Scrap 13

SCRAP 13
It is almost midnight when Rosa creeps into the kitchen and turns on the light.
‘Daddy, you gave me a fright. Why are you sitting here in the dark? I told you not to wait up for me.’
Bill is propped at the table, his head resting on his hands. Rosa places a hand on his shoulder. He slumps forward, his head hitting the table with a horrible thud.
Jason hears his sister’s screams and stumbles downstairs, a hammer in his hand. ‘What is it?’
Rosa is standing against the sink, shaking, tears streaming down her face. ‘I better get mum,’ says Jason.

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Bill always enjoyed a good wake. He certainly would have enjoyed this one. With family and friends arriving from all over the country and dozens more from Ireland, the yard is soon filled with caravans, trucks and cars.
The two big rooms at the back of the house are lined with chairs and in the centre of the living room, set on trestles and open for all to pay their respects, lays Bill in his elaborate oak casket.
The two families are split, the Protestants in one room, Orla’s Catholic family in the other. For most of them this is the first time they have seen Orla since her announcement that she had married a ‘Prod’.
The widow buzzes from room to room, making sure that everybody has enough to eat and drink. Jason shadows her, silent and uncomfortable in his itchy new wool suit.
Rosa fends off the attentions of the young men, who seem to see the occasion as a good opportunity to impress her. Most of them are cousins or second cousins, all of them strangers. Particularly annoying is Danny, her mother’s cousin’s son from County Cork. He arrived at the yard the day after Bill’s death, driving all the way in his pick-up truck, determined to be the first to offer his condolences in person.
Danny is a good looking young man, tall, dark hair and black eyes which twinkle with life. He is eager to make himself indispensible and Rosa knows that he has hopes for the two of them.
Rosa has a good idea of what her father would have said: ‘Over my dead body.’ Unfortunately, the play was unfolding in exactly that place.