A Sister’s Promise. Anne Bennett

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       THREE

      Stan was astounded at the numbers who attended the funeral of Ted and Nuala on 26 April. Paul Simmons had helped him make all the arrangements and had insisted on paying for everything. He had closed the factory as a mark of respect, but even so, Stan was amazed by those from the workforce who attended. Ted, Paul said, was very well thought of by everyone who met him, and many of the men who’d shaken Stan by the hand and commiserated with him on his loss said similar things. So also, it seemed, was Nuala liked and the pews were packed with neighbours and special friends of hers, mothers she met at the school gates, and those from the Mothers’ Union she used to attend regularly. Many were in tears.

      Added to this, all of Paul’s family came too – his father and mother, and two sisters and their husbands, all of whom still remembered what they had owed to Ted. They seemed genuinely shocked by his death and that of his young wife. Not that it was spoken of openly and certainly not in front of the children, who had both insisted on attending.

      Molly had remained dry-eyed, her distress and sense of loss too deep for tears, though she held on to Kevin’s hand to take comfort from the child as well as to give it, as the tears dribbled down his cheeks ceaselessly.

      As they stood at the graveside, they were warmed by the bright sun shining down from a sky of Wedgwood blue, and somehow this made the tragic deaths even more poignant. As the clods of earth fell with dull thuds on the coffins they seemed to reverberate in Molly’s brain. Dead! Dead! Dead! Kevin’s sobs became more audible and Biddy moved towards the child purposefully, but he pushed her away and turned instead to his grandfather. Stan held the little boy’s shuddering body tight. He didn’t urge him to stop crying either thinking he had a good enough reason to break his heart.

      He envied him in a way because he would have liked the opportunity to go home now and lock the door and cry his eyes out. Instead, he knew he had to lead the mourners to the room at the back of the Lyndhurst pub which Paul Simmons had booked, and make small talk with the people who had come to pay their respects.

      When he’d first been discussing the funeral arrangements with Mr Simmons, Stan, who had thought the mourners would only amount to a handful, said he intended to invite them back to the house. Mr Simmons had said he thought a room at a pub might be better and Stan, not up to arguing and certainly not with a toff, had agreed reluctantly.

      He had thought though the few people he had anticipated coming would look silly and maybe feel out of place, but it wasn’t that way at all. He looked at the crush of people around him in the room the pub had allocated them and was glad he had agreed. Kevin still held tight to his hand as Father Clayton, who had said the Requiem Mass, approached them.

      Father Clayton liked Stan, with whom he was not above sparring and joking, as he had liked Ted, and thought them fine men. He couldn’t understand for the life of him why they hadn’t turned Catholic and embraced the one true faith.

      That day though, Kevin’s large brown eyes still swam with tears as he turned them on the priest and demanded, ‘What did God want with my mammy and daddy?’

      Father Clayton didn’t have an answer that would satisfy the child. ‘We don’t understand the ways of God, Kevin.’

      ‘Not even you?’

      ‘Not even me.’

      ‘Well, then,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s the point of it all? That means that God can go round doing what He likes and you just say we can’t understand and that.’ He stamped his foot suddenly and cried in a high voice full of hurt and confusion, ‘I want to know. I think we needed Mammy and Daddy much more than He did.’

      ‘Kevin!’ The name was said like a pistol shot.

      Kevin СКАЧАТЬ