by Edna O'Brien
Ita’s brother, who was then alive, saw her pick up three empty jam jars, dump the remains of marmalade that had fungus on it from another jar, rinse it, then pick out the artificial flowers from the rainbow spiralled vase and run. She took a long time decking the altar. She put the blue and the purple flowers on the altar steps, reserving the white lilies, Mary’s flowers, for the altar itself, placing them on either side of the gold-crested tabernacle. The orange flaggers, being too flagrant, were put in the outer porch near the holy water font. She stood enraptured, surveying things—the altar cloth like a frosted banner, the white flowers spectral, satin, the pristine beeswax candles, and then other flowers along the steps, where alas those imps of altar boys could kick them or trample on them as they bustled about. She liked none of those boys, infidels at heart, making fun of the parish priest, trying on his vestments, imitating his singsong voice and the way his eyes rolled upwards of their own accord.
Next day she scrubbed the tiled floor, waxed the woodwork, even waxing the seats where people would plonk their backsides and their wet drapery. Not a cobweb remained in the high corners of the ceiling or in the window casements, no dust along the rim of the confessional doors and ledges and the church doors wide open to let the fresh air pour through. Later, she hauled across the two buckled stepladders, put a plank along the top, rested a chair on that, and climbed up, in order to fill the sanctity lamp with oil. Even her brother feared that she might have a seizure. He insisted that she rest, but no, she had a last chore. She had to make a sponge cake for the missioner, even though she did not know his taste in eats. The missioner the previous year had been elderly and had left them with a dire imprimatur, which was that when in bed they were to fold their arms in the form of a cross and recite:
I must die, I do not know when, nor how,
Nor where; but if I die in mortal sin
I am lost for ever;
Oh, Jesus, have mercy on me.
Yes, everything was at the ready, the chapel spick-and-span, the altar seraphic, the spongecake filled with lemon curd, sprinkled with sugar, propped on a cake plate, and Ita with her long hair drawn back and held with a brown slide. If she had any worry, it was the desecration, as such, that the local people would do to the church. She resented them trooping in, enjoying the sight of the flowers, soaking up the missioner’s words, lingering afterwards to have a word with him. Many of the farmers smelt awful, smelt of cow dung and things, but many of the town girls smelt worse, smelt of sin, and Ita knew it. If she had her way she would take these girls, lock them in a dark room, beat them, and then starve them to death. One such hussy had the audacity to ask if Ita wanted any help with the altar or if she could perhaps wash the linen. The linen! Her lewd hands touching it, her scrubbing board party to it, a scrubbing board on which filth had been pummelled. Ita slapped her face, slapped her smartly on both cheeks, so much so that word went round that Ita McNamara had gone insane, had lost her marbles.
She went to the parish priest’s house after dark, knocked on the side door, and spoke to a grump of a maid who did an “Indeed” as she went down the hall calling “Father, Father.” The priest met Ita without his stiff collar and was obviously nettled at being disturbed. There were crumbs on his lips, yellow cake crumbs. He listened to her explanation and accepted her offer for a Mass to be said as propitiation. It was a large donation, the money she had put aside to go to Dublin one day. She did not regret it. Her joy in her work was utter, and on the evening before the mission she knelt for a moment surveying her little palace, yielding to a moment of ecstasy. A child who was kneeling in the back of the chapel said she saw Ita McNamara wobble, then she saw her stagger as she held on to the altar rails, then she heard her talk either to herself or to Our Lord or to someone.
So perhaps it had begun then, although others insisted that it began the moment she laid eyes on the missioner himself. He was a young man and came upon her by surprise. He had come into the chapel softly, scarcely making any tread, in his thonged, well-worn sandals. He smiled when he saw what she was doing. From a glass perfume spray, Ita was bathing the faces of the flowers. This thin, delicate-looking priest introduced himself as Father Bonaventure and congratulated her on the beauty of the chapel. He said that one might be at Chartres or Lourdes, so exalting were the surroundings. She thanked him and shuffled away, having registered his rimless spectacles with a half-moon of thicker glass at the bottom of each lens, his commodious robes the colour of bulrushes, and his voice gentle yet so incisive, like a diamond cutter.
His sermon on the first evening of the mission began gently, ruminatively; yet no one was misled by that gentleness, least of all the wayward young girls, who sensed the sternness in his being, or the young men, who bristled at his scrutiny as he asked them to lift the veil and look into their souls and consider if by evil ways or evil thoughts they were crucifying afresh their loving Saviour, putting through the most holy soul of Mary the shaft of a sword, a shaft similar to that which passed through her in the hours of the Passion. His voice carried. It issued through the open windows, so that the Protestants doing a bit of gardening could hear it, as could the dumb beasts, the braying donkeys with gnats clotted on their eyelids, as could the little tufts of cowslips or primroses and every growing thing.
It was Ita who tended to him later, got some glucose and a glass of water. It seems he slumped on a bench in the sacristy, beads of sweat on his lips and on his temples, accusing himself of not having moved the faithful enough. He resembled some great performer who feared that he had lost his touch with his audience. His assistant, a far younger priest, Father Finbar, was outside in the chapel grounds, bidding the people good night. Father Finbar, who had pinkish skin rather like a girl’s, did not of course give sermons, but would be called on to assist at the Rosary and the Benediction and would probably hear some of the confessions. Later, the two priests left together, their horn rosaries swaying against the folds of their brown robes and their hoods pulled up because it had begun to spatter with rain. They walked in silence over the path where the trodon berries from the yew trees were like drops of blood, and then they went along the main road that was deserted now because of all the people having gone home. Ita watched them, and some children who were playing hide-and-seek saw what she did, then tattled about it. She picked up a cake box that was inside the gate to her house and ran after them, at a gallop. They had stopped at a bend on the road to look at a herd of fawn cattle, in a field. She thrust the box into Father Bonaventure’s hands and came away blushing. She put her finger to her lips by way of exacting secrecy from the children, and gave them a penny between them.
Confessions were heard each morning and the entire parish was enjoined to go. Ita watched them like a hawk each year, because some were bound to cheat. A wicked or a cunning person could go up, kneel down, but at the last moment refuse the Host, and yet return with eyes devoutly closed, as if the Host were dissolving. Just after the first two people had gone in to confess, an incident occurred. A girl by the name of Nancy fainted, fainted in high operatic manner, so that her arms slapped onto those next to her and her missal with all its contents scattered over the aisle; holy pictures with far from holy inscriptions were seen and read by several. The upshot was that this girl Nancy could not go in to confess, had to be carried to the harness maker’s nearby and be given a spoon of tonic wine in hot water. Ita, sensing foul play, commandeered the girl’s younger sister Della, brought Della out to the chapel grounds, and quizzed her inordinately about her sister’s behaviour. Was Nancy out late at night? Was Nancy seeing some boy? Was Nancy off her food in the morning and complaining of nausea? In short, was Nancy in a state of mortal sin and possibly having a baby? Another blight on their village.
The little girl Della got so frightened at this inquisition that to divert things she put the palm of her hand on the spear of the railing and threatened to gouge herself, to do penance for the whole world, her sister included. Ita gave her a sound thumping then and sent her back in
to the church. Many overheard it and wondered why Ita had become so officious. She quarrelled with several local people but particularly with the parish priest’s housekeeper, since the missioners were staying there, tackled her about menus, told her to buck up and give them something better than packet soup and synthetic jelly set with boiled milk to give it a bit of fuzz. Later, people were quick to insist that, yes, they had noticed it then, but they had thought it was a temporary aberration.
She spent far more hours than was necessary in the church, laying out several vestments for the priest, separating each of the altar breads in such a manner that when they were put in the chalice the priest could pick each one up separately and easily. She used the excuse to be in the church all the time by polishing the floor again and again, so much so that people skeetered over it, and once she was heard humming to herself and it was not a hymn, more like a refrain. Because of the crush in the church for the evening sermons—all were obliged to go and mostly all did—people had to be accommodated behind the altar rails, lined up along the altar steps, and usually it was children who were put there and usually it was the sacristan who organized it. No longer. Ita selected who would go in there and then sat among them, directly gazing up at the priest, catching the words, the incendiary words as they formed in his mouth just before he uttered them. Father Bonaventure, who had been gentle on the first evening, grew fiercer with each sermon, expatiating on the fires of Hell, the loss of the sight of God, the absence of grace, and reminding them of their last, perhaps their very last chance for redemption. At certain moments he foamed. He spared no one. He paused between words and sentences, to look into faces, the faces of those clustered around him including Ita, the gnarled faces of the older people in the pews with their heads bent, the shamed faces of the men standing at the back, and to each of them, it was as if he spoke directly and clairvoyantly. Then, fearing he had gone too far, he appealed to them. He softened his words and reminded them that if they persisted in their mortifications, God would respond, and His pent-up fountain of love and mercy would burst open to grant their wishes.
Emotion was rampant. People quaked with terror, others made vows out loud, others thumped their chests, others moaned, all except Ita, who gazed at him, glorious, beatific, triumphant, no longer the awkward creature, but now an almost presentable woman with a beret which she wore at an angle. People had remarked about this because Ita had always worn a headscarf and pulled it so far forward that it shelved on either side of her face. But here she was, inside the altar rails, gazing at the priest, her black angora beret at an angle, her cheeks adorned with rouge. At least some swore it was rouge, though others said it was flush from the blaze of the candles.
At his last sermon, so fervid was he, so resonant the vibrations of his words, that a lily, a white flute, fell stealthily off its stalk, onto the altar cloth. The people shivered, all harkening to his strictures. The “terrene affections,” as he called them, had to be crushed in favour of the love of the Almighty and the camaraderie of Christ. Many saw the lily, its white skin shrivelling in the heat, its yellow stamen specking the altar cloth, but then it was just a lily, a fallen inert thing.
When the faithful had gone, Ita had many tasks to do. She had to put away the cruets and the silver for the next year’s mission, throw out the withered flowers, and put the good ones on the tiled floor of the sacristy, far away from the fumes of the quenched candles. Moreover, people were pestering her with requests to have a word with Father Bonaventure, alone. Some thought that a private word with him would grant them unheard-of indulgences. The little nitwit Della asked if she could have her autograph book signed, and for her impertinence got a biff. All the while Father Bonaventure was behind the screen changing from his embroidered vestments into the brown robes of his Order. Sometime during that bustle, Ita must have taken the lily flute and put it in her pocket; maybe she thought to place it under her pillow, in the way that young girls put the crumbs of a wedding cake there, to dream of their betrothed. Della swears that Ita was crying, but then the mission made many people cry as they came face to face with the gravity of things. No one actually saw her and Father Bonaventure say goodbye. Many are divided about the hour of his departure. Some say he dallied, while others insist that he left almost immediately. The stall owners, who had tents outside the chapel gates, had already gone, and the mother-of-pearl rosaries, the fulsome leaflets, the blessed scapulars, and all the other sacred impedimenta were in boxes, waiting to be despatched to the seaside town where Father Bonaventure was due to preach.
Ita went home, and as her dismayed brother was later to attest, she behaved quite normally. He admitted to having been rather ratty with her on account of her being so late, he himself had driven a few crippled people home from the mission and was still back, half an hour before she appeared. The fire was out, as he said, and he had to coax it back to life with newspaper and paraffin. She seemed to him no different than usual, except that she refused to eat, vowing that she would be fasting from now on. Those hours mark the divide between the Ita that everyone knew and the lunatic that was to emerge and be dragged out of there at cockcrow.
Villagers were sunk in sleep, even dogs that barked and marauded on the green, had quietened down, when a roar followed by a volley of roars shook the village. It being summertime, most people had their windows open. Ita’s brother heard it, of course, as did the nearest neighbours, who jumped out of their beds believing there was a robbery or that the tinkers were on the rampage again. People with coats or cardigans flung over them were seen running, and soon they were in Ita’s room witnessing the crazed sight of her sitting up in bed, her nightdress bundled up around her middle as she wept copiously. Her brother asked if it was bats, as he lit a stump of a candle. Often on the summer nights bats came in, cleaved to the ceiling or the rim of an ewer, and then swooped about once it was dark. “Not bats … not bats,” she said, pointing to the lily, which was the cause of her dementia. It lay beside her on the bed, close to the calf of her leg, which was full of scratches. It had moved. It had taken flesh. It was dirty. They must get Father Bonaventure, because only he could exorcise it.
“Keep back … keep back,” she said as her brother tried to pluck it from her. She had now withdrawn to the head of the bed, her black hair splayed on the wrought iron. Her eyes were wild too. She got it into her head that they were all against her, and cursed them from the fortress of her bed. The cookery teacher tried to calm her, told her how much they all loved her, and asked if she would like a cup of tea. Then she reminded everyone of Ita’s trojan work during the mission and said that most likely she was exhausted. The praise softened her ire, and breaking into a childlike smile, Ita blessed herself and said, “Blessed is he that is not scandalized in me.” They knew now that it was in earnest; she was talking heresy. Her moods altered between states of near-beatitude and begging to be beaten, to be scourged alive. Her brother said that was what was needed and dashed out of the room to get his ash plant, but the neighbours remonstrated with him, said she must have the priest because she was possessed.
While he was gone, Ita treated them to some strange tales and used swearwords that they did not know were in her vocabulary. She described the assault of the lily, how it ran out from under the pillow, crawled all over her like a hairy Molly, and was impervious to grasp. Yes, it was the Devil, she knew that. Then she expressed a doubt and said it was not the Devil; then she tore at her flesh again, which was already full of cuts, and asked them to pray that she could be redeemed. Yet when Father Bonaventure arrived she acted like a courtesan, put her hand out to welcome him, said to excuse her “dishabille,” adding that her stockings were in flitters. Then she asked to be left alone with him and spoke in a whisper. She made mention of their days together, the promises they had made, and how they were going abroad as a team to convert heathens. Each time he accused her of imagining things she flared up and asked him to look at her body, to look at where Satan had been, to drive the serpent away, to crush
it with his thumb or his sandalled foot or his beads. He did not wish to look at her body. With one hand she grabbed him and with the other held the candleholder slantwise over the thin matt of greying hair and asked did he not see it? She said he must see it. It was there. It was a blister of blood, Christ’s blood, and had blood as its essence. She had been with Christ. Oh yes, he knew, but he was jealous, wanting her for himself. Who now was the culprit clinging to “terrene affections,” begging for her love? Who now but him? Immediately he began to pray rapidly and summoned the others in from the landing to pray with him, and so great was her rage at his calling for witnesses that she put the candle first to the sleeve of her nightdress, then to the matt of hair where she had been taken in adultery. But who were they to throw stones? Quick to smell the scorching, a youngster came from the kitchen with a pitcher of water, which was poured over her. Ita laughed and said she felt like a little girl, remembered her youth, the daisy chains she had made, and a game she played tracing a penny onto a page.
Very early, she was brought to the asylum, where she spent the best part of a year and took to sucking in her cheeks, refusing to speak to anyone and having to be barred from the chapel because the sight of flowers drove her into a frenzy. She took up smoking too, and the authorities indulged her in that, thinking it would take her mind off her troubles. She cadged cigarettes off visitors and told some very tall tales about travels she had made in the Far East, where she was a nursing sister and where she had contracted malaria. In about a year, when she was numb from tablets and shock treatment, they brought her home, and from then on she avoided people, growling at anyone who spoke to her, even the priest or the doctor. Being alone now, she does the farm work and has taken to wearing her brother’s old clothes and Wellington boots. She is always forking manure, or washing out the cow house, or carrying buckets of feed and water up the hills to the store cattle. “There goes the one with the roastings,” people say. She is like a landmark, one bucket in either hand, either going up the hill or returning to have them refilled. Children say that she curses them, and those who knock on her door are likely to be met with a pitchfork or a saucepan of hot stirabout.
