Radio 3 playing low, soft and low. What is it, chamber music? Anything that brings sleep will do. Jesus what a night and still not shot of her. Lying down there in a box in the dark in the corner, still occupying our kitchen, our kitchen, still controlling the agenda and her stiff as a board.
Half six tomorrow evening we’ll, Charlie Bradley and Denis McLaughlin that is, will bring her, me and Charlie Bradley and Denis McLaughlin, morticians, will bring her to the cathedral for her overnight stay, bed and board, breakfast not included. She should feel at home there right next to the altar where her and Kate and friends dusted and fussed at the flowers and the rest. Tulips were the ones she always tried to get up, you’d have thought they were the only flower there was. And the colours, green, cream, orange, white, red, every colour you could think of nearly except. Blue was it? Blue I think. I never remember seeing blue. Where did she get them when they weren’t growing here? I’ve seen them standing up there proud and erect all times of the year. Imports from Holland? When it’s spring again I’ll bring again tulips from Amsterdam. Not any more she won’t.
What’s that they’re playing now? Christ I don’t believe it. It is. It’s the fucking Flower Duet. I don’t want to hear it. I need to sleep. Well, maybe just a wee bit, maybe just a minute.
Under the dense canopy
Where the white jasmine
Blends with the rose
On the flowering bank,
Laughing at the morning
Come, let us drift down together,
Let us gently glide along
With the enchanting flow
Of the fleeing current
On the rippling surface.
With a lazy hand
Let us reach the shore.
Her eyes were shining now. “Forget about all the other things. I love you.”
“And I love you too.”
“Sleep,” she said. She fondled my face and shoulders and when the alarm went off her hands were still on me.
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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...
