Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

I tell you this, you.

Dear reader. God keep you, God keep you.

Or should I really go around those nuns? Perhaps I can linger a moment with such savagery and modesty mixed. No, no, I will go around them. Although many times in later years I had a dream of them coming to rescue me, like a herd of lotus blossoms with their white headdresses, pouring down Sligo Main Street, nothing of the sort of course ever happened. And I don't know why I thought there was a basis for such a dream, as I don't remember any instance of favour while I was among them. And of course, as my history would have it, I was gone from them entirely then by age sixteen.

Memories that I have of Fr Gaunt are always curiously precise and full, lit brightly, his face clear and intense. As I sit here writing away, I can actually see him behind my eyes, in this instance on the day he came to me with his own version of rescue.

I knew I had to leave school immediately on my father's death, because my mother's wits were now in an attic of her head which had neither door nor stair, or at least none that I could find. If we were to eat, I must find work of any kind.

Fr Gaunt arrived one day in his accustomed sleek soutane -I do not mean this critically – and as it was raining with that special Sligo rain that has made bogland of a thousand ancient farms, he was also covered in a sleek dark-grey coat of similar shiny material. Perhaps the skin of his face was also made of it, anciently, in his mother's womb. He carried a highly ecclesiastical umbrella, like something real and austere, that said its prayers at night in the hatstand.

I let him in and sat him in the parlour. My father's piano still remained, itself as animate as the umbrella, standing there against the wall, as if actively remembering my father somewhere in the brainways of its strings and keys.

'Thank you, Roseanne,' said Fr Gaunt, as I handed him a cup of tea I had heroically made out of a farthing of tea sadly already used three times. But I hoped it had one last squeeze of essence in it, come all the way from China after all, in Jackson's tea ship. We got our tea from the corner, not from the great emporium of Blackwood's, where the toffs shopped, so maybe it wasn't the best tea to begin with. But Fr Gaunt sipped it politely.

'Have you a drop of milk?' he said, kindly, kindly.

'No, Father.'

'No matter, no matter,' he said, regretfully enough. 'Now, Roseanne, you and I have things to talk about, things to talk about.'

'Oh, Father?'

'What will you do now, Roseanne, now that your poor father is gone?'

'I will leave school, Father, and get a job in the town.' 'Will you be advised by me?'

'Oh?' I said.

He drank his tea for a few moments and smiled his priestly smiles, a little repertoire indeed. I know even at this distance that he was trying to do his duty, to be kind, to be helpful. I know this.

'You have, Roseanne, various aspects to yourself, certain obvious gifts if I may say so, of…'

Just for the moment he didn't say what. I sensed that the what of this was something not completely delicate. He was looking in his arsenal of sentences for the correct sentences. He was certainly in no way being unpleasant, nor seeking to be. In fact I think he would have died before he would have offered anything unpleasant.

'Beauty,' he said.

I looked at him.

'The gift of beauty. Roseanne, I think without too much trouble I could – of course bearing in mind the opinion of your mother, and even yourself, although I must still account you almost a child, if I may so, and in grave, gravest need of advice, if I may say – but what was I saying? Oh, yes, that I think here in the town I could find you very quickly, very smartly, easily and in the nicest manner possible, a husband. Of course, there would be certain things to do first.'

Fr Gaunt was as they say warming to his theme. The more he spoke the easier the words came, all nice and milky and honey-touched. Like many a man in authority, he was sublimely happy as long as he was presenting his ideas, and as long as his ideas were meeting with agreement.

'I don't think…' I said, trying to roll back this great boulder of good sense he was pushing on my head – it felt like.

'Before you say anything about this, I know you are only sixteen, and it might not be the usual thing to marry so young, but on the other hand, I have in mind a very suitable man, who I think would have a great regard for you, maybe already has, and is in steady employ, and would be in a position therefore to support you – and your mother of course.'

'I can support us,' I said, 'I am sure I can,' I said, and less sure of anything in my life I had never been.

'You may know this man already, he is Joe Brady that now holds your father's former job at the cemetery, a very steady, pleasant, kind man, who lost his own wife two years ago, and will be quite content to marry again. In life we must look for a certain symmetry of things, and as your father once held -Hmm. And he has no children and I am sure…'

Indeed and I knew Joe Brady, the man who had taken my father's job, and come to see him buried. Joe Brady as far as I knew or could tell was about fifty years of age.

'You'd have me marry an old man?' I said, in my innocence. Because, since he was offering such magnanimous charity, I could hardly expect a man under thirty I suppose. If I wanted a man.

'Roseanne, you are a very lovely young girl, and as such I am afraid, going about the town, a mournful temptation, not only to the boys of Sligo but also, the men, and as such and in every way conceivable, to have you married would be a boon and a rightness very complete and attractive in its – rightness.'

His eloquence had momentarily failed perhaps because he had glanced at my face. I don't know what my face was showing but it wasn't agreement.

'And naturally, I would be so pleased, so relieved and delighted to be the agent, the author as one might say, of receiving you into the fold. Which I hope you will see is a politic and indeed marvellous and magical prospect.'

'Fold?' I said.

'You will be very aware, Roseanne, of the recent upheavals in Ireland, and none of these upheavals favour any of the

Protestant sects. Of course I will be of the opinion that you are in gravest error and your mortal soul is lost if you continue where you are. Nevertheless I can say I pity you, and wish to help you. I can find you a good Catholic husband as I say, and he will not mind your origin eventually, as, as I also have said, you are graced if I may say again with so much beauty. Roseanne, you really are the most beautiful young girl we have ever seen in Sligo.'

This he said with such simplicity and transparent – I almost said innocence, but something like innocence – he spoke so nicely I smiled despite myself. It was like getting a compliment from an old lady of distinction in the Sligo Street, a Pollexfen or a Middleton or the like, in her ermine and her nice tweed clothing.

'It is stupid of me to flatter you,' he said. 'All I mean is, if you will let me take you under my wing, I can help you, and I want to help you. I must also add that I held your father in the highest regard, despite his embarrassing me, and indeed had real love for him, because he was a straightforward soul.'

'But a Presbyterian soul,' I said.

'Yes,' he said.

'My mother is Plymouth Brethren.'

'Well,' he said, for the first time with a taint of animosity, 'never mind.'

'But I must mind my mother. And I will. It is my duty as her daughter.'

'Your mother, Roseanne, is a very sick woman.'

All right, I had not heard this expressed, and it shocked me to hear it. But, yes, I knew that to be true.

'More than likely,' he said, 'you will need to commit her to the asylum, I hope I am not shocking you?'