Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

Donna appeared at the door. Niamh had never been able to bring herself to call her mother-in-law anything other than Mrs Macfarlane. She might have been inconsolable, but she stood now with a face like gneiss. Whatever grieving was going on inside was not visible on the exterior. She said, ‘Seonag told us you were coming.’ A pause. ‘It might have been nice if you had told us yourself.’

Niamh stiffened. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you on the sabbath. But I did tell Donald that I would be here today.’ She glanced at Donald and he blushed to the roots of his ginger hair. Niamh had little doubt that he had told them just that. But Mrs Macfarlane revelled in being contrary. Niamh said, ‘I didn’t see Seonag’s car down by the office.’

‘She’s been and gone,’ Mr Macfarlane said. ‘Off to collect some finished cloth from the mill at Shawbost.’

Niamh nodded. ‘We need to talk about funeral arrangements.’ It sounded so blunt and businesslike, but she had no idea how else to say it.

‘You can leave that to us,’ Mrs Macfarlane said. ‘I think it’s down to the family to organize the funeral.’

Niamh felt anger colour her grief. But she retained control. ‘As his wife, and next of kin, I am his family.’ She saw Mrs Macfarlane bristle. ‘But I do think we ought to agree on the details together.’ The last thing she wanted was to fall out with Ruairidh’s parents.

‘Aye.’ Mr Macfarlane nodded his approval, but his wife was not to be so easily mollified.

‘Was he really having an affair with some Russian fashion designer?’ she demanded, as if it might all somehow be Niamh’s fault.

‘I have no idea. It’s what they’re saying.’

A puff of contempt blew from between puckered lips. ‘I think if my husband was having an affair with a Russian fashion designer I would have known about it.’

Niamh glanced at an awkward Mr Macfarlane, who didn’t know where to look. Niamh wanted to say, If your husband was having an affair with anyone, Mrs Macfarlane, who could blame him? But she bit back the retort. Instead she said, ‘Whether or not Ruairidh was having an affair is not something I’m going to discuss with you, or anyone else.’

‘What about Ranish, then?’ she said coldly.

‘What about it?’

‘We need to discuss the future of the company.’

And finally Niamh lost patience. ‘For God’s sake! I’m here to talk about burying your son. Not some business venture. Frankly, right now I don’t give a damn about the future of Ranish. I don’t know how it even finds a place in your thoughts.’

For the first time, Mrs Macfarlane appeared chastened and at a loss for words.

Mr Macfarlane said, ‘Donald tells us you’ve brought the body back with you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s it being kept?’

‘It’s in the boot of the car, Mr Macfarlane.’ And she saw the shock on both their faces, glancing then at Donald, who blushed again. She realized there were things he had clearly felt unable to tell them. She said quickly, ‘I phoned the funeral director in Stornoway first thing this morning to make an appointment. We should probably all go together.’

The cardboard box with its plastic shipping straps sat on the table in front of them. No one knew quite what to say. The awful realization that this was all that was left of her son had reduced Donna Macfarlane to tearful silence.

The funeral director, Alasdair Macrae, stood with his back to the window, looking at it thoughtfully. Here was a man who had seen and dealt with all manner of death, all degrees of grief. A dapper, soft-spoken man with sympathetic blue eyes and the smudge of a sandy moustache on his upper lip. Coffins in racks rose from floor to ceiling against one wall. And through the window behind him Niamh saw a line of refuse bins pushed against the wall. One blue, two black with coloured lids. For recycling the refuse. Just as here, on the inside, they recycled death.

Mr Macrae had already removed and examined the shipping papers, and now he took a knife to cut the strapping and lift the coffin for stillborns from inside its box. He picked it up, almost as if weighing it, and said, ‘Come through to the back.’

Niamh and Donald and his parents trooped along a corridor with a shiny linoleum floor into a workshop at the rear of the building. A large clear plastic fanlight let daylight through into the workshop where they had once made the coffins on site. Old workbenches were pushed against painted breeze-block walls, and two coffins stood, lengthwise, on trestles in the middle of the floor. The funeral director removed the lid from one to reveal that beneath its veneer the coffin was constructed of biodegradable MDF.

‘I’ll line the interior as I normally would,’ he said, ‘and place pillows at the head of it. We have to do things properly.’ He laid the box of Ruairidh’s remains in the middle of the coffin and looked around for a couple of cardboard boxes to brace it at either end. ‘I’ll construct something like this to hold it in place, so it doesn’t slide about when it’s being carried by the bearers. I’ll make it look nice, of course. Even if nobody sees it.’

Niamh put her hand to her mouth and bit down hard along the length of her forefinger. This was almost too much to bear. The dreadful banality that came in the aftermath of death. Everything practical for the dispatch of the body following the departure of life. And yet it all had to be gone through, step by painful step. The road to closure. The consignment of a lover to eternity.

Outside the rain had begun to fall, swept in across the Barvas Moor from the west coast. Stornoway was a dull town in the rain. Figures huddled in coats and hats, bent over against the wind. Umbrellas were rare, and never lasted more than a few minutes. They could hear the plaintive cries of seagulls circling the inner harbour below.

It was possible to pass the funeral parlour in this residential back street without noticing. The only indication being discreet gold lettering painted on a small square of window. A*MACRAE FUNERAL DIRECTORS. Barely two doors along stood the Body & Sole beauty parlour. Opposite, the Associated Presbyterian Church. This was a street, it seemed, that catered for all aspects of life and death.

The funeral was set for Wednesday at the cemetery at Dalmore Beach, the irony of which was not lost on any of them. Two more days, and all that was left of Ruairidh would be dispatched to the earth for good.

Inside, Mrs Macfarlane had said, ‘The coffin should be available at the house for mourners to pay their last respects.’ And Mr Macrae had promised to deliver it to the croft at Balanish by that evening.

Now, as they stood outside in the rain, she said, ‘I’ll arrange things with the minister.’ And although Niamh had wanted to keep control of the process, she was almost relieved to pass on the baton. It had been a long and painful journey, and she was not at all sure she had the strength to see it through to the end.

By late afternoon the wind had blown the rain away, and gathered in strength. From the clifftops at Cellar Head, Niamh felt buffeted by it. Far out across the Minch she saw the rain still falling, like a mist obliterating the swell of the sea and the mainland beyond. The ocean thrashed white against black rocks two hundred feet below, and she wondered how it might feel simply to step off into the void, spreading her arms like a bird and falling to oblivion. No more pain, no more grief, no more missing Ruairidh, or contemplating the life that lay ahead without him. But she did not have the courage for that.

Half a mile further along the coast, she could see the house they had made together standing proud and defiant on the promontory, and beyond it the ruined house and church built by Iain Fiosaich. A hundred years from now, she wondered, what would remain of their home? Would it vanish without trace like Ruairidh and Niamh themselves? Would anyone remember them, as folk today still remembered Iain Fiosaich and his wealthy wife from New York?