Aoife and I are the only ones in the front pew, even though there’s naught but standing room at the back of the small chapel. No one dared to sit beside us, or even across the way. I’m unsure if it’s that proximity to Aoife is a situation to be avoided, or no one wanted to get too close to Óisín’s coffin just in case he popped up again, shouting at them all to go home; possibly some alchemical combination of the two.
Me? I’m nothing to avoid, there’s nothing frightening about me.
Mostly, I suspect the crowd has come to make sure Óisín is truly gone, and that can be done from a comfortable distance. I know his faults all too well, but I’ll miss my grandfather sorely. He taught me everything I know about the sea and its moods, about ships, about business, and all the superstitions that sailors are heir to. I suffer no illusions: if I’d had brothers, if my mother’d had brothers, there’d have been little chance of my getting the education I did. The days of the O’Malley women’s power being unquestioned are long gone, and more’s the pity. Aoife’s a rare creature, a force of nature, elemental, my grandmother, utterly uninterested in others telling her what to do, but even she’s had to bow her head and give in now and then.
I think, some days, that Óisín was lonely and he liked my company, in his study here and on the trips into Breakwater, inspecting the vessels and cargo. He liked taking me for lunch in his favourite club, quizzing me about tides and knots and trade routes. Mind you, if I got anything wrong I never heard the end of it, and was left in no doubt as to what a disappointment I was. But I made a point of not getting things wrong, not after the first few times. In my pocket I can feel the weight of the small knife that was his, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl, given to me before he took to his bed for the last time.
‘A terrible husband,’ sighs Aoife yet again, louder for those in the back, just in case anyone missed it. Third time’s a charm: she’s making it a fact to be carried forward and forth by all those whose ears it touches. Aoife O’Malley’s always believed that the truth is what she says it is.
This time I reply, ‘Yes, Grandmother,’ though I feel a little disloyal, but Aoife’s the one I’ve got to live with now. No buffer any longer, even if that buffer was nothing more than Óisín’s desire to gainsay his wife.
The pallbearers seem to being taking an awfully long time down there, and there’s no longer even the rhythmic whine of the god-hound’s chant. I strain my ears, listening for the sound of boots on steps, or wood on stone as they shift the coffin into one of the niches, perhaps a cough or two in the stale air of a tomb that’s not been opened in fifteen years, not since my mother died of fever, following my father by a mere week.
I listen harder still, hear twice as much nothing. I know better, yet the absence makes my heart beat faster. I imagine everyone can hear it, but Aoife doesn’t look at me, registers no sign. What’s happening down there? Did they go too far? Did the stairs change? Grow in number, descend further? Are my cousins even now being welcomed somewhere unaccountably warm? From habit I touch the spot just beneath the dip in my throat, feel the thick black fabric of my high-necked dress and the warm lump of metal under it: a silver necklace with the ship’s bell pendant engraved with what might be scalloping or fish scales. Aoife also wears one; she says my mother did as well. As all the firstborns did.
Listen, listen, listen...
Aoife’s delicate head turns and she stares at me through the thick lace veil. I realise I’ve been squeezing her shoulders. I loosen my grip and press out a smile from behind my own veil, not as thick as hers, but then I’ve less to hide.
Footsteps at last! As if all they’ve been waiting for was the release of my tension. The cousins emerge, two by two: do they look paler than when they went in? Daragh, a little faint? Has Thomas finally let his breath go, gasping as if he’d held it in the whole time he was below? Only Aidan appears indifferent: a duty has been done and he’s been seen to do it. Nothing more.
He’s got the family height, but that’s all. Thinning blond hair, blue eyes, and beneath his costly well-tailored frockcoat (only the truest of O’Malleys have been afflicted with this grinding embarrassment of poverty), he’s fighting fat. In his thirties, he’ll keep it away only as long as he maintains daily physical activity: the riding, the boxing, the tramping across the hills, bestriding the decks of the ships he owns. He looks at Aoife, but not at me; then again, he seldom bothers to address me beyond ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’, as if I’m still a child, the little cousin, safely almost-invisible. I’m used to that, and comfortable with it. They exchange a nod, then he returns to the second-row pew where his sister Brigid – once my friend – with her pale eyes, soft
