The Secret Scripture (13 page)

Dr Grene crossed to the little chair by the window where I like to sit when the weather is a little warmer. Otherwise there is a chill that seems to penetrate the window-glass. Below the window there is the yard, the high wall, and the endless fields. Roscommon town I am told is over the horizon, and it may be.

There is a river that moves between the fields that in the summer takes the light and uses my window as a signal, signalling to what or who or where I do not know. The riverlight plays in the glass. So naturally I like to sit there. At any rate, Dr Grene put his weight into it, always a cause for slight alarm, for it is a mere dress chair, one of those nice little chairs that country women liked to have in their bedrooms for their dress, even if it was the only nice object in the house. How it got to this room God only knows, and He perhaps hardly.

'Can you remember, Mrs McNulty, what it was – I mean, the events leading up to your presence in the Sligo asylum? You remember me saying I could find no proper record of the matter? I have searched again since and certainly have found nothing further. I am afraid the history of your presence here and in Sligo is no more. But I will continue to look, and I have sent to Sligo just on the off chance they have something. Can you remember anything about the matter?'

'I don't think I remember. The Leitrim Hotel they called it. I do remember that.'

'What?'

'They called the asylum in Sligo the Leitrim Hotel.' 'Did they? I never knew that. Why so? Oh,' he said, nearly laughing, nearly, 'because – yes.' 'Half of Leitrim was said to be in it.' 'Poor Leitrim.'

'Yes.'

'That is an odd word, Leitrim. I wonder what it means? I suppose it is Irish. Of course it is.'

I smiled at him. He was like a boy that has banged his knee and now the pain was subsiding. The cheerfulness of a boy after pain and tears.

Then he sank back again somehow, blackening deeper into himself, like a mole in the earth. I answered him largely to raise him back again.

'I do remember terrible dark things, and loss, and noise, but it is like one of those terrible dark pictures that hang in churches, God knows why, because you cannot see a thing in them.'

'Mrs McNulty, that is a beautiful description of traumatic memory.'

'Is it?'

'Yes, it is.'

Then he sat there in his own version of silence for a long while. He sat so long he was almost an inmate of the room! As if he lived there himself, as if he had nowhere to go to, nothing to do, no one to attend.

He sat in the chill light. The river, drowned in its own water, and drowned a second time in the rains of February, was not in a position to throw its light. The window-glass was severely itself. Only the still grass of winter far below lent it a slight besmirch of green. His eyes, now much clearer somehow and more distinct without the beard, were looking forwards as if at an object about a yard away, that stare that faces have in portraits. I sat on the bed and without the slightest embarrassment watched him, because he wasn't watching me at all. He was looking into that strange place, the middle distance, the most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances. And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them. River, window and eyes.

'What is the matter, Dr Grene?' I said.

'Oh,' he said.

I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn't help it.

'Please do not mind me if I stand near you,' I said. 'I have had my bath yesterday. I am not foul-smelling.'

'What?' he said, absolutely surprised, but minutely. 'What?'

I stood by him and held out my right hand and placed it on his shoulder, actually a little behind the shoulder on his back. I had this unbidden memory of my father sitting on his bed, holding my mother, and patting her back almost childishly. I didn't dare pat Dr Grene, but just rested my old hand there.

'What is the matter?' I said.

'Oh,' he said. 'Oh. My wife has died.'

'Your wife?'

'Yes,' he said, 'yes. Her breathing deserted her. She choked, she choked – she suffocated.' 'Oh, my poor man,' I said.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes.'

Then I knew something about Dr Grene. I had opened my mouth to tell him something about myself, by grace of his lost beard, and out of his own mouth had issued this news, this huge information.

With infinite sadness and very quietly, he added: 'It is also my birthday.'

Now here is a story of general stupidity in me. You might not credit the level of it.

I was wanting greatly to speak to my father and my father was dead. I had been a couple of times to his grave in the Presbyterian yard, but I thought I could not find him there. Maybe his bones did not contain him, maybe his signal and his self was elsewhere.

It was the useful gloom of a December afternoon, dark by four. I knew well that the old gates up in the other cemetery would be open, but how easy it would be to slip in those gates in the dark and be there among the graves with no one to note me. I was sure, I was hoping if my father was to be found anywhere, something of him might remain there, some old twist of bushes and paths and buried things that might constitute a sort of ancient radio that would carry a signal of him.

So I crept in there in my old blue dress and my coat, as thin and slight in those days as a heron, and very like a heron I am sure in that garb, with my gawky face and long neck sticking up from it, an out and out opportunity for the cold.

What calm I took from the spreading paths, the quiet stones, the familiar numbers on their iron tags stuck into the ground by each grave, that tallied I knew with the book of graves held for safety in the concrete temple. A yellow light had got stuck in the meagre forest of small trees that covered the general paths, a forest that had been made thin and poor by the very blasts of death. Now I wrapped my coat about me to the collar, and without thinking what I was really doing, without being quite in the present time, penetrated as far as the circular sweep of graves in front of the temple.

There were the pillars, the old sharp arch with its faded figures, Greek heroes and the like, of wars and times unknown, and the iron door slightly agape on its heavy hinges, and that longed-for light within of the stove and the lamp that spoke the volume of my father. Without a thought for the present moment, in other words, in great stupidity, I crept forward towards that light, thinking, my heart begging me to advance, to claim again the cherished cowl of light and warmth and talk. The door was open enough for me to go straight in.

And nothing had changed. Everything inside also spoke of my father. His kettle was on the rickety hob still beside the grate of guttering coals, his enamel cup, even my own, on the table, the few books and ledgers piled neatly there, and the same footprints on the faded slate floor. My eyes opened and opened, and my face, and I felt absolutely certain that I would soon be in his presence, soon be comforted, advised, restored.

Then I felt a sudden and shocking push from behind. I wasn't expecting such a thing in the refuge of my own father. I staggered forward a few steps, quite unbalanced, with that nasty lurching feeling in the belly from having to right myself so abruptly. I turned about and there was a strange man in the door. He had a belly on him under a gansey too small for him, that had the shape and look of the crust of a shop-bought loaf. The face was severe with odd hollow cheeks, and the bushy brows of the old, except he probably wasn't much past fifty. No, no, but I knew this man, of course I did. It was Joe Brady that had replaced my father.

Hadn't Fr Gaunt told me? So why had it gone from my mind? What in the name of God was I doing there? You will say it was a madness, an astrayness in the head. He certainly did not have the appearance of a suitor, or anything like it. He looked angry and turned about, his eyes with that unhappy burning look I had noticed in the graveyard. In my longing for my father I had simply not thought about him again since Fr Gaunt brought his request.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, maybe so, but in my experience men are not any better. Terror rose in me from the cold flags of the floor, terror so severe I must confess – and forgive such honesty in an old woman remembering horrors -that I helplessly pissed in my drawers. Even in the poor light of the temple I am sure he saw that, and whether from this cause or another, he let out a laugh. It was a laugh like a dog's growl when it fears to be stepped on, a warning laugh if there is such a thing. And don't they say in books that the laugh of a human person has its origin in an ancient grimacing and growling of the face? So it looked to me that day, proof positive.

'You didn't want me,' he said, the first time in his life he had spoken to me, which amazed me, 'and you preferring to stay the Godless girl you are.'

He walked forward at me and I don't know what he intended. But as he moved I thought that indeed something ancient and irresistible was born in him. The silent temple in the silent yard, the darkness of December, and whatever was in me he wanted. It seemed as he moved forward, his intention changed, humanity cleared from his face, something private and darker than humanity, something before we were given our troublesome souls, stirred in his eyes. I think at this impossible distance that he wanted to kill me, why ever so I do not know. There was a story of this Joe Brady that I had just stepped in on, what huge plot he had plotted with Fr Gaunt I do not know. In seeking to find my father I seemed to have found my murderer. I called out with suddenly found strength of voice. I roared!

Now in behind him stepped another man. What luck I had that there was another man in that quiet place. Joe Brady by this time had completed the last step to my form, and as if it was what he greatly desired in all the things of the world, he closed his hands about my scrawny neck and pulled me to him. Then I knew somehow without knowing that he was scrabbling about at his flies to release whatever was there, God help me, I was only sixteen and though I knew about birds and bees, I hardly knew aught else, except that certain lads might stir you as you passed them, and you would not know why. At this point in my life I may have been the most innocent girl in Sligo, and I do remember even as I remember here, writing, that my first thought was that he was drawing forth a gun or a knife from his britches, because of course this was the very place I had seen guns drawn and heard them explode.

As if in very harmony with that thought, the new man behind Joe Brady indeed had a gun drawn, a big heavy-looking yoke that he brought across the back of Joe Brady's head with a movement like a man cutting a high bramble with a slash-hook. I was aware of all this even as I stood drenched in terror. Joe Brady didn't go out on the first blow, but he sank to his knees, and in utter disgust and misery I saw his swollen penis between his legs and threw my hands to my eyes. The new man gave him another swipe with his gun. I thought, does everyone in this place have a gun, am I fated always to see guns here?

Joe Brady now lay quietly on the floor. I took my hands from my face and looked at him, and then looked at the man behind him. He was a skinny youngish fella with black hair.

'Are ya all right?' he said. 'Is that your father?'

'No, it is not my father,' I said, well-nigh hysterical. 'My father is dead.'

'I see,' said the man, 'and do you not remember me? I remember you.'

'No,' I said, 'I do not remember.'

'Well,' he said, 'you knew me once. I'm going away to America and wanted to come and say goodbye to my brother

Willie.'

'Who's that?' I said stupidly. 'Why would he be here?'

'Because he's buried here. Don't you remember? Aren't you the girleen brought the bloody priest for him, and that likely brought the soldiers, those very soldiers that took us off and killed the some of us, and yet me getting away back home by a miracle.'

'I do know,' I said. 'I do know you.' And his name swam into my mind, maybe only because my father had spoken it, sitting in the little room reading the paper, or was it sitting there in the temple? 'You're John Lavelle. From the islands.'

'John Lavelle from the Inishkeas. And I am going to that other place I am, far away from this stinking lousy country, with its oath of fucking allegiance and its dead betrayed.'

I stared at him. Here truly was an astonishing revenant.

'Since I did you the kindness to save you,' he said, with hostile bravery, 'a kindness you never done for me, you might tell me where my brother's grave is, for I have wandered up and down and up and down those avenues and cannot find him.'

'I don't know, I don't know.' I said. 'But, but, it will be in the book there, on the table. Is this man dead?'

'I don't know if he is dead. It is funny he is not your father, but that I have struck him down anyway. You will know your father had a sentence on his head for what he done. Or not for what he done, for what you done, bringing the soldiers. But we couldn't be shooting girls.'

'I think you could bring yourself to be shooting girls, if you tried. What do you mean, a sentence on my father?'

'While the war raged, we were obliged to send him a letter, with his death sentence in it, and he was lucky when the war was over we let it go.'

'He was lucky?' I said, the words gushing up in fury from my throat. 'The unluckiest man that ever was born in Ireland. The poor man lies dead over in the other yard! You sent him a letter? Don't you know the hard life he had of it? The dark fate of him? Oh, I knew there was another thing I did not know of. You, you, you killed him. You killed him, John Lavelle!'

Now this John Lavelle was silent. The sort of discolouring, excited look went out of his face. He spoke suddenly very normally, even nicely. For some reason I cannot fathom still, I knew my words were untrue. I am proud I could understand that much. Whatever this young man had done in his life, he had not killed my father.