The Crow Road

CHAPTER 2

These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very small and there was still magic in it. He told them stories of the Secret Mountain and the Sound that could be Seen, of the Forest drowned by Sand and the trees that were time-stilled waters; he told them about the Slow Children and the Magic Duvet and the Well-Travelled Country, and they believed all of it. They learned of distant times and long-ago places, of who they were and what they weren't, and of what had and what had never been.

Then, every day was a week, each month a year. A season was a decade, and every year a life.

"But dad, Mrs McBeath says there is so a God, and you'll go to a bad place."

"Mrs McBeath is an idiot."

"No she's no, dad! She's a teacher!"

"No she's not, or better still, no she isn't. Don't use the word 'no' when you mean 'not'."

"But she's no a niddyott, dad! She is a teacher. Honest."

He stopped on the path, turned to look at the boy. The other children stopped too, grinning and giggling. They were almost at the top of the hill, just above the Forestry Commission's arbitrary tree line. The cairn was visible, a lump on the sky-line. "Prentice," he said. "People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots… in fact I think they have to be… a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement."

Several of the children giggled.

"Uncle Kenneth," Helen Urvill sang out. "Our daddy said you were a commie." Her sister, alongside her on the path and holding her hand, gave a little squeal and put her free hand up to her mouth.

"Your father is absolutely correct, Helen," he smiled. "But only in the pejorative sense, and not the practical one, unfortunately."

Diana squealed again and hid her face, giggling. Helen looked puzzled.

"But dad," Prentice said, pulling at his sleeve. "Dad, Mrs McBeath is a teacher, really she is, and she said there is so a God."

"And so did Mr Ainstie, too, dad," Lewis added.

"Yes, I've talked to Mr Ainstie," McHoan told the older boy. "He thinks we should send troops to help the Americans in Viet Nam."

"He an idiot too, dad?" Lewis hazarded, decoding the sour expression on his father's face.

"Definitely."

"So there isnae a God, eh no Mr McHoan?"

"No, Ashley, there isn't."

"Whit aboot Wombles, Mr McHoan?"

"What's that, Darren?"

"The Wombles, Mr McHoan. Of Wimbledon Common." Darren Watt was holding the hand of his little brother, Dean, who was staring up at McHoan and looking like he was about to burst into tears. "Are they real, Mr McHoan?"

"Of course they are," he nodded. "You've seen them on television, haven't you?"

"Aye."

"Aye. Well then, of course they're real; real puppets."

"But they're no really real, naw?"

"No, Darren, they're not really real; the real creatures on the real Wimbledon Common are mice and birds and maybe foxes and badgers, and none of them wear clothes and live in nice well-lit burrows with furniture. A lady made up the Wombles, and made up stories about them, and then people made the stories into television programmes. That's what's real."

"See, ah told ye," Darren said, shaking his little brother's hand. "They're no real."

Dean started to cry, face screwing up, eyes closing.

"Oh, good grief," McHoan breathed. It never ceased to amaze him how quickly a small child's face could turn from peach to beetroot. His own youngest, James, was just leaving that stage, thank goodness. "Come on, Dean; up you come up here and we'll see if we can get to the top of this hill, eh?" He lifted the howling child up — after he'd been persuaded to let go of his brother's hand — and put him on his shoulders. He looked at the little up-turned faces. "We're nearly there, aren't we? See the cairn?"

There was a general noise of agreement from the assembled children.

"Come on, then! Last one there's a Tory!"

He started off up the path; Dean was crying more quietly now. The other children ran round and past him, laughing and shouting and scrambling straight up the hillside, over the grass towards the cairn. He quit the path and started after them, then — holding Dean's legs — turned to look back at Diana and Helen, who were still standing quietly, hand-in-hand, on the path. "You two not playing?"

Helen, identically dressed to her sister in little new green dungarees and staring out from under her precisely-trimmed black fringe, shook her head, frowned. "We better go last, Uncle Kenneth."

"Oh? Why?"

"I think we're Tories."

"You might well turn out to be," he laughed. "But we'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, eh? On you go."

The twins looked at each other, then, still hand-in-hand, started up the grassy slope after the rest, earnestly concentrating on the business of clumping one foot in front of the other through the long rough grass.

Dean was starting to cry loudly again, probably because he thought his brother and sister were leaving him. McHoan sighed and jogged up the hill after the kids, shouting encouragement and making sure he trailed the last of them to the top and the cairn. He made a great show of being out of breath, and wobbled as he sat down, collapsing dramatically on the grass after setting Dean to one side.

"Oh! You're all too fit for me!"

"Ha, Mr McHoan!" Darren laughed, pointing at him. "You're the toerag, so ye are!"

He was mystified for a moment, then said, "Oh. Right. Toe-rag, Tuareg, Tory." He made a funny face. "Tora! Tora! Tory!" he laughed, and so did they. He lay in the grass. A warm wind blew.

"What for are all these stones, Mr McHoan?" Ashley Watt asked. She had climbed half-way up the squat cairn, which was about five feet high. She picked up one of the smaller rocks and looked at it.

Kenneth rolled over, letting Prentice and Lewis climb onto his back and kick at his sides, pretending he was a horse. The Watt girl, perched on the cairn, bashed one rock against another, inspected the struck, whitened surface of the stone she held grinned. She was a tyke; dressed in grubby hand-me-downs like rest of the Watt tribe, she always seemed to have a runny nose: he liked her. He still thought Ashley was a boy's name (wasn't it from Gone With The Wind?), but then if the Watts wanted to call their children Dean and Darren and Ashley, he supposed that was up to them. Could have been Elvis and Tarquin and Marilyn.

"D'you remember the story of the goose that swallowed the diamond?"

"Aye."

It was one of his stories, one he'd tried out on the children. Market research, his wife called it.

"Why did the goose eat the diamond?"

"Please, Uncle Kenneth!" Diana Urvill said, holding up one hand and trying to click her fingers.

"Yes, Diana."

"It was hungry."

"Naw!" Ashley said scornfully from the cairn. She blinked furiously. "It wiz fur teeth!"

"It swallowed it, smarty-pants, so there!" Diana said, leaning towards Ashley and shaking her head.

"Hey!" McHoan said. "You're both… sort of right. The goose swallowed the diamond because that's what geese do with things like pebbles that they find; they swallow them so that they go into their… anybody know?" He looked round them all as best as he could without disturbing Lewis and Prentice.

"Gizzurd, Mr McHoan!" Ashley shouted, waving the stone she held.

Diana squealed and put her hand to her mouth again.

"Well, a gizzard is part of a bird, too, that's right Ashley," he said. "But the diamond actually went into the goose's crop because, like lots of animals and birds, geese need to keep some wee stones, like pebbles or gravel, in their crop, down here, he pointed. "So that they can grind their food up small and digest it better when it goes into their tummy."

"Please, Mr McHoan, Ah remember!" Ashley shouted. She clutched the stone to her chest, getting her ragged, thin grey jumper a little dirtier.

"Me too, dad!" Prentice shouted.

"And me!"

"Me too!"

"Well," he said, rolling slowly over and letting Lewis and Prentice slide off his back. He sat up; they sat down. "Way back, a long long time ago, there were these big enormous animals that used to live in Scotland, and they —»

"What did they look like, dad?" Prentice asked.

"Ah." McHoan scratched his head through his brown curls. "Like… like big hairy elephants… with long necks. And these big huge animals —»

"What were they called, please, Uncle Kenneth?"

"They were called… mythosaurs, Helen, and they would swallow rocks… big rocks, way down into their crops, and they used these rocks to help crunch up their food. They were very very big animals, and very heavy because of all the rocks they carried around inside them, and they usually stayed down in the glens because they were so heavy, and didn't go into the sea or the lochs because they didn't float, and they stayed away from marshes, too, in case they sank. But —»

"Please, Mr McHoan, did they up climb trees, naw?"

"No, Ashley."

"Naw, ad didnae think so, Mr McHoan."

"Right. Anyway, when they were very very old and they were going to die, the mythosaurs would come to the tops of hills… hills just like this one, and they'd lie down, and they would die peacefully, and then after they were dead, their fur and their skin would disappear, and then their insides would disappear too af —»

"Where aboots did their fur and their skin go, please, Mr McHoan?"

"Well, Ashley… they turned into earth and plants and insects and other wee animals."

"Oh."

"And eventually there would just be a skeleton left —»

"Eek," said Diana, and put her hand over her mouth again.

"Until even that crumbled away and became dust, and —»

"And their tusks, Mr McHoan?"

"Pardon, Ashley?"

"Their tusks. Did they go intae dust as well?"

"Umm… yes. Yes, they did. So after a while everything was dust… except for the stones that the big animals had carried in their crops; those lay in a big pile where the mythosaurs had laid down to die, and that," he turned and slapped one of the larger stones protruding from the base of the rock pile behind him. "That," he grinned, because he liked the story he had just thought up and told, "is where cairns come from."

"Ah! Ashley! You're standing on stuff that's been in a animal's gizzurd!" Darren shouted, pointing.

"Eaurgh!" Ashley laughed and jumped down, throwing the stones away and rolling on the grass.

There was a deal of general tomfoolery and wee high squealing voices for a while. Kenneth McHoan looked at his watch, and wound it up as he said, "All right, kids. Time for your dinner. Anybody hungry?"

"Me!"

"Me, dad!"

"We are, Uncle Kenneth."

"Ah could eat a missasore, so ah could, Mr McHoan!"

He laughed. "Well, I don't think they're on the menu, Ashley, but not to worry." He took his pipe out and stood up, filled the bowl and tamped it down. "Come on, you horrible rabble. Your Aunt Mary's probably got your dinner ready for you by now."

"Will Uncle Rory be doing tricks, Uncle Kenneth?"

"If you're good, and eat up your vegetables, Helen, aye, he might."

"Oh good."

They trooped down. Dean had to be carried because he was tired.

"Dad," Prentice said, falling back to talk to him while the rest whooped and yelled and capered on the slope. "Are miffasores real?"

"As real as Wombles, kiddo."

"As real as Dougal in The Magic Roundabout?

"Every bit. Well, almost." He drew on the pipe. "No; just as real. Because the only place anything is ever real is inside your head, Prentice. And the mythosaur exists inside your head, now."

"Does it, dad?"

"Yes; it used to just exist in my head but now it exists in your head too, and the others'."

"So is God in Mrs McBeath's head, then?"

"Yep, that's right. He's an idea in her head. Like Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy." He looked down at the child. "Did you like the story about the mythosaur and the cairns?"

"Was it just a story then, dad?"

"Of course it was, Prentice." He frowned. "What did you think it was?"

"I don't know, dad. History?"

"Histoire, seulement."

"What, dad?"

"Nothing, Prentice. No, it was just a story."

"I think the story about you meeting mum's more better, dad."

"Just 'better' will do, Prentice; the 'more' isn't required."

"Still a better story, dad."

"Glad you think so, son."

The children were entering the forest, funnelling into the path between the pines. He looked away then, across the rough geography of bough and leaf, to the village and the station, just visible through the trees.

The train chuffed off into the evening, the red light on the final carriage disappearing round the bend in the cutting through the forest; the steam and smoke climbed into the sunset skies beyond. He let the feeling of return wash over and through him, looking across the deserted platform on the far side of the tracks, down across the few lights of Lochgair village to the long electric-blue reflection that was the loch, its gleaming acres imprisoned between the dark masses of the land.

The noise of the train faded slowly, and the quiet susurration of the falls seemed to swell in recompense. He left his bags where they lay and walked to the far end of the platform. The very edge of the platform dropped away there, angling down to the deck of the viaduct over the rushing water beneath. A chest-high wall formed the furthest extent of the rest of the platform.

He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the fifty feet or so to the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the river Loran piled down from the forest in a compactly furious cataract. The spray was a taste. Beneath, the river surged round the piers of the viaduct that carried the railway on towards Lochgilphead and Gallanach.

A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge, then zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the far bank of the river, as though it was a soft fragment of the train's steam that had momentarily lost its way and was now hurrying to catch up. He waited a moment, and the owl hooted once, from inside the dark constituency of forest. He smiled, took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the sweet sharpness of pine resin, and then turned away, went back to pick up his bags.

"Mr Kenneth," the station master said, taking his ticket at the gate. "It's yourself. Back from the varsity, are you?"

"Aye, Mr Calder; that's me done with it."

"You'll be coming back then, will you?"

"Aye, maybe. We'll see."

"Indeed. Well, I'll tell you now; your sister was here earlier, but wi" the train bein late an that…»

"Ach, it's not far to walk."

"Indeed not, though I'll be shutting up shop very soon now, and I could offer you a lift on the back of my bike if you liked."

"I'll just walk, thank you."

"As you will, Kenneth. It's good to see you back."

"Thank you."

"Ah… that might be her, actually… " Mr Calder said, looking down the curve of the station approach. Kenneth heard a car engine, and then headlights swung white light across the iron railings holding the rhododendrons back from the tarmac road.

The big Super Snipe growled into the car park, heeling as it turned and stopping with the passenger's door opposite Kenneth. "Hello again, Mr Calder!" a voice called out from the driver's seat.

"Evening, Miss Fiona."

Kenneth threw his bags onto the back, settled into the passenger seat and accepted a kiss from his sister. He was pressed back into the seat as the Humber accelerated off down the road.

"Okay, big brother?"

"Just grand, sis." The car skidded briefly as it swung onto the main road. He clutched at the grab handle on the door pillar, looked at his sister, sitting hunched over the big steering wheel, dressed in slacks and blouse, her fair hair tied back. "You have passed your test, haven't you, Fi?"

"Course I have." A car, coming in the opposite direction, honked at them and flashed its lights. "Hmm," she said, frowning.

"Try the dip switch."

"Ah hah."

They swept off the main road and into the house drive, roared up between the dark masses of the oaks. Fiona took the car grinding over the gravel, past the old stable block and round the side of the house. He looked back over his shoulder. "Is that a wall?"

Fiona nodded as she brought the car to a halt in front of the house. "Dad wants a courtyard, so he's building a wall by the stables," she said, turning off the engine. "We're going to have a conservatory overlooking the garden, if mum has her way, which I dare say she will. I think your room's all right, but Hamish's is being redecorated."

"Heard from him?"

"Getting on famously with the piccaninnies, apparently."

"Fi; really. They're Rhodesians."

They're little black Rhodesians and I shall always think of them as piccaninnies. Blame Enid Blyton, say I. Come on, Uncle Joe; you're just in time for supper."

They got out; there were lights on in the house, and a couple of bikes lying against the steps curving up to the front door. "Whose are those?" he asked, taking his bags from the back of the car.

"Couple of lassies camping over there," Fiona pointed, and he could just make out a dim orange shape, lit from inside, under the elms on the west side of the lawn.

"Friends of yours?"

Fiona shook her head. "No; just turned up, asked to camp; think they thought we were a farm. They're from Glasgow, I think." She took his briefcase from him and bounded up the steps to the opened double doors of the porch. He hesitated, reached into the car and took the keys out of the ignition, then glanced at the tent. "Ken?" Fiona called from the door.

He made a tutting noise and put the keys back, then shook his head and pulled them out again. Not because there were strangers around, and certainly not just because they were from Glasgow, but just because it was irresponsible to leave keys in the car like that; Fiona had to learn. He pocketed the keys and picked up his bags. He glanced over at the tent, just as it flared with light.

"Oh!" he heard Fiona say.

And that was when he first saw Mary Lewis, running out of a tent in her pyjamas with her hair on fire, screaming.

"Christ!" He dropped the bags, ran across the gravel drive towards the girl haring across the grass, hands beating at the blue and orange flames crackling round her head. He leapt down to the lawn, pulling off his jacket as he went. The girl tried to run past him; he tackled her, bringing her down with a ragged thump; he had the jacket over her head before she properly started struggling. After a few seconds, while she whimpered, and the stink of burning hair filled his nostrils, he pulled the jacket away. Fiona came running; another girl, dressed in too-big pyjamas and a fawn duffle coat, and holding a small flat kettle, followed her from the house, wailing.

"Mary! Oh, Mary!"

"Nice tackle, Ken," Fiona said, kneeling by the girl with the burned hair, who was sitting quivering. He put one arm round her shoulders. The second girl fell to her knees and put both arms round the girl she'd called Mary.

"Oh, hen! Are you all right?"

"I think so," the girl said, feeling what was left of her hair, and then burst into tears.

He extracted his arm from between the two girls. He brushed his jacket free of grass and burned hair, and put it round the shoulders of the crying girl.

Fiona was pulling bits of hair away and peering at her scalp in the gloom. "Think you've been lucky, lassie. But we'll call the doctor anyway."

"Oh no!" the girl wailed, as though this was the worst thing in the world.

"Now, now, Mary," the other girl said, her voice shaking.

"Come on, let's get into the house," Kenneth said, rising. Take a look at you." He helped the two girls to their feet. "Maybe get you a cup of tea, eh?"

"Oh, that's what caused all this in the first place!" Mary said, standing pale and shaking, eyes bright with tears. She gave a sort of desperate laugh. The other girl, still hugging her, laughed too. He smiled, shaking his head. He looked into the girl's face, finally seeing it properly, and thought how bizarrely beautiful she looked, even with half a head of frizzy, whitened hair, and eyes red raw with crying.

Then he realised he was seeing her — and seeing her better all the time — in the light of a flickering glow that was blooming in the west of the garden, under the elms. Her eyes widened as she looked past him. The tent!" she howled. "Oh no!"

"And I missed it! Damn damn damn! I hate going to bed this early!"

"Shush. I've told you; now go to sleep."

"No! What happened next? Did you have to take all her clothes off and put her to bed?"

"No! Don't be ridiculous! Of course not!"

"Oh. That's what happened in this book I read. "Cept the girl was wet from being in the sea… she's fallen in the water!" Rory completed the latter part of this sentence in his Bluebottle voice. "She's fallen in the water!" the wee voice said again, in the darkness of the room.

Kenneth wanted to laugh, but stopped himself. "Please shut up, Rory."

"Go on; tell me what happened next."

"That's it. We all came into the house; mum and dad hadn't even heard anything. I got the hose going eventually but by that time it was too late to save much of the stuff in the tent; and anyway then the primus really blew up, and —»

"What? In an explosion?"

"That's the way things normally blow up, yes."

"Holy smoke! Oh damn, hell and shite! I missed it."

"Rory; mind your language!"

"Weeeellll." Rory turned over in the bed, his feet prodding Kenneth in the back.

"And mind your feet, too."

"Sorry. So did the doctor come or not?"

"No; she didn't want us to call him, and she wasn't badly hurt; just her hair, really."

"Waa!" Rory gave a squeal of excitement. "She's not bald, is she?"

"No, she isn't bald. But she'll probably have to wear a scarf or something for a while, I expect."

"So they're staying in the house, are they? These two lassies from Glasgow? They're in the house?"

"Yes, Mary and Sheena are staying in my room, which is why I've got to sleep with you."

"Ffworr!"

"Rory, shut up. Go to sleep, for Pete's sake."

"Okay." Rory made a great bouncing movement, turning over in bed. Kenneth could feel his brother lying still and tense beside him. He sighed.

He remembered when this had been his room. Before his dad had unblocked the fireplace and put a grate in it, the only heating during the winter had been that ancient paraffin heater they hadn't used since the old house, back in Gallanach. How nostalgic he had felt then, and how distant and separated from Gallanach at first, even though it was only eight miles away over the hills, and just a couple of stops on the train. That heater had been the same height as him, at first, and he'd been told very seriously never ever to touch it, and been slightly frightened of it at the start, but after a while he had grown to love the old enamelled heater.

When it was cold his parents would put it in his room to heat it up before he went to bed, and they would leave it on for a while after they'd said good-night to him, and he'd lie awake, listening to the quiet, puttering, hissing noise it made, and watching the swirling pattern of flame-yellow and shadow-dark it cast on the high ceiling, while the room filled with a delicious warm smell he could never experience after that without a sense of remembered drowsiness.

It had been a precious light, back then; must have been during the war at first, when his dad was using the probably illegal stockpile of paraffin he'd built up before rationing began.

Rory nudged him with one foot. He ignored this.

He ignored another, slightly stronger nudge, and started snoring quietly.

Another nudge.

"What?"

"Ken," Rory whispered. "Does your tassel get big sometimes?"

"Eh?"

"You know; your tassel; your willy. Does it get big?"

"Oh, good grief," he groaned.

"Mine does. It's gone big now. Do you want to feel it?"

"No!" he sat up in the bed, looking down at the vague shape of his brother's head on the pillow at the other end of the bed. "No, I do not!"

"Only asking. Does it, though?"

"What?"

"Your willy; get big?"

"Rory, I'm tired; it's been a long day, and this isn't the time or the place —»

Rory sat up suddenly. "Bob Watt can make stuff come out of his; and so can Jamie McVean. I've seen them do it. You have to rub it a lot; I've tried but I can't get any stuff to come out, but twice now I've got this funny feeling where it's like heat; like heat coming up as if you're getting into a bath, sort of. Do you get that?"

Kenneth sighed, rubbed his eyes, rested his back against the low brass rail at the foot of the bed. He drew his legs up. "I don't think it's really up to me to have to go into all this, Rory. You should talk to dad about it."

"Rab Watt says it makes you go blind." Rory hesitated. "And he wears glasses."

Kenneth stifled a laugh. He looked up at the dim roof, where dozens of model aircraft hung on threads and whole squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes and ME 109s attacked Wellingtons, Lancasters, Flying Fortresses and Heinkels. "No, it doesn't make you go blind."

Rory sat back, legs drawn up too. Kenneth couldn't make out his brother's expression; there was a soft glow from the small nightlight candle on Rory's desk, near the door, but it was too weak to let him see the boy's face clearly.

"Ha; I told him he was wrong."

Kenneth lay back down. Rory said nothing for a while. Then Rory said, "I think I'm going to fart."

"Well, you'd better make damn sure it goes out the way."

"Can't; got to keep it under the covers or it might ignite on the nightlight and blow the whole house up."

"Rory; shut up. I'm serious."

"… "sall right." Rory turned over, settled down. "It went away." There was silence for some time. Ken fitted his legs round Rory's back, closed his eyes, and wished that his father had concentrated on restoring more rooms in the old house rather than building courtyard walls.

After a while, Rory stirred again and said sleepily, "Ken?"

"Rory; please go to sleep. Or I'll kick you unconscious."

"No, but Ken?"

"Whaaat?" he breathed. I should have beaten him up when we were younger; he isn't scared of me at all.

"Have you ever shagged a woman?"

"That's none of your business."

"Go on; tell us."

"I'm not going to."

"Please. I won't tell anybody else. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die I won't."

"No; go to sleep."

"If you tell me, I'll tell you something."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"No, really; something dead important that nobody else knows."

"I'm not buying it, Rory. Sleep or die."

"Honest; I've never told anybody, and if I do tell you you mustn't tell anybody else, or I might get put in the jail."

Kenneth opened his eyes. What's the kid talking about? He turned over, looked to the head of the bed. Rory was still lying down. "Don't be melodramatic, Rory. I'm not impressed."

"It's true; they'd put me in jail."

"Rubbish."

"I'll tell you what I did if you tell me about shagging."

He lay there, thought about this. Apart from anything else, the horrible and ghastly truth was that at the ripe old age of practically twenty-two, he had never made love to a woman. But of course he knew what to do.

He wondered what Rory's secret was, what he thought he had done, or what story he had made up. They were both good at making up stories.

"You tell me first," Kenneth said, and felt like a child again.

To his surprise, Rory said, "All right." He sat up in bed, and so did Kenneth. They waggled closer until their heads were almost touching, and Rory whispered, "You remember last summer, when the big barn burned down on the estate?"

Kenneth remembered; it had been the last week of his vacation, and he had seen the smoke rising from the farm, a mile away along the road towards Lochgilphead. He and his dad had heard the bell sound in the ruined estate chapel, and had jumped into the car, to go and help old Mr Ralston and his sons. They'd tried to fight the fire with buckets and a couple of hoses, but by the time the fire engines arrived from Lochgilphead and Gallanach the old hay barn was burning from end to end. It stood not far from the railway line, and they'd all assumed it had been a spark from an engine.

"You're not going to tell me —»

"That was me."

"You're joking."

"Promise you won't tell, please? Please please please? I've never told anybody and I don't want to go to jail, Ken."

Rory sounded too frightened to be lying. Kenneth hugged his young brother. The boy shivered. He smelled of Palmolive.

"I didn't mean to do it, Ken, honest I didn't; I was experimenting with a magnifying glass; there was this wee hole in the roof, and this beam of sunlight, and it was like a sort of searchlight falling on the straw, and I was playing with my Beaufighter; not the Airfix one, the other one, and I was melting holes in the wings and fuselage "cos they look dead like bullet holes and you can melt a big long line of them and they look like twenty millimetre cannon holes, and I pretended the sunshine really was a sort of searchlight, and the plane crashed, and I'd thought I'd see if I could make the straw go on fire, just a little bit, round where the plane had crashed, but I didn't think it would all burn down, really I didn't; it just all went up dead sudden. You won't tell, will you, Ken?"

Rory pulled back, and Kenneth could just make out the boy's eyes, shining in the gloom.

He hugged him again. "I swear; on my life. I'll never tell anybody. Ever."

"The farmer won't have to sell his car to buy a new barn, will he?"

"No," he laughed quietly. "It's old Urvill's farm anyway, really, and being a good capitalist, I'm sure he had it well insured."

"Oh… okay. It was an accident, honest it was, Ken. You won't tell Mr Urvill, will you?"

"Don't worry; I won't. It was only a barn; nobody hurt."

"It was an accident."

"Sssh." He held the boy, rocked him.

"I was that frightened afterwards, Ken; I was going to run away, so I was."

There now; sssh."

After a while, Rory said, groggily, "Going to tell me about shagging, Ken, eh?"

"Tomorrow, all right?" he whispered. "Don't want you getting all excited again."

"You promise?"

"I promise. Lie back; go to sleep."

"Mmmm. Okay."

He tucked the boy in, then looked up at the dull crosses of the planes, poised overhead. Young rascal, he thought.

He lay back himself, toyed briefly with his own erection, then felt guilty and stopped. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but couldn't stop thinking of the girl whose hair had gone on fire. He'd seen quite far down her pyjama top when he'd put his arm round her shoulders.

He forced himself to stop thinking about her. He reviewed the day, the way he often had since childhood, trying to fill the time between the light going out and his brain finally relaxing, letting him go to sleep.

Well, so much for his plan to tell his parents as soon as he got home that he too wanted to travel, that he didn't want to stay here, or get a job at the factory, managerial or not, or become a teacher like Hamish. Maybe something settled and bourgeois like that could come later, but he wanted to taste the world first; there was more to it than this wee corner of Scotland, more to it than Glasgow and even Britain. The world and his life were opening up before him and he wanted to take full advantage of both (apart from anything else, there was always the Bomb, that lurking presence forever threatening to close it all back down again with one final, filthy splash of light that heralded the long darkness, and made a nonsense of any human plan, any dream of the future. Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow we blow up the world).

He had intended to tell his parents all this as soon as he got in, but the incident with the girls and their tent and that poor, shocked, bonny lassie with her hair on fire had made it impossible. It would have to wait until tomorrow. There would be time. There was always time.

He wondered what her skin would feel like. It had been the colour of pale honey. He wondered what it would feel like to hold her. He had touched her — he had been sprawled on top of her, dammit — but that wasn't the same thing, not the same thing at all. She had been slim, but her breasts, soft globes within the shadows of those silly pyjamas, had looked full and firm. There had been something fit and limber about the way she'd moved, even when she'd been shivering after her ordeal. He would have believed she was an athlete, not a student of — what had she said? — geography. He smiled in the darkness, touching himself again. He'd like to study her geography, all right; the contours of her body, the swelling hills and deep dales, her dark forest and mysterious, moist caves…

The girls stayed at Lochgair for another six days. The McHoans were used to keeping open house, and wouldn't hear of the girls just packing up what was left of their possessions and cycling or taking a train back to Glasgow.

"Och, no; you must stay," Margot McHoan said, at breakfast the next morning. They were all sat round the big table; Mary with a towel round her head, looking prettily embarrassed, her friend Sheena, big-boned, blonde and apple-cheeked, happily wolfing down sausage and eggs, Fiona and Kenneth finishing their porridge, Rory searching for the plastic toy concealed somewhere in the Sugar Smacks packet. Dad had left for the glass factory earlier.

"Oh, Mrs McHoan, we couldn't," Mary said, looking down at the table. She had only nibbled at her toast.

"Nonsense, child," Margot said, pouring Rory another glass of milk and smoothing the Herald on the table in front of her. "You're both very welcome to stay, aren't they?" She looked round her three children.

"Certainly," Fiona said. She had already found Sheena to be a kindred spirit when it came to Rock "n Roll, which might provide her with a valuable ally when it came to displacing dad's folk songs and Kenneth's jazz on the turntable of the family radiogram.

"Of course." Kenneth smiled at Mary, and at Sheena. "I'll show you around, if you like; much better to have a local guide, and my rates are very reasonable."

"Muuuum, they've forgotten to put the wee boat in this box," Rory complained, arm deep in the Sugar Smacks packet, face dark with frustration and ire.

"Just keep looking, dear," Margot said patently, then looked back at the two girls. "Aye; stay by all means, the two of you. This big house needs filling up, and if you feel guilty you can always help with a bit of decorating, if there's any wet days, and if my husband gets round to it. Fair enough?"

Kenneth glanced at his mum. Margot McHoan was still a striking-looking woman, though her thick brown hair was starting to go grey over her forehead (she had dyed it at first, but found it not worth the bother). He admired her, he realised, and felt proud that she should be so matter-of-factly generous, even if it might mean that he had to keep sleeping in the same bed as his young brother.

"That's awful kind, Mrs McHoan," Sheena said, wiping her plate with a bit of fried bread. "Are you sure?"

Totally," Margot said. "Your parents on the phone?"

"Mine are, Mrs McHoan," Mary said, glancing up.

"Good," Margot said. "We'll call them, tell them you'll be here, all right?"

"Oh, that's awfully nice of you, Mrs McHoan," Mary said, and flickered a wee nervous smile at the older woman. Kenneth watched her and the smile ended up, albeit briefly, directed at him, before Mary looked down, and crunched into her toast and marmalade.

He drove the two girls round the area in the Humber when his dad wasn't using it; sometimes Fiona came too. The summer days were long and warm; they walked in the forests south of Gallanach, and in the hills above Lochgair. A puffer captain let them travel through the Crinan canal on his boat, and they took the family dory puttering over to Otter Ferry for lunch one day, over the smooth waters of Lower Loch Fyne, one windless day when the smoke rose straight, and cormorants stood on exposed rocks, wings held open like cloaks to the warm air, and seals popped up, black cones of blubber with surprised-looking faces, as the old open boat droned slowly past.

There was a dance on in Gallanach Town Hall that Saturday, the day before the two girls were due to return to Glasgow; Kenneth asked Mary to go with him. She borrowed one of Fiona's dresses, and a pair of his mother's shoes. They danced, they kissed, they walked by the quiet harbour where the boats lay still on water like black oil, and they sauntered hand-in-hand along the esplanade beneath a moon-devoid sky full of bright stars. They each talked about their dreams, and about travelling to far-away places. He asked if she had given any thought of maybe coming back here some time? Like next weekend, for example?

There is a loch in the hills above Lochgair; Loch Glashan, reservoir for the small hydro power station in the village. Matthew McHoan's friend, Hector Cardie, a Forestry Commission manager, kept a rowing boat on the loch, and the McHoans had permission to use the boat, to fish the waters.

Rory was bored. He was so bored he was actually looking forward to school starting again next week. Back in the spring, he had hoped that Ken being back home would make the summer holidays fun, but it hadn't worked out that way; Ken was either up in Glasgow seeing that Mary girl, or she was here, and they were together all the time and didn't want him around.

He had been in the garden, throwing dry clods of earth at some old model tanks; the clouds of dust the clods made when they hit the hard, baked earth looked just like proper explosions. But then his mum had chased him out because the dust was getting the washing dirty. He hadn't found anybody else around to play with in the village, so he'd watched a couple of trains pass on the railway line. One was a diesel, which was quite exciting, but he'd soon got bored there, too; he walked up the track by the river, up to the dam. It was very warm and still. The waters of the loch were like a mirror.

He walked along the path between the plantation and the shore of the loch, looking for interesting stuff. But you usually only found that sort of thing down at the big loch. There was a rowing boat out in the middle of the little loch, but he couldn't see anybody in it. He was banned from making rafts or taking boats out. Just because he'd got a bit wet a few times. It was unfair.

He sat down in the grass, took out a little die-cast model of a Gloster Javelin, and played with it for a while, pretending he was a camera, tracking the plane through the grass and over the pebbles and rocks by the loch side. He lay back in the grass, looked at the blue sky, and closed his eyes for a long time, soaking up the pinkness behind his eyelids and pretending he was a lion lying tawny and sated under the African sun, or a sleepy-eyed tiger basking on some rock high over a wide Indian plain. Then he opened his eyes again and looked around, at a world gone grey, until that effect wore off. He looked down at the shore; little waves were lapping rhythmically at the stones.

He watched the wavelets for a while. They were very regular. He looked along the nearby stretch of shore. The waves — hardly noticeable, but there if you looked — were coming ashore all along the lochside. He followed the line they seemed to indicate, out to the little rowing boat near the middle of the loch. Now he thought about it, it was very odd that there was nobody in the boat. It was moored; he could see the wee white buoy it was tied to. But there was nobody visible in the boat.

The more carefully he looked, the more certain he became that it was the rowing boat that all these little, rhythmic waves were coming from. Hadn't Ken and Mary been going fishing today? He had thought they'd meant sea-fishing, in Loch Fyne, but maybe he hadn't been paying attention. What if they had been fishing from the rowing boat and fallen overboard and both been drowned? Maybe that was why the boat was empty! He scanned the surface of the loch. No sign of bobbing bodies or any clothing. Perhaps they'd sunk.

Anyway, what was making the boat make those waves?

He wasn't sure, but he thought he could see the boat moving, very slightly; rocking to and fro. Maybe it was a fish, flopping about in the bottom.

Then he thought he heard a cry, like a bird, or maybe a woman. It made him shiver, despite the heat. The boat seemed to stop rocking, then moved quite a lot, and then went totally still. The little waves went on, then a few slightly bigger, less regular ones lapped ashore, then the water went still, and was as flat as a pane of glass.

A gull, a white scrap across the calm sky, flapped lazily just above the blue loch; it made to land on the prow of the little rowing boat, then at the last second, even as its feet were about to touch, it suddenly burst up into the sky again, all panic and white feathers, and its calls sounded over the flat water as it flapped away.

What sounded very like laughter came from the little rowing boat.

Rory shrugged, put the model plane in the pocket of his shorts and decided to go back down to the village and see if there was anybody around to play with yet.

Kenneth and Mary held hands at tea that evening, and said they wanted to get married. Mum and dad seemed quite happy. Fiona didn't seem in the least surprised. Rory was nonplussed.

It was years before he made the connection between those tiny, rhythmically lapping waves, and that blushing, excited announcement.