The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,78

family patter.

‘Goodnight now.’

‘Sleep well, Mammy.’

‘Get some rest.’

‘Night night,’ all out of rhythm, like the first drops of rain.

‘Coladh sámh,’ says Ernest, by the door, and she turns to him for a blessing, which my brother–the lying hypocrite bastard of lapsed-priest atheist–does not hesitate to give (in Irish no less) and she leaves happy. At least ‘happy’ is the look on her face. Happy. She is pleased with the people she has made. She is happy.

We are silent a moment after she is gone. Mossie sits. Ita takes a slug of her water, then her mouth twitches deeply down, in some riposte from the silent conversation she is having in her head. Kitty lights up a fag, which annoys everyone a little. And I think, I never told Mammy the truth. I never told any of them the truth.

But what was I supposed to say? A dead man put his hand in a deader man’s flies thirty years ago. There are other things, surely, to talk about. There are other things to be revealed.

Like what, though? Like what?

I start to help Bea with the dishes, while Kitty brings a pile of plates over to the sink.

‘What are you doing?’ says Bea to her.

‘Clearing up,’ says Kitty.

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘Oh. No, please do. Please do clear up.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No, there’s always a first time.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Well, scrape them first, would you? Scrape it, would you? Scrape it, and stack it over there.’

Kitty lifts the plate over her head like she is going to bring it smashing down on the floor. No one looks. She holds it there for a long moment–then, with a toss of the head, she carries the thing, ceremoniously high, to the bin. She goes to scrape it, and then she just can’t help herself and stuffs the lot into the rubbish, plate, food and all.

‘Jesus!’ she screams, looking at the knife that is left in her hand, like it is dripping with blood. I glance at the ceiling–Mammy is still moving around upstairs.

‘Oh JesusJesusJesus!’ says Kitty, throwing the murder weapon into the bin, and she flees out into the garden to finish her fag.

‘Bea,’ I say.

‘What,’ says Bea, very fiercely, as she picks the crockery out of the bin. ‘What?’

And I know what she means. She means, What use is the truth to us now?

Ita comes in from the corpse room and plonks a bottle of peculiar whiskey in the middle of the yellow pine table.

‘It’s all I could find,’ she says. The bottle has a funny Irish name. It looks a bit decorative.

‘I could go to the off-licence,’ says Jem in a small voice.

‘No, no. Not to worry.’

We uncork it anyway, and put it into glasses where it sits, thick and sweet. This ritual is strange for us because, although the Hegartys all drink, we never drink together.

‘Look at the legs on that,’ says Ivor, swilling it round and holding it to the light. We sip, and consider a moment, and suddenly Jem picks up his car keys, and leaves in a shower of large notes and instructions about red wine or white. The Hegartys have had a long day.

Bea, still on her high horse, takes the first shift in the front room while the rest of us stay in the kitchen and mooch and talk. Ernest checks the cupboards–a little intensely, indeed; dipping his finger into ancient mango chutney and sniffing at the mustard. Mossie has the occasional large opinion at the pine table while Ita keeps him company, leaning back against the central counter, too immobilised by drink to wash a plate.

It is like Christmas in Hades. It is like we are all dead, and that’s just fine.

One by one we finish and sit, ready to uncork the wine when it arrives. And when it does arrive, we do not toast the dead but merely drink and chat, as ordinary people might do.

There is some talk of the mysterious Alice, also the surprise appearance of Uncle Val, who is looking so spruce.

Then Ivor says that he is thinking of buying up in Mayo.

‘What?’ says Kitty, who is turning stage Irish with the drink. ‘A bit of the old place?’

‘Well, maybe not exactly there.’

‘Jesus.’ Kitty stares ahead as if looking at it. She needs an angle of attack. We all do. We talk for a while about interest rates and flights to Knock airport.

Then Ernest says, quite mildly, ‘Not a lot of money up there.’

‘Well, I think that’s the point,’ says Ivor. And realises he is already on his back