Anne Enright - The Gathering

‘It’s his back.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ and we both laugh-dirtily, like we have been talking about sex.

Tom is beside me, liking all this. I turn to salute Uncle Val who is being led off, rather spookily, by Mrs Cluny, to stay next door. When Ciara goes to leave, Tom organises her nappy bag and rounds up Brandon, her toddler. Then he drifts back to me.

He says, ‘Do you remember when you were pregnant with Rebecca and you wouldn’t go to the graveyard-whose funeral was it? You wouldn’t go anyway, because the child would be bandy, you said.’

‘ Cam reilige .’

‘What?’

‘That’s what it’s called. In Irish.’

‘You’re a funny thing,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m a hoot.’

Cam reilige , which is Irish for the twist of the grave .

I walk away from him then, feeling, once more, the shadow of a child in me, the swoop of the future in my belly, black and open.

I put my hand to my stomach. It is like a pain, almost.

‘Well it worked, anyway,’ says Tom, still at my shoulder. ‘She has a lovely pair of pins.’

I don’t need you to tell me that. I turn around to say it to him, I don’t need you to tell me that , but instead of seeing my husband, I only see the opening circle of his eye. If we wanted another child, it is waiting for us now. I can almost see it. So it is not all his fault, the sex that happens later. It is not entirely his fault, that I do not enjoy it as sex goes .

Meanwhile he gives me a nod. ‘I’ll take the kids. Any time. Come home any time.’

‘Don’t stay up,’ I say.

And he says, ‘I might.’

It was my sister Midge’s funeral, actually, and I was big as a house. My niece Karen had given birth a month before me, at the age of twenty-one. I remember sitting in the church and looking at the tiny, moist baby, churring on her mother’s shoulder, a white hairband across her little, new head. Anuna-all Midge’s grandchildren have silly names-is dressed now in an expensive red, puff coat, a knockout of a girl, with the dreaded Hegarty eye; cold and wild and blue.

‘Goodnight, Karen. Watch out for that one.’

They are flickering at each other across the room now, blue to blue, as strangers and extras take their leave. Bea prises Mammy out of her chair.

‘You’re very tired, Mammy.’

‘Yes.’

‘Come here and I’ll bring you upstairs.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll bring up your cup of tea.’

But there is something she wants to do before she goes. Mammy escapes Bea’s grasp and comes over to the table. She puts her two hands down on the wood, so everyone knows to stop talking. In her gentle, sweet voice, she says, ‘He would have been so proud of you all.’

We know she means, not Liam, but our father. She has got her funerals mixed up. Either that or all funerals are the same funeral, now.

‘He is ,’ she says with horrible conviction. ‘Your Daddy is so very proud of you all.’

Bea turns her around, to leave the room. ‘That’s it, Mammy.’

‘Goodnight,’ she says.

‘Goodnight Mammy,’ we say, in a little family patter.

‘Goodnight now.’

‘Sleep well, Mammy.’

‘Get some rest.’

‘Night night,’ all out of rhythm, like the first drops of rain.

‘ Coladh sámh ,’ says Ernest, by the door, and she turns to him for a blessing, which my brother-the lying hypocrite bastard of lapsed-priest atheist-does not hesitate to give (in Irish no less) and she leaves happy. At least ‘happy’ is the look on her face. Happy. She is pleased with the people she has made. She is happy.

We are silent a moment after she is gone. Mossie sits. Ita takes a slug of her water, then her mouth twitches deeply down, in some riposte from the silent conversation she is having in her head. Kitty lights up a fag, which annoys everyone a little. And I think, I never told Mammy the truth. I never told any of them the truth.

But what was I supposed to say? A dead man put his hand in a deader man’s flies thirty years ago. There are other things, surely, to talk about. There are other things to be revealed.

Like what, though? Like what?

I start to help Bea with the dishes, while Kitty brings a pile of plates over to the sink.

‘What are you doing?’ says Bea to her.

‘Clearing up,’ says Kitty.

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘Oh. No, please do. Please do clear up.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No, there’s always a first time.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Well, scrape them first, would you? Scrape it, would you? Scrape it, and stack it over there.’

Kitty lifts the plate over her head like she is going to bring it smashing down on the floor. No one looks. She holds it there for a long moment-then, with a toss of the head, she carries the thing, ceremoniously high, to the bin. She goes to scrape it, and then she just can’t help herself and stuffs the lot into the rubbish, plate, food and all.

‘Jesus!’ she screams, looking at the knife that is left in her hand, like it is dripping with blood. I glance at the ceiling-Mammy is still moving around upstairs.

‘Oh JesusJesusJesus!’ says Kitty, throwing the murder weapon into the bin, and she flees out into the garden to finish her fag.

‘Bea,’ I say.

‘What,’ says Bea, very fiercely, as she picks the crockery out of the bin. ‘ What? ’

And I know what she means. She means, What use is the truth to us now?

Ita comes in from the corpse room and plonks a bottle of peculiar whiskey in the middle of the yellow pine table.

‘It’s all I could find,’ she says. The bottle has a funny Irish name. It looks a bit decorative.

‘I could go to the off-licence,’ says Jem in a small voice.

‘No, no. Not to worry.’

We uncork it anyway, and put it into glasses where it sits, thick and sweet. This ritual is strange for us because, although the Hegartys all drink, we never drink together.

‘Look at the legs on that,’ says Ivor, swilling it round and holding it to the light. We sip, and consider a moment, and suddenly Jem picks up his car keys, and leaves in a shower of large notes and instructions about red wine or white. The Hegartys have had a long day.

Bea, still on her high horse, takes the first shift in the front room while the rest of us stay in the kitchen and mooch and talk. Ernest checks the cupboards-a little intensely, indeed; dipping his finger into ancient mango chutney and sniffing at the mustard. Mossie has the occasional large opinion at the pine table while Ita keeps him company, leaning back against the central counter, too immobilised by drink to wash a plate.

It is like Christmas in Hades. It is like we are all dead, and that’s just fine.

One by one we finish and sit, ready to uncork the wine when it arrives. And when it does arrive, we do not toast the dead but merely drink and chat, as ordinary people might do.

There is some talk of the mysterious Alice, also the surprise appearance of Uncle Val, who is looking so spruce.

Then Ivor says that he is thinking of buying up in Mayo.

‘What?’ says Kitty, who is turning stage Irish with the drink. ‘A bit of the old place?’

‘Well, maybe not exactly there.’

‘Jesus.’ Kitty stares ahead as if looking at it. She needs an angle of attack. We all do. We talk for a while about interest rates and flights to Knock airport.

Then Ernest says, quite mildly, ‘Not a lot of money up there.’

‘Well, I think that’s the point,’ says Ivor. And realises he is already on his back foot.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I could never do that isn’t-it-all-lovely and aren’t-we-all-lovely touristy shite.’