The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (9 page)

I could feel the sweat collecting at the top of my brow and dripping down both sides of my face, which I wanted to wipe off, but didn't dare.

“What's the story with the dog?” I said, still looking at its ever-watchful eyes.

Nobody said anything for another minute or so, and I had no more questions to ask.

“She's smelling your fear, Paddy,” said Vincent, practically in a whisper. “Dechtire,” he said. “By my side.”

The dog licked its lips and moved to Vincent's side.

My eyes darted from the dog to Vincent, to Sean, and back down to my briefcase. I could hear how irregular my breathing was, and I was squirming in my seat. I took out the coffin catalog, which I held out to Vincent, whose gaze now lowered to my trembling hand. Each moment was getting worse. As I tried to control the shaking in my hand, Sean reached over and took the catalog from me with a slight mocking smile and slowly started leafing through the pages, never once looking down at them, but continuing to stare at me all the while.

Desperate, I looked to the floor, feeling the burning heat of Vincent's disapproval along with my shame and the river of sweat collecting on my collar. As irrational as I knew it was, I was convinced that somehow Vincent knew I'd mowed his brother down and that he was about to announce it to me. I waited, knowing full well the funeral arrangements we were making had come to a grinding halt.

When Vincent spoke, he spoke much slower than he had up to this point.

“We'll come down to the funeral home later, Paddy, and finish the arrangements then. All right?”

“Okay,” I said, my mouth so dry I'd whispered the word. I accepted the catalog back from Sean and put the arrangement sheet away. Both Vincent and Sean were on their feet before I'd closed the briefcase. Sean held the door open as I walked out of the room with my head bowed, and then he closed it behind me.

I felt like I'd just been squeezed through a mangle. Was this what I'd been reduced to: a muddled, sleep-deprived mental patient with the biggest secret in Dublin? I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. I had to tell someone.

10:50 a.m.

I
closed the door to the back office behind me and sank to my knees, gripping my hair in despair. Vincent Cullen was going to check up on me, that was a certainty. I could only hope he'd write me off as a pathetic loser, but after my panicky display in his study, how far would his suspicions extend? I'd never felt guiltier than I had in his study, and there was no explanation for my collapse into panic, unless he'd put it down to the dog. Maybe he'd just request to have somebody else run the funeral. But considering the way my luck had been going, I wasn't expecting him to let me off the hook.

I needed to talk to Christy, to tell him what I'd done, to share the burden of my horrible crime, which I hoped would alleviate some of the mortal fear I found so impossible to shake. The relief of owning up, of admitting the truth, couldn't be mine. It was a road I knew I couldn't go down. Never in my life had I shirked the blame when it was mine. I'd always put my hand up no matter how severe the repercussions would be. But now something had changed in me. I don't know if fear had taken hold of my soul or if I was frightened by the hellish consequences I'd face if I admitted everything. I only knew that with the Lucy Wright situation and the far larger one of Donal Cullen, both of which I was one hundred percent culpable, I couldn't take the rap. It would destroy me.

Corrine arrived in with an empty cup and stopped in her tracks. I was no longer sweating like I'd been up in Cullen's house, but I still must have looked like I'd run all the way from Stephen's Green.

“Are you all right?” she said.

I took out a cigarette and lit it.

“I'll be all right in a minute,” I said. Corrine was a smart woman. She didn't ask questions. She kept to herself and never got involved in anyone's dramas, preferring instead to live her life privately away from the land of funerals.

“If you mind the phones for me, I'll make you a cup of tea,” she said.

“Deal,” I said, and moved out towards the front office.

“Oh, and Paddy!” she shouted after me. I cocked my ear. “Eddie Daly was on. Lucy Wright is clear.”

“Great,” I said. Incredible how inconsequential it seemed now beside the Cullen conundrum. Granted, Lucy's death was on my head, but the price for my crime, had I been made pay, would have been my reputation. Not my life.

I popped my head into the middle office to see Christy on a call. I signaled for him to join me when he was finished, and then went to answer the ringing phone in the front office.

“Gallagher's Funerals, good morning,” I said.

The voice on the other end was frantic.

“Hello, who am I speaking to, please?” It was an English accent, and familiar.

“Paddy Buckley here.”

“Oh, yes, Paddy. I talked to you yesterday . . . this is Derek Kershaw in Manchester . . .”

“Everything all right, Derek?”

“No . . . no, I'm finished. I'm afraid I've made the most dreadful mistake . . .”

“What happened?” I said.

“I've sent you the wrong body . . .”

“That's not good, Derek. The Hayes family is expecting him up at the funeral home at lunchtime. How soon can you organize a flight?”

“No, it's quite irredeemable . . . there's another remains whose people didn't want a funeral at all, just a straightforward cremation without a service . . . she had no family, just a nephew who hardly knew her . . .”

Kershaw had been drinking and was slurring his words.

“Derek, can you organize a flight today?” I said clearly.

“I've not only sent you the wrong body,” said Kershaw, in tears now, “I've cremated your man . . .”

Something inside me came alive. Ordinarily, this would have been enough to send the whole office into complete turmoil, me included, but a deep equanimity took a grip of me in an instant, and for the first time since I fell back into my body at Vincent Cullen's, it felt like I belonged in my skin again.

In every industry, horrible things go wrong every day, things incendiary enough to close down a business; and more times than not, somebody manages to keep a lid on it; and nobody the wiser. By some crazy cosmic decree, this happened to be a week full of lightning strikes in the same place, and I, for some unfathomable reason, was attracting them. Yet paradoxically, instead of being fried to a crisp, I'd been thrown into the eye of the storm.

I listened to Kershaw's defeated whimpering in my ear. I looked at the crimson wool fabric on the carpet. I watched Corrine's hand steadily place the mug of tea down on the desk in front of me. And I saw the grandfather clock keeping time as it had for forty years in exactly the same place.

It was then that I realized everything was perfect.

I turned away from Corrine, who'd just answered another call, and lowered my voice.

“Derek, let me understand you. You sent us the wrong body and the Hayes remains we were expecting you've cremated in Manchester. Is that it?” I asked in a calm, level voice.

“That's it,” Derek whispered.

“Who knows about this?”

“No one, just my son and I,” he said.

Christy came in from the middle office and sat down in front of me.

“Right, keep it to yourselves. Tell no one. Can you do that?”

“Yes, but what good—”

I cut him off. “Just give me an hour. Don't do anything or tell anyone. Sit tight. I'll ring you back in an hour.” I put down the phone.

“What's going on?” said Christy, with a lowering brow.

I winked for his complicity.

“Corrine,” I said, “has the Hayes remains been delivered?”

“It's in the side parlor,” she said, sipping her tea while studying the
Times
's Simplex crossword.

Christy followed me into the side parlor where the closed Hayes coffin rested on a bier. I closed the door behind us and spoke very quietly.

“Now, I need you to keep a level head and your mouth shut when I tell you this.”

“What?”

“Kershaw has cremated Dermot Hayes in Manchester.”

“Stop it,” said Christy.

“I'm telling you,” I said.

“None of your fucking messing now, Buckley,” said Christy defensively, but he knew by my eyes that I was serious. He brought his hand to his head and sat slowly down on the couch.

“Mother of fuck,” he said, before looking at me suddenly. “Who's he sent us?”

Within a minute, we had the screws out. I lifted the lid off the coffin and we looked inside. It was a plump old woman in her eighties, minus her dentures.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Christy. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

“Keep it down.”

“Paddy, this could close us down. Do you realize that?”

“No, it couldn't. It could close Kershaw down. Now, if you relax for a minute, we can make it so nobody gets closed down.”

Christy wasn't one bit happy.

“How are we going to do that, Buckley?”

—

FRANK GALLAGHER SPENT
a large part of each day up in his office, writing letters, doing the books, and looking after business in general. He was involved in a handful of community projects around the areas in Dublin he had funeral homes, as well as being a prominent figure in the national and international funeral associations he belonged to. He took these involvements seriously and gave them considerable time and energy.

In contrast to Vincent Cullen's dark mahogany study, Frank's office was oak paneled and well lit, with paintings of monasteries hanging on the walls along with framed black-and-white photographs of state funerals of prime ministers and presidents the firm had handled over the years. Frank was fond of smoking cigarillos while up there, often spending the day working under the slow-moving layers of smoke they lent the room. The baroque music he had playing in the background—Bach—put the finishing touch to the atmosphere he found best for letter writing, which was what he was in the middle of when I knocked on his door.

“Come in,” said Frank.

I leaned my head in.

“Frank, just to tell you, I've had a look at the Hayes remains from Manchester, and it's a closed coffin.”

He looked up from his letter for the first time.

“There's nothing Eamonn can do, no?”

“No,” I said. “Tissue gas has set in. It's definitely a closed case.”

“Okay, get on to the family and advise them accordingly.”

“Will do,” I said, and left him in the smoke.

11:45 a.m.

C
hristy and I stood outside the Hayeses' pebbledash house with its hodgepodge of round and square windows, waiting to be let in. Christy looked like he had the weight of Dublin's troubles on his shoulders. It was going to be a big funeral, and they'd expressed how much they wanted an open coffin, and Christy had wanted to make all their wishes come true.

“What has you so relaxed?” he said accusingly.

“It's a closed coffin,” I assured him.

“This mightn't wash at all,” he said to the ground.

The door was opened by old Mr. Hayes, a bull of a man in his early seventies.

“Ah, Christy,” he said warmly. “Come in.”

We followed him inside and were led straight into the living room where the whole family was gathered to remember Dermot, twelve of them in all, every one of them an adult. Our visit was unannounced and they were wondering what we were doing there.

“Sit down, lads,” said old Mr. Hayes. Christy sat down on the arm of the couch while I stayed back at the wall. It was Christy's funeral, so it was up to him to sell it. Often there were times when a family would be advised to have a closed coffin for genuine reasons, and they nearly always took the advice. But if a family insisted on an open coffin, it was their call at the end of the day, and who were we to stand in their way? We were just there to advise them, only today we had to go beyond advising them: We had to convince them.

“Will you have a cup of tea?” said old Mr. Hayes.

“No, no,” said Christy. “Just a quick word and we'll be on our way.”

“There's no problem, is there?” said the old man.

“Well, I wouldn't . . . no, there's no problem, but we've just collected your son's remains from the airport, and . . . well, we've had a look at the body and it's not really suitable for viewing . . .”

“What are you saying, son?” said old Mr. Hayes.

“Well, we're here to recommend having a closed coffin. It's our opinion that you'd be better off remembering your son as he was. It would be extremely distressing to do otherwise,” Christy said plainly.

The change in the room was immediate and severe. Some of them moved around on their feet like they'd been hit with news of another death. Others just looked at Christy with resentment. As if it was something he'd done.

“I've come home from Brussels for this,” said one of the sons, an executive type who'd done well for himself. “It's Dermot, Dad, he's dead, and we're expecting him to look dead. The coffin stays open.”

The mother started whimpering in her chair.

“Thomas,” she said to her husband, “I have to see him.” The old man put his hand on his wife's shoulder.

“What's the problem exactly, Christy?” he said.

“To be perfectly frank with you, tissue gas is the problem,” said Christy. “Rapid deterioration and swelling of the body and severe discoloration of the skin . . .”

“I don't care what he looks like,” said a determined sister. “I'm saying goodbye to him, Dad.”

Then they all started. Christy just sat there with his head getting shinier while the noise in the room got louder and more aggrieved. He snuck a glance at me that said it all:
We're fucked.

In any arrangement situation, you learn pretty quickly who you're talking to. Very often you find yourself in a roomful of family members, all of them adults, and nine times out of ten, there's just one person making the decisions. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to figure out who it is, other times it's clear immediately. In the Hayes house there was only one boss, and with everyone directing their pleas in his direction, there was no figuring out to be done. I leaned in close to old Mr. Hayes and whispered in his ear.

“Mr. Hayes, may I have a word with you outside?”

“Certainly, son,” said the old man. I nodded to Christy briefly before he and I walked out of the room ahead of old Mr. Hayes, leaving them all silenced behind us.

It was a small house, and I needed privacy with the old man. Without any prompting, he led us out of the little hallway into the kitchen before closing the door behind us. This was delicate ground and, to an extent, sacred. I had to be careful with what I said, as whatever picture he bought into would stay with him for the rest of his days.
Tread softly,
I told myself.

“I'm the embalmer,” I said. “Now, it's your call, let me say that before I tell you anything, but before you make a decision, I think you need to be fully abreast of the situation. I've worked with Gallagher's all my life. I've buried my father and my wife, so believe me, I know the territory well, not to mention how important this is to you. But I also know what viewing a remains in Dermot's state can do to a family. Christy mentioned that tissue gas has set in. It has and it's at an advanced stage. When that happens, there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. There's no process to arrest it, embalming can do nothing. To give you an example of how drastic the change in appearance is, just a few years ago I buried the brother of a retired army captain from Inchicore. Tissue gas had set into his brother's remains and it was a nasty case, so bad that the body had blown up like a balloon and the skin had turned a putrid green. The face had split open and gangrenous flesh had been exposed. I implored the captain to have a closed coffin, but he insisted on having it open, convinced he knew better. After seeing the state of his brother's remains, he demanded that the coffin be closed at once and afterwards developed a twitch under his right eye.”

Old Mr. Hayes winced while he listened.

“Now, I simply can't dissuade you enough, but if you insist on coming down yourself to decide, then so be it. But please understand that the dignity of the dead stops me from describing the state of Dermot's remains to you. I can only appeal to your higher sense to treasure your memories of him as they are. It's your decision, Mr. Hayes.”

The old man held his emotion while he reluctantly shook his head, gripping my arm with gratitude.

“I don't know how you do your job, son. Fair play to you.” He wiped his face briefly and then walked back inside to his family. Christy and I waited out in the hallway with our ears pricked up.

“There'll be no further discussion,” declared the old man. “The coffin is staying shut.”