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We stood at a muddy graveside in the pissing rain whilst the last words were said over my mother’s cheap plywood coffin. Photographers lurked behind statues of mildewed, grim-faced angels, trying their best to be surreptitious as they got their pictures of the grieving family and I said a quiet prayer that Lilith might get through the ceremony without biting any of them in the throat.
So far she’d been on her very best behaviour but I recognised the stiffened spine and clenched jaw that suggested she was mere minutes away from hunting them down, and I breathed an audible sigh of relief as the scattering of mourners threw their handfuls of earth into the open grave and we could make our way to the wake.
*****
As a darkly fitting final chapter to her miserable life the final stage of my mother’s send-off was held at the utter shit-pit of a social club that Niamh informed me had been her second home as she drank herself to death.
I watched as the cadaverous barman pulled a pint of cloudy, flat lager, and as he put the filthy glass on the counter I felt that familiar addict’s drool start in my mouth. I realised I wanted to grab the drink off the old fella who’d just bought it and down it in one.
The barman turned to me. “Sorry to keep you waiting, lad. What can I get you?” he asked.
I took one last wistful glance at the pint on the bar. One day soon I knew I’d be able to trust myself again, but today was most certainly not that day. “Just half a lime and soda, ta.”
The old fella next to me gave a derisive snort. “Some kinda queer boy, are yeh?”
I channelled my inner Lilith and gave him a brief, cold smile. “Not currently, no.”
He had the good grace to look mildly embarrassed then squinted at me. “Ah. You’re Agnes’ lad, aren’t you?” he asked, and when I nodded he patted me on the arm. “Won fifty punt bettin’ on you in a bare-knuckle, must be, ooh, ten year ago now. Was sorta handy in the ring myself back in the day, but nothin’ on you. Sorry for your troubles - no harm meant, yeah?”
I had no idea what to say to that, other than a grudging ‘Ta’. I took my drink and went to rejoin Lilith, and the second I sat down she pressed herself against me so that I could take refuge in her presence.
“How are you doing? Still okay?” she asked.
“Eh, y’know. Surviving. How’s the food?” I gestured at the smeared platter of greying prawns she’d been picking at from the buffet.
She grimaced and held one of the disconsolate shellfish. “Well it’s definitely deceased. In fact it probably died a few weeks before your mother did. I don’t think I’ll be having any more,” she said, and dropped the sad little corpse back with the rest of its departed comrades.
I surveyed the drab room. There were maybe half a dozen pissed and determined hangers-on clinging to the bar, and my family. Nearly over, I reassured myself. “At least the food is in keeping with the overall theme of the day, I suppose. Looks like most people are starting to drift away now, and we can always grab something on the way b- Oh holy fuck...!” The words shriveled in my mouth and anything else I was about to say was blasted clear out of my head because out of the corner of my eye I saw Sinéad talking to a man in the doorway of the club.
“Finn? Sweetheart? What’s wrong?” Lilith laid her steady hand on my arm but she was speaking to me from leagues away because the red-haired man with Sinéad was, without any doubt, Father McKenna. He wasn’t wearing a dog collar but there was no mistaking the thinning ginger hair and pockmarked, blanched face of the man who had raped me; the man who had helped send me on a journey to hell. And now here he was at my mother’s wake.
McKenna glanced furtively around the shabby room and as soon as he spotted me his already-pale face turned corpse grey. He bolted for the fire exit, and Sinéad threw me a look of pure fury and followed him.
Lilith
“McKenna. That bastard with Sinéad - it’s Father fuckin’ McKenna,” Finn whispered to me and before I could stop him he jumped to his feet and ran after his sister and the terrified-looking man. The room fell silent as the fire door slammed off its hinges, then the hubbub immediately started again as if to cover up the scene. I guessed the drinking club regulars were used to drunken drama.
Niamh came over with Sol clutched to her chest. “Lilith? Is Tack okay? I mean, with Sinéad…and was that Father McKenna with her? Should I follow them?”
“In question order, I highly sodding doubt it,” I said over my shoulder. “Yes, and no, absolutely not, you’re far too bloody nice to hear the things that I think I’m about to say. Just stay there,” I ordered, and ran to see whatever the hell was happening outside.
Finn
The fire door opened out onto an overgrown and scrubby enclosed yard that was strewn with empty glasses and beer bottles and carpeted with a thick layer of fag ends. It looked like an outdoor version of my bedroom back at Albermarle Hall.
The dilapidated wooden gate swung and squeaked on its hinges, and McKenna was nowhere to be seen. I was about to leg it down the road in search of him when Sinéad stepped in front of me, radiating supernova levels of fury.
“How the fuck could you do that to Father McKenna, you perv bastard!” she cried.
“Sinéad, I didn’t even know you knew the man. And what the hell was he doing here?”
“He’s just told me what’s happening to him. He’s only been fuckin’ suspended while they investigate him for bein’ a nonce back when you were in the care home. Wanted to come and pay his respects to mam, but didn’t dare come to the mass ‘cos he knew you were goin’ to be there spreading all kinds of shite about him. Jesus Finn, he’s been running our youth centre for years with no problem, and the minute you’re back on the scene with your shit and your lies his whole life goes to hell and suddenly he’s a paedo!”
“Your youth centre?” I felt sick. “Oh God Sinéad, did he…” I began.
She gave a derisive laugh. “Nah, course he didn’t, cos it’s all a load of made up bollocks and anyway, I’m not like you, some...some fuckin’ whore who -”
“That. Is. Enough.” Lilith Bresson appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, magically transformed into five feet nothing of English aristo and used nothing but the sheer force of her personality to stop Sinéad’s outburst mid-breath.
