Last Summer in Ireland. Anne Doughty
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and images flickering inside my head like the fleeing shadows on the grass.
I didn’t get much sleep in the two nights before the funeral, so on the day itself I seemed to see everything in the brightest Technicolor, with the sound turned up. The incredible noise of elderly relatives drinking tea or whiskey, according to sex, in the sitting room. The fallen petals from the wreaths tramped into the hall carpet. The bright green wing of Sandy’s eyeshadow. The frayed ends hanging down from the giant umbrella produced by the funeral director.
I felt slightly drunk most of the time, though I left the actual alcohol to Sandy and Matthew. Nevertheless, I felt very much in command of the situation. Like an anthropologist who has studied her tribe long and hard, I knew exactly what I should do at each point as the elaborate ritual unwound. I think I even managed to play my part with conviction. Matthew said I did it very well. Sandy was quite unambiguous in her praise: ‘You were just fantastic, Dee. Given how you really feel, you were incredible. I don’t know how you did it.’
In one way, it was all very easy. You simply didn’t allow your true feelings to get in the way. You let people have what they wanted, say what they wanted to say, believe what they wanted to believe, because that was what was important for them. Truth of any kind was the enemy, not to be allowed within the charmed circle of mourners and mourned.
In particular, Mother’s dying, lengthy, painful and diminishing, had to be rewritten to their liking. She had fought every step of the way, refused all the help and support the hospice had so richly offered, been critical and unpleasant to everyone she had come in contact with and repeated endlessly that her only wish was ‘to be out of this damn place and back to work’. But such facts, however true, are not relevant to those who gather to mourn.
The church was very full and very hushed. In contrast, the minister’s voice was very loud. It seemed to oscillate in harmony with the sudden drumming of rain on the roof and against the windows of the north aisle. I found its resonant boom strangely soothing. But the more it went on, the sleepier I got. I was listening to poetry in a foreign language. I was sure it was very good and no doubt apt to the occasion, but what was I supposed to say at the end of it all?
I sang the hymn vigorously, took deep breaths as I had been taught at choir practice and hoped that would help me to get through the address. We were asked to be seated. I composed myself.
‘Pearl Henderson, our dearly beloved sister in Christ, devout member of the church, unfailing servant of the Lord, whose triumph over death, whose courage in adversity was surely an inspiration to us all, goes before us into glory . . .’
As the words cascaded down upon me, I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. I just kept looking at the toes of my new black patent shoes. Even though I had polished them the previous evening, they seemed to be very dusty. I wondered if it was the shininess that attracted the dust and whether they would have been less dusty if I hadn’t polished them.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the Lord doesn’t have her the devil must.’ I was in the school playground, on a March day, bright with sun, the dust blowing in a sudden breeze, the long arc of a skipping rope curving before me, the chant of children’s voices.
But it was not children’s voices I was hearing, it was still the minister. Quieter now, more conversational, he was reading from his notes: ‘Pearl Henderson was the youngest member of a churchgoing family. Hers was a home where Jesus Christ was known and loved and Pearl brought that knowledge to her family life here in Armagh after her marriage. It was the faith and care of Christ that sustained her when, with her two children still very young, she lost her husband and bravely took up the role of breadwinner.’
One of the undertaker’s men had a dreadful cough. I looked across at him as he tried to muffle it in a huge striped handkerchief, but the more he tried the worse it got. By the time he’d recovered himself, the well-articulated voice had reached the 1980s. Mother’s active phase of building up the business gives way to ‘the opportunity for further public service through the Business and Professional Women’s Club of which she was secretary for many years’.
‘Cheerfulness, industry and efficiency. These were the keynotes of Pearl’s personality. Whenever she did something she did it well, and the Church had good cause to be grateful for her gifts, for who but Pearl could have organised so efficiently the Christmas bazaar. She would long be remembered for her magnificent needlework and tapestry, for her Swiss rolls and her Christmas puddings.’
I had forgotten the Christmas puddings. We dreaded them. I could see so vividly before me the huge bowl of sticky ingredients, the row of ready-greased containers, and hear the sharp edge in her voice should either of us dare come into the kitchen while she was preparing them. There were boiled eggs for supper when she cooked the puddings for the bazaar. She’d had enough of cooking and washing up for one day, she always said.
I was quite upset when the voice telling me the story about this wonderful woman stopped and instructed me to lift up my heart and sing another hymn. Halfway through, the undertaker’s men smartly turned the coffin through 180 degrees like a military manoeuvre, summoned Matthew to take his place at its leading edge, and left Sandy and me to our own devices.
‘Come on, Deirdre,’ I said to myself, as the funeral director caught my eye. ‘You’re back on parade. Get Sandy moving down that aisle beside you. No one else can move till you do. Another two hours and it’ll all be over.’
It was raining more gently as we stood on the muddy, tramped grass by the open grave. A sheet of plastic grass covered the mound of excavated earth. Like a model of Emain itself, it dominated the wet ditch into which minute rivulets dripped and splashed.
The coffin bore a shiny, brass plaque: ‘Pearl Henderson, Born 21 January 1926, Died 16 May 1986’. The saturated earth fell upon it and obliterated her lifespan.
The funeral director moved us on. Behind us, the undertaker’s men in black coats and well-polished shoes, were filling in the grave as if they were hard at work in their own back gardens. As we reached the paved path at the edge of the churchyard, I saw the departing mourners pause, turn and adjust their face muscles ready to address a member of the immediate family with the customary, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’
Rather like going to church each Sunday, even if you never sang, never listened and left it to the minister to do all the praying, to speak these words now would ensure your presence had been noted, a tick entered in the register that mattered most to you – God’s or your neighbour’s.
After the words had been spoken, it was equally important to draw a response from the family member in question, preferably a comment the deceased had made in happier times. This comment would be repeated when the funeral was discussed in those circles where Mother was known, exchanged for similar comments, leaving the speakers confident that they had done justice to the event.
‘Miss Henderson, I’m sorry for your trouble.’
Those who knew me called me Deirdre, but those who didn’t followed the old custom of not allowing marriage to intervene between a daughter and the death of a parent. They lined up and said their piece as they shook my hand.
‘Parker. Fred and Mary. We knew your Mother very well. So sad. Such a loss to the Church. And what a wonderful new shop she made after the bombing. Such energy. I wish there, were more like her.’
I nodded and smiled, thinking of Malvolio. ‘Mother often spoke of you. You used to help on the cake stall, didn’t you?’
There were dozens of them, all ready to present the speech they’d prepared. I’ve always had a good memory for detail and as my mother was voluble about her activities and concerns, I found I could place nearly all of them. Unfortunately, so much of my life passed before me as I did so that I felt like the proverbial drowning man.
At some point, the minister excused himself for another engagement and I became aware of the fact that Sandy and Matthew were nowhere to be seen.
The last hands were shaken, and then, only then, did I realise that the funeral director had been standing behind me all this time,