Spare

We ran inside the lodge. The warm kitchen! The old fireplace! I fell onto the fender, with its worn red cushion, and inhaled the smell of that huge pyramid of silver birch firewood stacked beside it. If there’s a smell more intoxicating or inviting than silver birch, I don’t know what it could be. Grandpa, who’d set off half an hour before us, was already tending his grill at the back of the lodge. He stood amid a thick cloud of smoke, tears streaming from his eyes. He wore a flat cap, which he took off now and then to mop his brow or smack a fly. As the fillets of venison sizzled he turned them with a huge pair of tongs, then put on a loop of Cumberland sausages. Normally I’d beg him to make a pot of his specialty, spaghetti Bolognese. This night, for some reason, I didn’t.

Granny’s specialty was the salad dressing. She’d whisked a large batch. Then she lit the candles down the long table and we all sat on wooden chairs with creaky straw seats. Often we had a guest for these dinners, some famous or eminent personage. Many times I’d discussed the temperature of the meat or the coolness of the evening with a prime minister or bishop. But tonight it was just family.

My great-grandmother arrived. I jumped up, offered her my hand. I always offered her my hand—Pa had drummed it into me—but that night I could see Gan-Gan really needed the extra help. She’d just celebrated her 101st birthday and was looking frail.

Still natty, however. She wore blue, I recall, all blue. Blue cardigan, blue tartan skirt, blue hat. Blue was her favorite color.

She asked for a martini. Moments later, someone handed her an ice-cold tumbler filled with gin. I watched her take a sip, expertly avoiding the lemon floating along the top, and on an impulse I decided to join her. I’d never had a cocktail in front of my family, so this would be an event. A bit of rebellion.

Empty rebellion, it turned out. No one cared. No one noticed. Except Gan-Gan. She perked up for a moment at the sight of me playing grown-up, gin and tonic in hand.

I sat beside her. Our conversation started out as lively banter, then evolved, gradually settling into something deeper. A connection. Gan-Gan was really speaking to me that night, really listening. I couldn’t quite believe it. I wondered why. Was it the gin? Was it the four inches I’d grown since last summer? At six foot I was now one of the tallest members of the family. Combined with Gan-Gan’s shrinkage, I towered over her.

I wish I could recall specifically what we talked about. I wish I’d asked more questions, and jotted down her answers. She’d been the War Queen. She’d lived at Buckingham Palace while Hitler’s bombs rained from the skies. (Nine direct hits on the Palace.) She’d dined with Churchill, wartime Churchill. She’d once possessed a Churchillian eloquence of her own. She was famous for saying that, no matter how bad things got, she’d never, ever leave England, and people loved her for it. I loved her for it. I loved my country, and the idea of declaring you’d never leave struck me as wonderful.

She was, of course, infamous for saying other things. She came from a different era, enjoyed being Queen in a way that looked unseemly to some. I saw none of that. She was my Gan-Gan. She was born three years before the aeroplane was invented yet still played the bongo drums on her hundredth birthday. Now she took my hand as if I were a knight home from the wars, and spoke to me with love and humor and, that night, that magic night, respect.

I wish I’d asked about her husband, King George VI, who died young. Or her brother-in-law, King Edward VIII, whom she’d apparently loathed. He gave up his crown for love. Gan-Gan believed in love, but nothing transcended the Crown. She also reportedly despised the woman he’d chosen.

I wish I’d asked about her distant ancestors in Glamis, home to Macbeth.

She’d seen so much, knew so much, there was so much to be learned from her, but I just wasn’t mature enough, despite the growth spurt, or brave enough, despite the gin.

I did, however, make her laugh. Normally that was Pa’s job; he had a knack for finding Gan-Gan’s funny bone. He loved her as much as he loved anybody in the world, perhaps more. I recall him glancing over several times and looking pleased that I was getting such good giggles out of his favorite person.

At one point I told Gan-Gan about Ali G, the character played by Sacha Baron Cohen. I taught her to say Booyakasha, showing her how to flick her fingers the way Sacha did. She couldn’t grasp it, she had no idea what I was talking about, but she had such fun trying to flick and say the word. With every repetition of that word, Booyakasha, she’d shriek, which would make everyone else smile. It tickled me, thrilled me. It made me feel…a part of things.

This was my family, in which I, for one night at least, had a distinctive role.

And that role, for once, wasn’t the Naughty One.

30.