We passed the lay-by near the Cowal Road junction doing about ninety. I watched as we went by. Nothing; it was just a damp, deserted parking place with a big new concrete litter bin (replaced with unusual alacrity, in less than six months). We swept past, trailing light spray. It was a dim, grey day; light drizzle from the overcast, mountains hidden past about a thousand feet. We were on dipped-beam; the instruments glowed orange in front of the delicious, straight-armed, black-skirted, Doc-shoed, crop-blonde, purse-lipped Verity; my angelic bird of paradise, driving like a bat out of hell.
"Yo; Prentice. Get you out of bed?"
"Oh, you guessed."
"It's a gift. Pick you up at one?"
"Umm… Yeah. Where are you, Lewis?"
"At the Walkers', in Edinburgh."
"Oh… Is Verity there?"
"Yeah; she's coming."
"Eh?"
"She's coming; to Lochgair. Charlotte and Steve are off to the States this morning, skiing, and Verity —»
"Skiing, to the States? Sheesh, that pack-ice gets —»
"Shut up, Prentice. The upshot is Verity's going to be Festival Perioding with the Urvills. She's going to drive us there."
And me insane, I thought.
"Great," I said. "No Rodney?"
Lewis laughed. "No Rodney. Verity is finally a Rod-free zone."
"Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap."
"Agree grade and comments. See you thirteen hundred hours."
"Yeah; see you then." I put the phone down.
There was a dartboard above the phone with a picture of Thatcher taped over it. I kissed it. "Yeeeeee-HA!" I shouted, leaping back into the bedroom.
"Shut up, Prentice," Gav moaned, muffled, from his bed. He was invisible under a heap of duvet. My bed was on the other side of the room, away from the window, and so not quite as cold as Gav's in the winter. I fell into it, bounced. (Technically I should have Norris's solo room because I've been in the flat longest, but that room's small and noisy; also, Gav doesn't snore and he's quite happy to retreat to the living room couch if I have female company… That's another thing; there's only room for a single bed in Norris's room). "Put the heater on, ya bastard," Gav mumbled.
I leapt up, ninja'd over to Gav's bed and wheeched the duvet off.
"Aw ya —!" He grabbed the duvet back, cocooned himself again. " — bastard!"
"Gavin," I told him. "You are a skid-mark on the lavatory bowl of life. But I respect you for it." I turned, grabbed my dressing gown and made for the door; with one mighty ninja kick, the side of my right foot connected with all three switches of the fan heater at the same time and it hummed into life. "I shall make some tea."
"Dunno about tea; fuckin good at makin a noise."
"Thank you for sharing that with us, Gav. I shall return."
"What's the weather like?"
"Hmm," I said, staring at the ceiling, one finger to my lips. "Good question," I said. "The weather's like, a manifestation of the energy-transfer effected between volumes of the planet's gaseous envelope due to differential warming of the atmosphere at various latitudes by solar radiation. Surprised you didn't know that, actually, Gavin."
Gavin stuck his head out from under the duvet, giving me cause once more to marvel at the impressive way the lad's shoulders merged into his head with no apparent narrowing in between (this appeared to be the principal physical benefit bestowed by the game of rugby; the acquisition of an extremely thick neck, just as the most important thing one could take to the sport was a thick skull, and from it an intact one still in satisfactory two-way communication with one's spinal cord).
Gav — who probably epitomised thick-skulledness, though admittedly would not be amongst one's first fifteen when it came to offering proof of heavy traffic within the central nervous system — opened one bleary eye and focused on me with the same accuracy one has grown to expect from security forces aiming baton rounds at protesters" legs. "What the fuck's made you so unbearable this morning?"
I clasped my hands, smiled broadly. "Gavin, I am in a transport of delight, or at least shall be shortly after one o'clock this afternoon."
There was a pause while Gavin's duty-neuron struggled to assimilate this information.
The intense processing involved obviously exhausted too much of Gav's thinly-stretched grey matter to allow speech in the near future, so he contented himself with a grunt and submerged again. I boogied to the kitchen, singing, "Walking On Sunshine'.
I watched the orange-white needles swing across their calibrated arcs. Ninety. Jeez. I was sitting behind Lewis, who was in the front passenger seat. I kind of wished I'd sat behind Verity; I wouldn't have seen so much of her — not even a hint of that slim, smooth face, frowning in concentration as she barrelled the big black Beemer towards the next corner — but I wouldn't have been able to see the speedometer, either. Lewis seemed unperturbed.
I shifted in my seat, a little uncomfortable. I pulled the seat belt tight again. I checked Verity wasn't watching and adjusted my jeans a little. The folder containing Rory's work lay on the seat by my side; I lifted the file onto my lap, concealing a bulge. There was a reason for this.
We'd been on the bit of fast dual carriageway between Dumbarton and Alexandria, not long after Verity and Lewis had picked me up. Verity made a sort of wriggling motion a couple of times, straining back against her seat. This force was applied by those long, black-nyloned legs, and though most of the pressure was provided by her left limb, some residual effort pushed her right foot down as well, and on each occasion we speeded up, just momentarily, as her amply-soled Doc Marten pressed against the accelerator.
"You okay?" Lewis had asked, sounding amused.
She'd made a funny face. "Yup," she'd said, shifting down to fourth as a car she'd been waiting to pass pulled back into the slow lane. We were all pressed back into our seats. "Problem of wearing sussies, sometimes; they sort of pull a bit, you know?" She flashed a smile at Lewis, then me, then looked forward again.
Lewis laughed, "Well, no, can't claim I do know, but I'll take your word for it."
Verity nodded. "Just getting things sorted out here." She strained against the back-rest again, her bum lifting right off the seat. The car, already doing eight-five, roared up to over a hundred. The rear of a truck was approaching rapidly. Verity wiggled her bottom, plonked it back down, calmly braked and shifted up to fifth, dawdling along behind the green Parceline truck while she waited for it to overtake an Esso tanker. "Parceline, parceline… she breathed, tapping her fingers on the thick steering wheel. She made it sound French, pronouncing the word so that it rhymed with "Vaseline'.
"That better?" Lewis inquired.
"Mm-hum," Verity nodded.
Meanwhile I was fainting in the back seat, just thinking of what that tight black mid-thigh skirt concealed.
It had taken until the long, open left-hander that leads down into Glen Kinglas before my erection had finally subsided, and that had been mostly naked fear; Verity had lost it just for a second, the rear of the car nudging out towards the wrong side of the road as we whanged round the bend. Sitting in the rear, maybe it had felt worse, but I'd been petrified. Thankfully, there'd been no traffic coming; the concept of striking up an intimate — indeed potentially penetrative — relationship with the rocks on the far side of the road had been bad enough; but even the prospect of a head-on with another lump of metal travelling at anything remotely like the sort of speed we were sustaining might have resulted in me making my mark in the most embarrassing fashion on the leather upholstery of the Bavarian macht-wagen.
Verity just went "Whoa-yeah!" like she'd accomplished something, jiggled the steering wheel once and accelerated cleanly away.
Anyway, it's one of the minor unfortunate facts of life that a detumescing willy is prone to trap stray pube hairs under the foreskin as it scrolls forward again, and that was why I was adjusting my clothing as we braked for the bend above Cairndow.
I opened the Crow Road folder lying on my lap and leafed through some of the papers. I'd read the various bits and pieces a couple of times now, looking for something deep and mysterious in it all but not finding anything; I'd even done a little research of my own, and discovered through mum that dad had some more of Rory's papers in his study; she'd promised she'd try and look them out for me. I took a sheet of paper out of the folder and held the page of scribbled, multi-coloured notes up, resting it on one raised knee, gazing at it with a critical look, wondering if Verity could see what I was doing. I cleared my throat. I'd rather been hoping Lewis or Verity might have asked me what the file contained by now, and what I was doing, but — annoyingly — neither of them had.
"Sounds?" Lewis asked.
"Sounds." Verity nodded.
I sighed. I put the sheet back in the folder and the folder back on the other rear seat.
We rounded the top of Upper Loch Fyne listening to an old Madonna tape, the Material Girl singing "Papa Don't Preach," which raised a smile from me, at least.
… Back to Gallanach, for Christmas and Hogmanay. I felt a strange mixture of hope and melancholy. The lights of on-coming cars glared in the dull day. I watched the lights and the drizzle and the grey, pervasive clouds, remembering another car journey, the year before.
"Sounds daft to me, Prentice," Ashley said, lighting another cigarette.
"It sounds daft to me," I agreed. I watched the red tip of her cigarette glow; white headlights streamed by on the other side of the motorway, as we headed north in the darkness.
Darren had been dead a couple of months; I had fallen out with my father and I'd been in London for most of the summer, staying with Aunt Ilsa and her long-term companion, whose only name appeared to be Mr Gibbon, which I thought made him sound like a cat for some reason… Anyway, I'd been staying with them in darkest Kensington, at Mr Gibbon's very grand, three-storeyed town-house in Ascot Square, just off Addison Road, and working at a branch of Mondo-Food on Victoria Street (they were trying a new line in Haggisburgers at the time and the manager thought my accent would help shift them. Only trouble was, when people said, "Gee, what's in these?" I kept telling them. I don't believe they're on the menu any more). I'd saved some money, grown heartily sick of London, fast food and maybe people, too, and I was getting out.
Ash had been in London for a programming interview with some big insurance company and had offered me a lift back home, or to Gallanach anyway, as I'd exiled myself from Lochgair. Her battered, motley-panelled 2CV had looked out of place in Ascot Square, where I think that anything less than a two-year old Golf GTi, Peugeot 209 or Renault 5 was considered to be only just above banger status, even as a third car, let alone a second.
"Sorry I'm late, Prentice," she'd said, and kissed my cheek. She and Lewis had been out for a meal the night before. Big brother was staying in Islington, making a living from TV comedy shows by being one of the twenty or so names that zip up the screen under where it says Additional Material By:, and trying to be a stand-up comic. I'd been invited to dinner too, but declined.
I'd hoped she'd just pick me up and we'd be on our way, but Ash hadn't seen Aunt Ilsa for a long time and insisted on exchanging more than just pleasantries with her and Mr G.
Aunt Ilsa was a large, loud woman of forbiddingly intense bonhomie; I always thought of her as being the most remote outpost of the McHoan clan (unless you counted the still purportedly peripatetic Uncle Rory); a stout bulwark of a woman who — for me at least — had always personified the dishevelled ramifications of our family. A couple of years older than dad, she had lived in London for three decades, on and off. Mostly, she was off; travelling the world with Mr Gibbon, her constant companion for twenty-nine of those thirty years. Mr Gibbon had been an industrialist whose firm had employed the ad agency which Aunt Ilsa had worked for when she'd first moved to London.
They met; he found her company agreeable, she found him a new slogan. Within a year they were living together and he had sold his factory to devote more time to the rather more demanding business of keeping Aunt Ilsa company on her peregrinations; they had been on the move more or less ever since.
Mr Gibbon was a grey-haired pixie of a man, ten years older than Aunt Ilsa, and as tiny and delicate as she was tall and big-boned. Apparently he was quite charming, but as the basis of his charm seemed to rest upon the un-startling stratagem of addressing every female he encountered by the fullest possible version of her name (so that every Julie became a Juliana, every Dot extended to a Dorothea, all Marys became Mariana, Sues Susanna, etc. Sorry; etcetera) as well as the slightly perverse habit of calling all young girls «madam» and all old women "girls," it was a charm to which I at least was quite prophylactically immune.
"And you are…?" he asked Ashley as he welcomed her in the hallway.
"Ash," she said. "Pleased to meet you."
I grinned, thinking Mr Gibbon would have a hard job finding a convincing embellishment for Ash's uncommon monicker.
"Ashkenazia! Come in! Come in!" He led the way to the library.
Ash turned back to me as we followed, and muttered, "He's a pianist, isn't he?"
Totally misunderstanding what she meant, I sneered slightly at Mr Gibbon's back, and nodded. "Yeah; isn't he just."
Aunt Ilsa was in the library; she had a heavy cold at the time and I am tempted to say we discovered her poring over a map, but the inelegant truth is that she was searching the shelves for a misplaced book when we entered.
She spent most of the next half hour or so talking about the extended holiday to Patagonia she was planning, in an extremely loud voice and with an enthusiasm that would probably have embarrassed the Argentinian Tourist Board. I sat fretting, wanting to be away.
By some miracle, the 2CV hadn't been towed away when I'd finally dragged Ash out; we'd made it to the M1, picked up a hitcher and — rather beyond the call of duty, I'd have said — dropped him where he was going, in Coventry. We got lost in Nuneaton trying to get back on the M6, and were now heading through Lancashire at dusk, still an hour or more from the border.
"Prentice, there are a lot of better reasons for not talkin to your dad, believe me."
"I believe you," I said.
"What about your mother?"
"No, she's still talking to him."
She tutted. "You know what I mean. You're still seeing her, I hope."
"Yeah; she came to Uncle Hamish's a couple of times, and she drove me back to Glasgow once."
"I mean, what's the big argument? Can't you just agree to disagree?"
"No; we disagree about that." I shook my head. "Seriously; it doesn't work that way; neither of us can leave it alone. There's almost nothing either of us can say that can't be taken the wrong way, with a bit of imagination. It's like being married."
Ash laughed. "What would you know? I thought your mum and dad were pretty happy."
"Yeah, I suppose. But you know what I mean; when a marriage or relationship is going wrong and it's like everything that one person says or doesn't say, or does or doesn't do, seems to rub the other one up the wrong way. Like that."
"Hmm," Ash said.
I watched the red tail lights. I felt very tired. "I think he's angry that having given me the freedom to think for myself, I've not followed him all down the line."
"But, Prentice, it's not as though you even believe in Christianity or anything like that. Shit, I can't work out what it is you do believe in… God?"
I shifted uncomfortably in the thin seat. "I don't know; not God, not as such, not as a man, something in human form, or even in an actual thing, just… just a field… a force —»
"'Follow the Force, Luke, eh?" Ash grinned. "I remember you and your Star Wars. Didn't you write to Steven Spielberg?" She laughed.
"George Lucas." I nodded miserably. "But I don't even mean anything like that; that was just background for the film. I mean a sort of interconnectedness; a field effect. I keep getting this feeling it's already there, like in quantum physics, where matter is mostly space, and space, even the vacuum, seethes with creation and annihilation all the time, and nothing is absolute, and two particles at opposite ends of the universe react together as soon as one's interfered with; all that stuff. It's like it's there and it's staring us in the face but I just can't… can't access it."
"Maybe it isn't accessible," Ash said, fag in mouth, holding the steering wheel with her knees and making a stretching, circling motion with her shoulders (we were on a quiet stretch of motorway, thankfully). She took her cigarette from her mouth again, put her hands back on the wheel. I hoped she wasn't getting sleepy; the drone of the wee Citroen's engine was cataleptically monotonous.
"How not?" I said. "Why shouldn't it be accessible?"
"Maybe it's like your particle; inevitably uncertain. Soon as you understand one part of what it means, you lose any chance of understanding the rest." She looked over at me, brows furrowed. "What was that routine Lewis used to do? About Heisenberg?"
"Oh," I said, annoyed now. "I can't remember."
"Something about being at school and bursting into this office and saying, look, are you Principal here or not, Heisenberg? And him going, weellll… " She gave a small laugh. "Mind, it was funnier the way Lewis told it."
"A little," I conceded. "But —»
"Lewis seems to be making it in the old alternative comedy scene, doesn't he?" Ash said.
"So we're told," I said, looking away. "I don't imagine Ben Elton or Robin Williams have considered early retiral quite yet, though."
"Aye, but good for him, though, eh?"
I looked at Ash. She was watching the road as we roared down a slight incline at all of seventy. Her face was expressionless; that long, Modigliani nose like a knife against the darkness. "Yeah," I said, and felt small and mean-spirited. "Aye, good for him."
"It true you've not seen much of him in London?"
"Well, he has his own friends, and I was usually too tired after work." (A lie; I wandered art galleries and went to films, mostly.) "And I couldn't have paid my way, either."
"Ach, Prentice," Ashley said, chiding. She shook her head (the long mane of fair hair was tied up, so it did not swish and fall over her shoulders). "He'd have liked to have seen you more often. He's missed you."
"Oh, well," I said.
I watched the lights again for a while. Ashley drove and smoked. I felt myself nodding off, and shook myself awake. "Ah, dear… " I rubbed my face with both hands, asked, "How do you keep awake?"
"I play games," she told me.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," she nodded, licking her lips. "Like Name That Tail-Light."
"What?" I laughed.
"True," she said. "See that car up ahead?"
I looked at the two red lights. "Yeah."
"See how high up the lights are, not too far apart?"
"Renault 5."
"No kidding!"
"Mm-hmm. One it's over-taking?"
"Yeah?"
"Horizontally divided lights; that's an old Cortina; mark 3."
"Good grief."
"Here's a Beemer. New five series, I think… about to pass us; should have lights that slant in slightly at the bottom."
The BMW passed us; its rear lights were slanted in slightly, at the bottom. We overtook the old Ford and the 5 a little later.
"Course," Ash said. "It's more fun in a fast car when you're doing all the overtaking, but even just sitting at seventy you'd be surprised how much you pass, sometimes. Now." She held up one finger. "Listen and feel as we pull back into the slow lane."
Ash swung the ancient 2CV to the left, then straightened.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." She grinned. "Missed all the cats" eyes. Bump-free lane-changing. A great skill, you know." She glanced at me, mock-serious. "Not so easy in a Ferrari, or whatever; the tyres are too wide. But skinny wee tyres like this thing's got are just about ideal."
"Allow me to sit back in amazement, young Ashley," I said, crossing my arms and twisting in my seat to face her. "I had no idea it was possible to extract such multifarious enjoyment from a simple night-time car journey."
Ashley laughed. "Cobbled streets are even more fun, if you're a girly."
"Huh. Trust you to lower the tone of the whole conversation and introduce a note of clitoris envy at the same time."
Ash laughed louder, ground the cigarette butt out in the ashtray, flipped it closed. "Och, it's a gift; I'd be ashamed of myself if I wasn't just so fucking nice with it." She put her head back an roared with laughter at this, before shaking her head and restoring her attention to the road. I laughed a little too, then stared out of the side window, wondering suddenly if Ash had slept with Lewis last night.
She clicked the indicator on. "Ye Olde Motorway Services. Come on; yer Aunty Ashley'll buy you a coffee and a sticky bun."
"Gee, you sure know how to show a boy a good time."
Ash just smirked.
When I woke, about mid-day in the flat on Crow Road, Janice Rae had gone. To work, I assume. There was a note, on a small blue sheet of writing paper: "You're the better stand-up. Call me, sometime, if you want. J."
I looked at that qualified second sentence with an odd feeling of sadness and relief.
Drying off after a shower, I stood looking at two framed movie posters on the bathroom wall. Paris, Texas and Dangerous Liaisons.
I had a coffee and some toast, washed up and let myself out. I'd put the Crow Road folder in a Tesco bag, and walked back to our flat under grey skies and through a mild and swirling wind, swinging the carrier to and fro, and whistling.
Our flat was in Grant Street, near St George's Cross (and just off Ashley Street, funnily enough). My flat-mates were out when I got back, which was fine by me; I did not relish the prospect of facing the single-entendres that were Gav's best approximation of wit, and which inevitably followed any sexual adventure of mine or Norris's — real or imagined — Gav ever found out about. If I was lucky, Gav would be so shocked at the very idea I had had carnal knowledge of an aunt — even one of the not-really-an-aunt variety that he would just pretend it hadn't happened. Hell, if I was really lucky he might stop talking to me altogether, I thought… but that didn't seem likely. Or preferable, to be honest; part of me rather looked forward to such taunting. I'd caught a glimpse of my face in the hall mirror once, when Gav was berating me for such rakish tendencies, and I'd been smiling.
I made myself another coffee, extended myself on the sofa — my legs quivery with fatigue — opened the folder, pulled out the sheets of paper and started to read.
Crow Road seemed to be the title of Uncle Rory's Big Idea. From the notes, he seemed unsure whether its final form would be a novel, a film, or an epic poem. There were even some pages discussing the possibility of it being a concept album. I lay there on the couch and shuddered at the very thought. So seventies.
The material in the folder seemed to fall into three basic categories: notes, bits of descriptive prose, and poems. A few of the notes were dated, all between the early and late seventies. The notes were on a mixture of papers, mostly loose-leaf; ruled, plain, squared, graph. Some were on cartridge paper, some on pages torn from what looked like school exercise books, and some on folded, green-lined computer print-out. Napkins and old cigarette packets did not, sadly, put in an appearance. The notes were scribbled in a no-less motley variety of different-coloured pens (ball, felt and micro-liner) and used a lot of abbreviations and compressions: H crshd twn carige & tr? Erlier proph. by Sr: "kid by t. livng & t. ded((?)) H Chrst-lk figr (chng nm to start with T!!???); fml Chrst fr new times? Scot mrtyrf Or Birnam wd idea — disgsd army??? (2 silly?)… and that was one of the more comprehensible bits.
2 silly, indeed.
The prose was mostly about places Rory had been; they read like out-takes from his travel pieces. San José, Ca: Suddenly, the Winchester House itself seemed like a emblem for the restless American soul… about some weird house Rory wanted to use in his story, judging by some cryptic notes at the end of the passage.
Then there was the poetry:
… We know this life
is merely a succession
of endless brutal images,
punctuated,
for effect,
by relative troughs
whose gutsy heaves
at first disguised
but power us to the next disgrace.
"Not applying for a job with Hallmark cards, then," I muttered to myself, sipping at my coffee.
But I kept on reading.
My head wasn't really in the right state for assimilating all this stuff, but as far as I could gather, Uncle Rory had been trying for years to come up with something Creative (his capital, his italics). Something that would establish him as a Writer: script-writer, poet, lyricist for a rock band, novelist, playwright… it didn't matter. Being recognised for having kept a glorified diary while wandering through India when he was young and naïve wasn't enough for him. It wasn't serious. This work, Crow Road, would be Serious. It would be about Life and Death and Treachery and Betrayal and Love and Death and Imperialism and Colonialism and Capitalism. It would be about Scotland, (or India, or an "Erewhon???) and the Working Class and Exploitation and Action, and there would be characters in the work who would represent all of these things, and the working out of the story would itself prove the Subjectivity of Truth.
… There were pages of that sort of stuff.
There were also pages of poems forced into some sort of rhyming structure so that they might conceivably have worked as songs, several paragraphs of references to critical works (Barthes, especially; Death of the Author! shouted what looked like a head-over one entire page of notes devoted to ideas about a loose-leaf novel/poem?? There were location notes for a film and sheets physical appearance of the characters and the sort of actors who might play them, these surrounded by doodles, mazes and uninspired drawings of faces. There was a list of bands that might be interested in doing an album (a musical tone-scale running all the way from Yes to Genesis), and a sheaf of sketches for the sets in a stage presentation. What there wasn't was any indication whatsoever that Rory had actually written any part of this great work. The only things that might have been classed as narrative were the poems, and they didn't seem to have anything to do with each other, apart from the fact a lot of them seemed to be vaguely about Death, or Love. Tenuous, was the word that came to mind.
I looked in the folder again to see if I'd missed anything.
I had. There was another small sheet of blue writing paper, in Janice Rae's hand. "Prentice — had a look at this — " (then the word "while', crossed out heavily, followed by the word "before', also nearly obliterated) " — Can't find any more; R had another folder. (?) If you find it and work out what it's all about, let me know; he said there was something secret buried in it. (Gallanach)?"
I bobbled my head from side to side. "Gallanach?" I said, in a silly high-pitched voice, as though quoting. I stretched, grunting with pain as my leg muscles extracted their revenge for having been ignored twelve hours earlier.
I reached for my coffee, but it was cold.
"Dear God, we beseech ye, visit the reactive wrath of their own foulness upon those nasty wee buggers in the Khmer Rouge in general, and upon their torturers, and their leader Pol Pot, in particular; may each iota of pain they have inflicted on the people of their country — heathen or not — rebound upon their central nervous system with all the agony they originally inflicted upon their victims. Also, Lord God, we ask that you remember the dark deeds of any communistic so-called-interrogators, in this time of great upheaval in eastern Europe; we know that you will not forget their crimes when their day of reckoning comes, and their guttural, Slavic voices cry out to ye for mercy, and ye reward them with all the compassion they ever showed to those unfortunate souls delivered unto them. Prentice?"
I jumped. I'd almost fallen asleep while Uncle Hamish had been droning on. I opened my eyes. The Tree was looking expectantly at me.
"Oh," I said. "Umm… I'd just like to put in a word for Salman Rushdie. Or at least take one out for old Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini… " I looked at Uncle Hamish, who was making quiet signals that I should clasp my hands and close my eyes. We were in the front lounge of Uncle Hamish and Aunt Tone's Victorian villa in the attractive Gallanach suburbette of Ballymeanoch, facing each other over a card table. I closed my eyes.
"Ah," I said. "Dear God, we pray that as well as suffering whatever part of the general physical unpleasantness involved in the Iran-Iraq war you may judge to be rightly his, you can find a spare area in his suffering, er, anti-create, for Mr R. Khomeini, late of Tehran and Qom, to experience at least some of the, umm, despair and continual worry currently being undergone by the novelist Mr S Rushdie, of Bombay and London, heathen and smart-alec though he may well be. Amen."
"Amen," echoed Uncle H. I opened my eyes. Uncle Hamish was already rising from his sear, looking positively twinkly with health and good cheer. He rubbed his hands. "Very good," he said, moving in that oddly stiff and creaky way of his for the door. "Let us repair for some repast," he chuckled as he held the door open for me. "I believe Antonia has prepared something called Cod Creole." He sniffed the fishy air in the hall; we crossed to the dining room.
"Not Lobster Creole? Or Kid?" I inquired.
But I don't think Uncle Hamish heard me. He was humming something sombre and looking pleased with himself.
Uncle H has developed a fascinating heresy based on the idea that exactly what you did to other people while you were alive gets done right back to you once you're dead. Torturers die — in agony — hundreds, maybe thousands of times, before their ravaged souls are finally dropped from the jaws of a fearsome and vengeful God. Those who authorise the dreadful deeds carried out by the torturers (or whoever) also share whatever proportion of this retrospective agony the deity — or his angelic cost-benefit-calculating representatives — deem they deserve. Having quizzed The Tree on the details of this scheme, it would appear that said burden of transferred pain is debited from the account of the guy at — or rather wielding — the sharp end of the original action, which seems only fair, I suppose.
Apparently Uncle Hamish is awaiting divine inspiration on the knotty problem of whether the good things one has accomplished in one's life are also re-lived from the other side (as it were), or simply subtracted from the nasty stuff. At the moment he seems to be veering towards the idea that if you did more good than bad during your life you go straight to Heaven, an arrangement which at least processes the merit of simplicity; the rest sounds like something dreamt up by a vindictive bureaucrat on acid while closely inspecting something Hieronymus Bosch painted on one of his bleak but imaginative days.
Still, it has its attractions.
Aunt Tone and the family's two children, Josh and Becky, and Becky's infant daughter, Iona, were already in the dining room, filling it with bustle and chat.
"Said your prayers?" Aunt Tone said brightly, depositing a steaming dish of potatoes on the table.
"Thank you, yes," Hamish replied. My uncle worships alone these days, and has done ever since his son left home to become a devout Capitalist (neither his wife nor his daughter had ever bothered with my Uncle's unique brand of condemnationist Christianity; as a rule, the McHoan women, whether so by blood or marriage, have displayed a marked reluctance to take their men-folk's passions seriously, at least outside the bedroom). I think that was why Uncle Hamish had been so delighted when I'd come to stay with the family, and also — perhaps — why he was in no hurry to help effect a reconciliation between me and my father.
We dined on spicy fish which repeated on me for most of the evening in the Jac, meeting pals, until I drowned it in an ocean of beer.
"Happy New Year!" Ashley yelled, flourishing a bottle of generic whisky with more enthusiasm than care; she cracked the bottle off the oak-panelled wall of the castle's crowded entrance hall, but without, apparently, causing damage to either. Clad in a sparkly jacket and a long black skirt, wreathed in silly string and clumps and strands of paper streamers from party poppers, her long hair bunned, she enveloped me in a very friendly kiss, breathing whisky and wine fumes. I kissed right back and she pushed away, laughing. "Wo, Prentice!" she shouted over the noise. The hall was packed with people; music spilled out from the main hall beyond; pipes and fiddles, tabors and accordions, guitars and a piano, several of them playing the same tune.
"I thought you gave up," I said, pointing at the cigarette she had stuck behind one ear. Josh and Becky were still at the doors, greeting people they knew.
"I did," she said, taking the fag from behind her ear and putting it in her mouth. She left it there for a few seconds, then restored it to its previous position. "See? Still given up; no temptation at all."
Ash and I levered our way through the press of people while I undid my jacket and struggled to extricate my half-bottle of whisky from a side pocket. We made it into the hall, which was actually less crowded, though still full. A huge fire roared in the grate; people balanced on the fire-seat which ran around the hearth, and on every other available perch, including the stairs and the piano.
A few enthusiasts within the midst of the crowd were trying to dance the Eightsome Reel, which in the circumstances was a little like trying to stage a boxing match in a telephone box; not totally impossible, just pointless.
Ash and I found a space over near the piano. She reached over the piano to a pile of little plastic cups, grabbed one and shoved it into my hand. "Here; have a drink." She sloshed some whisky into the cup. "How've you been?"
"Fine," I said. "Broke, and I can see that 2.1 disappearing over the event horizon, but fuck it; I've still got my integrity and my Mobius scarf, and a boy can go a long way with those things. You got a job yet?"
"What?"
"Let's stand away from this fucking piano."
"What?"
"Have you got a job yet?
"Na. Hey." She put one hand on my shoulder. "Heard what David Bowie's latest film's called?"
"This sounds Lewisian," I shouted.
"No," she shook her head. "'Merry Christmas, Mister Ceausescu'!" Ashley laughed like a drain; a teetotaller might have said her breath smelled like one.
"Very funny," I yelled into her ear. "Haven't laughed so much since General Zia got blown up. Where is Lewis, anyway? We were waiting for them to turn up at Hamish and Tone's but they never showed. He and James here?"
Ash looked concerned for a second, then her smile returned. She put her arm round my shoulders. "Saw James over by the accordion earlier. Hey; you want to take a stroll round the battlements?" She pulled a spliff half out of her breast pocket, let it fall back. "Got a number here, but Mrs McSpadden keeps wandering through, and I seem to remember she took inordinate and extremely loud interest in one of these last year when wee Jimmy Calder stoked up. You comin?"
"Not right now," I said, looking around the crowd, acknowledging a few waves and some distant mouthings that were probably shouts. I stood on tip-toes to look round the hall; a paper-plane battle seemed to be taking place at one end. "You seen Verity?"
"Not for a bit," Ash said, pouring herself more whisky. I refused. "Hey." Ash nudged me. There's dancing upstairs."
"Verity there?"
"Maybe," Ash said, raising her eyebrows.
"Let's check it out."
"Way to go, Prent."
… No Verity in the Solar, loud with sounds and dark with light, and less crowded still. Ash and I danced, then cousin Josh asked her, and I sat watching the people dance for a while — the best way to extract any real enjoyment from dancing, I've always thought, but I seem to be unusual in not gaining any real pleasure from performing the movements — and then saw Helen Urvill, entering the hall holding a lager can. I went over to her, through the dancers.
"Happy New Year!"
"Hey, Prentice. Same to you…»
I kissed her, then lifted her up and spun her round; she whooped.
"How are you?" I yelled. Helen Urvill, elegantly tall and judiciously lean, straight thick hair obsidian black, dress combat-casual, back on holiday from Switzerland and looking as thoroughly kempt as ever, passed the lager can to me.
"I'm fine," she said.
I looked at the tin she'd handed me. "Carling Black Label?" I said, incredulous. Somehow this did not quite seem Helen's style.
She smirked. Try some."
I tried some; the stuff foamed, went up my nose. I spluttered, stepping back, dripping, while Helen took the can back and stood grinning. "Champagne?" I said wiping my chin.
"Lanson."
"What else? Oh you're so stylish, Helen," I said. "Wanna dance?"
We danced, and shared the can of champagne. "How's Diana?" I shouted above the music.
"Couldn't get back," Helen yelled. "Still out in Hawaii."
"Poor thing."
"Yeah."
Helen continued to circulate; I decided it was time for a pee and then maybe some food, which took me via the garden (there was a queue for the downstairs loo, and the upper part of the castle was locked) to the kitchen.
Mrs McSpadden was in command, over-seeing a production line of sandwiches, sausage rolls, bowls of soup and chilli, slices of black bun and Christmas cake and accompanying slices of cheese.
"Prentice!" Mrs McSpadden said.
"Mthth MnThpndn!" I replied, mouth full of cake.
She shoved a set of keys into my hand. "Will ye pop down to the cellar, for us?" Mrs S shouted. "Get another litre of whisky; it's the second archway on the left. Dinnae let anybody down with you, mind; keep that door locked." The microwave chimed and she hauled a still half-frozen block of chilli out on a big plate; she started breaking it up with a large wooden spoon.
I swallowed. "Okay," I said.
I went through to the utility room, cool and dark after the noise and chaos of the kitchen. I turned the light on, sorted through the keys for one that looked like it might match the door to the cellar. A movement outside caught my eye and I peered through the window; looked like I'd put on an outside light, too.
Verity Walker, clad in a short black dress, was dancing sinuously on the roof of Uncle Fergus's Range Rover. Lewis sat cross-legged on the bonnet of the car, watching her. He glanced over, shading his eyes, and seemed to see me, looking through the window from the utility room. Verity pirouetted. Holding her shoes in one hand, she ran the other down over her body to one thigh, then back to her head and through her cropped blonde hair.
The floodlight outside — harsh and white — lit her like she was on stage. Her hair glowed like pale flame.
Lewis jumped off the Range Rover (Verity wobbled a little as the car bounced on its springs, but recovered); he stood at the side of the car, between me and it, and held one hand up to Verity. She danced on, oblivious, then he must have said something, and she danced seductively, fluidly, to the edge of the roof, hips moving slow, a big smile on her face as she looked down at Lewis, then she threw herself off the roof. Lewis caught her, staggered back a couple of steps, then forward, as Verity wrapped her arms round his neck and her legs round his waist; white glances of thigh against the black. Lewis put his arms round her as he pitched forward.
They thumped together into the Range Rover. I thought the impact must have hurt her back, but it didn't look like it had. Her arms and legs stayed where they were, and Lewis's head bent down to hers. Her hands started to stroke and caress the nape of his neck and the back and sides of his head.
After a while, one of Lewis's arms disengaged, waving behind him. One finger pointed up to the bright flood-light that was showing me all this. His hand made a cutting, chopping motion.
When he did it a second time, I put the light out.
I let myself into the cellar, locked the door behind me. The cellar was cold. I found the whisky, let myself out of the cellar and locked it, turned all the lights out, gave Mrs McSpadden the bottle, accepted a belated new-year kiss from her, then made my way out through the kitchen and the corridor and the crowded hall where the music sounded loud and people were laughing, and out through the now almost empty entrance hall and down the steps of the castle and down the driveway and down to Gallanach, where I walked along the esplanade — occasionally having to wave or say "Happy New Year" to various people I didn't know — until I got to the old railway pier and then the harbour, where I sat on the quayside, legs dangling, drinking my whisky and watching a couple of swans glide on black, still water, to the distant sound of highland jigs coming from the Steam Packet Hotel, and singing and happy-new-year shouts echoing in the streets of the town, and the occasional sniff as my nose watered in sympathy with my eyes.