He used to joke that I shouldn’t be carrying French books home, that I should learn a proper, useful language. Here, he said one day, and took out a pen from his pocket and tore a little page from the notebook he always kept in his pocket. He wrote carefully and handed me the paper. ‘Teach Yourself Urdu’.
“Good book,” he said, and nodded his head. I told him saucily that I’d think about it if I ever wanted to go and live in downtown Calcutta like him. And Khadim had shaken his head and said Calcutta was in India, not Pakistan, and didn’t Western schoolgirls know anything? But his inky dark eyes had danced as he turned away, and he went and said something to Da at the front of the bus that I couldn’t hear, and they had both laughed. I liked Khadim.
Da did too. It was funny really, because Da didn’t have much experience of “coloured fellows” as he called them before he met Khadim. He never saw a black man till he came to Glasgow from Donegal. I think, if he was honest, Da was a bit wary of cultures other than his own, but he had a natural sense of justice that cut through all of that.
The day Da’s friendship with Khadim was really sealed was the day a couple of young guys got on and started messing about with Khadim. You could see they were trouble from the start with their Doc Marten boots and their hard, slitty eyes. Da had just taken over the shift and was dropping Khadim off in Pollokshields. Khadim was standing at the front talking to him, still with his uniform on. I was reading a book on the bus that day so I don’t know how it started. But all of a sudden I heard one of them say that black bastards like him were taking jobs from white men, and why couldn’t he go back to his own fucking country, and in the end Khadim said he was going to have to ask them to get off the bus if they didn’t stop.
“Get aff the bus?” said one of them, getting up and digging his finger into Khadim’s shoulder. “Who’s gonna make me get aff?”
The bus suddenly jolted as Da slammed on the brakes. He jumped out of his cab and said quietly, “I am.” A current ran through the bus, all eyes swivelling to the front. My heart hammered. I wanted Da to get safely back behind his wheel. The two of them looked at Da in surprise. But Da wasn’t a big man, and after the momentary surprise, they turned to one another and sniggered. Da said the bus wasn’t going anywhere until they got off, and for a minute it looked like it might get nasty. A toddler began crying loudly at the back of the bus and an old woman with a shopping bag on her knee stuck her oar in.
“Yous are a disgrace,” she said. “Jist get aff and gie’s a’ peace. That wean’s screaming because of yous.”
“Fuck off, grandma,” one of them said, but then this big guy appeared from upstairs. He was enormous.
“The driver’s tellt yous two to get aff, now get aff,” he said. “Because see if yous don’t, ahm gonnae put you aff maself. Now move it, ya wee shite bags.”
They weren’t going to argue. But on the way off, one of them went up and stuck his face right into Khadim’s, and for a minute I thought he was going to headbutt him. But then I saw his lips move and the next minute a great gob of spit had landed on Khadim’s cheek. They jumped off the bus and ran.
For a second nobody moved. Then Da jumped up angrily like he was going to give chase, but Khadim put out his hand and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. Da looked at him and Khadim shook his head and muttered something, and Da climbed back into his cab and the engine started up again. I saw the spit on Khadim’s face begin to trickle down and felt my stomach heave. I took out a tissue and handed it to him. He accepted it without a word and wiped the slime from his face, and everyone on the bus looked out of the window in embarrassed silence until the old woman with the shopping bag said, “Y’alright son?” though Khadim was in his forties.
It was the day after that Khadim invited us all to his house for the first time. Da and Khadim seemed like a definite partnership after that, thought they made an odd combination. The wee, square, dark-haired man with the faint Irish burr that had never quite left him, and the big Pakistani with a long white beard and a round, curry gut.
I always wondered why someone as smart as Da ended up driving buses but I assumed Grandpa had never had enough money for him to stay on at school and needed him out working. He never liked his job much, but whenever I suggested he do something else he just said what else was he going to do at his time of life, as if he didn’t have a choice. But why would you drive buses if you were an accountant?
It always pained him that I went from one temp post to another. He wanted me to go to university, make something of myself, and I always assumed it was because he never had the chance. I wasn’t interested. I was smart enough, but though I never knew why, I just didn’t feel settled enough to have ambition. I didn’t know what I wanted from life enough to go out and get the qualifications to do it.
Qualifications. If Da really had been an accountant, he would have to have had qualifications. I lift out every drawer of the bureau, sifting quickly through the school reports and the photographs, the bills and accounts, and finally come to a large brown envelope on the bottom. I lift out the single sheet of parchment inside and my eyes dance down the page as the key words leap out. My heart skips a beat. Glasgow University. Joseph Connaghan.
The date suggests Da would have been twenty-eight, a mature student. National Service accounted for some of the time after he left school. But had he worked after that to pay his way through university? And how had he and Mother met? I stare at the parchment and then slip it back into the envelope, feeling sick and confused and vaguely betrayed.
CHAPTER SIX
Can you imagine how hard it was to quell all those emotions and go out to meet Sarah at the church? It helped that I felt proprietorial about the knowledge I had gathered from the bureau; it was mine. It also helped that it was incomplete. I told myself there was no point in saying anything to Sarah until I knew the whole story. I picked up my bag and left the house, walking slowly in the heat but with my mind racing.
I hear Father Riley before I see him.
I am standing over at the trees in the church grounds and his voice booms out as the doors open, hard as hellfire, roasted with an Irish brogue and years of Capstan full strength.
“Yous’ll all be wanting home for the football on the telly tonight. Starts in five minutes, so the Lord will forgive us if we sing only one verse of the final hymn and let’s hope He gives us the right result tonight.”
There is a little ripple of laughter; Father Riley is a wag, so he is. So human as well as holy. That’s what everyone says. Voice like thunder and a heart the size of a pea, if you ask me. The pews empty and the crowd flows through the doors and I catch a flash of Sarah’s blonde hair somewhere at the top of the steps. She comes down to stand with me and we wait for the priest.
“Father Riley,” says Sarah tentatively, as he goes to sweep by us. She touches his arm. I suspect he would have pretended not to hear otherwise.
“Ah, girls,” he says briskly, putting his arm on Sarah’s shoulder and propelling her with him. “Yous are lovely but can it wait? I’ve got a lovely steak pie on low in the oven and the footie is about to start. Are your souls in danger or can it wait?”
“Our dad died yesterday, Father.”
“Ah dear, dear, dear,” says Father Riley. He sighs. I think the sigh is more for his steak pie than for Da, but Sarah says I don’t give priests the proper respect and maybe she’s right. There’s a reason for that, as you’ll find out later. There are too many secrets to give them all at once.
“You’d better come in now,” he says.
He turns the key in the lock of the church house and leads us through into a sitting room. It isn’t a room he uses himself, I am sure. More a births, weddings and funerals kind of room. I suppose even priests have to keep a part of themselves for themselves.
It has been a grand house once, the kind of place that a housekeeper fussed over. But it is too big and draughty to heat properly nowadays. The place smells vaguely fusty, like the holiday cottage in Ireland we once we
nt to with Da. It is a room too long shut up, with only stillness and dust for company and no warmth in its chilled veins. A grandfather clock ticks loudly in the corner.
“Sit down girls, sit down,” says Father Riley. “I’m sorry for your trouble, surely I am. Now I know your faces, and I know your daddy, but your name again is…?”
“Connaghan,” says Sarah. “I’m Sarah and this is Rebecca.”
“Ah yis, yis. Your father will be James.”
“Joseph,” I correct.
“Ah yis, yis, Joseph. Of course. And what happened to poor Joseph now?”
“He had a heart attack, Father,” Sarah begins levelly, and then her eyes fill with tears. “He hadn’t been ill… he just… just…” Her voice falters.
“Ah dear,” says Father Riley, shaking his head softly. “You never know the minute. Were yous with him?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Well now, that’s a comfort anyway, isn’t it? Sure, he didn’t die alone.”
I suppose he’s being kind in his own inadequate way. I look around the room, cold and functional: devoid of flowers or wedding photos; of hideous china dogs won at fairs; of crayon-drawn posters smeared with chocolate; of graduation portraits. It’s everything that’s NOT here that tells you about Father Riley’s life. I’d lay money that the room he uses himself isn’t any different, except it will have a television and a well-stocked drinks cabinet. You could rattle around in there, keel over with a heart attack, and the only human voice would be from the box in the corner. I said that once to a young priest I knew. You’ll die alone to the tune of Coronation Street, I warned him.
“Yes, Father, we’ve been to the undertakers,” I hear Sarah say. “And we are hoping the funeral will be Friday morning if you can say the mass for us.”
“Yis, yis, Friday,” he says. “Ten a.m. now, will that be all right for yous?”
“Ten,” repeats Sarah, looking at me. I return her stare blankly. I feel completely detached. None of this seems real. We could be organising a coffee morning instead of Da’s funeral.
“We’ll have the service the night before when the remains are brought into the church… say six-thirty?” says Father Riley.
The remains. The word makes me flinch.
“That will be fine,” says Sarah. “I’m sorry… I don’t know, really… we haven’t got any experience… I’m not sure what we…”
“Ah, don’t worry now,” says Father Riley, going over to a desk by the window. “I’ll give you a book of readings suitable for funerals and maybe you could have a wee look through and see which you think would be nice.”
“Now,” he says, reaching for a notebook and pen, “hymns. Have you thought yet about hymns?” His pen hovers over the page.
Aye, here’s a list I prepared earlier, I think. Da’s Funeral Hymns Should He Snuff It Unexpectedly… Aloud, I say I’d also like some secular music to be played. Father Riley isn’t keen. Some priests might allow pop music at funerals but he’s not one of them. None of this, ‘My Way’ carry on. And wouldn’t a good Christian man like James want things to be done right? His name was Joseph. Oh yis, yis, sorry.
Anyway, I say, it’s opera I’m thinking of, not pop music. An aria from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Is that a requiem? No, a comedy. Sarah, thinking I’m being facetious, looks warningly at me. Father Riley says tightly if it’s not a hymn, it’ll have to be at the end. Not part of the liturgy. I look at him resentfully but silently. Yeah, like the football chat, I think.
Father Riley wants to know who the singer will be.
“I have a friend, Shameena. A family friend.”
The little flicker, the blink of the eyelids, when I say her name might have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t been staring at him.
“Is she a Catholic?” he says.
“Catholic Muslim.”
I don’t think he likes me. Which is fine because I don’t like him either with his hard little raisin eyes and his soft, doughy belly and his florid skin. I hate men with florid skin. Sarah always protests when I say that and says you can’t hate someone just because their skin is a bit red but I can. I hate men with florid skin and right now I hate Father Riley.
“Perhaps we could have a quick look through a hymn book if you have one, Father,” says Sarah quickly. “I think we’ll be able to pick some out that Dad would have liked.”
I sit back. Sarah can choose the holy stuff.
“‘Soul of my Saviour’?” suggests Father Riley.
“Oh God.”
They both look at me.
“A lot of people like it,” says Father Riley, the colour rising in his neck, staining it purple.
“Aye, well I’m sure it’s Top of the Funeral Pops, but I hate it.”
You know, I can almost laugh writing that sentence all these years later, though the laugh is a little shamefaced. It was so typical of me back then: mouthy, snappy, rude. But I have to stop short of apologising for the old me. Sarah did enough of that. I look back now and I see so clearly how much I was hurting. And how scared I was. I needed Father Riley to offer me something and he couldn’t. Nothing that meant anything to me. Given half a chance, he’d no doubt give me that old line about my Father in heaven looking after me. The best way he could do that, I would have told him, was to leave me one on earth.
Two faces staring at me in the silence. Sarah is wearing her horrified, ‘what-do-you-think-you-are-playing-at-Rebecca?’ expression. Father Riley stares stonily. “Let’s have a little respect, shall we?” he says with wounded dignity. “I can see you are not a believer, Rebecca, but you are asking the Church to bury your father and I think that’s what we should focus on.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah says. There she bloody goes again. “It’s been such a hard couple of days. ‘Soul Of My Saviour’ will be fine. I’m sure Dad would have liked that.”
What is she talking about? Sometimes I think Sarah knew a different Da from me. He’d have hated it. ‘Soul of My Saviour’ is old-time Ireland. A hard Ireland, where his mother died when he was just a boy. ‘Soul of my Saviour’ is childhood, with his toes sticking through rough woollen stockings, and beatings in school, and lots of God but no mammy.
Sarah looks exhausted all of a sudden. Her elbow is resting on the arm of the chair and she leans her head against it, eyes cast downwards. Father Riley looks at her sympathetically. He is warmer towards Sarah than he is towards me, but priests sniff out their own, don’t they?
“Ah dear, dear,” he says. “You’ve had a hard couple of days right enough, Sarah, so you have, but you just remember that your daddy’s with God now. He’ll look after him for you, so He will.”
Oh here we go. I knew it was coming.
Sarah nods tearfully, gratefully, and scrambles in her bag for a tissue. I fix my eyes on the grandfather clock in the corner. Tick, tock. I don’t feel at all grateful. Tick. Tock. I look up at a picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall. The compassion of Christ. It makes me feel angry. Inexplicably, furiously angry.
“We were supposed to all be looking at holiday brochures this morning,” says Sarah. “Becca and Dad were going on holiday together and I was going to go if I could get time off. We’d thought maybe Italy… or even Spain. Dad would have liked it so much, all that sunshine…”
“Well Sarah, you just remember that the sunshine in heaven is brighter and warmer and altogether sweeter than the sunshine in Italy.” Father Riley sits back, a little smugly, I think. He is pleased with that line.
Sarah tries to smile through her tears, presses her tissue to her eyes. “That’s a really comforting thought, Father.”
She means it. She bloody means it.
I can smell the rich scent of steak pie wafting from the kitchen at the back of the house. It makes me feel vaguely nauseous. I just want out of here. I look through the window at the last small group of parishioners still talking in the grounds after mass, at the sunshine dappling through the trees and casting shadows below.
I stand up and they both
look at me expectantly.
“I’m not feeling too well,” I say. “I think I’ll just step outside for a moment in the fresh air…”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The church is cool inside, and the scent of summer flowers and incense from the evening service lingers in the air. I sit down on the back pew. It is less committed.
On the back seat I am just visiting, not really part of anything.
The wood feels hard against my backbone. Da always said I hadn’t enough flesh on me. Like a sparrow, he said. “You need a good steak in you, girl,” he used to say when I came home. But I like the austerity of the hard wood right now, and the warm golden glow of it, and the round carved edges of the rows. And the stillness. I wish I understood about that stillness. I wish I could tell if it is the stillness of peace or just the stillness of a vacuum.
I stare straight ahead at the massive crucifix above the altar and the trickle of plaster blood and paint on the hands and feet. Blood of my saviour, bathe me in your wounds. At the side altar to the Virgin Mary, the candlelight flickers and dances. As a child, I used to think the Virgin’s eyes followed me, that they actually changed expression. Sometimes I imagined they were reproving, and sometimes I thought they were imbued with a kind of tenderness for me, her child. Right now they seem neutral, staring without judgement.
A metal coin clinks into the iron box as an elderly lady in a headscarf lights a candle in front of the altar. She kneels before the statue and I hear her whispered prayers, a little sibilant hiss in the silence. It is always old ladies who light candles. Old ladies in patterned headscarves. I wonder what she wants at her age that makes her pray so fervently. Salvation? And what about me… what do I want in a church that is empty save for evening shadows? To look for Da, I suppose.
Father Riley’s words keep running through my head. The sunshine in heaven is brighter, warmer, sweeter than here on earth. Religious people don’t half talk shite. You can keep your sunshine heaven. I want sunshine that blisters your skin and sun milk that soothes it. No need for sun milk in heaven. We had a teacher at school once, Miss Edwards, who used to talk about heaven. She told one of her classes that she had been away to be a nun but had come back. I don’t know why she bothered. She might just has well have worn a habit as those frumpy tweed skirts and jumpers.
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