The Crow Road (44 page)

‘Canada, I think, Prentice. Churchill, on Hudson’s Bay. To observe the arctic bear.’

I confess I had to re-process that sentence a couple of times as we danced, before working out that she did not intend to study the region naked (an image I found rather alarming), but was merely using a more pedantically accurate term for a polar bear.

‘Super.’ I smiled.

 
 
 
Uncle Hamish sat at the table with the rest of the family and got slowly drunk. I danced with Aunt Tone, and asked after her husband’s health.

‘Oh, he’s getting better all the time,’ Aunt Tone said, glancing at him. ‘He hasn’t had the nightmares for weeks now. I think going back to work helped him. Fergus was very understanding. And he’s had a lot of long chats with the minister. People have been very kind, altogether. You haven’t talked to him?’ Aunt Tone looked at me critically.

‘Not for a bit.’ I gave her a big smile. ‘I will, though.’

 
 
 
Uncle Hamish watched the dancing. He lifted his whisky to his lips, sipped at it, then shook his head with such slow deliberation I caught myself listening for the creak. ‘No, Prentice. I have been foolish, and even vain. I did not pay sufficient heed to the scriptures. I thought that I knew better.’ He sipped his whisky, shook his head. ‘It was vanity; my theories, my beliefs about the hereafter; vanity. I have renounced them.’

‘Oh,’ I said, disappointed. ‘No more anti-creates?’

He shook, as though a chill had passed through him. ‘No, that was my mistake.’ He looked at me straight for the first time. ‘He punished both of us, Prentice.’ Uncle Hamish flicked his gaze towards the roof of the marquee. ‘Both of us,’ he repeated. He looked away again. ‘God knows we are all his children, but he is a strict father, sometimes. Terribly, terribly strict.’

I put my head on my hand and looked at my uncle as I considered this idea of God as child-abuser. Hamish started to shake his head again before he’d sipped his whisky, and I experienced a brief feeling of excited horror, waiting for the resulting catastrophe; but he just stopped in mid-shake, sipped, then shook his head slowly again. ‘Aye; a strict father.’

I patted his arm. ‘Never mind.’ I said, helpfully.

 
 
 
I danced with Aunt Charlotte, Verity’s still-handsome and determinedly superstitious mother, who told me that the newly-weds would surely be happy, because their stars were well-matched.

Exhibiting a generosity of spirit I rather surprised myself with, I agreed that certainly the stars in their eyes seemed to augur well.

 
 
 
I bumped into the smaller than life-size Mr Gibbon near the bar at one point; I was in such a gregarious, clubbable mood I actually enjoyed talking to him. We agreed Aunt Ilsa was a wonderful woman, but that she had itchy feet. Mr Gibbon looked over at Aunt Ilsa, who had - I could only imagine by force - got Uncle Hamish up for a dance. Together they were having the same effect on the dance floor as a loose cannon manned by hippos.

‘Yes,’ Mr Gibbon said, sighing, his eyelids fluttering. ‘I am her kentledge.’ He smiled at me with a sort of apologetic self-satisfaction, as though he was the luckiest man alive, and tip-toed off through the crowds with his two glasses of sherry.

‘Kentledge?’ I said to myself. I’d have scratched my head but my hands were full of glasses.

‘Prentice. Taking a breather too, eh?’

I had stepped outside the marquee for a breather, late on, after the hoochter-choochter music started and the place got even warmer. I looked round in the shadows and saw Fergus Urvill, Scottishly resplendent in his Urvill dress tartan. Fergus came into the light spilling from the open flap of the marquee. He was smoking a cigar. The rain had ceased at last and the garden smelled of earth and wet leaves.

Fergus glittered; crystal buttons sparkled on his jacket; black pearls of obsidian decorated his sporran, and the skean dhu stuck into the top of his right sock - a rather more impressive and business-like example of the traditional Highland-dress knife than mine, which looked like a glorified letter opener - was crowned with a large ruby, glinting in the light against the hairs of his leg like some grotesquely faceted bulb of blood.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, getting my breath back.’

Fergus looked into the marquee. ‘They’re a handsome couple, eh?’

I glanced in, to see Lewis and Verity, hand in hand, talking to some of Verity’s relations. Lewis had changed into a dark suit and a bootlace tie; Verity wore a dark skirt and long, gold-coloured jacket.

I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. I cleared my throat.

‘Cigar?’ Fergus said, digging an aluminium tube from one pocket of his jacket. I shook my head. ‘No,’ Fergus said, looking at me tolerantly. ‘Of course you don’t, do you.’

‘No,’ I said. I grinned inanely.

I was surprised at just how uncomfortable I felt in his presence, and how hard it was both to work out precisely why I felt that way, and to disguise the fact. We talked for a little while. About my studies; going better now, thank you. And about flying. Fergus was learning to fly; up at Connel, the air field a few miles north of Oban. Oh, really? Yes. Hoped to be going solo by the end of the year, if all went according to plan. He asked me what I thought of the Gulf crisis and I, quailing, said it all kind of depended how you looked at it.

I think I made him feel as awkward eventually as I had from the start of the conversation, and I took the opportunity of a new reel beginning to head back into the marquee, to join in another swirling, riotous dance.

 
 
 
Ashley, Dean and I retired to my room in the house during the supper interval, while people got their breath back and the band - four oldish guys mysteriously called the Dougie McTee Trio - tried to get drunk.

We snorted some coke, we had a couple of Js, and in response to a single question from Dean, I told them both all about the River Game; its history, every rule and feature, a thorough description of the board, an analysis of the differing playing styles of myself, Lewis, James, dad, mum and Helen Urvill, some handy tips and useful warnings, and a few interesting excerpts from certain classic games we’d played. It took about ten minutes. I don’t think I repeated myself once or left anything out, and I finished by saying that all of that, of course, wasn’t to mention the secret, banned version; the Black River Game.

They both stared at me. Dean looked like he hadn’t believed a word I’d said. Ashley just seemed amused.

‘Aye. Good coke, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yep,’ Dean said, busy with mirror and blade again. He glanced at his sister and nodded at me. ‘For God’s sake, Ash, stick that number in his mouth and shut him up.’

I accepted the J with a smile.

The three of us kick-stepped down the stairs.

‘Hoy, all that stuff about that game,’ Dean shouted as we three swung into the marquee, where an Eightsome Reel of extravagant proportions and high decibel-count was in its Dervish phase. ‘That gospel, aye?’

I frowned deeply as I looked at him. ‘Oh no.’ I shook my head earnestly. ‘It’s
true.’

 
 
 
Later, I sat alone at a table, quietly drinking whisky, watching them all. I’d lowered my head; one hand lay flat, palm-down, on the table. I felt very calm and deadly and in control; shit, I felt like I was Michael Corleone. The tunes and laughs and shouts washed through me, and the people, for that moment, seemed to be dancing about me, for me. I felt ... pivotal, and drank a silent toast to Grandma Margot. I drank to my late father. I thought of Uncle Rory, wherever he was, and drank to him. I even drank to James, also absent.

James was coming down only slowly from his peak of anger. Even now, he was still so sullen and difficult to get on with that it had almost been a relief when he’d said he didn’t want to be involved in the wedding. He’d gone to stay with some school pals at Kilmartin, a little north of Gallanach, for the weekend. I think mum was unhappy he wasn’t here today, but Lewis and I weren’t.

I drank some more whisky, thinking.

A marriage.

And a little information.

Not to mention more than a little suspicion.

All it had taken was one blurred face, glimpsed far away by somebody else, seen soundless for a second on a fuzzed TV in a noisy, crowded, smoky pub in Soho, one Friday evening - just one tiny example of all the inevitable, peripheral results of a confrontation in a distant desert - and suddenly, despite all our efforts, we were back amongst the bad stuff again; shrapnel from the coming war. Although, of course, I couldn’t be sure.

Mum went past, dancing with Fergus Urvill, who was sweating. Mum looked small, next to him. Her expression was unreadable. Jlsy, I thought, and drank to Uncle Rory.

 
 
 
Lewis and Verity left at midnight in a taxi. None of that let’s-make-a-mess-of-the-car nonsense for them. The taxi was supposedly heading for Gallanach; only mum and I knew they were actually booked into the Columba in Oban, and heading for Glasgow and the airport tomorrow.

The four-man trio played; the dancing continued. Mum left with Hamish and Tone; she was staying with them tonight. I was in charge of the house. I danced until my legs ached. I talked until my throat hurt. The band, and the bagpipe players who’d joined in with them, stopped playing at about two. Dean and I fed some home-made compilation tapes through the PA, and the dancing went on.

Later, after everybody had either left or crashed out in the house, Ash and I walked out along the shore, by the calmly lapping waters of Loch Fyne, in a clear, cool dawn.

I remember babbling, high and spacey and danced-out all at once. We sat and stared out over the satin grey stretch of water, watching low-flying seagulls flapping lazily to and fro. I treated Ash to bits of Uncle Rory’s poetry; I knew some of it by heart, now.

 
 
 
Ash suggested heading back and to the house, and either having some coffee or getting some sleep. Her wide eyes looked tired. I agreed coffee might be an idea. The last thing I remember is insisting I had whisky in my coffee, then falling asleep in the kitchen, my head on Ash’s shoulder, mumbling about how I’d loved dad, and how I’d loved Verity, too, and I’d never find another one like her, but she was a heartless bitch. No she wasn’t, yes she was, no she wasn’t, it was just she wasn’t for me, and if I had any sense I’d go for somebody who was a kind and gentle friend and who I got on well with; like Ash. I should take up with Ash; I should fall in love with her, that’s what I ought to do. Only if I did, I muttered into her shoulder, she’d be sure to fall for somebody else, or die, or get a job in New Zealand, but that’s what I ought to do, if only things worked that way ... Why do we always love the wrong people?

Ash, silent beneath me, above me, just patted my shoulder and laid her head on mine.

 
 
 
Mum woke me in the late afternoon. I moaned and she put a pint glass of water and two sachets of Resolve down on the table near my head. I tried to focus on the water. Mum sighed, tore the sachets open and tipped the powder fizzing into the glass.

I checked things out with the one eye that would open. I was in my room at Lochgair, on my bed, still mostly clothed in shirt and kilt and socks. My head felt like it had been recently used for a very long and closely contested game of basketball. Somebody had stolen my real body and replaced it with a Prentice-shaped jelly mould packed full of enhanced-capacity pain receptors firing away like they were auditioning for a Duracell commercial. Mum was dressed in faded jeans and an old holed sweater. Her hair was tied back and she wore violently yellow rubber kitchen gloves which were doing horrible things to my visual cortex. A yellow duster dangled from her hip pocket. I couldn’t think what else to do, so I moaned again.

Mum sat down on the bed, put a hand on my head and ran my curls through her rubber-clad fingers.

‘What’s that you’ve got in your hair?’ she said.

My brain cells? I wondered. Certainly it felt like they’d been squeezed out of my ears. Damn rim-shots. Not that I could share this insight with my mother, for the simple reason that I couldn’t talk.

‘What is it?’ mum said. ‘This black stuff?’ She rubbed her fingers together in my hair, the rubber gloves squeaking horribly. ‘Oh, stop moaning, Prentice. Drink your water.’ She sniffed at her fingers. ‘Hmm,’ she said, rising and heading for the door. ‘Mascara, eh?’

I looked up, monocular, at the closing door, grimacing.

Massacre?

CHAPTER 15

I sipped my Bloody Mary, looking down at huge, white, piled-up clouds so bright in the mid-day sunshine they looked yellow. The plane had just levelled out and there was a smell of food; they were serving lunch further forward in the cabin. I watched the clouds for a moment, then looked at my magazine. I was on my way to London, a couple of torn-off match-book covers in my pocket, hoping to confront Mr Rupert Paxton-Marr.

 
 
 
‘Thanks mum ... Ash?’