The Secret Scripture (32 page)

Maybe it was then that some part of me leapt away from myself, something fled from my brain, I don't know.

Refuge. A forlorn being seeks refuge. I had the fire covered in ashes in my hut, and all it would need would be the ashes knocked off the turves, and more turves added, and soon I would have a decent fire. And I could peel off my old coat and my dress and my slip and my shoes and dry myself exultant in the dry room, laughing, victorious, having gained a victory over storms and families. I had a simple stew in a covered pot and I would eat that, and then when I was dry and fed, into the bed with me, and I would lie there looking out on Knocknarea, poor old Queen Maeve above in her own stone bed, feeling maybe the worst of the storm so high up, and I would look at my belly as I liked to do, and see the elbows and the knees poking out and disappearing as my baby stretched and stirred. I had about six miles to go before I reached this longed-for safety. I could see from the cut of the land that if I went out on the beach as the motorcars used to do at low tide, I would take a good two miles from the journey. I noted even in my distress that the tide was at its lowest ebb, though it was hard to make this out with the armies and legions of rain that lashed across it. So I cut down from the high road along a steep boreen, not minding the rough stones too much, contented in my mind I was shortening my way, and indeed so numb in my feet and legs I think I no longer felt much pain there. The pain was all in my stomach, the pain was all about my child, and I was fear-somely anxious to gain my advantage. Beautiful once, but beauty ended.

Down on the sand all was like a dance, as if the Plaza itself had expanded to fill Sligo Bay. The rain was like huge skirts, swirling and lifting, with hammering pillars of legs driving down, the whole of the strand and the sea between Strandhill and Rosses blanked out by a million brushstrokes of grey and grey. I thought then that it was not so sensible to have taken to the sand, or at least, I was cursed by a change in the gear of the weather, an infinite swelling and belling of the storm, tearing at me and my stomach, my little creature of elbows and knees.

Then I was starting to slosh through shallow runs of water and knew I was not on a proper course. The sand that the cars favoured as they roared out to the dance sat higher than the rest, and on a summer's night was dry. I feared I was heading towards the channel of the Garravoge, a disaster unimaginable, and now I didn't know which way to turn. Where was the mountain, where was the bulge of the land? Where was Strandhill and where was Coney?

Suddenly in front of me loomed a monster – no, it wasn't a monster, it was a cone of carved stones, it was one of the bollards that were set up in a line to show the way to the island, along the best sand, the last sand to be covered as the tide came in. A thing the tide was beginning to do, I knew, because I could hear, inside the roaring of the storm, the other galloping sound of the sea, as it rushed in eagerly to take the empty places in its arms. But I reached the bollard and held onto its stones for a few moments, trying to calm myself, at least a mite encouraged to have found it. Unless I had turned myself around completely, I judged the river would be over to my right, and Strandhill somewhere to my left. At the top of the bollard was a rusty metal arrow, pointing to the island.

Fearsomely in the storm the Metal Man would be standing on his rock, pointing to deep water, pointing, pointing. He would have no time to help the likes of me.

I knew I had to keep going, if I stayed where I was the tide would simply gather in, cover the sand at my feet, and slowly slowly rise up the bollard. I did not dare go back towards the shore, where there might be a rising flood. But at high tide most of the bollards were covered, and there would be no safety here. It would be the realm of currents and fishes. I put the bollard at my back, taking a course from the arrow, and stepped forward into the storm, praying I could keep enough of a straight line from that compass, and reach Coney.

A swathe of blue angry light was cut into the storm, like a slice of mad cake, and suddenly I saw the great prow of Ben Bulben looming, like a liner that was going to run me down. No, no, it was miles away. But it was also where I had supposed it to be, and then I was able to gain the next bollard. Oh, I sent my heart to the Metal Man in gratitude. Now I could see indistinctly but distinctly enough the mound of Coney island ahead. I forged on towards it. As I moved from the next bollard I felt that water gush from me and briefly warm my legs. With another hundred aching strides I had reached the first rocks, and the black seaweed, and drove myself up the sloping path. Without that break in the storm I don't know what I would have done, except drowned in the hurrying sea. Because now the storm closed about me again like a room of utter madness, walls of water and ceiling of banging fire, it seemed, and I lay in a nest of boulders, panting, and half expired.

I awoke. The storm was still howling roundabout. I hardly knew who I was. I remember searching in my mind even for words. In my sleep or whatever state it was, I had heaved my back up against a mossy rock, I don't know why. The storm was howling, with enormous drenching drifts of rain. I was lying so still I had the mad thought that I was dead. But I was far from dead. Every so often, minutes or hours I couldn't tell, something took a hold of me, like I was being squeezed from the crown of my head to my toes. It was so painful it seemed to have crept beyond pain, I don't know how other to describe it. I pulled myself onto all fours, again not exactly deciding to, but responding to a will unknown. Looking now wildly forwards, I thought in the cascading sheets of rain I saw a person standing, watching me. Then the storm seemed to blot the figure out. I screamed out to whoever it was, screamed and screamed. Then another shock of pain gripped me, as if someone had cleaved my backbone with an axe. Who was it watching me in the rain? Not someone who was going to approach and help. More hours passed. I felt the tide recede again from the island, felt it in my veins. The storm burned down from the heavens. Or rather, I was on fire in all that wetness. My stomach was like a bread oven, gathering in heat. No, no, it could not have been. The time of human clocks flew away, the coming and going of the pain was the new marker of time. Did the pain come closer and closer now? Less time between? Had night fallen secretly to darken the storm? Was I blind? Now there was suddenness, arrival, blood. I looked down between my legs. I felt I had my arms outstretched like wings, ready to catch something falling from the sky. But it wasn't falling from the sky, it was falling down through me. My blood fell on the soaking heather and cried out to God to help me, His striving animal. The voice of my blood cried out. No, no, that was only madness, madness. Between my legs was only coals, a ring of coals burning so redly nothing could live if it passed through it. In that second of madness then was the crown of a little head, and in another second a shoulder, all smeared in skin and blood. There was a face, there was a breast, there was a belly and two legs, and even the storm seemed to draw its breath in silence, there was a silence, I looked, I took up the little creature, it drew out after it a vivid cord, I lifted the baby to my face and, again without real thought, bit the cord, the storm swelled up and howled and howled, and my child also swelled, seemed to form himself in the lashing dark, gathered his first diamond of air, and howled out in miniature, called out tinily, to the island, to Sligo, to me, to me.

When I awoke again, the storm had cleared away like a savage dress sweeping out of the room of Sligo. Where was the little creature? There was the blood and the skin and cord and the placenta. I started to my feet. I was as dizzy and weak as a newborn foal myself. Where was my baby? Such a wild feeling of panic and loss poured into me. I looked about with the frantic longing and fiery head of any mother, human or animal. I parted the low sprigs and plants of heather, I searched about me in circles. I called out for help. The sky was big and blue all the way to heaven.

How long had the storm been gone? I didn't know.

I fell back down, striking a hip against the rock. There was still a steady twine of blood coming out of me, dark blood, warm and dark. I lay there, staring out at the world like a woman who had been shot in the head, the peaceful beach, the sandbirds dipping and striking with their long beaks along the receding tideline. 'Please help me,' I kept saying, but there seemed to be no one to hear me except those birds. Weren't there a few houses on the island, hiding here and there from the wind? Could someone not come and help me find my baby? Could someone not come?

As I lay there a strange sharp hurting feeling came into my breast, it was the milk coming into them, I thought. I had the milk now, ready. Where, where was my baby to drink it?

Then down the winding road to the strand I saw a white van moving. I knew immediately it was an ambulance, because even so far away I could hear its siren in the stillness. It reached the sand and surged forward, taking its course, just as I had in the storm, from bollard to bollard. I stood again and waved my arms, like the shipwrecked sailor does when at last he sees the far-off ship to rescue him. But it wasn't me that needed rescue, it was that tiny person vanished from the space he should have occupied. When the men came up to me with their stretcher, I asked them to tell me where my baby was, I begged them.

'We don't know, ma'am,' one said, with perfect manners. 'What are you doing out here on Coney having a baby? It's no place to have a baby, now, that's for sure.'

'But where is it, where is my baby?'

'Was the tide in high, ma'am, and washed it away, God bless the poor mite?'

'No, no, I had him in my arms, and slept, and kept him close, and warm. I knew he could be warm beside me. Look, I had him here, in my breast, look, the buttons are undone, I had him safe and warm.'

'All right,' said another. 'All right. Do calm yourself. There's still bleeding,' he said to his colleague. 'We'll have to try and stop that.'

'You mightn't stop it,' said the man.

'We'll get her to Sligo quick.'

And they loaded me into the back. But were we abandoning my child? I didn't know. I scrabbled at the door when it closed.

'Look everywhere,' I said. 'There was a child. There was.'

Oh, then when they started the engine, it was like falling through floors, I swooned away.

Now I begin to encounter difficulties. Now the roads seem to take two courses through the forest, and the forest is so deep in snow there is only whiteness.

Someone took my child. The ambulance brought me to the hospital. For days I know I was still bleeding inside, and they did not expect me to live. These things I remember. I remember they did an operation on me because I know I stopped bleeding and that I lived. I remember Fr Gaunt coming in and telling me that I was going to be taken care of, that he knew where he could put me for my own safety, and that I would like the place, and that I wasn't to worry. I asked again and again about my child and each time he just said the word 'Nazareth'. I didn't know what he meant. I was so weak I think I must have done what the prisoner will do with his jailer, I looked for Fr Gaunt to help me. I may have asked him for his help. I certainly wept a great deal and I have even a memory of him holding me while I wept. Was there anyone else there? I can't remember. Soon I saw the two towers of the asylum looming above me and I was given forth to hell.

I cried out that I wanted to see my mother, but they said, 'You cannot see her, no one can see her, she is beyond seeing.'

Now memory falters. Yes. It shudders, like a motor trying to start at the turn of the crank, but failing. Phut, phut, phut. Oh, is that Old Tom and Mrs McNulty in the darkness there, in a dark room as may be, and myself there also, and are they measuring me with their linen tapes, for an asylum smock, not saying anything, except the measurements, the bust, the waist, the hips? Like they had measured all the other inmates as they came in, for a smock, and all the inmates as they went out, for a shroud?

Now memory stops. It is entirely absent. I don't even remember suffering, misery. It is not there. I remember Eneas coming in his army uniform one night, charming the staff into seeing me. He had a major's uniform on that day and I knew he was only a private soldier but he confessed to me that he had gone and borrowed his brother Jack's and very well he looked in it, with the epaulettes. He told me to dress myself quickly, that he had my baby outside and he was going to free me. We were going to go away together into another land. I had no dress to put on except the rags I had already, I knew I was filthy and lice-ridden, there was blood dried on me all over, and through the dark corridor we crept, Eneas and I, and he creaked open the great door of the asylum, and we went out under the old towers and across the gravel, me not minding the sharp stones at all, and he gathered the baby from the high pram where it had waited for us, a lovely baby boy he was, and he took the bundle in his arms, and led me on across the lawn with my bleeding feet, and we had to cross a little fresh river at the bottom of the slope. He crossed over and walked up onto a beautiful green meadow with lofty grass. The moon was speckling the water of the river, my old owl was calling, and as I stepped into the river my dress dissolved and the water cleaned me. I stepped out the other side from the rushes and Eneas looked at me, I know in my heart I was beautiful again, and he handed me my baby and I felt the milk come into my breast. And Eneas and I and our child stood in the meadow in the moonlight and there was a line of enormous green trees being stirred gently by a warm summer wind. And Eneas took off his useless uniform, it was that warm, and we stood there as content as ever people were, and we were the first and last people on the earth.

A memory so clear, so wonderful, so beyond the bounds of possibility. I know it.

My head is as clear as a glass.