In The Wake

‘Have you ever seen a dead body before?’

Dad won’t give me a straight answer, just said that’s how they do funerals in Ireland. He only told me in the car that her body was still in the house, open casket, in her room till the procession tomorrow. I’ve seen the episode of Derry Girls where they’re at a wake but that’s the 90s. Then again, who am I to judge what can and can’t change?

The drive through Belfast was less a memory and more an impression, city to country and winding between postcard fields, sun haloing the Mountains of Mourne. Closer and closer we get, and up the dying garden path to the black front door, and I’m looking through the window but I’m inside also. I’m eight again, it’s my birthday. Nanny is in her chair and the living room isn’t as full with bodies.

Now, Dad rings the bell, and I’m waiting for someone to recognise us through the glass.

‘Donal’s here!’

Aunty Brigid ushers us in. ‘Quick like, wind’s feckin’ Baltic. Good to see the two of yous.’ She hugs us both, firm pats over shoulders, before sweeping up a mug from the porch table. ‘Caught the early flights, did yous? Where’s your mammy?’ she asks me.

Dad tells her that Mum isn’t well. ‘Nothing serious, mind you,’ he says. ‘But sudden plans, didn’t feel up for travelling. We were lucky enough as is.’

‘Can’t they wait more than three days to put her body in the ground?’ Mum had said the night Nanny died. I keep this from Brigid.

She holds up her mug as if to drink but doesn’t. ‘I see,’ she says. ‘Well, most everyone else is through or passin’ through.’ I can feel the cold seeping in behind me, but the living room swelters, either from the heating or just sheer numbers. We shed our coats and shamble further in. Aunty Brigid pats me on the back again. ‘Good to see you’re with your da, Christopher.’

‘It’s good to see you too,’ I say reflexively.

‘If you’re wanting, there’s a leftover platter in the kitchen, tea as well,’ she says. Before I can answer, she’s pressed the mug into my hand. ‘I take mine two sugars, plenty milk.’

My free hand is taken up shaking others’ as I weasel through the living room. There’s Uncle John and Aunty Evelyn, Aunty Maeve, Uncle Colm, cousins Liam through Aoife, about a dozen or so faces I know and a host I don’t. The room feels about two arm spans wide each way, more if you count the TV’s understairs alcove. BBC’s Pointless drawls under the throng. I don’t catch much beyond ‘How are yous’ to Dad and a few joke tea orders. I don’t know how much I’ll understand later; there’s already bottles and cans in hands, on side tables and mantles beside framed photos and faces I can scarcely name.

Beige carpet gives way to dark tiles as I cross another threshold into the hallway-thin dining room that leads to the kitchen. I pass the downstairs bedroom too, door wide open. Nanny’s breathing equipment is neatly stacked in the corner.

The kitchen’s colder, quieter. Tentative, I put the back of my hand to the kettle on the hob. Brick cold. I’m not sure what Aunty Brigid takes so I rifle through pine cabinetry for Irish Breakfast even though it’s 4.37pm. Through the kitchen window, it looks even later. I don’t know anywhere else where the streetlights are so orange, or blink on this far ahead of sundown. Clouds have patched themselves together into one smothering sheet, churning like water in the kettle as it comes to boil.

New bodies blow in through the front door. ‘It’s feckin’ Baltic out there,’ they all say.

As I pour, I count the footsteps overhead between each cup.

I leave milk out my tea these days, like Mum.

Dad’s still in the living room but he’ll want to go up soon too.

Out of his earshot, Mum had made me promise something. I’m still circulating what it means and what I can do, like heat and cold chasing equilibrium.

My scalp itches and I bite dead skin from under my nails. Right now, I just have to make tea. I have to be careful how much I carry; I don’t want to spill and scald myself.

‘Thank you very muchly,’ Aunty Brigid says. She takes a sip and scowls. ‘You thought I was lying about the milk?’

‘I dashed in more than a wee bit,’ I scoff.

‘And I want more milk than tea, thank you.’ She hands it back.

Somebody laughs like a dog barks. I roll my eyes and swing back to the kitchen.

On the way, Uncle Franky tries to squeeze past me even though he stoops through the doorframe. ‘A’right, Christopher?’ He waits to shake my hand with both his, clenching a rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth. ‘Have to feckin’ smoke aside.’

‘I’m good, thanks,’ I say. ‘How you doing?’

‘Better in a mo,’ he says. ‘Your Aunty Brigid needs to make her feckin’ mind up. Quit or no. You want summat?’

I’ve never touched a cigarette. I’d know my grandfather if he hadn’t. Seeing Nanny go after a lifetime of second-hand smoke, maybe Brigid will finally be stubborn over this too. When I bring the tea back to her, she points me in the direction of the porch and stairs.

It is time.

I take the stairway slow; it is steep and narrow, like climbing a mountain path. How they’ll pass the coffin down, I do not know. To make way on the landing for others trekking back, I duck into the spare bedroom. It’s crowded with extra chairs, drawers, heaped bags of clothes on the guest bed, and another halved skeleton of a bedframe cluttered beside. The room’s already small but with these it’s postage stamp. When I find Dad in Nanny’s room and take a seat beside him, it’s the first thing I can say. ‘How’d you and your brothers ever all fit in that one room?’

‘Never did,’ he says. ‘This was our room back when it was all us, bunk beds both sides.’

We’re sitting against the interior wall, so he motions either side, wide window between. The curtains are drawn, white like the Mournes’ snow you can still just make out in the distance. Condensation advances round the glass, from top trickling to Nanny in the coffin below.

‘That’ll frost in the morning,’ I say.

‘Probably,’ Dad says. He shifts forward in his chair, hands clasped together but makes no move to get up. I wait.

There’s a few like us, seated round the fringes. Most stay standing though, hushed ‘helloo’s to those they recognise. They hug or shake hands, huddle a moment, before approaching Nanny. When they speak, I don’t know what they’re saying or who they are before they’re gone. I suppose we will be soon.

‘Y’know,’ Dad begins softly. ‘I must’ve been seven or eight when I got up early one morning. I think it was a February like this because it was coming out of winter, and I went to the window, and I drew the curtains open, and found the whole window had iced over. You could see where the sheet of ice was breaking in these great cracks that spanned the glass and all these tiny breaks that spanned between them. It was all yet to fall, so I gave the pane a hard flick with my finger and the whole thing fell out the frame in pieces. The sound of breaking glass woke everyone in the house. None of us knew at first what’d exactly happened. Y’know water freezes and expands, so my dad reckoned there’d been fault somewhere in the glass where water had gotten in. That’s when I found the bullet caught in the curtain fold.’

I smile. ‘What?’

Dad pinches his finger and thumb together. ‘A wee bullet. It must’ve left such a tiny hole in the glass I didn’t notice.’

I look between him and the window. ‘You’d been shot at?’

‘Not shot at,’ goes Dad. ‘It must’ve still been going fast enough to make a hole but from far enough away to only just. A stray bullet.’

‘And you’ve just never told me this before?’ I ask.

Dad puckers his lower lip.

‘So, who did it? IRA related? What happened to the bullet?’ I ask.

He sighs. ‘Oh, I dunno.’

Always the same ending.

‘Well, thanks for the story then.’

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look me in the face. Dad shifts back in his chair. He’d snapped at me on the airplane about changing into pyjamas but now he won’t look me in the face. Flying, easy — talking?

There’s an opening at the coffin.

‘Did you want to go over?’ I ask him.

Still, nothing.

‘I think I might,’ I say.

The man can’t, won’t answer me.

‘Please. Be there for him,’ Mum had said.

But that’s not up to me, is it?

So, like slowly picking a scab, I stand and move to the coffin. I take my hands out my pockets and cradle them against my body. I look into Nanny’s face, her closed eyes, pinched mouth and smoothed creases. Her hair is freshly curled like in every memory, and they’ve dressed her in a white, high-collared sweater.

But the rouge on her cheeks is too bright — she’d never wear that.

And the white is probably to further offset her pallor.

Mum was right: this isn’t Nanny anymore.

I try looking to the Mournes but it’s too late, the window is a dark mirror. Condensation trickles across my face.

Someone moves beside me: my cousin Aoife. She pulls a chair closer, so I shuffle to give her room at Nanny’s head. Without hint of hesitation, Aoife’s hands go in the coffin. She lays them over Nanny’s hands in the same way, fingers down and together, left over right, then traces them up and over wrists to arms past shoulders, cradling Nanny’s head and stroking her hair. I can’t look away.

When was the last time I saw her alive?

Aoife hands smooth the fabric of Nanny’s sweater across her shoulders.

She’d visited Brisbane, but when?

Aoife slips a hand under Nanny’s, careful not to shift the rosary beads wound in them. Nanny had given me rosaries too, while we were still in England, visiting for my first communion. I must’ve been eleven. I’ve only ever used them for Hallowe’en costumes. And I’ve only thought of them now. I hadn’t thought to pack them.

I steady a hand on the coffin’s rim, then reach in.

I’m sorry.

She’s cold.

I flinch and pull away. What did I think and what did I say aloud?

I look to Aoife. Her cheeks are wet and red, but her eyes are fixed on Nanny, hands ever so gently polishing

the white-gold of her hair, as if making a wish.

I put my hands in my pockets.

I don’t belong here.

I sit down next to Dad.

I should say something nice, but I can’t think of anything that’s true.

‘Helloo, I’m so sorry for your loss, who are you?’ a middle-aged woman says all at once, putting a hand across me to Dad. She’s just walked in. I don’t know what she’s apologising for if she doesn’t know who we are.

‘Guess I’m the missing link,’ smiles Dad.

Does he feel it too?

He shakes her hand. ‘Donal Haughey.’

She smiles back. ‘Oh, the one from England.’

‘Well, Australia now,’ he says.

‘Oh my,’ she goes. ‘Oh-stray-lia, my you’ve come a long way. I’m very sorry for your loss. And this must be your nephew Oisín,’ she says.

‘No actually, this is my son Christopher,’ Dad says.

‘No one’s ever confused me with Oisín before,’ I tell her.

‘Apologies, there must be something similar about yous,’ she says.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. Family’s one thing but I don’t need to entertain complete strangers. Maybe that’s what Dad needs, I can’t tell. Does he even want me here? Let him figure that out without me. I make an excuse about going to the kitchen.

The mood’s spoiled in the land of the living too. Aunty Brigid’s in Nanny’s chair and even though the throng hasn’t thinned, of those I recognise, I don’t see any uncles. No, there’s one left. ‘Christopher!’ snaps Brigid. ‘Tell your Uncle Franky get his arse inside, if he hasn’t left for the feckin’ pub too.’

I make out his chimneystack figure, still in the back garden that’s more brick than garden. He lights up another cigarette between long fingers. Someone else is beside him too, breathing out vape clouds. Cold air numbs my lips as I open the back door. ‘Aunty Brigid wants you. Says it’s Baltic out here,’ I try.

‘Aye, so it is,’ he says. He takes one long smoldering hit of his cigarette, then drops it, puts it out under his boot heel. ‘Feckin’ in we go. Oisín say helloo your cousin.’

Oisín doesn’t pocket the vape, doesn’t move a step. After a moment, he says:

‘A’right, Chris.’

I know it’s dark out, and I know it’s been an age since we last met, but I also know we are nothing alike. The bruise round Oisín’s eye should show that alone, and I’ve heard enough family gossip besides. The rosary beads — Oisín had come with Nanny for that weekend of my first communion. He’d been so proud she’d brought him along. Why is he out here?

Once Franky’s stooped in, I close the door.

The nameless woman from upstairs is in the kitchen now, making fresh tea. ‘For your da,’ she smiles. ‘He looks so tired. Could you take it up to him? I’m sure he needs you right now.’

I lie: ‘I know.’

‘Now, your cousin there—’ she motions through the kitchen window to the silhouette blowing fumes. ‘He shouldn’t be on his lonesome either.’

‘If he’s put himself there, he should be happy enough,’ I say.

But if I’d grown up here, would I be any different?

If I had, would Dad trust me any better?

These thoughts follow me up the stairs and sting a little too much to bear, like my fingertips round the hot porcelain mug as I step again into Nanny’s room. My hands shake for some reason. Tea spills just a drop, scalding at my left thumb. The only table to put it down is in the far corner but it’s where all the best framed photos of Nanny have been gathered. There’s no one else here I know to pass it to.

Except Dad, standing silent over his mother in the coffin.

I close my eyes and try to imagine that early February morning, that wee bullet, that window shattered yet whole.

Rory Hawkins (he/him) is an English-Irish emerging writer and editor based in Meanjin/Brisbane, currently a sub-editor with Jacaranda Journal. Whether through prose or poetry, Rory loves to repurpose true life into something a little less certain, sometimes a little more mystical. He is a 2022/23 shortlister and 2024 winner of QUT's Allen & Unwin Prize - with his memoir-fiction blend 'In the Wake.' Rory is also editor of 'Is This Working?' - a short fiction and memoir anthology published by Tiny Owl Workshop.