Iain Banks The Crow Road

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nomenclature, only half a decade earlier, on the occasion of my sixteenth
birthday, when we'd got drunk together for the first time, 'he just lumbers
about!'
'She was a good woman, and did little that was bad and much that was good, so
I'm sure she has gone to a reward rather than a punishment, living amongst our
anti-creates.'
I nodded, and as we strolled amongst them, looked around at the various
members of my family, the McGuskies (Grandma Margot's maiden-family) the
Urvill clan, and sundry worthies from
Gallanach, Lochgilphead and Lochgair, and pondered, not for the first time,
what on Earth (or anywhere else for that matter) had given Uncle Hamish the
idea for his bizarre, home-made religion. I really didn't want to go into all
this right now, and anyway found the whole subject a little awkward, because I
wasn't actually quite as gung-ho for Hamish's personal theology as he seemed
to think I was.
'She was always very kind to me,' I told him.
'And therefore your anti-create will be kind to her,' Uncle Hamish said, still
with one hand on my shoulder, as we stopped and looked up at the stained-glass
monstrosity at the far end of the hall. This showed in graphic form the story
of the Urvills from about the time of the Norman conquest, when the family of
Urveille, from Octeville in Cotentin, had crossed into England, percolated
northwards, swirled briefly around Dunfermline and Edinburgh, and finally come
to rest -
perhaps afflicted by some maritime memory of their ancestral lands on the seam
of the Manche - in what had been the very epicentre of the ancient Scots
kingdom of Dalriada, losing only a few relatives and a couple of letters on
the way. Swearing allegiance to David I, here they have stayed, to mingle
their blood with that of the Picts, the Scots, the Angles, the Britons and the
Vikings who have all variously settled, colonised, raided and exploited this
part of Argyll, or maybe just arrived at one time and forgotten to leave
again.
The peregrinations and subsequent local achievements of the clan Urvill make
interesting history, and would make fascinating viewing if the giant window
telling the tale wasn't so badly done. The fashionable but untalented son of
one of the previous head Urvill's school pals had been commissioned to execute
the work, and had taken the brief all too literally. Deadly dull and eye-
squintingly garish at the same time, the stained glass window made me want to
grit my teeth.
'Yes, I'm sure you're right, uncle,' I lied.
'Of course I am, Prentice,' he nodded slowly. Uncle Hamish is balding, but of
the school that believes long wisps of hair grown on one side of the head and
then combed delicately across the
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the other edge look better than naked sin exposed to the elements. I watched
the coloured light from the stained glass window slide over shiny skin and
hardly less luminescent oiled hair, and thought what a prat he looked. I
inadvertently found myself humming the appropriate piece of music from the
Hamlet cigar adds and thinking of Gregor Fisher.
'Will you join me in worship this evening, Prentice?'
Oh shit, I thought. 'Perhaps not, actually, uncle,' I said, in tones I hoped
sounded regretful. 'Have to pop down the Jac to talk to a girl about a
Jacuzzi. Probably go straight from here.' Another lie.
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Uncle Hamish looked at me, the grain-like lines on his forehead bunching and
tangling, his brown eyes like knots. 'A jacuzzi, Prentice?' He pronounced the
word the way the lead in a
Jacobean tragedy might pronounce the name of the character who has been his
nemesis.
'Yes. A Jacuzzi.'
That's a form of bath, isn't it?'
'It is.'
'Not meeting this young lady in a bath, are you, Prentice?' Uncle Hamish's
lips twisted slowly into what was probably meant to be a smile.
'I don't believe the facilities of the Jacobite Bar run to such a thing,
uncle,' I told him.
'They've only recently got round to installing hot water in the gents. The
relevant jacuzzi is in
Berlin.'
'The German city?'
I thought about this. Could I have mis-heard Ash and she have been talking
about the briefly famous chart-topping band of the same name? I thought not.
'Yes, uncle; the city. Where the wall was.'
'I see,' Uncle Hamish nodded. 'Berlin.' He stared up at the violently clashing
leaden imagery of the great stained-glass window. 'Isn't that where Ilsa is?'
I frowned. 'Aunt Ilsa? No, she's in Patagonia, isn't she? Incommunicado.'
Uncle Hamish looked suitably confused as he contemplated the garish gable
glass. Then he nodded. 'Ah yes. Of course.' He looked back down at me.
'However. Shall we see you for supper, Prentice?'
'I don't know,' I admitted. 'Just as likely to end up with a kebab, I imagine.
Or a fish supper.'
'Well, you have your key with you?'
'Oh yes. Thanks. And I'll be . . . you know; quiet, when I come in.'
'Right.' Uncle Hamish gazed back up at the crass glass. 'Right. We'll probably
be off in a half-hour or so; let us know if you do want a lift.'
'Surely.'
'Right you are, then.' Uncle Hamish nodded, turned, then looked back with an
intensely puzzled expression. 'Did I hear somebody say mother exploded?'
I nodded. 'Pacemaker. That's what Doctor Fyfe was rushing to tell us; told dad
in the ambulance. But it was too late by then, of course.'
Uncle Hamish looked more baffled than ever, but nodded eventually and said,
'Of course,' and walked off over the parquet with a startlingly tree-like
creaking noise which I realised - with a small but welcome surprise - was
issuing from his black brogues.
I made straight for the sideboard with the drinks, but a quick inspection of
the casement of the relevant window on my way there revealed that Verity the
Comely had gone.
*
Fortingall is a modest hamlet in the hills north of Loch Tay, and it was there
in the winter of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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