The spectacle of Joe McKee’s funeral has begun. Prayers to a God I most certainly don’t believe in around the coffin. Standing outside, aware that the coffin is being closed and that there are no further chances to see his face again.
Marie has now reached peak grieving-widow mode. All that’s missing is a black mantilla and she would give Jackie Kennedy a run for her money. She sniffs, dabs her eyes. She’ll travel in the funeral cars with Ciara, Stella and Kathleen. Alex and I will make our own way in our car. We are sidelined already. No doubt that will give a message of its own to the gawkers and the grief voyeurs. DI Bradley and DC King are here again. Of course. Maintaining a respectful distance but watching all the same.
I’m sure I also saw a press photographer outside as we arrived. This will be news. Maybe not today, but soon. When the police solve their mystery, or when Ciara can manage to persuade them it was me all along. The cold-hearted, ungrateful wench of a step-child. My not crying won’t help me look any less guilty, but I won’t cry for him. I won’t pretend. They can look at my stony-set face and draw their own conclusions. I’m past caring. Or so I tell myself.
There’s a scuffling of shoes, people moving backwards as the door to the house opens and the undertakers guide Joe’s coffin over the threshold. Some of the male neighbours, a work colleague and Alex step forwards and hoist the coffin onto their shoulders. They’ll walk to the end of the street and then they will put the coffin in the hearse and some of us will continue to follow on foot. A procession of grief, dressed in black, heads bowed against the January wind and sleet. Family, friends, colleagues. Neighbours. People who feel a sense of duty to be there.
Alex has gone back to fetch our car. He’ll meet me in the church grounds. Never have I been so glad that I have Lily with me in her pram. I won’t have to link arms with any of them and walk together, serious of face. I hate it.
I hate how people look.
I remember that from when Mammy died. The people who looked. Who saw me, in my black coat, with my shiny patent shoes, black tights and black dress. Ribbons, black of course, in my hair. My hand limply in Granny’s as she linked on to Grandad.
‘It would break your heart,’ I heard people mutter after. ‘Parents having to bury their child and then that wee girl left.’
‘Joe will look after her. God love him,’ someone muttered back.
We reach the church, St Eugene’s Cathedral near the centre of town, and Alex is beside me, Lily now in his arms, as we file down the aisle after the coffin. I listen to readings and prayers and hymns are sung. Father Brennan tells us the gates of heaven will be open wide to welcome Joe McKee back into the Lord’s house, and that while we might be sad, there will be rejoicing in heaven as a man of faith, of strong heart, of generosity, comes home.
I fidget in my seat. The priest talks of how Joe is reunited with those who went before him. His parents. His cousin, Paul. His aunt, Alice. I brace myself for hearing my mother’s name – knowing each time I hear it, it gives me comfort to know she’s remembered, but at the same time hurts because I still miss her so.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply.
‘And all those who have gone before him in faith to rest with the Father,’ Father Brennan says, skipping over my mother’s name. Erasing her from his narrative.
I open my eyes, look around me. Ciara and Marie both have their heads bowed in prayer. Kathleen is clutching a wrinkled tissue in her hands and looking straight ahead. I wonder can they feel my eyes on them. I wonder which of them told Father Brennan not to say her name.
Alex rests his hand on my knee, as if calming me. Is it an act of comfort, or is he afraid I’ll make a scene, right here, in the church in front of everyone? When everyone is starting to think I’ve lost the run of myself anyway. No, I’ll keep my peace. Grit my teeth and get through the day. Focus on being home in my own space later, away from it all.
Before I know it, we’re filing out again, in convoy behind the coffin, heading towards the City Cemetery. I realise I didn’t speak to Ciara, or any of them, after all, about the plot he will be buried in, but I assure myself it will be fine. They didn’t acknowledge my mother’s life at all during the Mass, so surely none of them would be so crass as to think he deserved to lie with her now.
So my stomach lurches as we approach the cemetery and the hearse does not turn down towards the new plots but instead turns left and travels up the hill to the older graves. To where my mother has been lying for the past twenty years.
‘They’re making a mistake,’ I say to Alex.
‘I think they know what they’re doing,’ he replies, his car following slowly, trying to gain a purchase on the icy ground.
But I can see it. I can see that my mother’s grave has been disturbed. A large mound of brown soil covered with a green plastic cover rests beside it. Before I know it, before I’ve had time to make a conscious decision to do so, I have unfastened my seat belt and am reaching for the door handle.
‘Heidi!’ Alex’s voice is loud and clear, the car is still moving, but slowly. I can still jump out.
I open the door, feel his hand on my arm trying to hold me back, but I shake him off. No. This is a step too far. He can’t go there. He can’t. No.
Alex slams the brakes on in the car and I lurch a little but not enough that I lose my balance. I am out of the car and I am half walking, half running up the remainder of the hill towards the funeral car they are all in. All eyes are on me. I can sense that, can hear things around me. Whispers.
My heart is pumping hard and I can feel a cool sweat break out on my forehead, even though it is bitterly cold. I want to scream. I want to claw at Ciara. To ask her what on earth she is thinking. To ask her why. Why would she do that? She’s not a stupid woman, she would know how much pain it would cause me.
The funeral car stops and the door opens just as I reach it. Ciara steps out, her face set thick with concern and a hint of fear.
‘What is it, Heidi? Are you okay?’
‘You can’t bury him here, in my mother’s grave!’ I shout and any eyes that weren’t already on me are suddenly focused in my direction. ‘You can’t do this. I can’t believe you’re doing this. Make them stop. Now!’
I watch as tears form and start to fall from Ciara’s eyes, how she takes a step back as if she is afraid of me. I’m aware of Stella getting out of the car and trying to direct her away.
‘But … it’s what he wanted. His final wishes. You were okay with that …’ Ciara says, crumpling. ‘It’s breaking my mother’s heart but it’s what he wanted. When we talked about it, you said we were okay to follow his final wishes. You agreed.’
I was okay with it? When did I say that? My head is swimming and I can hear the thumping of my heart so loudly I fear it will burst through my eardrums. The edges of the conversation I had with her are fuzzy. I’d been feeding Lily and was still reeling from the heated conversation with Alex.
Maybe I’m losing my grip on reality. I can feel it slipping away. I can feel the physical sensation of it falling from my hands as if it is my skin peeling from my bones. I feel it and it is the thing of nightmares, and I want it to stop. I need it to stop.
I feel a hand on my arm, strong. It’s Alex.
‘Heidi, please. Come away. Don’t make a scene. Not now. This is hard enough.’
He is whispering, but his voice is urgent. Embarrassment radiates from him as he tries to encourage me back to the car. I’m almost catatonic with a mixture of rage and fear, and I want to push him away. I want to run to my mother’s grave and do everything I can to stop them from going anywhere near it, and yet the sight of her open grave hits me with such a punch in the stomach that I fear I might throw up.
I can’t take my eyes from it, but I don’t want to see. I’m scared. I’m like that child again, nine years old and not understanding why they were putting my mammy in a hole in the ground. That wasn’t heaven, either. They said she was going to heaven. Not to a cold, wet hole in the ground. I had stood there, aged nine, shaking so badly with fear while people wept and wailed around me, desperate to tell them they were making a mistake but trying to be a good girl, just like Granny had asked me.
When the first shovelful of soil was dropped onto the top of her coffin, I had been so scared that I had, to my eternal shame, wet myself. Soaked through those black tights bought just for the occasion. The pee running into my shiny patent shoes. I was scared and humiliated.
And now, her grave open, the thought of where she is, how she is, that he will be placed on top of her remains – it makes me want to do whatever it takes to stop them.
But Alex is pulling me backwards. Using all of his strength. And still everyone stares. And still Ciara is weeping on Stella’s shoulder and Kathleen is glaring at me while Marie just looks lost.
And none of them, not one of them, has the right to be more upset than me.