A Goat's Song by Dermot Healy

Author:Dermot Healy [Dermot Healy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1997-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

III

THE HARES

17

The Mourners

Jonathan Adams was buried in Fermanagh. Only there, it was finally decided, could his tombstone proclaim that he had been a Sergeant in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The hearse that took him North was from Belmullet. His family followed behind in a hired car. And behind them in a Fiat rusted by salt from the sea came Joe Love, Bernie Burke and Eitne Noone. Despite Maisie’s entreaties the Mullet folk had decided to attend the funeral in the North.

Outside Blacklion, on the Florencecourt Road, when they were safely in the North, the cortege came to a stop.

“Looks like a roadblock,” said Bernie Burke, who was driving.

“Well don’t do anything hasty,” advised Joe Love.

“What’s going on?” asked Eitne.

With a sense of disbelief, the Mullet mourners saw another hearse emerge from a side road. Soldiers climbed out from behind a hedge. Three police Saracens cruised up behind.

“Are we going to be kidnapped or what?” asked Bernie.

“Just keep looking ahead,” whispered Joe.

A soldier appeared at the window and Bernie wound it down.

“Morning,” said Bernie.

“OK,” said the soldier, “you with the funeral?”

“Yes.”

“OK.”

A man in a black bowler and long black coat appeared, and along with him, two men dressed in ill-fitting black suits. The three swiftly tipped Jonathan Adams’ coffin into the Northern hearse. His policeman’s gloves and cap were placed on it and armfuls of funeral bouquets alongside. The hearse from Belmullet returned to the South and the new cortege took off into the North. “Jazus,” said Bernie, “they’re putting the foot down.” They went off up back roads, skirting towns till they arrived at the station in the village where the dead man had served his time. All the vehicles slowed to a halt, and stayed there outside the fortress, with their engines running, for a long surreal moment.

Joe Love turned to Bernie: “I told you he was an important man.”

All that could be seen of the station was a tall concrete wall, spiked with reams of barbed wire, huge green galavanize gates and a small door, behind sandbags, that opened into the wall. Beyond that were slated roofs covered by green netting and a single watch-tower. The man in the bowler hat stepped out and stood at the front right-hand side of the hearse. He nodded. The Saracens and the two cars took off again at walking pace. Another few mourning cars slipped surreptitiously in behind as the cortege drew towards the church. Then, flanked by two columns of uniformed policemen, who were in turn protected by armed British soldiers, Jonathan Adams’ coffin was ferried on the shoulders of four young policemen into the quiet graveyard.

“By jingo,” said Joe Love, “he was in the guards.”

“The RUC are not the guards,” whispered Eitne.

Willy was waiting by the grave. And he chose the same verse to read, from the Gospel according to St Matthew, as the priest had spoken over Matti Bonner: He is not dead. He sleepeth.

He is not dead. He sleepeth.

“Imagine,” whispered Bernie Burke in awe, “he went to his grave without taking a drink.

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