The Crow Road Read Online Free Page B

outside the chapel, and to the assembled, still stunned and quieted crowd of us announced, ‘I’m sorry, folks, but I believe I’m having a coronary ...’ and keeled over on his back.
    There was an instant when nothing much seemed to happen. Then Dean Watt nudged me with the hand holding his Regal and said quietly, ‘There’s a funny thing, eh?’
    ‘Dean!’ hissed Ashley, as people crowded round the doctor.
    ‘Oo-ya!’
    ‘Call an ambulance!’ somebody shouted.
    ‘Use the hearse!’ yelled my dad.
    ‘Och, it’s only a bruise,’ Dean muttered, rubbing vigorously at his shin. ‘Oo-ya! Will ye quit that!’
    They used the hearse, and got Doctor Fyfe to the local hospital in ample time to save his life if not his professional reputation.
    The muffled crump - which I still maintain that I heard - was my grandmother exploding; Doctor Fyfe had neglected to ask the hospital to remove her pacemaker before she was cremated.
    Like I say, this sort of thing keeps happening in my family.

CHAPTER 2

    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