SCOTLAND ZEN and the art of SOCIAL WORK

  Wednesday 7th may

  I spend most of Wednesday preparing for the evening service and the Thursday Mass. I need to organise a minder for the kids, someone to walk John to school in the morning, and find something respectable to wear. I will probably borrow from my perfect sister Kate, as she has outfits for every occasion. She also has a steady job in the offices of the steelworks in Motherwell, a visible husband, and no baggage, i.e. children, so she can afford to be generous and actually, she doesn’t mind sharing.

  Just before seven o’clock on Wednesday evening there is a small crowd, mostly women, gathered outside the church. It’s a bitter cold dry evening and the women’s faces are pale as pressed rose petals. Some of my mates, who were just passing by on their way to the bingo in the church hall, huddle together with me chatting and smoking. I spy my mother arriving and throw the cigarette away quickly, but not quick enough for her hawk eyes.

  ‘Margaret! You’re a pure embarrassment to me,’ she whispers, ‘smoking in the street like a prostitute.’

  ‘Dry your eyes mother this is 1983 not 1933,’ I whisper back, not fully intending her to hear this bit of cheek, but she gives me a look with enough frost in it to kill a fruit tree.

  The service is short and John Coyle’s praises are duly sung. Old Father Ryan rambles on a bit and reminisces about when John was a young boy, a devout altar boy of course. Father Ryan could, of course, be making this up. At every Carfin funeral I have attended the deceased have either been dedicated alter boys in their youth or in the case of the women, members of the Legion of Mary, one of the many in-house cults of the Catholic Church. All a bit too good to be true, but a compassionate embellishment. Father Ryan gives his apologies, he will not be saying the morning funeral mass as he is going on his annual retreat. A bit like a busman’s holiday, these retreats, lots of praying and contemplation, supposedly what they should be doing in their day job anyway.

  A relief priest, Father McDonald, will be his replacement for the week. A soft murmur of disappointment floats round the church, Father Ryan is very popular with the older set.

  I help to give out the tea and biscuits in the church hall after the service. I hand Father Ryan his tea and he sits down heavily on a bench at a trestle table. Not a drop of tea was spilled, the sure sign of a practiced drinker. While he sips his tea, at least a dozen people approach him and say how sadly missed he’ll be tomorrow and for the next week. I think they forget that it’s Uncle John who is supposed to be sadly missed. Thankfully, I am able to leave a bit early by telling Mam that I was paying a sitter by the hour.

  I lied about paying the baby-sitter, my intermittently estranged husband had turned up at teatime. He’d heard about John’s demise on the grapevine and offered to watch the kids tonight and tomorrow for the funeral. The lie was a necessity, as Charlie is not too popular a character with the rest of my family. Charlie O’Hara’s not really a bad guy, just a shit husband. Mam feels more upset about the separation status than we do.

  He’s handsome, with light brown wavy hair and blue grey eyes, he is funny and a good cuddle. He’s also fickle and childish and can’t really resist women in general, which makes any long-term relationship with him virtually impossible unless you are a forgiving saint. I’m not. I always had the feeling early on that it would never work with us so there was no real surprise, after little Rosie was born that Charlie started to spend more and more time away.

  We sort of drifted into separation not long after being shot-gunned into marriage. However, despite all his flaws, Charlie is a trusted baby-sitter and a friend to the kids, if not a father figure. He’s very discrete about his other activities, some romantic and some a bit illegal, so we get on fine. Mam thinks I live in sin because I don’t keep my marriage vows, but she conveniently forgets that it takes two to make or break. Our situation is not so different from lots of couples I know who try to remain friends while apart, for the comfort of the kids.

  Kate also frowns on my relationship with Charlie, her world is more black and white than mine, and she thinks we should be together or divorced with proper bits of paper stating custody and access, and legal words setting us free to start again. There may be just a touch of envy there, she scoffed at my pre-nuptial bump but I bet now she wishes it could have been her in the same state.

  Everyone accepts that mothers cry at weddings, but at mine the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom clung to each other and wept tears of relief that we had made it to the Altar, before the waters broke.