The Mammy Read Online Free Page B

Mark.
    ‘Did he come back?’ she asked.
    ‘Come back? From where?’ Mark looked puzzled.
    ‘Mammy said Da was gone to heaven - he went after work. Did he come back?’
    ‘Yeh,’ Mark said.
    ‘Why?’ she pressed.
    ‘Cause he didn’t want to miss the funeral.’
    Cathy’s reply was a simple ‘Oh’, and on they walked, behind the now human-powered vehicle.
    Kevin Carmichael had been employed for twenty-five years by Solemn Sites Ltd., the owners of Ballybough cemetery. He started as a grave digger, and over the years had worked his way up to cemetery manager. He loved his job and ordinarily the cemetery ran like clockwork. Of course from time to time little hiccups would occur: during the strike of ‘63 graves had to be dug by the family members, and once a well-known Dublin prostitute who was supposed to be laid to rest in the family grave, ended up, because of a clerical error, joining the Sisters of Divine Revelation! The mistake was quickly rectified and the prostitute’s family thought it hilarious. Nobody ever told the sisters.
    Today had all the makings of a bad day at the cemetery. Kevin prided himself on planning the arrival of funerals to be at least fifteen minutes apart, so as to give a semblance of privacy to each family. But a mixture of errors and circumstances saw three of today’s burials arrive simultaneously. The Clarke funeral was running well behind schedule, due to the priest having had a heart attack mid-Mass. By the time an ambulance was called and a replacement priest found, Thomas Clarke (deceased) was indeed late for his own funeral, by one hour. The second funeral due in, the Browne family, was now arriving twenty minutes late - the reason for this was obvious as ten red-faced men pushed the huge Zephyr into the cemetery reception area. To top matters off, the O‘Brien party were spot on time. So Kevin now had three funerals arriving together, and bedlam for lunch!
    Fresh men were needed to carry Redser’s coffin. Those who had pushed the hearse were knackered. Four barmen from Foley’s pub were appointed pall bearers along with the two men from the funeral home. As the pall bearers moved through the now huge crowd, they joined the other two coffins, also being carried shoulder-high. With all three coffins in a row the procession began and everything went well for a while, the huge crowd following the three coffins - it looked like a mass funeral. Suddenly, one of the coffins broke ranks and took off down a side route. The crowd now rumbled with questions - ‘Which one was that?’ they all wanted to know. It was turning into a gigantic version of the Shell game. A decision was made by someone and a large portion of the crowd broke away in pursuit of the stray coffin. The children looked to Agnes for guidance, and, decisive as always, Agnes said: ‘Follow the one on the left ... that’s your Da!’ The words ‘the one on the left’ went through the crowd like Chinese whispers. At the next junction ’the one on the left’ veered to the left again and up a small hill. Agnes and the children followed, so did the crowd.
    After some five hundred yards or so the coffin was laid across two planks on top of the grave. The crowd milled around this spot and when everybody was in position, there was a deathly quiet. ‘Our father who art in heaven ...’ the priest began, like the first singer at a singsong. The huge crowd joined in and Agnes wiped a tear from her eye. The children huddled close to her, and this made her feel a little less lonely. She glanced around at the crowd. Old friends were there and there were also a good few she didn’t recognise, but Redser was a popular man. On the far side of the grave she picked out an attractive-looking woman who, like herself, was dressed in black, and was sobbing. Agnes didn’t recognise her. At first she was puzzled, then slowly it began to creep in - the suspicion for the first time in her life that Redser Browne might have been