The Crow Road

"Canada?" I said, aghast.

"I've got an uncle there. He knows somebody working in a firm installing a system I know a bit about; they swung the work permit."

"My God, when do you go?"

"Next Monday."

"Next Monday?"

"I'll be going up to Gallanach tomorrow, to say goodbye to mum."

"Flying?"

"Driving. Leaving the car there. Dean can use it."

"Jesus. How long are you going to Canada for?"

"I don't know. We'll see. Maybe I'll like it."

"You mean you might stay?"

"I don't know, Prentice. I'm not making any plans beyond getting there and seeing what the job's like and what the people are like."

"Shee-it. Well, can I see you? I mean; I'd like to say goodbye."

"Well, you going to Gallanach this weekend?"

"Umm… Would you, believe that this weekend I was intending to drive a Bentley to Ullapool, get a ferry to the island of Lewis, drive to the most north-westerly point on the island I could find and throw a paperweight into the sea? But…»

"Well, don't let me stop you. I've got plenty of family to see, goodness knows."

"But —»

"But I'm flying out from Glasgow on the Monday morning. You can put me up in this palace you're living in, if you like."

"Sunday? Yeah. Let me think; can't get a ferry on a Sunday, but I can get to Ullapool on Friday, travel over; back Saturday. Yeah. Sunday's fine. What time do you think you'll get here?"

"Six all right?"

"Six is perfect. My turn to take you for a curry."

"No it isn't, but I accept anyway. I promise not to throw brandy all over you."

"Okay. I promise not to act like an asshole."

"You have to act?"

"Gosh, you know how to hurt a chap."

"Years of practice. See you Sunday, Prentice."

"Yeah. Then. Drive carefully."

"You too. Bye."

I put the phone down, looked up at the ceiling, and didn't know whether to whoop with joy because I was going to see her, or scream in despair because she was going to Canada. Caught between these two extremes, I experienced an odd calmness, and settled for a low moan.

I was starting to think that maybe the Bentley wasn't really me. People gave me fu

With hindsight, perhaps saying, Gosh, I thought you only did this to black people! wasn't the most politic reply to have made, but they only kept me waiting for an hour while they checked up on me and scrutinised the car. I spent the time sitting in the back of the police car thinking of all the worthy causes I could give the proceeds of the Bentley's sale to (I certainly wasn't going to keep Fergus's blood-money). The African National Congress and the League Against Cruel Sports were two names that suggested themselves as fit to spin Ferg's remains up to near turbo-charger speeds in his watery grave. Thankfully the Bentley's tyres were nearly new and the lights, like everything else, were all in perfect working order, so the boys in blue had to let me go.

Anyway, it felt right that it was the monstrous burgundy-coloured Eight I took to the Hebrides rather than the Golf.

I started out on Friday morning and took the A82 to Iverness, then crossed to the west coast and Ullapool. The drive confirmed that the Bentley would have to go. It hadn't been as unwieldly as I'd imagined it might be, but I just felt embarrassed in the thing. There hadn't been anything in Fergus's will to say I couldn't do what I wanted with the car, so what the hell, I'd sell it.

I caught the afternoon ferry to Stornoway. I stayed in the Royal Hotel that night, read history books about ancient wars and long-gone empires, and dipped into our currently interesting times via the television. I stationed the paperweight on the bedside table, as though to guard me through the night.

At ten o'clock the next morning I stood in a strong wind and light drizzle, wrapped in my dad's old coat, near the lighthouse at the Butt of Lewis — trying to think of a good joke about that to tell my brother — and wishing I'd brought a brolly. I hadn't been able to decide whether this really was the most north-westerly point of the island — there was a place with the appropriate name of Gallan Head that might have done as well — but in the end I thought maybe it didn't really matter that much, and anyway this headland was easier to get to.

There were some cliffs, not especially high. I had the paperweight in my pocket, and I took it out, feeling suddenly self-conscious and foolish even though there was nobody else around. The wind tugged at the coat and threw light, soaking spray into my eyes. The sea was tarnished rolling silver and seemed to go on forever into the light grey watery expanse of spray and air and cloud.

I hefted the glass ball, then threw it with all my might out to sea. I don't think it would have mattered especially to me if it had hit the rocks and shattered, but it didn't; it just disappeared into the greyness, heading towards the piling, restless waves. I think I saw it splash, but I'm not sure.

I had been thinking about saying something, when I threw the paperweight into the sea; "You forgot something," had been the line I'd been toying with on the drive up, through the peat-smoke smell. But it seemed trite; in the end I didn't say anything.

Instead I stood there for a while, getting wet and cold, and looking out at the waves and thinking of that wreckage, lying out there on the floor of the Atlantic, a few hundred kilometres to the northwest, far beneath the surface of that grey receiving sea.

Was Fergus Urvill anywhere, still? Apart from the body — whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure — was there anything else? Was his personality intact somehow, somewhere?

I found that I couldn't believe that it was. Neither was dad's, neither was Rory's, nor Aunt Fiona's, nor Darren Watt's. There was no such continuation; it just didn't work that way, and there should even be a sort of relief in the comprehension that it didn't. We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constipatory, too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.

The belief that we somehow moved on to something else — whether still recognisably ourselves, or quite thoroughly changed — might be a tribute to our evolutionary tenacity and our animal thirst for life, but not to our wisdom. That saw a value beyond itself; in intelligence, knowledge and wit as concepts — wherever and by whoever expressed — not just in its own personal manifestation of those qualities, and so could contemplate its own a

The waves surged against the cliffs, thudding into the rock and being reflecting. The shapes of their energy charged back into that wild, disturbed water, obliterated and conserved at once.

It seemed to me then that it was this simple; individual life has no momentum, and — just as dad had said — the world is neither fair nor unfair. Those words are our inventions, and apply only to the results of thought. To die as Darren had, and as my father had, and perhaps as Rory had, with what might have been great things still to do, and much to give and to receive, was to make our human grief the greater, but could not form part of any argument. They were here, and then they weren't, and that was all there was. My father had had the right of it, when I'd been so upset at Darren Watt's death; it had been a sort of petulance I had felt towards the world, an anger as well as a sadness that Darren had died so soon (and so uglily, so sordidly; a litter bin, for fuck's sake). How dare the world not behave as I expected it to? How dare it just rub out one of my friends? It wasn't fair! And, of course, indeed it was not fair. But that was beside the point.