‘Oh, he’s terribly like,’ I say to his mother, whose name, I realise, is Sarah. I knew all along that this is what she was called.
‘Yes,’ she says.
And the look that passes between us is one of absolute regard.
‘Will you come and sit with us?’ I say, indicating the top of the church, though I know this might not be the best moment to break the news.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Oh, no. I’m sorry, I just got in.’
‘That’s all right,’ I say. ‘You’ll come back after?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ she says. ‘I think I should.’
‘Yes, you should. You should.’
The mourners’ car has arrived outside, but I can not, I find, leave the boy. I get down on my hunkers and I smile. He hides again. I reach out my arms and he edges further back. He knows my need for him is too great. And then, evil person that I am, I say, ‘Afterwards, you know, if you come back with all of us, there will be buckets and buckets of ice cream.’
He likes that one all right.
Here they come: my mother, tiny and round and bobbing on Bea’s elegant arm. Mossie on the other side, also tall, and handsome in the way that professional men can be; his gentle wife; his three too-perfect children; Ita in a slow march; the twins, Ivor and Jem, who bump together and separate, all the way up the aisle. Kitty, my little sister, stops to take my hand, in a quietly theatrical way. As I turn to leave, Sarah nods to say that she will not disappear, that she knows who she is, and what she has come here for.
I make my way up to the top of the church and am drowned in the emotion, whether love or sadness, that floods my chest. My face sets into the mask of a woman weeping, one half pulled into a wail that the other half will not allow. There are no tears. My head twists away from whichever side of the church is more interested in my grief, only to show it to the other side. Here it is. The slow march of the remaining Hegartys. I don’t know what wound we are showing to them all, apart from the wound of family. Because, just at this moment, I find that being part of a family is the most excruciating possible way to be alive.
Tom turns, and when he sees my face, he stops. He hands me in to the seat in front of him, and the girls follow me on the other side.
‘All right?’ he says, slipping his hand over mine, while Emily turns in to cling to me-or, if the truth be told, to stroke my breasts while pretending to admire (or console, perhaps) the covered buttons of my good, funeral coat.
‘Leave your mother alone,’ says Tom.
Indeed. I have been so much touched these last few days. I cross my legs over the memory of the sex we had the night of the wake. Or he had. And wait for the Mass to begin. Everyone wants a bit of me. And it has nothing to do with what I might want, or what my body might want, whatever that might be-God knows it is a long time since I knew. There I am, sitting on a church bench in my own meat: pawed, used, loved, and very lonely.
Actually, I do know what I want. I want whoever touched the small of my back in Mammy’s kitchen to declare himself. To say, again, that everything will be all right. Because I felt someone’s loving touch, and I was-but completely-reassured by it, before I turned to see that there was no one there.
Also, I want Rowan. I yearn for him, not with lips or hands, but with my entire face. My skin wants him. I want to nuzzle him, and feel his light hair tickle my chin. I want to flutter my eyelashes against his cheek.
This spooling fantasy runs through my head through all that follows: the Mass and the stupid old priest and Ernest’s few words from the altar.
Liam was never interested in material things, says Ernest. He had a great sense of humour.
‘My brother had a rage for justice,’ he says, not mentioning how this might turn to bus-kicking, in drink. But it is done well enough. The words are well enough spoken, while behind me, my great, and soon-to-be-broken, secret shouts, ‘Hallo! Hallo!’ in broad South London at the back of the church.
We do the whole thing. We follow the box out down the aisle again and as soon as we hit open air, I say it to Tom.
‘Do you remember the girl? That girl who came with him the last time, or the second-last time.’
‘What girl?’
‘Remember the girl who wouldn’t eat, with a face on her, when we had the builders in?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says.
‘He was horrible to her.’
‘Oh, yeah. Her.’
‘She was pregnant,’ I say. ‘She was pregnant at the time.’
‘By him?’
‘Oh, there’s no doubting the child,’ I said. ‘It’s Liam. To the life.’
The Hegartys are stuck in the porch, shaking five hundred people’s hands. I don’t know half of them, and I don’t care. I am waiting for Sarah to come through so I can take her aside and figure how to do this thing.
‘I’m very sorry for your trouble.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m very sorry.’
‘It’s a great loss.’
All of them apologising for the fact that someone you love is dead, when the world is full of people you don’t.
‘I knew him at school,’ says one man to me, transforming, even as the words happen, from a middle-aged stranger to Willow of the vodka naggin and the beautiful older brother. He is absolutely himself, and this confuses me. I can’t get the picture of a middle-aged man back, now that I know who he is.
‘Oh, Willow,’ I say, like a schoolgirl fool. Love is one thing, but there are so many people in the world to like, that we never see.
It’s a heady business, burying the dead.
I wait until we are at the hotel, and even then I am reluctant to break the news. I can not hand it to Bea, the owner of all the Hegartys. I can’t expose it to Ivor’s irony, or Ita’s intelligence, or Mossie’s wonderful management skills. I need a child to do this, or a grown-up child.
‘Come here, Jem,’ I say to my little brother; the youngest and best loved. And I watch him go round the others; Mammy last. Bea tries to make her sit down, but she will not sit down. Mammy stands up and undoes the top button of her blouse, and, wild-eyed, pulls off her coat, casting around her as she does so, stuck in the second sleeve. She finds Sarah and the child, as Bea yanks the last of the coat off her arm, and she hurries over, runs even, to set her hands on the child’s shoulders, then up on either side to graze his lovely face. She looks at Sarah, with a terrible contract in her eye, and Sarah steps forward, very politely, to shake her hand. After which, as though none of this had happened, Mammy turns away.
It is hard to describe the effect of the boy on the assembled Hegartys.
‘Rowan?’ they say. ‘Rowan.’
It is like we had never seen a child before. He has the Hegarty eyes, we say-delighted, like they weren’t a curse-and we look to see what human being looks out through them, this time. It is too uncanny. Everyone wants to touch him. They just have to-they reach out and he shies away; flinches, even. The one he chooses for safe haven is, of all people, Mossie, who sits him on one long leg and jounces him, hard, Ride a cock horse, threatening to spill him on to the floor. Mossie, who was for Liam a dark mirror, loves the boy and the boy loves him. Mossie’s own children gather round, and for the first time I see how happy they are-that is why they are so well-behaved, with their gentle mother and their father who is firm but fair: they are content.
This seems like an amazing thing to notice about your own brother, after so many years-it is almost more amazing than the fact of Liam’s son. Maybe that is because the accident of Liam’s son is too fantastic to contemplate, in the middle of a hotel reception room, in the suburbs of Dublin, where two hundred people I sort of know are sitting down to soup or melon, followed by salmon or beef.