The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) (4 page)

“I wonder what happens if there’s no will and there’s nobody belonging,” Jim said. “You know, when —”

Margie was itching to get her spoke in. “Goes to the state I’d say. The probate office would tell you so they would.” Her glass was empty again. She could knock them back all right. She laughed suddenly. “Maybe you’re going to come into a fortune Jeremiah.”

I looked at her, lightheaded with the drink. I was taking it too fast. Maybe Mammy’s the one that’s coming into the money.
Don’t you be worrying, Maud, if you go before me I’ll see to everything. Just you leave aside whatever you think and I’ll see to the expenses and all the rest slurp slurp. God but that’s very good of you Vera.
No, somehow I don’t think so. Early this evening you couldn’t move but you were tripping over priests coming in and out of the house. That wee busybody Finucane was leading the charge too, he of the twitching confessional curtain. I’d say that boy gets a big bang out of it seeing these upstanding pillars of society wriggling in the pews before they come in and then listening to their litany of secret sins. Makes him feel on a higher plane I suppose. Though what does he do if this guy that’s applying for the choirmaster’s job tells him behind the curtain that he interferes with boys? What does he do then? How does he explain voting against him if the guy has amazing qualifications?
There’s something about him that’s not right. What exactly do you mean, Father Finucane? I don’t know, I just don’t like the cut of his jib.
(Code for
Sure I’m not allowed to break the seal of confession.)

“I heard of this case down in Galway,” said Jim, “where some farmer left everything to the Mormons and the son tried to change the will. Got himself into trouble and ended up not getting a penny.”

“Naw,” corrected Margie, “it was Roscommon that happened and it was some other crowd. Scientific Church. Or Church of Scientology is it? Naw, not them either.” She frowned, put the glass to her head and kept it there for about ten seconds as if she was doing a trick with it on her nose. Then she lowered it and asked: “What is it you call it when somebody changes their will? It was on the TV the other night. Did any of yous see it? Robin Day was interviewing this lawyer about it.”

“I saw it,” said Seamus. “It’s some word like a painkiller or something.”

Codicil. When you amend your will. I remember reading about it one time. Rich farmer in Roscommon died leaving every penny plus about a hundred and twenty acres to the Catholic church and the son was fit to be tied. Other farmer down the road Paddy O’Hare or some name like that was the dead spit of the da so the son went to see him the minute the da died and asked him to let on to be the da and make a new will leaving everything to the son himself and O’Hare was to get a quarter of the proceeds. He agreed anyway and they got this solicitor and some witness to come in and the body was well hidden in the back bedroom so the son could announce the death later on that day. O’Hare’s in the bed and the blanket up to his nose and he tells the solicitor he’s amending his previous will and now wants to leave everything to “my good friend and neighbor Paddy O’Hare.” Some scam.

Willie Henry was looking suddenly crestfallen. “Father Swindells’ll be getting on to me the next time he sees me,” he said.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Seeing me with drink in me. Coming into a wake with drink in me. It’s not like this is out in the country or something. ”

“Wise up Willie,” said Seamus. “It’s none of his business what you do.”

Willie Henry’s snozzel was starting to run and he wiped it with his knuckles and rubbed the back of his hand discreetly behind the knee of his trousers. “Aw God I doubt it is.”

“Don’t you be worrying your head about that Willie,” said Margie. “The same wee man has his secrets.”

“Right?” said Jim.

“Aw aye. And he’s not above tapping old ladies for a bit of money to finance his habits either.”

“You’re telling me that Margie?” Jim was agog. Margie drank from the air, her free hand holding the invisible glass to her lips.

“You don’t say,” said Willie. “I never knew that now.”

“Aw aye. Sure the police stopped him on the lower deck of the bridge one night there at half two in the morning and he was all over the road.”

“I heard,” said Seamus.

“In his big Cortina,” continued Margie. “On the way back from a hard day’s night.” She laughed loudly and then quickly put her hand up to cover her mouth. “God forgive me,” she said, “and Maud lying over there.”

“Margie’s right,” nodded Seamus. “The RUC had a quiet word with the bishop and the bishop had a quiet word with Swindells and it’s taxis everywhere now.”

“Never got to court?” I asked.

“You’re joking,” said Seamus.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Jim.

Neither would I. And it was good to hear. Though you’d have thought somebody in the school would have told me.

“There’s a lot of things you wouldn’t believe,” said Margie. “Did yous not hear about the two oul Quinn sisters from Windsor Terrace?”

“I know them,” I said. “Sure they were at the door there a wee while ago. I think they might even be still in the front room now. What about them?”

“Well, that new wee priest in the cathedral started calling at their house once a week. Doing whatever you call it, pastoral visits.”

“Father Finucane,” said Willie Henry. Eyes gleaming and you couldn’t tell to look at him if it was from the gossip or the mucus.

“Was that not a bit often for him to be visiting?” said Seamus.

“It was but you see they’d always left a fiver on the edge of the sideboard beside the door of the kitchen for him to pick up on his way out.”

“A fiver a time isn’t bad for ten minutes and a blessing,” suggested Jim.

“Is that not how Protestants came about?” asked Seamus. “I mean, is that not how it all started?”

“But wait till you hear. Your man Father Finucane just happened to mention to Father Swindells one day about how generous the two oul dolls were and Swindells says to him ‘I think maybe you should do the top part of Great James’ Street down as far as Prince’s Street from now on Father. I’ll see to Windsor Terrace.’ Pulling rank you see.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Seamus.

“I swear to God,” said Margie. “This past I don’t know how long he’s been raking in nearly as much as the bishop. And every time after he left the ladies he’d be straight out to the Broomhill House Hotel shooting the whiskeys into him. You can down a fair few drinks for a five pound note so you can and even when he ran out of the readies he was able to sponge off these ones that were hoping he’d put in a good word for their son or daughter coming out of teacher training or whatever. It was nothing ordinary what he drank.”

“I mind hearing Irish coffee was his favorite,” said Seamus.

“And the rest,” nodded Margie. “But you’re right about the Irish coffee. Mickey McGriskin told me he saw him putting away seven of them in the one night. And when each new one was set in front of him he’d always say Ah, not only Irish but free.”

“I’ll drink to that,” shouted Willie Henry, eyes more or less closed now, bunged up by phlegm or whatever. “God save Ireland!” He then began a pincer movement, two hands closing in stealthily on his crotch, element of surprise being employed obviously, and quickly pouncing, pressing and possibly nailing whatever was there.

“I heard years ago his mother was one of the Pipers from Slaughtmanus,” said Margie. “Did any of yous ever hear tell of them?”

“He who pays the piper calls the tune,” said Jim.

We were all laughing when Aisling walked in. I almost dropped the glass when I saw her. She had on a white mantilla over her long black hair and a dark leather jacket belted at the waist and down below some sort of a gray knee length skirt and black tights and the breath left me. Her face was like a light. She nodded to the wall in front of her and then straight over to the coffin, looked down into it I don’t know how long, it wasn’t long anyway, and next thing was she turned round and left without looking near me. I got up and my legs nearly went from under me. I followed her past mourners whispering in the hall and out to the street. I had no idea what I was going to say to her. She stopped on the footpath at the bottom of our steps and turned to me. Her eyes glistened like seagreen under the streetlight. My head spun. Let her speak. Let her do the talking.

“I thought it was your mother was dead,” she said, “and I shook hands with her at the door and she told me who she was.”

“Did she know who you were?” I asked pointlessly.

“I love you Jeremiah. You know that, don’t you? I’m not sleeping.”

I opened my mouth to say I’m not sure what but then waited because a bus stopped and sat throbbing very loud in a queue. She was as irresistible as I’d ever seen her. I wanted to hold her and crush her but I stood at a measured distance and when the bus moved on I said: “Will you be going back to Audrey?”

“I can’t say I won’t.”

The firewater was in my head now although I didn’t realize it properly and from not knowing what I was going to say I got in a state where I didn’t right know what I was saying. “Well make sure she’s got the doldos well stocked next time you go up to Belfast” came out. The drink had loosened more than my shoulders.

“What are you talking about?”

“What has she got that I haven’t got? Aw I forgot, she’s got the doldos.”

“You mean dildos? Is it dildos you’re thinking of, Jeremiah?”

“Dildo. Doldo. What the hell does it matter what you call it? What’s she got that I haven’t got?”

“Excuse me Mister Coffey.”

I turned round. The two Miss Quinns were waiting to get past me, all aflutter.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

Two pairs of spectacles flickered nervously. “We were wondering,” said one of them, “what time the funeral mass is going to be at.”

“It’s at ten o’clock”.

“Ten o’clock,” twittered the other. “That’s grand. Some of them are nine and some are eleven.”

“And sometimes they’re not till twelve,” added the first. “Sometimes people have to come over from England and they don’t get here till it’s late morning.”

Aisling was gone.

“But poor Maud had no relations, hadn’t she not?” said the other. “Isn’t it terrible when you have no one?”

“God have mercy on her soul,” they said, one starting on her own, then slowing down so the sister could catch up and they were together on the last three words, heads going like two sparrows.

The street was gray with mist. I looked in the direction she went and saw something shapeless coming towards me. Her coming back? I’m not sleeping, she said. It had been good to see her humble herself and know I could still have her if I wanted. Share her. What was so bad about what she was doing? Was it so bad? Yes it was. Deviant and devious and what’s the other thing, promiscuous. Better shot of all that. It would be good to be in the state of grace again anyway, I should never have been out of it. I’d get confession tomorrow before half seven mass after Maud was taken to the cathedral, get confession and clean the slate. The swings and slides in Bull Park dizzied as I turned my head from whoever was coming and tried to think of something to say to the Quinns. Why couldn’t they go? I looked down at them and waited for the shape to clear and Aisling to say: “Can I have a word with you in private?”

Big Bill Braddock stepped from out of the murk. “That’s a dull old night, isn’t it?” he said. He shook my hand and raised his hat to the two Miss Quinns. Addressing me he said: “I was sorry to hear about your neighbor, ah …”

Her name escaped him. I didn’t have the presence of mind to supply it. I’d been expecting Aisling.

“Molly. Molly was her name, wasn’t it?” he said with assurance. Never a man to lack confidence.

“Maud you mean?” cried one of my companions. “Maud Harrigan.”

Bill stared at her and then smiled and murmured: “Ah yes. Maud Harrigan. Of course.”

The sisters left us then and I led him to the kitchen. He went to the coffin and I stood dutifully beside him while he blessed himself with something of a flourish and placed a mass card on the dead woman’s two piece suit. After praying in a loud whisper May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed etcetera he turned to see who else was in the room.

Jim, James and Willie Henry acknowledged him with dumb hostility and Bill looked disapprovingly back at them, having noted the drinks in their hands. Margie was smiling glassily, keeping her own counsel.

“Very sad,” Bill said and sat on a chair opposite the others. “All things must pass.”

It was at this point that somebody let off, a prolonged squelchy one partly muffled I’d say by a pair of clenched cheeks. The smell came a little later, as it does, and there was no way of knowing for certain who it emanated from, Margie, Seamus, Jim and Willie Henry being seated inscrutably close together, unless you could have had some way of finding out who had had cabbage and baked beans and spiced meatballs too if I’m not mistaken for dinner that day. (My money for what it’s worth would have gone on Willie Henry, known to some in Derry by the sobriquet McGillycuddy of the reeks, not to be confused in any shape or form of course with Donough McGillycuddy, direct descendant of Mogh Nuaghad King of Munster and current chieftain of the McGillycuddy of the Reeks clan, educated at Eton and Neuchâtel and now living in Himeville, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, according to an article in the Irish Times I have here in front of me.)

Neither was there any way of ascertaining whether this rearward breaking of wind was involuntary or carried a message, what I mean is some kind of gesture directed at Bill. Whichever was the case the stink was so bad that it would have made a skunk throw up had one been present. The three male suspects were perfectly unreadable while Margie was staring pointedly at the coffin, lips tight together with controlled I’m not sure what. The thing she was implying by her knowing look was awful of course though not necessarily unthinkable. I suppose Charlie Bradley and Denis McLaughlin would be the ones to ask. I’ve heard for example that undertakers have to block up all the orifices to stop leaks. It’s disgusting when you think about it but I suppose that’s the way we’re made. If God really exists, and sometimes you have to wonder, you’d think at least He’d have given us a bit of dignity. Temples of the Holy Ghost, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be? Well, if the Holy Ghost stopped doing whatever it is He does nowadays and thought about it all for a second He might just decide He didn’t want His name associated with us.