by Anne Doughty
‘Now don’t worry,’ Rose had said. ‘Granda would be pleased you wore his dress. Besides, I’m certainly not wearing all black. He hated me in black. Skirt and coat, yes, but I’ll wear a blouse or a scarf he liked and so will Sarah and Helen. Remember Aunt Elizabeth is a Quaker and they don’t wear black for funerals.’
Rosie found it hard to believe how calm Rose had been. Even shortly after John died, Rose had come down to the kitchen to find her weeping in Richard’s arms and not shed a tear herself. Instead, it was she who’d comforted them both.
‘There’ll be a time for tears, Rosie dear, but it’s not now,’ she’d said to them both, smiling. ‘Now we must give thanks. John and I had an extra day. A whole, happy day, when we might have had nothing at all. He was safe and comfortable and not anxious and there was no pain, just the puzzlement my good friends had warned me about,’ she added, taking Richard by the arm and squeezing it gently.
To Rosie’s amazement, she’d sent them both down to Ballievy. The night watchman had instructions to open the office at any hour if someone from Rathdrum needed the telephone.
‘I’m quite happy to be on my own,’ she’d said firmly, when Rosie suggested she should stay and keep her company. ‘This is the last time for many days when John and I can be quiet together.’
It was quite true. From the arrival of Richard’s parents less than an hour later, closely followed by the undertaker, the house had not been empty or quiet since except in the deep night hours. The once calm haven of her grandparents’ bedroom became a public place, where John lay still and pale beneath a creamy linen cover, at whose centre, carefully remounted in recent years was set a wreath of rosebuds embroidered long ago entwining the initials J and R.
‘Are you all right, Rosie?’
Rosie nodded and grasped Emily’s hand. Her sister had long bony fingers like her mother, but unlike her mother, Emily’s awkward touch always brought comfort. Now she clutched the warm hand as if it would prevent her own from turning to ice.
Throughout the great vaulted church, there was a murmur, an ebb and flow of echoing sound that was also a kind of silence. Dark figures made their way to the remaining spaces in the front pews reserved for the family and close friends. Behind them, every pew was full and men lined up against the walls leaving their wives to take the folding chairs being carried from the church hall to give extra seating in the outer aisles.
‘Who’s that lovely-looking girl with the long, dark hair?’ Emily whispered.
‘That’s Helen Sinton, Aunt Sarah’s daughter. She’s the one that goes to the art school in London. She’s very nice.’
‘Is Auntie Sarah here?’ Emily mouthed, looking puzzled. ‘I thought she was away somewhere foreign.’
‘Yes, she was. In Berlin. But she started out when Granda took ill, so she was already in London with Auntie Hannah when he died. They came together yesterday morning with Helen and Auntie Hannah’s son, Frances.’
‘Is she the one that’s a countess or somethin’?’
‘Yes. But she never mentions it. Granny just says “my daughter Hannah”, but I did see “Lady Harrington” printed on her suitcase. That’s Frances sitting beyond Helen with Hugh, Aunt Sarah’s son.’
Emily studied the faces of the two young men she could never remember meeting. Frances lived in an English mansion called Ashleigh Park but Hugh lived in Belfast. He had something to do with flying, she thought, but didn’t know quite what.
‘How is Granny?’
‘Amazing. I really can’t understand why she doesn’t cry all the time. I would if it was me.’
Emily fidgeted awkwardly in her seat.
‘Maybe when yer old it’s not the same,’ she said abruptly.
‘What d’ you mean?’
‘Maybe things don’t matter as much. They sort of wear out.’
‘Do you mean things like feelings?’
Emily nodded.
‘Well, if you mean love, then it doesn’t. They loved each other more than couples I know saving up to get married.’
The organ stopped playing. The congregation stood up, the silence now complete but for the rustle of clothes and the ripple of movement. As the ‘Funeral March’ began Rosie took a deep breath and wondered how she would ever get through the service without bursting into tears.
The coffin was carried down the central aisle and laid on trestles so close to her she could almost have reached out and touched it. Immediately behind it, her grandmother walked steadily, a small composed figure, her hand on her father’s arm, her eyes never moving from the sheaf of red roses, the only flowers to lie on the coffin itself out of the multitude of wreaths that had arrived.
They moved into the pew in front of her, so that Rosie found herself suddenly looking at a delicate silk scarf John had bought for her grandmother in Kerry and the immaculate black and white of her father’s coat and stiff collar.
Hannah, her blonde hair now streaked with grey, and Sarah, her face pale, dark circles under her eyes, weary from days of travelling and the saddest of homecomings, walked together behind them, then turned aside to the places awaiting them beside their own sons and daughter.
As the first hymn began, the vigorous uplifting of so many voices was so utterly unexpected it left Rosie stunned. Even more unexpected was what followed. A tall, thin man of military bearing, whose name on the printed sheet was followed by rows of letters, honours and decorations, few of which made sense to her, walked briskly from his seat to the great brass eagle of the reading desk. He laid a small piece of paper on the open Bible and then, without making the slightest reference to it, launched into his address.
‘They say we must speak no ill of the dead,’ he began, his tone commanding attention, yet light, easy, almost conversational. ‘It is my feeling that it would be a task of considerable magnitude to find any ill we could speak of in considering our friend John Hamilton.’
From the congregation came a sound, soft like a sigh, not as positive as laughter, but yet somewhere on the edge of pleasure, a movement of agreement, a relaxation of tension. They listened devotedly as he continued.
‘John Hamilton was born in Annacramp, near Armagh, in 1851, the youngest son of a blacksmith. He left school at twelve, as so many did in those days, and went into the forge with his father, leaving to find work with a local landowner Sir Capel Molyneux when his father died some three years later …’
Rosie listened, fascinated. There were so many things about her grandfather that were new to her. She knew the story of his meeting with Rose in Kerry and the coat that was too small for him, of course, a story which Sir Lindsey retold with obvious pleasure, but she’d not known about her grandfather’s inventions, nor about his part in improving working conditions in the mills.
‘It was typical of the man,’ Sir Lindsey went on to say, ‘that he listened both to the urgings of his daughter, Sarah, and the advice of his close friends Dr Richard Stewart and his wife Elizabeth.
‘It was one of John Hamilton’s gifts,’ he continued, ‘that what he knew he shared, and what he didn’t know he was willing to learn. I would hazard a guess there is not a man or woman here today who has not spoken to John Hamilton knowing he would listen to whatever they had to say.’
Even when this unknown man, a fellow director of Bann Valley Mills, went on to speak of the long and happy marriage that had blessed John’s life, Rosie managed to remained dry-eyed and attentive. She glanced cautiously at her father and saw him smile at some of the stories that were brought back to him. Rose herself looked pleased. Out of the names of those who had said they would be honoured to pay tribute to John, Sir Lindsey had been her own choice.
He stepped down from the reading desk at last and walked briskly back to his place, leaving a lightness in the air. But for Rosie, the sense of uplift that followed his generous and accurate tribute was swept away as the organ began the opening bars of the tune Crimmond and they stood to sing ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’.
Suddenly, she
could hear her grandfather’s voice: ‘Ach, it’s a lovely psalm that, whatever the tune they put it to, but I like Crimmond the best.’
Tears streamed down her face and simply would not stop.
Both her own handkerchief and one of Emily’s were sodden before they stood for the Benediction, but by then her tears were spent. Sitting at the aisle end of the second row of pews, she gathered herself to follow Hannah and Sarah. If she didn’t move at exactly the right moment, she and her brothers, Alex, the Stewarts and three women she didn’t know, would not be behind Rose as the coffin left the church.
She walked as steadily as she could, aware of Richard and Elizabeth and Richard P. following her, then Sammy and Bobby, Billy and Charlie. In front of her, on both sides of the aisle, the solid mass of dark clothes and pale faces. She had never seen so many people in one place ever in her life before.
The organ was playing something triumphant which she found oppressive, but suddenly they were out in the sunshine. For a few moments there were hugs and handshakes as close family greeted Rose, Sam, Hannah and Sarah. Then, as Sam responded to a signal from the undertaker and moved away, the three women took up their position and waited to receive the greetings and condolences of the entire congregation.
Rosie looked around her, beyond the known figures who waited at some distance from her grandmother and her two aunts. On all the space between the short driveway and the enclosing trees of the small churchyard the flowers had been laid out in the sunshine. Now, as the warmth played on the carpet of chrysanthemums and roses, lilies and dahlias, large formal tributes and bunches of homely garden flowers, it drew out a heady perfume that floated on the still air.
Absorbed by the colour and perfume, it was some minutes before she noticed that the coffin had not been put back in the hearse which had brought it from Rathdrum. Her father and Alex, Hugh Sinton and Richard P. stood ready to take it from the shoulders of the undertaker’s men. She watched as her four brothers fell into step behind them and they moved slowly towards the gates. Then, four by four, in some prearranged pattern, after speaking to Rose and her daughters, the men from the congregation lined up behind her brothers.
It dawned on her then that so many men had wanted to pay their respects by carrying John’s coffin for a short distance they were going to shoulder it the whole way to Seapatrick, well over a mile from the church.
Rosie watched her father and Uncle Alex settle the weight of the coffin on their broad shoulders, their arms clasped beneath the casket. As a little girl she had always thought Uncle Alex was her father’s younger brother. It was only when she was older she’d learnt that Alex was an orphan, sent with a ship-load of children out of Liverpool to an orphanage in Canada that provided cheap labour for the farms.
He couldn’t have been more than five, a little boy with a label on the collar of his coat. As he’d said to her himself more than once, all he possessed was his name, Alexander Hamilton, written on that label, until a chance meeting with Granny’s brother, Sam, had awakened a lost memory and sent him searching for his family.
Sam had spoken of Annacramp, where generations of Hamiltons had lived. Granda had been born there. He’d brought Granny from Kerry to her first home there. James and Sam, Hannah and Sarah had all been born there.
Alex had come to Ireland in search of his family and had found Granda and Granny in Ballydown. Whether or not these particular Hamiltons were his actual family, Rosie was sure there was no one in this vast concourse of people, their eyes upon the steady movement of her grandfather’s coffin, who could imagine Alex as anyone other than John Hamilton’s son.
Slowly, the head of the procession made its way through the gates of the churchyard and out into the empty, silent streets, the shops closed because it was Sunday, the blinds on private houses drawn down because of John’s death. Behind it, yet more men took their place. Group after group, they moved like a dark, flowing river that would never end.
‘What do we do now?’ Emily whispered, as quietly as if they were still in church.
‘I’m not sure. Granny told me it’s only the men that go to the graveyard. There’s tea at Rathdrum. I do know that because Mrs Love and I made loaves and loaves of sandwiches last night.’
She looked around again and saw clusters of women walking away from the church in twos and threes. The undertaker’s men were loading the wreaths into the empty hearse. Yet there were still men shaking hands with Rose, older men, bent with age, who did not hurry to join the groups of four who would carry the coffin all the way up the long hill. She could still hear the murmur of their voices, repeating and repeating the same simple phrase.
‘I’m sorry for your trouble. I’m sorry for your trouble.’
Richard P. was so right. He’d asked her yesterday if she’d ever been to a funeral and she’d shaken her head, so he’d described what it would be like. He’d explained everyone would say ‘I’m sorry for your trouble’ to her grandmother as she stood at the church door. Though it looked a bit like a formula, it wasn’t. It was, as he put it, a hallowed phrase, only ever used when sincerely meant.
She felt so grateful to him now for telling her as much as he had about the customs and traditions and the rituals of mourning, but nothing he’d said had prepared her for the sheer numbers of people nor for the atmosphere created in the parish church.
‘Hallo Rosie. That’s the worst over.’
Helen Sinton had come up quietly behind them and slipped an arm round them both. ‘You must be my cousin, Emily,’ she went on smiling. ‘I think the last time we saw each other, I fell out of a tree in your orchard.’
‘Ach dear, fancy you rememberin’ that,’ responded Emily, her face lighting up. ‘Your poor ma looks tired out.’
‘She had rather a bad journey from Berlin to The Hook,’ Helen replied, pressing her lips together. ‘She just caught the first possible train with no booking, so she’d no sleeper. I think she actually stood part of the way, but she’s not letting on about that. Have you ever seen so many people at a funeral before?’
‘I’ve never been at a funeral before,’ Rosie confessed.
‘So Richard P. told me. He seems very concerned about you,’ she said with a small smile.
‘He’s been very kind,’ Rosie replied honestly. ‘He tried to warn me what it would be like. I was so afraid of doing something wrong.’
Helen took them both by the arm.
‘There are some taxis waiting over at the hotel. They’re going to ferry us all up to Rathdrum and then collect the men as they make their way back from the churchyard. I’ve to go now and summon them,’ she added, ‘unless you’d like to come with me.’
Rosie glanced across at Emily, knowing how shy she could be with people she didn’t know well, but she was looking pleased and relieved. However different from them this elegant young woman might seem to be, with her smart London costume and beautifully manicured hands, she was warm and friendly, just like her mother.
They set off together, slipping out by the small side gate behind the church, but there they had to wait for some time before they could cross the road. They stood silently on the pavement until the last of the solemn figures had past by, then took one last look at the long, dark line winding its way over the bridge, past the Crozier Memorial and through the town, on the journey John had made at least once a week through every week of his working life.
Rosie, Emily and Helen were the first to arrive back at Rathdrum. The front door stood open, the sitting room and hall were full of flowers, but all was silent as they made their way through to the kitchen. To their surprise, they found there not only Mrs Love, who had insisted on staying behind, but two young girls in black dresses and white aprons laying out cups and saucers and a smart young man polishing wine glasses.
‘This is Mary and this is Bridget,’ said Mrs Love quickly, introducing the two girls. ‘Auntie Hannah said that you and I had done enough,’ she went on, addressing Rosie. ‘We’re not to spend the afternoon in the kitche
n, so she borrowed these two from the hotel.’
Rosie wondered why she hadn’t introduced the young man who was polishing away quite devotedly, but before she’d remembered Mrs Love was a vigorous teetotaller, Helen had stepped forward towards him.
‘I’m Helen,’ she said sticking out her hand. ‘And these are my cousins Rosie and Emily. Who are you?’
He looked up from his tray of sparkling glasses, stared at her in amazement, blushed as red as the stripe on his Irish linen tea towel, and finally shook her hand.
‘I’m Willy Auld. Pleased to meet ye.’
‘Does your father by any chance work in the Post Office?’
‘Aye, he does. He’s the postmaster,’ he replied, looking startled.
‘You must talk to my mother when she gets here. She and your father are old friends. I’ve often heard her mention him. Now let’s take these through to the sitting room. Where have you set up the booze?’
Rosie had no idea what she was going to do about the look on Mrs Love’s face as she saw Helen and Willy disappear together. To make it worse, Emily said excuse me and headed for the lavatory and Mary and Bridget picked up their trays and moved out into the hall to follow Helen and Willy.
‘Yer granda wasn’t a great man for drink,’ she said accusingly.
‘No, I don’t think he ever got drunk,’ Rosie replied, choosing her words with care, ‘but he always enjoyed a wee whiskey. And he liked wine,’ she added emphatically, remembering the bottle of sparkling white wine he’d ordered for her birthday supper.
Mrs Love pressed her lips together and jerked her head in righteous disapproval.
‘Ye haven’t seen the boxes that came with that young man from the hotel. And it being the Sabbath day,’ she said, tight with ill-concealed anger.
‘Where did he put them?’ Rosie asked, looking round her, there being no visible sign of drink of any kind in the kitchen.
