The Collected Stories (60 page)

‘So everything should go to your mother as the only surviving next of kin. As she is a certain age it should be acted on quickly and I’ll be glad to act as soon as I learn what it is your mother wants.’ As he spoke he opened the deeds Philly gave John to hand over. ‘Peter never even bothered to have the deeds changed into his name. The place is in your grandfather’s name and this document was drawn up by my grandfather.’

‘Would the place itself be worth much?’ Philly’s sudden blunt question surprised John. Out of his quietness Mr Reynolds looked up at him sharply.

‘I fear not a great deal. Ten or eleven thousand. A little more if there was local competition. I’d say fourteen at the very most.’

‘You can’t buy a room for that in the city and there’s almost thirty acres with the small house.’

‘Well, it’s not the city and I do not think Gloria Bog is ever likely to become the Costa Brava.’

Philly noticed that both the solicitor and his brother were looking at him with withdrawn suspicion if not distaste. They were plainly thinking that greed had propelled him to stumble into the inquiry he had made when it was the last thing in the world he had in mind. Before anything further could be said, the solicitor was shaking both their hands at the door and nodding over their shoulders to the receptionist behind her desk across the hallway to take their particulars before showing them out.

In contrast to the removal of the previous evening, when the church had been full to overflowing, there were only a few dozen people at the funeral Mass. Eight cars followed the hearse to Killeelan, and only the Mercedes turned into the narrow laneway behind the hearse. The other mourners abandoned their cars at the
road and entered the lane on foot. Blackthorn and briar scraped against the windscreen and sides of the Mercedes as they moved behind the hearse’s slow pace. At the end of the lane there was a small clearing in front of the limestone wall that ringed the foot of Killeelan Hill. There was just enough space in the clearing for the hearse and the Mercedes to park on either side of the small iron gate in the wall. The coffin was taken from the hearse and placed on the shoulders of John and Philly and the two Cullens. The gate was just wide enough for them to go through. Fonsie alone stayed behind in the front seat of the Mercedes and watched the coffin as it slowly climbed the hill on the four shoulders. The coffin went up and up the steep hill, sometimes swaying dangerously, and then anxious hands of the immediate followers would go up against the back of the coffin. The shadows of the clouds swept continually over the green hill and brown varnish of the coffin. Away on the bog they were a darker, deeper shadow as the clouds travelled swiftly over the pale sedge. Three times the small snaillike cortège stopped completely for the bearers to be changed. As far as Fonsie could see – he would have needed binoculars to be certain – they were the original bearers, his brothers and the two Cullens, who took up the coffin the third and last time and carried it through the small gate in the wall around the graveyard on the hilltop. Then it was only the coffin itself and the heads of the mourners that could be seen until they were lost in the graveyard evergreens. In spite of his irritation at this useless ceremony, that seemed only to show some deep love of hardship or enslavement – they’d be hard put to situate the graveyard in a more difficult or inaccessible place except on the very top of a mountain – he found the coffin and the small band of toiling mourners unbearably moving as it made its low stumbling climb up the hill, and this deepened further his irritation and the sense of complete uselessness.

Suddenly he was startled by the noise of a car coming very fast up the narrow lane and braking to a stop behind the hearse. A priest in a long black soutane and white surplice with a purple stole over his shoulders got out of the car carrying a fat black breviary. Seeing Fonsie, he saluted briskly as he went through the open gate. Then, bent almost double, he started to climb quickly like an enormous black-and-white crab after the coffin. Watching him climb,
Fonsie laughed harshly before starting to fiddle with the car radio.

After a long interval the priest was the first to come down the hill, accompanied by two middle-aged men, the most solid looking and conventional of the mourners. The priest carried his surplice and stole on his arm. The long black soutane looked strangely menacing between the two attentive men in suits as they came down. Fonsie reached over to turn off the rock and roll playing on the radio as they drew close, but, in a sudden reversal, he turned it up louder still. The three men looked towards the loud music as they came through the gate but did not salute or nod. They got into the priest’s car and, as there was no turning place between the hearse and the Mercedes, it proceeded to back out of the narrow lane. Then in straggles of twos and threes, people started to come down the hill. The two brothers and Jim Cullen were the last to come down. As soon as Philly got into the Mercedes he turned off the radio.

‘You’d think you’d show a bit more respect.’

‘The radio station didn’t know about the funeral.’

‘I’m not talking about the radio station,’ Philly said.

‘That Jim Cullen is a nice man,’ John said in order to steer the talk away from what he saw as an imminent clash. ‘He’s intelligent as well as decent. Peter was lucky in his neighbour.’

‘The Cullens,’ Philly said as if searching for a phrase. ‘You couldn’t, you couldn’t if you tried get better people than the Cullens.’

They drove straight from Killeelan to the Royal for lunch. Not many people came, just the Cullens among the close neighbours and a few far-out cousins of the dead man. Philly bought a round for everyone and when he found no takers to his offer of a second round he did not press.

‘Our friend seems to be restraining himself for once,’ Fonsie remarked sarcastically to John as they moved from the bar to the restaurant.

‘He’s taking his cue from Jim Cullen. Philly is all right,’ John said. ‘It’s those months and months out in the oil fields and then the excitement of coming home with all that money. It has to have an effect. Wouldn’t it be worse if he got fond of the money?’

‘It’s still too much. It’s not a wanting,’ Fonsie continued doggedly through a blurred recognition of all that Philly had given to their
mother and to the small house over the years, and it caused him to stir uncomfortably.

The set meal was simple and good: hot vegetable soup, lamb chops with turnip and roast potatoes and peas, apple tart and cream, tea or coffee. While they were eating, the three gravediggers came into the dining-room and were given a separate table by one of the river windows. Philly got up as soon as they arrived to ensure that drinks were brought to their table.

When the meal ended, the three brothers drove back behind the Cullens’ car to Gloria Bog. There they put all that was left of the booze back into the car. The Cullens accepted what food was left over but wouldn’t hear of taking any more of the drink. ‘We’re not planning on holding another wake for a long time yet,’ they said half humorously, half sadly. John helped with the boxes, Fonsie did not leave the car. As soon as Philly gave Jim Cullen the keys to the house John shook his hand and got back into the car with Fonsie and the boxes of booze, but still Philly continued talking to Jim Cullen outside the open house. In the rear mirror they saw Philly thrust a fistful of notes towards Jim Cullen. They noticed how large the old farmer’s hands were as they gripped Philly by the wrist and pushed the hand and notes down into his jacket pocket, refusing stubbornly to accept any money. When John took his eyes from the mirror and the small sharp struggle between the two men, what met his eyes across the waste of pale sedge and heather was the rich dark waiting evergreens inside the back wall of Killeelan where they had buried Peter beside his father and mother only a few hours before. The colour of laughter is black. How dark is the end of all of life. Yet others carried the burden in the bright day on the hill. His shoulders shuddered slightly in revulsion and he wished himself back in the semi-detached suburbs with rosebeds outside in the garden.

‘I thought you’d never finish,’ Fonsie accused Philly when the big car began to move slowly out the bog road.

‘There was things to be tidied up,’ Philly said absently. ‘Jim is going to take care of the place till I get back,’ and as Fonsie was about to answer he found John’s hands pressing his shoulders from the back seat in a plea not to speak. When they parked beside the door of the bar there was just place enough for another car to pass inside the church wall.

‘Not that a car is likely to pass,’ Philly joked as he and John carried the boxes in. When they had placed all of them on the counter they saw Luke reach for a brandy bottle on the high shelf.

‘No, Luke,’ Philly said. ‘I’ll have a pint if that’s what you have in mind.’

‘John’ll have a pint, then, too.’

‘I don’t know,’ John said in alarm. ‘I haven’t drunk as much in my life as the last few days. I feel poisoned.’

‘Still, we’re unlikely to have a day like this ever again,’ Philly said as Luke pulled three pints.

‘I don’t think I’d survive many more such days,’ John said.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to bring Fonsie in than to have him drinking out there in the car? It’ll take me a while to make up all this. One thing I will say,’ he said as he started to count the returned bottles. ‘There was no danger of anybody running dry at Peter’s wake.’

Fonsie protested when Philly went out to the car. It was too much trouble to get the wheelchair out of the boot. He didn’t need drink. ‘I’ll take you in.’ Philly offered his stooped neck and carried Fonsie into the bar like a child as he’d done many times when they were young and later when they were on certain sprees. He set him down in an armchair in front of the empty fireplace and brought his pint from the counter. It took Luke a long time to make up the bill, and when he eventually presented it to Philly, after many extra countings and checkings, he was full of apologies at what it had all come to.

‘It’d be twice as much in the city,’ Philly said energetically as he paid.

‘I suppose it’d be as much anyhow,’ Luke grumbled happily with relief and then at once started to draw another round of drinks which he insisted they take.

‘It’s on the house. It’s not every day or year brings you down.’

Fonsie and Philly drank the second pint easily. John was already fuddled and unhappy and he drank reluctantly.

‘I won’t say goodbye.’ Luke accompanied them out to the car when they left. ‘You’ll have to be down again before long.’

‘It’ll not be long till we’re down,’ Philly answered firmly for all of them.

In Longford and Mullingar and Enfield Philly stopped on their way back to Dublin. John complained each time, but it was Philly
who had command of the car. Each time he carried Fonsie into the bars – and in all of them the two drank pints – John refused to have anything in Mullingar or Longford but took a reluctant glass in Enfield.

‘What’ll you do if you have an accident and get breathalysed?’

‘I’ll not have an accident. And they can send the summons all the way out to the Saudis if I do.’

He drove fast but steadily into the city. He was silent as he drove. Increasingly, he seemed charged with an energy that was focused elsewhere and had been fuelled by every stop they had made. In the heart of the city, seeing a vacant place in front of Mulligan’s where he had drunk on his own in the deep silence of the bar a few short mornings before, he pulled across the traffic and parked. Cars stopped to blow hard at him but he paid no attention as he parked and got out.

‘We’ll have a last drink here in the name of God before we face back to the mother,’ Philly said as he carried Fonsie into the bar. There were now a few dozen early evening drinkers in the bar. Some of them seemed to know the brothers, but not well. John offered to move Fonsie from the table to an armchair but Fonsie said he preferred to remain where he was. John complained that he hadn’t asked for the pint when the drinks were brought to the table.

‘Is it a short you want, then?’

‘No. I have had more drink today than I’ve had in years. I want nothing.’

‘Don’t drink it, then, if you don’t want,’ he was told roughly.

‘Well, Peter, God rest him, was given a great send-off,’ Philly said with deep satisfaction as he drank. ‘I thank God I was back. I wouldn’t have been away for the world. The church was packed for the removal. Every neighbour around was at Killeelan.’

‘What else have they to do down there? It’s the one excuse they have to get out of their houses,’ Fonsie said.

‘They honour the dead. That’s what they do. People still mean something down there. They showed the respect they had for Peter.’

‘Respect, my arse. Everybody is respected for a few days after they conk it because they don’t have to be lived with any more. Oh, it’s easy to honour the dead. It doesn’t cost anything and gives
them the chance to get out of their bloody houses before they start to eat one another within.’

An old argument started up, an argument they had had many times before without resolving anything, the strength of their difference betraying the hidden closeness.

Philly and Fonsie drained their glasses as John took the first sip from his pint and he looked uneasily from one to the other.

‘You have it all crooked,’ Philly said as he rose to get more drink from the counter. John covered his glass with his palm to indicate that he wanted nothing more. When Philly came back with the two pints he started to speak before he had even put the glasses down on the table: he had all the blind dominating passion of someone in thrall to a single idea.

‘I’ll never forget it all the days of my life, the people coming to the house all through the night. The rows and rows of people at the removal passing by us in the front seat of the church grasping our hands. Coming in that small lane behind the hearse; then carrying Peter up that hill.’

Fonsie tried to speak but Philly raised his glass into his face and refused to be silenced.

‘I felt something I never felt when we left the coffin on the edge of the grave. A rabbit hopped out of the briars a few yards off. He sat there and looked at us as if he didn’t know what was going on before he bolted off. You could see the bog and all the shut houses next to Peter’s below us. There wasn’t even a wisp of smoke coming from any of the houses. Everybody gathered around, and the priest started to speak of the dead and the Mystery and the Resurrection.’