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Granny and Granda
by Paul McMahon
Granda had been dead about ten minutes. Me and my Aunt, Ann, were standing at the side of the bed looking at him. The front door opened and after running up the stairs, Granny came in the bedroom door. One pitiful glance and she knew. She ran over to Granda and threw herself on top of him, crying hysterically.
“Why...why couldn’t you hold on a few more minutes? You knew...?” We had phoned her about a half an hour beforehand and told her to get here as quick as possible, that Granda was dying and that he was calling for her. For the past year she had refused to see him or speak to him.
Ann was trying to console her; I said nothing. Time stood still, Granny wailing, Auntie Ann with her arm around her, rubbing her back. Time began again when Granny noticed the bright frame-shaped patch of wallpaper—that wallpaper was pasted on forty years previous, just after they returned back from their honeymoon in Dublin when granda got them thrown out of the hotel they were staying in because he pissed in a plant. Apparently his argument was that the plant was “gasping with the thirst.”
“Where is our wedding photograph?” Granny said, gazing lost about the room. She looked at me. I wasn’t going to answer. She looked at Ann. “Mummy,” Ann said, “it...” Ann didn’t want to answer either. Granny was starting to come back down to earth again. “Where is it?” she asked again, “Just tell me where it is.”
I was standing there trying to think of any possibility to excuse myself and get out of that room. “Did he put it somewhere?” granny asked. I would do things differently now, but when granny turned her head up to me and pleaded, where did he put our wedding photograph, I just told her: in the fire.
Mayhem! In a word that’s what followed. It finally spent itself out with Granny trying to strangle Granda and me and Ann trying to pull her off. She probably wanted to do that to him years ago but Granda was thin as a pin and very nifty on his feet. But she certainly gave him a good strangling that time—if he was alive she probably would have killed him.
A year ago, as Granny left him for the final time she got the last word in, and called him “...Nothing but a useless bum” just before she slipped out the door. Granda didn’t have a chance to get his response in. This got to him—I heard him roar from upstairs and stamp on the floor. I was in the living room watching TV. He smashed something off the wall as he stormed down the stairs. Even before he opened up the front door she already had her car triumphantly revved up and on the way up the road. He slammed the front door, swearing that “I’ll get ye for that…I’ll show you. Who are you to be calling anyone a useless bum?” He raced up the stairs and two minutes later he burst in through the living room, with their framed wedding photograph in his hand, shouting to me as he saw the blazing fire “So, you got coal did ye, at last... Well, I’m glad y’did.” He cracked the frame over his knee, then gripped it in his hands and held it up to his scowling face, then tossed it into the fire. That was his answer to her calling him a useless bum.
Granny sat there then, exhausted, on the side of the bed. It was actually a Saturday night. It was ten o’clock. A half an hour into town, closing hour at one o’clock... Granny looked up at the bright patch of wallpaper on the wall where their wedding photo hung for forty-nine years and said, “I want another one.”
“What?” said Ann. “I want another photograph of him,” said Granny. “Look Mummy,” said Ann, “it’s too late, he’s dead.” “I don’t care,” said Granny, “I want another one.” We didn’t argue long; Granny was one of those people that always gets their way—if she doesn’t the day is ruined anyway. And I could understand: that was the only photograph that they, or anyone, had of them together as a couple. And so, as always, whether her case was convincing or not, she pushed it through. She soon took charge. “Where is his good suit?” There was no talking to her. I got his suit out of the cupboard, granny flicked the sheets back. We got the trousers on first, and then the shirt, buttoned it up, noosed on the tie, and then his jacket. Then granny stood up in shock, and said, “A camera, does anyone have a camera?” I had, I ran into my room and got it and ran back. Granny and Ann where hauling Granda up the bed and sitting him up with his back against the headrest. I gave granny the camera and she tried to give it to Ann. “What are you givin’ it to me for,” said Ann holding her hands back, refusing to take the camera, “Why don’t you take it yourself?” “Because I’m going to be in it,” Granny said, and then thrust the camera into Ann’s hands. Granny got in beside Granda and put her arm around his neck. His head kept drooping forward so we had to put a cushion behind his back to give the space so as to balance his head backwards. That didn’t really work either so I had to crouch down by granny’s side and try and keep out of the photo, while I stretched my arm behind her neck and gripped onto Granda’s hair at the back of his head.
Granda had a theory that people didn’t need to wash their hair. He said that hair cleaned itself, given enough time; it was difficult to get a grip because it was so greasy. This was a man, after all, that ate three fries and smoked forty Parkdrive every day. He used to soak the lard up with bread—he called it gravy.
Ann lifted up the camera, paused for a second and then lowered it again and just stood looking at granny. “What is it?” said Granny. “His eyes are closed,” said Ann. No-one said anything for a moment and then Ann said, “Well, Jesus, mummy, you can’t have him with his eyes closed, he looks...” “I know, for Christ’s sake,” said granny, and then she swooped her hand up and pulled his eyes open. Granda’s eyes stared out dull and black, like they had a film of glue over them. “Take the photo for Christ’s sake,” shouted Granny. Ann raised the camera and took a snap, the flash didn’t go off. “Take another one,” said Granny. Ann took another one —the flash lit the room. I wish that I had closed my eyes when Ann took took photo because the effect of the flash had the effect of freeze-framing Granny and Granda, into my memory, sitting there, half dead-half alive, on the bed. It’s now the way I always remember them as a couple.
Granny hung her head for a second then quickly got off the bed. “Ok,” she said, “Could you help me to pull him down the bed?” Me and Ann took an ankle each and, with Granny supporting his back, we pulled Granda down into the centre of the bed. We let go of his ankles and stood back. Granny still had her hand on his back. “You can let go now mummy,” said Ann. “I’m not holding him,” said granny. She took her hand away and tugged gently on his shoulders and Granda slowly fell back onto the bed, and as he did, his legs rose up and pointed to the ceiling. “Oh, dear God,” she said and she lifted him up again so he was sitting upright in the bed. It was ten thirty; rigor mortis had set in.
It wasn’t mayhem this time, it was panic. Before we could gather what was happening the three of us were on him. Ann was lying over his knees and me and granny were pulling on his shoulders but he wouldn’t budge—he was frozen solid. Ann screamed out and started crying, “He’s looking at me, he’s looking at me.” Granny told Ann to get a grip of herself and then while still looking at Ann, said to me, “Close his eyes there, sure you have a hand free.” “Look, Granny, this is...” I said, and just looked at her. She hissed at me and tried to close his eyes. “They are frozen” she said, “I can’t.” We pulled again on his shoulders but he still didn’t budge. Granny started crying, muttering, “How will we get him in the coffin, he won’t fit into it like this?” It was quarter to eleven. Granny was talking to herself now, muttering, “Dear God help us, Dear God help us...” Then the door bell went.
We froze. Ann was lying over his legs, Granny and me had our hands on his shoulders, all of us were looking at the bedroom door. “Jesus, who could that be?” said granny, “I’ll go and see.” “Don’t, mummy,” said Ann. “I have to answer it,” granny said, “I met Betty McIntyre on the way here and told her that this would probably be the time. It’s probably her and she’d be really worried if no one answered the door.” Granny went out and down the stairs. She opened the front door and was talking to someone with an inaudible deep male voice. She then came back up the stairs, still talking. I stepped away from the bed and Ann scrambled off Granda’s legs and stood over beside me.
Granny walked in and the old priest, Father Ryan walked in behind her. When he saw Granda sitting dead and upright on the bed he went ballistic, roaring like someone from the Old Testament. Betty McIntyre had phoned Father Ryan straight away just in case he had to give the last rites. “What have you done to the deceased?” he was yelling about the room, raising his hands up into the air, bible in his hand, as though casting out demons. He pointed to me and yelled “You!” as though his darkest suspicions had been confirmed. Granny was muttering to herself, Ann was just screaming out, "It was a photo," and I was just standing there. After he calmed down we were able to explain to him what happened. “Ok,” he said, then rolled up his sleeves, took Granda by the shoulders and pulled him down so his back lay on the bed and his feet pointed up to the ceiling.
He told Ann and Granny to hold him down by the shoulders and told me to help him. “Take one leg at a time,” he said. I gripped Granda by the foot and was about to pull, but Father Ryan roared at me, “Just below the knee joint, or you’ll break his leg, you fool.” I don’t like being called a fool but I told myself to right that wrong another time, then he shouted out, “One, two, three” and we pushed, just below the knee joint, cracking his leg down straight. “The other leg,” he shouted out. We put our hands just below the other knee joint, “One two three,” then we cracked it down the same as the other. We stood by the side of the bed looking down at Granda. Like a professional, Father Ryan, swooped over Granda and when he stood up again his eyes were closed. It was still only eleven o’clock. In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, amen.
About The Author
Paul McMahon is currently doing the MA in Writing in Galway NUIG. His work has been published in Ropes and Full Colour Sound. His plays have been workshopped by Tinderbox Theatre, Belfast and Fishamble Theatre, Dublin. His play The Blueprint, which he also directed, was in last years Dublin Fringe Theatre festival. His play, Parallels, which he also directed, was in this years Muscailt festival in Galway. The Paper Lantern Theatre are presently developing one of his plays for professional production. He is also singer-songwriter with the world music group Dons Goodbye Cafe and an Irish traditional musician and teacher.