“Death is something we all have to face sometime, my boy. It’s the natural end of every living being, animal or plant on the planet, a natural conclusion. Everything in the world has a beginning and an end. That’s the law of God and nature for all. For people, for animals, for plants,” she replied, her voice hushed. “Life is a journey, and death is its natural end. You know how we take the train to go to Dublin, travel along and then reach the end, Heuston Station? Somebody comes and somebody goes at each stop. Everyone has his own special journey, his own beginning and his own destination. And on the way he meets others at different stations along the line. We come into this world and join the cycle of life, and at last there comes a moment when we all have reached journey’s end. Everyone has his very own destination, his own ending, his own personal Heuston Station.
“For each of us the stations and the destination are different. But ye know, it doesn’t matter when comes our turn to go, because I think that’s not in our hands to change. What matters is that the time will come someday. Nobody can avoid it. That parting can be very hard for those left behind.” She glanced at his scrunched-up little face, as he tried to take this in; he was after all only six years old. “Ah, Keith, your mam was my little daughter, my baby girl, and it hurt very much when she… when she… reached her end.”
He stared up at the tears sliding down her wrinkled cheeks, misting her glasses. “What was my mam like, Nana? Was she beautiful?”
She smiled sadly. “The most beautiful girl in the world.”
Keith pondered for a moment. “And now she is in heaven? Is she an angel?”
“I like to think so.”
“Was she an angel before – when she was here?”
She began to laugh through her tears. “Divil a bit! She always had to find out everything. She poked and pried and asked a million questions until … ”
“Like me?”
“Just like you, little monkey! You’re very like her, same brown hair, blue eyes and endless questions. Come along; let’s see if there is anything in the biscuit tin.”
Keith kept glancing at his image reflection and the views outside his window, as the Brussels metro carriage rushed him home through its murky tunnels: lights, glass reflections merging with real pictures, anonymous crowds running back and forth at each stop.
He awoke one April morning with a feeling that it was going to be a special day. He had his breakfast, hugged Nana and Ginger, and scampered off. He had noticed, absently, that his usual headlong pace had become a little too fast for Ginger lately and had persuaded Nana to let him run off alone, as he was almost late to school. He didn’t really need a bodyguard any more.
He had read up his maths lesson on the decimal system, he understood about sorting numbers into tens, and why they made such a to-do about it he did not understand: he had long ago realised that he had ten fingers for a reason. It was useful to know about the decimal point. The rest of the class was blundering about as usual.
The teacher began, “Look, in the first place to the right of the decimal point, you have tenths of one. In the second place, you have hundredths. In the third place, thousandths. So, you can split one into smaller and smaller pieces.” Then she asked, “How many numbers can you find between nought and one, class?”
There was a deafening silence. Keith puzzled over it for a few minutes… how many? 001, .00001. It could go on forever. It just might. He stared disbelievingly at what he had just discovered. There was indeed no end. One might calculate forever and it would never end.
He raised his hand.
The incredulous teacher gaped at him. Kids his age never – but he had. She had to call the rest of the class to order. It was not a joke. Keith had discovered infinity. His mind was filled with a kind of awesome light he had never imagined.
He’d been just a little relieved that Ginger wasn’t waiting to walk him home, because he had to rush to tell Nana Maura about his discovery. He dashed out of the schoolhouse door, flinging his school bag carelessly over his shoulder; the familiar fur bundle was nowhere to be seen. He called; he searched, and then ran lickety-split home to Nana, who could solve all problems… Except it might be the numbers between 0 and 1.
As he came near the house, Ginger walked out of the door, followed by his grandmother, “Oh, Ginger, where were you?” he cried reproachfully. “I hunted everywhere. Nana, why wasn’t she there? She’s all right, isn’t she?” Nothing appeared to be amiss with his friend, who stood blissfully accepting his caresses on her head and ears.
Maura sighed. “No, Keith. She’s all right; I took her to the vet. He says - she’s just slowing down. She’s going on for an old dog.”
“B-but… she’s only, what twelve-and-a-half! I am eight. I shall not be old when I am twelve-and-a-half!”
“Dog years are different from ours, lad. She’s something of an Irish Setter; they live twelve or thirteen years…”
“And then they die? Like you told me a long time ago?”
Maura nodded. “It comes to us all someday.”
He looked at her in panic. “Not to you, Nana. Not to you!”
“To me, to you, to everyone. Come inside.”
Slowly, he stroked and inspected the big dog. She looked just the same as ever. Oh, there were some white hairs in her dark muzzle, he hadn’t noticed.
“He says she has a touch of arthritis. It sometimes hurts her to move. She can’t run with you any more, but she will try as long as you want her to.”
“Not if it hurts her.” The bright light of his discovery was clouded over, like the sun in Ireland.
Maura, perceptive as ever, said, “Ah, now, lad! She’s fine today, Keith. I’m fine today. And what sort of a day is yours, now?”
He brightened but, daunted by the task of explaining his marvellous scientific insight, said only, “Maths is a miracle thing, Nana.”
“Well, now, it’s fierce glad I am to hear it!” she laughed. “I wouldn’t have got a wink o’ sleep tonight what with worryin’ about the maths!”
Not so long afterwards, when the pumpkins were ready to pick, he came home to find Ginger lying quietly on her carton bed. “It’s time to say goodbye, Keith,” said his grandmother very gently.
“No.”
“She’s gone, lad.”
“No, she’s asleep. She can’t go. She can’t.”
He buried his face in the thick brown and white fur and covered his ears. But the beloved warm body was too still. The ribs were not moving with her breath. Worse, it was growing cooler.
“No! Ginger, come back! Ginger!” He clutched her tighter; he would warm her again and she would raise her heavy head and lick his face as always.
But he already knew she would not. Never again.
Maura threw an eiderdown over the pair of them and sat down nearby. The dog grew cold and stiff in his arms.
When the dawn began to break the darkness into shadows, she rose herself stiffly and went to put on the kettle.
She didn’t speak; she couldn’t. Right now, there was nothing to say. Keith had not slept; his eyes were oozing tears, which dropped slowly onto the chilling fur. She picked up the dog’s bowls, put away her bed, gathered her toys and put them all out of sight.
Finally, as full light dawned, Keith began to pull away, very slowly. He pushed the eiderdown aside and went out of the kitchen moving like an old, old man.
Together they buried Ginger in the garden, and together they prayed for her soul. Neither doubted that she had one. Neither doubted that, if heaven were as reported, her loving generous spirit would be welcomed among the angels.
It was some days before he could bring himself to speak of Ginger. He’d lost half of himself. She had always been there, playmate, confidante, comforter, protector.
They sat together in the parlour, remembering. Wakes were not held for animals, but little Keith wished they were; people did drop by with sympathetic remarks. Mick came by with a ragged bunch of flowers he’d picked, daisies from the field
s, cornflowers, Queen Anne’s lace…
Finally, Maura said, “Keitheen, I know this road. It gets better in time. Remember I told you once. It comes to us all… the last station.”
“If God has taken her, I’ll never forgive Him!”
She smiled sadly. “But He will forgive you. You are angry, but it will get easier. All that pain will heal, almost. The eraser of Time corrects as it passes. You’ll never forget her, as I never forget my daughter, but Ann is now a glow deep in my soul. That is what she left behind her, as Ginger has left her glow to you. What matters is what we leave behind and how others will remember us.” She paused. “Someday it will be your turn, Keith. You need to be prepared for that moment when it comes. Be ready.”
He stared at her. “Be ready? What are ye after meaning, Nana?”
“Being ready means that you come to accept the idea of your own end, this great loss which nobody can escape. Because the loss of life is the last and most important thing we do, whoever we are, just before our last journey into the unknown. Everything we do in the time we have helps us to get ready – whatever has made us useful and loved by the people around us, whatever will let us be remembered with love and appreciation. So we must be clear with ourselves and our conscience when we reach that moment, always aware that everything will come to an end. We must be getting ready all our lives.
“When we’re young, we don’t think about such things. We think death is far away and nothing to do with us. So some of us waste their lives on poppycock – flashy clothes and cars, foolish ambitions, or doing bad things that harm people around us, and especially ourselves. But when you grow up, you understand that death is quite ordinary, it comes with time and natural wear and tear, that it’s not something you need to fear, no matter how bad it sounds.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I’m talking to you like a grown-up, my boy. Maybe you don’t understand everything, but I know that you are writing it all down inside you and when the time comes you will remember and understand...”
Little Keith watched her intently, frowning as he tried to grasp the sense of all these impressive and important notions. His eyes had been wide open at all the serious and complicated things she had tried to explain. He always felt that with her talk, she had opened to him locked doors of knowledge, shown him unknown and inexplicable mysteries like life and death. Maura had a gift of communication, of conveying parts of herself, because she spoke the language of the soul.
But he was finding this first experience very unpleasant and painful.
“I don’t think I like it at all, Nana!” Keith concluded emphatically after a moment.
“Nobody likes it, boy! But we can’t change the thing,” she said, encouraged by his reaction and seeing that her little grandson understood, as much as he could at his age. “Come on now, I made ye some chocolate biscuits.”
Hand in hand, they got up and headed for the kitchen.
As the train pulled into Tomberg, the station before his, he reflected that Maura’s days had accumulated into a life enviable from many standpoints. He would always wonder if she had managed to be ‘ready’ for the end that overtook her. One evening at dusk, she was cycling home along the road by the waters of the canal, when there was a roaring sound and she and her bicycle were hurled across the road. Nobody saw it happen; the car had driven off, uncaring.
Perhaps an hour later a farmer passed by the spot and sounded the alarm. Maura was rushed to hospital. Keith, in Dublin to complete his post-graduate studies, was called into the office and told that his beloved grandmother was in hospital in a critical condition. He reached the hospital in Naas in record time, but too late. “Why didn’t you save her?” he shouted at the doctor. “Just because she was old, she had a right to live!”
The doctor stared at him. “We did everything humanly possible, Mr. MacFarland. This was Maura Donnelly, not just anyone! But her injuries – hit-and-run – it was too late by the time she was admitted. My condolences for your loss. It is a sad loss for all of us.”
“Who did it?” Keith demanded. “Where is the bastard?”
“You must ask the police, but as far as I know, there were no witnesses.” Keith made the necessary funeral arrangements in a raging trance.
The wake lasted for an extra day because even Uncle Dan flew over from Boston to attend. All of Sallins and much of Naas, and people Keith didn’t even know from Dublin and Cork and heaven-knew-where kept arriving, filling the little house to overflowing, paying respects to the old woman lying in state in her coffin. There were so many flowers that half of them had to be left outside. It was said to be the grandest wake Sallins had ever seen.
Endless stories were told about his grandmother, some quite new to him. Over the years, and in spite of her antics and progressive notions which occasionally scandalised the tiny, isolated and severely Catholic village, she had won the complete approval and absolute respect of the whole of Sallins’ small society.
One village favourite was about the days before Keith was born. Maura and some friends were having a quiet pint in a local pub when the door burst open upon a rowdy group of IRA provos, armed to the teeth and spoiling for a fight. They were in town for their annual visit to the Bodenstown grave of Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the first (1798) – and failed – uprisings against the British Empire.
The patrons of the pub froze. They knew of old that these rowdies had hair-trigger tempers. Sure enough, as soon as they had downed a pint or two, with loud voices and waving the guns which they so openly and proudly carried, they commanded all those present to join them in singing the official IRA anthem. A grudging, half-hearted murmur rose in an off-key rendition and soon it was clear that few knew the words. Maura stubbornly refused to open her mouth in spite of whispers and discreet nudges from her friends. Nobody wanted trouble with the IRA roughnecks and it was all too clear that their alcohol level was already dangerous. But she was adamant as always and remained loyal to her principles. Nobody, but nobody, could push her into anything she considered wrong, unseemly or gauche.
The leader of the group noticed her at once, and when the song ended, that beefy hooligan advanced upon her and tried to impale her on his sharpened glance, rubbing his shaggy and rather greasy beard with a fat finger. “Why don’t you sing, darlin’?” he demanded in a coarse Northern Irish accent. “Don’t you like our anthem? Don’t you like the IRA? Don’t you like the idea of a united independent Ireland freed from the boot of the barbarian conquerors?”
Without losing her composure for an instant, Maura turned and looked him contemptuously right in the eye. “How old are you, me boyo?”
This unexpected response flustered the thug: “Uh, t-t-twenty-eight and some,” he mumbled, blinking at the furious light in her eye.
“Oh, indeed! Twenty-eight is it now! And just where were you on Easter Sunday in 1916, can you tell me?” Maura continued with the same imperious look. Her words fell into the dead silence of the narrow public room where the few customers, numb with fear, watched the scene with bated breath. Deadly silence ensued, even a pin falling on the terracotta tile floor would have sounded like thunder.
“Me, I was in the streets of Dublin with the rebels those days! Right there in the street, fighting and the fires along with the fighters!” Maura continued, her voice rising to a boom. “I’d bet the gleam in your da’s eye that created you, you wasn’t even lit yet. So, permit, if you please, one who lived through the crazy excitement of the birth of our new government. With two world wars at my back, let me have my personal opinion of the IRA and united Ireland! Permit me not to sing if that’s my choice! We live in a democratic society. Choice is not a luxury but a rule!” she uttered with gusto, finally taking a deep breath.
The tense and utter silence prevailing in the little pub intensified, no one daring to breathe. What would the spalpeen be after doing next?
He stared at Maura for a time, hesitating. Such boldness he had not anticipated from a simple old village woman. He
opened his mouth to speak but could not utter a word. Suddenly he spun about and hurled his half-filled mug to the floor. The pint glass shattered into a thousand fragments with a frightful crash as horrified onlookers scattered in all directions and a strong smell of hops flooded the atmosphere.
“Let’s be feckin’ off!” bellowed the scruffy warrior, thoroughly demoralised. His cohorts followed him obediently in sullen silence. As the door slammed shut behind the last of them, there rose a huge common sigh of relief followed by murmurs of wondering admiration. Maura, quite unfazed, lifted her mug, and winking at the host who was still paralysed with terror and trembling, she took a leisurely sip of her beer.
From that evening on, the IRA fighters’ visits were very much more circumspect when they came down into Sallins.
The story spread with lightning speed to most of the neighbourhood. From then on, she was regarded as something of a local aristocrat, almost a heroine. Their Maura had stood proud beside the great heroes of the Irish rebellion of 1916! And now she’d sent the roughnecks scuttling off with their tails between their legs! By now this tale was embedded in village tradition.
She was buried in the Donnelly family plot in the shade of the old yew trees, not far from Thomas Wolfe Tone’s own grave, beside her husband and her daughter.
There had been no progress in finding the killer.
****
As he descended from the train, Keith realised that, in her inimitable way, Maura had helped him from beyond the grave. The confusion in his mind had cleared; in fact, he realised that his decision was already taken. The unexpected way that Anna Aggerblad had confronted him had not discouraged him but, on the contrary, had made him dig in his heels.
The Next Stop Page 4
