After Mother’s burial in a freakish sunshine that was followed by a violent purple hail, Brian and Conor filled in the grave with two long spades. They cast the black earth into the hole. Father watched on. Conor was stoic and threw his black necktie over one shoulder as he set to shovelling spade after spade of earth on top of her, faster now, and faster still, the inky soil spraying down on three white roses. But Mother was gone, taken out to sea like a child, the great folds of material were waves to help her escape.
Lara turned and left the graveside when the rain came down heavy, apologising to everyone that Josh needed feeding. I was relieved she had not exposed a breast in front of the simple-folk mourners. Brian was inconsolable and cramped down on his hunkers. Father grew agitated. He was flickering his eyes in his youngest son’s direction, Brian paying himself no attention. It wasn’t like him. Father had his hands behind his back, he was bent over slightly which I noted was a new habit and was hard to read. He came close by me and I could feel his damp body brush off me, the mist soaking into my clothes too. His clumsy leather shoes didn’t fit him. I wondered if his feet had started to shrink. Mother had all but disappeared.
‘Get him up, Claire,’ Father said. He moved away and stood fussing under a black umbrella some cousin held above him. I considered how remarkable it was that so many people came to his aid. I did nothing, just waited and again he came by me and he poked a finger into my back: ‘Claire, for God’s sake get him up, he’s soaked through, and does he know where he is? He isn’t above in Dublin now.’
I put my hand on Brian’s damp shoulders. His knuckles were raw white, all tense and clasped on his knees. He had let the shovel go by the graveside and was shaking hard. I tentatively hugged him from behind: ‘Can you stand up?’
‘What?’ he said, sniffling and staring down into the grave.
‘Himself wants you to get up,’ I said, again, the rain heavy, my breath on his hot ear.
He nodded.
‘Will you both get up to hell,’ Father barked.
Brian stood, turned about and looked at Father with a wildness and as though he were young again and sleepwalking as he often did as a child, marching assuredly to the front door, to leave, and go. He walked out of the cemetery and on he went towards the town without looking back. I watched as his long figure disappeared. No one saw him for the rest of the day, and me, I did not – to my shame – see him for some time after.
*
Father looked blankly as people were coming to him, shaking his hand and pulling out of him in an aggressive kindness. Women waited behind their husband’s backs, allowed the men to shake hands with Father first, and they mostly nodded silently in his direction, or muttered: Sorry. Thank you. Very sorry. Thank you. Lovely woman. The salt of the earth. Can I do anything? God is Good. God is Cruel. God is God. It’ll be better when summer’s long stretch comes, one man said, as though the longer the day, the less grief might be felt. There was a sureness to winter, a certainty that you could take to the bed without causing alarm. Or feeling guilt. Tom texted some heart emojis. White ones. Máire and Joe kissed me before leaving for Glackens’s.
*
Father turned his black suit lapels inward, showing the grey foam linings, and he was now desperately looking about for a toilet.
‘You won’t find one here,’ I whispered in his ear as I slipped my phone back in my pocket. I had texted Conor to go and look for Brian. I texted Lara to turn the car engine on. I texted Brian a white heart. Both my brothers’ texts remained on Delivered. Father was turning green-pale now, as a shadow moved across his face and beads of pearl sweat bubbled on his face. It was rare to see him with such a close shave.
‘Won’t I?’ he said back to me.
‘No. Come on, let’s move on. I’ll get you sorted. Are you OK to walk as far as the car?’ I said. ‘We’ll make it then to Glackens.’
‘Aye,’ he said, turning in the direction of the road by the grey stone wall of the cemetery. A red fox waited on a grave in the distance, and looked down on us. ‘Aye,’ he said again.
Lara sat in the driver’s seat of their dark grey SUV with large sunglasses on her face as we approached. Josh was sleeping and strapped in the back.
‘Isn’t it great now all the same?’ Father said as we happened on the car.
‘What?’
‘Women,’ he said, holding his balls. ‘Driving.’
*
In the back yard of Glackens’s loos, the flagstone was damp underfoot. Father had wet himself by the time I got him perched and steady, and I apologised as other men turned and ran from the place upon seeing a woman.
‘Ah well, fuck anyway,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about it, it’s dark, the suit, and the material,’ I said, ‘no one will notice.’
‘I’ll know,’ he said, holding my stare.
‘Right then,’ I said, ‘no one will take any notice.’
‘I’ll notice,’ he said. ‘It’s me who’s damp. I’ll know, won’t I?’
I nodded.
‘It’s a rental.’
‘What? How do you not own a black suit?’ I said, saddened.
‘What cause would I have for a black suit, Claire? Tell me,’ he said and he spat into the gully.
‘No matter. They’ll dry-clean them for you,’ I said.
‘Are you OK? Have you pain?’
‘No,’ he said, more gently now, and he turned and looked at me like he didn’t know who I was for a moment and he seemed to smile at me, and then his face changed again: ‘I’d better head out then because where I’m from you can’t just up and leave a bar full of people after a funeral expecting a sandwich, Claire. Can you?’ I shook my head and he walked back into the lounge of Glackens’s where he went on and regaled the local crowd with a story about a stallion he had once broken after it had smashed its head into two of Father’s ribs and finally into his nose, but he hadn’t given in, and within days the horse had taken to the saddle. He was immersed in the horse and hadn’t stopped to notice his own pain, or slept in days, or so he said. He told the story as though he never had a wife, or a funeral, or a family or a great looming grief.
*
By the late evening, the dark blue curtains were pulled across the pub windows. He turned to me and said: ‘She’s gone.’
‘She is,’ I said.
‘She missed you when you were abroad in England, Claire. All the years. Missed you somewhat terrible, you know. It had such a bad effect on her. She had stopped talking to me with the loneliness.’
‘You could have visited.’
‘You never invited us.’
‘You never asked.’
‘Plenty of planes coming back, lots returned home now, you could have come home for good – she would have loved that.’
‘Don’t – please. There was nothing here for me,’ I said, resisting the urge to tell him how it would have been impossible for her to fly with him. To board a plane, to pack, to pack correctly, to drive correctly and to predict everything so as he would not fall into a stupor of rage thinking someone or another was mocking him by simply asking to see a passport or a ticket validation, for him to be required by another person he did not trust, to validate himself.
‘There’s land here, isn’t there?’ He was playing with me now. ‘They’re not making any more of it – I’ll bet they don’t teach you that inside in the universities.’
I wanted to say that none of us wanted his land, full of rock, thistles and furze bushes. That it was a noose. I wanted to say the land was never mine. I knew well enough to know that.
‘Will we buy her a drink?’ I said. ‘We won’t,’ he said. ‘We won’t waste money like they might do abroad in England.’
__________________________________
From Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way by Elaine Feeney. Copyright © Elaine Feeney, 2025. Reprinted with permission from Biblioasis.
