There’s an old woman, though, with plans and plots of long gestation; and there’s the sea, which will have her due, come hell or high water; and there are secrets and lies which never stay buried forever.
2
‘He was a terrible husband, you know, Miren,’ my grandmother says with a sigh.
We’re watching the coffin (a death-bed made at great expense to ensure he stays beneath, golden locks and hinges, padded silk interior stuffed with lavender which calms the dead, the joins sealed with eldritch adhesive over which spells have been sung) be carried down, down, a’down into the crypt beneath the chapel floor. The pallbearers have paced across the painted labyrinth of a pilgrim’s path that decorates the aisle, and now they’re at the great dark void in front of the altar. The flagstones have been pulled up so my grandfather Óisín can be laid to whatever might count as rest for him. Some of the mosaic tiles – merrows and ships and things with wings that might resemble angels in poor light – have been chipped. Someone (Malachi) was careless. I hope Grandmother doesn’t notice, but chance would be a fine thing. Someone (Malachi) will hear about it, either today or tomorrow; later, if she’s decided to hold fire and use the sin at a time when more of an impact can be made, more of a fuss.
No one bothered to light the candles on the wooden chandelier above our heads – an oversight – but the daylight throws beams of colour through the arched stained-glass windows. Still, it takes a while for the eye to adjust in the gloom, and I keep waiting for someone to trip over something, anything, their own feet most likely. It’s cold but then it always is here, surrounded by rough-hewn stone. I can smell the sea air and mildew beneath the wafts of burning incense. I put an arm around my grandmother’s shoulders because she’s shivering, but that might just be advanced years – mind you, I can feel the muscles beneath her gown, built by years of daily swimming in the sea. She never misses a morning, swam the day my grandfather died and swam today, the day we’re putting him in the ground. She gives me glance, does Aoife O’Malley, barely tolerating the gesture – we’re of a height and age hasn’t stooped her at all – but I keep the arm there as much to annoy her as to give myself some skerrick of warmth. Besides, I feel the eyes of all the relatives on us and, as prickly as Aoife might be, I do want to protect her from those who think her weakened by the years, easy prey.
The priest come, all unwilling, to send the old man off keeps intoning his prayers but they sound like maundering to me. Once, we’d have warranted a bishop from Breakwater, at the very least – he’d have been no less unwilling, I grant you, but we were worth more at one point, and they’d not have dared to deny us. But now... a low-level god-hound with black half-moons under his nails, smelling of alcohol and earth, a fine fall of dandruff on his shoulders like winter’s come early. Mumbling his prayers as if afraid his chosen god might strike him down for attending here, for laying Óisín O’Malley into the dirt, like it’s a seal of approval. Mind you, there’s not much choice of clergymen left in Breakwater anymore, no matter what your standing.
‘He was a terrible husband, you know,’ repeats Aoife as if wittering, but I know enough to do nothing but nod. She’s putting up a front, is my grandmother: harmless old lady, recently bereaved. Bereaved of a terrible husband certainly, but leaving no doubt for those in earshot that she’ll still miss him terribly, because she was a good wife in spite of him. In the face of marital adversity, she, Aoife O’Malley, did her very best to be a tender, loving, considerate, respectful spouse.
Which is precisely what she was not. But, as I say, I’m not fool enough to contradict her in front of others. Though we might bicker when it’s just us, I’m loyal in public, no matter what. All these relatives from various family offshoots are here only to see what they might get out of the old man’s death. And they’re not proper O’Malleys, not true ones, pedigree all mixed and mingled – like myself – the products of marriages made with men and women not of our line. Honestly, though, such breeding had to be done for all my grandmother laments it. How many times can a line fold back on itself without bringing forth a monster? Gods know, we’ve had our share, and Malachi’s whispered to me that there are strangely made coffins down there in the earthy deep, hiding the secrets no one else would keep.
But Aoife’s an O’Malley twice over: born one and then married to one. She’s proper, double-blooded, the omega. The rest of us are lesser, children with ichor so thin it barely matters. But I was raised in this house, I’m Aoife’s granddaughter; I’m one step above the others.
Yet she is the last here of purest lineage.
The cleric’s mutterings bounce back up while the strongest of the cousins follow him, carrying Óisín’s mahogany coffin (extra long to accommodate his height, adding to the cost) into the depths. I can see Aidan Fitzpatrick’s strong back, shoulders broad beneath his coat, hair so blond
