“You and Maud were very close, weren’t you, Kate?” she said.
Kate. That’s who it was, Kate Breslin. Never out of the cathedral, never done bowing and scraping to the priests and putting fresh flowers on the altar, her and Maud and these others ones. I met her a couple of times when I was coming out of Aisling’s and from the look on her face at the cut of me I always had the feeling she knew something was going on that wasn’t christian. Well she wouldn’t be seeing me that way again.
Between sobs Kate told Margie that she’d been to the Long Tower carnival in the Brandywell showgrounds with Maud last July, just three months ago nearly to the day it was, and the two of them had gone to this fortune teller Madam Esmerelda just for the fun of it and she’d told Maud that she, Maud, would come into an inheritance before the year was out.
Margie said “Well maybe the fortune teller was right, Kate, because sure you and I know that Maud’s in heaven right now and if that’s not coming into her inheritance I don’t know what is.” I couldn’t hear everything Kate said back with all the snivelling but I picked up the not exactly useful information that Madam Esmerelda was actually Sadie Walker from up Creggan Heights and she was in hospital at the minute with a broken hip from the time she got hit by a trailer carrying bricks at the end of Nailor’s Row.
“She never seen that one coming,” said Jim to nobody in particular.
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The Wake - Table of contents
HumorTHE YEAR is 1968 and the Swinging Sixties are still swinging - though not in Ireland. But wait! An old woman dies in a northern Irish town and her wake becomes a rendezvous for lesbians, bisexuals and political revolutionaries. And in there among t...
