The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín

grandfather had fallen down dead just as he was going in the door of his own house. His heart, she said, it was his heart.
    â€œDid he get a pain?”
    â€œHe was very peaceful.”
    When he went down to his grandfather’s house with his father he saw that the curtains on the front windows were drawn and there were black ribbons with a note bordered in black.
    â€œDo you think he should go up?” his father asked his Aunt Margaret.
    â€œI don’t know. Does he want to?”
    â€œGo up now and say a prayer,” she said to him. “Kneel down and bless yourself first.”
    There were people in the house whom he did not know, and others came to the door, their faces solemn and watchful. He walked up the first small flight of stairs and waited there. He could hear them saying the Rosary in the front bedroom,their voices murmuring together in a sing-song of prayer, and then the moment of silence before the return of the single voices: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”
    He moved up a few more steps closer to the room, he could now see the candlelight flickering on the wallpaper, he could smell the softening wax. He crept up closer until he was near the top of the stairs. The Rosary came to an end and they began reciting the Hail Holy Queen.
    â€œDid your Mammy say you could come up?” a woman asked him as she came up the stairs. “Did you ask your Mammy?”
    He looked at her hard, unfriendly face. He did not know her. He could feel his own face breaking apart, but he did not cry and instead kept his eyes fixed on the woman and said nothing.
    â€œWhich of them are you?” she asked.
    â€œI’m Eamon,” he said.
    â€œAnd did your Daddy say that you could come up?”
    He did not reply, but turned away from her.
    â€œYou’re very bold,” she said and walked past him up the stairs.
    In the back room downstairs the people were whispering there were bottles of stout on the table and some of the women had small glasses of sherry in their hands.
    â€œThat’s the last of them gone,” a man said. “That’s the last of the Fenians.”
    Stephen was in the kitchen with Tom.
    â€œDo you want a bottle of orange?” he asked Eamon. When his grandmother found Stephen in the kitchen she made him move into the back room out of the draught.
    â€œYou’ll get your death in here,” she said. She was wearing black; even her stockings were black.
    â€œHe went very fast,” someone said to her as she passed into the hall.
    â€œYou’ll have to be very good to your mother now,” the woman whom Eamon had met on the stairs said to Tom.
    â€œAye, aye,” Tom said.
    Eamon went up the stairs again and sat on the top step. There was no noise coming from the front bedroom now except the whispering of prayers. He said his own prayers then, but stayed outside, all the time trying to imagine what it would be like to see his grandfather when he was dead.
    *  *  *
    There was a mist over the graveyard which became sleet as they said the prayers over the coffin. Eamon’s feet were freezing, his toes were aching with the cold. He held his Aunt Margaret’s hand and stood behind his father whose frame blocked Eamon’s view of the grave. When he found a chink in the crowd, the coffin was already in the ground. A man was holding an umbrella over the priest. His Uncle Tom and his Uncle Patrick were holding his grandmother on either side. Stephen was standing in front of Eamon, beside his father. He was shaking with the cold. As he put his hands behind his back Eamon saw how thin his fingers were, how frail his hands.
    As soon as they came home, Stephen went to bed and they lit a fire for him in the room upstairs. Eamon wondered who would use the front room now; who would sleep in the bed. Would they use the same mattress on which the dead man had been laid out? He knew that he could not ask. His