Page 31 of The Women at Ocean's End

‘So, is he a lay minister? Can he do a ceremony and, you know, say a few official words, so Mum’s… on the path in the right direction?’ Heather raised her eyes towards the ceiling, the obvious implication being she’d like to hedge her bets towards heaven if at all possible for Dot.

‘You don’t have to worry about that.’ Finbar was at the door. ‘And yes, if you’d prefer I can do a humanist ceremony. I mostly do weddings.’ He looked at Constance, smiled impishly. ‘The young ones are all for humanist services. We get lots of weddings here on the island and I thought, well, since they’re coming across anyway, why not offer my services rather than have someone travel over with them for the sake of an hour…’

‘I’m not sure which she’d prefer, my mother wasn’t exactly the most devout woman,’ Heather said diplomatically. ‘But still, she never mentioned not having a church service.’

‘Whatever suits. I can pencil in a time for the priest on the mainland and he’d only be too happy to do the funeral. Are ye bringing across her remains or is it a question of an urn?’ Finbar asked.

‘She’s in the front room, on the windowsill,’ Constance said and then, when she actually thought about Dotty perched on the windowsill, she had to laugh, because at their age, there was nothing less likely than either of them wedging themselves up there again.

‘Did someone say tea?’ Ros was standing at the door. She halted when she realised that Finbar had come over to discuss the funeral arrangements.

‘Come in, come in, don’t be daft, you’re not going without telling us how you got on.’ Constance grabbed her arm, pullingher through into the kitchen. Ros looked as knackered as Constance had ever seen her. She frog-marched her to the kitchen table and went about making a pot of tea and placing homemade brown bread on a plate with butter and jam and a few biscuits to finish up.

‘Oh, it won’t take long to tell you. Let’s just say, I was as prepared as I could be and we’ll have to wait and see.’ Ros plopped into the chair, obviously relieved to have it over with. ‘Actually, maybe a bit better than expected, one of the interviewers might even be especially rooting for me.’ She told them about Sonia and their chat after the interview.

‘Well, that’s as much as you can ask for; let’s keep our fingers crossed, eh?’

The spin out to the church was actually lovely. Constance hadn’t visited her mother’s grave in the longest time and she hated to think how much longer it was since she’d stood in St Brendan’s.

‘You have the church looking lovely, Finbar,’ she whispered to him as they stood in the vestry. The place was a combination of gleaming brass and heady beeswax.

‘Ah, go on with you, you know well I have plenty of help in the winter time.’ It was true, some of the other fishermen were always happy to lend a hand when the sea turned back their boats with storms that would cut even the hardiest into pieces.

‘Help or no help, I’ve heard that you’re doing a fine job,’ Constance said softly and she wandered out towards her mother’s grave and stood there while Heather and Finbar made the arrangements for Dotty’s funeral service.

21

Heather

‘That sounds perfect,’ Heather said as she and Finbar walked out towards the graveyard, where Constance was standing at Maggie Macken’s grave. It hadn’t taken very long to agree the details and at least she felt happy that now, finally, she was doing something that her mother couldn’t but be pleased about.

‘Oh, Constance, this is…’ She looked up at Maggie Macken’s headstone. It was a fine column of carved granite with a verse etched into the stem:Listen for me on the autumn breeze, see me in the showers that fall across the hillside, sit by me on a summer’s day in the shade of an old yew tree and remember that I have loved and lived and let you not cry that I remain only a whisper on the morning dew.‘It’s beautiful.’

‘She wrote it especially. I think she was inspired by Yeats, but of course, it’s a much longer pilgrimage to make, off the mainland, so really, no-one has ever sat here in the way she might have hoped,’ Constance said a little sadly.

‘I think anyone who does would be moved by those lines,’ Heather said and although she was here to bury her own mother, something pulled at her heartstrings, because without Maggie Macken, neither of them would have any connection to this place. Suddenly, she was overcome with a feeling of deep gratitude to the woman for dragging her family out of Galway to this place all those years earlier, and she said as much to Constance.

‘Oh, I don’t think there was any dragging involved. Your grandmother was happy to come. It was hard times to be a single parent and the city was no place to raise a child on your own,’ Constance said. ‘My mother knew that only too well.’

‘They must have been close? Maggie and Sylvie?’ Heather asked later that night. Her mother never spoke about her own parents. It was as if Sylvie and Norman Wren had only existed as mere shadows, so long before that they hardly counted any more. It was a shame. Heather wanted to know about them and Constance was now the only one who could tell her. They were sitting on deckchairs that Ros had resurrected from somewhere and set up near the back door. From here, you could see right out to the crest of the horizon.

‘I think they both just had a terrible shock, after the well and all and…’ Constance hesitated, perhaps realising that Heather had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Hasn’t your mother told you the story of how we became so close?’

‘No, I just assumed that you grew up together here,’ Heather said, reaching to the ground and picking up the bottle of red wine before topping up both their glasses. ‘I’d love to hear it.’

‘It’s not my favourite story to tell, but anyway, it’s how we ended up here, so I suppose, if you’re interested, you should know it. We had been living in a little house in Galway, on the road out of the city towards Salthill. Apparently, it’s what they call an up-and-coming area now. Dotty and her parents lived next door. Your grandmother was a great cook, far more a homemaker than my mother; it’s a pity you’d hardly remember her, I’m sure.’

Constance sighed now, as if thinking back was almost making her tired. ‘Anyway, the house on the other side of us had a wilderness of a garden and an old disused well at the end of it. As small girls, Dotty and I were thrown together while my mother wrote and hers kept house. I hated it there. The other kids alongthe road would tease me, but they wouldn’t dare if Dotty was nearby. Your mother had the courage of a lion. I didn’t see it at the time, of course, only later when I realised.’

Constance’s gaze drifted off and there was a moment when Heather thought she might say something, but she simply sighed and then smiled before beginning again.

‘One day, I was in the garden and some of the boys broke through. I knew I was for it if they caught me and I made my escape through the fence. Anyway, I ended up falling into the old unused well.’ She sipped her wine before going on. ‘I must have bashed my head, but the next thing I remember was waking up and everything was dark. I mean, the sky was full of stars, but I was down so deep, I could only just make it out. I was missing for days. My mother told me there were search parties sent out all across the city, they didn’t realise I was just a few hundred yards away. Your grandmother thought they’d never see me again. My own mother was afraid to think at all. She walked the streets with a photograph of me, showing my face to strangers, hoping that someone had come across me. And then Dotty, by some miracle, found me. I’ll never forget her voice, calling my name.Constance, Constance, please if you’re down there, let me know.I thought I must be dreaming it at first. I mean, I was down there days, two long days and nights. I was probably in shock, certainly fatigued beyond measure and most likely dehydrated too.’

‘Oh my God, Constance, you poor little thing, so young, you must have been terrified,’ Heather said and she reached out and stroked Constance’s arm. The bond between her mother and Constance made sense now. How devastating it must have been all those years ago when it severed; she could understand how an experience like that could draw them together in a way beyond normal friendship.

‘Ah, I gave them all quite the shock. My mother feared I’d never be quite the same again.’ Constance’s lips lifted into a wry smile and, for a moment, Heather had the strangest feeling that there was something very important she was holding back. ‘She had just signed her first big publishing contract. We’d come into more money than she had ever dreamed possible and she thought that getting away from Galway might help me recover. She was right, of course. With a bit of minding and a good rest and moving away from that place, I suppose I was fine, mostly.’

‘I can’t imagine. But, after that, you all moved here?’

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