school photos 64

Jean and Jo stood to the side of the hearse’s tailgate, fag smoke and aftershave, a toxic mix, wafting from behind them, the jingling of pocket change, like horses’ reins, a reminder of fellow mourners waiting for Joey’s last call.  She held Jo’s hand tightly, a peaching of lipstick on her daughter’s mouth, plucked eyebrows, a fingertip of eye shadow, reminding her how grown up she was getting. Everyone searching the back of wardrobes for black funeral attire, except for her brother Jim and his floozy, who didn’t turn up.  Jean opted for Joey to buried, not cremated, or rather her sister Ruth played referee and bought into that option. Jean shut her eyes, her chest choking into her throat, determined not to cry. After the inevitable delay, Joey’s coffin made the funeral real enough, shouldered out the door and into the hearse, by John, wee Charlie, McGinley and a cousin he’d known as boy. Birdsfoot, Trefoil and Speedwell, trying their luck, poked up through the gaps in the slabs their feet shuffled over.  Shoved inside the back of a hearse in a pine box, with two guy in silk top hats and frock coats watching over the delivery, was slightly more surreal. No fuss, as Joey would have liked, but flowers— floral pillows, sprays on top of the casket, alongside plastic wreaths and messages poking out of clear polystyrene he’d never read. All for the bin, like him, Jean thought. She kept losing things, needed it to be over and done with so they could start searching for Ally.

Canon Martin conducted the funeral mass in St Stephen’s at his own slow steady pace. Jean, flanked by Jo and John, insisted on leaving a space at the end of the pew for Ally. Her sisters, their partners and children in the pews behind them. Relations, friends, workmates and people that knew Joey, and parishioners that didn’t know him, filled the other seats, and sprawled out to a loose-hipped shuggle, standing against the back walls of the chapel. John didn’t want to be ignorant and turn round and stare, but one of them had a rich baritone voice that soared above their heads and out-choired the organ music and the choir. His rendition of the twenty-third Psalm made his head dip and he’d cried into the lapels of his borrowed jacket.  He was within touching distance of the coffin, choking on incense, the clanking of the thurible like the straining sound of the chains on the Renfrew ferry on the Clyde where he’d worked. The old priest pontificated from the pulpit, said all the usual things about Jesus and God’s will.  Before the consecration of the coffin, he asked for a special prayer to be said for Alison. His wheezing monotone voice and empty words sickened John. It felt as if he’d already stuffed Ally in the coffin with his Da and nailed down the lid with banalities. John wanted to stand up, to scream and shout in protest, but bowed his head and studied his hands.

A signal from the undertakers, who had ghosted up the aisle, and John and the other pallbearers picked the coffin up and balanced it on their shoulders. He kept his head down, his face blurry with tears, he carried grief down the aisle and carried the coffin out of the chapel and into the waiting hearse.

He sat in the back of the hired car with his mum, facing Jo and Auntie Caroline. His Auntie patted him on the knee. ‘You did well son.’ They sunk into a chauffeured silence, rain washing against the window, looking out at people going in and out of shops, getting on with their lives.

The wind funnelled down from the Old Kilpatrick Hills. Dalmuir Crematorium and graveyard, a cold spot made colder. Joey’s grave had been dug, the kickboards a walkway on the grass, and the gravediggers, in their fawn overcoats and work boots stood a few feet away from their work. Mourners arrived in fits and starts, parked cars along the path and on the muddy grass against the wall at the top of the graveyard that separated the crop of the dead from the harvest of fodder for cattle in the fields alongside.  No room for manoeuvre the graves were pencilled in straight lines. No border between the old and the new, but marble headstones, sunken stone and a scattering of angels weary with moss. Canon Martin came in his own car, a jalopy with only two doors. He was helped out of the passenger seat and helped along to the graveside by a middle-aged altar boy.

With the noise of the wind and traffic it was difficult to hear what the old priest said as he read from his missal. The main show was over. For most of those gathered it was a mime show, watching the flicker of turned pages and mutter of moving lips.  Soon it was time to drop Joey’s coffin into the trench that had been dug. The undertaker handed John one of the cords for this duty. He distributed the other cords to men Joey  worked with in the yards, big broad men, bursting out of their suit, not scared to get their clean shoes dirty on the runnel of dirt at their feet. They took the job seriously. The man across from John, the biggest of them all, with a quiff and sideburns, giving him the nod when it time to lower the coffin. They dropped the cords in nodded to each other at a job well done.

‘I was very sorry to hear about your Da.’ The man with the quiff shook John’s hand. ‘He was a good man.’ He squeezed his hand tight in a handshake. Brown eyes locked on his, steady as his gravelly voice.  ‘And I was sorry to hear about your wee sister too. Bastards.’ He spat into the grave. ‘Bobby Rodgers. If there is anything I can do let me know.’

‘Cheers.’ John sounded unsure. Not because of anything that had been said. He was sure he spotted Janine’s braided hair swinging back and forth across her back, and the signature of her jerky gait as she walked away from the gravesite.

He loped through the crowd. People he vaguely knew nodding at him and mourners he didn’t know offering their condolences and trying to engage him in conversation. He caught up with her on the hill leading onto the pavement abutting the dual-carriageway. She wore a smart navy suit with flashy silver buttons. He touched her on the back as if they’d been playing a game of tig. She jolted back from the contact.

‘You came.’ He leaned across and pecked her on the cheek, making a grab for her hand.

‘Sign of respect.’ She pushed his outstretched fingers away. A green Hillman nosed out of the graveyard, chugged and rattled on the shoulder of the exit onto the dual-carriageway, with other cars backed-up behind it.

‘Wait there and I’ll give you a lift.’ Her face was shiny, by Janine’s standards, no make-up.  His voice rose and he smiled. ‘You’re coming to the do aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be daft. You need to come.’ He watched cars speeding past them, gaps opening between them and the black of the hired cars, last of all, crawling, coming out through gates. Distracted, he spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘I saw you the other night, standing at the window, looking out at the stars.’

‘Did you?’ Her voice poised to say more. ‘I’m thrilled to smithereens.’ She walked away from him, her heels clicking on the motorway bridge.

‘Hing on.’ He easily caught up with her. She flicked his hand away. The limousine slowed and stopped beside him. The window hushed down and his mum looked out at him.

‘Jump in,’ he shouted at Janine. A gap had opened between them. She shook her head and kept clumping along, without turning back or looking at him.

Jean followed her son’s gaze, as the car passed her. ‘That’s a strange girl that.’    

‘She looks trouble,’ chimed Auntie Caroline.