The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

‘No lap, no lap.’

  ‘For to be sitting babies on,’ said Tom helpfully, but it didn’t help me at all.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  There was a curious skein of whiteness on her features, like a sprinkle of halfhearted snow on a roadside. Perhaps it was a powder she used. The sunlight that the day outside virtually dumped into the room had betrayed it.

  I must be careful to write of her fairly.

  Then Old Tom sat me down on one of the lumpy chairs. Each arm had a little mat with flowers worked into it in simple threads. It was bare, neat work. Mrs McNulty put herself on the couch, where beside her rose a little mound of books, which I detected to be her scrapbooks. For the moment she left them severely alone, like a chocolate addict torturing herself near a chocolate bar. Old Tom pulled up a wooden chair in front of me. He was as jolly as you would like. In his hands he clasped a little flute or piccolo, and without further ado he began to play an Irish tune on it, with his famous mastery. Then he stopped, and laughed, and played another one.

  ‘How are you on the cello?’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’

  Of course piccolos and cellos were never played by him in the band, and it was as if, instead of conversation, he was talking to me through these more exotic instruments. But what he was trying to say eluded me. We had often spoken at the Plaza, but these exchanges seemed worthless here. I might as well have never met him in my life. It was very strange. Mrs McNulty made a huh noise, and got up, and drifted away from the room. It might have meant anything, that noise, 160

  and I was hoping it was just a characteristic ejaculation, as the old novels used to say. Old Tom got through a little more of his repertoire, then he got up also, and left the room. Then Tom left the room. He didn’t even look back at me.

  So I sat in the room. It was just me and the room and the echo of Old Tom’s music and the other echo that Mrs McNulty had left behind her, something quite as enigmatic as a scrap of O’Carolan.

  Tom came back eventually and came over and helped me to my feet. He didn’t say anything, just widened his face a moment, as if to say, Well, there you are, what can you do. We walked out onto the Strandhill Road where the bungalow was just one of four or five similar properties on an acre each. There was something half-done about that road, halffinished, and something very much half-done about meeting Mrs McNulty.

  ‘Did she not like me?’ I said.

  ‘Well, well, she is concerned about your own mother. Well, she might be said to take a professional interest in that. But it isn’t the main thing. No. And I thought it might be. But no. The mother is very religious,’ said Tom. ‘That’s the real difficulty.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, linking his arm. He smiled at me gently enough, and we were trotting along fairly nicely, approaching all the while the older narrower streets of the town’s edge.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘She would like you to talk to Fr Gaunt, if that would be possible.’

  ‘For what?’ I said. So she was a friend of Fr Gaunt, I thought, oh God.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘All the what’s-it and to-do of these things. Yes. Decree of bloody Ne temere, you know, and all that. Bugger now, I couldn’t care if you were a Hindu, but, you see, it’s the Presbyterian angle, you know. Oh, Jesus, I don’t think she ever had a Protestant before set foot in her house, that’s for sure and certain. By Jesus.’

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  ‘But me, does she like me at all?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘she didn’t say that at all. It was like a committee meeting in the scullery, formal, you know.’

  Tom had not asked me to marry him or anything and yet I knew all this talk was something to do with marrying. I suddenly myself didn’t want to marry him, or anyone, or be asked. I was in my early twenties and those times you were an old maid by twenty-five, you wouldn’t get a hunchback to marry you then. There were far more girls than men in Ireland those times. Women were wiser and went off to America and England double-quick, before their boots were sunk and stuck for good in the mire of Ireland. America was crying out for women, we were as good an export as gold to America. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds went, every blessed year. Lovely women, round women, small, ugly, strong, exhausted, youthful, ancient, every damn category. Freedom I suppose they were after, following their instincts. They’d rather be maids in America than old maids in bloody Ireland. I suddenly had a strong, a fervent, almost a violent wish to join them. It was the smell of that lamb was in my clothes, and only a sea-voyage across the Atlantic I thought would shift it. Now, but you see, I loved that Tom. God help me.

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  chapter fifteen

  Dr Grene’s Commonplace Book

  Curious and upsetting news today about John Kane. At a staff meeting we were trying to field a report from one of the wards. A relative had found one of the patients in some distress, the patient in question being quite a young Leitrim woman, by comparison with the ageing population here, early fifties I should think. She is a woman that came in only recently, having suffered a psychotic episode involving her being the new female Messiah who had failed to save the world, and must therefore scourge herself. She had used barbed wire for this purpose. All this in the setting of a perfectly ordinary Leitrim farm, and a perfectly ordinary and seemingly happy marriage. So already a tragedy. But the relative, I think her sister, had found her quite distracted in her room the other morning, with her hospital gown drawn up, and a bit of worrying blood on her legs. Not very much, just a smattering. And of course the worst was suspected, as it always is, and hence the staff meeting. All thoughts turned to John Kane because of course he has been implicated in such matters before, and let off. On the other hand he is so ancient, is he still capable? I suppose a man is always capable. But there is no proof, nothing, and we must simply all be vigilant.

  I was struck again how terrified everyone always is at these staff meetings, at events in the hospital requiring any sort of outside airing. Of anything having to be mentioned to the visiting professionals in any capacity whatsoever. Even when the kitchen manages to create a mild case of food poisoning on a ward, there is exactly the same level of fear as there was this 163

  morning. The staff seems to gather together and roll itself into a ball, needles outward. I must confess I feel the same myself. Perhaps it would shock an outsider the level of things going wrong we feel we can tolerate, even of catastrophe. Nevertheless it is a profound instinct, especially I think in a mental institution, where the work is in itself often so onerous, even bizarre. Where distress can be measured to the degree of hurricane and tsunami on a daily basis. Things are best handled in-hospital. However I don’t know how the relative will feel about this.

  Very strange to remind oneself that soon all of this, these individuals, these very rooms, these very matters, will be dispersed to the four winds at the demise of the hospital. Strangely enough this comes in the same week as John Kane being diagnosed with a return of his throat cancer. Not that he was told that, no. He has increasing difficulty swallowing, that’s all he knows about it. This would be quite sad for him, if it wasn’t for this other matter. If the other matter is true of course we must hope he will die roaring, as Irish people say. He is old enough though for such a cancer to move very slowly. How old though, I could not find out. By his own admission, he has no birth certificate, having been brought up somewhere by adoptive parents. Well, we have that in common, and hopefully little else. The reason he is still working seems to be that no one has thought to retire him, since his age has never registered. Furthermore his job is so menial it would be almost impossible to fill, as it is doubtful even a willing person from China or Bosnia or Russia would take it. John Kane himself shows no desire to lay down his brush of his own free will. And he insists on climbing the stairs to Roseanne’s room, though the climb knocks the wind out of him, and he was told he could leave it to someone else. Oh no, he went into a muttering ‘thunderousness’ about that. Because of Bet, I must admit I put my mind only lightly to 164
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  these matters. At least, I attempted lightness. My head is already stuffed with grief I suppose like a pomegranate with its red seeds. I can only bleed grief, having no room for more. While the registrar and the nurses spoke about the poor molested patient, if that is what happened to her, my own head was roaring. I sat there among them with a roaring head. Then I went up to Mrs McNulty’s room and sat with her a while. It seemed like the logical thing to do. Even if it is the logic of poor Mr Spock, who feels nothing. But I was feeling plenty. I didn’t continue with my investigation into her presence in the hospital. I couldn’t. This is a horrible admission, but there it is.

  I sat there in the twilight of her room. I suppose she was watching me. But she said nothing either. I was thinking thoughts that I could not in any case, in any circumstance, have voiced out loud in her presence. Thoughts that are a savage mixture of old desire and continuously new regret. I was trying to sort myself out, as the Yanks say. Because it was another strange night last night. I do not know what I would say to myself if I came to myself for therapy. I mean, I no longer know. There are pits of grief obviously that only the grieving know. It is a voyage to the centre of the earth, a huge heavy machine boring down into the crust of the earth. And a little man growing wild at the controls. Terrified, terrified, and no turning back.

  It’s that banging that has me done in. Such a little thing. But it has thrown my nerves into a sort of hyper-awareness. Nerves! Now I am sounding like a Victorian doctor. But it is something very like Victorian nerves, seances, the intimation of the living, those dying tombs in Mount Jerome cemetery, untouchable because bought in perpetuity, but mouldering, and no one alive to go and rub the brasses. Look on my works, ye mighty, et cetera.

  Last night things took a step forward into the dark. I was 165

  lying in my bed more awake than a dog. Suddenly in the pitch dark, in those un-peopled small hours, Bet’s phone started to ring, I heard it going off above my head. I had got her a second line when she complained I was always on the internet and she couldn’t ever make calls. She said her friends could only leave messages, and that I never gave her the messages. So yes, I got her a second line, expensive though it was. The phone sits there beside her bed. Now it was suddenly ringing, and such a jump I gave, like in a cartoon. Chemically, I suppose it was like an injection of adrenalin into the head, I don’t know. But it was quite sickening, so sudden and so strange. And it rang and rang, of course it did, because there was no one to answer it. I certainly was not going to go up there into that room in the middle of the night. But then it struck me as odd that it didn’t go to message, like it normally did, if Bet was out. I suppose the phone company had discontinued it. Then I had the miserable thought that hadn’t I actually phoned the phone company a few weeks ago and asked for the line to be discontinued? If I had, and I couldn’t really remember, it must be ringing as a result of some sort of fault. Oh, but, to lie there and hear it go on and on.

  Then it stopped. I tried to calm myself, induce myself into feeling relieved. Then the terrible thing happened. Oh, Jesus, yes. I heard it so clearly, above my head, a little muffled because it had to come through the floorboards and the old plaster ceiling, but I heard it, the word ‘Hello?’ It was Bet’s voice. I nearly lost the grip on my bladder I was so startled. I had a vision in my head of a monster wrapping its coils about me, like an anaconda, and starting to squeeze. An anaconda kills by putting such pressure on the inner organs that the heart bursts. That one word nearly burst my heart. I missed Bet so terribly, but in all honesty I did not want to hear her voice, not like that. The living breathing woman, yes, but not that single word floating down to me, piercing down to me. But then I 166

  thought, had there been some awful mistake, had I imagined her dying, or had I buried her alive, and – but I had no time for further madness of that sort, because another word followed, it was my name being called, clear as a bell, ‘William!’

  Oh, Jesus, I thought, it’s for me. Now that in itself was a mad thought. I mean, for heaven’s sake, the call could not have been answered, and therefore, how could it be for me?

  My name had been called. The voice was just as it always had been, the exact same tone, carrying in it that same pulse of impatience, annoyance that I had given her number to someone, and that they were using her line. I didn’t know what to do. ‘What?’ I called up, without even intending to.

  I couldn’t just leave it at that – now here was fresh madness

  – I couldn’t not respond. I got out of bed feeling like a dead man myself, as if I was now in the realm of the dead, or a story by M. R. James himself that Bet so loved. I went out my door with deepest reluctance and walked along the corridor on my bare feet. If she saw me like that, I thought, she would chastise me, going along without my slippers. I reached the little entry to the stairs to the attics, and went up, step by step. I got to the landing where I had found her struggling for life, almost expecting to see her there. I flicked the switch but the bulb must have died without me noting it, because nothing happened. There was a murk of moonlight on the landing, a mere soup of light. I had left her door a little ajar so as not to impede the movement of air in the room, as a precaution against mildew. So I went to the door with slow, leaden steps, and stood there a moment.

  ‘Bet?’ I said.

  Now I was all unhappiness. Whatever chemical is allied to fear

  – adrenalin and its sisters – was drenching my brain. My knees were literally weak, and I felt the contents of my bowels turn to water. I wanted to vomit. Years ago as a boy in the slaughter 167

  house in Padstow I had seen cows going in a queue towards the gun, and watched them pissing and shitting in terror. Now I was just the same. Part of me longed for her to be inside the room, but a far greater part dreaded that same thing, dreaded it like the living are obliged to dread the dead. It is so deep a law of life. We bury or burn the dead because we want to separate their corporeality from our love and remembrance. We do not want them after death to be still in their bedrooms, we want to hold an image of them living, in the full of life in our minds. And yet, suddenly, equally, like the first breeze of an enormous storm, I wanted her to be there, I wanted it. I pushed open the door and stepped in, wanting Bet to be there, wanting to take her in my arms gently in a way I had not done for so many, many years, and laugh and explain to her, explain the folly of my mind, and how I thought she had been dead, and please, please now could she forgive me the stupidity of Bundoran, and could we start again, let’s go on a holiday somewhere, why, to Padstow itself, to see the old house, and eat at the posh new restaurants we heard about, and have a lovely time –

  Emptiness. Of course emptiness.

  I think for someone to have seen me then would have been as if they were seeing a ghost – as if I were the ghost. A wildeyed, foolish sixty-five-year-old man in his dead wife’s bedroom, gone daft from grief, looking as usual for forgiveness and redemption the way normal people look for the time. The default mechanism of most every thought of her. Bet –

  redemption, redeem me, forgive me. When the foul truth is she should have thrown me out.

  I was sitting in Roseanne’s room thinking all this. There was nothing of it I could say to her. I was in a patient’s room, supposedly to assess her for release, ‘back into the community’. One of the inspirations of Mrs Thatcher’s regime in England, a Thatcherite fashion one might say that hasn’t gone away. Roseanne was sitting up in her bed, with that white 168

  mantle thing she wears, that in the half light looks like crumpled wings, the new wings of a butterfly before the blood is pumped into them and, much to the astonishment no doubt of the creature, it can suddenly take wing and fly.

  Assess her. It suddenly seemed so absurd I laughed out loud. The only person’s sanity in doubt in that room was my own.

  Roseanne’s Testimony of Herself

  We were married in Dublin, in the church at Sutton, it was the easiest thing to do. The priest there was a friend of Tom�
��s, they had gone to college at the same time in Dublin, even if different colleges. Tom had only lasted a few months studying law at Trinity College, but long enough to make friends in the city. Tom could fashion a bosom pal out of an afternoon at the races. Whatever needed to be done, licence, banns, whatever you need to do to marry a Presbyterian woman, was done. I suppose the good people of Sutton weren’t too impressed by that particular wedding, but even if it lacked tuck and thunder, there were a few of his other Dublin buddies there, and afterwards we went to Barry’s Hotel for two nights, and on the second night we went to a dance at the Metropole, because Tom knew the bandleader there, and we danced together nearly for the first time. For some strange reason, we had rarely danced together in his own dancehall. I suppose that was odd, I don’t know. Tom seemed quite content in every way and didn’t say a word about not having any of his family there. Jack would have been there only he was in Africa, but he paid for the wedding lunch as a gift to his brother. Tom drank so much whiskey at the lunch he wasn’t up to much in the hotel that night, but he made up for it the night of the dancing. He was the nicest lover. That is the truth.

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  We lay in the dark of the hotel room. Tom had bought a packet of these Russian oval cigarettes at College Green, just beside his old college, and he was smoking one of them. I think I was twenty-five, he was just a little older.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said. ‘It’s very nice up here. I wonder could I ever make a go of it in Dublin?’

  ‘You wouldn’t miss the west?’

  ‘I suppose I would,’ he said, making a swirl of Russian smoke in the gloomy room.

  ‘Tom?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘I do, surely. Certainly I do.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘because I love you.’

  ‘Do you?’ he said. ‘You show very good taste. That’s very wise of you, I must say. Yes.’

  And then he laughed.