The Crow Road Read Free Page A

Roderick.’ The good lawyer Blawke had helpfully nodded at my dad and my uncle when he mentioned them. Dad kept on grinding his teeth; Uncle Hamish stopped snoring and gave a little start at the mention of his name; he opened his eyes and looked round - a little wildly, I thought - before relaxing once more. His eyelids started to droop again almost immediately. At the mention of Uncle Rory’s name Mr Blawke looked about the crowded chapel as though expecting Uncle Rory to make a sudden and dramatic appearance. ‘And, sharing, I’m sure, in the family’s grief, the husband of her dear late daughter, Fiona.’ Here Mr Blawke looked very serious, and did indeed grasp his lapels for a moment, as he nodded, gravely, at Uncle Fergus. ‘Mr Urvill,’ Mr Blawke said, completing the nod that had developed pretensions to a bow, I thought, and then clearing his throat. This genuflection completed, the reference to past tragedy duly made, most of the people who had turned to look at Uncle Fergus turned away again.
    My head stayed turned.
    Uncle Fergus is an interesting enough fellow in himself, and (of course) as Mr Blawke knew to his benefit, probably Gallanach’s richest and certainly its most powerful man. But I wasn’t looking at him.
    Beside the thick-necked bulk of the Urvill of Urvill (soberly resplendent in what I assumed was the family’s mourning tartan - blackish purple, blackish green and fairly dark black) sat neither of his two daughters, Diana and Helen - those long-legged visions of money-creamed, honey-skinried, globetrotting loveliness - but instead his niece, the stunning, the fabulous, the golden-haired, vellus-faced, diamond-eyed Verity, upwardly nubile scionette of the house of Urvill, the jewel beside the jowls; the girl who, for me, had put the lectual in intellectual, and phany in epiphany and the ibid in libidinous!
    Such bliss to look. I feasted my eyes on that gracefully angular form, just this side of her uncle and sitting quietly in black. She had worn a white quilted skiing jacket outside, but now had taken it off in the unfittingly chilly crematorium, and sat in a black blouse and black skirt, black ... tights? Stockings? My God, the sheer force of joy in just imagining! and black shoes. And shivering! The slick material of the blouse trembling in the light from the translucent panes overhead, black silk hanging in folds of shade from her breasts, quivering! I felt my chest expand and my eyes widen. I was just about to look away, reckoning that I had gazed to the limits of decency, when that shaven-sided, crop-haired head swivelled and lowered, her calm face turning this way. I saw those eyes, shaded by her thick and shockingly black brows, blink slowly; she looked at me.
    Small smile, and those diamond eyes piercing, marking me.
    Then the gaze removed, refixed, directed somewhere else, once more facing the front. My neck felt un-oiled as I turned away, blasted and raddled by the urge of that directed consideration.
    Verity Walker. Eating my heart out. Consuming my soul.
     
 
 
‘And dad’s mole?’
    ‘Here,’ Grandma Margot said, tapping her left shoulder. She laughed a little as we went along the path between the shore and the trees. ‘That one itches fairly often.’
    ‘And mine?’ I asked, plodding after the wheelchair. I’d taken my biker’s jacket off and it lay now on my gran’s lap.
    She looked up at me, her expression unreadable. ‘Here.’ She patted her tummy, looked forward again. ‘Pivotal, wouldn’t you say, Prentice?’
    ‘Ha,’ I said, still trying to sound non-committal. ‘Could be. What about Uncle Hamish? Where’s he at?’
    ‘Knee,’ she said, tapping the plaster on her leg.
    ‘How is your leg, gran?’
    ‘Fine,’ she said tetchily. ‘Plaster comes off next week. Can’t happen soon enough.’
    The wheels of the chair sighed through the grass on either side of the narrow path. I remembered something I’d been meaning to ask.
    ‘What were you doing up