The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (13 page)

I was horrified but intrigued.

“So Donal showed her what to do?” I said.

“He did no such thing, Paddy. This is the connection and potential I'm talking about. Beginning to see the possibilities?”

I was enjoying the story about the dog as much as I was appreciative of the conviviality and trust between Chris and me, but before I could enjoy another moment of either, the thought of my forgotten hearse-driving duties drained the blood from my face. I checked my watch: 10:30.

“Oh, Christ,” I said.

10:30 a.m.

T
here weren't many things that annoyed Frank Gallagher, but hearses arriving late for funerals was at the top of the list. At twenty past ten, when Paddy hadn't answered his phone, he'd begun to suspect things weren't running as smoothly as he'd like, but now, standing outside the church at half past ten with no sign of a hearse, he was becoming furious.

He tried phoning the church to see if he could get anyone to go out to the altar and alert the priest to the problem so he could help by stretching the Mass a little, but nobody answered the phone. He'd have organized another hearse to come up in its place if there was one available, but it was a busy morning and they were flat out. They were just going to have to wait for Paddy.

Christy and Jack, who were with him, were no happier than Frank was. Nobody wanted to be left explaining to a grieving family surrounded by hundreds of mourners why the hearse hadn't arrived.

The priest had just finished the Mass and was stepping down past the altar to stand by the coffin to say the closing prayers. The sacristan stood beside him, tending to the incense and holy water. These prayers seldom took more than five minutes, ten at the most. Frank prayed with every bit of faith he possessed that the priest would take it past the ten-minute mark, long enough for Paddy to pull up outside.

The generally accepted cue for the undertakers to walk to the top of the side aisles and stand in waiting was the priest's starting of the closing prayers. Frank turned to his men, grim-faced.

“Right, we're going to have to go up. We'll take this as slowly as possible.”

Christy and Jack followed Frank up the left side of the church so slowly that hardly any of the mourners even noticed them moving. Christy, for his part, was extremely apprehensive about dealing with the Hayeses under such circumstances, but was more worried that Paddy had come unstuck with Cullen in some way, and played out all sorts of unwelcome scenarios in his head, his sunken cheeks the only outward sign of anxiety.

Once at the top of the aisle, the three men stood still with their hands clasped behind them and their faces drawn.

They'd hoped that one of the family would take to the podium to say a few words about the deceased's short life, which would have added another five minutes and possibly saved them, but nothing of the sort happened.

The priest took the holy water from the sacristan and walked slowly around the coffin with the sprinkler, shaking the water onto it. He followed that by doing a similar ritual with the thurible, which he used to shake incense at the coffin with a practiced hand before passing it back to the sacristan and getting back to his prayer book.

“May the martyrs come to welcome you and may the angels lead you into Paradise and may you have eternal rest,” he said, before making the Sign of the Cross and turning off his mike. He stepped down off the altar and proceeded to walk past the coffin a few feet down the center aisle, stopping to wait for the coffin to be turned and wheeled down behind him.

As the organ music piped up to see them out of the church, Frank moved to the coffin much slower than he usually would with added dignity and piousness and took longer, too, in what appeared to be a heartfelt genuflection, emulated precisely by Christy and Jack. Then they turned the coffin around on its trolley so the feet were facing the priest. Just as the priest was about to continue towards the door, Frank moved to the family and took old Mrs. Hayes's hands in his.

“Mrs. Hayes, would you like your sons to carry Dermot out on their shoulders?”

The old woman nodded her weeping head. Frank then turned to the sons and took his time about telling them what their mother had decided before guiding them out of the pew and placing them around the coffin according to their height: tallest at the back, shortest at the front. Once they all had their positions and the coffin was raised onto their shoulders, Frank gave the priest the nod to go on, following after him at a snail's pace, flanked by Christy and Jack, whose eyes, along with Frank's, were riveted on the space outside the open doors that was still horribly vacant.

As the Hayeses carried the coffin behind him, Frank mentally went through the route from Cullen's house to the church to appease his tortured mind and fervently prayed Paddy was only moments away.
Jesus, get him here, I'm begging you, roll that hearse up outside the doors, please, Lord, I implore you, let me see that hearse outside.

10:41 a.m.

I
hadn't stopped once since leaving Cullen's house. Breaking five red traffic lights, driving on the wrong side of the road, and three times touching on 140 kph, I managed to squeeze the twenty-minute journey into an even eleven minutes. By the time I got to the church, I was sure I'd be pulling up to a mob of angry mourners, but as I approached the doors of the Romanesque monstrosity of a church, it was miraculously free of people. I slunk past the main doors as the coffin was being marched down the steps and inched to a stop as if it was as methodical a procedure as the tightly linked cogs in a clock keeping time. I killed the engine just as Frank turned the handle on the back door and opened it up for the coffin, which was slowly pushed up to a stop just behind my head.

I got out of the hearse only to be immediately met by Frank, who took a firm grip of my arm and led me around the corner to the side of the church, where he stopped short of pinning me to the wall.

“Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?” he said, barely able to contain his anger.

“Frank, I'm sorry. I couldn't get away from Cullen.”

Frank was incredulous.

“I don't give a shite who you were with, Paddy. You should have been here at ten past the fucking hour. Why didn't you answer your phone?”

“It was on silent. He's a tricky bastard, Frank; he tells me when I can come and go. I'm sorry.”

He straightened his coat with a yank. “Don't ever do that to me again,” he said with finality, and walked back around the corner. I gave it a minute before following after him, moving around to the back of the hearse, where Christy was placing the family wreath at the head of the coffin while Jack placed the other flowers on either side of the coffin. Christy raised his eyebrows at me while exhaling through puffed cheeks.

Before we could say a word to each other, our attention was seized by old Mrs. Hayes making her way up to Frank, who was standing on the other side of the hearse, collecting Mass cards from the occasional mourner.

“Mr. Gallagher,” she said. “I've rosary beads here. Is it possible to have them put in the coffin at this late stage?”

“Of course it is,” said Frank, his calm restored. “Have you them there? I'll look after it myself.”

She handed him the beads.

“We'll just have to take the coffin inside the church again.”

“Thanks very much,” she said, and moved back to her family. Christy was beside Frank in a matter of seconds, holding out his hand.

“I'll look after that for you, Frank.”

“You can give me a hand,” said Frank, and then looked to Jack. “Keep an eye on things out here, Jack, we're taking the coffin back inside for a minute.”

“Right you are,” said Jack.

Christy kept his hand held out, the panic coming alive in his eyes.

“Here, Frank, Paddy and I'll look after that, you can stay out here.”

Frank ignored him. He moved to the back of the hearse and took out the spuds holding the coffin in place. I knew Frank well, and once he'd decided on something, he generally stuck to it like glue.

“Paddy,” he said. “Give us a hand getting this inside.”

Christy's eyes were darting all over the place. I winked at him as we took a grip of either side of the coffin while Frank took the head. We carried it inside and placed it on the trolley and then wheeled it over to a quiet alcove. I took out my screwdriver, opened the four screws holding the lid down, and opened it a crack. I stretched my hand out to Frank.

“I'll just slip them in,” I said.

Frank wasn't in the mood to be challenged. “No, take the lid off the coffin.”

I took the lid off to reveal the dead old woman. Frank's jaw dropped slowly open. Christy stood there looking awkward and ashamed, sinking lower in his shoes by the second. And I just waited. Frank brought his gaze up to mine.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he said, with contained righteous anger.

“We weren't just sent the wrong body,” I said. “Kershaw's cremated Dermot Hayes over there.”

“And whose decision was it to wing it?” said Frank, with scrutinizing eyes.

“It was mine,” said Christy, taking the proverbial bullet. Granted, it was his funeral, and because of that, he felt responsible, but it was the caliber of his friendship that informed his spurious confession.

“It was mine,” I said. “It was mine all the way.”

12:40 p.m.

T
he boardroom in Gallagher's was a long room seldom used for anything but the storage of neglected ashes and the odd meeting Frank might have with his lawyer or accountant. I sat at the end of the long oak table by the boxes of ashes, looking at Christy through the film of dust on the antique mirror spanning the length of the wall. He didn't want to talk to me. Having positioned himself half a table length from me with his face cupped in his hand, he was completely despondent, blaming himself for listening to me and veering from Frank's code of rectitude at all times, at all costs.

If the Kershaw situation had happened in any other week, I probably wouldn't have gone down the route of deceit, but the die had been cast with the Wright and Cullen situations, so I did it as much to validate and bolster the desperate measures I'd been forced to take as to keep the Hayeses from a tainted grieving process and Kershaw out of the soup. But this was little comfort to Christy with his job on the block and reputation tarnished.

“Christy . . .” I began.

He raised his hand to silence me without looking up and then let it drop in his lap.

“I feel like a bollocks,” I said.

“Don't,” he said flatly. “I'll be able to pick up some work with the embassies.”

I emptied my lungs. “What a monumental fuckup,” I said.

“The beads,” he said. “Those fucking rosary beads . . .”

Before I could respond, Frank came in, looking even more deflated than Christy, but with an anger on him. He dropped himself into the chair at the head of the table and looked at me like a betrayed and disappointed father.

“How much did you make on this, Paddy?”

I thought he knew me better than that, but then I suppose he thought he knew me better, too.

“You think I did what I did to make money?”

“Well, why else would you have done it? Surely you wouldn't have hung me out to dry for nothing?”

“I didn't make a penny on this—it never even crossed my mind . . .”

“So you put my business on the line, my livelihood, my reputation, Paddy, to cover a man in England who you've never even fucking met! Is that what you're telling me?” He stood up out of his chair, utterly indignant.

“I did it to cover the situation, Frank, not Kershaw per se, but the whole thing. I took a calculated risk, never intending to make money but to—”

“Jesus Christ Almighty, do you want to come home with me, Paddy, and start running my house and family, too?”

I felt his pain. I'd disrespected him and deserved whatever he had to mete out.

“I've no defense,” I said, and looked to the table.

“There was a pair of us in it, Frank. It was as much me as it was Paddy,” said Christy. Frank sat down and sighed heavily.

“Your loyalty is admirable, Christy, but misplaced. There's one to be brought back from the Mercy, bring Jack with you. Now get out of my sight.”

Christy got up from his seat. “I'm sorry,” he said to Frank quietly, and left the room.

In the thirty years Frank and I had known each other we'd never had a moment like this. It was a tough call for him. I'd love to have been able to talk to him about the bind I was in, but under the circumstances, he was the last person I could tell. He was having difficulty as it was; to heap any more on his plate wouldn't do anyone any favors, least of all Frank himself.

“What would your father think?” he said, in nearly a whisper.

“I'd imagine he'd be concerned, like yourself. The truth is, Frank, I've felt him closer to me this week than I have in years. I know how out of character all this seems, but I'm having the strangest week I think I've ever had. I feel like I'm halfway down a birth canal. And I've been asking myself what would Shay think, and I think from where he's at he'd have perspective on it like you can't have when you're seeing it from just one angle. I'm not saying what I did was right, but I did it to facilitate a normal funeral, a normal grieving process. And I know what it's done to the dynamic between you and me, and I can't express just how sorry I am about that. For what it's worth, I have more respect for you than any living person I know. And that's the truth.”

He sat there continuing to look at me, considering what I'd said. He took out his brass case of cigarillos along with his matches. It was a meditative technique I'd seen him use countless times when big decisions had to be made. He selected a cigarillo slowly and methodically, tapped it three times against the case, and lit a match, puffing out the smoke while sucking the flame against the tobacco. They were James Fox's finest cigarillos. I knew this because I picked them up for him from Fox's on Grafton Street whenever he needed them. It smelled so nice I pulled out a cigarette and joined him. As smoking moments go, it was a perfect one.

The anger that had been so tangible when he'd first entered the room was gone. All I could feel exuding from him now was his inherent kindness. But I knew he wasn't given to sentimentality and that pragmatism and fairness would inform his decision before his magnanimity.

I was three-quarters way through my cigarette when he put his case back in his pocket, the picture of composure.

“The Cullen remains is in the embalming room waiting to be laid out,” he said, with a gentleness that put the perfect end to the meeting.

I put out my cigarette and blew out the last of the smoke.

“Thank you, Frank.”