The Dear Departed – Brian Moore (2020)

One of the books I read in February for the #ReadIndies challenge – which I am glad is now extended until mid-March – was The Dear Departed a slight collection of selected short stories by Brian Moore. This was a collection I bought last year, intending to read it as part of the Brian Moore centenary, but of course, as so often happens I didn’t get around to it. So while I read it for #ReadIndies month, I am able to review it for Cathy’s Reading Ireland month, always one of my favourite reading events.

Moore is much better known for his novels, though he did in fact write a number of short stories that were published in various periodicals and anthologies. These tightly controlled stories proving him to have been just as adept at the shorter form. Only one collection of his stories was published during his lifetime, this collection put together by Independent Irish publisher Turnpike books in 2020. The stories themselves however all date from a period between 1953 and 1961. Although there are only eight stories here I have decided not to write about each one.

Moore’s themes here are wonderfully variable, however. In these stories he considers Catholicism, death and emigration the sorts of themes one might expect of Brian Moore, alongside others we might not including stories of revenge, Sicilian bandits and Canadian acrobats.

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was ‘No.’ All things came from that beginning. ‘No, don’t do that, Joe,’ Mama said. ‘No, not now, Joe,’ Daddy said.”

(A Vocation)

The collection opens with A Vocation a very short piece, in which a young boy enters into some discussion of Catholicism, the catechism, purgatory and death. His first conversation is with the priest – but later he joins up with his friend, and the two continue the discussion of purgatory, and whether it wouldn’t be better to die when very young, when you haven’t amassed too many sins. There is a seam of dark humour in this one that runs through the collection.  

In Grieve For the Dear Departed Daniel Kelleher lies dead in the downstairs spare bedroom. Supported by her adult children, his widow Kate awaits the arrival of her eldest son Michael – who she sent for when her husband died. Kate sent for Michael even though she knew her husband would not have wanted her to, but Michael is her son too, and she looks forward to his coming. For Daniel and his eldest son had been badly estranged – a mixture of pride and anger preventing the older man from reaching out. Now, in the midst of the activity that comes with the passing of a loved one, Kate waits in great anticipation and with some guilt for the return of another.

Uncle T tells the story of a young newly married couple Vincent and Barbara honeymooning in New York. For a few years Vincent has been writing to Uncle T (Turlough Carnahan) in the hope that one day his uncle may be able to help him. Now finally they are to meet – and Vincent has his hopes pinned on a job, a good job, anything that will free him from the prospect of returning to Ireland and his job of teaching secondary school boys. Uncle T had escaped Ireland, he had apparently achieved great success – he has told Vincent in the past that he would keep an eye out for opportunities that he might take up. Uncle T and his wife Bernadette don’t make a very good first impression – but Vincent is desperate to believe in the glamour he has built up around this uncle – Barbara is quick to see the dyed hair, the coarseness, the drinking, the crumpled shirt. Uncle T may not be quite all that he claimed.

In another very darkly comic piece, Off The Track a holidaying couple decide to take themselves off the usual tourist track while travelling in Haiti. They want to take photographs that others won’t have, photos they can show their friends back at home – while boasting of their intrepidness. They are dimly aware that many of the people object strongly to having their pictures taken, but in that arrogant way that tourists can have brush aside such things, and set out with little idea what they might encounter.

“Unemployed miners and construction workers, lumberjacks laid off in mid-season, old winos and middle aged beer hounds, a few lonely boys stranded in the big city, several immigrants who had not found God’s Own Country – they were a strangely pathetic group. They wore windbreakers, lumberjackets and army surplus overcoats. There wasn’t much talk. They were solitaries. Few had buddies here. In two shuffling crocodile lines they circled the long trestle dining tables picked up trays and cutlery and moved towards the serving hatches.

‘Hold it!’ Mr Minchip called. ‘Hold it, fellas.’ He turned to us. ‘You want a picture of the chow line?’”

(Hearts and Flowers)

Hearts and Flowers is the story of a mission at Christmas, homeless, out of work, destitute men will be rounded up and given a Christmas dinner as part of a publicity campaign in the newspapers. The editor thinks it will make a nice little feature for Christmas day. At the mission everything must run to the newspaper men’s convenience – the food laid out in front of the men, but they aren’t permitted to start eating until the photographer is ready. It’s a really sharp little piece – and totally believable.

I had realised recently that I hadn’t read a short story collection for ages – for no reason that I can think of, as I love short stories. This was great little collection, and a reminder just what an excellent writer Brian Moore is.