Iain Banks: The Crow Road

She sighed. I looked at the car. It was long and quite beautiful, in a recently-old-fashioned way. Beneath the patina of dust it was a very dark green. The roof above the missing rear window was battered and dented, as was the exposed part of the boot lid.

"Poor old thing," I whispered, shaking my head.

Grandma Margot sat upright. "It or me?" she said sharply.

«Gran…» I said, tutting. I was aware that she could see me very well, sunlit from behind her, while all I could see of her was a dark shape, a subtraction of the light.

"Anyway," she said, relaxing and poking at one of the car's wire wheels with her walking stick. "What's all this nonsense about a matter of principle?"

I turned away, rubbing my fingers along the chrome guttering over a rear door. "Well… dad's angry at me because I told him I believed in… God, or in something, anyway." I shrugged, not daring to look at her. "He won't… well, I won't… We're not talking to each other, so I won't come into the house."

Grandma Margot made a clucking noise with her mouth. That's it?"

I nodded, glancing at her. "That's it, gran."

"And your father's money; your allowance?"

"I — " I began, then didn't know how to put it.

"Prentice; how are you managing to survive?"

"I'm managing fine," (I lied.) "On my grant." (Another lie.) "And my student loan." (Yet another lie.) "And I'm doing some bar work." (Four in a row!) I couldn't get a bar job. Instead I'd sold Fraud Siesta, my car. It had been a small Ford and kind of lazy about starting. People used to imply it looked battered, but I just told them it came from a broken garage. Anyway, that money was almost gone now, too.

Grandma Margot let out a long sigh, shook her head. "Principles," she breathed.

She pulled herself forward a little, but the wheelchair was caught on part of the tarp. "Help me here, will you?"

I went behind her, pushed the chair over the ruffled canvas. She hauled open the offside rear door and looked into the dull interior. A smell of musty leather wafted out, reminding me of my childhood and the time when there was still magic in the world.

The last time I had sex was on that back seat," she said wistfully. She looked up at me. "Don't look so shocked, Prentice."

"I wasn't — " I started to protest.

"It's all right; it was your grandfather." She patted the wing of the car with one thin hand. "After a dance," she said quietly, smiling. She looked up at me again, her lined, delicate face amused, eyes glittering. "Prentice," she laughed. "You're blushing!"

"Sorry, gran," I said. "It's just… well, you don't… well, when you're young and somebody's…»

"Past it," she said, and slammed the door shut; dust duly danced. "Well, we're all young once, Prentice, and those that are lucky get to be old." She pushed the wheelchair back, over the toe of my new trainers. I lifted the chair clear and helped complete the manoeuvre, then pushed her to the door. I left her there while I put the tarpaulin back over the car.

"In fact some of us get to be young twice," she said from the doorway. "When we go senile: toothless, incontinent, babbling like a baby… " Her voice trailed off.

"Grandma, please."

"Och, stop being so sensitive, Prentice; it isn't much fun getting old. One of the few pleasures that do come your way is to speak your mind… Certainly annoying your relatives is enjoyable too, but I expected better of you."

"I'm sorry, Grandma." I closed the garage door, dusted off my hands, and took up my position at the back of the wheelchair again. There was an oily tyre print on my trainer. Crows raucoused in the surrounding trees above as I pushed my gran towards the drive.

"Lagonda."

"Sorry, Gran?"

The car; it's a Lagonda Rapide Saloon."

"Yes," I said, smiling a little ruefully to myself. "Yes, I know."

We left the courtyard and went crunchily down the gravel drive towards the sparkling waters of the loch. Grandma Margot was humming to herself; she sounded happy. I wondered if she was recalling her tryst in the Lagonda's back seat. Certainly I was recalling mine; it was on the same piece of cracked and creaking, buttoned and fragrant upholstery — some years after my gran's last full sexual experience — that I had had my first.

This sort of thing keeps happening in my family.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the family; on the one hand, as I don't doubt you may well imagine, it gives me no great pleasure to stand here before you at this time… yet on the other hand I am proud, and indeed honoured, to have been asked to speak at the funeral of my dear old client, the late and greatly loved Margot McHoan…»

My grandmother had asked the family lawyer, Lawrence L. Blawke, to say the traditional few words. Pencil-thin and nearly as leaden, the tall and still dramatically black-haired Mr Blawke was dressed somewhere in the high nines, sporting a dark grey double-breasted suit over a memorable purple waistcoat that took its inspiration from what looked like Mandelbrot but might more charitably have been Paisley. A glittering gold fob watch the size of a small frying pan was anchored in the shallows of one waistcoat pocket by a bulk-carrier grade chain.

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows that time is on his side. I thought he had looked oddly comfortable in the presence of the undertakers.

I sat and listened to the lawyer and in short order wondered (a) why Grandma Margot had chosen a lawyer to make the address, (b) whether he'd be charging us for his time, and (c) how many others of my family were wondering the same things.

"… long history of the McHoan family in the town of Gallanach, of which she was so proud, and to which she so… usefully and, and industriously contributed throughout her long life. It was my privilege to know and serve both Margot and her late husband Matthew well, in Matthew's case first as a school friend, back in the twenties. I well remember…»

"Grandma, I mean; good grief."

"What?"

My grandmother drew deeply on the Dunhill, flicked her wrist to close the brass Zippo, then put the lighter back in her cardigan.

"Grandma, you're smoking."

Margot coughed a little and blew the smoke towards me, a grey screen for those ash-coloured eyes. "Well, so I am." She inspected the cigarette closely, then took another drag. "I always wanted to, you know," she told me, and looked away, over the loch towards the hills and trees on the far side. I'd wheeled her down to the shore path at Pointhouse near the old cairns. I sat on the grass. A soft breeze disturbed the water; seagulls flew stiff-winged, and in the distance the occasional car or truck disturbed the air, making a lazy throat-clearing noise as they emerged from or disappeared into the channel the main road drove between the trees. "Hilda used to smoke," she said quietly, not looking at me. "My elder sister; she used to smoke. And I always wanted to." I picked up a handful of pebbles from the path-side and started throwing them at the waves, lapping against the rocks a metre below us, almost at high tide. "But your grandfather wouldn't let me." My grandmother sighed.

"But gran," I protested. "It's bad for you."

"I know." She smiled broadly. That was another reason I didn't ever take it up, after your grandfather died; they'd found it was unhealthy by then." She laughed. "But I'm seventy-two years old now, and I don't give a damn."

I chucked a few more pebbles. "Well, it isn't a very good example to us youngsters, is it?"

"What's that got to do with the price of sliced bread?"

"Eh?" I looked at her. "Pardon?"

"You're not really trying to tell me that young people today look to their elders for an example, are you, Prentice?"