No one who arrives for the removal – at the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven in Dolanstown – is seen holding a copy of the Evening Herald.
From about five o’clock on, mourners start drifting into the church. There are a lot of people from the area: friends and neighbours of Catherine’s; friends and ‘associates’ of Noel’s; Terry Stack, naturally; his entourage; friends of Yvonne’s and Michelle’s; friends of Gina’s. There are onlookers (friends of no one’s in particular), as well as a local councillor, a few journalists, a few photographers, and maybe one or two plainclothes detectives.
Our Lady Queen of Heaven, built in the early fifties, is enormous, a brick and granite echo chamber that can hold up to fifteen hundred people. When the ceremony starts, it is almost a quarter full. Sitting in the front pew, next to the coffin, are Catherine and her three sisters. In the couple of pews behind them are immediate family – Yvonne’s husband and their three kids, Michelle’s partner and their two, plus other family members, cousins, two aunts, an uncle.
Behind them is everyone else, the congregation thinning out farther back in the church.
Catherine is staring at the altar. She took a Xanax before coming out, and feels numb. Her mouth is dry. Every few minutes – literally, since Monday night – it’s been hitting her, the news, what happened… and each time it’s as though she’s hearing it for the first time. Her mind goes blank and then it hits her. Her mind goes blank and then it hits her again. But at least now it’s like someone hitting her with the cardboard tube from a roll of kitchen paper. Before it was like someone hitting her with a baseball bat.
The news about her brother, on the other hand, has barely sunk in at all.
It has for Yvonne, Michelle and Gina, though. They are grieving for Catherine and her loss, but also for their brother, Noel, and it’s pretty much unbearable. One day you’re going about your business, everything is normal, and the next you’re plunged into an abyss of anguish and pain.
Who could make sense of that?
Certainly not this Father Kerrigan, it occurs to Gina. As the priest walks out of the sacristy and onto the altar, she feels a mild hostility rippling across the surface of her grief. Everyone stands up, and the sound of a few hundred people collectively shuffling to their feet reverberates throughout the church. Father Kerrigan positions himself at the lectern and leans towards the microphone. He is a portly man in his fifties. He has receding hair and is wearing glasses. He makes the sign of the cross.
‘In the name of the Father,’ he says, leading the congregation, ‘and of the Son -’
Gina doesn’t move or say anything.
‘- and of the Holy Spirit.’
Father Kerrigan’s amplified voice and the voices of the crowd echo loudly. It is such a familiar sound, a sound from her childhood. Gina hasn’t been inside this church for at least ten years, not since her mother died. She looks around. She looks at the marble pillars, the confession boxes, the statues of Our Lady, the Stations of the Cross represented in paintings that line the walls on either side.
She really can’t believe this is happening.
Back at the house someone offered her a Xanax, but she refused it. She knows that Yvonne and Michelle took a half one each, and already, coming from the funeral parlour to the church, she could see the medication taking effect, could see her sisters retreating into its quiet, chilly cocoon.
Gina can understand the attraction here. Her own mind is a riot of thoughts and emotions, and she’d love to put it temporarily out of commission, or even calm it down – but not at the expense of clarity, or of rawness, or of anger.
Most of what she’s feeling makes a kind of sense to her, and she doesn’t want to lose that. The rawness certainly makes sense. She has cried a lot over these past couple of days and has felt a depth of sorrow she hadn’t previously known was possible.
But she’s been angry a lot of the time, too, and although that makes sense to a degree, it doesn’t make sense entirely. Her anger at the seeming randomness of what happened makes sense. Her anger at what she’s learned about her nephew’s activities makes sense, as does her anger at what’s been suggested might have caused her brother’s accident – but she’s angry about something else as well, and she doesn’t know what that is.
It’s below the surface. It’s like a scrambled password, a piece of code.
It’s what doesn’t make sense.
It’s the two Noels.
As Gina listens to the liturgy, and to the readings, and to the extravagant promises about souls reposing in the afterlife, she strains to see a pattern in events, something that might explain what happened. She’s sure there is one, because randomness only goes so far – it’s an easy way out, shorthand for I give up, for defeat, for what her mother’s generation would have called God’s will. But for Gina that’s not enough. For Gina, what happened on Monday night is simply too random.
There has to be a more satisfactory explanation.
As Father Kerrigan steps forward to say a few words, Gina braces herself, expecting the worst, platitudes, condescension. Soon, though, she has to admit that he’s doing a pretty good job in the circumstances. Young Noel isn’t exactly a shoo-in for Paradise and yet the priest manages to say some simple, affecting things about life – regardless of how it is lived – and about death.
But it is when the ceremony ends and the members of the congregation file past the front pew that Gina wishes she’d taken a tranquilliser after all. Because this most public part of the ordeal is very intense. It’s exhausting, and emotionally draining. Knowing that they have to go through it again tomorrow doesn’t exactly help either.
Every once in a while Gina glances to her left to see how the others are coping. Of course it’s a lot harder for Catherine, who not unreasonably breaks down several times, the sudden appearance of a familiar face triggering fresh waves of tears and sobbing.
For her part, Gina doesn’t recognise many of the faces at all. Sophie passes, as does P.J., and a couple of others from work. She recognises a few of the neighbours from when she was a kid. She thinks she recognises one or two of Noel’s associates. She’s seen their photos in the papers.
She definitely recognises Terry Stack.
He has an unmistakable air about him, of arrogance, of self-regard. He’s quite short and lean and rugged-looking. When he reaches out to shake her hand, Gina notices a flicker of interest in his eyes.
Who’s your one?
He nods. She nods back but keeps her head down. The line shuffles on.
Afterwards, on the steps of the church and in the car park, people mingle and things loosen up a bit. Sophie comes up to Gina and they hug. P.J. comes up to her as well. They haven’t spoken since the other day on the phone, and they clearly need to talk, but – equally clearly – that’s not going to happen now. At one point, Father Kerrigan is passing. Gina stops him, shakes his hand and thanks him. Yvonne sticks close by Catherine, holding her arm, as they move slowly through the crowd. Michelle stands at the side with Dan, her partner, and her two kids. She’s clutching an unlit cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other, and looks lost.
People are invited back to the house for something to drink, or at least that was the idea before it became clear how many people this might involve. But then word quickly gets around that Terry Stack is taking over Kennedy’s pub down the road, and that tea, coffee, sandwiches and drink are available for anyone who wants to come along, all taken care of, all in honour of Noel.
Gina sees Stack over with Catherine now, arms around her for a second, then looking into her eyes, talking to her – Noel this, she imagines, Noel that. Catherine was always ambivalent about Noel’s association with Stack, but she’s vulnerable at the moment and he’s probably laying it on with a trowel.