The priest intones a final blessing and bids us go in peace. Aoife wastes no time; we progress down the aisle at a sprightly pace she might want to reconsider in her guise as a fragile grieving widow. I squeeze her arm, and she gets the message after a moment. Her speed falls away a little, steps become smaller and slower, no longer those earth-eating strides to put men half her age to shame.
Behind us come the relatives and remnants. I glance over my shoulder and watch them through the black froth of lace as they pour along in our wake like well-trained waves, as if afraid we might escape if not quickly pursued.
‘Just this last trial to get through,’ murmurs Aoife.
‘Yes, Grandmother,’ I say, but I’m thinking What then? How do we go on? How do we return to embroidery and reading, managing those three tenant families and Maura and Malachi, tending the herb garden and testing their properties, riding those ancient horses, walking the sea brim, making do from one day to the next? How?
And there is, I must admit, the thought singing at the back of my mind that there is only Aoife now, and when she is gone I might leave Hob’s Hallow and all the obligations of this place and the O’Malley name behind me.
* * *
‘How’s our darling Aoife, Miren dear? Is she quite well?’ asks Aunt Florence Walsh, who’s really just another cousin, yet so old it’s easier to call her “aunt”. She’s short and round, but none of the fat remains in her face which means she’s wrinkled with sunken cheeks. Wrapped in black, she looks like a prune topped with silver hair that appears soft as a cloud. I can tell from experience it’s nothing of the sort: as a child I touched it, expecting floss, yet finding something sharp and dry and prickly. I felt for days afterwards that there were shards beneath my skin, and I was slapped for my trouble, which I never forgot.
‘She is very well, Aunt. How kind of you to ask.’
It’s nothing of the sort. The old carrion bird is younger than Aoife by a few years but looks older. In her head, I think there’s a race to see who survives longest; I wonder how many others are taking bets. I know who I’d put money on, if I had any.
‘She’s very adaptable, our Aoife, I’m sure she’ll survive whatever life throws at her.’ Aunt Florence reaches towards me, touches the tiny pintucked frills on my sleeve as if to judge their value. This gown is old, greening with age for it’s not even mine – my mother’s, I think, and worn at her own grandparents’ funerals. I suspect it belonged to another O’Malley or three before that. The style is antique, but all that matters is that it’s black; Maura took the waist in a little for I’m more slender than Isolde was. For a moment I consider slapping away the spidery hand with its grasping fingers, a long-delayed revenge, but her bones would probably shatter. It’s tempting, though.
‘And so resourceful. Look at all this!’ She gestures to the spread of food and drink laid out in the long hall once used for balls when we could afford to entertain. Sideboards circle the walls and tables form a line up the middle, all are weighted down with provisions. Everything’s (well, in this room) been cleaned and polished and tidied by the four maids Aidan Fitzpatrick “loaned” us, an unusual attention to duty for this last office for my grandfather. Both Aoife and I have grown used to a light fall of dust most of the time, with even my grandmother accepting that Maura’s getting too old for much beyond rubbing a cloth across easily reachable surfaces in a desultory fashion. Florence’s icy blue eyes gleam as she says, ‘Most impressive with such a pinched purse.’
‘Grandmother can be most persuasive when she wishes, Aunt, as you and Uncle Silas well know.’ Florence’s husband, long-gone, unlamented by most, was rumoured to have been talked out of a good portion of money not long before his death; never paid back either as Aoife had also convinced him that the debt should be forgiven in his will. Even more rumours abound as to how she managed to sway him. Aoife is, as Florrie’s observed, resourceful. Ruthlessly so.
Aunt’s face convulses, the benign expression she tries so hard to cultivate simply cannot stand against the malignance that lives inside and it pushes up like some great sea creature surfacing. A glimpse, then it’s gone. I’m not afraid of her, but for a moment my knees felt shaky, perhaps because in that moment Florence looked rather like Aoife. Not in the features, no, but the ill-intent.
‘You’ve got more than enough of her blood,’ she says and it sounds like a curse. She smiles. ‘I’m glad she’s well. Take care of yourself, Miren.’
Aunt Florence moves off, slowly, and I watch as she makes her way through the press of black-clad bodies. She stops here and there to say something, touch someone. Some recoil from her; others lean in.
The crowd seems to have thinned, but I doubt it’s because anyone’s left yet – although those planning to get back to Breakwater before dark will want to go soon. Relatives will be wandering the house, of course, spreading like webs from wing to wing to see what they can see. It’s not often they have the chance nowadays to visit, invitations to dine have been thin on the ground for some years. Hopefully they’ll not steal anything; not because they need to steal, but because a souvenir is something to crow about in future. They’ll be hard-pressed to find anything of value, even the multitude of silver objects – vases, busts,
