³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Sue had dressed in black and walked into the bay. The tide took her but kept her near the shore. We discovered her trapped by rocks, head down in a pool. Sea wrack covered her face. Like Ophelia, she drowned in flowers.

On the day she killed herself, her son arrived from England to introduce his fiancée. Seeing a crowd about the house, he expected a party. Unexpectedly, he joined a wake.

Her former husband came for the funeral. A mild man, who dealt in watercolours, he sipped whiskey and told us how she tried to jump from a window on their honeymoon. Warmed by a turf fire, he gazed at Trawbreaga where she had died. Smoke clung to the cold sky – dark like her spirit.

Sue painted pictures and taught children. Etching was her love – rocks, the sea in spate, wild sky, a cottage isolated at Malin Head. Blues and greys filled her pictures – shadows, shadows.

On the morning we buried her, there were crows – dozens of black crows – cawing in the elm trees. There was a church with a tower – a Planters’ church with Planters’ names inscribed on gravestones: Harvey, Young, Colquhoun. There was a green – diamond shaped – and houses with red and blue doors. There was a ten-arched bridge and a heron standing in the water that streamed beneath. There was the bay where she died. Beyond it roared the ocean whose embrace she was denied. There were hills, an endless strand, the grey clouded sky.

About the town was a reek of burning turf, smoke blowing. There was a smell of new baked bread and bacon frying. A pennant flew from the castellated church. Inside, on cushioned pews, her friends pushed for space. You could smell damp tweed and leather boots; catch a whiff of last night’s whiskey.

A bronze eagle, wings spread, supported a bible laced with ribbons. Our prayer was short – simple sounds of English, redolent of King James; the Lord is my shepherd; a collect for the dead.

A bell tolled. The Vicar bowed. We lifted her and carried her out past a column of school girls shivering in skirts and blazers. Some wept, others stared. Snow drops had withered. Daffodils stretched. Yellow whins danced in a breeze that tasted of ice.

We put her in the ground amidst a scattering of crows. We chanted the Lord’s Prayer and threw earth on her. Our feet dented the gravel, our hands steadied the creaking gate. We blew our noses. Sue, oblivious to convention, rose and followed the wind along Trawbreaga.