The crow road by Iain Banks

Author:Iain Banks [Banks, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780349109077
Publisher: London : Abacus, 1993.
Published: 2011-01-22T22:07:49.390000+00:00

Uncle Hamish turned to me. 'Swear he was still alive.’ He nodded, frowning at me. I raised my eyebrows, feeling very cold inside. Hamish nodded again. 'Still alive; he said something to me. I swear Kenneth said, “See?”’ Hamish shook his head. 'Said that to me; said, “See?” without opening his eyes.’ He looked down at his rotating thumbs. His frown seemed to stop them. 'That was what he said; and it was so . . . wrong; such a silly, silly thing to say, that I thought I must have only thought I heard it, but I’m sure, that’s what he said. “See?”’ Uncle Hamish shook his head. '“See?”’ He kept shaking his head. '“See?”’ He turned to me. 'Can you credit that, Prentice?’ He looked away again before I could think of what to say. '“See?”’ he repeated to the tray with the ruined puzzle, and shook his head again.’“See?”’. 'Excuse me.’ Mum got up and left the room, crying. Hamish stared at the cardboard puzzle. Aunt Antonia sat at the end of the bed, staring hollow-eyed at her silent husband. The tray over Uncle Hamish’s legs started to vibrate. I could see the duvet over Uncle Hamish’s thighs shaking. The bed began to squeak. My uncle stared, appalled, at the tray on his lap, as the little grey pieces of the up-turned puzzle migrated across the vibrating surface of the tray, gradually collecting against one edge. The spasms in Uncle Hamish’s legs seemed to grow more severe; the cup of tea I’d put on the bedside table near my right elbow snowed a concentric pattern ot standing ripples. I suddenly thought of the scene in The Unbelievable Prevalence of Bonking, when the tanks enter Prague. Uncle Hamish made a strange keening noise; Aunt Tone patted his feet under the duvet and rose from the end of the bed. 'I’ll get your pills, dear.’ She left the room. Hamish turned to me, his whole body shaking now, the puzzle on the tray starting to break up as the tray bounced up and down beneath it. 'Jealous,’ Hamish croaked through clenched teeth. 'Jealous, Prentice; jealous! Jealous! Jealous God! Jealous!’ I got up slowly, patted his trembling hands and smiled.

*

I’ve always had this fantasy that, after Uncle Rory borrowed his flat-mate Andy’s motorbike and headed off into the sunset, he crashed somewhere, maybe coming down to Gallanach; came off the road and fell down some gully nobody’s looked in for the last ten years, or – rather more likely, I suppose – crashed into the water, and there’s a Suzuki 185 GT lying just under the waves of Loch Lomond, or Loch Long, or Loch Fyne, its rider somehow entangled in it, reduced by now to a skeleton in borrowed leathers, somewhere underwater, perhaps between here and Glasgow; and we all pass it every time we make the journey, maybe only a few tens of metres away from him, and very possibly will never know. I know that dad –

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