In the sand house he watched the ants. They had found a beetle. It lay on its back, dead. The ants ran to and from its body in a thin undulating trail. They sneaked under its wings and probed its eyes. One balanced on the tip of a frozen leg and weaved back and forth. In comparison with them the beetle was a giant. Yet they fed on it. Matthew snatched up the beetle and shook it. Ants ran up his arm. He clawed them away, squashing them and stamping them into the ground.
‘I hate you!’ he shouted. ‘I hate you! You’re horrible, disgusting, cruel.’ Cradling the beetle in his hands he crouched over its body. When the sand beneath his feet chilled with night shadows he dug a small hole and buried it.
What would Edward look like now that it was day? Would they have dressed him in black like the priest, put him in a little room where people stood around shaking their heads?
Gran would be there but Gran did not always tell the truth. He knew that now. Neither had Edward, nor Mother. They all left things out, important things. Had something been left out now? Something which would frighten him? Something they would never understand? But to see Edward once more. His longing ached all through him. And when Gran told him they should go he nodded, although he felt afraid.
Edward’s body lay on a bier in the centre of a bare wooden hall. Beneath him a deep red flag draped to the floor. Around his body mourners had heaped red roses. Other people were there already. Workingmen in bowyangs and woollen shirts stood a silent moment beside the bier, doffed their caps and went away. A woman in an assortment of poor mismatched clothes touched him lightly on the forehead before laying her rose with the others. They came and went with reverent steps, careful to not shake the hollows of the hall.
His eyes were shut. As if he slept. Matthew had never seen Edward asleep, only pretending to doze on the beach. Perhaps his eyes would pop open as they used to, startling him with their laughing aliveness. He tiptoed to his side and put his hand on his arm.
‘He’s cold, Gran.’
‘Is he, darling? Then we should help him.’
She took off her shawl, laid it across Edward’s chest and tucked it over his arms. ‘There, that will warm him.’
Matthew nodded. ‘Where is he, Gran? Where is Edward?’
‘He’s like Grandfather, like water, like wind, like time. He’s here yet not here. We call it ‘there’ because we can’t understand. Everything that seems to pass is really always here still.’
He saw again the ribbons of lucid water green between pale-shouldered sandbars. They were clear to the floor of the sea. Only soft meshed seaweed stirred there and fish that flicked the sun off their backs. Edward wasn’t there. How could he be? Nor could he be in the yeasty rush of waves dumping their sand-filled burden on the beach. No one was there. Water and time might be forever but not people.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘No, Gran! Edward isn’t here. Those men shot him. They killed Edward. People always kill things. Edward is dead and I loved him.’
She held him against her, her body warming him like the shawl she had tucked around Edward.
‘Yes, darling, Edward is dead but not the love, never the love.’
Gran planned to attend Edward’s funeral. She looked at Mother. ‘No!’ said Margaret. ‘What point is there in my going? May Goodman has invited me to afternoon tea; just the two of us. It’s a long time since I did anything pleasant. This could be the start of a new life for me.’
‘Then can you take Matthew?’
‘Won’t you?’
‘No. There’ll be thousands there. A huge procession. It’ll be too much of a crush.’
‘I don’t want to take him to May’s. He’ll be bored. Can’t you think of something?’
Gran looked tired. ‘Oh, very well.’
She sent a letter with Matthew to Mr Werther who read it, smiled and said to Matthew: ‘I’ll bring a surprise. That day we’ll have some happiness, eh?’ Matthew smiled back because it was polite.
On the day of the funeral Gran and Margaret dressed silently. George Goodman picked Margaret up in his car. She put a dainty gloved hand in his as he helped her into a seat and waited while she adjusted the scarf about her hat and under her chin. She waved to Matthew and was gone.
Gran dressed in black and pinned a crimson rose to her hat.
Mr Werther appeared carrying his violin case. ‘How will you go?’ he asked. ‘The procession starts at the union building. It is two miles to the cemetery. I could drive—’
‘No. I shall walk,’ Gran said. ‘The Irish have always walked behind their dead. Our poverty, our walking and our dead have united us.’
‘You will be all right?’ Mr Werther looked anxious.
‘Yes, quite all right, thank you. You are a good friend to us.’ Mr Werther looked shy and above the grey of his beard a little pinkness spread like the tentative rosiness of early morning. Gran, at the door, came back and held out her hand. Mr Werther took it in both of his, shaking and patting it. Gran smiled, hugged Matthew and went out.
‘Take care,’ Mr Werther called after her.
‘She’ll come back?’ Matthew was anxious.
‘Of course.’
‘Mr Werther?’
‘Yes, my little Schubertianer?’
‘I am very sad without Edward.’
‘Of course you are. It is a very sad thing.’
‘Will I always feel as sad as I do now?’
‘For a little while and then later sad but not so much.’
‘Mr Werther, why did they shoot Edward?’
‘I don’t know, Matthew. It is stupid, yes? And pitiless. He disagreed with their ideas but why they should kill him. It is very hard to understand.’
‘There won’t be another Edward.’
‘No, not another. And
