“I promise,” Elle said.
“Why did you do it?” Jane asked.
“It wasn’t good.”
“You didn’t have to burn it, Elle.”
Elle stayed quiet for a while. “Do you really forgive me, Janey?” she then asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want to hear an explanation?”
“No.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I know.”
Jane left then because she’d felt awkward and still angry and she needed to talk to Dr Griffin before she spoke to her sister openly and honestly. And since she’d spoken to Dr Griffin she’d been biding her time, delaying the inevitable. Jane wasn’t ready to face the possibility that Elle had a problem, so how could Elle do so?
They sat quietly waiting for the church to fill and the Mass to begin. In the front pew Ben Walsh was on the outside and beside him was Kate, her arm linked in his. Next in line was Eamonn, then his wife Frankie, Kate’s husband Owen, and Tom at the end. There was little or no talking among the main mourners.
Rose got up out of her seat and made her way back to where her daughters and Leslie were sitting. “Push in,” she said.
“What are you doing?” Jane whispered.
“It’s no fun on your own,” she said.
Elle grinned and pushed in.
“Push in a bit further,” Rose demanded, so that her view would be uninterrupted. They all pushed in for Rose. She sat in and looked around. “You’d think for such a Holy Joe she’d have a few more to her funeral.”
“Mum,” Elle said, “don’t be such a cow.”
“Sorry, darling.”
The priest came out and everyone stood, bar Rose. “You won’t catch me standing for one of those arrogant church bastards,” she whispered.
For the next forty minutes the priest talked and read the same old passages from the Bible that they always read when a person died, they said prayers, knelt, stood, sat, knelt, stood and sat, and then knelt, stood and sat some
more. Leslie, Elle and Jane got up and queued to receive Holy Communion. Rose sat where she was. “You won’t catch me taking Communion from one of those arrogant church bastards,” she whispered. After Communion and before the priest gave the last blessing he invited Breda’s family to come up to the altar and talk about her. Ben couldn’t find it in him to speak because it was all he could do to stand. Eamonn got up, walked onto the altar and took a second or two to compose himself.
“This is the good bit,” Rose said.
Leslie, Elle and Jane ignored her.
Eamonn cleared his throat. “I’d like to thank everyone for coming here today. My mother would have been really pleased with the turnout.”
Rose looked around with a face on her which suggested that if Breda would be impressed she certainly wasn’t.
“My mother was a good person. She was kind, caring, giving, friendly, happy most of the time. She wasn’t jealous or boastful, she wasn’t selfish and she wasn’t hurtful. She believed in God. She believed in prayer and she came here nearly every day of her life until recently. Most of you know we lost Alexandra in June 2007. My mother believed that God would save her. She believed that He would bring her home. ‘She’s still with us, Eamonn,’ she’d say. ‘She’ll be home any day, any day now. God will deliver her from evil.’ When God didn’t deliver her from evil my mother got so sad and so sick that it made me angry about all the time she’d wasted here on her knees. But then I thought, What if God couldn’t deliver Alexandra because Alexandra was already gone? What if the pain and suffering of my mother’s loss was so great that instead of delivering Alexandra from evil
He delivered my mother instead? Who knows what’s real and what isn’t? My mother took comfort in believing in a God who could hear her, and I may not be the most religious of people but today of all days and for her sake I’d like to think He did. Thank you.”
Elle was crying and Jane squeezed her hand. “That was lovely,” Elle said.
Leslie was silent but nodded in agreement. Rose blew her nose.
Jane, Leslie and Elle joined the queue to sympathize with the family.
Jane sympathized with Owen, then Frankie and Eamonn. “That was really lovely,” she said.
“Thanks. I hope she would have liked it,” Eamonn said.
“She would have loved it.”
Eamonn hugged her. “Every time I see you I think of Alexandra. I miss her, Janey.”
“I know you do, Eamonn,” Jane said, and her eyes filled. “I miss her too.” She moved on to Kate, who hugged her and thanked her for coming, and then to Ben, whose blue eyes were swimming. “I’m so sorry, Mr Walsh.”
“Thanks, Jane.”
She reached Tom and shook his hand, but he drew her into a hug and they held each other tightly – so much so that Kate and Frankie both noticed. Frankie smiled at them. Jane pulled back. “I’ll see you in the graveyard,” she said, and Tom nodded.
Elle and Leslie were following and shaking hands and Kate reminded Ben that Elle was the girl who had painted all the pictures of the Missing and that Leslie had been behind the findingalexandra website.
“Thank you, girls, thank you so much.”
They both nodded and told them how sorry they were.
It was odd but all three women, Jane, Elle and Leslie, felt like they weren’t just at Breda’s funeral but that they were at Alexandra’s too. They discussed it in the car on the way to the graveyard. Leslie was the first to bring it up but the two others were quick to agree. Rose congratulated herself on being the only one who had worked out the woman was dead a long time ago.
“We’re not saying she’s dead, Rose,” Jane said.
“Oh, fine, Janey – the funeral felt like it was for both Alexandra and Breda and yet you’re not saying you think she’s dead. Are you in the habit of burying the living?”
They arrived at the graveyard, parked the car and followed the crowd to the plot that would be Breda’s final resting place. As they walked in line the heavens opened and heavy rain fell, drenching them all in seconds.
“Oh, for fock’s sake!” Rose said, and Jane nudged her.
They walked from grave to grave under a dark and forbidding sky.
Eamonn stood over his mother’s grave, soaked to the skin, and he told the crowd who were gathering around him and his family that his father had chosen the casket his mother would rest in, Kate had chosen the flowers, he’d chosen the readings and the music would be chosen by Alexandra. “She loved Jack Lukeman and this is one of her favourite songs. I know my mother would like it and it seems appropriate. It’s called ‘Rooftop Lullaby’.” He nodded at Owen who pressed play on the CD player and everybody stood in silence. Eamonn dropped his head and stared at the coffin in the ground.
“
Mother, is there something in the sky?
Something up there that they hide
,
a jewel for me and you
,
apple trees with falling fruit
.”
Kate held an umbrella over her father’s head.
“
Oh Daughter, now I don’t know
but I believe that its beauty’s beyond words
,
it’s like a tune that I can’t sing
but I’ve heard it sung by birds
.
It’s a rooftop lullaby
falling from the sky
sends us to sleep tonight
.
It’s the apple in your eye
keeps you as sweet as pie
,
dreaming through the night
.”
Kate’s husband Owen held his umbrella over her.
“
Oh Father, now won’t you tell me
if you know where does half the moon go
when it’s not up in the sky
it disappears before my eyes
.”
Ben Walsh stood in silence, looking into the middle distance, unable to bring himself to look at the box that held his wife beneath him.
“
Oh my son, why does morning break each day
why do people pass away?
”
The rain continued to fall on the people gathered in the graveyard and the people outside walking by and trying to get on with their day. It fell in the cities and the suburbs. It fell by the coast and it fell on the mountains … and under a dark sky, under dead foliage and in a forgotten part of the Dublin mountains, the rain fell so heavily that the earth slid and moved, and under that dark sky, dead foliage and in that forgotten part of Dublin’s mountains, a high-heeled black boot poked through.
“
Oh it’s the mystery in truth
it’s the innocence in youth
or a rooftop lullaby
falling from the sky
sends us to sleep tonight
,
it’s the apple in your eye
keeps you as sweet as pie
dreaming through the night
.”
Chapter 16
I Ain’t Crazy
Life’s a little mystery waiting to be solved
,
questions they come pouring down with a little pinch of salt
,
forever poised to conquer, forever poised to fall
but every time I close my eyes I hear these voices call
.
Jack L,
Metropolis Blue
December 2008
Leslie had successfully avoided Jim for a month when eventually, through his tenacity and refusal to take no for an answer, she gave in and met him for a walk. They walked in silence engaging in a little small-talk, and when they found a little bench by a bandstand they sat watching a young band play to a small group of their teenage friends. Jim told her that he had gone home and felt very stupid the night he had given her Imelda’s letter. He further explained that it was not his intention to suggest that the only reason he was in Leslie’s life was because his dead wife had asked him to be. Jim hadn’t considered for a moment that Leslie would jump to that conclusion but now he felt a bit of a fool for not considering the possibility. His intention had been to show Leslie how brave she was and how proud her sister would have been to see her not only surviving but living. He wanted her to know how happy seeing
her surviving and living made him. He wanted her to know that he cared for her.
“But you don’t love me,” Leslie said quietly.
“I think that I do,” he said.
“But?” Leslie said, sensing the word was coming.
“But you’ve just gone through a massive life-changing operation.”
“It’s been more than four months.”
“That’s no time.”
“You think I’m using you,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I would never think that.”
“You think we could never have anything because you belong to Imelda,” she said.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I let Imelda go a long time ago.”
“But you never remarried,” she said.
“Because the relationships I had didn’t work out. Age, distance, incompatibility – there were a million and one other reasons that had nothing to do with Imelda.”
“Do you think you could really love me?” Leslie asked.
“I do,” he said.
“So?”
“So I’m scared. Are you really ready for love?”
“I am,” she said.
“Don’t just say that, think about it.”
“I have.”
“Please, think about it again.”
“Why?”
“Because I survived losing one Sheehan. I don’t think I could survive losing two.”
“I’m ready. I’m ready for you. If you’ll have me?” she
said, and he smiled, showing his dimples, and he kissed her right there on a bench in front of ten teenagers nodding to the worst rock band in the free world.
It was Christmas week, which was always Elle’s favourite time of year. She loved spending time in town, walking among the hordes of shoppers and the dancing lights and beautiful window displays. She liked the big twinkling trees and the
faux
snow and the cold crisp air that reddened her nose.
She’d felt strangely contented since she’d spoken with Jane after Breda’s funeral. Jane had driven them home and, when her mother had gone for a nap having nearly drunk the Walshes out of house and home, Jane had made her way to Elle’s cottage and they had sat and talked. Jane told Elle about their father and what he had done, and contrary to Jane’s reaction, Elle’s was considered and calm because to Elle her father’s actions made perfect sense.