Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

Eventually, just as I thought he was going, like those detectives in the old films, he turned about at the door and looked at me and smiled.

'Do you remember Fr Garvey?' he said.

'Fr Garvey?'

'Yes, he used to be the chaplain here. About twenty years ago.'

'Was he the little man with the hairs in his nose?'

'Well, I don't remember the hairs. I was sitting there, and I just remembered, you didn't like him coming to see you. I don't know why I suddenly remembered that. Was there any reason for that?'

'Oh,' I said. 'No. It's just that I don't like the religious.'

'The religious? You mean, people that believe?' 'No, no, priests, and nuns, and such.' 'And is there any reason for that?'

'They are so certain about things, and I am not. It's not because I am Presbyterian. I don't like holy people. He was very kind, Fr Garvey. He said he completely understood,' I said, as indeed he had.

He lingered there in the door. Was he wanting to say something else? I think so. But he didn't, he nodded his head a few times.

'You don't mind doctors, I hope?' he said. 'No,' I said. 'I don't mind doctors at all.' And he laughed, and went out.

Fred Astaire. Not a handsome man. He said himself he couldn't sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs, with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures. When you saw Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth, from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That's the gospel truth. St Fred. Fred the Redeemer.

I could have been praying to him that time.

At the bottom of the mountain I picked a nice smooth stone from the rainy path. It is an old custom to carry up a stone to put on the cairn above. Oh but, yes, I was in a state. Not from the climb, that was going to be nothing to me that time. No, because my head was 'in a whirl' as the bodice-rippers used to say. And I can't say why exactly, only that I knew there was something amiss in what I was doing. The day was absolutely peaceful, absolutely calm, the sky ripped open by scars of blue across the expanse of clouds, but my mood belonged to some other sort of day. When the tempests poured over Knocknarea and flooded down in invisible armies and extravagant dragons onto Strandhill, having it out there between the village houses and the sea. I was bare-armed there as I stooped to pick a stone, even in my unease careful to choose a decent one, bare-armed and bare-hearted.

If my father had his fate I also had my fate I suppose.

Dear reader, I ask for your protection, because I am afraid now. My old frame is actually trembling. It is all so long ago and I am still afraid. It is all so long ago and yet I am stooping still, and feel the stone in my fingers as if it is still then. How is that? Would that I felt that same vigour now, climbing the mountain with so fierce a step. Climbing, climbing, fiercely, fiercely. Perhaps I even feel a shadow of that. My limbs with such heat in them, my skin as smooth as metal, youth unregarded and unprized in me. Why did I know so little? Why do I know so little now? Roseanne, Roseanne, if I called to you now, my own self calling to my own self, would you hear me? And if you could hear me, would you heed me?

About half way up the mountain there was a little crowd of people coming down, I could hear them laughing, and now and then a little rock came speeding down the path. Then they were upon me, all gabardine coats, Trilby hats, scarves, and more laughter. It was one of the better sets in Sligo, and I even knew one of the women, because she had often come into the Cafe Cairo. I even remembered her habitual order and seemingly so did she.

'Hello, hello!' she said. 'Cocoa and a cherry bun, please!'

I laughed. She certainly meant nothing demeaning by it. Her companions looked at me with mild interest, prepared to be friendly if the woman so willed it. She didn't quite introduce me. But in a quiet voice, she said:

'I hear you got married,' she said. 'To our wonderful man at the Plaza. Many congratulations.'

This was nice of her, because the marriage had not exactly been the talk of the town, or if it was, not the nice talk of the town. Let's put it that way. In fact, I am sure it caused a relatively lowscale breeze of scandal, as most things out of the way did in Sligo. It was a very small town under the rain.

'Well, it's good to see you. Have a nice climb. Cheerio.'

And with that slight Englishism she was gone, the plummeting path pulling her away, the hats and scarves sinking quickly down the mountain. And the laughter. I could hear the woman talking in her pleasant voice, maybe filling them in, maybe remarking on the fact that Tom was not with me, I don't know. But it didn't bolster me much in my task.

What was my task? I didn't know. Why was I climbing Knocknarea at the bidding of a man irregular in the recent civil war and maybe just as irregular in his life? A jailbird that was digging Sligo ditches. Who as far as I knew was unmarried and walking out with no one. I knew what it was and how it looked, but I didn't know what drove me up that mountain. It was maybe a sort of infinite curiosity rising out of my love for my father. Needing to be brought again close to his memory, or any memory of him that seemed to make him more present, even the events of that miserable night in the cemetery – both miserable nights.

At the summit there was no one at first sight, except maybe the ancient bones of Queen Maeve under her burden of a million small stones. From far away in the lower fields, by the sea of Strandhill, her cairn looked distinctive but small. Only when I walked up to it on my tired legs did I realise what an enormous thing it was, the labour of a hundred men, gathering from the mountain long ago the strange harvest of fist-sized stone, starting maybe with the queen under a few carefully laid slabs, and slowly, like single turves added to a turf stack, like single events added to an epic story, making the great mound for her to sleep under. I say sleep, but I mean moulder, diminish, vanish into the hill, creeping down in the moisture underground, feeding little diamonds and glints of heather and moss. For a moment I thought I could hear music, a swell of old American jazz, but it was only the bleary wind staggering over the summit. And in the music I heard my name. 'Roseanne!'

I looked around and could see no one. 'Roseanne, Roseanne!'

Now the old childhood fear got a hold of me, as if I might be hearing a voice from the next world, as if the banshee herself might be sitting atop the cairn with her last strands of dusty hair and her hollow cheeks, wanting to add me to the underworld. No, but it wasn't a woman's voice, but a man's, and now as I looked a figure rose from a little enclosure of stones, in black clothes, black hair and a whitened face.

'There you are,' said John Lavelle.

I had taken the time from the clock in the everything shop down in Strandhill village, but I still thought it an unlikely success to have met him here on the barest of information. Sunday at three. If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our destruction.

I walked down to him where he stood. I think I had a great sympathy for him, I think that was it, he having lost his brother in such a terrible fashion. He was like a piece of the history of my childhood that I could not sever myself from. He had an importance whose nature I could not really fathom. It was a sort of dire respect, for him who was only a ditch-digger maybe, but nevertheless for me had an heroic aspect, the prince in beggar's clothing.