Field of Blood

FOUR . THE OFFICE FOR THE DEAD

It was four-thirty and the last slice of sun was perched on the horizon, the failing yellow light oozing through the dirty windows on the upper deck. In the back three rows teenage boys kicked at one another while diffident girls smoked and smirked and pretended not to watch.

Paddy sat alone, surreptitiously eating from a plastic tub. The three cold boiled eggs had been sitting in her bag in the hot office all day, and the texture was alternately rubbery and clay dry. All she had to chase away the aftertaste was a sour quartered grapefruit. She’d have the black coffee when they got back from the chapel. The diet had been scientifically worked out in America: three boiled eggs, grapefruit, and black coffee three times a day would build up into a chemical reaction that actually burned off fat at a rate of six pounds a week, guaranteed. She projected forwards to her goal weight. In just one month she could tell Terry Hewitt to go and take a flying fuck to himself. She imagined herself with an unspecified but better haircut, standing in the Press Bar, dressed in that size ten green pencil skirt she had optimistically bought from Chelsea Girl.

“Actually, Terry, I’m not fat anymore.”

It wasn’t very witty. It had the essence of what she wanted to say but didn’t sound very real.

“D’you know, Terry, on balance, I’d say you’re fatter than me now.”

Better, but still not very good. If the journalists heard her say that, they’d know she cared about her weight and she’d never hear the end of it.

“Terry, you’ve got a face like two buckets banging together.”

That worked. Paddy smirked to herself. She’d wear the green miniskirt, pointy-toed winklepickers, and a tight black crewneck pullover. An unforgiving outfit. She’d need to be really slim to wear that. She only ever wore black pencil skirts with woolly tights and sweaters baggy enough to cover her lumps and bumps.

Paddy knew she was fat before Terry Hewitt commented on it- she wouldn’t have attempted the disgusting Mayo Clinic Diet otherwise- but it hurt that her weight was the only thing he had noticed about her. The Scottish Daily News was a fresh audience, and without seventy-odd relatives preceding her she felt she could be anyone. She didn’t want to be the clever fat girl again in this new incarnation.

Finishing the last piece of grapefruit, she put the soft plastic lid back on the tub, dropping it into her bag, and cautioned herself: there’d be a lot of food when they got back from the chapel, mounds of cheese sandwiches, hot salty sausage rolls, rough-cut gammon on soft plain bread spread with chips of hard butter. She’d better avoid physical proximity to them if she was to stick to her diet. Nor should she approach the iced rings or moist coconut snowballs or jammy biscuits or butterfly cakes or the arctic roll. She was salivating wildly as a talon hand clutched her shoulder.

“You’re wee Paddy Meehan, eh?” The voice sounded like a man’s but for a single strain in the timbre.

Paddy turned around to face a woman with a face like a dried chamois. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Breslin. Are ye going to Granny Annie’s laying-in?”

“Aye.”

Mrs. Breslin had worked with Paddy’s mother in the Rutherglen Cooperative when they were both first out of school. She had seven children of her own, five boys and two girls, all of whom were considered a little bit scary by the other young people of the area. The Breslin kids were rumored to be responsible for the fire that burned down the Salvation Army Hall’s shed.

Mrs. Breslin lit a cigarette from the stub of her last one. “God rest her soul, wee Granny Annie.”

“Aye,” said Paddy. “She was a lovely woman, right enough.”

They avoided each other’s eye. Granny Annie wasn’t lovely, but she was dead and it would be wrong to say otherwise. Mrs. Breslin nodded and said Aye, right enough, so she was, God rest her.

“I hear you’re a journalist now?”

“Not a journalist,” said Paddy, pleased at the mistake. “I run messages at the Daily News. I’m hoping to become a journalist, though, one day.”

“Well, lucky you. I’ve got four out of school now, and not one of them can get work. How did you get that? Did someone put in a word for ye?”

“No, I just phoned up and asked if they were taking on. I’d done articles for the school paper and that. I gave them some things I’d written.”

Mrs. Breslin sat forward, her smoke-stinking breath smothering Paddy as effectively as a cushion. “Are they taking on now? Could you put in a word for my Donal?”

Donal carried a knife and had been giving himself tattoos since he was twelve.

“They’re not taking on anymore.”

Mrs. Breslin narrowed her eyes and turned her head away a fraction. “Fine,” she said spitefully. “Help me up. We’re there.”

Mrs. Breslin was fatter than Paddy remembered. Her shoulders and face were deceptively slim, but her buttocks were fantastically large: the shoulders of her pale green raincoat were halfway down to the elbows to accommodate her shape. Paddy watched down the narrow stairwell as Mrs. Breslin slammed from side to side while the bus took a corner, and wondered if she herself would be that fat after seven children, or as oblivious to the truth of what her kids were like.

The bus stopped in the middle of the street, blocking the traffic. Paddy helped Mrs. Breslin down the steep step to the road, leading her across the still traffic, snaking through the smoking cars.

Every Catholic in the neighborhood was wearing black and converging outside Granny Annie’s tiny council house. They climbed out of cars, walked around corners, came down the Main Street. Smoke and icy breath rose like steam from cattle as the frosty black tarmac glittered silver around them.

Fifty yards up the side street Mrs. Breslin saw someone she was more annoyed at than Paddy and went over to spoil their day.

Looking out for Sean’s flattop, Paddy waved to cousins across the road and accidentally caught the distant eye of Mrs. McCarthy, an overemotional neighbor who cried with joy whenever she saw Paddy. Mrs. McCarthy had done an unrequested month-long novena before Paddy’s interview at the Daily News and subsequently felt she had a claim on her, having effectively snagged her the job. Mrs. McCarthy mouthed “Thank God,” and Paddy nodded stiffly, grateful for the hand reaching for hers. Sean Ogilvy, tall and dark with ninety-degree shoulders, dipped at the knee and gathered Paddy’s hand into his.

“Bloody hell. I met stinky Mrs. Breslin on the bus, and then Mrs. McCarthy saw me. I got caught by bloody Matt the Rat last night and had to have the whole Paddy Meehan conversation again.”

“You used to love talking about that Paddy Meehan case.”

“Well, I’m bored of it now.” She avoided his eye and looked around the crowd, seeing that a lot of her own extended family were there. “I’m sick of knowing everyone and everyone knowing me.”

“Why aren’t you interested in Paddy Meehan anymore? I thought you were going to try and interview him.”

“Ye grow out of things, though, ye know?” she said uncomfortably. “I don’t care about that anymore.”

“Please yourself.” He pulled off one of Paddy’s woolly red gloves, tucking it into her duffel coat pocket, and slid his hot hand around her bare skin, making the peace. “I thought you’d be interested to meet him, after knowing so much about the whole story and following it for so long.”

“He’s just a fat old man now.” She tutted and looked away. “He drinks in the town. All the wasters at work know him. I can’t be annoyed with it.”

“Well, well, well,” Sean said, squeezing her hand playfully. “Don’t get shirty with me about it.”

They smiled at the silly turn of phrase and stood pressing their shoulders together, looking at the crowd but thinking about each other. Paddy’s breath felt warmer when Sean was with her. She felt thinner and taller and funny suddenly because he loved her and they were promised to each other.

The undertakers were bringing the coffin out of the house. A respectful hush descended on the mourners. Those having conversations too urgent to abandon lowered their voices. The chief undertaker took his place at the head of the procession and the hearse began its glide down the quiet street, gathering the crowd in its wake. They formed in the natural order of family, then friends, followed by neighbors and pals from chapel, until a hundred and fifty people were behind the car. Sean’s mother and brothers were up front, but he held back, squeezing Paddy’s hand tight. She saw him blinking hard, and the tip of his nose darkened as he struggled for breath. At eighteen, Sean was as tall as a man and his voice was deep, but sometimes under all the bluster she saw the sweet boy she met at school, before his growth spurt made him six foot one, before working for Shug gave him those shoulders.

The hearse took a right, turning into the Main Street, and the line of mourners braced themselves, standing taller, pulling the small children into the center. The chat got louder, as if they were trying to swell the numbers. It was a tense time for a Catholic procession: Pastor Jack Glass was giving speeches all over the city about the whore of Rome, and the troubles over in Ireland were ferocious. A Republican woman MP had been shot in her home in front of her child, and prisoners in the Maze were starting a second hunger strike to demand political status. A demonstration in support of the men had been organized, and everyone knew there was going to be trouble. Whenever feelings ran high in the six counties, Glasgow teetered on the edge of the violence. As the nearest foreign city to Belfast, just over a hundred miles away across the Irish Sea, Glasgow was the traditional place of exile for Unionists who had lost their position but were too contentious to kill off. They drank in Dennistoun pubs and held raffles for the cause back home. Rogue Republicans got the better deal and were exiled to America.

The procession made its way down one side of the Main Street, and the cars on the other side slowed to show their respect. A couple of drivers sped up, crossing back and forth between the lanes. One man drove past hanging out of his window, shouting belligerent abuse about the Pope. Protestant pedestrians watched in silence from the pavement, some waving to friends who were walking, some uncomfortable or mocking because they didn’t understand the custom.

The hearse stopped in front of St. Columbkill’s modern yellow-brick chapel, and Annie’s coffin was carried carefully across the low-walled courtyard, up the stairs, and through the huge yellow-timbered doors. They were committing her to the safety of the chapel for the night, to guard against the devil stealing her soul before the funeral mass and burial in the morning. Paddy spotted a crowd of four girls she had been at primary school with, standing on the steps, hands clasped piously in front, eyes cast down respectfully. Her two brothers, Marty and Gerald, were queuing behind them. Behind them again she saw an old neighbor who was in her Granny Meehan’s knitting bee.

“For Godsake, this is like a bloody dream sequence,” she said quietly. “Everyone I’ve ever known is here.”

Sean nodded. “Yeah, it’s nice.” He took a breath and pulled himself up tall. “Wherever we go in this life, we’ll always belong here.” He squeezed her hand. “These are our people.”

She knew he was right, that there was no escape. If she traveled a thousand miles and never came back, if she sold their gold, she would still belong to them. Sean tugged her hand gently, leading her up the stairs to the Office for the Dead.