The Stranger at the Funeral
THE STRANGER AT THE FUNERAL
Your one-and-only brand-spanking-new bike was a Christian brother’s model – black and sturdy, with a chain guard, a carrier, three-speed Sturmey Archer gears, and steel rods that connected the brake levers to the calipers. It weighed a ton. You got it from Delaney’s, the bicycle shop at Harold’s Cross Bridge. Saved your money from your part-time job in the drapery shop in town. You remember the first time you cycled along the canal on your new bike. You felt like someone, didn’t you - Stephen Daedalus, off to forge the conscience of your race, flying
along on your new Raleigh bike. You were the man!
You didn’t go home to show off the new bike. No, you headed straight to Hugh’s house, didn’t you? You needed his imprimatur to seal the deal. Hugh, after all, was the arbiter of all things good and tasteful. Had he said, ‘No’, you would have gone straight to Delaney’s and asked for your money back. That’s how much you cared for his approval, you sad bastard. He made you sweat, though, didn’t he, inspecting it, without saying a word.
‘Cool,’ he said, at last. And he took it from you and mounted it as lightly and elegantly as a ballet dancer. Hugh on your bike in the sunshine. Looking beautiful. A fucking Greek God. And you wanted to fall to the ground and worship him.
*
A few months earlier Hugh had invited you to his house to listen to Joan Armatrading’s Show Some Emotion. He wanted you to hear one track, ‘Woncha Come on Home’. You sat in the formal parlor, on the sofa with the green brocade, stiff and awkward, trying to look nonchalant, while Hugh lounged in an armchair. He played the track three or four times, urging you to listen to the voice; the thumb piano; imagine the shadowy figures; hear the sadness pouring out of the record player. You were all nodding head, trying to take it in; trying not to say anything foolish or naïve. And all the time you wondered why he’d singled you out? Why this privilege? Listening to Hugh’s new album, his sole guest. It was a mystery then and it’s still a mystery. This was Hugh. Hugh who glided through school, untouchable, unfathomable. In an ugly world, he was beauty personified. When Hugh was around, you forgot the shit-brown walls and floor of your school; the sour teachers; the concrete of the public-housing scheme where you lived; the endless grey; the nagging feeling you were not good enough, would never be good enough, didn’t even know what good enough meant. And here you were in his parlour and you wondered if this was some elaborate piss-take. But then he was speaking to you, focusing all his passion for the music on you. It was the most thrilling thing you had ever heard – the way his voice rose and fell; the way his thoughts spread and gathered as he sat forward pointing to the air, tracing the line of the song’s beauty. It stirred you in every way. He stirred you in every way. You were mortified by the hard-on you got, pulling your jumper down and crossing your legs to hide it.
How many years ago was that? Forty? And it is still as vivid as if it were yesterday. Sitting in that parlor, the sun streaming through the window. Yeah, well, maybe that bit is made up. But not the rest. And that afternoon was the beginning of the two most glorious years in your life. The two years you were Hugh’s best friend; the two years when you were a factor in other people’s calculations.
*
You’d read about him in the papers over the years – his marriage to an heiress; the film production company they’d established in Australia. Their success. In the photographs, he never looked out of place or ill at ease. And always with that expression that you recognized - the knowing smile that said, ‘None of this is important. Nothing lasts.’
*
You were on holidays in the west, and it bucketed rain. Non-stop, pissing down. You sat in the sun lounge of the house that looked over to Achill, watching the clouds as they passed over the fields, your wife flicking through an old magazine.
“Isn’t that Hugh O’ Donnell a fine thing,” she said, holding up a photo for you to see. You nodded. “‘Where did we go wrong?”
“You mightn’t believe this,” you said.
“Go on,” she said, “try me.”
“We were best friends in school,” you said, “me and Hugh.” And no sooner were the words out of your mouth than you regretted saying them.
“What? You and Hugh O’ Donnell?”
“Yeah.”
She picked up her wine glass and took a sip. “Funny now that you never mentioned that to me before,” she said, good humoredly, ‘in the thirty years we’ve been married.’
“Yeah, well,” you said, wishing you’d kept your big mouth shut.
“Anything else I should know about your past, Mister? The summer you spent interrailing with George and Brad. That sort of thing.”
And then the big man in you took over, “Next time Hugh’s in Ireland, I’ll give him a shout,” you said, “and then you’ll see.”
“Oh, I look forward to that.” And she chuckled to herself and drank her wine, shaking her head in amusement, as the rain battered against the windows.
*
It became a kind of joke between the two of you, a date for all future projects, the ones you promised your wife that you would get around to.
“Great,” she’d say, “you’ll do that that when Hugh O’ Donnell is in Ireland, will you?”
And though you made light of it, it always needled you, the fact that she didn’t believe you. Didn’t think it possible. Didn’t put you in the same league. You’d show her. Except you weren’t sure what there was to show, were you? Maybe your poor little heart in hiding.
*
Of course, you were never his equal. You know that, don’t you? Come on. you were his acolyte, amazed by what he knew: music; cars; motorbikes; trees; birds; plants; sex. The common wren weighs three ounces. The arctic tern can travel up to 50,000 miles in a year. You’d read up on subjects only to find that he had moved on to something else just as you were getting the hang of yesterday’s interest. You never mastered the art of being one step ahead. In school, you did better than him in most subjects, but he treated school as a joke. Laughed at the teachers. He made you feel foolish for caring so much about it. He
always seemed to pull the rug out from under your feet. He confused you. Where did his confidence come from? His certainty? You envied him that.
*
You went camping once, you and Hugh. He showed up in Busáras with a girl and, with a toss of his head, introduced her as Rachel. No other information or explanation. Not that Hugh ever felt the need to explain himself. She was two years older than you and in university. And she wore tight jeans and a man’s pullover and spoke in little runs of speech. You were mesmerized by her, by the easy way she lived in her skin. You saw how Hugh smiled at her and brushed against her and it troubled you, the easy intimacy between them. You thought you knew everything there was to know about him, didn’t you? So where had she come from? And Jesus, she was attractive.
You had no idea why you were there with them, what purpose you were meant to serve. The three of you bussed and hitched out to Connemara and camped by a lake, a mile or two outside Casla. You remember walking into the village store and buying Goldgrain biscuits, tins of sardines and a bottle of milk. You ate them by the lake’s edge and it seemed like a feast.
Rachel had enough money to buy a round of drinks in the local pub, in the evening. You weren’t used to pubs or drinking. Your mother and father were dead against the drink. And you’d never outgrown your altar boy morality, had you? Sin was everywhere. So you agonized before asking for a bottle of cider. And there was the added pressure of not saying or doing anything that would cause Hugh to laugh at you. And he did laugh at you, only you don’t like admitting that now, do you?
There was music in the pub that night. You lost yourself in it and avoided thinking about later. When you left the pub, the light had gone from the sky except for a hazy line at the horizon. On the road back to the tent, you were spooked by the night song of a bird, a heron, maybe, or a curlew, though in truth you hadn’t a clue what it was, only knew that it made you uneasy. And all the while you were worrying about the sleeping arrangements and the etiquette of taking off your clothes or staying around if Rachel and Hugh got amorous. That’s the word you hit on to cover all eventualities, ‘amorous’. You were such a Mammy’s boy. In the end, you needn’t have worried. Hugh stripped to his underpants and unzipped his sleeping bag and Rachel stripped, too, to her knickers, and slipped in beside him. In the dark, laying side-by-side, you felt easier in yourself than you ever had in your life – Hugh and Rachel lying beside you, in a tent in the middle of nowhere. What did it matter why he’d invited you? You were there and that was enough. And when they had sex, you closed your eyes and took your own vicarious pleasure, and you weren’t sure if it was the thought of Hugh or Rachel that excited you the most.
In the morning, outside the tent, with the sun glistening on the lake, and the mountains brown and tawny in the distance, and a drift of clouds across a high, blue sky, and Hugh and Rachel dozing on the other side of the canvas, you never felt more alive in your life.
*
That’s a lovely story. ‘Never felt more alive in your life’. ‘Your own vicarious pleasure’. Do you ever listen to yourself and the shite you talk? You tugged at your mickey till you thought it might fall off, and you felt a right eejit in the morning. Hugh laughing at you. And that’s the truth.
*
It was your wife who saw the report of Hugh’s death, from cancer, aged fifty-five. She was sitting up in bed drinking the cup of tea you’d brought her, checking the news on her iPad. She read out the headline and the first few lines of the report. ‘That’s shocking,” she said, before reading on. The news hit you harder than it should have, your heart thumping in your chest. What was all that about? You hadn’t seen him in over thirty years or had any contact with him. What power did he have over you? There was to be a funeral service in Australia, and some kind of memorial in Ireland, for relatives and friends.
“You should go to that,” your wife said, teasing you, not realizing that you felt sick to your stomach.
“Maybe I will,” you said,” with a bitterness that surprised you and did little to console you.
*
Before the Leaving Certificate, you talked about college, what it might be like. “We’ll get a flat in Ranelagh, or Rathgar,” Hugh said, “move in with some students from the College of Art. They throw the best parties and are all for free love.” He made the unimaginable sound possible. You’d break free of the shithole where you lived. You saw the world ahead in glorious technicolor. O the words that flowed from him. The light that surrounded him.
He was vague about what he’d study. You were definite. English Literature. That was your passion. You lived for it. You wanted to be a writer, but that was too precious a thing to be spoken aloud, too fragile, too breakable, even with Hugh, especially with Hugh. You picked up some Gallery Press collections. The poems set a flame in you, though you didn’t trust yourself to speak what you felt. And then, out of the blue, after you’d accepted your place in UCD, Hugh told you he was going to Trinity. Trinity? For fuck’s sake. It had never crossed your mind. Your mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.
“But,” you stuttered, “I thought we were going to UCD.”
“UCD? UCD is for culchies. Do you not know that?”
You’d pictured yourself wandering around in his shadow, letting him lead you through the labyrinth. And he hadn’t bothered to tell you. Hadn’t wanted to be encumbered. That was it, wasn’t it? You felt like a tool. How could you not have seen it? That was the beginning of the end of the enchantment, wasn’t it?
*
In college you met a girl who sang in the folk mass. And before you knew it you were sitting on floors, surrounded by candles, chanting and meditating. She took you to Taizé and you loved it. Loved the communal meals; the warm bread from the big oven; the accents; the different language; the joss sticks; the openness; the goodwill. You felt like a different person, free or something that you hadn’t known had oppressed you. You felt at home. And you didn’t worry what other people thought of you.
You met Hugh when you came back and tried to put into words what you had experienced. He looked at you like you were some exotic creature that both fascinated and repelled him.
“Heading to the Papal Mass, are you?”
You had enough gumption not to answer, but he knew from the way you blushed.
“For fuck’s sake. Well enjoy the rest of your life,” he said, over his shoulder, as he walked away, in his red trousers and white jacket, shaking his head. And you knew that was that. Whatever the test was, you had failed it.
*
You heard about the flat in Ranelagh, the parties, the coolest people. You imagined the free love. Pictured Rachel there, undressed. You were never invited. “Fuck him,” you said. And you went back to Taizé. It was your big show of defiance and independence, your two-fingered salute to Hugh, though he never knew about it, and wouldn’t have cared, anyway.
*
Out of the blue Rachel contacted you and you met in town and spent the day together. Drinking coffee, wandering through the art gallery. She asked you about Hugh and you knew that she, too, had been dropped. You couldn’t believe it. How can anyone have dumped Rachel? It addled you. She brought you back to her bedsit in Rathmines and took you to bed with her. It was your first time to go all the way with a girl and if you were hopeless she never said. You still remember her neat breasts, the dark purple of the areolae. Her need. Her kindness. You never called her. You were too much of a coward. You told yourself there were too many associations. Yeah, right. You were just a cowardly prick. Admit it.
*
You hung around with the folk-mass girl for a time, cycling your bikes all over the city, half-in-love in an innocent way. And then the folk group were invited to sing at Midnight Mass in Ballyfermot, by a young priest who’d been the chaplain in College. It was romantic cycling on a frosty night to a mass on Christmas Eve. Until you came out and your bike, your beautiful shiny, black bike, was gone. Robbed. And the first thought that came to you was how Hugh would have laughed at you. And you saw yourself through his eyes. And you blushed in spite of yourself. After that you and the folk-mass girl drifted apart.
*
It was an item on the Entertainment News. Sheryl Saunders, the film producer and socialite, in Dublin for a memorial service for her late husband.
*
You dither. You want to be there but how private is private? In the end you go, without telling your wife or anyone else. You’re back in your old stomping ground. There are more cars than you expect, and you have to park in a side street off the South Circular Road, outside a premise offering Thai massage. You hurry back, but the service has started by the time you arrive. You sit towards the back of the church and watch. You look for Rachel but she’s not here. The minister is Australian, a family friend. Hugh’ widow, Sheryl Saunders, is more beautiful in reality than in the photographs you’ve seen of her.
You recognize Hugh’s brother, the one who toured the Continent on a motorcycle. Beside him is his sister, the once young woman whom you fancied, though she was too old for you and treated you as a little kid. They sit side-by-side, both now in their seventies. They make you think of Hugh’s parents - his father, old IRA, with his soft hat, braces, and horn-rimmed glasses, reading the Irish Press, at the dining-room table, that was too big and formal for the space it occupied. And his mother, in her apron, with her hair tied in a bun, laughing at something her husband read aloud for her. They were old, then. Characters from the Abbey stage. You never understood why they lived in a Corporation house in Rialto. But you liked being there among them, watching. Not unwelcomed.
*
At the end of the service you approach the family and offer your condolences. Hugh’s widow is polite and distant. You make a half-hearted attempt to explain who you are, but her attention is already elsewhere, over your shoulder. The man who takes your elbow and guides you away is, you realize, with a start, her minder.
*
You follow the cars to the cemetery. It is a small enough gathering. At his parents’ grave, the urn is placed in the earth. The minister says a few prayers and Hugh’s widow gives a short address. She speaks very quietly, and her words do not a carry to where you are standing, at a discrete distance. You see Hugh’s brother look over in your direction, a few times. You smile and nod your head. The penny has finally dropped for him. You’ll meet after and be again what you once were – Hugh’s best friend. There’ll be reminiscing. You’ll be among people who will know what you’re talking about and won’t doubt you. You will belong.
*
The cortege goes back to the family home in Rialto, where Hugh’s brother still lives. More than anything you want to sit in the parlor. Relive that afternoon. Joan Armatrading is already playing in your mind.
*
The minder stops you at the front door.
“Strictly family,” he says. He is not friendly.
You start to explain but he cuts you off.
“Your presence at the cemetery made Miss Saunders and Mr O’ Donnell’s family uncomfortable. Please leave now.”
“Uncomfortable? No, there must be some mistake. Please.”
If there is, you’re the one who has made it and the minder lets you know in no uncertain terms.
*
You can’t go home. You walk down the South Circular Road, your feet moving you forward, step by mechanical step, past the red-brick houses behind their ornamental railings, past the old synagogue. You don’t even try to pretend that it doesn’t matter, that you don’t give a damn. Everything swirls in your head, lines from a song, images, snatches of conversation.
Hugh in the parlor speaking with passion on music.
Hugh stripped to his underpants.
Hugh inscribing a circle on your shiny new bike.
Hugh shaking his head as he walked away.
All these years, hoping he’d make contact. Hoping he’d validate the choices you’ve made; the woman you married; the few bits and pieces you’ve published.
You stop at the traffic lights. There’s a procession of cyclists.
You have the feeling that you had when you were sixteen, that everyone who passes is sniggering at you.
“You fucking eejit,” they’re saying. “Do you really think that you meant something to Hugh O’Donnell? That you registered with his family? That he spoke to them about you? Do you really believe that? You were a foil, that’s all, a disposable prop. And do you know what you are now? You’re a sap, that’s what you are, a fucking loser.”
You bite your lower lip with your teeth. You look at the cyclists coming your way. There’s one that looks like …Your heart races. ‘Jesus Christ,’ you think, ‘it couldn’t be’. When he passes you, looking straight ahead, it’s like someone has punched you in the stomach. You bend over with the pain. And you understand something. Were Hugh to pass here, now, on your shiny new bike, foil or no foil, you’d fall to the ground and worship him, like you have always worshipped him. Like you always will.
Were Hugh to pass here now.
But High will not pass, will he? And the passengers who gaze out the window of the passing bus take no notice of you at all.
Kevin Mc Dermott is a Dublin-based writer. He is the author of six novels for young adults. His writing for radio includes plays, feature-length documentaries, essays and short stories. His poems have been published in journals and magazines and broadcast on RTE, the Irish national broadcast service.
