Red Coat

 

Yet again I find that I am turning into my mother for Matty had a thing about coats. Every time we went into a charity shop (which was often) she’d be perusing the coat rails looking for the perfect, lightweight, showerproof beige coat. My thing about coats does not include beige. My thing is the perfect funeral coat.

I have yet to find it. At a pinch I have a couple of coats that would do. One black and one navy, both M&S. For a long time I resisted navy as I have never gotten over the trauma of St. Louis Grammar School, those three hellish years that I was tortured by fascist nuns - a special mention for that vicious bitch, Sister Mary Benedicta. I still shiver at the sight of navy skirts.*

My funeral coat needs to be smart and sombre. I know that now. For there was another traumatic time in my life, thankfully brief, only about an hour long, that I got the funeral outfit very wrong indeed. And it could have been avoided, if only I’d known. You see, I was not used to the mores surrounding a Presbyterian funeral. Bert’s Aunt Sally’s husband Jack had died very suddenly. He was carrying buckets of meal to his calves when he suffered a heart attack and fell to the ground face first, stone dead. How the minister preached! At any moment, we might be struck down! Are you ready? Are you saved? And so on…

I heard all this because in my stupidity, not wanting to be left alone in the house with the female members of the family I went with Bert and his father to the burial ground. Bert promised me I would not be the only woman there but I was and not only was I the only woman I was the only person there in a bright red coat. Everyone else was wearing the darkest of hues. It is also highly likely that I was the only Catholic in the crowd. Oh, I would have given anything then to be back in the farmhouse, coatless and braving the Presbyterian womenfolk.

A humiliation never to be forgotten. Although it didn’t put me off red coats. I’ve three hanging in my wardrobe right now.

I know that's just two but the corduroy one I have in two sizes, one that fits and one that doesn't.