Page 74 of The Women at Ocean's End

‘I’m just about to check on Constance now,’ Heather said.

‘I’ll come.’ Perhaps Ros already knew too.

They pushed the door in together, softly; and for once it didn’t creak. The curtain at the window billowed slightly with a faint breeze and the room smelled of the sea but there was stillness on the air despite the open window.

‘Oh, Constance,’ Ros breathed at her side and she ran to Constance’s bed. ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ She looked back at Heather, tears filling up her eyes. ‘She’s gone.’

‘She is,’ Heather said and went to Constance and kissed her gently on her forehead. She looked so serene, so content, as if she’d just drifted off to sleep and had been in the middle of a lovely dream when she decided it was time to step away.

They stayed there for a long time, Ros’s head down as she wept on Constance’s stomach. Heather stood at the head of the bed, gently touching Constance’s hair, patting it into place to keep it out of her eyes as if there was any chance it might annoy her now.

Later, as they sat in the kitchen with a pot of tea between them that was cold in their cups, Heather couldn’t remember if she’d cried at all. She must have, because she had that empty feeling that only came when every emotion had been poured from you.

‘Did you know? Last night? That she was dying?’ Ros’s voice was barely a whisper.

‘I think, yesterday, I think I did, but I didn’t want to believe it. I truly believed we’d have her for a little longer.’ She looked at Ros now who was a shadow of herself, her colour drained from her, even her hair hanging limp, as if it had given all vibrancy over to the sadness of losing Constance. ‘The important thing is, I think she knew it and she was happy, Ros. She was ready to go. She’d done everything she wanted to do.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know, her business with Jake, she’d set her affairs in order.’

‘You really think she was ready?’ Ros shook her head. ‘And she was happy?’

‘I do, she talked about her mother being here with her, shewashappy, Ros.’ Heather leaned across and put her arm around Ros’s shoulder. ‘You helped to make her happy. I’d say having you here made her as happy as she’d been in years.’

‘And you, Heather, she loved having you here. You know, when she heard you were coming across, it was such a panic toget that room sorted for you.’ Ros was laughing and crying now, all at the same time. ‘I thought it would be a disaster, I scrubbed and cleaned every inch of the place. I don’t think I ever worked so hard, but I had to when I saw how much it meant to her.’

‘But that’s it. Constance knew that, she knew how much she meant to you and you were so very dear to her.’

‘She’ll always be the closest I’ve ever come to having a granny.’ Ros sniffed again.

‘She wouldn’t want you to be too upset; I think she’d want to know that you were making the very most of your life.’ Heather squeezed Ros’s shoulders again.

Heather wasn’t sure where the next few days disappeared to. There was a wake and a funeral to organise. Finbar had rolled in to help them do things correctly. ‘You’re not in the city now, Constance would want a proper island send-off,’ he told Heather and she had been happy to let him tell her how things were done. She wanted to give Constance the very best send-off she possibly could. This would be her gift to Constance, her final thank you for everything, but mostly for setting her free from the overhanging calluses of her youth in a way she’d never thought she could be.

The three-day wake and funeral were cathartic in a funny way. Neither Heather nor Ros had much time for sleep and Ocean’s End filled with neighbours and stories and laughter about Constance’s life and what she’d meant to everyone. There was sadness too; older people who had moved to the mainland years earlier made the journey back to the island to remember her. They sat in small groups and reminisced about times they’d never see again. They told some of the best stories about the two girls who lived in the big house and the many escapades that made them notorious with the other kids on the island.

Finbar’s memories were a lot like Heather’s.

‘She was so kind, but more than that, she had time for all the island kids when our parents were much too busy to pay us any heed. Her strawberry-picking parties were legendary each summer. Every kid on the island turned up and we ate strawberries until we were almost sick. And then, there would be homemade lemonade that was prepared in the house and brought out to the kitchen garden. We all loved the kitchen garden. In autumn some of us would come up and she’d send us home with bags of apples for our mothers to make tarts and crumbles.’

‘Are they the only apple trees on the island?’ Ros asked.

‘As far as I know, they only survive here because the wall is so high, and even then they’re not nearly as hardy as if they were on the mainland. I peeped in one day when you opened it all up again and they’re still there and, you know, I was right back there, a kid looking forward to bringing home a bag of apples to my mother.’

Finbar smiled sadly. Like everyone else, he was very fond of Constance too. He’d been really good, helping out with the funeral. It seemed he had spent most of the last three days at Heather’s side, making tea and serving up sweet memories with pies that had been delivered to the door from neighbours and friends that Heather never knew they had. Jake, too, had played a blinder. For an outsider, he’d certainly managed to fall in step with island life. He spent most of the three days of the funeral ferrying cups of tea and coffee from the kitchen into people’s hands and clearing away the empties in time for the next round.

She finally met Jonah Ashe. He called with boxes of food and drink from the supermarket and two home-cooked hams that he had prepared and sliced up especially for the wake. Heather had to admit, she found it difficult to understand why Ros seemed to dislike him so much.

‘Oh, he can be a bit sharp, but he’s a good egg,’ Finbar said as they watched Jonah’s jeep turn out of the drive.

The service was beautiful. Heather wrote out the prayers, offering thanks for the gift of friendship and kindness that Constance had embodied in life. The readings were chosen to reflect that same sentiment and, at the end, Ros stood and read a long piece by Maggie Macken that had been written as a poem, but was really more of a meditation on the daughter who had meant the world to her.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the church by the end of it. Perhaps it was added to by the lack of sleep, but Heather felt as if she was entirely emptied out and maybe that was how it was meant to be, because she looked across at Finbar and had a feeling that the last few days had been cathartic beyond measure. There was room in her heart for something more now. When he squeezed her hand as they made their way on the short walk to the cemetery from the church, she felt as if maybe he knew this too.

The ceremony at the graveside was accompanied by a local piper. It was one of those things that Constance had set in place herself. She loved the mournful sound of the pipes and had chosen a piece that managed to be both soothing and uplifting, as if she might be raised to heaven on the very air of it.

The whole funeral was beautiful, so much more than what Heather had managed to organise for her own mother and maybe that saddened her just a bit. From the way Constance had spoken about their friendship, Heather had a feeling that Dotty would just be happy to see her again, wherever they might be now.

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