Iain Banks: The Crow Road

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 k.ck at his sides, pretending he was a horse. The Watt girl, perched on the cairn, bashed one rock against another, then inspected the struck, whitened surface of the stone she held. He grinned. She was a tyke; dressed in grubby hand-me-downs like the rest of the Watt tribe, she always seemed to have a runny nose, but he liked her. He still thought Ashley was a boy's name (wasn't it from Gone With The wW?), 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 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 andl 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, 1 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.