" — resolutions are fine, unless they're against Israel, of course, in which case, Aw sheeit; you guys just stay in them Golan Heights, and that Gaza Strip. Shoot; them Palestinians probably weren't — aw, gosh-darn; did I say shoot them Palestinians? Well, hell no, we won't mention that. Twenty-three years the Israelis have been ignoring UN resolutions and occupying foreign territory; south, east and north. Hell's teeth, they'd probably invade the Mediterranean if you told them the fish were Palestinian. But does the US lay siege to them? Impose sanctions? Like fuck, they bank-roll the place!"
Maybe she did think of me as a brother. All those times I'd rambled drunkenly away to her about how much I loved Verity and what a hard time I was getting from everybody, and how wonderful Verity was, and what a poor, hard-done-by kid I was, and how much I loved Verity and how nobody understood me, and how wonderful Verity was… How could you expect anybody to listen to all that moronic, self-pitying, self-deluding crap for so long and not think. Poor jerk?
" — we paid him to fight the Iranians for us, but now the scumbag's getting uppity, so we'll pay other scumbags like Assad to help fight him, and it'll all happen —»
Unloading all that stuff on Ash; most people would have told me to fuck off, but she listened, or at least didn't interrupt… but what must she have been thinking? The response just couldn't be, Oh, he's so sensitive, or Oh, what a deep capacity for lurve this young fellow has… Poor jerk. That about covered it. Or just, Jerk.
" — a modern day Hitler it's Pol Pot; even Saddam Hussein hasn't obliterated two million of his own people. But does the West mount a crusade against that genocidal mother-fucker? No! We're supporting the vicious scumbag! The United fucking States of America and the United fucking Kingdom think he's just the bee's knees because he's fighting those pesky Vietnamese who had the nerve to beat Uncle Sam —»
But maybe she hadn't really got off with this guy. Maybe it was all a mistake, maybe there was still a chance. Oh shit, I thought, and watched a seagull glide smoothly through the air below us, over the tops of the trees and the bundled rocks that led down to the distant shore.
"Oh," said Verity suddenly, and clutched her belly, and looked wide-eyed at Lewis, who was in full flight over the vexed sands of Kuwait, and apparently quite beyond verbal interception.
" — Sabra and Chatila; ask the Kurds in Halabja — " He stopped dead, looked at his wife, who was still clutching her belly, looking pleadingly at him.
Lewis's jaw dropped and his face went white.
Verity hugged herself, put her head between her knees and started to rock back and forth. "Oh-oh," she said.
Lewis staggered to his feet, hands flailing, while Verity's shoulders started to quiver. The dog, which had been snoozing at Lewis's feet, jumped up too.
"Verity, what's wrong? Is it —?" began Helen, leaning over and putting an arm on Verity's shoulders.
"Who's the least drunk?" Lewis hollered, gaze oscillating rapidly between the car parked a few metres behind us and his wife, sitting rocking back and forth and shaking. The dog barked, bouncing up on its front feet, then sneezing.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" said Verity, as Helen hugged her.
"Aw Christ," said Dean. "Verity, you're no about to drop, are ye?"
Lewis stood with his hands out, fingers splayed, eyes closed, on the rock. "I don't believe this is happening!" he yelled. The dog barked loudly in what sounded like agreement.
Helen Urvill, her face down at Verity's knees — where Verity's head was still wedged — suddenly slapped Verity across the back and rolled away, laughing.
Dean looked confused. I felt the same way, then realised.
Lewis opened his eyes and stared at Helen lying laughing on the rock.
Verity rose quickly and gracefully, her face pink and smiling.
She stepped up to Lewis and hugged him, rocking him, her face tipped up to his as she giggled. "Joke," she told him. "It isn't happening. I keep telling you, this baby's going to be born in a nice warm birthing pool in a nice big hospital. Nowhere else."
Lewis sagged. He might have fallen if Verity hadn't held him. He slapped both hands over his face. "You unutterable… minx!" he roared, and put a hand to each side of Verity's grinning face, holding her head and shaking it. She just giggled.
So we sat and had some coffee and sandwiches.
"Damn fine coffee," muttered Lewis.
Well, he had a tartan shirt on.
We drove back later; I watched buzzards and crows and gulls stoop and wheel and glide across the under-surface of thickening grey cloud. We were all very tired save Verity, and I must have fallen asleep because it came as a surprise when we had to stop to put the top up, in Inveraray, when the rain came on. It was a cramped, claustrophobic journey after that, and the dog whined a lot and smelled.
We got to Lochgair; I staggered into the house, collapsed into my bed and slept for the rest of the day.
I kept missing Ashley after that. Whenever I rang the Watt house she was out, or asleep. She rang me once, but I'd been out walking. Next time I called she had caught the train for Glasgow, en route for the airport and London.
Tone and Hamish's usual post-Hogmanay soirée had been even more subdued than usual. Hamish had given up drink, but apparently found his heretical ideas on retribution more difficult to jettison, and so spent most of the evening telling me — with a kind of baleful enthusiasm — about a Commentary he was writing on the Bible, which cast new light on punishment and reward in the hereafter, and which had great contemporary relevance.
I drove back to Glasgow on the fifth of January. After New Year's Eve, watching Fergus show off his new plane, I hadn't visited the castle again.
Two weeks later, after I had had my abbreviated conversation with Lachlan Watt in sunny Sydney, I set off for Lochgair at nine that Friday morning, listening to the war on the radio for as long as I could, until the mountains blocked out the signal.
War breaks out amongst the oilfields and the price of crude plummets. From being an ally so staunch he can missile American ships and it passes as an understandable mistake, and gas thousands of Kurds with barely a gesture of censure (Thatcher promptly increased his export credits, and within three weeks Britain was talking about all the lovely marketing opportunities Iraq represented; for chemicals, presumably), Saddam Hussein had suddenly become Adolf Hitler, despite more or less being invited to walk into Kuwait.
It was a war scripted by Heller from a story by Orwell, and somebody would be bombing their own airfield before too long, no doubt.
From Glasgow to Lochgair is a hundred and thirty-five kilometres by road; less as the crow flies, or as the missile cruises. The journey took about an hour and a half, which is about normal when the roads aren't packed with tourists and caravans. I spent most of the time shaking my head in disbelief at the news on the radio, and telling myself that I mustn't allow this to distract me from confronting Fergus, or at the very least sharing my suspicions with somebody other than Ash.
But I think I already knew that was exactly what would happen.
And Ash… God, the damn thing may be just muscle, merely a pump, but my heart really did seem to ache whenever I thought of her.
So I tried not to think about Ashley Watt at all, utterly unsure whether by doing so I was being very strong, or extremely stupid. I chose not to make an informed guess which; my track record didn't encourage such honesty.
Mum dropped her laser-guided bombshell over lunch that day. We were sitting in the kitchen, watching the war on television, dutifully listening to the same reports and watching the same sparse bits of footage time after time. I was already starting to get bored with the twin blue-pink glowing cones of RAF Tornadoes" afterburners as they took off into the night, and even the slo-mo footage of the exciting Brit-made JP-233 runway-cratering package scattering bomblets and mines with the demented glee of some Satanic Santa was already inducing feelings of weary familiarity.