Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

He was lying on the bed with her when she died.

He must have been wondering where she was gone. Did he know it was her in the coffin, with her feet pointing away from the altar? It was a very big funeral, the church was packed. Maybe he was looking for her, among all the people there, that’s what I’m thinking, that’s why he barked. There was lots of singing, all the songs she had picked out herself. Buddy was well used to hearing people singing. Down in Clare. He was used to lying on the floor of a pub and hearing somebody breaking into a song and holding on to the bar counter. He probably even knew her favourite song, if that’s possible, what do you think? A song in Irish. A song that she used to sing herself or say the words of, repeating the last lines again and again to herself about something that never comes again.

She didn’t believe in the afterlife. There is no such thing as the next life, she said. This is the next life we’re having right now, here, this minute. She said her life was no more than Buddy’s life, only that she could read and write and remember the words of a song, that was all.

She didn’t know why she was having a church funeral, but where else would you have it if not in a church? You end up going back to what you did your best to get away from. She always wanted to die in Dublin, by choice, like an ordinary person with a modest, heartfelt, traditional Dublin funeral, so she said. She saved up the money years ago to pay for it, because even if you believe in nothing, she said, the way Irish people did funerals gave you something to look forward to, if only you could be there yourself, in person. And she was right, I never saw so many people who were friends again in one place, under the one roof. She insisted on a full lunch for everyone in a hotel afterwards. Anyone and everybody, regardless of who said things about her and who didn’t, because some people didn’t like me, that’s fine, some people did.

Some people really did like me, she said.

Buddy was there at the hotel as well, where else would he go? I could see him getting his bowl of food and his water like everyone else. It was a fine day, very sunny, and we were all sitting outside. I was at a table full of women, the only non-woman. They were remembering their favourite lines of poetry. So when it was my turn, I could only think of repeating the last lines from the song that she liked so much, Trathnóna beag aréir. That’s the Irish for a small evening, last evening. What a great night we had together last night gone by and what a pity it’s already turned into yesterday and never coming back. Roughly translated.

That’s what I’ll miss most, she says to me at the Berlin Wall. I’ll miss walking with Buddy. His blurry legs running along the path. I’ll miss being on the road, meeting somebody by chance. I’ll miss being out in the wind, with the words taken out of your mouth, you can hardly talk.

Manfred is gone ahead to get the car and she tells me some of the things that make her happy.

People with time to spare, she says. I love people asking me questions, was I away and am I back home again. I love meeting the farmer living near Doolin, she says, the man who knows everything there is to know about Elvis, even things that Elvis never knew, the dates of all his hits, the entire discography, all the irrelevant stuff on the labels. He knows the same if not more about Chuck Berry, she says, even though you can’t imagine what he needs that information for when he’s out walking across the rocks. And he would never tell me this himself, she says, but I heard that he was once in the finals of Mastermind . He blew all his opponents away and he only fell down on some question to do with Naked Gun .

And Josie, the woman whose brother, Packo, died only recently, did I ever tell you that, Liam? They were such a lovely couple together, she says. I thought for years they were husband and wife, until I asked them where they found each other, was it at a dance? They laughed and said, no, we’re twins. And Josie, she says, she’s the only person I know who still wears one of those see-through, plastic head-scarves going to Mass. Packo never had anything to cover his head only a newspaper, you’d see him making a dash into the pub. Their friends all had names like Rosie and Peig and Jerome and Bapty, for John the Baptist.

I love meeting young people, she says. Young eyes. Young stories not made up yet. I love the young men in the Indian restaurant, talking to them about where they come from, Karachi, Nepal.

She wants to know what makes me happy.

I’m not talking about the normal things, she says, like love and drink and drugs and the day your daughter was born.

What else is there?

Things that lift your heart, Liam.

Like a lighthouse.

What lighthouse?

Any lighthouse. I tell her I feel glad whenever I see a lighthouse. I have no idea why. Maybe it reminds me of being close to home. Something about the summer. Even the word lighthouse makes me happy. I don’t go looking for them. It’s just lighthouses I happen to see or hear about.

You’re right, she says. Lighthouses.

I tell her I’m like everyone else, I love travelling. I love hearing languages I don’t understand. Far away languages, like Japanese. I wouldn’t have a clue what they were saying. I like that. And Irish. I tell her I love it when Radio na Gaeltachta comes on by accident in the car. When you hear somebody talking his head off with great Irish and you don’t understand half the words.

Go mbeirimíd beo ar an ám seo arís.

She says it’s the Irish for being alive around the same time next year. Literally. May we meet again alive this time.

We make a stop at a café called Einstein. I help her off with her coat, but she’s still very hot and she says it feels like she has a coat on inside her. She needs to use the facilities, she calls it. I bring her as far as the ladies and help her out of the wheelchair. She can manage after that, thanks, Liam. She is able to walk without assistance, holding on to things. She closes the door behind her but doesn’t lock it in case. I wait down the corridor, sort of standing guard to make sure nobody walks in on her.

I think it was mostly fathers we talked about in Café Einstein.

When she gets back to the table she is still too hot or too cold, she doesn’t know the difference any more. She stands still for a moment, holding on to the table, maybe it’s the pain. She sits down. She takes off the cap and everybody knows. She smiles back at them. Let them look.

She told me about her father and I told her about my father.

She orders coffee, tea for me. She wants nothing else. She’s fine with the coffee because she’s already had plenty of chocolate earlier on. And when the coffee arrives along with a tiny glass of water, she drinks the water and admires the glass. She opens a sachet of sugar and ends up spilling it across the table. She gathers it all up, placing her palm on the table and pulling the grains of sugar together towards the edge. She sweeps them into the catching hand, then pours them into the coffee and slaps her hands free. She stirs the coffee and takes a sip, then sits back to look at faces. She examines all the faces available, the waitress, the people sitting opposite, two women facing each other, looking at their mobile phones.

She remembers her father’s eyes. She wanted to be like her father, not like her mother. His eyes didn’t care what was left behind. Her father was happier than her mother was, he loved himself more than her mother could ever love herself.

I’ve ordered Apfelstrudel for myself and when it arrives she leans forward to examine it. She notices that they’ve given me custard, even though I’ve asked for it without custard. It makes me think of the yellow door, that’s all. It says custard on the menu, she says. Vanilla sauce, they call it, paler in colour than custard.