The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

  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 liceridden, 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.

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  If you are reading this, then the mouse, the woodworm and the beetle must have spared these jotters.

  What can I tell you further? I once lived among humankind, and found them in their generality to be cruel and cold, and yet could mention the names of three or four that were like angels.

  I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us, and yet aren’t like them. If our suffering is great on account of that, yet at close of day the gift of life is something immense. Something larger than old Sligo mountains, something difficult but oddly bright, that makes equal in their fall the hammers and the feathers. And like the impulse that drives the old maid to make a garden, with a meagre rose and a straggling daffodil, gives a hint of some coming paradise.

  All that remains of me now is a rumour of beauty.

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  chapter twenty-one

  Dr Grene’s Commonplace Book

  Well, I finally made my trip over to Sligo, having found a gap in all these preparations for leaving the hospital. Such a short journey really, and yet I have rarely made it over the years. Beautiful spring day. Yet even on such a day, Sligo Mental Hospital looked so gloomy, with its unpromising twin towers. It is a vast building. In common parlance it is called the Leitrim Hotel, as Roseanne explained to me, since half of Leitrim is said to be in it. But that no doubt is just a regional prejudice.

  Considering I was once so friendly with Percy Quinn I suppose it is strange that we have not really kept in touch, with so few miles between us. Some friendships though, even strong and interesting ones, seem to have quite a short term, and cannot be prolonged. Nevertheless Percy, with his receding hair and a new plumpness I didn’t remember, was exceedingly cordial when I found his office, which occupies one of the towers. I don’t know much about his reputation, how progressive he is, or to what degree he sits back and lets things take their course, as I am afraid I have often been guilty of myself, I do believe. Not that I would confess this anywhere but here, but I am sure St Peter is taking notes against me.

  ‘I was very sorry to hear about your loss,’ he said. ‘I was intending to come over for the service, but I just could not make it that day.’

  ‘Oh, that’s fine, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ Then I didn’t know what to say. ‘It went off very well.’

  ‘I don’t think I knew your wife, did I?’

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  ‘No, no, I’m sure not. After your time.’

  ‘Well, so you’re on the hunt?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’ve been trying to assess the patient I wrote to you about, Roseanne Clear, for various reasons, and as she is very unforthcoming I have had to try and be a bit devious, and go round the back of the houses, as it were.’

  ‘I’ve been digging a bit for you,’ he said. ‘Found a few things. Actually, it began to intrigue me. I suppose everyone has mysteries in their lives. Look, will I call Maggie and get her to bring us up some tea?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘Not for me anyway. Perhaps yourself?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said briskly. ‘First thing that might interest you. There are RIC police records remaining. They were in the town hall, would you believe. The name you gave me was Joseph Clear, wasn’t it? And yes, there was a record of that name, in the nineteen-tens or twenties I think it was.’

  I was disappointed, I must confess. I think I hoped that Roseanne’s denial would have proven correct. But there it was.

  ‘I suppose that was the same man,’ said Percy.

  ‘It’s not a very common name.’

  ‘No. And then I was looking again at what we had besides the very quaint account of that Fr Gaunt fella, which I re-read. You were concerned that she had killed her child, wasn’t that it?’

  ‘Well, not concerned as such. Trying to establish the truth of it, because she denies it.’

  ‘Oh? That’s interesting. What does she say about it?’

  ‘I asked her what became of the baby, since Fr Gaunt had mentioned it, and it was no doubt the crowning reason she was committed here, and she said the child was in Nazareth, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.’

  ‘Yes, well, I think I know what she is trying to say. The orphanage here in Sligo was called Nazareth House. It doesn’t 270

  have orphans any more, it’s mostly an old persons’ home now, but I try to refer people there if I can, rather than . . . You know.’

  ‘Oh, I see, well, that fits all right.’

  ‘Yes, it does. And, I must say, it would have been very unfair, unlawful even, of Fr Gaunt, to suggest something so terrible if he knew it to be untrue. I am searching in my mind for an interpretation of his words. I can only conclude that he meant killed it spiritually. In those days of course the illegitimate child was thought to carry the sin of his mother. This may have been what our enterprising cleric meant. Let us be generous in retrospect. That is, if it turned out she didn’t kill the child of course.’

  ‘Do you think I could go over to Nazareth House and ask them if they have any records?’

  ‘Well, I think you could. They used to be very closed of course, about these matters, unless you knew how to prise them open. Their instinct I am sure is still to secrecy, but like many of these institutions, they have been assailed in recent times with accusations of one sort and another. There are many Nazareth Houses, and some of them have been accused of rather terrible cruelty in the past. So you may find them more helpful than you might have expected. And they’re used to dealing with me. I find them always very helpful. Nuns, of course. They were a mendicant order originally. A noble concept, really.’

  Then he said nothing for a bit. He was ‘cogitating’ as Bet used to say.

  ‘There was another thing,’ he said. ‘In the interests of openness on my own part I think I can tell you. Unfortunately it was part of our confidential records. Internal inquiries, you know, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I said, gingerly enough.

  ‘Yes. In regard to your patient. There was a man here called Sean Keane, an orderly, a bit funny in the head himself apparently, to use layman’s terms for a moment, who made a com271 plaint against another orderly. Now, this of course is long ago, in the late fifties even, I didn’t even recognise the name of the man keeping the notes, Richardson was his name. Sean Keane accused this
other man Brady of menacing and I fear molesting your patient over quite a long period. She is described as a person of ‘quite exceptional beauty’, if you don’t mind. You know, William, I could tell even from the scurry of the writing, that the notemaker was reluctant to write any of this. Not much has changed, I hear you say.’

  But I had said nothing. I nodded to encourage him.

  ‘Anyway, I think it was decided at this point to move your patient to Roscommon, and let the dust settle over the matter.’

  ‘What happened to the alleged molester?’

  ‘Well, that was rather tragic, because he stayed here till retirement, I could trace his presence quite plainly right to the end of the seventies. But, you know.’

  ‘I do know. It is all very difficult.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Percy. ‘The boat is always in the middle of a storm and one tries not to rock it further.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Not too surprisingly also, Sean Keane disappears with Roseanne Clear from the records, so they must have let him go. Richardson no doubt opting for peace of a sort.’

  The two of us sat there then, contemplating this, maybe both of us wondering if indeed anything much had changed.

  ‘Her mother died in here. Did you know that? 1941.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Severely deranged.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. I’d no idea.’

  ‘It’s funny that our hospitals are so close and we never see each other,’ he said then.

  ‘I was just thinking that as I drove over.’

  ‘Well, such is life.’

  ‘Such is life,’ I said.

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  ‘I am very glad you came over today,’ he said. ‘We should try and make a habit of it.’

  ‘Thank you for looking into this for me. I’m really grateful, Percy.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll give Nazareth House a ring and tell them to expect you, and who you are, and whatnot. All right?’

  ‘Thank you, Percy.’

  We shook hands warmly, but not all that warmly, I thought. There was a hesitation in both of us. Life, indeed.

  The part of Nazareth House I was directed into was new, but still seemed to have acquired a certain institutional grimness, if not as grim as the old asylum. When I was a very young man I thought places for the sick and mad should be made very bright and attractive, given a sort of festiveness to alleviate our human miseries. But maybe these places are like animals and cannot change their spots and stripes no more than leopards and tigers. The keeper of records was a nun, like me in advanced middle age if not old age, wearing her relaxed modern gear. I had half expected wimples and robes. She said good Percy had already rung and given her details of names and dates and that she had some information for me. ‘News’, she called it.

  ‘But you will have to go to England if you really want to pursue this,’ she said.

  ‘England?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with her unplaceable country accent which I placed nonetheless as maybe Monaghan, or even further north. ‘There is a reference here all right, but all the documents relating to these names are in our house in Bexhill-on-Sea.’

  ‘What are they doing over there, Sister?’

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  ‘Well, I don’t know, but as you are aware these are old matters, and you may find out more in England.’

  ‘But is the child still alive? Was there a child that came here?’

  ‘There is a reference against the name, and it was the particular case of one of our sisters in Bexhill, Sr Declan, who was from here of course. She is dead now, may she rest in peace. Of course, Dr Grene, she was a McNulty. Did you know old Mrs McNulty was with us here in old age? Yes. She was ninety when she died. I have her records in front of me, God rest her. God rest them both.’

  ‘Is it possible for you to telephone them?’

  ‘No, no, these matters are not matters for the phone.’

  ‘It was Mrs McNulty’s daughter that was a nun in England?’

  ‘That’s exactly it. She was a great friend of the order. She had a bit to leave and she left it to us. She was a very great lady and I remember her well. A tiny little woman with the kindest face you ever saw, and always trying to do the good thing by everybody.’

  ‘Well, I am sure,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes. She wanted to take the veil herself but couldn’t do it while her husband was alive, and then didn’t he live till he was ninety-six, and then of course there were the sons. They mightn’t have liked it. Do you mind me asking if you are a Catholic, Dr Grene? I think by your accent you’re English.’

  ‘I am a Catholic, yes,’ I said, easily, without embarrassment.

  ‘Then you will know how odd we are,’ said the little nun.

  I drove back here in a strange state of mind. I thought how curious it was how people leave a few traces as they go, that can be looked at and puzzled over, but whether ever properly understood, I doubted. It seemed Roseanne had indeed suffered greatly, as I had feared. How terrible to lose her child, 274

  however that had happened, and then to be subjected to the attentions of some miserable bastard who looked on her merely as an opportunity for his pleasure. I could suspect also that having been parted from her baby, or having lost it, or even killed it if Fr Gaunt is accurate after all, she might also have finally been parted from her wits. Such traumas might very well have brought on quite a radical psychosis. She would have been well nigh a sitting duck for any unpleasant element among the staff, with her ‘exceptional beauty’. God help her. I thought of the sere old lady in the room here in Roscommon. Professional man though I am, I confess to feeling very sorry for her. And retrospectively, rather guilty. Yes. Because for one thing I would probably have been inclined to do the same as Richardson.

  On the other hand, I was thinking, as I drove, it was unlikely I would find the time to go to England. And I was wondering to myself, what in the name of God are you doing anyway, William? You know you are not going to recommend putting her back in the community. She will have to be transferred somewhere (note: not Nazareth House in Sligo, and not Sligo Psychiatric Hospital, all things considered) because she is surely too old now for anything else. So why was I pursuing it? Well, the truth is, it has been a great comfort. Also, there has been something about it that I have found almost irresistible. I think I must classify the whole impulse as a form of grieving. Grieving for Bet, and for the nature of lives in general. For the lot of human creatures generally. But, I was thinking, England is a step too far, though I must say I would like to find out the truth of Roseanne’s child, or no child, having come this far. But the work load at the present time is much too great (I am trying to write down a version of my active thoughts in the car, never an easy thing), and maybe, since the most crucial and important parts of life seem after all to have the characters of sleeping dogs, I should let them lie. It is all old history and 275

  what would it serve now to dig it up? And then the real thought struck me. That I have been looking at this from all the wrong angles. Because if there is a record of this child, would it not be a great comfort to Roseanne to know this, even if the person is uncontactable – to know ‘before she dies’ that she put someone safely into the world after all? Or would this be just further mental mayhem and trauma? Would she want to be in touch with this person, and would this person – oh, the proverbial Pandora’s box. Well, well, I have no time anyway, I was thinking. But I will lay this quest down reluctantly. Then I parked my car as usual and went into the hospital. I took an account of the day from the day nurse and among other things she told me that Roseanne Clear’s breathing had worsened and they had been even afraid to move her down to the medical ward, she was so delicately balanced between life and death, but they had managed it under Dr Wynn’s supervision, and she was on an oxygen mask. The lungs need a 98 per cent function to have sufficient exchange of gases properly to aerate the blood, and she has only about 74 per cent, s
uch is the congestion. Although at the end of the day she is ‘just another patient’ I have to say this was very worrying and discommoding. I hurried to the ward nearby as if she might be already perished and was unaccountably very relieved to find her alive, if unconscious and with an unpleasant sound to her breathing. After a while sitting there I began to feel very idle, because there would be papers to attend to in my office. So I went in there and attacked the pile. At the bottom of the forms and letters was a package, a sheaf of papers in a large used envelope, in fact an envelope I had opened a few days ago and thrown in my waste-paper basket. Someone had fished it out again and put in these pages. They were written in blue biro, in a very neat small hand that required me to put my reading glasses on, something of course that I try not to do, out of mere vanity. It didn’t take long to realise that it was an account of 276

  Roseanne’s life, written it would seem by herself. I was absolutely amazed. I was instantly but rather strangely glad I had not pressed my advantage that day when she told me she had had a child. Because here was everything anyway, without the sense that I had forced her to ‘betray’ herself, using all the wiles and tricks of my training. I knew I wouldn’t have time to read it properly until I was in my house that night (yesterday), but already I could see she offered information freely, in such strong contrast to her spoken answers to me. But also, where had it come from? And who had put it on my table, certainly not herself, surely? I was honour bound to suspect John Kane, as he was the person most usually in her room. Or one of the nurses. Of course, with all the kerfuffle today in her room, it might have been anybody. I called through to the nurses’ room and asked if anyone knew anything about it. Doran, a reasonably able and pleasant man, said he would ask around. Where was John Kane? I asked. Doran said Kane was home at his little flat in the old stableyard behind the institution (also due to be knocked down shortly). He said John Kane had been feeling poorly and after a morning’s work, had asked to be let go to lie down. Dr Wynn had excused him readily. John Kane of course is not a well man.