The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  Fiona leant back against the rear of the dressing table, breathing hard, and waved one hand, wafting air over her face. Her cheeks were pink, and a couple of coils of copper hair had fallen from her hairdo, one on each side of her head. She pulled at her bodice, blew down, went ‘Whoo!’ Rory couldn’t see Fergus Urvill. Then he reappeared, stood by Fiona. He was holding a key and a couple of toilet rolls; he said something Rory didn’t catch. ‘Oh no,’ Fiona said, touching Fergus’s arm. Her face looked amused but concerned. ‘No, that’s naughty ...’

  Fergus stood there for a moment. Rory couldn’t see his face, but Fiona’s looked glowing and bright. ‘I like being naughty,’ he heard Fergus say, and then he stepped forward and took Fiona in his arms, still holding the key and the toilet rolls.

  What? thought Rory. This really was something. Sister Fiona and big Fergus Urvill? Stupid girl; probably only after her body.

  ‘Ferg!’ Fiona said, breaking away. Her face looked surprised, cheeks even redder. She smiled broadly, held Fergus’s elbows. ‘Well, this is ... unexpected.’

  ‘I’ve always ...’ Fergus lowered his voice as he bent to kiss her again, face in her hair and then his mouth on hers. Rory missed the exact words.

  Go on, thought Rory. Go on. Do it. Let me see!

  Fergus’s hands dropped the key and the toilet rolls, grabbed Fiona’s bum. She pushed away from him. ‘Ferg ...’ she said, breathless, lip-stick smeared.

  ‘Fiona,’ Fergus moaned, clutching her. ‘I want you! I need you!’

  ‘Well,’ Fiona said, gulping. ‘That’s very, ah ... but not here, eh?’

  Fergus pulled her close again. ‘Let me drive you home tonight.’

  ‘Umm, well, I think we were getting a taxi.’

  ‘Please; let me. Please. Fiona. You don’t know ...’ Fergus stuck his nose into her hair again, made a sort of moaning noise. ‘Feel me.’ And he guided one of Fiona’s hands to the front of his kilt.

  Good God, thought Rory. He took another quick glance down the hall, then looked back through the key-hole.

  Fiona took her hand away. ‘Hmm. Yes; actually I already could, Fergus.’

  ‘I need you!’ He pulled her close again.

  ‘Not here, Fergus.’

  ‘Fiona; please ...’

  ‘All right; all right, Fergus. I’ll try. We’ll see, okay?’

  ‘Yes; yes, thank you!’ Fergus gathered Fiona’s hands in his.

  ‘Right,’ she laughed. ‘Well, come on; let’s get out of here before the happy couple arrive. Put those back in the loo.’ She pointed at the toilet rolls. Fergus retrieved them. She busied herself with her hair, restoring it. Fergus turned and disappeared from Rory’s view. ‘And put some cold water on that,’ Fiona said, grinning. ‘Looks like your sporran’s trying to levitate.’

  She came towards the door. Rory leapt back, staggered on legs that had gone half to sleep, and only just scrambled into the broom cupboard and got the door shut before the bedroom door opened. The broom cupboard key-hole didn’t let him see anything. He heard muffled conversation but no footsteps.

  He waited, breathless, heart hammering in the darkness, one hand in his trouser pocket, stroking himself.

  ‘Do you know where the twins were conceived?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said, and belched.

  ‘Fucking McCaig’s Folly, that’s where.’

  ‘What, Oban?’

  ‘The very place.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘You don’t mind me saying this, I mean talking about Fiona like this, do you?’

  ‘No, no.’ He waved one hand. ‘Your wife; you talk about her. No, no, that’s bad, that sounds bad. I’m all for women’s lib.’

  ‘Might have bloody known. Might have bloody known you would be. Bloody typical, if you ask me. You’re a Bolshie bastard, McHoan.’

  ‘And you are the unacceptable face of Capitalism, Ferg.’

  ‘Don’t quote that fairy at me, you Bolshie bastard. And don’t call me Ferg.’

  ‘Beg your pardon. Some more whisky?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  Rory got up out of the creaking wooden seat and walked unsteadily over to where Fergus lay on the bare wooden floorboards, head against the ancient, burst couch. The fire crackled in the grate, its light competing with that of the little gas lamp. Rory unscrewed the top from the bottle of Bells carefully and topped up Fergus’s little silver cup. Fergus had brought a leather case with him; it held three of the silver cups and a big hip flask. Rory had brought the bottle in his rucksack.

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘Ta much. You’re a decent fellow for a Bolshie bastard.’

  ‘One tries, old bean,’ Rory said. He walked carefully to his seat, picked his little cup up from the floor and went to the room’s single window. It was black outside. There had been a moon when they’d first arrived, but the clouds had come while they were chopping wood, and the rain while they’d cooked dinner on the two little primus stoves.

  He turned from the darkness. Fergus looked like he was almost asleep. He was dressed in plus fours, tweed waistcoat (the jacket, and his waxed Barbour were hanging behind the door of the bothy), thick socks, brogues, and a fawn country shirt with a button-down collar. God, he even had his tie on still. Rory wore cords, mountain-hiking boots and a plain M&S shirt. His nylon waterproofs were draped over a chair.

  What an odd pair we make, he thought.

  He had been back from his travels for a while, staying first in London then at Lochgair, while he tried to work out what to do with his life. He had the impression things were sliding past him somehow. He’d made a good start but now he was faltering, and the focus of attention was drifting slowly away from him.

  He had returned to discover that — like his brother before him — Ken had given up being a teacher. Hamish had taken up the managerial place at the factory that everyone had expected would be Kenneth’s, when Kenneth had decided to teach. Now Ken too was quitting the profession to try something else: writing children’s stories. Rory had always thought of Hamish as a sort of ponderously eccentric fool, and Ken a kind of failure because he had so much wanted to travel, and instead had settled down with Mary, stayed in the same wee corner of the world as he’d been born and raised in, and not only raised his own children, but chosen to teach others’, too. Rory had felt slightly sorry for his elder brother, then. Now he felt envious. Ken seemed happy; happy with his wife, with his children, and now with his work; not rich, but doing what he wanted to do.

  And why hadn’t Ken told him he was writing too? He might have been able to help him, but even if Ken had wanted to do it all without any assistance from his younger brother, he might at least have told him what he was doing. Instead Rory had found out only when Ken had had his first story published, and now it was as though they were passing each other travelling in opposite directions; Ken slowly but surely building up a reputation as a children’s story-teller while his own supposed career as a professional recounter of traveller’s tales sank gradually in the west. Books people forgot about and articles in Sunday supplements that were only one notch above the sort of shit tourist boards put out.

  And so he’d left London, to come here, hoping to lick the closing wise wound of whatever talent it was he had.

  He’d spent a lot of time just wandering in the hills. Sometimes Ken came too, or one of the boys if they were in the mood, but mostly he went by himself, trying to sort himself out. What it boiled down to was: there was here, where he had friends and family, or there was London where he had a few friends and a lot of contacts, and it felt like things were happening, and where you could fill time with something no matter how mixed up and fraudulent you felt... or there was abroad, of course; the rest of the world; India (to take the most extreme example he’d found so far), where you felt like an alien, lumbering and self-conscious, materially far more rich and spiritually far more poor than the people who thronged the place, where just by that intensity of touching, that very sweat
ing crowdedness, you felt more apart, more consigned to a different, echoing place inside yourself.

  One day, on a long walk, he’d almost literally bumped into Fergus Urvill, crouching in a hide up amongst the folds in the hills, waiting with telescope and .303 for a wounded Sika deer. Fergus had motioned him to sit down with him behind the hide, and to keep quiet. Rory bad waited with the older man - silent for quarter of an hour apart from a whispered hello and a quick explanation of what was going on - until the herd of deer appeared, brown shapes on the brown hill. One animal was holding the rest back; limping heavily. Fergus waited until the herd was as close as it looked like it was going to come, then sighted on the limping beast, still two hundred yards away.

  The sound of the shot left Rory’s ears ringing. The Sika’s head jerked; it dropped to its knees and keeled over. The rest raced off, bouncing across the heather.

  He helped Fergus drag the small corpse down the slope to the track, where the Land Rover was parked, and accepted a lift back to the road.

  ‘Hardly recognised you, Roderick,’ Fergus said, as he drove. ‘Not seen you since Fi and I got shackled. Must be at least that long.’

  ‘I’ve been away.’

  ‘Of course; your travels. I’ve got that India book of yours, you know.’

  ‘Ah.’ Rory watched the trees slide past the Land Rover’s windows.

  ‘Done any others?’

  ‘There was one about the States and Mexico. Last year.’

  ‘Really?’ Fergus looked over at him briefly. ‘I didn’t hear about that.’

  Rory smiled thinly. ‘No,’he said.

  Fergus made a grunting noise, changed gear as they bumped down the track towards the main road. ‘Ken said something about you living in a squat in London ... or something ridiculous like that. That right?’

  ‘Housing cooperative.’

  ‘Ah-ha.’ Fergus drove on for a while. ‘Always wanted to take a look at India myself, you know,’he said suddenly. ‘Keep meaning to go; never quite get around to it, know what I mean?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t the sort of place you can just take a look at.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The Land Rover came down to the main road between Lochgilphead and Lochgair: ‘Look, we’ve got a do on this evening, in the town -’ Fergus glanced at his watch. ‘- bit late already, to tell the truth. But how about coming round tomorrow for ... In fact, d’you fish?’

  ‘Fish? Yeah, I used to.’

  ‘Not against your vegetarian principles, is it?’

  ‘No. India didn’t change me that much.’

  ‘Well, then; come fishing with me tomorrow. Pool on the Add with a monster trout in it; been after the swine for months. Plenty of smaller stuff too, though. Fancy it? Course, I’ll never talk to you again if you catch the big feller, but might make a fun afternoon. What do you say?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  So they became friends, after a fashion. Most of Rory’s pals in London were in the International Marxist Group, but here he was; wandering the hills with an upper class dingbat who just happened to be married to his sister and who lived for huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ (and seemed to spend the absolute minimum amount of time in his castle with his wife), and who had just last year rationalised half the work force in the glass factory out of a job. Still, they got on together, somehow, and Fergus was an undemanding companion; company of a sort, but not taxing; none of Ken’s garrulousness, Lewis’s moodiness or Prentice or James’s ceaseless questioning. It was almost like walking the hills on your own.

  And a couple of days ago Fergus had suggested they go for a longer hike, up into the trackless hills where the Landy couldn’t reach. They would take collapsible rods, a couple of guns, and have to fish and shoot to eat. They could stay in the old lodge; it would save taking a tent.

  So here they were, on the first floor of the old lodge, which was now used just as a bothy. The room they were in contained a single big dormer window, a fireplace, a couch, a table and two seats, and two bunkbeds. There were other rooms with more beds, but keeping to one room meant only lighting one fire; the autumn weather had turned chilly early.

  ‘No,’Fergus said, looking up from where he lay, slumped against the couch. ‘But you don’t mind me talking about Fiona like this, do you? I mean, your sister. My wife. You sure you don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘McCaig’s Folly, eh?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh; well yes... at least I think so. Got the idea from Charlotte, actually.’

  ‘What, your sister?’

  ‘Mmm. The one that married that chap Walker, from Edinburgh.’

  ‘Oh yeah; I remember.’ Rory went over to the seat that held his jacket.

  ‘Funny girl, Charlie; had this thing about ... antiquity. Got Walker to deflower her under this ancient fucking yew tree in Perthshire. So she told me, anyway.’

  ‘Uh-huh.‘Rory rummaged in his jacket pockets.

  ‘Fiona and I thought we’d try something like that, one time we were in Oban, for some do. You know; put a bit of sparkle back in ... You sure you don’t mind me talking about your sister like this?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rory took his tobacco tin from the jacket. He held the tin up. ‘As long as you don’t mind me having a little smoke?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. Bloody cold it was, in that damn folly. Had to sit on a - Oh,’ Fergus said, suddenly realising. ‘You mean the old wacky baccy.’

  Rory smiled, sat down. ‘That’s the stuff.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Fergus said, waving one hand. ‘Go ahead.’ He watched carefully as Rory set out the papers. ‘Mmm, go ahead.’

  Rory looked up, saw Fergus’s fascinated expression. ‘Do you want any of this, Fergus?’

  ‘Umm,’ Fergus said, sitting back, blinking. ‘Could do, I suppose. Never really tried it, to be honest. Couple of chaps at the school got booted out for that stuff and I never did get round to it.’

  ‘Well, I’m not forcing you.’

  ‘Not at all. Not at all.’

  They smoked the joint. Fergus, used to the occasional cigar with his brandy now that he’d given up his pipe, pronounced the smoke quite cool, and objected more to the sweet taste of the Old Holborn than to the scent of resin.

  ‘This any good for hanky-panky?’ he said, passing the roach back to Rory, who took a last hot toke then flicked the remains into the heart of the fire.

  ‘Can be,’he said.

  ‘Might try it some time. God knows we could do with something to - Look, you absolutely sure you don’t mind me talking about your sister this way?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Good man - hey! Did you hear that?’

  Rory looked up at the ceiling. Fergus was staring at the plasterboard expanse above them. Rory listened. Then, above the crackling of the fire, he did hear something; a quiet, scrabbling noise in the roof-space above them.

  ‘Rats, I’ll bet!’ Fergus said, and rolled over to his pack.

  Rory thought about it. They were here in a deserted old house in the middle of nowhere on a black and starless night in one of the more mysterious bits of Scotland, and there was a scrabbling, clawy sort of noise coming from the ceiling above him and this other drunk, stoned man. He shrugged. Yeah; probably rats. Or mice. Or birds.

  Fergus pulled his pack gently to him, scraping over the floorboards. He lifted the rucksack up. The .303 and the shotgun were in a waterproof bag strapped to the side of the pack. Fergus undid the straps. ‘Ssh,’ he said to Rory. Rory had started building another joint. He waved. He drank some more whisky.

  He was just inserting the roach when Fergus rolled over to him and held the shotgun out to him. ‘Here!’ he whispered urgently.

  ‘Hmm,’ Rory said, nodding thanks. He heard some clicks.

  Fergus held the ancient Lee Enfield at his side. He knelt close by Rory. ‘Think the little bastard’s over there.’ He pointed. He reached up, touched
the gun Rory held. It was hard doing the roach one handed. ‘Put that down, man!’ Fergus hissed. He took the tin from Rory’s lap and put all the makings down on the floor. Rory felt peeved.

  ‘There,’ Fergus said. ‘Safety’s off. When I fire, aim where I do, all right?’

  ‘Yup,’ Rory said, forgetting about the J. He took the shotgun. Fergus walked on his heels, still hunkered down, across the room, eyes and gun pointed towards the plasterboard ceiling. He stopped. There was a noise like a spider running across a very sensitive microphone.

  Bang! went the rifle. Rory almost dropped the shotgun. ‘There!’ yelled Fergus. Plaster was falling from a small hole in the ceiling; there was smoke in the air. Rory aimed at the small hole, pulled the trigger. The gun struck back against his shoulder, sending him falling back off his seat. He clattered to the floor.

  ‘Well, pump it, man, pump it!’ he heard Fergus shouting from somewhere.

  Awful lot of smoke around. Ears seemed to be ringing. He pumped the gun. (Funny; he’d have thought Fergus would have been a side-by-side man.) There was another sharp crack of sound from the .303. He saw the hole appear in the plaster almost right above him. Great; he could get the little bastard without having to get up from the floor. The floorboards ought to provide extra firing stability, too. He pulled the trigger again. The gun went Blam! with a little less sonic enthusiasm than before, though it hurt his shoulder a little more.

  A white waterfall of plaster burst down from the ceiling and slapped and pattered all over him. Rory spat bits out of his mouth, blinked the white dust out of his eyes. He heard Fergus colliding with something in the room. He pumped the gun, looked round. Fergus was lying on the couch, aiming at the centre of the ceiling. He fired the Lee Enfield again; Rory was getting the hang of this now, and aimed the shotgun at the same place and fired it, almost before the noise of Fergus’s shot had stopped echoing. The room was getting a bit hazy, and there was probably blood coming from his ears, but what the fuck. Rory readied the gun again.