funerals

Instead of going to school we were instructed to go to a funeral mass at St Stephen’s. It meant not singing out the twelve times table, but bawling out hymns instead. I didn’t bother leaving my house until ten past nine, and nipped down the short-cut that took me onto Shakespeare Avenue, past the dentists at the bottom of the street, across Overtoun Road and I was there. The school and the chapel stood next to each other, with a high wall and a door to the chapel- house at the back separating the school playground from the church grounds. God could have covered both with his big hand, if He kept it out of the way of the pointy steeple. Mr Ward and Miss Bridges and other teachers clustered together, standing on the pavement, an ensemble of mourning black, lit fags in the cup of their hand, quick drags of smoke haloing into the air, arms falling stiffly to their sides. They created a smoker’s corner, partially hidden away from the main gate and the funeral cortege. Pulling my anorak hood up I joined the throng of pupils and some adults that passed them.

The hearse’s wheels clipped the kerb, its black shiny armour, with the back door open, ready to spill its load. The funeral guy stood guard with his black peaked cap over his eyes daring us to look in, or look away from the barest bones of sight, at the littlest white coffin lying atop an ersatz mahogany bed garlanded with dead flowers. Wind plucked at my hood and I ducked my head down as if dodging what I’d seen and pulled it up around my ears. My feet picked the mazy path through black jackets and trousers and coats. While men smoked and looked away women clutched into each other and wept into the bloom of white hankies.

Sammy Doak and Johnny Gibbons and a few of the other that lived close together, up in the better houses in Parkhall, were leaning and slouching against the aluminium bannister close to the main doors to the chapel. The grass was striped, newly cut, with the scent of spring hanging in the air. Sun spots of daffodils nodded sagely together in the borders, decaying with a yellow light in split clumps.

‘I heard she got hit by a bus.’ Sammy turned suddenly, fear in his chubby face that it was a teacher behind him listening, but it was only me.

‘How could you not see a double-decker bus?’ Johnny sounded unconvinced.

‘Splat!’ I grinned.

We laughed, not wanting to go into the church too early and be holy-Joes.

Brian, one of the pass keepers, stuck his curly head out of the side door on the right that most men seemed to favour going into the chapel, but business was good, all of the chapel doors were wedged open. The organ reverberated so that we could hear it in our feet. Near the gate fags were flicked casually away. The great black herd began to hurry forward with shuffling shiny black shoes. We strolled inside, dabbing our hands with the sponge of holy water at the font and making the sign of the cross on our newly sanctified body: Father. Son and Holy Ghost, on our forehead, belly and shoulder, left to right. We split up at the door to the nave. Sammy, Johnny, and the others, went to the pews where their class was seated. I stood shuffling my feet, the scent of beeswax and incense filtered through the airy light pouring in from the high windows on the choir behind me, looking for guidance, looking for my class. Mr Jordan, a bush- haired book stop, was sitting on the pale lacquered pews with our class piled in close on the wrong side of the nave, on the girl’s side, but the whole school was inside. Adults stood pressed up against both walls and filled the two altar wings out with the nave. That threw me. Mr Jordan turned, not looking at me exactly, but at the people spilling into the church around me. A head nod from him was enough to let me know I was late. I scuttled across, genuflecting like a saint, towards the altar, just as the opening bars of ‘Be Not Afraid’ rang out and filled the church with the uneven voices of longing. There was no room in the pew. Mr Jordan, disinfected by strong cologne, pinched my elbow and stood me beside him like a loose peg. Before the hymn finished the white coffin had been brought in shoulder high. Adult mourners trooping in behind it filled the two front pews on each side of the altar. We sat down briefly after the priest’s blessing, my left leg squeezed tight against Mr Jordan’s. I was terrified to move and suddenly needed to pee, but only a primary one or two would be allowed to go. I tried my trick of concentrating on the priest, looking for any spare nimbuses of heavenly light that might have been floating about from the big stained glass windows at the side altars. But it was only Canon Mallon saying the mass, and with his beaky nose and gimlet dark, eyes every day was a funeral for him. We took a break from the misery and suffering of the Lord. I felt the tremor in Mr Jordan’s knee as Canon Mallon yarned on after the gospel. He leaned across and ‘Tsk, Tsked,’ Noel Behan who was whispering to Kevie Whorisky. Mr Jordan was sure to kill them both later, which took my mind off the toilet and cheered me up.

I became punch-drunk with prayers, lost track of all the hymns we had to sing, but with Mr Jordan holding the hymn book for both of us I had to sing all the verses of ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’. His voice was monotone. He faltered and took a break at the page turning of ‘Ave Maria’ We both listened to Miss Bridges’ voice taking the slack, her voice rising effortlessly above us, carrying everybody away to a better place.

The opening bars of ‘Here I am Lord,’ and I bowed my head in prayer, trying to shape my face into proper piety, glad to be out of the pew and going up to get Holy Communion and wondered if I could sneak away to the toilet at the back of the chapel when I came back. There was plenty of room in the aisle but I found myself scrunching my shoulders up at I passed the coffin sitting on two wooden trestles pushed close together. The dead girl’s family sat like crows on a line waiting for release. I searched them out for tears, but they seemed all out.

I took my place and knelt at the altar rail to receive Holy Communion. Canon Mallon placed God on my poked out unworthy tongue. Ewan, the oldest altar boy in the world, leaned across, acting as goalie with a hand- held gold salver, in case he dropped the consecrated wafer. I closed my eyes and shut my mouth, making sure God didn’t touch my teeth on the way down or I’d go to hell.

On the way back to my seat we went the longer route past the Stations of the Cross on the walls. I got to the main doors at the back. With so many people shuffling past I thought I could nip to the toilet, but Mr Jordan stood up and moved out of the seat to let me in. I was trapped and trudged towards him, fingers pointed up to heaven like steeples and genuflected before squeezing in and kneeling to say a prayer that I wouldn’t pee myself, before sitting up smartly on the pew. We sang another hymn.

Canon Mallon came down from the four steps from the high altar, the oldest altar boy, clanging with each step as he carried the gold chain of the thurible behind him. Canon Mallon took it from him and circled the trestles, working the chains, lifting the lid of the incense holder, mumbling prayers about the repose of the soul. Incense was his antiphon, coating the bud of the coffin with the sensuous smudged fire of smoke -- a tremulous thing, lighter than air, that reached out and filled our senses. That’s when the keening started. A sound I’d never heard before. The sound of a woman’s voice tearing and breaking. I couldn’t see who it was, but I knew, I knew that was the girl’s mother.

Mr Jordan was soft eyed and tears ran down his face as the mass of black coats scraped their feet and lumbered out through the main doors. The hymn book shook in his hand and he couldn’t sing ‘Walk With Me Oh My Lord through the darkest nights and brightest days. Be at my side Oh Lord. Hold my hand and guide me on my way.’ I’d never liked Miss Bridges, but her voice stayed strong. Small, bald headed, Mr O’Donnell the headmaster, was first out of the pews at the front, leading the different classes, the youngest pupils first, behind him and out into the light outside. We were last to go, our eyes filled with tears so that we stumbled into one another as if drunk.

There was no respite from school. Our feet crunched on the red stone chip path as we followed it around the outside of the dull orange brick chapel to the school gates. I snatched my hood up to hide my tearful face. Up at the church gates the black hearse pulled away and took the loose strewing of other lives and the levy of death with it.