CHAPTER SEVEN: Year 2018 – Declan

Declan shifted his shoulders slightly, adjusting to the heavy weight resting on them and gripping his hand firmly around the edge of the coffin before they started down the aisle, away from the candlelit alter. His Aunty Cheryl's sobs were echoing through the church, mixing with the soft violin music as they bounced off the stone walls. He could see his little brother snuffling out a few quiet sobs beside her too. Poor kid. This was his first funeral.

Declan's own eyes were dry. The cold, rigid wood of the box was knocking oddly against that sticky-out bone of his shoulder as their slow procession moved. He had never carried a coffin before. It was weird, when he thought about it – his Granddad's corpse a couple of inches away from his face, separated only by a plank of wood. Was it moving around in there? Sliding a centimetre to the left or to the right as the six of them moved unevenly, six sets of different shoulders shifting up and down with unequal footfalls.

His grandfather had been a nice man. The bit he knew of him anyway. He remembered being a kid, seven or eight, and climbing onto his lap for a hug at some family function and finding his fist wrapped around a twenty pound note as he climbed down. Twenty pounds! When the greatest thing you dreamed of buying was a Premier League sticker-book, twenty pounds might as well have been a million. He'd shown it to Paddy later – just a glimpse, "see with your eyes, not with your hands" – and his brother's eyes had widened so much that Declan could see a full circle of the white bit. Paddy had missed out that day, yanked away by Dad before he had a chance to climb on Granddad's lap himself.

It had been a nice service, too. The priest had told a few stories about him, talked about the fundraising he'd done for St. Anne's parish centre, about the way he used to donate three bottles of whiskey as prizes for the Christmas raffle every year. Declan sat in the pew with his sniffling aunty and brother and step-grandmother, listening to the priest tell the congregation about a kind, honest, friendly man called Seamus Brady, and knew that his eyes probably should be misting over at the words, that he should feel some sense of loss or sadness.

But weirdly, his head was full of Da instead. His mind was seeing Da hover hawk-like on the few occasions when he or Paddy had met Granddad when they were young. It was hearing him arguing with Mam, telling her point blank that they would not be taking up the invitation to Sunday lunch in Granddad's pub, not this Sunday, not any Sunday. His eyes were watching Da, face slapped with a smile that didn't make it all the way to the eyes as his white-knuckled hand rose up and down, shaking Granddad's in necessary greeting.

The church was rammed full. Granddad's pub had been the area's local since he opened it in the eighties, after he'd moved to Belfast with Cheryl's mam, and Granddad had been the life and soul of the place from what Declan had been told over the last few months. Mam had brought him and Paddy to visit the man a lot in the last few weeks, as he slowly got frailer and frailer, and each time there seemed to be another old punter there, ruffling Paddy's hair and shaking Declan's hand in some awkward gesture of condolence and then decompressing the sombre mood with a story about the shenanigans they used to get up to in the good oul' days.

They'd all turned out in force today, anyway, lining themselves up into orderly pews, donned in respectful black, bent heads muttering prayers for his soul at the priest's command. Maybe that was why Declan's eyes were still dry, that was why he didn't really feel sad for the lifeless body in the box on his shoulder. Granddad already had enough people on his side. Da didn't. Da needed Declan to be on his side.

Someone had explained that to him, once.

These were the thoughts flitting through his strangely untroubled mind as he carried his grandfather's remains on their final journey, through the swirling sound of sobs and violin strings. His eyes glanced curiously around at the throngs of people, watching as they bowed their heads and blessed themselves with a little inaudible whisper as the procession passed. They must not all be able to see the aisle, Declan mused. Did it ripple through then, the passing of the coffin, like a Mexican wave? Is that how they all knew, even the people stuck in the corners, when to do that odd little dance, bending their necks and throwing their hands up into the sign of the cross? He craned his neck, trying to see the people at the back. Were they watching him, or were they just watching whoever was standing beside them for their cue?

And that's when he saw him. In the last pew, a few spaces apart from the nearest mourner, shoulders hunched and sunk low like a man trying to go unnoticed. His face was angled to the floor, gaze transfixed by it. Not completely visible, but enough to be sure. It was him. Declan felt his heart buck-leap against his ribcage. Da. Da was here, right here. Suddenly, his casual observances and idle musings were over. His heart was hammering. The procession was moving painfully slow and Declan just wanted to sprint to the door and fling the box towards the hearse so he could leave this parade and go to his father, but they were moving too fast now and another step had Da's face obscured completely by the sea of Lemming mourners and Declan wanted to crash to a halt and make the whole procession reverse a few paces so he could double check it again and make sure he hadn't imagined the whole thing. Cheryl's sobs were wracking on and on and Declan had to fight the urge to whirl around, spinning the dead man one-eighty above his head and shout, "He's here, Aunty Cheryl! He's here! Da is here!"

The air outside was biting cold but Declan couldn't even feel it. Impatiently, he shuffled the last few paces with the other men, and awkwardly and ridiculously lowered the coffin with them so they could slide it forward into the big car full of chopped flowers. He didn't even wait to see the boot close on it, he'd spun around and was pushing past his weeping family to get back to the entrance of the building. People were starting to pour out of it now, the wide double door thick with bodies spilling into the winter afternoon. Declan threw himself against the tide, pushing and shoving ungraciously, uncaring of the mutters of shock directed at him. He staggered his way inside, to the spot he had seen his father from, still battling against the steady stream of mourners flowing past him. He was gone. Declan's stomach lurched. The drill of his heart inside his chest felt dangerously like it might crack through his ribcage now. No. He couldn't be gone. Where could he have gone to, with all these bodies in the way? He had been right there, a few minutes ago. Just a few minutes, tops.

Declan spun on the spot and was back throwing himself into the sea of people again, swimming through them to get back out to the air, batting away condolences like missiles. No way. No way could he be gone already. Where the fuck was he?

For the second time, he burst into the crisp November sunshine and didn't feel the cold. His eyes scanned the crowds, frantic. All he could see was black and grey and pale faces muttering nothing. Where was he? His Mam was over with Cheryl and Paddy now, wrapping an arm around his little brother. The undertakers were at the door of the hearse, talking quietly to each other. The crowd was spilling out, reaching as far as the gates of the church, conversation getting louder and a little more cheerful.

Suddenly, he caught it. A glimpse, a tiny phantom of a dark suit and a grey-flecked head of brown hair disappearing out the pedestrian gate at the side, dipped down like it didn't want to be seen. Declan bolted, running now, only vaguely aware of his mother's cry behind him, "Declan! Where are you going?!"

He skidded out the pedestrian gate and rounded the corner he'd seen the phantom disappear behind. The sight hit him like a sock in the stomach. Five metres away, that was it.

"Da!" he shouted, his voice coming out louder than even he had expected. Like six years of not saying the word had layered itself up, each day it had been unspoken adding a decibel to its volume now.

Da stopped. Slowly, he turned on the spot where he was until he was facing Declan.

He looked tired, Declan thought. Jaded. The weighted lids hanging half-shut over screaming eyes, the heavy-etched lines of his face that seemed to drag the corners of his mouth down. Unbidden, the flash of memory brought those rumours to the fore, the pieced-together information fed by newspaper articles that named no names and hushed whispers that filled in the blanks. Drugs. Murder. Gangland war. He batted them away, dragging to mind the advice he had been given once. The advice he had clung desperately to for six years.

Now, standing face-to-face, Declan wasn't sure what to do. He was too old for tears now. Too old to run to him and throw his arms around him in a hug, begging for affection or recognition. Six years had passed. Declan was a man now.

Da wasn't doing anything. He was just standing, watching, waiting for Declan to decide what was going to happen here. Letting him decide. Declan fought a tiny swell of panic.

"Do… do you want to go for a pint, Da?" he asked, eventually.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX

"So it's a bit more intense now, the training," Declan was saying, one hand wrapped around a pint of Carlsberg as he leaned back into the cushioned lounge-seat. "Which is grand for the minute but next year is final year so I'll have to hit the books a bit, might cut back on the rowing then I suppose."

They were sitting in Flaherty's, a quiet little snug that Declan had been in only once before. It had taken them about twenty minutes to walk to it, but that was one of the reasons Declan chose it. Less likely to run into someone from the past, he figured. He was guessing that wasn't something Da would have liked.

As they entered the darkened lounge, Dad had grunted at him, asking him what he wanted to drink. Declan tried to keep his voice normal as he answered, tried to keep the incredible surreal sensation that was engulfing him out of his reply. It was up to him to keep the ball in the air, he sensed that. Da just seemed so tired, like he wouldn't have the energy to even think about doing this if Declan didn't guide him through.

Da had come down from the bar, a pint in either hand, and lowered himself into the seat opposite Declan. A moment of silence descended, tremendous and pressing and full of a thousand unspoken questions and answers from both of them, to both of them. Declan almost felt his father's heartbeat through that moment, felt his throat close and his inside tremble against the weight of it. That weight, when he already looked so tired.

So Declan started talking. He talked about everything. He talked about the Engineering degree he was doing in Queen's. He talked about making the second rowing team this year. He talked about Anna, the girl he was sort-of seeing for the last few months and how she was trying to get him to go visit her family over Christmas but he'd rather chew off his own arm than spend his Christmas holidays on a farm in Derry trying to make a good impression on a bunch of country hicks.

He spoke about Paddy, describing how he'd announced dramatically at the breakfast table one morning that he was planning to break the world record for the shortest time to eat three cream crackers that afternoon, about the horror on Mam's face as her living room filled with neighbours and well-wishers and the world-record-man and even a bloke from the local paper come three p.m., about the nonchalant grinning shrug from Paddy as he missed the time by over two seconds and cheekily told the gathered crowd that it'd been a bit of a long shot anyway.

He told him about Aunty Cheryl, about how she'd started seeing Eoghan Nolan, Lindsay's brother who owned the cocktail bar, but Declan wasn't so sure about him because he seemed a bit put on.

He talked on and on and on, gently disintegrating the tension of that moment until he knew Da wasn't quivering under its weight anymore.

"I'm glad, Deccy. Declan," Da spoke, suddenly, interrupting Declan as he explained how he was trying to talk Paddy out of his new and excessively irritating passion for drumming. His voice sounded hoarse, thick and stodgy from disuse. He coughed, awkwardly aware of it. "I'm glad you're… you're okay."

Declan's tirade of information ground to a halt. Da's eyes were on the table top, examining the cardboard coaster he had been fiddling with at the beginning, but every few seconds they'd fly furtively to Declan's face, wanting something from him. It made Declan feel like he was being asked some question, like Da was waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, course," he said, gently. Of course he was okay. Why wouldn't he be okay? But what about Da? Da wasn't okay! He was shrivelled and black and lost and Declan wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he could see the blue of his eyes again, but he didn't. The crippling weight of the first moment might be gone, but this was still delicate, still fragile.

"Yeah, course," Dad echoed, shifting needlessly in his seat, black eyes still darting to Declan's face every few seconds. "Just… It's just I was worried, y'know, that you… that I might've messed you up, when I left. That you might think I didn't, y'know… care."

He stopped moving as he said the last word, grew still and raised his head and threw his gaze full force at Declan so he almost toppled, almost dropped that delicate, fragile ball. They were full of that question, that unuttered and terrified question, and Declan could hear it now: do you hate me for fucking it up?

"I did, for a bit," Declan said softly, after a pause. He was responding to the words Da had spoken but both men knew the question he was answering. He swallowed, trying not to let the wince on Da's face deter him. He needed him to understand, to know that Declan was on his side. Had always been on his side, no matter what, for six years. "But then I got it. I get it. Ste explained it to me."

"Stephen?" Da dragged the name through his lips, more inhalation than exhalation. His eyes were gone again, darting around the room like he needed to find the exit, but his body leaned further forward like he needed more from his son. Declan drank in the reaction. It was almost visceral. Unexpectedly, he found himself remembering Ste, pupils dilated and cheeks flushed pink with adrenaline, choking on his own words. "Even if… even if we don't never see him again. It's up to me and you, Declan." Had Ste ever seen Da again? Had Da ever gone back there, back to Hollyoaks, back to the place where his eyes were the lightest Declan had ever seen them?

"Yeah, Ste Hay," he said. Dad's eyes were flying now, like they were on some rotator blade, and Declan could feel that breakable ball dangerously slipping against his fingertips, but suddenly he didn't care. Suddenly, this felt more important. "He came to see me, before I came back to Belfast. I was angry, y'know. Really angry. At you. But he told me… he made me see, you're a good man, y'know. And that it's up to me and him, to keep believing that, 'cause nobody else will. Even you."

The moment was back, pressing its suffocating weight onto the tiny lounge table, but Declan didn't try to dissolve it with idle chatter this time. He sat, watching his father take in the truth, that Ste and Declan believed in him, that Declan was okay, that he would make sure that Paddy was okay as well.

And in that quiet little pub on that frosty November afternoon, Declan watched as Da's face crumpled like cardboard and his sigh shuddered like the wind and he started to cry.