The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ I said, for I knew not what else to say.

  ‘I’m sure you are very hungry after your journey,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I am, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Sr Miriam will see you afterwards.’

  So I ate in some bemusement and when I was finished – the nun seemed to have a sixth sense for this, because no one person could have cleared that spread – I was led deeper into the convent and shown eventually into a smaller room.

  It was a room of the usual filing cabinets. I immediately had a sense of hush and history. I suspected there were some things in these cabinets that people would need lawyers to get at, if even then. And presiding over this was a neat, doughy-faced nun.

  ‘Sr Miriam?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are Dr Grene.’

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘And you have come I believe to consult certain records?’

  ‘Yes, I have some documents with me also, that may help us identify . . .’

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  ‘I received a call from Sligo and I’ve been able to make a start before you came.’

  ‘Oh, I see, she did ring then, I thought she said . . .’

  ‘This file has a dual reference,’ she said, opening a slim folder. ‘The child you are seeking did not stay with us long.’

  I almost said, Thank God, but managed to keep the words in my head only.

  ‘Although the file pertains to quite a long time ago, I understand the mother is still alive, and of course, the child himself . . .’

  ‘So there was a child, is a child?’

  ‘Oh yes, most certifiably,’ she said, smiling broadly. Though I cannot place Irish accents, I inevitably have a go, and was thinking maybe Kerry, or certainly the west. Her slightly official use of words I supposed came from long acquaintance with these records. I must say she was an appealing person, very polite, and seemed intelligent.

  ‘You are with me so far?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘There is a birth certificate,’ she said. ‘There is also the name of the people to whom the child was given in adoption. This latter party however would never have seen the former document, or only briefly. Enough to know the child was Irish, healthy, and Catholic.’

  ‘That sounds sensible,’ I said, rather stupidly I thought, as I heard the words come out. I was actually a little in awe of this woman, there was something formidable about her.

  ‘The thing that gave the community a certain desire to find a good home for the child was of course its relationship to Sr Declan, God rest her. As a young woman I remember her well. She was a lovely west of Ireland person, an enormous credit to her mother and to us. She was in fact in her day the finest mendicant nun in Bexhill. That was a very great achievement. And the orphans in general loved her. Loved her.’

  There was gentle but clear emphasis here.

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  ‘You might want to come out later and see her little grave?’

  said Sr Miriam.

  ‘Oh, I would be delighted . . .’

  ‘Yes. We recognise here at Bexhill that things were very different in the forties, and personally I think it is impossible to travel back in time adequately to appreciate those differences. Even Dr Who himself might find it hard.’ She smiled again.

  ‘There is a great truth in that,’ I said, immediately sounding pompous even to myself. ‘In the arena of mental health. God forbid. But at the same time, one must . . .’

  ‘Do what one can?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To make reparation and undo hurts?’

  I was very surprised to hear her say so.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, flustered by her unexpected honesty.

  ‘I agree,’ she said, and like a cool-handed poker player, laid two documents before me on the desk. ‘This is the birth certificate. This is the adoption paper.’

  I leaned forward, taking out my reading glasses, and looked at the pages. I think for a moment my heart stopped and the blood was suspended in my body. Just for a moment those thousand rivers and streams of blood ceased to flow. Then flowed again, with an almost violent sensation of force and movement. The child’s name was William Clear, born of Roseanne Clear, waitress. The father was given as Eneas McNulty, soldier. The child was given to Mr and Mrs Grene of Padstow, Cornwall, in 1945.

  I sat there before Sr Miriam in a daze.

  ‘Well?’ she said quite gently. ‘So, you didn’t know?’

  ‘No, no, of course not – I am here on official – to help and aid an old lady in my care –’

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  ‘We thought you might know. We didn’t know if you knew.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘There are other things here, notes of conversations between Sr Declan and a Sean Keane in the seventies? Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Keane was anxious to find you and Sr Declan was able to oblige him. Did he ever find you?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Yes.’

  ‘You are very confused and of course that is understandable. It is like the tsunami, no? Something sweeping over you. Carrying people and things with it.’

  ‘Sister, excuse me, I think I am going to be sick. Those cakes . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Just go through there.’

  When I was sufficiently able, there was the bizarre experience of looking at my ‘aunt’s’ grave. Then I left that place and made my way back to London.

  I wished, I wished and I longed for Bet to be still alive so I could tell her, that was my first thought.

  But every subsequent thought I had, I shook my head at it. The other passengers must have thought I had Parkinson’s. No, no, it was impossible. There was no door in my head where the information could go in.

  That old lady, whom I had been barely aware of for years, and yet who had taken such a grip on my imagination in these recent times, that old lady, with her oddness, her histories, her disputed deeds, and yes, her friendship, was my mother.

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  I hurried back, hurried home as one might say. The hours of the journey didn’t bring me much clarity. I was homing though, hurrying, fearful suddenly that she would be dead before I got there. I could not explain to anyone that feeling. Pure feeling, nothing else. Feeling without thought. Just to get there, to keep going and get there. I rushed across Ireland, driving I am sure with certifiable stupidity. I parked clumsily in the carpark of my hospital, and without as much as a greeting to my staff, strode on into the ward where I hoped and prayed she still was. There was a curtain drawn about her bed, although there was no one else in the room. I thought, oh, yes, of course this is the conclusion, she is dead. I looked round the curtain only to see her face quite awake and alive, turning now a few degrees, quizzically to look at me.

  ‘Dr Grene,’ she said. ‘Where have you been? I’m back from the dead, apparently.’

  I tried to tell her, there and then. But I hadn’t the words. I will have to wait for the words, I thought.

  She seemed to sense something, as I lingered at the gap in the curtain. People know more instinctively than they know in their conscious brain (perhaps medically a dubious notion but there it is).

  ‘So, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Have you assessed me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you made your assessment?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I think so.’

  ‘And what is the verdict?’

  ‘You are blameless.’

  ‘Blameless? I hardly think that is given to any mortal being.’

  ‘Blameless. Wrongly committed. I apologise. I apologise on behalf of my profession. I apologise on behalf of myself, as 291

  someone who did not bestir himself, and look into everything earlier. That it took the demolition of the hospital to do it. And I know my apology is useless and disgusting to you.’

  Weak as she was, she laughed.

  ‘But’, she said, ‘that is not true.
They showed me the brochure for the new hospital. I suppose you will let me stay there for a while?’

  ‘It is entirely your decision. You are a free woman.’

  ‘I was not always a free woman. I thank you for my freedom.’

  ‘It is my privilege to pronounce it,’ I said, suddenly very odd and formal, but she took it in her stride.

  ‘Can you step back to the bed?’ she said.

  I did so. I didn’t know what she intended. But she just lifted my hand, and shook it.

  ‘I wonder will you allow me to forgive you?’ she said.

  ‘My God, yes,’ I said.

  There was a short silence then, just enough of a silence for the breath of a dozen thoughts to blow through my brain.

  ‘Well, I do,’ she said.

  The next morning, I went round to the old stableblock. I wanted to ask John Kane while I still could the few questions, with now all the more reason to do so. I knew it was unlikely that he would be able or even willing to answer me. I supposed at the very least I might offer him profoundest thanks, for all his strange work.

  There was absolutely no sign of him. His quarters was a single room with an old-fashioned gramophone sideboard, the sort of one where you had to open the right-hand door for the sound to escape, because the door hid a simple wooden amplifier. There was a collection of 78 records in the niche supplied by the manufacturers (Shepherds, Bristol). It con292 tained Benny Goodman, Bubber Miley, Jelly Roll Morton, Fletcher Henderson, and Billy Mayerl records. Otherwise the room was empty, except for a neat little iron bed, with a coverlet crudely sewn with flowers. I thought immediately of Mrs McNulty’s work as described by Roseanne. I have no doubt that to get his way, or what he thought was the best way to serve Roseanne, he used all the pressure he could bring on the McNultys and their secret. The first wife who did not legally exist, and about whom the second family of Tom McNulty was probably never told. The mad wife who was not a wife, but nevertheless was flesh and blood. I am sure Mrs McNulty and her good daughter went as far as they humanly could to humour John Kane, even to the extent of supplying my new name, and my story up to that point. I do not know what he intended to do after he had found me, and can only suppose that having found out I had miraculously trained as a psychiatrist, he adapted himself to this, and hatched a better plan than the first, which after all, if it was a simple reunion he had in mind, might have resulted in my refusal to see Roseanne, or having seen her, my rejection of her. Because why would I not reject her, when everyone else had?

  Well, I supposed all these things. It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust.

  I should also memorialise a box of Cuban cigars by John 293

  Kane’s bed, which, on opening it, I discovered to be half empty. Or half full.

  Otherwise nothing, except this curious and important little note on top of the gramophone:

  Dear Doctor Green,

  I am not no angel but I took the baby off that island. I run to the doctor with it. I would like to speke to you but I am bound to go. You will ask why I done it all for Roseanne and the anser is because I loved my father. My father was killed by Peerpoint. I got Doc Sing to right you a letter and it was a miracle he did and that you came. I am glad you came. Someday I was going to tell you the truth and now that day is come. You know the truth I am certan and plese now you do do not throw off your mother. No one among us is perfect look at me but that is not the idea. If we do not come to the gates of heaven with love averred, St Peter cannot let us in the gates. Now I say goodbye, Doc, forgive me, and God also forgive me.

  Faithfully,

  Seanín Keane Lavelle (John Kane)

  PS. It is Doran attacked that Leitrim woman, the one that went home safely.

  The other nurses and attendants did not know where he was. It wasn’t as if he had packed a bag, or crept into the woodland behind us to die. There was simply no trace of him. Of course the police were informed and I am sure the gardai are keeping a weather eye out for him, and spot him everywhere and nowhere. Max Doran, the orderly referred to by John Kane, quite a young fellow and rather handsome and who has a girlfriend, confessed privately to me about the Leitrim woman, about which he is obviously ashamed and, more to the point, 294

  worried. He confessed, but then retracted. When the solicitors are ready he will go to trial, which may be some time. As the hospital and its staff are dispersed, I cannot say morale has been harmed. Perhaps something small has been gained. I would like to think it is the start of safety for our patients but alas I am not so great a fool.

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  chapter twenty-two

  Now here is the autumn and she is in good quarters. Purposebuilt, state of the art, really, in truth, an asylum worthy of that ancient and desirable name. No doubt with her great age it is only a matter of time, but then, what is not? Many a good man died long before my own age. Many days she is silent, and difficult, and won’t eat, and asks me brusquely why I have come. Sometimes she tells me she doesn’t need me to come. Like John Kane, I am trying to pick my moment. I see very well the difficulty he had.

  One day as I was going she stood up and came the few inches towards me like a scrap of parchment, embraced me, and thanked me. Even her bones have lost weight. I was so moved I almost told her. But I still did not.

  I think I fear, though she may be satisfied hopefully with me as a doctor and a friend, she may be disappointed with me as a son, as being not sufficient recompense for all her travails – a ridiculous, sober, ageing, confused English Irishman. Furthermore I am terrified of shocking her in the wrong way, medically, psychically. On this I might consult with Dr Wynn, but it might be a shock well beyond the business of medicine, beyond what he knows, and what I know. Something subtle, gentle, and fragile might be broken, beyond our clumsy fixing. The kernel of her endurance. But I believe it will keep, it will keep. The important thing is, she is safe and cared for. And she is free.

  The month after I returned from England the asylum was demolished. They decided to do it by controlled explosion, so that the top four floors would collapse when the ground floor was blown away. That morning it was like going out to see my 296

  life being erased, with wires and dynamite and beautiful calculations. We all stood back on a little hill, about a quarter mile from the building. At the appointed hour the engineer pushed down on the box, and after an eternal second we heard a massive noise and saw the underside of the old building dissolve in a fiery crown of mortar and ancient stone. The huge edifice immediately headed earthward, leaving only a hanging memory of its old positions against the sky line. Behind it was an angel, a great man of fire the height of the asylum, with wings spread from east to west. It was evidently John Kane. I looked about me at my companions and asked them if they saw what I saw. They looked at me as if I was mad, and I suppose, having lost my asylum and now being only the superintendent of an enormous absence, filled by an unlikely angel, I suppose I was. It was of course grief that saw the angel. I know that now. I was thinking I was quite over Bet, Bet was a safe memory, but it was only just beginning. Grief is about two years long, they say, it is a platitude out of manuals for grievers. But we are in mourning for our mothers before even we are born.

  I will tell her. Just as soon as I can find the words. Just as soon as we reach that part of the story.

  Today I drove back to Sligo. At the top of the town I passed the municipal graveyard, and wondered what time had
done to the concrete temple and the acres of graves. I dropped in on Percy after all, and thanked him for helping me. I don’t know if he was surprised. When I told him what had happened he certainly looked at me gobsmacked for a few moments. Then he got up from behind his desk. I was standing by the door, not having been sure whether fully to enter, or half to stay outside, so as not to disturb him.

  ‘My dear man,’ he said.

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  I don’t know, I thought he was going to embrace me. I smiled like a boy, that’s what it felt like, and I gave a laugh of happiness. It was only then really that it hit me. I am content to report that at the centre of it all, given everything, the nature of her history and mine, there was a very simple emotion. I wanted to tell him that I thought it wasn’t so much a question of whether she had written the truth about herself, or told the truth, or believed what she wrote and said was true, or even whether they were true things in themselves. The important thing seemed to me that the person who wrote and spoke was admirable, living, and complete. I wanted to tell him, to confess in a way, that from a psychiatric point of view I had totally failed to ‘help’ her, to prise open the locked lids of the past. But then, my original intention was not to help, but to assess her. All the time I might have helped her, all those years she was here, I had more or less left her alone. I wanted to tell him, she has helped herself, she has spoken to, listened to, herself. It is a victory. And that, in the matter of her father, in the upshot I preferred Roseanne’s untruth to Fr Gaunt’s truth, because the former radiated health. That moreover I believed that if the wonderful Amurdat Singh had not summoned me, I probably would never have practised psychiatry, and did not believe that I had ever been a good psychiatrist, whatever about a good man. That Roseanne had instructed me in the mystery of human silence and the efficacy of a withdrawal from the task of questioning. But I wasn’t able to say these things. Then he made a remark that might have been offensive, but actually I think represented an aperçu on his part, of which he was quite proud, and for which I was quite grateful, in the circumstances.