Free The Living by Léan Cullinan Page A

trees shimmying in the wind.
    It felt strange to be back here. I’d hardly stepped on to the campus since I’d left. I would’ve been picking up my Master’s degree around now, if I’d taken my place. If my parents’ verdict had gone the other way. ‘It’d be different if it was a qualification of some kind,’ had been Dad’s last word. Mum had said, ‘You have to start thinking about the future.’ I’d gathered that it was bad enough to have chosen Trinity in the first place, without getting notions about more study.
    As I followed Joan and Val through the massive doors and up the stairs to the organ loft, I felt at home – at home with the dark wood and the dust, with the bright curving vaults above us, with the lovely bulbous acoustic that caught and magnified our voices.
    I waved a greeting to Matthew, but we didn’t get a chance to speak. Rehearsal was just beginning. We sang first through a selection of solid hymns, accompanied by a worried organist with thinning blond hair, whom Diane introduced to us as Stephen Bailey. I loved singing the traditional Church of Ireland hymns, with their squarish melodies and straightforward harmonies. They were so much more comforting than the weedy folk-group efforts of my youth. I’d sung in Trinity Chapel Choir for just two terms in my final year, but it had been the highlight of my week. The sparse dignity of the Anglican service, the measured tranquillity, the sense of intellectual engagement, were so different from the droning, smug Catholicism I’d grown up with.
    Tom’s father had apparently been a big fan of English Baroque, and we were to sing two anthems by Henry Purcell. We started with Hear My Prayer , which I hadn’t sung before but others had. The music was in eight parts, twining and curling around each other to weave a delicate, shimmering fabric of sound. ‘Lovely,’ Diane said, after our first run-through. She tapped her tuning fork and listened. ‘Tuning’s good. We need to work on the diction. Hear my prayer O Lord – give me a clear d there, right on the downbeat – and then and let my crying come unto thee – we wanta very exaggerated and-a-let there. And-a-let . And roll your r s if you can – crrrying . It’s a bit … English , I know …’ she faltered, and I heard Val beside me give a very tiny snort. ‘But that’s all right,’ Diane went on, recovering. ‘We have English people in the choir. Listen to how they do it.’
    â€˜You know,’ Val muttered, ‘it might actually be … kind of OK to sing Purcell in an English style.’
    Diane said, ‘All right, once more from the top.’
    The service was efficient and dignified, the readers calm, the priest consoling. As the offertory gifts were brought up, we rose for the first Purcell piece. ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts,’ we sang. Tom gave a moving eulogy, which was among other things a meditation on changing times, a changing Ireland. His father had been born in 1923, just after the Civil War.
    Afterwards, everybody went across Front Square to the Exam Hall, where tea and sandwiches were served. I went to find Tom, who received my condolences with a quiet solemnity that conjured a lump in my throat. Having shaken my hand, he excused himself and went to greet a tall, black-haired woman and two teenage boys whose abundant curls marked them out as his sons. I could see Matthew across the room talking to Donal and Linda. I exchanged brief and stilted words with Stephen, the organist, about the music we’d just performed. Joan and Val joined us just as Stephen was drawn aside by the vicar.
    Val spoke quietly. ‘So Stephen got a mention in the death notice, at least.’
    â€˜Oh?’ Joan was pleased. ‘As Tom’s partner?’
    â€˜Yeah – well, not explicitly, I don’t think. Survived by children