Andrew Hurley - The Loney

The others shook their heads.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘It might be better to bring the lad tomorrow,’ Mr Belderboss said. ‘Without everyone watching.’

‘We’re here now,’ said Mummer, aware that Miss Bunce was glaring at her. ‘We’ve made a special effort to come and I’d like Andrew to take the water.’

Farther put his hand on Mummer’s back.

‘Come on, Esther,’ he said. ‘Don’t upset yourself.’

‘I’m not upset.’

‘Look,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Why don’t we go back to the house? It looks like it’s going to rain any minute.’

‘No,’ said Mummer. ‘I’m sorry, Father, but he is to take the water and that’s that. He is not going to spoil the day.’

‘Ah, come on, Mrs Smith, he’s hardly doing that now is he?’

‘Isn’t he?’

‘It’s not his fault.’

‘Why? Because he’s too stupid to know what he’s doing?’

‘I never said that.’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘Mrs Smith …’

She grabbed Hanny and took him over to the well, fending off Father Bernard’s appeasements with a wave of her hand. She upturned a jam jar of dead daffodils and knelt down and filled it from the well. The water spun with sediment and grime.

‘Open your mouth,’ Mummer said sharply. ‘Look at me.’

Hanny looked at up her and started to cry.

‘Stop it,’ said Mummer. ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to get better?’

Hanny turned to get away again, but Mummer held his arm and looked over to Father Bernard.

‘Well, help me,’ she said, but he looked away.

‘Careful Esther,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘You’re hurting him.’

Mummer tightened her grip and then more so again, as though she was bringing a wayward dog to heel. Slowly, Hanny opened his mouth.

‘Wider,’ said Mummer, pinching his cheeks in so that his jaw opened.

‘Esther, stop it,’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘Please, Esther,’ Mrs Belderboss cried and then turned away, her eyes full of tears.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, just drink it,’ said Mummer.

Hanny closed his eyes and screwed up his face the way he did when he had to take Milk of Magnesia. Mummer carefully poured the water in, as though she was measuring it. Hanny coughed and choked and then spat the water into her eyes.

Mummer blinked and stretched her face, but said nothing. Instead, she screwed the lid on the half full jar of water and put it in her pocket. Father Bernard was leading everyone quietly out of the shrine. I took Hanny by the hand and followed them. Only Farther stayed behind, staring at his wife.

Despite Father Bernard’s best efforts to persuade them to stay, Miss Bunce and David packed their things and he drove them to the station in Lancaster to catch the sleeper train.

A heavy despondency filled Moorings to the brim and when I couldn’t stand it any longer I went to bed, leaving Mummer and Farther and Mr and Mrs Belderboss to talk glumly in the sitting room.

Hanny was fast asleep, exhausted by what had happened at the shrine. I watched him for a while but must have dropped off quickly myself.

I had been asleep for about an hour when I heard someone coming into the room. It was Mummer. She was carrying a steaming cup on a tray. She looked at me and made a motion with her hand that I should lie back down.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Giving Andrew a cup of tea.’

‘He’s asleep.’

Mummer shushed me and went and sat on the edge of Hanny’s bed. She watched him sleeping for a minute and then took out the jam jar of water. She tipped some of it into the tea and set the cup on the bedside table. The rest of the water she trickled into her hand and, using her finger, traced a cross very gently on Hanny’s forehead.

He stirred a little and half woke. Mummer hushed him. Hanny settled again and went completely still, his consciousness sliding back down into the drains of sleep.

She ought to have left him alone. He was so worn out by what had happened at the shrine that he looked dead. His face had the same awful slackness as Father Wilfred’s the day Mummer and the others went to wash his body in preparation for burial.

I had been made to go too, to help the visiting priest that had been sent by the bishop to oversee the ablutions. It would do no harm, said Mummer, for the bishop to know she had a capable son when the time came for me to be thinking of a career in the clergy.

They had Father Wilfred laid out in his coffin in the front room of the presbytery. It was a rarely used room and almost as cold as the January day that bristled against the window behind the curtains. A carriage clock futtered quietly on the mantelpiece next to the candles that would be kept lit until the funeral. Everyone stood around the coffin as the priest said a prayer and made the sign of the cross over the body.

Because it was a body now and not Father Wilfred at all. Death was a poor draughtsman and had rendered his likeness just a little off-centre, giving him the look of someone who was almost familiar but lacking the something that made them so. Like a waxwork, I suppose.

As a crop of white stubble had spread across his cheeks and chin, his face had taken on the texture of fake velvet. The skin on his arms and legs was like ancient parchment dotted with the ink of moles and liver spots, and beneath the skin lay stringy muscles that had been loosened by the funeral director to make the cleaning easier.

Mummer brought in basins of warm water and a bottle of Dettol and the ladies rolled up their sleeves and slowly opened the folds of linen and began to wash him, gently lifting his arms and turning his legs slightly to get around the backs of his knees. A swirl of a loincloth afforded him some modesty and spared our blushes.

I stood back and held a basin for Mummer. I noticed that there was a brown stain on the satin pillow as she cradled Father Wilfred’s head so that she could run a flannel around his face and neck. Water and disinfectant trickled over the hard bow of his clavicle and down the grill of his ribs and when Mummer mopped his brow there remained little droplets among his eyelashes.

When it was done and the ladies were going in and out to sluice the water down the drains, Mummer opened up the newspaper parcel she had brought with her and took out a small bunch of white roses. She crossed Father Wilfred’s shrivelled hands over his stomach and interlaced the fingers. Then, careful not to cut him, she lifted his hands and slotted the roses into his grasp one by one.

As they swaddled him again, there was an audible exhalation. Of pity, I thought, or relief. Relief that it was over. Relief that it wasn’t them lying there on the table like meat.

Mummer crossed herself and then sat down on a wooden chair by the coffin with her rosary beads to take the first watch of the vigil. The other ladies said nothing and left one by one.

‘Light the candles before you go,’ said Mummer as I was putting on my coat.

I did as she asked and watched the light flickering on Father Wilfred’s face.

‘Is Father in heaven?’ I asked.

Mummer looked up and frowned. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t he be? All priests go straight to heaven.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s their reward for serving God.’

She looked at me a moment longer then went back to her rosary. I knew when Mummer was only half sure about something — like when I came home with algebra homework and Farther wasn’t around, or she had to drive somewhere she hadn’t been before, the confidence she feigned was tinged with irritation that she didn’t actually know the right answer or the right way at all.