The Secret Scripture (27 page)

And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

Unfathomable. Fathoms. I wonder is that the difficulty, that my memories and my imaginings are lying deeply in the same place? Or one on top of the other like layers of shells and sand in a piece of limestone, so that they have both become the same element, and I cannot distinguish one from the other with any ease, unless it is from close, close looking?

Which is why I am so afraid to speak to Dr Grene, lest I give him only imaginings.

Imaginings. A nice sort of a word for catastrophe and delusion.

Years and years they left me there, because it takes years to sort out what they were trying to sort out, Jack and Fr Gaunt and no doubt others, for the saving of Tom McNulty. Was it as much as six, seven, even eight? I cannot remember.

When I wrote those words a few minutes ago, I put down my biro and placed my forehead in my hands, and thought a while, trying to fathom those years. Difficult, difficult. What was true, what was not true? What road did I take, what road refuse? Poor ground, false ground. I think an account before God must, must contain only truth. There is no human agency I need to bamboozle. God knows the true story before I write it, so can easily catch me out in falsehood. I must carefully winnow out one from the other. If I have a soul remaining, and perhaps I do not, it will depend on it. I think it must be possible that souls are rescinded in hard cases, cancelled at some office in the halls of heaven. That you arrive at the gates of heaven already at the wrong address, before St Peter says a word.

But it is all so dark, so difficult. I am only frightened because I don't know how to proceed. Roseanne, you must leap a few ditches now. You must find the strength in your old corpse to leap.

Is it possible I spent all those years in that hut without event, collecting my groceries every week, saying nothing to no one? I think it is. I am trying to be certain. Without event, I say, and yet I knew that war had begun in Europe, just like those days when I was a little girl. And yet I saw no army uniforms now. The hut was like the centre of a huge clock, the turning of the year in Strandhill, the roaring of the cars going by on Saturday night, the kids with their buckets, the starlings all winter, the darkening and brightening mountain, the heather with its snow of tiny flowers, what a comfort, and myself trying to do my bit with the roses on the front porch, tending them, clipping them back ready for the off, and watching them day by day in the strengthening year plump out their bulbs; 'Souvenir de St Anne's' they were, now I think of it, a rose bred in a Dublin garden out of that famous rose bred by Josephine in memory of Napoleon's love for her, 'Souvenir de Malmaison'.

Now, dear reader, I am calling you God for a moment, and God, dear dear God, I am trying to remember. Forgive me, forgive me if I am not remembering right.

I would rather remember aright than just to remember things so they will stand in my favour. That luxury is not allowed to me.

When Fr Gaunt finally came back to me, he did so alone. I suppose a priest is always alone in some sense. Never a creature to lie at his side. And he looked older suddenly, less the bright prospect, I could see he was losing his hair just at the temples, it was drifting back, a little tide that would not be coming in again.

It was high summer and he looked very hot in his woollen clothes. He ordered his clothes from the clerical outfitters in Marlborough Street in Dublin – how I knew that I do not know now. These clothes were quite new, oddly stylish, the soutane like something a woman might wear at a pinch to a formal dance, if in another colour, and shorter. I was tending to my roses as he came in the little gate, surprising me, giving me a fright really, because no one for a long, long time had made that noise on the latch except myself, creeping out late at night to walk on the dunes and the marshy ground, which was now dry and springy from a few weeks of comparative heat. I think I was presentable, unlike later, I had a scissors to cut my own hair in front of Tom's little shaving mirror, and my dress was clean, with that lovely stiffness in the cotton from being dried on a bush.

He carried a little leather case with him, scuffed and dented here and there from long and assiduous use. Really this man might have qualified as an old friend, I had known and had dealings with him so long. He was certainly qualified to write quite an intimate history of my life, since he had been witness to certain curious parts of it.

'Roseanne,' he began, with just exactly the same tone as he had used those years before, indeed as if this was a mere continuance of that conversation. There was no hello, how are you, or hesitancy. In fact he had the demeanour of a doctor with serious news to impart, not even the friendly alertness of Dr Grene when he has to make yet another gentle assault on my 'secrets'. Can I say I disliked him? I don't think so. Nor though did I understand him. What gave him pleasure in life, what sustained him. He did give my roses a glance as he went up the little steps and on into the dark hut.

I wiped my fingers on the wood of the steps, just to get the green juice off them, and followed him in.

Was it not an extraordinary meekness in me to stay in that hut at his bidding? I am almost ashamed to think it might be so. Should I not have raged at him that time before, rushed at his throat and the throat of Jack, got my teeth on his jutting Adam's apple and ripped out his voice? Berated them, shouted at them? But to what end? Only rage, useless rage expending itself on the white dust of a Strandhill road.

'I haven't anything to offer you, Father,' I said. 'Unless you will take a glass of Beecham's powders?'

'Why would I drink a glass of stomach powders, Roseanne?'

'Well, it says on the packet, a refreshing summer drink. That's why I bought it.'

'It is for those who have overindulged,' he said. 'But thank you.'

'Well, you are welcome, Father.'

Then he sat down just where he had sat before and indeed I had not seen any reason to move the chair from where it stood. The sunlight had followed us both into the room and lay about us in dusty bushels.

'I see you are keeping well,' he said.

'Oh, yes.'

'Of course, I have had my spies keep an eye on you.' He said this without any trace of guilt. Spies. 'Oh,' I said. 'I did not notice them.' 'Well, naturally,' he said.

Then he opened the case on his lap, the lid obscuring the contents. He took out a sheaf of papers, very neat and clean, the top one containing I could see a very impressive-looking design or seal.

'I have been successful,' he said, 'in my efforts to free Tom.'

'Excuse me?' I said.

'If you had followed my advice, Roseanne, some years ago, and put your faith in the true religion, if you had behaved with the beautiful decorum of a Catholic wife, you would not be facing these difficulties. But I do appreciate that you are not entirely responsible. Nymphomania is of course by definition a madness. An affliction possibly, but primarily a madness, with its roots possibly in a physical cause. Rome has agreed with this estimate, in fact the department of the Curia that deals with these thankfully rare cases not only agreed, but also posited the same theory. So you may rest assured that your case was seen to with all the thoroughness and fairness of minds well-informed, disinterested, and with no bad intention of any kind.'

I looked at him. Neat, black, clean, strange. Another human creature in the lair of a human creature. His words sombre, measured, at ease. No trace of excitement, victory, nothing only his usual careful, measured tones.

'I don't understand,' I said, nor did I, though I think I knew, all the same.

'Your marriage is deemed null, Roseanne.'

As I did not speak, after a full half minute, he said, 'It never happened. It does not exist. Tom is free to marry another, as if he had never been married. Which as I say he never was.'

'This is what you have been doing these last years?'

'Yes, yes,' he said, with some impatience. 'It is a monumentally complex undertaking. Something like this is never granted lightly. Deep deep thought at Rome, and my own bishop of course. Weighing everything, sifting through everything, my own deposition, Tom's own words, the elder Mrs McNulty who of course has experience of the troubles of women, in her work. Jack of course is away in India at the war, or else he might have made his contribution. The courts sit in careful judgement. No stone unturned.'

I was still staring at him.

'You may rest assured every possibility of justice has been afforded to you.'

'I want my husband to come here.'

'You have no husband, Roseanne. You are not in a state of matrimony.' 'I am divorced?'

'It is not a divorce,' he said, suddenly with vehemence, as if he found the word disgusting in my mouth. 'There is no divorce in the Catholic church. The marriage never existed. By reason of insanity at the time of the contract.'

'Insanity?'

'Yes.'

'How do you reckon that?' I asked after a moment, and with difficulty, words now becoming awkward and thick in my mouth.

'We do not believe your indiscretions are confined to one instance, an instance you will remember I was witness to with my own eyes. It was not thought probable that that instance did not have a history, given of course your own position visa-vis your early years, not to mention of course the condition of your mother, which we may assume was hereditary. Madness, Roseanne, has many flowers, rising from the same stem. The blooms of madness, from the same root, may be variously displayed. In your mother's case an extreme retreat into herself, in your case, a pernicious and chronic nymphomania.'

'I don't know what that word means.'

'It means,' he said, and yes, with a trace of fright now in his eyes, because he had used the word once and maybe thought I had accepted it. But he knew I spoke the truth and he was suddenly afraid now. 'It means a madness manifest in the desire to have irregular relations with others.'

'What?' I said. The explanation was as mystifying as the word.

'You know what it is.'

'I don't,' I said, and I did not.

I had shouted the last words, and indeed he had shouted his. He put the papers swiftly back into the case, closed it with a snap, and stood up. For some reason I noticed how polished his shoes were, with that little skirt of road dust on them from when he had no doubt reluctantly left his car and approached my house.

'I will not explain it to you further,' he said, almost in a paroxysm of annoyance and anger. 'I have tried to make your position clear. I believe I have done so. You understand your position?'

'What is that word you used?' I shouted. 'Relations!' he shouted, 'Relations! Congress, sexual congress!'

'But,' I said, and before God this was the truth, 'I never had relations with another besides Tom.'

'Of course, you may take refuge in an atrocious lie, if you choose that.'

'You may ask John Lavelle. He will not fail me.'

'You do not keep up with your paramours,' he said, quite nastily. 'John Lavelle is dead.'

'How can he be dead?'

'He went back into the fold of the IRA, thinking we would be weakened by this German war, shot a policeman, and was justly hanged. The Irish government brought Albert Pierre-point himself over from England to do the work, so you can be sure it was done well.'

Oh, John, John, foolish John Lavelle. God rest and forgive him. I will admit I had often wondered about him, where he was, what he was doing. Had he gone back to America? To be a cowboy, a train-robber, a Jesse James? He had shot a policeman. An Irish policeman in an Irish state. That was a terrible act. And yet he had done me the great grace of keeping away, he had not haunted me again as I had feared he might, he had kept himself away, he had not sought to trouble me again, having no doubt a true understanding of the trouble he had brought me on Knocknarea. That had been his promise, and he had kept it. After the priests had gone, he had gripped my hand, and promised me. He had honoured his promise. Honour. I did not think this other man in front of me now had as much.

Fr Gaunt wanted to move past me now, to get to the narrow door and out and away. For a moment I blocked his path. I blocked it. I knew I would have the strength if I willed it to kill him, I felt it in that moment. I knew I could snatch at something, a chair or anything close to hand, and bring it down on his head. And as true as my declaration to him was, this was also true. I would have if not happily, at least gladly, open-heartedly, fiercely, finely, murdered him. I don't know why I did not.

'You are menacing me, Roseanne. Step back away from the door, there's a good woman.' 'A good woman? You say that?' 'It is an expression,' he said.

But I stepped out of his way. I knew, I knew any proper, decent life was over. The word of a man like that was like a death sentence. I felt all about me the whole hinterland of Strandhill speaking against me, the whole town of Sligo murmuring against me. I had known it all along, but it is a very different matter to know your sentence, and then to hear it spoken by your judge. Perhaps they would come out and burn me in my hut for a witch. Truest of all things, there was no one to help me, no one to stand at my side.

Fr Gaunt removed himself neatly from the dreaded house. The fallen woman. The mad woman. Freedom for Tom, my lovely Tom. And what for me?

Dr Grene's Commonplace Book

Absolute stillness again in the house last night. It is as if, having called out to me one last time, she will never need to call out to me again. This thought brought me out of fear, and into quite a different state. A sort of pride that after all I had love in me, buried in the mess. And that maybe she also. I listened again not out of fear, but a sort of sombre longing. But knowing nothing again would be asked or answered. A strange state. Happiness I suppose. It didn't last, but like I would a vulnerable patient in the throes of grief, I asked myself to note it, remember it, give it passionate credence when other darker feelings assail me again. It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life. Now there is a remark that will not bear much scrutiny, I fear.