The Crow Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

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, I 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.
     
 
 
The train chuffed off into the evening, the red light on the final carriage disappearing round the bend in the cutting through the forest; the steam and smoke climbed into the sunset skies beyond. He let the feeling of return wash over and through him, looking across the deserted platform on the far side of the tracks, down across the few lights of Lochgair village to the long electric-blue reflection that was the loch, its gleaming acres imprisoned between the dark masses of the land.
    The noise of the train faded slowly, and the quiet susurration of the falls seemed to swell in recompense. He left his bags where they lay and walked to the far end of the platform. The very edge of the platform dropped away there, angling down to the deck of the viaduct over the rushing water beneath. A chest-high wall formed the furthest extent of the rest of the platform.
    He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the fifty feet or so to the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the river Loran piled down from the forest in a compactly furious cataract. The spray was a taste. Beneath, the river surged round the piers of the viaduct that carried the railway on towards Lochgilphead and Gallanach.
    A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge, then zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the far bank of the river, as though it was a soft fragment of the train’s steam that had momentarily lost its way and was now hurrying to catch up. He waited a moment, and the owl hooted once, from inside the dark constituency of forest. He smiled, took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the sweet sharpness of pine resin, and then turned away, went back to pick up his bags.
    ‘Mr