David McVey

The organist played some slow Scottish psalm tunes. The congregation was a mixed bag, and many of them had hardly known Daniel McKelvie. Yes, there were some close friends and family, but their focus was more on the reading of the will, which was due next day. Many of the others had only tenuous links to the deceased, yet were losing earnings to be here. This rankled with some of them.

‘When dis it start?’ said a woman four rows back. ‘Is it late?’

‘Shhh,’ said the woman next to her, ‘it’s no eleven o’clock yet.’

As soon as it was eleven o’clock, the organist hurried the tune Glasgow to a sudden flourished close that was part music hall and part mid-70s Rick Wakeman. A minister with a polished bald head, an open-necked shirt, and John Lennon glasses appeared at the lectern.

‘We’re here to give thanks for the life of Daniel McKelvie,’ he began. ‘We have here this morning many of his friends, his family, former colleagues, and some of his peers from the creative writing community. They have curated this service to honour Daniel in their own special way. I will now hand you over to Jessica Hamilton, the Chair of Antermony Writers’ Group.’

An elderly woman with long, straggling grey hair, who was enveloped in a billowing cotton gown that could have served as the marquee at a village fete, replaced the minister at the lectern. She had the slow, expressive movements of a mime artist.

‘I’ve chosen,’ she began, in a very correct Bearsden accent, ‘to read you one of Daniel’s short stories. It was his favourite and I believe he wanted it to be read at his… at his… memorial service.’ She composed herself and continued. ‘He wrote this story five years ago.’

She picked up a word-processed document, flicked her hair back, and began to read. ‘The organist played some slow Scottish psalm tunes. The congregation was a mixed bag, and many of them…’

David McVey lectures at New College Lanarkshire. He has published over 150 short stories and a great deal of non-fiction that focuses on history and the outdoors. He enjoys hillwalking, visiting historic sites, reading, watching telly, and supporting his home-town football team, Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC.