Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"Yeah, but he expected better of us."

"Dads always do, it's traditional. We turned out not too bad."

"Neither of us did as well as he expected at Uni," I said. I'd told Lewis — though not my mother — that I was fairly certain I'd failed my finals.

"Well, for a start, he didn't know about you," Lewis said, scraping some earth off the blade of his spade. "And he was smart enough to know degrees aren't everything. Come on, we're not in prison, we're not junkies and we're not Young Tories." He waggled his eyebrows. "It's no small achievement."

"I suppose," I said, and started digging again. (Pity he'd mentioned prison; another thing I hadn't told Lewis about was that I'd been nicked for shop-lifting. Not that I'd be going to prison, but it's the thought that counts.)

Lewis kept on digging. "We could have done worse," he insisted.

"We could have done better," I said, shovelling another load of earth out of the pit.

Lewis was silent for a while, then said, quietly, "Better than… yesterday?"

I laughed in spite of myself (and in spite of the grave, and my aching head and still bruised heart). "Shut up," I said, "please."

Lewis shut up. I encountered another rhodie root and attacked it with the hacksaw, then took up the spade again, blinking sweat out of my eyes and waving a couple of flies away.

Lewis muttered almost inaudibly as he dug; "It's only waffer thin…»

We snorted and guffawed for a while, then took a break for yet more Irn-Bru, sitting at the edge of the grave, legs dangling into it, with Jimmy Turrock still blissfully — and vocally — in the land of nod across the grave in front of us.

I drank deeply from the bottle, passed it to Lewis. He finished it, grimaced, looked at the bottle. "You know, I've finally realised what this stuff reminds me of," he said, and belched heavily. I followed suit, trumping his sonorous burp with one that disturbed a few drowsy crows from nearby trees and even had Jimmy Turrock stir in his sleep.

"What?" I said.

"Chewing gum," Lewis said, screwing the cap back on the bottle and chucking it into the grass near the council earth-digger.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah, right enough."

We sat there, silent for a while. I looked at Jimmy Turrock's spotty, open-mouthed face and his wispy red hair. His snores sounded like somebody forever trying to start a badly-tuned buzz-saw. I listened to it for a while, and watched a couple of flies buzzing around in a tight but complicated holding pattern in front of his mouth, as though daring each other to be the first to investigate inside. After a while they broke off, though, and settled for exploring the rough landscape of Jimmy's checked shirt. My head hurt. Come to that, almost everything hurt. Ah well, self-inflicted wounds.

Jimmy Turrock snored on, oblivious.

Lewis and Verity had arrived the night before, an hour after I'd got back from my sunset visit to Darren's sea-side sculpture. Their plane had been late and they'd had problems hiring the car, so they arrived nearly two hours later than we'd expected. Rather than phone from the airport, Lewis had hired a mobile along with the car but then when they'd tried to use it, it hadn't worked. The upshot was that mum and I had been getting into a fine panic, and I'd been dreading watching the news: "… and we're just getting reports of an incident at Glasgow airport… details still coming in…»

I mean, statistics tell you family tragedies oughtn't to come in quite such close succession, but Jeez; it gets to you, when somebody dies as unexpectedly as dad. Suddenly everybody you know seems vulnerable, and you fear for them all. Every phone-call sends your heart racing, every car journey anyone takes you want to say, Oh God be careful don't go above second gear have you thought of fitting air-bags is your journey really necessary be careful be careful be careful… So there we were; mum and I sitting watching the television, on the couch together, side by side, holding hands tightly without even realising it and watching the television but not taking in what we were watching, and dreading the sound of the phone and waiting waiting waiting for the sound of a car coming up the drive.

Until I heard it, and leapt over the couch and hauled open the curtains and the car drew up and Lewis waved at me as he got out and I whooped, "It's them!" to my mum, who smiled and relaxed and looked suddenly beautiful again.

There was a big three-cornered hug in the hall; then mum saw Verity standing by the door, taking a very long deliberate time to take her jacket off and hang it up; and so she was brought into the scrum too, and that was the first time, I realised, that I'd ever actually embraced her, even if it was just one arm round her slim shoulders. It was all right.

Then the phone rang. Mum and I jumped.

I got it. Mum took Lewis and Verity into the lounge.

"Hello?"

"Hello!" shouted a voice of immodestly robust proportions. "To whom am I talking?" the booming voice demanded. It was Aunt Ilsa. We'd left a message at the only contact address we had for her, two days earlier. She was in Ladakh, a place so out of the way it would take several international airports, a major rail terminus and substantial investment in a network ot eight-lane highways to promote it to the status of being in the middle of nowhere.

"It's Prentice, Aunt Ilsa." There was a satellite delay. I was talking to what I suspected was the only satellite ground station between Islamabad and Ulaan Baatar. There was a lot of noise in the background; it sounded like people shouting, and a mule or something.

"Hello there, Prentice," Aunt Ilsa bellowed. "How are you? Why did you want me to call?" Perhaps, I thought, she'd been taking steroids and they'd all gone to her vocal chords.

"I'm… there's —»

" — ello?"

" — some bad news, I'm afraid."

"What? You'll have to speak up, my dear; the hotelier is proving refractory."

"It's dad," I said, thinking I might as well get this over with as quickly as possible. "Kenneth; your brother. I'm afraid he's dead. He died three days ago."

"Good God! What on earth happened?" Aunt Ilsa rumbled. I could hear shouting. The thing that sounded like a mule went into what appeared to be a fit of coughing. "Mr Gibbon!" roared Aunt Ilsa. "Will you control that fellow!"

"He was struck by lightning," I said.

"Lightning?" Aunt Ilsa thundered.

"Yes."

"Good God. Where was he? Was he on a boat? Or —»

"He was —»

" — golf course? Mr… hello? Mr Gibbon had a friend once who was struck by lightning on a golf course, in Marbella. Right at the top of his back-swing. Bu —»

"No; he was —»

" — course it was an iron."

" — climbing," I said.

" — number seven, I think. What?"

"He was climbing," I shouted. I could hear what sounded like a fight going on at the other end of the phone. "Climbing a church."

"A church?" Aunt Ilsa demanded.

"I'm afraid so. Listen, Aunt Ilsa —»

"But he wouldn't be seen dead near a church!"

I bared my teeth at the phone and growled. My aunt, the unconscious humorist.

"I'm afraid that's what happened," I said as evenly as I could. "The funeral is tomorrow. I don't suppose you can make it, can you?"

There was a noise of some Ladakhian confusion for a while, then, fortissimo; "I'll have to leave you now, Lewis —»

"Prentice," I breathed through gritted teeth.

"— Our yak has escaped. Tell your mother our thoughts are with her at —»

And it was goodbye downlink.

I looked at the phone. "I'm not sure you have any to spare, aunt," I said, and put the phone down with a feeling of relief.

"I need a drink," I said to myself. I strode purposefully towards the lounge.