A thick mist had settled on the morning of the funeral. The sun was attempting to shine through it and making ghosts of commonplace things. Robbie stood at his bedroom window for several minutes, taking in the view of the river and the soggy fields beyond. Something stirred in the room and he turned to watch Hannah change her sleeping position and start to nuzzle the pillow. She and Amy had arrived the day before, two hours later than expected owing to the traffic coming out of Dublin.
Hannah had been flustered and felt like a stranger, while his daughter had grown at least two inches in his absence. The first ten minutes of their reunion was spent poking and prodding Amy until they had discussed all her features and had to shift their attention to one another. At that point his family had taken over and Hannah was swept into the frenzied emotion of his mother’s house while Elizabeth stole Amy away to a quiet corner of the living room. Wendy and Margaret plied Hannah with tea and leftover tray bakes from the wake and when Robbie excused himself on ‘funeral-related’ business, she had looked up at him rosy-cheeked from the attention.
After visiting the florist to pay for their family wreath and some flowers for the church, Robbie had driven up the A1 to Hillsborough. The quaint shops and squashed houses with their neat window boxes reminded him of Ranelagh or Rathmines; suburbs that, at one stage, were villages on the outskirts of Dublin before the great city loosened its belt and expanded.
With his hood pulled up against the rain and hands sunk deep into his pockets, he walked down the steep hill on Main Street. He saw smoke snaking from the chimney of The Plough and felt warmer at the sight of it. Inside, he ordered a cup of coffee and sat down in a small nook near the fire. He had only taken a few sips of his drink when Joan appeared, shaking the rain from her coat and signalling to the waiter that she too would like a coffee.
‘Miserable day,’ she said, rubbing her hands and then offering her palms to the fire. Catching his eye, she tugged on the edges of her blouse and sat down opposite him.
‘I’m so sorry about, you know,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘When’s the funeral?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Martin’s funeral was such a bollocks.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes, the bishop was a new guy and he was very nervous. They couldn’t do an open casket because, well, you know.’
Robbie nodded.
‘Of course, Great-aunt Deirdre didn’t know all the details about how he died and she was furious that the casket was closed. It was a whole palaver.’ Her laugh came out more as a nervous titter.
He shifted in his seat.
‘What?’ Joan asked.
Robbie looked up.
‘You just sighed as if the entire world was on your shoulders.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got a lot on my mind.’
‘You look tired. Are you sleeping?’
‘Not really.’
The waiter delivered Joan’s coffee and she stirred sugar into it.
‘I’m going home soon and there’s something I need to tell you,’ he said.
Joan sat upright and wrapped her hands around the mug.
‘Go on then.’
‘There is a possibility that it was all my fault. —Don’t say anything yet. You know how close I was with Lizzie back then. Well, I told her stuff I shouldn’t have and I have recently discovered that she told my mum, who told my dad, who blabbed to the whole pub by the sounds of things.’
He ate the foam on his cappuccino with a spoon. Joan was staring at him and he braced himself for her reaction.
‘Listen, Robbie. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. I’ve spent the last five years trying to find someone to blame. You were an easy target but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks and I just have to accept that Martin made choices that resulted in his own death.’
‘But—’
‘No, Robbie. It doesn’t matter what your dad said or who he said it to. The end result was inevitable.’
He ran his fingers through his hair and watched her closely.
‘It’s not fair,’ he said.
She laughed.
‘Of course it’s not fair.’
‘That letter Martin wrote me. He wanted me to look after you and the girls.’
‘Sure you were only young yourself.’
A dirty ring had formed on the inside of his coffee cup where the foam had started to thicken. He scraped at it with his teaspoon.
‘Why are you being so nice?’ he said.
‘As I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I always imagined seeing you again and allowing all my rage out.’ She flung her arms open. ‘When you arrived at the house the other night, I realised that it wasn’t right to blame you. I suppose it was just easier.’
She took the coffee cup from him and wrapped her fingers around his.
‘I know you are. That word is banned from now on, do you hear me?’
‘Will you be ok?’
‘Me? Of course.’
‘Do you need to talk about …’ he offered half-heartedly.
‘No. I thought I did but really, there’s not much more to say. You better get going.’
They exchanged a smile and Robbie checked his pockets for change.
‘Bye, Joan,’ he said, setting some coins on the table. ‘Take care of yourself.’
The mist had not lifted by the time the hearse arrived to collect the coffin. Two men in tall black hats handled the casket into the back of the car while Hannah packed Amy’s things in a bag. Robbie tarried on the doorstep as the sleek, black vehicle reversed on to the road. There was something painfully final about watching his father’s body leave and he wished it could have been from the farmhouse.
John had arrived on the doorstep of Larkscroft on the eve of his own father’s death, only to have the keys thrust into his hand and an earnest plea made that he do a better job than his father. It was a story John loved to tell when he was trying to convert Robbie into a farmer. Even the memory of those conversations, some sober, others not, caused such a sense of responsibility to rise in Robbie that he wanted to uproot the billboard in the front field and lay claim to the land that should have been his. He laughed at himself and leant against the doorframe as the hearse drove slowly down the lane.
His melodrama gave way to a less severe kind of guilt when he imagined how his father must have felt to know that Larkscroft Farm stopped with him. The sweat and blood that he had poured into the place out of respect for his own father and a need to support his family would soon be buried under new houses and fresh tarmac. What must it have felt like for him to sign it all over to someone like James Spiers? Robbie shivered as the car disappeared from sight and the mist started to soak through his clothes.
It fell on Robbie to give an address at the funeral. He had gone to Hillsborough Forest Park after his meeting with Joan to think about what he might say, but the words would not come. He could not think of anything that would be both true and appropriate to say in a church. How could he be expected to stand up and eulogise about a father who was always there but never present, had principles but no integrity, and whose death left more questions than answers. After enough laps of the lake that he lost count, Robbie phoned the minister to let him know that there would be no speech from a family member.
There was a deep silence in the church as the organ faded and the minister opened his bible on the podium.
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Robbie took Hannah’s hand.
The casket was open at the front of the church with Robbie’s family’s wreath still covered in dew and white roses. When it was delivered to the house and set up in the room in which John had spent the last few days of his life, Robbie had been disarmed by his father’s expressionless face. With smooth cheeks and less of a ruddy complexion, Robbie wanted to reach out and touch him but could not quite believe that his father would not open his eyes and scowl at him for trying. With John neck-deep in floral bouquets, Robbie allowed some of the relief from his death to settle.
The minister finished and the organ started up again, the notes running into one another as if they were racing to the end of the bar. Robbie stood between Hannah and Elizabeth. His daughter was asleep in her car seat with her hands clasped as if in prayer. Robbie took his wife’s hand and whispered in her ear, ‘I’m so glad I’m coming home with you’.
She was still looking at him as he took up the hymnbook to join in the singing.