©2003 Julian Dobbins. - All Rights Reserved. Strictly No Copying

  

 

It was ten forty in the morning.  Friday.  A black car stopped by a wooden gate.  The door opened and a man, dressed as black as the car he drove, stepped out onto the gravel.  He reached back into the car and produced a tall hat, and placed it on his head, adjusting it a few times before he was satisfied.  He stole a glance in the window that ran the length of the car, as he walked toward the back, and made a further adjustment.  Flowers filled his reflection, where they rested above the coffin of Stewart Donnell.

Across the gleaming roof, on the other side of the car, a man, similarly dressed, walked in parallel, placing his hat, checking his appearance and arriving at the large rear door just a few steps afterwards.

The first man looked up.  The sky was clear, save for some small white clouds gathered on the horizon.

“It’s a glorious day, John, don’t you think?”  His companion agreed that it was.  “And they said we’d have rain.  Sure, I wonder what these weather men get paid for sometimes.  Seems they’re always getting it wrong.”  He swung open the large door, and turned as three more cars arrived.  “Can you just imagine what’d happen if we started making mistakes like that.  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry Mrs. Flannigan.  I’m sure when we left it was your husband’s coffin we’d loaded into the car.  We’ll just nip back and get the right one.  If you’d just wait, we won’t keep you a moment.’  Sure, there’d be an outrage.”

His companion was crouched, wiping the toes of his shoes with the white handkerchief on which he’d just spat.  He replaced the handkerchief in his trouser pocket after several firm rubs on each shoe, then stood up again and agreed that there would.

Car doors opened and closed, and the two men were joined by two more; the driver of a black Granada , and his front-seat passenger.  They greeted each other, as if they hadn’t been together just half an hour before at the funeral parlour, and unloaded the car, hoisting the maple coffin, with its simple brass finish, onto their shoulders.

They passed through the wooden gate and climbed in silence the gentle slope whose path curved right then left between neat grass borders toward the church.  One of the men coughed, and said through rasping breath:

“I’m sure it wasn’t this far last week.”  He coughed again.

“Shhh!”  two others said in reply.

A small group of people followed them.  At the front of the group, a young woman, in a long black coat, possibly cashmere, walked with a mild swagger, her hands brushing the coat-tails loose in the breeze.  Beneath the coat she wore jeans and a long jumper, both black.

Behind her, two women walked together, talking.  One watched the path as she walked, her stockinged legs appearing between the gap in her buttoned grey coat.  She said very little.  Her companion, older and bigger, looked around as she walked, and seemed to be talking about the weather.  She seemed to think it might rain later.

Beyond the gate, another car drew up and stopped.  Two people emerged; a tall man, greying hair, with a long beige overcoat; and a much shorter woman, whose dark hair, troubled by the gusting wind, was causing her to hold it in place with her free hand.  In the other, she carried a handbag of black leather.  It matched her shoes, and she wore no gloves.

As the coffin moved through the Norman arch doorway, past the sturdy wooden door crossed with strips of ancient metal, one more car pulled to a halt in the lane.  A pall bearer cast one last look over his shoulder, then passed into the dim shadows of the stained glass church interior.

Conor climbed from the car and looked across the roof of the Astra, and across the crude landscaping of Dunsheery cemetery, to where Mary walked beside an older woman he took to be her mother.  The girl walking ahead of them, he knew, was Claire, Mary’s younger sister.  They’d already met, and it came as no surprise to see her at the head of group.  Patrick Geary, the local police sergeant, and Rachel, his constable, followed up the rear.  A couple more cars arrived to his right, along the gravel track down from the main road through the village.  A dark green Land Rover caused him to look away, back toward the church.  He sighed deeply, then moved around the front of the car and passed through the gate.

“That’ll be your Mum and Dad, then,” Sean said, appearing from the driver’s side.

“Reckon you’re right enough there.”  He kept walking.

“Don’t you think we should wait for them?”

“They know the way.”

Sean walked up behind Conor, adjusting his tie.  It was black polyester, and the knot bulged from between the button-down collars.

“I just can’t get this friggin’ tie right.  How does it look now?”

Conor turned, still walking forward.

“You look like fuckin’ Huggy Bear out of Starsky and Hutch.”

“Jesus, I do not!”  He contorted his face, in an effort to see the huge knot beneath his chin.  “Oh, fucking Hell!”  Then he undid it, and started again.

“What does it matter what your tie looks like anyway.  The guy’s dead.”

“God, you’re a barrel of laughs today, aren’t you.”  He finished the knot.  “There is such a thing,” he said, strutting, “as pride in one’s appearance.  Now, how does that look?”

Conor looked around.  They’d reached the top of the hill, and he stopped just before the church door.  His parents were making their way slowly along the path, and a few of the villagers had walked across from their homes and were following closely behind:  Strangers come to pay their respects to the dead, and to catch up on the living.

“You look lovely, Sean.  I’d fancy you myself, if wasn’t for that greasy black mop of yours.”

“Aw, piss off.  That’s gel, that is.  Not that I reckon you’d know a hair care product even if it sat on your face and said ‘Hello, I’m a hair care product.  You must be Conor.’  It’s Vidal Sassoon ‘wet look’.  Really expensive, you know.”

Conor ran his fingers through his tangle of red hair, rolling his eyes, and doing his best to look like he’d just stepped out of a salon.

“It’s Dunnes’ Own Brand, you know.  Not expensive.”  Sean walked alongside him, and Conor leant to take a closer look.  “Oh yeah.  You’re right.  You can tell, up close, it’s not greasy.  It’s got a real nice shine to it.”

“Thanks.”  Sean wandered ahead, tiring of Conor’s comments.

“Maybe I should get some for Betsy.  What do you reckon?  Have you a wet nose as well?  Now, that’d be the clincher.”

“Shut up, will ya.  This is a funeral, you know.”

Conor’s face fell.

“Do you think I’m ever likely to forget that, Sean?”  His parents approached them, and they moved off, through the door and into the church, in silence.

 

Father Doyle was young.  Maybe thirty five at the most.  And Mary’s mother said as much when they passed him on their way toward the front of the church, though she’d seen him the previous day when he’d visited them and had said exactly the same then.  They eased themselves into the pew one row from the front.  The coffin rested on a pair of wooden crosses near to the altar, on their right.  Mary’s gaze rested on the coffin, as her mother shuffled in, continuing to speak.

“It’s like when I go to the hospital.”

“You what!” said Claire, on Mary’s right and already seated.  They both looked at their mother in disbelief.

“Yes.  And all the doctors are so young, you can’t help but wonder at them being old enough to do the job.”

“I think you’ll find, Mum, it’s a bit different here.”  Mary sighed in spite of herself, and once seated, looked around the church to see who had arrived.  She recognised Sean O’Brien and Conor Moore, and Rachel.  She could see Sergeant Geary talking to Gerald Moore, Conor’s father, over by the door, and a few familiar faces acknowledged her, giving a gentle nod of sympathy as their eyes met.

“There are a lot of people here, Mary,” her mother said as she too started craning her neck to see the arrivals.  “Much bigger turn out than I’d expected.  I didn’t think he had that many friends.”

“We didn’t.  I don’t.  They’re just here out of respect, mostly.  They do that over here.”

“What?  Go to strangers’ funerals?”

“They’re not ‘strangers’, Mum.  Not in that sense.  I do recognise them, you know.  We weren’t complete hermits.  Whatever I might have led you to believe, we do know some people round here.”

At five to eleven Father Doyle disappeared behind the black drapes at the back of the church.  Mary watched him, letting her gaze remain, thinking nothing, then brought it back to lose herself a while in her mother’s pointless conversation.  Three altar boys appeared between the curtains.  Mary watched them.

The first, dressed in black beneath a white gown, carried a long wooden staff topped in brass by a shining crucifix.  Behind him, on either side, were two similarly dressed acolytes, each bearing candles.  They walked down the aisle toward the altar, trailing a delicate line of smoke and sweet scent, in front of Father Doyle, now draped in an ornamental purple sash, and they genuflected in unison before separating.

Father Doyle made his way to the pulpit.

His mousey-brown hair was cut short, and his lean face, taught from the morning’s shave, carried a healthy complexion.  He wore small, metal-framed glasses, which sat awkwardly on the bridge of his nose.  He hitched them up as he looked at notes written the previous evening immediately after the visit, then with slow, deliberate movements removed his glasses and started to speak.

“Jesus said, I am the resurrection, and I am the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

He looked across the congregation, allowing sufficient pause before speaking once more.

“Welcome, everyone, to St Michael’s on this solemn occasion.  We are here to celebrate the life of Stewart Donnell.”  He picked up a small burgundy hymn book.  “And we will begin with that lovely hymn of Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is My Shepherd.  I shall not want...’  Page 79 in your hymn book for those new to our church.”

An organ sounded, and Mary’s Mum strained her neck once more.  Rising slightly in her seat she could just make out the top of the organist’s balding head away to the right of the altar.  He held the last note of the introduction, inviting the congregation to stand, and the twenty or thirty people rose to their feet and started singing.

Mary felt strange as she formed the words made familiar through years of schooling.  She’d never before really listened to what they were, but they came easily to mind.  She heard the school assembly hall echo, and the voices of her friends singing their favourite hymn.  Eleven years ago it must be, and it was still a good tune.  She could see their navy blue uniforms, arranged in rows of boys and girls, younger children to the front.  And up on stage, holding a hymn book proud before his chest was Dr Louther in his graduation colours.

A bible rested on the coffin.

That seemed strange as well.  It wasn’t as if Stewart was particularly religious.  But Father Doyle had put it there shortly after the coffin had come in.  A symbol of his Christianity, she seemed to recall.

Well, it was a small bible, she thought.

In fact, everything about and around the coffin seemed small.  She stared at it, boring into it, imagining Stewart lying inside wearing jeans and a red jacket.

Was it good to do that?  To try and see Stewart inside it, rather than just the smooth finish of the coffin itself?  She shook her head, trying to lose the image.  But he grew restless, becoming vivid before her eyes, short of breath and pushing to get out.  The wood became glass, and her own breath, regulated by the singing, grew erratic as she watched him in panic, pressing against the sides, looking around him.  His mouth was opening and closing and she could see the veins on the side of his throat expanding as he shouted.  The glass began to fill with icy cold loch water, freezing him, drowning him, as it had done just one week before, stealing the last remnants of fight from him, and she watched as first his fear, then his life, and finally his very soul rose up on the head of water and pressed itself out through tiny cracks in the tomb, carried away on the hymn-filled air...

She clamped her eyes to shut him out.

“Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale...”

Her mother glanced across, then withdrew behind her hymn book.

Mary opened her eyes, forcing herself to see nothing but a six-foot-something wooden box.  She was singing by rote, focussing on the brass fittings, trying to clear her mind.

“Goodness and mercy all my life

“Shall surely follow me;”

It was nothing to do with Stewart, her husband.  It was just a symbol, like the bible.  A symbol of his life, and of his death.

A symbol, rather than the real thing, because the real thing couldn’t make it.

“And in God’s house for evermore

“My dwelling-place shall be.”