The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (11 page)

6:30 p.m.

I
'd often remarked to myself, countless times, in fact, how strange it was to see the remains of someone I knew. Most of the people we buried were unknown to me, and when I'd dress a remains, or embalm them, or even close the lid of their coffin, I was always aware that I could get no real sense of how they looked when they were alive. The animating feature had gone; Elvis had left the building. But when it's someone you know, and you see them laid out, expecting them to look at rest or asleep, you get a nasty jar when they don't look like themselves at all. There'd been cases in the past where a family member had insisted that it wasn't their father or mother in the coffin when it absolutely was. Something happens to the face, it collapses a little. All that's left is a husk.

When I saw Lucy Wright's remains laid out on the embalming room table beside her husband's, waiting to be dressed, I was filled with memories of her living beauty; of her laughing heartily, making me laugh, too; of her standing by the counter, making tea; leaning on the chair, smiling, disarming me completely; holding my hankie to her eyes, containing her emotion; and of her legs opening while taking me inside her. I wondered if her ghost was near, and what she'd think of everything now that she'd awoken from the dream.

Eamonn opened and closed the scissors while raising his eyebrows at Christy.

“Polikoff Special, Christy,” he said, winking at me. The Polikoff Special was one of the tricks of the trade that gave Christy an uneasy feeling going out on funerals, particularly ones he'd arranged himself. To facilitate the path of least resistance in getting a garment on a remains, the back of it was cut open right up to within an inch of the neckline. Then it was just a matter of placing it over the head, putting the arms in the sleeves and tucking the back in to where it originally belonged. I'd bought a relatively cheap suit in England years ago under the Polikoff label, and the inside lining came apart in the same week of my buying it. After that, whenever I'd put a blade to a suit in the embalming room, I'd always preface the cut with the words “Polikoff Special.” I showed Eamonn when he first started embalming, and he took it as his own.

The trousers were always a cinch to get on and needed no cutting. One man lifted the legs while the other pulled the trousers up to the waist. We had Michael Wright's remains dressed and coffined within minutes.

And then Lucy. Eamonn was about to cut her blouse and cardigan up the back, but I raised my hand.

“There's three of us here, just as quick to put them on her,” I said, and started lifting her shoulders. Eamonn was slightly taken aback as I'd rarely not go for the Polikoff, but Christy moved in immediately.

“Bang on, Buckley,” he said, and helped me dress her without tearing anything. We lifted her from the table into the coffin then, and I fixed her hair. It was common practice within the firm to administer only the smallest amount of makeup, so I put on just the subtlest hint of rouge around her cheeks to raise her color slightly. As corpses go, she looked dignified and composed.

I opened the embalming room door out onto the yard where the two hearses were waiting in the darkening evening. As I turned on the deck lights in the back of the first hearse, a white articulated lorry slowly maneuvered its way through the gates.

“I thought Conway's only delivered coffins down here on Saturdays,” said Christy from the door.

“They made an exception today,” I said.

“That's a first,” said Eamonn.

“It's for Cullen.”

Eamonn let out a little chuckle.

“Amazing what a bit of fear does to people, isn't it?” he said, closing the lids on the coffins.

“Amazing,” I said, looking at Christy.

—

I LED THE WAY
out to Pembroke Lane, Christy and Eamonn each in a hearse behind me. The nearer I got to Brigid Wright, the more my heart swelled, never mind that I was bringing her parents' remains home for her to grieve over. When I stepped back and looked at it, it all seemed a little twisted, but I hadn't wished for it or invited it in, and the chemistry between us didn't have a switch I could hit, nor did it seem right to hand the funerals over to Frank or Christy. The moments I shared with her mother in the kitchen were golden to me, and I felt duty-bound to carry out the funerals as originally intended, all the more now that I'd met Brigid. To honor the Wrights and atone for my role in Lucy's death, the least I could do was bury them well. I'd keep my feelings in check and my heart hidden.

After pressing the buzzer, I felt the door shake and hum before I pressed it open and walked through to the open front door. I expected there to be a crowd rallying around Brigid by this stage, but she was on her own.

“Hi,” she said. “Come on in.”

I followed her through the living room into a bigger room, a study with wall-to-wall bookshelves. Brigid pointed to where she wanted the coffins.

“There and there, I was thinking. What do you think?”

“Perfect,” I said, and it was. I'd been in many beautiful houses making arrangements in my time, some of them opulent beyond belief, but what the Wrights had done in their home no interior designer could do. They had class. Not manufactured or emulated, but genuine, and they were artists. The room was filled with the smallest, seemingly effortless details. The little framed charcoal sketch fitting snugly between bookshelves; the old rug on the floor, probably woven in the west of Ireland with colors to paint the night red with; and countless other inimitable touches.

“We'll bring them in. Do you want to wait in the kitchen, and I'll come and get you when we're ready?”

“Sure,” she said, and then disappeared back through the living room.

We wheeled the coffins in one by one and left them on their trolleys, side by side, just in front of the fireplace. Christy got out his screwdriver and opened the lids, resting them against the books while Eamonn and I fixed the hair and clothes on Michael and Lucy, respectively, and adjusted their heads on the little pillows beneath them. We did this deftly and without a word as we always did when in someone's house. Everything in its place, both men nodded silently to me and walked out of the house into the night and away with their hearses.

I knocked gently on the kitchen door and walked in to where Brigid sat at the table, looking at me expectantly.

“Can I go in now?”

“Of course.”

I stayed in the kitchen while she went in, her scent still alive in the room and doing a number on my senses. She looked even more gorgeous than she had in my head all day. Her hair was half up, half down, and she wore a white linen blouse with jeans and knee-high brown leather boots. I sat down at the table with my stomach aflutter, wondering should I have gone with the boys and left her alone to grieve her departed parents. I knew from compiling the death notices that there weren't many relatives on either side, certainly no sisters- or brothers-in-law, nor were there nephews or nieces; surely, though, she'd be expecting someone. The reason I'd hung around was to give her the estimate—at least that's what I'd told myself. I could've given it to her when she'd let me in, but I didn't. I'd kept it till after, when we'd be alone. Shaking my head at my inner machinations, I pulled out the envelope containing the estimate and placed it on the table in front of me. I'd no further business there.

I rose to my feet and walked inside to tell her I was on my way. I stopped at the door to see her turning around to look at me from the chair she'd placed between the coffins. She'd lit a pair of candles on the mantelpiece, which gave the room a soft, glowing light. I was going to tell her that I'd left the estimate on the table for her and that I'd see her tomorrow, but as I stood there looking at her in the flickering candlelight, her eyes glistening with sorrow and love and longing and loss, I found myself completely disarmed by her beauty and wanted nothing more than to stay there looking at her.

“I'll leave you, Brigid,” I said softly.

“Are you on call?”

“No, I'm off duty,” I said, delighted to be able to tell the truth.

“Then stay awhile.”

“You've probably got people coming over; I'd only be in the way.”

“There's nobody coming over. Can you do something for me?”

“Sure.”

“Pour two glasses of wine and bring them in.”

I sourced the wine, a 2010 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, walked back in, and handed her a glass. She took it in both hands and sipped from it while looking up at me. It didn't seem odd that the silence was comfortable. As if appreciating the taste of the wine, she closed her eyes and rolled her head back on her shoulders. The desire to reach out and touch her, to kiss her and undress her and explore her body, was becoming more difficult to resist and I had to battle it. Why couldn't I just take her away from her dead parents, from my dead life, to a place where nothing mattered, where we could love each other freely and just start again? She was beautiful and wonderful and obviously aware of the burgeoning feelings between us, and maybe waiting for me to make a play, however small—a sign, a gesture—to let her know that I liked her, that I was willing to acknowledge the obvious, however bizarre the situation.

I took my glass and walked to the couch, where I sat down and looked at the floor. As much as I liked her, I couldn't help vacillating between warning myself against what seemed to be growing between us and feeling like an intrusive pervert. I didn't want to hurt or confuse her or lead her somewhere I knew I could never go myself. I was dancing close to the fire as it was, but toying with something sacred, something that was in my custody, however briefly, that I was honor bound to protect, went against the grain of my character, never mind my duty.

I drank down my wine and felt a wave of tiredness and regret sweep over me. After five minutes of looking through the floor into my soul, I sat up, put my elbows on my knees, and looked over to Brigid.

“I feel a strange kind of comfort when you're here,” she said quietly, still looking at her father's remains. “I don't know if it's because you were here when my mother died or because you were the one to tell me that she'd died or if it's because of something else, but that solace you talked of before you left the last time”—she turned to look at me—“I feel it whenever you're around me.”

“I feel it, too,” I said, willing to confess that much at least. She closed her eyes.

“Just the strangest circumstances,” she said, so softly I could barely hear her.

I wanted more than ever to embrace her but, like opposing magnets, felt myself polarized and negated from being able to do so.

She got up from her chair and walked into the kitchen. I checked my watch: half seven. Time to go. As I was getting out of my seat, Brigid walked back in with the bottle of wine, not stopping until she was standing beside me, refilling my glass.

“Stay a little longer,” she said, sitting down on the couch beside me. I sat back down, finding myself closer to her than ever before. There was no denying it: She was doing to my heart what only Eva had done before her. And it was becoming pretty clear that the feeling was mutual. Sublimation was futile, regardless of how compromised my morals were.

“I've been thinking,” she said, with no more than three veils on. “Tomorrow evening when the coffins are in the church for the prayers, nobody will know which coffin is which, will they?”

“You're right. No one will know, apart from those close enough to read the nameplates.”

“Would it be odd if we were to place a picture of them on top of their coffins while they're in the church?”

“Wouldn't be odd at all,” I said.

“I think I'd like to do that. Will you help me pick out the photographs?”

“I will,” I said, and placed my glass on the floor before following her out to the wall with the photographs. There must have been fifty or sixty in all, a lot of them black-and-white. Michael looked like Richard Burton in many of them, and Lucy looked as beautiful and bohemian in them all as I'm sure she had throughout her life. Brigid stood with her weight on one hip, holding her wine with her head to one side, nearly swaying in relaxed consideration. She had a sensuality to her movements that was both sultry and alluring.

“Your father reminds me of Richard Burton,” I said.

“He always did me, too,” she said softly with a smile. “And he had a similar voice, but with an Irish accent, of course.”

It was a little spooky standing behind Brigid while being smiled at by Lucy, albeit from pictures of her, but not so much that it was off-putting.

“I think that picture of my mum is possibly the one,” she said, pointing to a color photograph probably taken five years ago. I'd always paid particular attention to women's hands, and Brigid's had an elegance to them, along with a vitality that made them even more attractive. I got a flash of her hand taking coins out of a purse to give to a five-year-old for ice cream.

“She looks beautiful. And maybe that one of your dad.” I pointed to one that looked like it had been taken around the same time. Our proximity, not to mention the swelling intimacy, had brought our voices down to whispers.

“That was the year before his stroke. They'd go well together, wouldn't they?”

She rolled her head back on her shoulders again, closer to me than ever now. We were centimeters from each other. I cupped her elbow in my hand, and she moved back into me so that I could touch and smell her hair. She turned slowly in my arms, and then we kissed. It was soft and exquisite and dizzying. There was an unspoken understanding and tenderness between us that transcended the myriad reasons I shouldn't be anywhere near her. I knew I was getting into something that would ultimately lead to pain for both of us; I simply couldn't undo what had happened with Lucy and the lies it had precipitated, yet neither could I deny the potency and immediacy of the feelings between Brigid and me. She broke out of the kiss and looked at me. I felt like I was made of endorphins.