‘Now you can call them,’ he said.
* * *
Izzy Keaveney could not sleep that night. As morning approached she got out of bed and as she passed along the landing she stopped at the window and saw the strange light over the headland – the smoke rising up through it. She stood staring at it for some time until she felt her legs weaken and gripped the windowsill. She began to descend the stairs, holding tightly to the banister, as though with each step she was slowly lowering herself into the tide. In the kitchen she sat at the table and waited for the kettle to boil. In her mind she saw the sign on the front of the cottage that read ‘Innisfree’. For always night and day, she thought. For always night and day. And a flash of terror sparked and shrivelled inside her.
She dressed quietly while James turned in his sleep. She got in her car and drove. It was barely light when she crossed the
bridge into the town. Passing the little park that fronted the seashore, she noticed a flush of crocuses, purple and white,
had shot up at the foot of the old oak tree. In the low tide, the boats cowered at the pier. Outside the Reel Inn, the two
petrol pumps stood sentry over the deserted town. Pulling off the Shore Road and onto the Coast Road, the bay appeared in
front of her, the morning light breaking through at the horizon. Low cloud decked the sky, so richly textured she felt she
could reach out her hand and touch it. She slowed as she neared the beach, parked at the turn. At the entrance to the Mullens’
property she saw two Garda cars parked nose-to-nose. The entrance to the cottage was blocked with police tape, and all that
was left at the top of the drive was a charred ruin.
Chapter 24
Niall stared at the clothes his mother had laid out on his bed – a grey cardigan with fat buttons wrapped in brown leather, black trousers, and a white shirt. A pair of black lace-up shoes lay at the foot of the bed. He had asked his mother the day before if he should wear a tie and she’d told him not to be stupid. He’d found her in her room, just sitting on the end of her bed, staring into space. He’d caught her eye in the mirror on her dressing table, but at first she didn’t move or speak, like she was pretending not to have seen him.
‘But will Carl be wearing a tie?’ he’d asked.
‘Oh, probably,’ she’d said. ‘But it’s not your mother who’s dead, so don’t be looking for notice.’
His face had gone very hot then. But no matter how hard he tried, once his face had that hot, stinging feeling, he could never stop himself from crying.
His mother had been like this for the past week, saying mean things all the time to him, and his father, and Orla. Orla had come home from school for the weekend and sulked the entire time because their mother wouldn’t let her go out and meet her friends. ‘I just want yous where I can see you at the moment, is that too much to ask?’ she’d said. And every night, when she thought he was asleep, his mother came into his room and sat on his bed and brushed his hair from his forehead. But he didn’t let her know he was awake in case she left.
Niall took off his pyjama top and bottoms, kicking aside his underpants, and slid on the fresh grey pair his mother had laid out for him. He put on his shirt and buttoned it in front of the mirror, and was still convinced he’d look better with a tie.
‘Niall!’ he heard his mother shout from downstairs. ‘Right, come on, we’re leaving in two minutes.’
He picked up the book on his bedside locker. He checked the page he’d stopped at. He’d reread a few of these poems every night since Colette had died. He remembered that when he’d shown it to his mother, she’d looked at it doubtfully, turning it over in her hands like she’d never seen a book before. ‘Jesus, look at the size of that,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll never get through all of those. Are they for children?’ But they weren’t children’s poems, or at least not all of them were – and Niall had read every single one.
He put the bookmark back and pressed the book closed, feeling the thickness of it between his hands. He heard loud footsteps on the landing and the door flew open.
‘Niall, what in the name of God are you doing?’ his mother asked. She stared at the book in his hands and became very still. A concerned look came over her.
‘You were great pals, the pair of you, weren’t you?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘She was always nice to me.’
‘She was that way with everyone, pet. That was the kind of her.’
His mother was wearing a long black skirt and a short black blazer and a white blouse with a high neck and a brooch at her throat. The brooch was gold with a piece of black glass at its centre that caught the light.
‘Stop gawping at me, and get into the car,’ she said.
In the church, when the coffin entered, six tall men carried it on their shoulders. Mr Crowley and Ronan were at the front and Barry at the back, and he didn’t recognise the other men, but they all had black hair like Colette. The coffin must have been very heavy because it pressed down on their shoulders so the material of their black suits bunched up. Carl’s daddy looked different. He’d always looked older than the other fathers of children in his class, but now he looked ancient, every line and crease in his face visible like he’d been dusted in chalk. And then Carl came into view, following behind, wearing a black suit with a white shirt and black tie, the same as the men who were carrying the coffin. But the sleeves of Carl’s shirt were too long and the collar so big that you couldn’t see his neck. He thought of the fight they’d had in the schoolyard. There was the same look of shock on Carl’s face now. His cheeks were damp with tears and there were two red circles around his eyes. Carl was walking beside Mrs Diver, but when they got to the top of the church, she left Carl with his father and his brothers and sat a few seats behind. The rows filled up with more people – really, he’d never seen the church so full, not even at Christmas – and he lost sight of Carl.
While the new priest said the mass, Niall looked at the pamphlet printed for the service. There was a black-and-white photo of Colette on the front. In the photo she wasn’t smiling, which was strange, because she was always smiling when you saw her. She looked happy though, wide-eyed, staring directly at the camera, her hair trailing back and away from her face like it was blowing in the wind. And her skin looked very bright like her face had absorbed all the light around her. And two of her poems were printed on the middle pages of the pamphlet. One was called ‘Testament’ and it was kind of like a prayer – the language was very plain and at the end of each verse there was a repeated line like when they did the responsorial psalm. But the other poem was different, it didn’t rhyme and there were no verses, just a long list of lines down the page, and if it hadn’t been called ‘Mothering’, Niall would never have guessed what the poem was about, because they were frightening, the things she promised to do to protect her children, and they were promises you could never keep.
When the priest spoke about Colette, he started by saying, ‘I never had the good fortune to meet Colette Crowley but . . .’ and then he went on to talk about her for what felt like a very long time, saying things that other people had told him, and Niall’s mother began to sigh like she did when they waited at the doctor’s or the dentist. But when the priest finished, he said, ‘And now Barry Crowley will read a poem for us.’ But Barry just bowed his head and sat there. Ronan turned to him and said something into his ear and Barry shouted ‘No’ with such force that his long hair leapt on his head, and the noise of his shout echoed through the church. Niall heard his mother tut. On Barry’s other side his father turned to him and placed a hand on his shoulder but his whole body jolted and his father pulled away like he’d been shocked. Barry passed a piece of paper to Ronan, who approached the altar. He moved quickly, stood tall, an apology in his smile. He spoke about the poem he was about to read, and what it had meant to his mother. It was like he was trying to make them all feel better after the boring things the priest had said about Colette. And when he started to read the poem, Niall turned the page of the pamphlet and saw that it was printed there. ‘Dirge Without Music’ by somebody called Edna St. Vincent Millay. He wasn’t sure what a dirge was but it sounded depressing, and the last verse began, ‘Down, down, down’, and that was how the poem made him feel, like he was being pulled under by the words. And there were a couple of lines that kept repeating and at the end they were repeated together: ‘But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.’ But when Ronan reached these words, he wasn’t smiling anymore. He wasn’t looking out at the faces of the people in the church as he had been. He just stood there for a while, as if he was unable to move, unable to stop himself from staring down at the page. But every face in the church was lifted to him. And when Niall looked up at his mother, he could see her pulse beating in the curve of her throat, like her heart was caught there.
The end of the mass came and the priest said, ‘And now the Ardglas Choral Society will sing for us.’ The song was in Irish and Niall couldn’t understand every word, but there was something about the sea, and the way it made him feel was like a warm current running through him, and even though it was sad there was something hopeful about it. Everyone stood very still, listening through the first verse, until the men at the front of the church moved to lift the coffin. When Carl passed by him again, filing out of the church, Niall tried to catch his eye but Carl just stared ahead the whole time.
Walking behind the hearse, Niall watched Carl’s head move in and out of view at the front of the crowd. He was determined to walk up to Carl and say something before the end of the funeral. Losing your mother was the worst thing that could happen, and if Niall wanted to make himself cry, he just had to imagine his mother dying. He thought that perhaps Carl might be nicer now and that things could be different between them, or at least more like they were before. But as soon as they reached the graveyard, the procession spread out around the mouth of the grave and he lost sight of Carl. His mother was still holding one of the pamphlets from the church and he slipped it from her hand.
The priest started to say something but Niall couldn’t make out any of it because he was too far away. He tried to catch a glimpse of Carl when some of the people blocking his view moved apart, but then there was a lot of movement because someone was coming through the crowd. People were making a great effort to spread apart from each other, and into the space they made stepped Donal Mullen.
‘Jesus Christ,’ his mother whispered, and when he glanced at her, he saw the muscles in her cheeks ripple as she clenched her jaw. And even though she didn’t move, his father put his arm out in front of her, like she was about to bolt away.
And people continued to edge farther from Mr Mullen and the space around him grew so it was like he was surrounded, like he was the centre of the scene and not the people standing at the grave who Niall could now see through the gap in the crowd – Carl, then his brothers, then his father, all lined up in order of size, staring down into the mouth of the grave in their matching suits, like paper cutouts joined at the elbow.
The pamphlet dropped from Niall’s hand and blew across the grass, stopping near Mr Mullen’s feet.
Niall took one step forward and he felt his father’s hand fall heavy on his shoulder.
‘Stay where you are, Niall,’ his father said.
But he wanted to take Colette’s poems home so he could read them in bed that night, and his gaze kept drifting back to the pamphlet. And when he looked up, Mr Mullen was staring over his shoulder at them, his eyes dark and shining, like the black glass in his mother’s brooch.
His mother dug her knuckle into his shoulder and he felt her breath on the side of his face. ‘Stop staring,’ she whispered. ‘And for the love of God stop pulling at your hair.’ Niall took down his hand and there were a few strands between his thumb and forefinger.
The priest raised his arm and made a blessing in the air as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Each of the Crowley brothers dropped a single white rose into the grave.
‘Take me home,’ his mother said.
‘Will we not go to the hotel for the meal? Shaun invited us,’ his father said.
‘I will not be anywhere there’s a chance of running into that man again.’
‘Ah, come on – he’s not going to show up at the afters. He wouldn’t have the nerve.’
‘He’s here, isn’t he?’
And with that his mother headed off in the direction of the gates, his father following behind. Niall retrieved the pamphlet from the grass, the pages so wet now, the image of Colette was almost washed away. Looking up, he saw the mouth of the grave covered by planks of wood draped in green felt, the wreaths piled on in one great colourful mound.
