Niamh wheeled angrily on her mother. ‘Why don’t you let him speak for himself, just once in his life?’ Her mother recoiled, as if from a slap. And Niamh turned back to her father. ‘Dad?’
He gave a feeble shrug of his shoulders. ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t.’
‘We’re not going.’ Her mother’s voice was hard as steel.
Niamh turned to look at her again. Stared directly into her eyes until her mother was forced to avert them. She said very quietly, ‘I’m not asking any of you to go for Ruairidh. I’m asking you to go for me.’ She paused. ‘And if you can’t do that... If you can’t do that, then I have no family.’ She turned and pushed her way from the room, out through the kitchen and the back door, almost hyperventilating. To stand for a moment on the back step, gazing out across the garden where she had played as a child. At the bothag which she and Seonag had imagined so colourfully as a house, filling it with dollies and miniature plates and cups and saucers. At the old blackhouse where her grandfather once wove Harris Tweed.
And still the rain wept from a sky that leached all happiness from once precious memories.
There was a large gathering of cars outside the Macfarlane croft house. Too many for the metalled parking area, and they extended well down the hill on the single-track road that led to the bridge. More were arriving all the time. Niamh parked by the bridge itself and walked up the hill through the rain. She wore a black dress and shawl, and a pillbox hat and net that she had bought for a previous funeral. Her hair was pinned up beneath it, severe and uncompromising. She wore no make-up and her skin was ghostly pale, penumbrous shadows beneath sad hazel eyes.
Mourners arriving at the house appeared almost embarrassed to see her, nodding solemnly before quickly averting their eyes. People parted to let her through, as if somehow death had contaminated her.
The hearse was parked on the road, and the coffin prepared by Alasdair Macrae sat across several chairs in the porch at the front. Ruairidh’s final view from the house in which he had grown up, blurred through windows distorted by rain.
Mrs Macfarlane led her through to the porch from the sitting room. ‘We’ve had literally hundreds come to pay their respects,’ she said. ‘A constant stream of family and friends, and well-wishers from around the island.’
Well-wishers. What irony. How could Ruairidh’s mother ever have known that this was the name adopted by her son’s killer. Well wisher. Whatever else he had wished Ruairidh, it wasn’t well.
‘The minister’ll be here soon. I wanted to have the service in the house, like they used to do it. As you know, Ruairidh was never much one for the church himself. So it seemed, you know, more appropriate.’
Niamh nodded. For once, Mrs Macfarlane had judged it right.
‘I’ll leave you with him for a few moments.’ And she withdrew discreetly to leave Niamh with the coffin and the knowledge of what lay inside. There was no comfort in it. Nothing could take away the horror of the moment in the Place de la République when the explosion had knocked her from her feet. Or when the undertaker in Paris had placed the coffin for still-borns on his desk, and Niamh had visualized for the first time exactly what that explosion had done to the man she loved. What little of him it had left her.
A slow tear, like molten sadness, trickled its way down her pale cheek, and she turned, startled by the sudden realization that there was someone standing beside her.
Donald looked awkward. Embarrassed like all the others, but there was something else in his eyes that went beyond mourning or sympathy. He could not hold her gaze for long. ‘What news?’ he said.
Niamh frowned.
He clarified. ‘Of the investigation.’
‘Oh. That.’ She succumbed to indifference. What did it matter now? ‘None.’
He hesitated, then to her surprise wrapped protective fingers around her arm. ‘You know... if they haven’t caught anyone for it, it’s just possible that you could be at risk, too.’
She turned her head up to look at him, crinkling her brows in surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’ It seemed an extraordinary coincidence, coming the morning after someone had tried to kill her.
He shrugged. ‘Just worried about you.’ His freckles were even more striking than usual against the whiteness of his skin, and she saw that his eyes were watery and bloodshot. Perhaps he had not been sleeping. ‘What are your plans after the funeral?’ he asked.
‘I have no plans.’
He let go of her arm. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own, Niamh.’ Then, as if he had spoken out of turn, added quickly, ‘It’s an emotional time.’
‘Every minute since it happened has been an emotional time.’
He nodded, and she saw what seemed to her like a fleeting shadow of guilt cross his face. And, yet, what would Donald have to feel guilty about? Ruairidh was his wee brother, after all. Grief showed its face in many ways. She took and squeezed his hand, and succeeded only in increasing his discomfort.
It was impossible to say how many folk were crushed into the house for the brief service conducted by the minister. And there were many more outside, standing in the rain.
The minister himself was an elderly man. The wind had ruined the careful parting of what was left of wiry white hair, and then the rain had flattened it so that it stuck in fine wet curls to his forehead. He was tall and impossibly thin, and in spite of the strictness of the Free Church had always, to Niamh’s mind, presented the human face of his dour religion.
In the silence that filled the house, pervading every corner of it, Niamh listened to the intonation of his voice rather than his words. It was hard to find the vocabulary truly to express your feelings. People and religions fell back on platitudes and favourite biblical readings. But the heart spoke through the voice, and Niamh just closed her eyes to listen. Here was the man who had thrown the first handful of sand over Anndra’s coffin, read the same blessings, offered the same sympathies. Drawing no distinction between one and the other. Apportioning no blame. For he, at least, carried the certainty in his soul that only God knew the truth of what happened all those years ago, and that it was His justice that would prevail.
But his final words rang out loud and clear, bringing tears to almost every eye in the house. Song of Solomon 4:6. So often read aloud at funerals, written in obituaries, carved on headstones. Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
It was not until she got outside, drawing cold fresh air into her lungs, that it became apparent just how many people there were out here. Among the many she knew were others that she did not. Journalists, perhaps. A drone hovered high overhead and she realized that some TV news outlet, or freelancer, was filming the funeral for broadcast later in the day. She caught a glimpse of Lee Blunt, solemn and subdued, dressed all in black, and surrounded by so many of the famous faces of British fashion. Models and designers, photographers and fashion writers. Faces familiar around the world, turning up here for an island funeral, drawing stares of curiosity and wonder from awestruck locals. Such was the celebrity of Ranish Tweed, and Ruairidh’s renown, that people like these would travel the world to say their farewells.
Jacob Steiner tipped his hat towards Niamh as six men, Donald among them, carried the coffin out to the hearse. When the rear door closed on it, Ruairidh’s brother came to take her arm. ‘You come in the car with me,’ he said. ‘We can pick yours up later.’
She saw that her parents and Uilleam were standing among the mourners watching her, maintaining a discreet distance. She wondered why they had come after all. Perhaps to stop the gossips from whispering among themselves how her own family had failed to turn out for Ruairidh’s funeral. But she cut short the thought, even as it formed. And preferred, instead, to believe that for once maybe it was her father who had prevailed.