Removal

Dagny had everyone out of the pub by eleven.  She nearly had to take a broom to one of the big drunks at the bar who declined to move on account of his numb behind but he soon got up from the stool when he saw Dagny reach for the wooden staff; the sudden roll of fear in his eyes said he had met with it before.   Stinson wondered how they were going to move the casket but Katrine pointed to a long wheel trolley near the entrance which he hadn’t noticed before.  While Stinson helped Katrine and Walter carry the box over and load it onto the trolley, Masterson called to the bar seeking a farewell moment with Dagny and having got to know something about the wolf priest by now she showed him the broom also. 

Out in the night, Torshavn revealed that look all small towns were inclined to reveal in the diffusing hours.  A general feeling of resignation hung over everything which even the fog now confessed to sharing, for the air was far less soupy than before; but in the last of the fragile wisp, prostrated workers could be seen toddling along home with unfresh loaves under their arms and there were trucks with muddied wheels left hanging from battered pavements and the shadows of heads moving in windows as lights softened and everything was like a lonely whistled tune in Stinson’s mind.  It could have been home.  Or Killybegs.  Or even Paris.  As he watched the drunken fishermen from Dagny’s struggle up the road, he concluded that his virgin pub experience had been a somewhat successful one, even if he happened to be involved in the removal of a coffin from the establishment at that moment in time.  But at least here was a body leaving in orderly fashion.