The Crow Road

Fiona shook her head. "No; just turned up, asked to camp; think they thought we were a farm. They're from Glasgow, I think." She took his briefcase from him and bounded up the steps to the opened double doors of the porch. He hesitated, reached into the car and took the keys out of the ignition, then glanced at the tent. "Ken?" Fiona called from the door.

He made a tutting noise and put the keys back, then shook his head and pulled them out again. Not because there were strangers around, and certainly not just because they were from Glasgow, but just because it was irresponsible to leave keys in the car like that; Fiona had to learn. He pocketed the keys and picked up his bags. He glanced over at the tent, just as it flared with light.

"Oh!" he heard Fiona say.

And that was when he first saw Mary Lewis, ru

"Christ!" He dropped the bags, ran across the gravel drive towards the girl haring across the grass, hands beating at the blue and orange flames crackling round her head. He leapt down to the lawn, pulling off his jacket as he went. The girl tried to run past him; he tackled her, bringing her down with a ragged thump; he had the jacket over her head before she properly started struggling. After a few seconds, while she whimpered, and the stink of burning hair filled his nostrils, he pulled the jacket away. Fiona came ru

"Mary! Oh, Mary!"

"Nice tackle, Ken," Fiona said, kneeling by the girl with the burned hair, who was sitting quivering. He put one arm round her shoulders. The second girl fell to her knees and put both arms round the girl she'd called Mary.

"Oh, hen! Are you all right?"

"I think so," the girl said, feeling what was left of her hair, and then burst into tears.

He extracted his arm from between the two girls. He brushed his jacket free of grass and burned hair, and put it round the shoulders of the crying girl.

Fiona was pulling bits of hair away and peering at her scalp in the gloom. "Think you've been lucky, lassie. But we'll call the doctor anyway."

"Oh no!" the girl wailed, as though this was the worst thing in the world.

"Now, now, Mary," the other girl said, her voice shaking.

"Come on, let's get into the house," Ke

"Oh, that's what caused all this in the first place!" Mary said, standing pale and shaking, eyes bright with tears. She gave a sort of desperate laugh. The other girl, still hugging her, laughed too. He smiled, shaking his head. He looked into the girl's face, finally seeing it properly, and thought how bizarrely beautiful she looked, even with half a head of frizzy, whitened hair, and eyes red raw with crying.

Then he realised he was seeing her — and seeing her better all the time — in the light of a flickering glow that was blooming in the west of the garden, under the elms. Her eyes widened as she looked past him. The tent!" she howled. "Oh no!"

"And I missed it! Damn damn damn! I hate going to bed this early!"

"Shush. I've told you; now go to sleep."

"No! What happened next? Did you have to take all her clothes off and put her to bed?"

"No! Don't be ridiculous! Of course not!"

"Oh. That's what happened in this book I read. "Cept the girl was wet from being in the sea… she's fallen in the water!" Rory completed the latter part of this sentence in his Bluebottle voice. "She's fallen in the water!" the wee voice said again, in the darkness of the room.

Ke

"Go on; tell me what happened next."

"That's it. We all came into the house; mum and dad hadn't even heard anything. I got the hose going eventually but by that time it was too late to save much of the stuff in the tent; and anyway then the primus really blew up, and —»

"What? In an explosion?"

"That's the way things normally blow up, yes."

"Holy smoke! Oh damn, hell and shite! I missed it."

"Rory; mind your language!"

"Weeeellll." Rory turned over in the bed, his feet prodding Ke

"And mind your feet, too."

"Sorry. So did the doctor come or not?"

"No; she didn't want us to call him, and she wasn't badly hurt; just her hair, really."

"Waa!" Rory gave a squeal of excitement. "She's not bald, is she?"

"No, she isn't bald. But she'll probably have to wear a scarf or something for a while, I expect."

"So they're staying in the house, are they? These two lassies from Glasgow? They're in the house?"

"Yes, Mary and Sheena are staying in my room, which is why I've got to sleep with you."

"Ffworr!"

"Rory, shut up. Go to sleep, for Pete's sake."

"Okay." Rory made a great bouncing movement, turning over in bed. Ke

He remembered when this had been his room. Before his dad had unblocked the fireplace and put a grate in it, the only heating during the winter had been that ancient paraffin heater they hadn't used since the old house, back in Gallanach. How nostalgic he had felt then, and how distant and separated from Gallanach at first, even though it was only eight miles away over the hills, and just a couple of stops on the train. That heater had been the same height as him, at first, and he'd been told very seriously never ever to touch it, and been slightly frightened of it at the start, but after a while he had grown to love the old enamelled heater.

When it was cold his parents would put it in his room to heat it up before he went to bed, and they would leave it on for a while after they'd said good-night to him, and he'd lie awake, listening to the quiet, puttering, hissing noise it made, and watching the swirling pattern of flame-yellow and shadow-dark it cast on the high ceiling, while the room filled with a delicious warm smell he could never experience after that without a sense of remembered drowsiness.

It had been a precious light, back then; must have been during the war at first, when his dad was using the probably illegal stockpile of paraffin he'd built up before rationing began.

Rory nudged him with one foot. He ignored this.

He ignored another, slightly stronger nudge, and started snoring quietly.

Another nudge.

"What?"

"Ken," Rory whispered. "Does your tassel get big sometimes?"

"Eh?"

"You know; your tassel; your willy. Does it get big?"

"Oh, good grief," he groaned.

"Mine does. It's gone big now. Do you want to feel it?"

"No!" he sat up in the bed, looking down at the vague shape of his brother's head on the pillow at the other end of the bed. "No, I do not!"

"Only asking. Does it, though?"

"What?"

"Your willy; get big?"

"Rory, I'm tired; it's been a long day, and this isn't the time or the place —»

Rory sat up suddenly. "Bob Watt can make stuff come out of his; and so can Jamie McVean. I've seen them do it. You have to rub it a lot; I've tried but I can't get any stuff to come out, but twice now I've got this fu

Ke

"Rab Watt says it makes you go blind." Rory hesitated. "And he wears glasses."

Ke