James McGrother hung back from the grave, watching Pat’s old shoulders hunch against the wind as he knelt in prayer. Blessing himself quickly before chasing after his three young children, James knew that nothing he could say would lessen his uncle’s pain. It was better to leave the grieving man alone, to speak the words in private that he never got the chance to say at the funeral. Earlier that morning, Pat told James he could not face another night without talking to his beloved Annie and had asked his nephew to accompany him to the graveyard.
The young father guessed that his three children were playing hide and seek around the ruin of the old church in the centre of Haggardstown cemetery. The only sound he could hear was the whistling of the wind through the gaps in the broken walls. When he eventually found them, Catherine was sitting on the ground, her arms encircling her two younger siblings. They were leaning against one of the cold stone walls and seemed frozen to the spot. When they saw their father, Thomas aged nine, and his four year old sister Mary-Anne, ran towards him, screaming. James patted their backs reassuringly, while looking sternly at Catherine, who smiled sweetly back at him.
“Has your big sister been frightening the life out of ye with her ghost stories again?”
“We made her tell us, Daddy. She said Annie had told her the same story when she was my age and it didn’t frighten her at all. Men don’t get scared, do they? Does that mean I’m not a man yet?” asked Thomas.
James saw tears well up in his son’s eyes and lowered himself until their faces were level with each other. Noting that Mary-Anne was beginning to shiver, he drew her close to his chest and wrapped both sides of his jacket around her thin frame.
“Of course you’re a man, Thomas. Aren’t you my wee man? Soon you’ll be as big as me and then I won’t be able to call you that any more. And don’t ever be ashamed to say you’re afraid. I’ve been in fear many a time. Ask your mammy.”
Catherine had joined Pat at the graveside and James smiled when he saw her patting the hunched back of the elderly fisherman. She rested her head on his shoulder, until Pat laid a hand on the wooden cross that bore his wife’s name and hoisted himself up onto a pair of shaky legs. He looked behind to where his nephew stood waiting, before placing his cap back on his head and taking hold of the small cold hand held out to him.
“Is Mamó asleep now? Do you think she’s warm enough, Dadó?” asked Catherine.
“Aye, a stór. She’s in a safe place and cannot feel the chill of this breeze. Come now, let’s get ye all back to the fire and warm up those poor frozen hands and feet,” said Pat.
Before leaving, the men took one last look around the cemetery and Pat’s eyes came to rest on a plaque that bore the name of a young man.
“Annie reached a good age, James. She lived through some hard times and if I join her tomorrow, I have no regrets. We were given a lot longer than some of these poor souls, like young Doctor Martin over there. Cut down by the fever in his prime he was, while tending the sick and the poor, bless him. He was barely a day over thirty.”
“I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,” said Thomas.
James and Pat smiled at the boy who was standing as tall as he could stretch, his chest thrust out. They both knew he would be a fisherman in a few years’ time. It was the way things were and they were not likely to change.
The wind had raced ahead to reach the cottage near the shore, where Mary McGrother lay in bed. She was not asleep, but her eyes remained closed as the door opened and a cold draught swept her children into a parlour that was not much warmer than the garden.
“Mary, wake up, you can’t sleep all day like this. The fire’s almost out and the place is freezing,” James scolded as he placed some sods of turf onto the dying embers.
“Leave her be, son. Leave her be,” said Pat.