Banks, Iain - The Crow Road by Banks Iain

Author:Banks, Iain
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2003-05-21T01:51:30+00:00

'Shouldn't have mentioned you,' Uncle Hamish said, as I walked to the door of the dim bedroom. I turned back. He was still trembling. It hurt me to look at him, the way it hurts to hear nails scraped down a blackboard. 'Shouldn't have said anything about you, Prentice,' he said, the words whistling out between his clenched teeth. I could hear Aunt Tone's footsteps coming up the stairs in the hall outside. 'Shouldn't have said, Prentice; shouldn't have said.'

'Said what, uncle?' I said, hand on the door knob.

'That you were closer to me; that I'd won you, saved you from his heathen faith!' Uncle Hamish's eyes stared at me from a shaking, ash-grey face.

I nodded and smiled at him. 'Oh well,' I said. The door opened and I got out of the way of Aunt Tone, bearing pills and a glass of water. 'See you tomorrow, Prentice,' she whispered to me.

She patted my arm. 'Thank you.'

'It's all right. See you tomorrow, Aunt Tone.'

Outside, on the landing, I looked down the stairs to where my mother was standing by the front door, putting on her jacket. I leant back against the closed bedroom door for just a second, and -

looking at nothing in particular - said very quietly to myself, 'See?'

*

I went to the land-side edge of the concrete cube, and faced back at the remains of the sunset, trying to work out how I was going to feel seeing Lewis and Verity again, after the way I'd behaved at New Year. But search as I tried, I could find no trace of dread or jealousy; I was even looking forward to seeing them again. Something of the coldness that had settled over me in the last few days seemed to have spread to the way I felt about Verity. It felt like all my jealous passion had dissipated like the clouds overhead.

I thought about jumping down onto the beach, but that might have been asking for another family tragedy, so I climbed down, walked to the end of the shallow scoop of bay and set off through the grass by the side of the burn, heading back to Gallanach through the calm summer gloaming.

*

. . .He told us about the plants on the islands, too; how the open, glorious machair, between the dunes and the farmed land, was so dizzily sumptuous with flowers because it was the place where file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,%20Iain%20-%20The%20Crow%20Road.txt (117 of 187) [5/21/03 1:52:24 AM]

the acidic peat and the alkali sands produced a neutral ground where more plants could flourish in the sunlight. And just the names of those plants were a delight, almost a litany; marsh samphire, procumbent pearlwort, sand-spurrey, autumnal hawkbit, cathartic flax, kidney vetch, germander speedwell, hastate orache, sea spleenwort; eyebright.

We learned about the people who had made Scotland their home: the hunter-gatherers of eight or nine thousand years ago, nomads wandering the single great wood and stalking deer, or camping by the edge of the sea and leaving only piles of shells for us

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