Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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was astounded at the numbers who attended the funeral of Ted and Nuala on 26 April. Paul Simmons had helped him make all the arrangements and had insisted on paying for everything. He had closed the factory as a mark of respect, but even so, Stan was amazed by those from the workforce who attended. Ted, Paul said, was very well thought of by everyone who met him, and many of the men who’d shaken Stan by the hand and commiserated with him on his loss said similar things. So also, it seemed, was Nuala liked and the pews were packed with neighbours and special friends of hers, mothers she met at the school gates, and those from the Mothers’ Union she used to attend regularly. Many were in tears.
Added to this, all of Paul’s family came too – his father and mother, and two sisters and their husbands, all of whom still remembered what they had owed to Ted. They seemed genuinely shocked by his death and that of his young wife. Not that it was spoken of openly and certainly not in front of the children, who had both insisted on attending.
Molly had remained dry-eyed, her distress and sense of loss too deep for tears, though she held on to Kevin’s hand to take comfort from the child as well as to give it, as the tears dribbled down his cheeks ceaselessly.
As they stood at the graveside, they were warmed by the bright sun shining down from a sky of Wedgwood blue, and somehow this made the tragic deaths even more poignant. As the clods of earth fell with dull thuds on the coffins they seemed to reverberate in Molly’s brain. Dead! Dead! Dead! Kevin’s sobs became more audible and Biddy moved towards the child purposefully, but he pushed her away and turned instead to his grandfather. Stan held the little boy’s shuddering body tight. He didn’t urge him to stop crying either thinking he had a good enough reason to break his heart.
He envied him in a way because he would have liked the opportunity to go home now and lock the door and cry his eyes out. Instead, he knew he had to lead the mourners to the room at the back of the Lyndhurst pub which Paul Simmons had booked, and make small talk with the people who had come to pay their respects.
When he’d first been discussing the funeral arrangements with Mr Simmons, Stan, who had thought the mourners would only amount to a handful, said he intended to invite them back to the house. Mr Simmons had said he thought a room at a pub might be better and Stan, not up to arguing and certainly not with a toff, had agreed reluctantly.
He had thought though the few people he had anticipated coming would look silly and maybe feel out of place, but it wasn’t that way at all. He looked at the crush of people around him in the room the pub had allocated them and was glad he had agreed. Kevin still held tight to his hand as Father Clayton, who had said the Requiem Mass, approached them.
Father Clayton liked Stan, with whom he was not above sparring and joking, as he had liked Ted, and thought them fine men. He couldn’t understand for the life of him why they hadn’t turned Catholic and embraced the one true faith.
That day though, Kevin’s large brown eyes still swam with tears as he turned them on the priest and demanded, ‘What did God want with my mammy and daddy?’
Father Clayton didn’t have an answer that would satisfy the child. ‘We don’t understand the ways of God, Kevin.’
‘Not even you?’
‘Not even me.’
‘Well, then,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s the point of it all? That means that God can go round doing what He likes and you just say we can’t understand and that.’ He stamped his foot suddenly and cried in a high voice full of hurt and confusion, ‘I want to know. I think we needed Mammy and Daddy much more than He did.’
‘Kevin!’ The name was said like a pistol shot.
Kevin jumped and his eyes were full of foreboding as he watched his grandmother approach. ‘Now you see the level of my concern that I explained to you this morning when I called in to introduce myself and arrange an appointment?’ Biddy complained to Father Clayton. ‘The child has not even been taught how to address a priest correctly, and as for questioning the ways of our Good Lord, well, words fail me totally.’
Before the priest had time to reply, Stan burst in, ‘I think Kevin has a perfect right to ask what manner of God it was at all who allowed his parents to be taken away, and who else to ask but the priest? So you just leave him alone.’ He turned to Father Clayton and went on before Biddy could speak, ‘We’re taught that God loves us, aren’t we? Well, He sure as hell didn’t show much love to poor Nuala and Ted. That’s how I feel and so I know exactly what young Kevin means.’
So did Father Clayton, and he was glad he had been the one assigned to take the Mass and not Father Monahon, for he would have torn the child to ribbons if he had been silly enough to say those things in front of him. As for Stan, a non-Catholic, Father Monahon would have a total lack of understanding for his pain. To Father Monahon, Catholicism and the pursuit of it was all that mattered. He was like the maternal grandmother, just recently arrived from Ireland, no doubt a devout and ardent Catholic, but not a woman he could take to at all. Father Clayton turned to her now as she burst out, ‘D’you hear that, Father? Blasphemy, and before the child too. As if I could leave a child in a home where such views are felt and, even worse, expressed. The sooner I get them both to Ireland the better I’ll like it.’
‘Come now …’ the priest began soothingly.
He got no further, for what the women had said had penetrated Kevin’s brain. He had been shocked into silence when she had shouted at him, but now he said, ‘What do you mean about going to Ireland?’
‘Just what I say,’ Biddy almost hissed. ‘You and your sister are coming to live with me.’
‘Oh no I’m not! I ain’t,’ Kevin cried desperately. ‘I’m staying with my granddad, I am. Aren’t I, Granddad?’ He appealed as Stan stayed silent. ‘Tell her, Granddad. Go on, tell her.’
‘Ah, yes, tell me?’ Biddy mocked.
‘Have you no shame?’ Stan demanded of her coldly. ‘We have just buried the child’s parents. You might be holier than I am, but there isn’t a kind bone in your body.’
‘But it ain’t true, is it?’ Kevin cried. At the grave expression on his granddad’s face, he felt suddenly cold, afraid and lonely as he insisted, ‘Say it ain’t true, Granddad. Tell her.’
‘May your God forgive you,’ Stan said, picking Kevin up in his arms, ‘for I will struggle to do so.’
Father Clayton watched Stan stride across the room and knew he was going to go somewhere quiet and explain to the child that his suffering was far from over yet. That now he had to go to some alien place with a woman he was so obviously scared of and live there until he was adult and could choose for himself. And tell him too there wasn’t a damned thing either of them could do about it. The priest felt suddenly terribly dispirited and heavy, as if his body was filled with lead.
‘They’re both wilful, those children,’ Biddy said fiercely. ‘Too fond of getting their own way and totally disrespectful.’
‘You don’t think it’s just that they are both still in shock and missing their parents, and maybe a little afraid of the future?’ the priest put in mildly.
‘I don’t go along with all this psychological claptrap,’ Biddy said. ‘Their parents are dead and gone, and that’s that, and it is obvious they will have to live with me. I am putting myself out too, you know? Do you think I want to start rearing children at my time of life?’
‘Then why do it?’ The words were out before the priest could stop them.
Biddy stared at him coldly. ‘I would have thought you of all people would not have to ask that question,’ she said, ‘I know my duty and do not approve of my grandchildren being brought up with a heathen.’
‘Stan Maguire is no heathen,’ Father Clayton said quite heatedly because the woman was annoying him greatly.
‘I don’t see how you can say that so categorically when the man worships nowhere and neither did his son,’ Biddy said.