The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

  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?’

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  ‘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.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I am sorry your father is dead. Of course I am. Don’t you know they shot my comrades? They took them out without mercy and shot them, Irishmen killing their own.’

  It was as if his sudden change were a sort of catching cold, and I caught it.

  ‘I am sorry about that,’ I said. Why did I suddenly feel silly and awkward? ‘I am sorry about everything. I never brought in the soldiers. I never did. But I don’t even care if you think I did. I don’t even care if you shoot me down dead. I loved my father. And now your comrades are dead and my father is dead. I never said a word to no one but the priest, and he had no chance to speak on the way. Don’t you see, the soldiers were 107

  following you? Do you think no one else saw you? This town has eyes. This town can see out secrets, no bother.’

  He was staring at me then with his eyes the tainted strange colour of seaweed. The seaweed of his island was in his eyes. Maybe there was seaweed slugging about in the wombs of the women there, people half gone back to the sea, like the first little thrumming creatures in creation, if I am to believe what I read. Oh, he cleared his eyes of everything then, and he stared at me, and for the first time I saw what was also hiding in John Lavelle, a sort of kindness. How much of such kindness the war had covered over with corpses and curses I do not know.

  ‘Will you show me my brother’s grave?’ he said, in the same tones as another might have said, I love you.

  ‘I will, if I can find it.’

  So I went over to the book in question and scanned down the names. There was my father’s beautiful blue copperplate writing, the hand of a proper scribe, though he was none such. And among the Ls I found him, Willie, Willie Lavelle. Then I noted the numbers of reference, and as if I was my father himself, and not a girl of sixteen that had nearly been knocked down and raped, I walked past the still inert lump of Joe Brady, and John Lavelle, and out among the avenues, and brought John Lavelle to his brother, so that he might say goodbye.

  Then maybe John Lavelle went to America for it was a long while before anyone heard anything about him.

  John Lavelle went to America and I went to a place called the Café Cairo – which wasn’t quite as far.

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  chapter eleven

  John Kane came out today with an extraordinary statement. He said the snowdrops were early this year. You would not expect such a man to notice snowdrops. He said that in the top garden where only the workers at the asylum are allowed to go, he saw a crocus in bloom. He said all this in a very nice way, standing in the middle of the room with the mop. In fact he came in to mop the floor, told me about these miracles, and then went off, forgetting actually to mop. Distracted I must surmise by his own sudden attack of poetry. This goes to prove yet again that few people stick to the articles of their characters, and will keep breaking away from them. At the same time he has been the same stranger to the washbasin and his flies were open as is mostly the case. Some day a small animal will notice his open flies and go in and live there, like a hedgehog in the inviting damp hollow of an ash tree.

  I write this calmly although at this moment I am anything but calm.

  Dr Grene was here for an hour in the afternoon. I was quite shocked by his ashen face, and he was to my added astonishment wearing the dark suit of the mourner, as he had just attended his wife’s removal and burial. He referred to her as Bet, which must be a shorter form of Betty, which is a short form for what name? I cannot remember. Perhaps Elisabeth. He said there were forty-four mourners, he had counted them. I had the thought that there would be fewer for me, fewer, few, or none, unless Dr Grene himself attended my interment. But what does it matter? I could see the grief in the very lines of his face and where he had shaved his beard there was a violentlooking red rash, which he kept touching gingerly. I told him 109

  there he might be better not bothering with the likes of me on such a day, but he didn’t answer that.

  ‘I have unexpectedly found some additional material,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether it will help us, as it pertains to matters in the long ago. As they say.’

  As who say? The people he is accustomed to seeing? The old people of his youth? When was Dr Grene young? I suppose in the fifties and sixties of the last century. When Queen Elizabeth was young and England was old.

  ‘It was a little deposition someone had made many years ago, I don’t know if it belonged to this institution or in fact went back to your time in Sligo Mental Hospital, and had been transferred here with you. It has at least raised the hope in me that the original is there. This copy was in a very poor state, typed but very faint as one might expect. And a great part of it missing. Something from an Egyptian tomb indeed. It referred to your father being in the Royal Irish Constabulary, which is not a phrase I had seen for many a long year, and the circumstances of his death – of his murder as one might say.
I was very distressed to read about it. I don’t know, but I felt I should see you today, despite my own – challenges at the moment. It seemed so vivid, so recent, perhaps because I am just at the moment susceptible to, to grief and griefs. That might be the why. I was very upset, Roseanne. In the chief part because I did not know.’

  His words hung in the room the way such words do hang.

  ‘It must be someone else’s document,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You may have been upset unnecessarily. On my account at least.’

  ‘This wasn’t the fate of your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was not in the police?’

  ‘No.’

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  ‘Oh, well, I am relieved to hear it. But it had your name attached, Roseanne McNulty.’

  ‘You call me Mrs McNulty, but there is another story attached to that, I really should be called by my maiden name.’

  ‘But you were married, no?’

  ‘Yes, I was married to Tom McNulty.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘No, no.’

  But I wasn’t able in that moment to add anything.

  ‘The document said your father was an RIC man in Sligo during the height of the troubles in the twenties, and was tragically killed by the IRA. I must confess I am still a little musty on that whole period. It seemed to us at school so much a series of dire errors and – it is such a belligerent history. Even the Second World War seemed to us – I don’t know what it seemed to us. Ancient History? And yet I was born during the war. Wasn’t your father’s name Joseph, Joseph Clear?’

  But I was gripped by some unpleasant feeling, I don’t know if you have ever had it, as if someone has stopped up your body with putty. When I closed my gums on the feeling I could have sworn I was actually biting through putty. I stared at Dr Grene in panic.

  ‘What is the matter, Roseanne? I have upset you? I am so sorry.’

  ‘Perhaps’, I said, at last able to get words through the putty,

  ‘that is your job, Dr Grene?’

  ‘To upset you? No, no. My job is to help you. In this instance, to assess you. It has actually been put upon me as a duty. There is all sorts of legislation nowadays. I would be more than happy to leave you alone – I mean not alone, but be, to leave you be, and talk of other things, or talk of nothing, which I am beginning to think is the healthiest topic of all.’

  ‘My maiden name was Clear,’ I said suddenly.

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  ‘That is what I thought. I read it, didn’t I, in that little book?’

  he said. ‘That is of course a very rare name. Joe Clear. There can’t have been too many of that name. There cannot be too many Clears in Ireland. I wonder is it a form of Clare, or connected to Cape Clear, or what?’

  He was speaking in oddly agonised tones, with that perplexed look again as of a young boy overwhelmed at school.

  ‘I think it is a Protestant name and maybe comes out of England long ago.’

  ‘Do you think? Of course, McNulty is a common enough name. You might find McNultys everywhere.’

  ‘It is an old Sligo name. My husband told me they were the last recorded cannibal tribe in Ireland. It is written somewhere that they ate their enemies.’

  ‘Oh my.’

  ‘Yes. Myself, I didn’t eat meat at that time. The smell of meat made me feel faint, though I cooked it every day for him. So my husband liked to tell people that I was the last recorded vegetarian cannibal in Ireland.’

  ‘He was droll, your husband.’

  Oh, oh, oh, shallow rocks again. I buttoned my lip as quick as I could. I did not want to rehearse all that now.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, stirring to go at last, ‘I might bring up that document I mentioned tomorrow or the next day, it might interest you to look it over.’

  ‘I cannot read as well as I used to. I read Thomas Browne, but then I know the writing off by heart mostly.’

  ‘We should get you a pair of reading glasses, Mrs McNulty –

  or should I say Ms Clear?

  ‘I am as happy without them.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Then for some reason he laughed, one of those little tinkling laughs that people laugh when a private thought has amused them, and occurs before they have the power to stop it. 112

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, although I had said nothing, ‘excuse me –

  nothing, nothing.’

  And off he went, nodding. He raised his right hand at the door and actually waved, like I was a passenger on a ship. Was it before or after that John Kane came in to talk about the snowdrops? I can’t remember.

  No, I remember. John Kane did come back in, but it was to mop the floor. He had evidently, somehow or other, realised he had not yet mopped my floor. After all, he is also now becoming elderly, the elderly fetching for the elderly. Not that he fetches. As he swept in under my bed he happened to bring out in the bristles of his brush a spoon. It was not clean but smeared with soup, and I must have knocked it from the tray. He gave me a very brief dark look, slapped my face lightly, and left.

  How does good history become bad history by and by?

  Dr Grene’s Commonplace Book

  ‘Certainly that man were greedy of life, who should desire to live when all the world were at an end . . .’

  She is only two weeks buried. Bet. It is so difficult even to write the name. Sometimes here in the house now alone at night I hear some little banging somewhere, probably a sound I have unconsciously heard a million times, a door in the house that touches against its frame in the draught, and I don’t know, I look fearfully up the dark corridor and wonder if it is Bet. It is a terrible and odd thing to be haunted by your wife. Of course, I am not. It is one of the many strange fruits in the cornucopia of grief.

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  How difficult it is to live. I would almost say all my world is at an end. How often I must have listened blithely and with professional distance to some poor soul tortured by depression, a sickness that might have had its origin in just such a catastrophe as has hit me.

  I feel so bereft I am almost inclined to admire any instance of simple strength of mind, all health of mind. I watched the images of Saddam Hussein, ‘President of Iraq’ as he still called himself, being hanged, and scoured his face for signs of suffering and pain. He looked confused but strong, almost serene. He had such contempt for his captors even as they taunted him. He did not believe maybe they had the strength to finish his term of life. To complete his story. Or he thought if he could find strength within himself, he would complete his own story with an admirable flourish. He looked so bedraggled and astray when they took him from the hidey hole months before. His jacket and shirt were always immaculate in court. Who washed them, brushed them, ironed them? What handmaiden? What does his story look like seen with the eyes of a friend, an admirer, a fellow townsperson? I envied him the evident peace of his mind as he went to his death. They did not show mercy to Saddam, who himself had shown no mercy to his enemies. He looked serene.

  It is true that for the last ten years, a whole decade, Bet removed herself to the old maid’s room at the top of the house. I sit here in our old bedroom – old in a few senses, as in, for twenty years we shared it, the room has not been decorated for many years, it was where we ‘formerly’ slept etc., etc. – as I have sat a thousand times – how many nights in ten years, 3,560 nights – and no longer is she just above me, walking the floorboards, making her narrow bed creak as she lay on it. All is perfectly quiet and still, except for that little banging somewhere, as if she is not dead at all, but has immured herself in a cupboard and wants to get out. In the little room above, her bed is 114

  still neatly made just as she left it the last morning, I couldn’t bear to touch it. Her collection of books on roses occupies the windowsill as always (when we shared a bed, it was rose books on her side, Irish history on mine), propped up by two extravagantly carved Hawaiian bookends in the shape of t
wo shameless maidens. By the bed, her phone on a little chinoiserie table her great-aunt left her. Her great-aunt had died of Alzheimer’s, but she had won the table years ago at a card game in her prime, and Bet had been thrilled and touched to get it. In the drawers are her clothes, in the cupboard are her dresses, summer and winter ones, and her shoes, among the pairs are those heeled shoes she used to wear to dinner, that I thought didn’t suit her, but at least I never had the lack of grace to say so, that is not among my sins, years ago when we did such things. But it is not that woman I found in the corridor, struggling for breath as her lung collapsed, one last shout in her that brought me clattering up the little stairs, that assails me, so much as that other younger person she was when I fell in love with her, that is the person that haunts me. The perfectly desirable and neat beauty that she was, who went against her father’s wishes, and insisted she must marry a penniless student studying the unknown and unpromising science of psychiatry at a hospital in England, whom she had met on a holiday to Scarborough. The sheer accidental nature of things.

  There was nothing about me that her father liked, a man who had been one of the subcontractors on the great Shannon hydroelectric scheme, and as such an historical and epic man, supplying gravel from the quarries of Connaght. But she prevailed, and we had our wedding, God help her, her numerous family ranged on one side of the church, and no one on the other side but my adoptive father, enduring the warlike stares from the other side. My parents were Catholic, which might have stood in their favour, except that they were English Catholics, a people in the eyes of my inlaws more Protestant 115