by Cowley, Joy
‘There were times,’ says Father O’Donnell, ‘when you felt that their love for each other filled the whole room.’
And if it did, Father, where did it leave their daughters? Have you thought of that? Have you wondered how two people who are mirrors to each other, find room for their children? I know that when people die it is usual for someone to make myth of their lives, but please, for our sake, don’t make great love out of a great obsession.
‘Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us your peace.’
Peace, this, peace that. What’s so wonderful about peace? Growth is a product of tension, not inertia. Why do religions advocate a static condition when the whole of life is meant to be a birthing struggle? He’s done it, now. Dad has. The chicken’s hatched, the eggshell remains. But wherever he is I would not wish peace for him. I would not wish a state of no-growth.
Okay Delia, calm down. It’s not such a big issue.
Really, I have no heavy argument with Father O’Donnell and the Catholic Church. It’s just that living with Lal has developed in me a natural fondness for mental aerobics, especially where belief systems are concerned. Doctrine, as I see it, is partly about control, sheepdogs on paper making sure that the flock stays together and the ewes keep up the increase. But then there is the other part of teaching which is about the remembering of the forgetting. Except that they tend to forget to remember what it’s for. Not just Christians. All religions. They start worshipping the words and the entire journey stops with language idolatory. We get stuck, Father, in our own little webs of ideas.
I kneel with Beatrice on foam padding and remember the hard wooden kneelers of my childhood. How did the elderly manage in those days? Did they consider bruised knees to be just penance? Someone is playing a flute. A young man stands at the end of the choir stalls, his fingers fluttering over the silver pipe. Another flute-like sound rises in harmony. It is from Bea’s friend Molly who is as wide as a door but who sings a thin silver thread that is utterly pure. Ave verum corpus. Her head is back. You can see in her white throat the quivering movement where the sound begins, and then follow the thread out of her mouth to the point where it twines around the flute. A-a-a-a-a-ve ve-e-rum coooorpus.
I sit back on the seat. Bea, Francis, Chloe walk past me to go up the aisle for communion.
I have this music at home on CD but Molly is not Kiri Te Kanawa. No, this thin thread, so at ease with the flute, does something else, transforming the notes to the simple call of a bellbird, a sound that sets the heart quivering with thin, pure grief.
Chloe, Francis, Bea come back. Bea sits down and leans towards me. She is holding the little white moon of the host in two hands. She breaks it in half. I open my mouth and she places half on my tongue, then half on hers. She crosses herself.
The wafer dissolves on the back of my tongue and slides away into silence. People walk past the pew, heads down, enclosed within themselves. The music winds itself around them, around the polished wood casket, around me. As I float somewhere between the voice and the flute my body loses definition and I spread with the sound to fill the church as weightless as sunlight. There are no questions, no answers, just a being. And when the music stops, I am still there.
In vino veritas. It cannot be contained in words.
After the Mass we follow the hearse to the cemetery, Bea driving, Francis beside her, Chloe and I in the back. On the open road, a boisterous wind slaps the car and trees shake as though seized with cosmic laughter. The cracking flags at a gas station could be on some Tibetan mountain. The clouds that swirl across a blue bowl of sky form themselves as more flags, more banners, feathers from angels in their summer moult. The weather is giving him a rousing send-off on a road he’s travelled for eighty-two years.
Bea says to Francis, ‘We carve the half leg of lamb at the table. It’s crusted with garlic, rosemary and blue cheese, and we serve it with an anchovy sauce and char-grilled vegetables.’
‘You must have pavlova,’ says Francis.
‘Definitely. We serve it three ways.’
‘Three?’
‘Francis likes pavlova,’ says Chloe, ‘but we don’t often eat it. We try to encourage the children towards more healthy options.’
‘Pavlova is totally non-fat,’ says Bea, ‘if you put a fat-free mousse on top instead of cream.’
‘It’s all that sugar,’ says Chloe. ‘White death.’
‘Remember,’ I say to Bea, ‘the time we came along here in a high wind and we found a sheep truck that had blown over. It was fortunate there weren’t any sheep on board.’
‘It was right across the road,’ she says. ‘The driver was standing beside it. He was kicking the roof of the cab and swearing. Boy, was he upset. I hope that doesn’t happen to. Can you imagine Dad skating across the road?’
‘Mother!’ says Francis.
‘Something like that did happen,’ I tell them. ‘It was in the town, in busy traffic. The hearse got to the top of the hill and the back door opened. Out fell the coffin and away it slid down the hill, between cars, past pedestrians. At the bottom of the hill it slid into a chemist shop. The lid opened and a voice said to the chemist, ‘Have you got anything to stop this coffin?’
‘Oh please,’ says Chloe, with an attempted laugh, ‘can we change the subject?’
Bea calls back to me, ‘What about McTavish?’
‘Who’s McTavish?’
‘You know, the golfer.’
‘I don’t know any McTavish.’
‘You do so. Oh Diddy, you told me.’
‘I did not.’
‘You did. Oh yes, you did! McTavish was fanatical about golf. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his game.’
‘No!’
‘One day the hearse went past the golf course. McTavish now, he stopped his swing and took off his cap. He stood there until the funeral cortège had gone past. You must remember it, Diddy.’
‘I’ve never heard it before.’
‘For crying out loud!’ says Bea. ‘It was your bloody story. McTavish stands there, cap in hand, and the fellow with him is impressed. He says he’s pleased McTavish showed that sign of respect, and McTavish says. He says, “Och mon, it were the least I could do. She were a very good wife to me.” Now do you remember?’
‘I never told you that story, Bea.’
‘Yes you did.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Bea looks at me in the rear mirror and her eyes are narrowed. She starts hissing, ‘Yesssssssssss.’
Francis turns his head quickly. Chloe looks out the windows at the trees in convulsions.
I return. ‘No, no, nnnnnnnn.’
Bea and I break down in laughter.
‘Do you want me to drive, Mother?’ Francis is tense but he speaks in a reasonable voice.
I slide down the seat, laughing, laughing, and Chloe, still looking out the window, folds her hands in her lap.
Bea’s shoulders shake over the wheel. Her right hand slaps her left hand several times. ‘Shut up, Bea!’ she gasps. ‘Shut the hell up.’
‘You’re mad, Mother,’ Francis says.
‘I didn’t, Bea.’ My throat is in spasm and the words have to fight their way out. ‘I didn’t tell you about McTavish. His name was McGregor.’
Away we go again, while the wind bashes the trees at the gates of the cemetery and the hearse gently bounces over the road hump inside the entrance and Chloe and Francis sit still, no thought of any kind showing on their faces.
Doors open. I recognise only two of the pallbearers, Erueti Rawiri and John Samuels. Perhaps Bea knows the others. They carry the casket along a narrow path between the last two rows of headstones, to the covered hole next to Mum’s grave. They place it carefully down on the bearers. Francis and Chloe move into the narrow space between it and the next grave while Bea and I stand on the path at the foot
of the casket, with a space of grass and trees behind us. As Father O’Donnell opens his book, we hear the wind approaching with the roar of an express train and I turn to see grasses part in a wide path as the gust races through them. I consider the possibility that it’s not wind at all but spirits celebrating a freedom dance. Then dust and twigs blow full in my face and I turn back, ducking my head. ‘I’ll probably be buried there,’ says Bea.
‘Lord Jesus Christ, by your own three days in the tomb, you hallowed the graves of all who believe in you, and do make the grave a sign of hope that promises resurrection even as it claims our mortal bodies.’
There are only fifteen of us including Father O’Donnell. Plus the funeral director who has handed me the cards from the floral tributes. Where do all the flowers come from? I pass the cards to Bea who slides them into her purse with one hand as she strives to hold down her skirt with the other. Stems of gladioli are battered by the wind. Gerberas and dahlias, yellow roses, carnations, fluttering mauve satin ribbons, a wreath of red poppies and green fern are all blown about like our clothing. For a few seconds, Chloe’s half-moon abdomen is outlined in black above the yellow flowers on the casket and I wish that I had my camera to record the moment against that air-washed background. It would have made a fine gift for the future grand-nephew or niece.
‘Because God has chosen to call our brother Frank from this life to himself, we commit his body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.’
Although Mum’s funeral was only six years ago, I remember very little of it. Shock does that, I guess. It was late autumn and the cemetery was covered with low cloud, granite grey, that released a torrent of rain as we got to the grave site. The funeral director miraculously produced numbers of black umbrellas. I remember that, and the way we held onto Dad who was shaking as though he had a fever.
‘The Lord bless and keep him, the Lord makes his face to shine upon him and be gracious to him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace.’
Peace, again.
But the small piece of furniture that is now being lowered into the ground is not my father. He is over the hill somewhere, his thumb and forefinger hooked in his mouth to whistle the dogs around a mob of edgy ewes. He’s standing behind the piano stool, rubbing Mum’s neck and shoulders with his awkward hands. We are all at the beach and he’s holding his panama hat over the top of his Box Brownie, at the same time trying to see us through the viewfinder, myself, Bea, Uncle Jack. Now he’s kneeling, one elbow on a kitchen chair, counting rosary beads with nicotine-stained fingers, his slow and separate words filling me up with a screaming because there are only a few minutes to go to the Lifebuoy Hit Parade on the radio. Those are not times past but still present within me, full of the detail of sight, sounds, smells and feeling. Oh God, yes, the feeling. Childhood emotions never get threadbare with time.
‘Go in the peace of Christ. Thanks be to God.’
The funeral director is giving Bea and I each a yellow sunflower. They are bigger than the sunflowers on the casket. Where did he get them? Are these men trained in graveside conjuring tricks, sunflowers and black umbrellas produced like rabbits out of their top hats? He touches my elbow and I realise that he expects me to go forward and throw the sunflower down to the casket. I don’t think I can do that. Bea goes first, the wind whipping her skirt around her legs. She releases the sunflower and I hear it hit the wood, then she puts her hand over her mouth as though she is trying to prevent words from tumbling down the hole.
I move up beside her and look at the earth walls of banded clay and stone, the wooden lid which already has crumbs of dirt on it, the cross of sunflowers still looking fresh in spite of the wind and Bea’s sunflower lying on its side where his head would be. I throw my flower and it lands with a soft sound on top of the others. Bea tucks her arm through mine and we turn away. That is all. It is over.
We walk slowly back to the car, Francis and Chloe in step behind us. Abruptly, Bea stops. She turns off the concrete path and strides into the long grasses which drag at the hem of her skirt. Then she raises her arms and her skirt flies free like a flag. She stands there, hair wild with the wind, hands stretched out, measuring. ‘This is where I’m going to be buried,’ she says. Then she lies down in the grass, her hands at her side, her eyes closed. I run as fast as my tight dress will allow and lie down beside her. ‘I’ll have this place,’ I shout above the noise of rushing air. The earth is surprisingly warm at my back, while in front of me, the clouds race away to nowhere on a distant music spun out on the piano by her fingers. Schubert’s ‘Impromptu in G Flat’. Her hands move like the wind and the wind is everywhere. It bends the trees, combs the grasses, shears our arms and faces.
My nose is filling with scent of pollen which will be hay fever in a few minutes.
Nobody has stopped or said anything. Through a frame of dry grass stalks there is an image of Francis and Chloe walking on, heads down, still wearing the expression of paid mourners. I stand up and reach out a hand to Bea, to help her to her feet. We lean against each other to brush the grass from our clothes and we laugh until we cry.
Molly Gleave’s house is only a block away from the church, a small cottage, big enough for a wake. Women from the Catholic Women’s League have set out on the table, sandwiches, cake, cups and saucers, while Molly’s husband is pouring the other stuff at the end of the kitchen bench. In the absence of good wine, I order a large Scotch and then go to Molly to tell her how much I appreciated her singing.
‘Oh! You’re the American one!’ she cries.
‘Bea’s sister Delia,’ I explain.
‘You’ve got such a lovely accent!’ She is a large woman with a bosom like the pillows on a double bed and a face suited to mothering and the pouring of tea.
I look around the room, thinking that human beings are such interesting containers. You never know from the outside what treasure they are. Father O’Connell, now, I wonder if he still carves ducklings and rabbits from poplar wood with a pearl-handled pocket knife? He advances, drink in hand, and I know that if he hasn’t changed, I am in for a God commercial.
He says, ‘How’s the painting and paper-hanging business, Delia? Going well, is it?’
‘Well enough, Father.’
‘I’ll tell you now a funny thing. Years ago I was in this little presbytery in the South Island. The priest before me had painted the entire bedroom black as the inside of a lump of coal. Now what do you think of that?’
‘Well, maybe he –’
‘Needed it for sleep, he said. So I went out, I did, and bought the brightest paint in daffodil yellow. Oh, just lovely. But I had a devil of a job painting yellow over black. Why would that be, do you think?’
‘You may have needed an undercoat –’
‘I like yellow. Those sunflowers now, for Frank. What a lovely idea.’
‘That bit of inspiration came from my sister.’
He waves his glass and gives me one of his shrewd looks. ‘You’ll be in a much bigger parish in New York, I’m thinking.’
‘No.’ I return the gaze. ‘I’m not sure about God and the Church, Father.’ There now, I’ve said it and either he’ll give the party line or I’ll find out something about the man who likes yellow and carves ducklings.
He smiles. ‘All relationships are based on communication, you know. If there’s no communication in a partnership, there is no partnership and if there’s no communication in the family, the family disintegrates, so it does.’
I wait for the punchline so that I can engage him in a discussion on subjective views of cosmic communication but he says, ‘Now that TWA plane crash. What a terrible thing and them not knowing what caused it.’
The wily old fox has sidestepped. Oh well, I guess he has seen it all before.
I join Bea in the lounge and listen to a group of people telling Frank-and-Agnes stories, the one about the windows being taken out to get the grand piano into the lounge, only in this version the entire wall
is removed. They talk about Dad’s careful way with money and how he drove thirty-five miles into town to get a pair of gate hinges at sale price. There are more stories of the farming district, of wool sales, dogs and horses.
‘We still got that pony Frank sold us for the kids. You know what young Judy used to do? Bring it into the house to watch TV.’
‘Old Frank was lucky with that tractor that time. Got thrown off before it tipped. Three times, he said. Rolled three times down the hill then landed right way up and he drove it away, just a broken seat and exhaust.’
From the way Bea nods and laughs, it is obvious that she knows these stories. Most are new to me. It is strange to hear strangers claiming my father in memories that I don’t share. The possessive child in me wants to snatch these stories from their mouths and carry them away, tucked under my jacket.
Erueti Rawiri says, ‘I remember we were feeding out hay with the tractor and trailer and suddenly Frank said, “Listen!” I listened but I couldn’t hear anything. “Listen!” he says again. Well, it was just the tractor ticking over and the sheep running down the fenceline. “Listen!” he said and he turned off the engine. Then I heard it in the distance. The piano. Agnes playing. Beats me how he picked it up so far away with the tractor going like that.’
Somewhere in the story I realise that the group next to Erueti is his family, his wife Donna, their two daughters, their son and a couple of grandchildren. One of the daughters looks exactly like Erueti’s Italian mother, a Botticelli angel with large eyes and a faint fringe of hair, fine as feathers, on her upper lip. As for Erueti, the baby who slept in the woolshed only last season in my memory, his curly hair has turned quite grey.
Molly Gleave brings in a plate of sandwiches and, through half-shut eyes, I watch the movement of give and take around the room, hand reaching out, words exchanged, little energies swimming from one to another like goldfish. You could paint it. Some of the impressionists had a fine trick of breaking the hard line of definition by releasing flecks of colour from the object, into the background. Cézanne, Seurat, Dégas, Monet, Renoir, they all did it, and especially Pierre Bonnard. The colours swam over the boundary of outline and tethered objects to space and each other, with bright stitches. Yes, you could paint the people in this room like that, the exchange of energy going out in flecks of colour. I find it interesting, the Celtic view that the soul is not in the body but the body is in the soul. That could explain auras and traditional haloes, the seeing of bright energy spinning out like sunspots. It might also explain why some people like Delia Munro are protective of their personal space. Just you keep your impressionistic splashes on your side of the fence, my dear Bea, and we’ll get on fine. I give what I can. Don’t ask me to change.