The Crow Road

CHAPTER 14

So anyway, bro, how are things?" Lewis shook his head slowly and deliberately. He held up his whisky glass and studied it from close range, focusing with explicit care, one eye at a time. I formed the impression he was attempting to fix the tumbler's image in his memory so he'd know the identity of the receptacle to blame come the following morning. I was so drunk at the time this actually seemed like quite a smart idea, and I would probably have attempted to do the same thing myself if I'd thought I was remotely capable of coordinating my hand, eyes and brain to that degree. The only reason I could get my drinking hand and my mouth in roughly the same place at approximately the same time at this stage in the evening was because I'd had so much recent practice at it. And even that comparatively simple system wasn't a hundred per cent any more; I'd missed my mouth twice already and spilled small amounts of whisky onto my chin and shirt. I'd carried it off with dignity, though.

Lewis looked like he was going to sleep. Either that or the superior intellect of the whisky glass had hypnotised him. I knew the problem.

"Lewis?" I said.

"Wha — what?" he looked at me, confused.

"I was saying," I said. "How are things?"

"Oh," he said, and sighed. "I don't know." He frowned. "Verity said to me just yesterday… she said, 'Lewis, I don't think we understand each other any more.»

"What did you say?" I sipped my whisky carefully.

"I said, 'Whadaya mean?" Lewis snarled.

Then he burst out laughing. It must have been infectious laughter because I started laughing too, and then we were both laughing, but we couldn't have been that drunk because we didn't over-do it. Five minutes later — well, maybe ten, absolute max — we'd stopped laughing almost entirely.

"Really?" I said, wiping my eyes.

Lewis shook his head. "Na, course not. Everything's… was pure dead brilliant, actually."

"Good," I said, and drank. I meant it too, but even as I realised that I meant it, I thought: ah, it's just the drink. I'll be worse in the morning. Still, I looked up at Lewis and said, "I think I'm better."

"Better…?" Lewis began, giggling.

"Better than… yesterday, Mr Creosote?" I started to laugh.

"Better get a bucket — " Lewis howled, but couldn't manage the rest of the line, because by then we were on the floor. I laughed until my ears hurt.

I stood beneath the larches in the rain, holding an umbrella, wearing a kilt and feeling a little self-conscious. The stand of dripping trees had gone yellow and dropped their needles during the last few weeks, turning the ground beneath them a dully shining blond that seemed like a tinted mirror to the ash-bright expanse of overcast sky. I touched the plain black obelisk, slick and cold in the chill October rain. Behind me, the noise from the marquee — an increasing choir of chattering voices — was slowly drowning the patter of the drizzle as it fell through the twigs and branches above onto the sodden ground; a busy, buzzy, shared excitement displacing what the solitary soul perceived as a sort of tranquil gloom.

What guy? I thought. What is Ash going to show me; who? (And already thought I might have guessed.) Shit, I didn't like the sound of this.

The rain came on harder and I listened to it drumming on the taut black skin of the umbrella, remembering remembering.

"Remember the River Game?"

"Remember the Black River Game?"

"Ha!"

We were digging dad's grave, waist deep in the rich black earth of Lochgair, partially shielded from the house by the dense mass of rhodie bushes and tall tangles of wild roses. Jimmy Turrock, the council workman sent from the municipal cemetery to dig the grave officially, and who'd been in the same class as Lewis at school, was sitting against the wheel of his miniature earth-mover, arms folded, head back, mouth open, snoring. That morning over breakfast, Lewis and I had decided we'd dig the hole ourselves. If nothing else, it would take our minds off our hangovers, which were industrial strength.

The River Game was something dad made up himself. He did it for Lewis and me. The first version was roughed out in a big sketch book, while he tinkered with the rules. When he was happy with it all, he got a big bit of white cardboard from a display company in Glasgow, drew out the playing surface, painted it, sprayed it with lacquer and edged the board with black tape. He'd bought various Lego packs and made the ships and the cargoes out of those. The rules were typed, the cards were printed on labels and they were stuck onto the back of ordinary playing cards. We were presented with the result as a sort of extra present to be shared between Lewis and me for Christmas 1981. James was still a bit young; he'd only have chewed the ships and choked on the cargoes.

Lewis — who had asked for and got a television for his room, and a new Walkman — had the good grace to express gratitude. I was still celebrating having finally worn down dad's resistance to having a computer in the house, and was therefore far too busy kicking pixel and re-staging the attack of the Imperial AT-ATs on the rebel snow trenches to be bothered sparing more than the most cursory glance at what was, when all was said and done, a lump of amateurishly painted cardboard, a handful of non-motorised and very basic Lego bits, a few adulterated cards and what looked suspiciously like an exam paper. "Yeah; great, dad. Got any more PP9 batteries for this wee car? The one out your calculator didn't last long," was about as enthusiastic as I got about the game for most of the festive period.

Later, I deigned to play.

The River Game was based on trade; dad had wanted something that would distract us from all the war games Lewis and I played: soldiers, with our friends in the woods, battles with our toys, wars on friends" computers. He really wanted something non-capitalistic as well as non-military, but the River Game was going to be just his first effort; he would — he told us — be working on something much more right-on, once he had the time to spare. He'd see if we liked the River Game first.

You had two or three ships; you sailed them from a port on one side of the board to a port on the other side through what was either a big loch or lake choked with islands, or a piece of territory with an awful lot of waterways snaking through it, depending how you chose to look at it. You picked up cargo at the second port and sailed back. The cargo was worth a certain amount when you got back to your home port, and with the money you could buy more ships, configured for speed or capacity. There were at least half a dozen major routes from one port to the other, and basically, the shorter the route you took, the more hazardous it was; there were whirlpools, channels prone to rock falls, stretches of river where the sand-banks changed all the time, and so on. The weather had a chance to change every few moves, and how much the different types of cargo were worth depended on… Oh, what your opponents had chosen to carry, what the weather was, whether the month had an «r» in it; I can't remember it all.

It was quite a fun game, mildly addictive, with a reasonable balance of skill and luck, and Lewis and I eventually got quite a few of our friends playing it, but the truth is it improved dramatically when Lewis — with my help — drew up an extra set of rules which let you build warships!

We played that game for weeks before dad caught us at it in the conservatory, one rainy May day, and asked how come there were all these ships with funny-coloured cargoes clustered so close together and surrounded by wrecks where there were no hazards.

Oops.

We called it the Black River Game (Dad even objected to the title). He had been working on a new improved version of the original game that involved using some of the money to build railways across the board; you laid track, you built bridges, dug tunnels, coped with rock falls and marshes and recalcitrant land owners, and the first one to finish his or her railway was, in effect, the winner. But he stopped work on this sophistication when he found us acting out furiously destructive naval engagements on his painstakingly crafted board. He didn't take it away, though. I think for a while he was trying to develop another non-combative game that he'd defy us to turn martial, but it stayed at the development stage and never did see the light of day.

I stopped digging for a moment, wiped some sweat from my brow with the hem of my T-shirt, which was lying on the ground at the head of the grave. I leant on my shovel, looking at Jimmy Turrock's up-ended face while he snored. Lewis stopped digging for a moment too, breathing hard.

I said, "We disappointed him, though, didn't we?" Lewis shrugged. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. "Oh, Prentice, come on; boys will be boys. Dad knew that."

"Yeah, but he expected better of us."

"Dads always do, it's traditional. We turned out not too bad."

"Neither of us did as well as he expected at Uni," I said. I'd told Lewis — though not my mother — that I was fairly certain I'd failed my finals.

"Well, for a start, he didn't know about you," Lewis said, scraping some earth off the blade of his spade. "And he was smart enough to know degrees aren't everything. Come on, we're not in prison, we're not junkies and we're not Young Tories." He waggled his eyebrows. "It's no small achievement."

"I suppose," I said, and started digging again. (Pity he'd mentioned prison; another thing I hadn't told Lewis about was that I'd been nicked for shop-lifting. Not that I'd be going to prison, but it's the thought that counts.)

Lewis kept on digging. "We could have done worse," he insisted.

"We could have done better," I said, shovelling another load of earth out of the pit.

Lewis was silent for a while, then said, quietly, "Better than… yesterday?"

I laughed in spite of myself (and in spite of the grave, and my aching head and still bruised heart). "Shut up," I said, "please."

Lewis shut up. I encountered another rhodie root and attacked it with the hacksaw, then took up the spade again, blinking sweat out of my eyes and waving a couple of flies away.

Lewis muttered almost inaudibly as he dug; "It's only waffer thin…»

We snorted and guffawed for a while, then took a break for yet more Irn-Bru, sitting at the edge of the grave, legs dangling into it, with Jimmy Turrock still blissfully — and vocally — in the land of nod across the grave in front of us.

I drank deeply from the bottle, passed it to Lewis. He finished it, grimaced, looked at the bottle. "You know, I've finally realised what this stuff reminds me of," he said, and belched heavily. I followed suit, trumping his sonorous burp with one that disturbed a few drowsy crows from nearby trees and even had Jimmy Turrock stir in his sleep.

"What?" I said.

"Chewing gum," Lewis said, screwing the cap back on the bottle and chucking it into the grass near the council earth-digger.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah, right enough."

We sat there, silent for a while. I looked at Jimmy Turrock's spotty, open-mouthed face and his wispy red hair. His snores sounded like somebody forever trying to start a badly-tuned buzz-saw. I listened to it for a while, and watched a couple of flies buzzing around in a tight but complicated holding pattern in front of his mouth, as though daring each other to be the first to investigate inside. After a while they broke off, though, and settled for exploring the rough landscape of Jimmy's checked shirt. My head hurt. Come to that, almost everything hurt. Ah well, self-inflicted wounds.

Jimmy Turrock snored on, oblivious.

Lewis and Verity had arrived the night before, an hour after I'd got back from my sunset visit to Darren's sea-side sculpture. Their plane had been late and they'd had problems hiring the car, so they arrived nearly two hours later than we'd expected. Rather than phone from the airport, Lewis had hired a mobile along with the car but then when they'd tried to use it, it hadn't worked. The upshot was that mum and I had been getting into a fine panic, and I'd been dreading watching the news: "… and we're just getting reports of an incident at Glasgow airport… details still coming in…»

I mean, statistics tell you family tragedies oughtn't to come in quite such close succession, but Jeez; it gets to you, when somebody dies as unexpectedly as dad. Suddenly everybody you know seems vulnerable, and you fear for them all. Every phone-call sends your heart racing, every car journey anyone takes you want to say, Oh God be careful don't go above second gear have you thought of fitting air-bags is your journey really necessary be careful be careful be careful… So there we were; mum and I sitting watching the television, on the couch together, side by side, holding hands tightly without even realising it and watching the television but not taking in what we were watching, and dreading the sound of the phone and waiting waiting waiting for the sound of a car coming up the drive.

Until I heard it, and leapt over the couch and hauled open the curtains and the car drew up and Lewis waved at me as he got out and I whooped, "It's them!" to my mum, who smiled and relaxed and looked suddenly beautiful again.

There was a big three-cornered hug in the hall; then mum saw Verity standing by the door, taking a very long deliberate time to take her jacket off and hang it up; and so she was brought into the scrum too, and that was the first time, I realised, that I'd ever actually embraced her, even if it was just one arm round her slim shoulders. It was all right.

Then the phone rang. Mum and I jumped.

I got it. Mum took Lewis and Verity into the lounge.

"Hello?"

"Hello!" shouted a voice of immodestly robust proportions. "To whom am I talking?" the booming voice demanded. It was Aunt Ilsa. We'd left a message at the only contact address we had for her, two days earlier. She was in Ladakh, a place so out of the way it would take several international airports, a major rail terminus and substantial investment in a network ot eight-lane highways to promote it to the status of being in the middle of nowhere.

"It's Prentice, Aunt Ilsa." There was a satellite delay. I was talking to what I suspected was the only satellite ground station between Islamabad and Ulaan Baatar. There was a lot of noise in the background; it sounded like people shouting, and a mule or something.

"Hello there, Prentice," Aunt Ilsa bellowed. "How are you? Why did you want me to call?" Perhaps, I thought, she'd been taking steroids and they'd all gone to her vocal chords.

"I'm… there's —»

" — ello?"

" — some bad news, I'm afraid."

"What? You'll have to speak up, my dear; the hotelier is proving refractory."

"It's dad," I said, thinking I might as well get this over with as quickly as possible. "Kenneth; your brother. I'm afraid he's dead. He died three days ago."

"Good God! What on earth happened?" Aunt Ilsa rumbled. I could hear shouting. The thing that sounded like a mule went into what appeared to be a fit of coughing. "Mr Gibbon!" roared Aunt Ilsa. "Will you control that fellow!"

"He was struck by lightning," I said.

"Lightning?" Aunt Ilsa thundered.

"Yes."

"Good God. Where was he? Was he on a boat? Or —»

"He was —»

" — golf course? Mr… hello? Mr Gibbon had a friend once who was struck by lightning on a golf course, in Marbella. Right at the top of his back-swing. Bu —»

"No; he was —»

" — course it was an iron."

" — climbing," I said.

" — number seven, I think. What?"

"He was climbing," I shouted. I could hear what sounded like a fight going on at the other end of the phone. "Climbing a church."

"A church?" Aunt Ilsa demanded.

"I'm afraid so. Listen, Aunt Ilsa —»

"But he wouldn't be seen dead near a church!"

I bared my teeth at the phone and growled. My aunt, the unconscious humorist.

"I'm afraid that's what happened," I said as evenly as I could. "The funeral is tomorrow. I don't suppose you can make it, can you?"

There was a noise of some Ladakhian confusion for a while, then, fortissimo; "I'll have to leave you now, Lewis —»

"Prentice," I breathed through gritted teeth.

"— Our yak has escaped. Tell your mother our thoughts are with her at —»

And it was goodbye downlink.

I looked at the phone. "I'm not sure you have any to spare, aunt," I said, and put the phone down with a feeling of relief.

"I need a drink," I said to myself. I strode purposefully towards the lounge.

Lewis had been marginally more sensible than me, later on, that night before the funeral; he'd gone to bed one whisky before I had, leaving me in the lounge alone, at about three in the morning.

I should have gone then too, but I didn't, so I was left to get morose and self-pitying, re-living another evening in this room, another whisky-connected two-some over a year earlier.

"But it's not fair!"

"Prentice, —»

"And don't tell me life isn't fair!"

"Aw, think, son," dad said, sitting forward in his seat, clutching his glass with both hands. His eyes fixed on mine; I looked down, glaring at his reflection on the glass-topped coffee table between us. "Fairness is something we made up," he said. "It's an idea. The universe isn't fair or unfair; it works by mathematics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry… Things happen; it takes a mind to come along and call them fair or not."

"And that's it, is it?" I said bitterly. "He just dies and there's nothing else?" I could feel myself quivering with emotion. I was trying hard not to cry.

"There's whatever he left behind; art, in Darren's case. That's more than most get. And there's how people remember him. And there might have been children —»

"Not very likely in Darren's case, was it?" I sneered, grabbing at any opportunity to score even the smallest rhetorical point over my father.

Dad shrugged, staring into his whisky. "Even so." He drank, looked at me over the top of the tumbler. "But the rest," he said, "is just cells, molecules, atoms. Once the electricity, the chemistry, stops working in your brain, that's it; no more. You're history."

"That's defeatist! That's small-minded!"

He shook his head. "No. What you're proposing is," he said, slurring his words a little. He pointed one finger at me. "You're too frightened to admit how big everything else is, what the scales of the universe are, compared to ours; distance and time. You can't accept that individually, we're microscopic; here for an eye-blink. Might be heading for better things, but no guarantees. Trouble is, people can't believe they're not the centre of things, so they come up with all these pathetic stories about God and life after death and life before birth, but that's cowardice. Sheer cowardice. And because it's the product of cowardice, it promotes it; 'The Lord is my shepherd'. Thanks a fucking lot. So we've to live like sheep. Cowardice and cruelty. But everything's okay, because we're doing the Lord's work. Fuck the silicosis, get down that mine and work, nigger! Aw shucks; sure we skinned her alive and threw her in the salt pans, but we were only doing it to save her soul. Lordy lordy, gimme that old time religion and original sin. Another baby for perdition… Shit; original sin? What sick fuckwit thought that one up?"

Dad drained his glass and put it down on the glass-topped table between us. "Feel sorry for yourself because your friend's dead if you want, Prentice," he said, suddenly calm and sober. "But don't try to dignify it with what's supposed to be metaphysical angst; it's also known as superstitious shit, and you weren't brought up to speak that language."

"Well, thanks for the fucking censorship, dad!" I yelled. I jumped up and slammed my own glass down. The table top cracked; a single big flaw crossed, deep and green and not quite straight, like a dull ribbon of silk somehow suddenly embedded in the thick glass, from one edge of the table to the other, almost underneath our tumblers.

Dad stared at it then snorted, chuckling. "Hey, yeah! A symbol." He shook his head, glum, muttering as he sat back: "Hate the fuckers."

I hesitated, looking at the cracked glass, instinct — or training — telling me to apologise, but then did what I'd intended to do, and set about storming out of the room.

"Just fuck off, dad," I said before I slammed the door.

He looked up, pursed his lips and nodded, as though I'd asked him to remember and put the lights out before he went to bed. "Yup; okay." He waved one hand. "Night."

I lay in bed seething, thinking of all the smart things I should have said, until I fell into a troubled sleep. I woke early and left before anybody else was up, driving my hangover back to Glasgow and shouting at caravans that got in my way, and that was the last meaningful, full and frank exchange of views with my dad that I ever had.

"I wish he hadn't died right now," I said. I didn't look at Lewis. I was still looking at Jimmy Turrock, asleep against the wheel of his council digger. "I wish I could — I wish we could have started talking again." One of the two flies exploring the cotton landscape of Jimmy's shirt suddenly buzzed up to his forehead. His snoring hesitated, then went on. "It was so stupid." I shook my head. "I was so stupid."

"Yeah," Lewis said after a bit. "Well, that's just the way it is, Prentice. You weren't to know." I heard Lewis sigh. There was something I wish I'd told him, too. Could have said, over the phone, end of last week."

I looked at Lewis. "Oh yeah?"

Lewis looked awkward. He crossed his arms and sucked at his bottom lip. He glanced at me. "Were you really that… you know; keen on Verity? I mean; are you?"

I kicked my heels against the sides of the grave, checked out a couple of tree roots we'd have to tackle before we could dig much deeper. I shrugged. "Ah, it was just infatuation, I suppose. I mean, you know, I'll always like her, but… all that stuff at New Year… that was… well, partly the drink, but… mostly just sibling rivalry; sibling jealousy," I said. We both grinned. He still looked awkward. This time, instead of sucking his bottom lip, he bit his top one.

I knew, just like that.

"You are getting married," I said, gulping.

Lewis looked at me with wide eyes. "She's pregnant?" I spluttered, contralto.

Lewis's mouth was hanging open. He shut it quickly. He wiped his face with the hanky; his eyebrows and eyes registered surprise.

"Um, both," he said. "Almost certainly." He rung the hanky out over the hole, but it didn't drip (still, though, we would leave a fair amount of sweat in our father's grave).

Lewis nodded and his smile was flickering, uncertain. I hadn't seen him look so unsure of himself since the time when he was sixteen and I almost had him convinced the Boxer Rebellion had been about underpants.

"Fooof," I said.

Seemed as appropriate as anything. I stared over at Jimmy Turrock, blinking.

Lewis was making a clicking noise with his mouth. He cleared his throat. "Wasn't exactly planned, to tell the truth, but… well; I mean, we both, you know; want it, so… And, well, you know how I feel about marriage and all that stuff, but… Fuck it, it just keeps things simple."

He sounded almost apologetic.

I shook my head and, turning to him with a big smile, I said, "You total bastard." I put my hands on my hips. He looked concerned, but I guess my grin must have looked sincere. "You total, complete and utter bastard; I hate you," I told him. "But I hope you're disgustingly happy." I hesitated, just a little, then I hugged him. "Obscenely happy," I said. Probably have cried but I was pretty cried out by that stage.

"Man." He breathed into my shoulder. "I didn't know how you'd take it."

"In the neck," I said, pushing him away. "Told mum?"

"Wanted to wait till after the funeral. Mind you, I was going to wait till then to tell you, too, so maybe Verity's spilling the beans right now."

"So when's the big event?"

"Which one?" Lewis smiled; embarrassed, I do believe. He shrugged. "We thought October, and the sprog thinks March."

I let out a long, shuddering sigh, head feeling a bit swimmy. "Marriage, eh?" I said, shaking my head again. I looked him down and up, hoisted one brow. "Think you'll take to it?"

Lewis grinned. "Like a lemming to water."

I laughed. Eventually I laughed so loudly I woke Jimmy Turrock, who looked at me — sitting on the edge of my father's grave on the day of his burial, guffawing away fit to wake the living — with undisguised horror.

Like a lemming to water. Lewis knew as well as I did the maligned little buggers are perfectly good swimmers.

James arrived back about mid-day. He was… well, pretty distressed, and all the fragile defences mum, Lewis and I had been constructing for the past few days — Lewis and I joking, mum staying quiet and keeping busy — crumbled. James seemed to blame dad, blame us; blame everybody. He was ugly with anger and he was like a racing outboard in the calm little pond we'd been trying to create; the house felt hellish and we all started snapping at each other. Outside, at the back of the garden, we could hear the council digger, excavating the rest of the hole. The engine revved up and down; it sounded like a machine snoring. James wished us all dead and ran up to his room and slammed the door. It was a relief to get back out to the grave and help Jimmy Turrock apply the finishing touches.

Then it was time to get showered and changed and wait for the hearse and the mourners. The funeral was suitably grim, despite the sunshine and the warm breeze. The words Lewis said over the grave sounded awkward and forced. Mum looked white as paper. James stood, mouth twisted, furious; he stalked off the instant the coffin touched the bottom of the grave. I threw some earth down onto the pale wood of the lid, putting back a little of what I'd helped dig out.

But it passed, and the people who came — a good hundred or more — were kind. We were busy in the house afterwards, feeding and watering them, and then that passed too.

My big brother and his intended asked me to be their best man the day after dad's funeral. I'd slept, fitfully, on the idea, but finally said yes. It had already been agreed between the two families that the wedding would be held at Lochgair. Lewis and Verity stayed another day after that, then left to go back to London so that Lewis could resume his gigs. He was almost ashamed when I saw him next, when he confessed that nobody thought his delivery had altered a bit; he was just the same on stage after dad's death as he had been before. The only thing he changed was that he stopped telling the joke about the uncle that dies in an avalanche on a dry ski-slope.

I told him not to worry about it; you had to be a different person on stage. The person he was up there would only change if he told a story about dad dying. Maybe a routine based on the idea of an atheist getting struck by lightning while climbing a church tower would be therapeutic for him, one day.

Lewis had the decency to be appalled at the idea.

Mum and I went through dad's papers, and were able, after Ashley's tuition, to work the computer and access the information it held.

Dad's will, which had been written at the time of Grandma Margot's death, had turned up in the strongbox hidden under the study floorboards. The strongbox had been no big secret; we all knew about it. It was just something to make any burglar's job more difficult. Mum had already seen the will when she had opened the strongbox the morning after dad's death, in the company of one of her friends from the village. She had only looked at the first paragraph, which confirmed that dad wanted to be buried in the grounds of the house. She'd been too upset to look at any more of it, and had put the will back under the floor.

So we opened the strongbox again, divided the papers, took a desk each, and looked at what we had. Mum had given the pile with the will in it to me. I read it first, and my heart sank after I'd scanned quickly through it and got to the end.

"Oh no," I said.

"What's wrong?" she asked from the main desk in front of the window.

"It's the will," I said, turning it over, looking at the last part again, looking over the page but still failing to find what I was looking for. "It hasn't been witnessed or anything."

Mum came over and stood behind me. She took the four handwritten sheets from me, frowning. Her skin was pale and her eyes looked dark. She wore black jeans and a dark blue shirt and her hair was tied back with a piece of blue ribbon. She handed the will back to me. "I think it's all right," she said slowly. She nodded. "I'll call Blawke to make sure. He'll need to look at it anyway." She nodded again, walked back to sit in her seat and started reading through the papers she had in front of her. Then she looked up at me. "You phone him, would you?"

"All right," I said and watched her bend to the papers again. She appeared to read for a few moments; I almost wanted to laugh, she seemed so unconcerned. She looked up again after a few seconds and just sat there, looking out through the open velvet curtains at the back lawn.

She sat like that for a full two minutes, unmoving, face unreadable. I smiled; I wanted to weep, to laugh. Eventually I said softly, "Mum?"

"Hmm?" She turned to me, a hesitant smile on her tin face.

I held the will up from where it lay on the desk. "This is dad's will." I managed a smile. "Don't you want to know what it says?"

She looked confused, then embarrassed, and put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, of course. Yes. What does it say? Let's see."

I pulled my seat over alongside hers.

The good lawyer Blawke opined that the will was perfectly legal; under Scottish law, a hand-written will did not have to be witnessed. He even came out and looked at it personally, which made two visits in one week. Truly our cup of honour ranneth over.

"Yes," the lawyer Blawke said, reading the will as he sat in the front lounge. "Well, I can't see anything wrong with it." He looked unhappy. "Unarguably his writing…»

He studied it again.

"Yes," he nodded, finally. "I actually warned him against doing this, some time ago, but he seems to have got away with it." The heron-like lawyer seemed sad that the will was litigation-proof. He smiled weakly, and mum offered to re-fill his whisky glass.

The will — expressed with a brevity and a lack of ambiguity the best lawyers would have been proud of, and the rest alarmed at — left the house, grounds and so on to mum, along with a two-fifths share in both the residue of dad's savings and any money made after his death. Lewis, James and I had one-fifth shares each. There were specified amounts to an almost archetypal spread of right-on causes: CND, Amnesty International and Greenpeace. Ten grand each. Ten grand! I was initially stunned, fleetingly annoyed, then ashamed, and later vaguely impressed. Mum just sighed, like she'd been expecting something like that.

I confess to having experienced a sensation of relief on discovering I had not been written out of dad's will; I wouldn't have blamed him. I think and hope that that feeling was engendered more by a desire to feel I'd still been loved — despite everything — than by avarice. I didn't think there would be all that much to go round after those donations, anyway.

Dad's agent, his accountant and the lawyer Blawke worked it out between them (though I checked their figures later). The good lawyer summoned us all to his office a fortnight after dad's death. Only James wouldn't come. Lewis flew up specially.

It had all, indeed, been just about as simple as it had looked. Blawke told us the sums involved and I was pleasantly surprised. The donations to right-onnery seemed much more in proportion now; I can only claim that I had spent (what at least seemed like) so long living on bread and cottage cheese and fish suppers in Glasgow — measuring my money in pennies and reluctantly-parted-with pounds — that I had an excuse for not being able to imagine that the thirty K dad had salved his conscience with when he'd written the will had actually been quite a small part of the modest fortune he'd built up over the years.

Dad had left over a quarter of a million pounds, after the government had taken its cut.

My share came to well over forty thousand smackeroos. The likelihood was that for the next few years at least, I'd bank about fifteen grand per annum, which might or might not tail off, abruptly or gradually, depending on how well dad's stories held up against the tests of time… not to mention the likes of Thomas the Tank Engine, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and whatever other delights the future of the children's fiction market held.

Anyway, suddenly I was, if not quite within range of the mountains of Rich, certainly well into the foothills of Comfortable. It entirely made up for the discovery, a few days earlier, that the estimate I had made of my chances of passing my final exams had been considerably more accurate than any of the conclusions I had drawn in the course of them. I had distinguished myself by failing, a result the department prided itself on happening only rarely.

My initial reaction had been to cut my losses on the honours front and see if I could take an MA instead; a re-sit would mean a whole extra year at university. But that sentiment had only lasted for a day. In the turmoil of feelings and fortunes dad's death had produced, the prospect of another year's study, with the framework and time scale that would provide — especially if I applied myself, as I thought I would now be able to — seemed suddenly a relief rather than a chore.

At any rate I still had a little time to decide what to do, and the money would make the choice easier. A return to Glasgow need not now also mean a return to the joys of sharing a flat with Gav, Aunt Janice, and their sonically extrovert passions.

We stood, the three of us, mum, Lewis and I, on the pavement outside the Main Street offices of the lawyer Blawke, in Gallanach.

I was still thinking, Forty grand? and trying not to look too stunned. Mum was slowly putting on her black leather gloves.

Lewis and I looked at each other.

Lewis wasn't doing too badly himself, down in London, but he too had looked pretty surprised when Blawke told us the sums that were heading our way. Mum hadn't really shown any reaction — she'd just thanked the good lawyer politely and asked after his wife and family.

"Fancy a drink?" Lewis said to me. I nodded. I felt slightly faint. "Mum?" Lewis said.

She looked round at him, small and neat in her dark blue coat. It was a bright, warm day and I could see the silver in her dark brown hair. She looked so delicate. I felt like I was in my early teens again, mum seemingly getting shorter and shorter with each season that passed.

"What?" she said. I found myself sniffing the air; I was downwind, but all I could smell was Pear's soap and Lewis's Aramis. Mum seemed to have stopped wearing perfume.

"I think a drink, to steady our nerves," Lewis said to her.

"Aye," mum said, looking thoughtful. She gave a thin wee smile and nodded at us. "Aye, he'd have liked that."

And so we went to the Lounge of the Steam Packet Hotel, looking out over the tourist-crowded pier and the packed car park. The water was bright amongst the hulls of the moored yachts, and the Mull ferry was a black shape in the distance, heading away.

We drank vintage champagne and fifteen-year-old malt. I suspected dad would have approved.

Lewis had to head back to London that night. Mum and I had been busy for a week, tidying up all the loose ends an unexpected death leaves, especially when the deceased is somebody as socially and professionally entangled as dad.

Then mum had gardened while I'd sorted through less urgent papers — printing out everything on the disks, searching out all the of the stuff on stories, and sending it — or copies — to dad's literary executor, his editor in London. I had become modestly PC-computerate (Ashley had given me a grounding in the basics, though PCs were not really her field). I'd even learned how to change the toner cartridge in the photocopier without making a mess.

On one of the earliest computer disks dad had used, dated shortly after he'd finally joined the computer age and bought the Compaq, in 1986, I found copies of some of Rory's poems; dad must have been putting them onto the system from the drafts Rory had left. I printed those out. It didn't look like dad had been very impressed with the poems, or he'd presumably have transcribed them all onto the computer (they weren't on the hard disk or backed up onto another floppy either — another indication my father had regarded them as relatively unimportant), but at least I again had something Rory had written. I was still hoping more of Rory's papers would surface somewhere.

Dad's old diaries turned up in a cardboard box at the back of a cupboard. Mum glanced at them, handed them to me. They looked pretty boring, frankly: "M&I to Gal; shops, prom walk, back; did VAT." and "me Glasg car 1040 LHR 1315 F'furt; late, missed others, tel. L'gair Din in room, TV" were two of the more exciting and informative entries for last year. Dad's ideas books — A4 pads, usually — were where the interesting stuff was. We'd look at the diaries later.

Then, one day, at the back of dad's oldest and most decrepit falling cabinet, I'd discovered treasure. It was in the form of three jatty, falling-apart Woolworth folders stuffed with old exercise books and shorthand-pads, bulging manila envelopes stuffed with tickets, timetables and assorted scraps of paper, as well assorted sheets of paper of various sizes, some stapled together, most loose, some typed and some hand-written, and all the work of Uncle Rory. There was one sealed envelope, too.

Here were all the poems I'd seen before and more, typescripts of all the travel pieces, and the progenitor of Traps; Rory's India journal; tattered, battered, stained and torn and littered with doodles and little hand-drawn maps and sketches. A fold-out map of India was stapled to the inside back cover of the first exercise book, and on it Rory's spastically erratic route round the country was picked out in blue Biro. The back cover of the second book was covered with little faded train and bus tickets, attached to the cheap, fibrous blue paper with rusting staples. The last exercise book had only one ticket stapled to the rear cover: Rory's Air India ticket home. Some of the pages were stained with what looked like saffron, and I swear one book still smelled of curry.

I'd sat down there and then and begun to read, flicking through the thin, brittle pages of the journal, smiling at the spelling mistakes and the awkward, amateurish drawings, looking for passages I remembered.

I'd looked at the other stuff too, and found one play — another martial yarn about death and betrayal, and apparently nameless — which contained not only the passage about the fate of soldiers which I'd read in the delayed train back in January, in the rain on the line at the back of Crow Road, but which also ended with the lines I'd heard first a few weeks before that, in Janice Rae's flat. In Janice Rae's bed, in fact.

And all your nonsenses and truths, I'd read.

"Your finery and squalid options," I'd said quietly, to myself.

Rory's climax-delaying mantra was all there, right down to the last, three-word line. But, given the situation the narrator was in at that point, the lines took on an extra resonance, and an irony I had not been able to appreciate before. The section was circled with red ink and under that last line was written a note in large letters:

USE FOR END CR.

Gradually though, as I'd looked at it all, my feeling of quiet elation faded as I realised there seemed to be nothing else in any of the folders that seemed to relate to Crow Road. All I found was one cryptic note scribbled in pencil on the inside flap of what looked like the most recent of the three tatty files. It said:

'CR:!B killsH!!? (save)

(jlsy? stil drwnd)

B and H. I vaguely remembered these abbreviations from the notes I'd lost. I shook my head, cursing my own idiot negligence, and Uncle Rory's frustrating delight in abstract abbreviation.

… Jlsy. Well, that was a recurring theme in Rory's work.

… Stil drwnd. But Hell, I thought H got crshd btwen crge & tr!

"Fuck it," I'd said, and closed the file. I'd turned the bulky, heavy, sealed manila A4 envelope over in my hands for a while, then opened it. Computer disks. (That was a surprise. As far as I knew Uncle Rory had never possessed a computer.) Eight big floppy computer disks each in their own brown paper envelopes. Hewlett-Packard Double-sided Flexible Disks, Recorder # 92195 A (Package of 10 disks). Well, yes; of course there would have to be two missing. They were numbered 1 to 8 in black felt-tip, and that was the only indication they weren't brand new and unused. The write-protect holes were still taped over.

I'd looked over at the Compaq, sitting on dad's desk, but the big, somehow already old-fashioned looking disks wouldn't even have fitted into the Compaq's drive if you'd folded them in half.

Making a mental note to call Ashley in London about the disks some time, I put them back in their manila envelope and the envelope back in its faded folder, and spent a fair while after that just leafing through Uncle Rory's India journal, smiling sadly at it all and becoming almost as willingly lost in it as it seemed Rory had m the pungent, teeming wastes of India itself… until mum called me from the foot of the stairs, and it was time for tea.

A few days later, I'd travelled back up to Glasgow by train; we'd got all the immediate matters regarding my father's death sorted out. It had been a perfect day; summer-warm and spring-fresh, the air winter-clear, the colours more vivid than in autumn.

I'd felt a sort of shocked calm settle over me as I'd travelled, and been able to forget about death and its consequences for a while.

The familiar route had looked new and startling that day. The train had travelled from Lochgair north along the lower loch, crossed the narrows at Minard, and stopped at Garbhallt, Strachur, Lochgoilhead and Portincaple Junction, where it joined the West Highland line and took the north shore of the Clyde towards Glasgow. The waters and the skies blazed blue, the fields and forests waved luxuriously in a soft, flower-scented breeze and the high hill summits shimmered purple and brown in the distance.

My spirits had been raised just watching the summer countryside go past — even the sight of the burgeoning obscenity of the new Trident submarine base at Faslane hadn't depressed me — and when the train had approached Queen Street (and I'd been making very sure I had all my luggage with me) I'd seen something sublime, even magical.

It had been no more than that same scrubby, irregularly rectangular field of coarse grass I'd sat looking at so glumly from the delayed train in the rain that January. Then, the field's sodden, down-trodden paths had provided an image of desolation I had fastened onto, in my self-pity, like a blood-starved leech onto bruised flesh.

And now the field had burned. Recently, too, because there was no new growth on the brown-black earth. And yet the field was not fully dark. All the grass had been consumed save for a giant green X that lay printed, vivid and alive, on the black flag of the scorched ground. It was the two criss-crossing paths through the wedged-in scrap of field that still shone emerald in the sunlight. The flames had passed over those foot-flattened blades and consumed their healthier neighbours on either side while they themselves had remained, made proof against the blaze and guaranteed their stark survival just by their earlier oppression.

I'd stood there, in the act of taking my bags down from the luggage rack. And smiling to myself, I'd said, "See?"

Dad hadn't specified any memorial; all his will had said was that he wanted to be buried somewhere in the grounds of the house. There was some discussion, and eventually mum decided on a plain black granite obelisk with his name and the relevant dates on it.

I stood there, dressed in my slightly preposterous Highland finery, half-way through this wedding in the rain and remembering the funeral in the sunlight a season earlier, and I thought again how damn ugly that dark monument had turned out, then I shook my head and turned, and walked back to the lawn and the marquee. The ground was squelchy and I had to tread carefully to avoid getting mud on my thick white socks. The kilt swung against my knees.

I wondered if Ash was back yet.

"What what what? Come on, Prentice! My first chance to snog tongues with your brother as a married man and you're dragging me away waving… ha! ha! Where did you get these?

The hall of the Lochgair house was swarming with people, crowding in, laughing, brandishing presents, shaking hands, demanding drinks, slapping Lewis on the back, hugging Verity, talking quietly to my mother, wandering through the press of people greeting each other and bumping and smiling and talking away and generally making me feel I might have arranged the reception line a little better; it had been a relief to spot Ashley struggling through the crowd at the front door, remember the computer disks, dash upstairs to get them and then down to intercept her and haul her into the lounge.

"Found them in dad's study," I told Ashley, holding the disks out to her. She put a gaily wrapped package down on a chair, took one of the big disks from me and slid it out of its paper wrapper, grinning.

Then she looked up, frowned and stepped back, arms wide. "Prentice," she said, voice deep with censure. "You haven't said how stunning I look yet. I mean, come now."

Ash wore loose black pants and a shimmery silver top; hair back-swept and piled up. The glasses had been replaced by contacts. "You look great," I told her. I nodded at the disk in her hand. "Think you can do anything with that?"

Ash sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. Haven't you got the machine they ran on?"

I shook my head. "I asked my mum about it; she thinks they might have been Rory's."

"That long ago, eh?" Ash tapped the disk sleeve dubiously, as though expecting it to crumble to dust at any second.

"I didn't know until today he even had one; I mentioned to mum I'd ask you about these, and she said Rory did have a computer, or a word processor or whatever. Got it out in Hong Kong about a year before he disappeared."

"Hong Kong?" Ash looked even more dubious.

"Some sort of… copy; clone? Of an… well, mum said an Orange, but I guess she means Apple. She remembers him complaining that it — or the program or whatever — didn't come with proper instructions, but he got it to work eventually."

"… Uh-huh."

"Dad left it in the flat Rory shared in Glasgow when he took Rory's papers away. Wouldn't have a computer in the house, at the time'.

"Wise man."

"I'm going to try and track down the guy Rory shared the flat with but I reckon the machine's been chucked out or whatever long ago, and I just thought, could you… you know… you might know somebody who perhaps could be able to… to decode what's on there?" I shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. Ash was now looking at the disk as though fully anticipating that creepy crawlies were about to start emerging from it. "I mean," I said, clearing my throat, suddenly feeling hot and sweaty. "There might not be anything on them at all, but… I just thought…»

"So," Ash said slowly. "Let me get this straight: you don't know the machine, but it's probably some ancient nameless Apple clone from the dark grey end of the market, almost certainly using reject chips; it probably had a production run that lasted until the first month's rent fell due on the shed the child-labourers were assembling them in, it used an eight-inch drive and ran what sounds like dodgy proprietorial software with more bugs than the Natural History Museum?"

"Umm… Yeah. That about sums it up."

Ash nodded a few times, lips tight, weighing the disk in her hands. "Right." She nodded at the ones I still held. "Okay. Can I take these?"

"Sure." I handed them to her and she turned for the door.

"See you later," she said, heading into the crowded hall. I went after her; she was excusing her way to the front door.

"Ash!" I said, squeezing through after her. "Not now! Come and enjoy the party!"

"Don't worry," she said, glancing back. "I shall return. I'll drop these at home so I don't forget to take them back to London; I know people who might be able to help… but I just remembered I forgot something; something for you. Left it at mum's." She looked out the door; it was starting to rain. "Shit."

There was an old giant brass cartridge case by the hall hat stand which held our assorted umbrellas and walking sticks; I lifted a brolly from it. Ash turned to me, a worried expression on her face as she said, "I saw that guy again. I'll show you. Give my present to the happy couple!"

"What guy —?" I said, but she was already sprinting through the still-arriving guests for the little red 2CV, parked a good fifty metres down the car-crowded drive, the disks held tight to her chest. I watched her high-heels flashing over the gravel, and the other guests turning to look at her, then there were more people to greet and hands to shake.

I took the brolly myself eventually and went for a walk up the garden to dad's grave, just to get away from the crowds for a bit.

Back in the house, I dodged one of the waitresses from the Lochgair Hotel, carrying a huge tray with champagne flutes out of the kitchen towards the marquee; I waved at mum, splendid in black with white stripes and standing talking to Helen Urvill, and went through to the hall. I put the umbrella in the old cartridge case. Then I thought maybe I should open it out and dry it, like you're supposed to, so I hauled it out again and left it opened in the hall.

"Prentice," Verity said, coming down from upstairs.

She was enfolded in white silk; a creation of some clothes-designer, friend of hers in Edinburgh. Technically it was a blouse, medium-length skirt and jacket, but when she wore it it looked like a single piece, and handsome it was too. She was hardly showing yet, but the outfit would anyway have disguised an almost full-term pregnancy. She wore white leggings, and high-heels that made her taller than me. She also wore the fulgurite necklace; mum had guessed both that Verity would want to wear it, and that she might think it best not to, in case the association hurt, so she d made a point of telling Lewis she thought Verity ought to wear it, if it suited the outfit she had chosen. Verity's hair was as short-cropped as ever, but she looked none the worse for that, and the little white micro-hat she wore, complete with thrown-back, white fish-net veil, sat well on her too. She came up to me, took me by the shoulders and kissed me on the cheek.

"That was a great speech; thanks," she said. She was still holding my shoulders, and squeezed them. She looked the way you're supposed to look, both when you're pregnant and on the day of your marriage; glowing, radiant, suffused with joy. Still had perfect skin. She put on a convincingly upper-class English accent as she said, "You've been en ebserloortly soopah byest men, my deah."

I put my hands lightly on her still slim waist and made a small bowing motion. "Any time," I said, and grinned.

She laughed, shaking her head. She stepped back, folded her arms, looked me up and down and said, "And so smart."

I curtsied, fluttering my eyelashes.

She laughed again and held out her hand. "Come on; let's find my husband. He's probably flirting with the bridesmaids by now."

"I thought that was my job," I said, taking her arm in mine as we went towards the rear of the hall. I heard the front door open behind us. I turned and looked, stopped, then turned back to Verity. "I'll take a rain check on that, shweetheart."

Verity smiled at Ashley Watt, shaking a glistening waterproof she'd just taken off, and nodded. "Well, there's appropriate, today." She winked at me and walked off.

Ashley met me at the foot of the stairs, brandishing a VHS cassette. "Got it. Take me to your video."

"Walk this way," I told her, heading up the stairs two at a time.

"Do I get to look up your kilt?" she said from behind.

"Not if you're lucky."

I switched the lights on in the study; we tended to keep the curtains closed. There was a TV and video in the study. I switched it all on and put the cassette in the machine.

"Cool," Ashely said, standing hands on hips in the middle of the study, hands nearly over the centre of dad's Persian rug, bunned hair directly beneath the big brass and stained-glass light fixture, hanging extravagantly beneath an ornate plaster ceiling rose. She swivelled, surveying the book-case walls, the maps, the prints and paintings and various interesting bits and pieces scattered around shelves, tables, desks and the floor.

"Bit cluttered for my taste," I said, starting the tape and watching some end-credits. "Dad found it conducive enough."

"Fast forward," Ash said. The screen scrolled quickly, then the BBC Nine O'clock news started flashing before us. Ash turned away, so I let it roll.

Ashley crossed to an over-crowded book case; there was an empty crystal bowl perched on a pile of loose papers on top of the book case, and Ashley tapped the bowl very gently with one finger. She took her hand away, held it in the air near the ice-coloured ornament, and clicked her fingers. She bent her head towards the bowl, seemingly listening for something. I frowned, wondered what she was up to.

She turned and faced the bowl, went "Ah," in a high-pitched voice, then listened again, head tilted, smiling this time.

"Ashley, what exactly are you doing?"

She nodded at the bowl. "Crystal; you can make it ring by producing the right noise." She grinned like a little girl. "Good, eh?" She looked behind me. "That's you," she said, nodding at the screen.

I hit Play. We stood, watched.

"… talked to Rupert Paxton-Marr of the Inquirer, one of the journalists held by the Iraqis, and asked him how he'd felt," said the BBC man in Amman.

I couldn't resist a thin smile, one journalist asking another how he felt.

Rupert Paxton-Marr was a tall, blond, blue-eyed man with exactly the jaw-line I'd have chosen for myself, given the opportunity; sickeningly handsome, he had an accent to match. "Well, Michael," he said. ('Air, hair lair," I said to myself.) "I don't think we were really in much danger; clearly international attention has fixed on Iraq, and I think they knew we knew that, and accepted we were… weren't a threat to them. Umm… our driver had taken a wrong turning, and that was that. Of course, one does remember what happened to, ah, Farhzad Bazhoft, but I don't think you can let that stop you; in the end one has a job to do."

"Thank you, Rupert. And now, reporting fr —»

I hit Stop and turned to Ashley, standing beside me. She was still looking at the blank screen where the little green zero symbol sat in one corner, wobbling almost imperceptibly. She had sucked her cheeks in and her lips were pursed. There was a whoop of laughter from somewhere downstairs. Ash nodded slowly, looked at me. "That's ma boy," she said.

"You're sure about that?" I said.

"I'm sure." She looked serious. She looked pretty good, too, now I looked properly; I couldn't remember ever seeing Ashley wearing make-up, and you'd have thought that not having had the practice she'd be crap at it, but she looked great; maybe a little over-enthusiastic with the dark stuff round the eyes, but why quibble? She nodded. "Don't look at me like that; I'm really sure."

"Sorry. I believe you," I said. I spun the tape back, to play it again. Ashley put one hand on my arm and rested her chin against the shoulder of my Prince Charlie jacket.

"Turn the sound down," she said. "That guy's voice is like chewing on silver paper."

I turned the sound down. The noise of people laughing and talking in the marquee came through the double glazing and the heavy burgundy of the velvet curtains. I heard an amplified voice outside say, "Testing." It was probably Dean Watt; he and his band had been hired by Lewis and Verity to play during the afternoon (for the evening they'd booked a more traditional wheech-your-partner fiddle and accordion band).

I ran the clip again. "Definitely, officer," Ashley said, tapping the top corner of the TV. "Recognise him anywhere, even with his clothes on."

I switched the TV off and ejected the cassette. I stood for a moment, rubbing my chin.

"Whoops," Ashley said, and delicately rubbed a little of that transferred make-up from the black shoulder of my jacket.

I waited till she'd finished, then went to dad's desk, unlocked a lower drawer and took out a slide tray; one of those plastic things that holds a few hundred transparencies. "So, when you saw this guy, Paxton-Marr," I said, opening the tray and putting the lid on the desk, "in Berlin, in this hotel, in the Jacuzzi… " I looked up at Ashley, standing sceptically by the TV, one elbow resting on it as she watched me. "What was the hotel called again?"

"I told you," she said. "I can't remember. I called June, and neither could she. It's probably the only place she ever stayed and forgot to nick a towel or yet another emergency sewing kit or whatever." Ash shrugged. "Frankly, Prentice, I was stoned out of my brains most of the time I was there. All I can remember is it had a big pool in the basement with a Jacuzzi at one end, and they did really good breakfasts." She sighed. "Excellent hopple-popple." Her eyebrows flicked once.

"Hopple-popple?'I grimaced.

"Scrambled eggs," Ash smiled. "Take me to Berlin and I'll find it for you. It was somewhere near the zoo."

I put the tray down on the desk, went over to Ashley, holding out a little piece of cardboard; it was the front cover off a book of matches, torn off the piece that held the matches.

"Wasn't the Schweizerhof, was it?" I asked her.

She looked steadily into my eyes for a little while, then took the piece of card, looked at it and turned it over.

"Twenty-seven eleven eighty-nine," she muttered. She nodded and handed me the cover back. "Yeah," she said, frowning. "Yeah; it was. That was the place."

I put the little torn bit of cardboard back in the slide tray. It was the second last one, out of about forty of them.

"What's the significance of the date?" Ashley asked, coming over to the desk. Outside, I could hear the sound ot an electric guitar chord and a few drum beats.

"I think that was when dad received it." I picked the latest torn cover out of the tray. "This one arrived just after he died." We both sat on the edge of the desk; Ashley looked at the little piece of glossy cardboard.

"Woo," she whistled. "Amman Hilton. Spooky, or what?"

"Yeah. Spooky " I said, as fuck,tapping the cover with one fingernail. "And I'm sure I recognise that guy Paxton-Marr, too. From Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or here. I've met him. In the flesh, I think."

Ash put her elbow on my shoulder. "And damn firm, tanned flesh it was too, let me tell you," she said.

I looked into those grey eyes, smiling. "But not as firm and tanned as your programmer from Texas."

Ash laughed, skipped off the desk. "Systems Analyst. And you're right; they breed them bigger and better in Texas."

Music started up in the marquee. Kiss The Bride. Ash stood on the Persian rug again, putting one hand to her ear. "Hark; it's young brother and his pals." She frowned. "Doesn't sound like a Mark E Smith or Morrissey track to me." She shook her head. Tsk. How are the mighty fallen." She put her head down so that, if she'd been wearing glasses, she'd have been looking over them at me. "Want my advice?"

"Mm-hmm," I nodded.

"Come on and dance. We can sort — or you can sort — this out later, when you've had time to think." She struck a dramatic, arguably dance-inspired pose and held out one hand. "Hey baby, let's boogie!"

I laughed, shut the match-book covers away and locked the desk drawer.

That's it, laddy," Ashley said, holding my arm as we went to the door. "You put that key in yer sporran."

"At least I know down there it's safe from interference," I told her. She smiled. I locked the study door too.

"By the way, by the way," Ash muttered into my ear as we headed along the landing for the stairs, "got a gramme of the old Bogota talcum powder about my person. Fancy a toot, later?"

"What, the real thing?" I grinned. "I thought speed was your poison."

"Normally," she nodded. "But this is a special occasion; I splashed out."

"You wee tyke," I said. I pulled her closer as we walked, held her tight. "You just stick with me, kid, all right?"

"Whatever you say, ma man."

We did kick-steps down the stairs. Risky, when you're wearing a kilt as it is meant to be worn, but invigorating.

I danced with Ashley, and with Verity, and with Helen Urvill, and with mum, cutting in on Lewis after he'd persuaded her onto the floor. Most of the time though she just sat, surrounded by family and friends, watching us all with an expression that, to me at least, spoke of a kind of stricken joy; a surprise that such pleasure could still exist — and she feel even remotely a part of it — when dad was not here to share in it all.

I am not a natural dancer but I made an exception for Verity's wedding. I grooved and sweated and drank and made a point of doing the old red blood cell impression, circulating; bathing in, soaking up and transmitting onwards the oxygen of family news and gossip from cell to cell…

"Where are you off to next, Aunt Ilsa?" I asked the lady in question, during our waltz. Aunt Ilsa — even larger than I remembered her, and dressed in something which looked like a cross between a Persian rug and a multi-occupancy poncho — moved with the determined grace of an elephant, and a curious stiffness that made the experience a little like dancing with a garden shed.

"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 I'd felt a sort of shocked calm settle over me as I'd travelled, and been able to forget about death and its consequences for a while.

The familiar route had looked new and startling that day. The train had travelled from Lochgair north along the lower loch, crossed the narrows at Minard, and stopped at Garbhallt, Strachur, Lochgoilhead and Portincaple Junction, where it joined the West Highland line and took the north shore of the Clyde towards Glasgow. The waters and the skies blazed blue, the fields and forests waved luxuriously in a soft, flower-scented breeze and the high hill summits shimmered purple and brown in the distance.

My spirits had been raised just watching the summer countryside go past — even the sight of the burgeoning obscenity of the new Trident submarine base at Faslane hadn't depressed me — and when the train had approached Queen Street (and I'd been making very sure I had all my luggage with me) I'd seen something sublime, even magical.

It had been no more than that same scrubby, irregularly rectangular field of coarse grass I'd sat looking at so glumly from the delayed train in the rain that January. Then, the field's sodden, down-trodden paths had provided an image of desolation I had fastened onto, in my self-pity, like a blood-starved leech onto bruised flesh.

And now the field had burned. Recently, too, because there was no new growth on the brown-black earth. And yet the field was not fully dark. All the grass had been consumed save for a giant green X that lay printed, vivid and alive, on the black flag of the scorched ground. It was the two criss-crossing paths through the wedged-in scrap of field that still shone emerald in the sunlight. The flames had passed over those foot-flattened blades and consumed their healthier neighbours on either side while they themselves had 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 pressed in faded jeans and an old holed sweater. Her hair was tied up and she wore violently yellow rubber kitchen gloves which started doing horrible things to my visual cortex. A yellow duster hung 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?