Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

'Honeysuckle Rose'. Whap whap whap go the drums and up and down and round the clock go the chords of the guitar. You can drive even the hill boys of Sligo half mad with that song. A dead man would dance to it. A dumb man would cheer the solos.

It was said, at least Tom told me, that Benny Goodman would give a good twenty minutes to that song, at dances. I could well believe it. You could play it all day and still have things to say with it. That was it, you see, it was a speaking song. Even without someone singing the words.

So.

So, I went over there. It was the strangest darkest feeling to do that. To put on what I had of finery there, my best dress, hurriedly dab on some 'slap', comb my hair, fix it, shove on my stage shoes, and all the while breathing in and out a little heavily, then stepping out into the breeze, feeling the chill in it, so that my breast seemed to shrug minutely. But I didn't care about that.

Because I thought it was still possible everything was all right. Why did I think that? Because I had not heard otherwise. I was in the middle of a mystery.

It was early for the dance but there were cars coming out from Sligo already, their big beams like big shovels shovelling the rutted road. Expectant faces in the cars, and lads standing on the running boards now and then. It was a happy sight, the happiest sight in Sligo.

I was feeling more and more like a ghost the nearer I came to the Plaza. Now the Plaza used to be just a holiday house, and they built the hall on at the back, so the front looked just like an ordinary dwelling, except concreted over, erased somehow. There was a nice flag fluttering above the roof, with P-L-A-Z-A written on it. There wasn't much in the way of lights, but who needed lights, when the building was the Mecca of everyone's weekday dreams and thoughts. You could slave all week in a rotten job in the town, but as long as you had the Plaza…It was bigger than religion, I can tell you, the dancing. It was a religion. To be denied the dancing would have been like what's-it, excommunication, to be not allowed the sacraments, like the IRA men in the civil war.

Boys like John Lavelle of course.

'Honeysuckle Rose'. Now the band let that be and began to play 'The Man I Love', which as the world and his brother knows is a slower tune, and I was thinking it wasn't such a good choice for so early in the night. Ever the band member. Every tune is right in the right moment. Some tunes only rarely find their moment, like some ould Christmas song, or slushy old ballads in the deeps of winter when everyone wants to be melancholy. 'The Man I Love' is for the second last dance, or thereabouts, when everyone is weary but happy, and there is a shine on everything, faces, arms, instruments, hearts.

When I entered the hall there were only a few souls dancing. I had been right, it was much too early for that song. But the band all the same had a late-night look to them. Old Tom was playing the solo bit near the start, and then his son was cutting in with the clarinet. It was actually shocking. Maybe the people there noticed also that Tom, my Tom, seemed a little drunk. He was certainly swaying a bit, but he held the music just fine, until suddenly he seemed to stall, and took the beak out of his mouth. The band played the song to the nearest ending, and stopped as well. Their faces looked round at Tom, to see what he wanted to do. Tom placed his instrument down with his usual care, stepped down off the stage, and swayed away backstage, to where our dressing room was. I didn't know whether he had even seen me.

I was going to go in there too. There was only the dancefloor between me and the old curtains that hung across the door. I stepped forward, full of intent, but suddenly there was Jack at my side, his face very stern in the turning shadows.

'What do you want, Roseanne?' he said, the coldest I had ever heard him, and he could be an arctic man.

'What do I want?'

It was funny, I had been so silent for two or three days that my voice almost cracked when I spoke, gghh, like a needle dropped on a record.

I don't suppose anyone was looking at me. We must have seemed like two old friends chatting, as a thousand old friends did there on a Saturday night. What would friendship have done without the Plaza, let alone love?

My stomach was probably empty, but that didn't stop my body from trying to throw up. It was a reaction to the ice in Jack's words. It told me more than any little speech of his could, no doubt the little speech I was about to hear. It wasn't the voice of the executioner, like that Englishman Pierrepoint the Free State government brought over in the forties to hang IRA men, but it was the voice of the judge, announcing my execution. How many murderers and felons already know by the very look on the judge's face, never mind the black cloth shortly put on his head, their fate, even though every fibre of their being cries out against the knowledge, and hope is brought right to the very brink of irrevocable words. The patient staring up into the face of the surgeon. Death sentence. What Eneas McNulty got for his being in the police. Death sentence.

'What do you want, Roseanne?'

'What do I want?'

Then that dry retching. Then people were looking at me. Probably thought I had downed a half bottle of gin too quick, or the like, like nervous dancers did, or dodgy customers as Tom called them. There was nothing to show for my retching, but that didn't stop my grievous embarrassment. Close on the heels of which was a deep deep feeling of something, maybe remorse, maybe self-horror, that bored down into me.

Jack hung back from me as if indeed I were a cliff, or something dangerous that might crumble at the edge, and send him plummeting to his death. The cliffs of Mohar, Dun Aengus.

'Jack, Jack,' I said, but meaning what, I didn't know.

'What's going on with you?' he said. 'What's going on with you?'

'Me? I don't know. I feel sick.'

'No, not now, not fucking now, Roseanne. What have ya been up to?'

'Why, what's they saying I was up to?' Now, that didn't even sound like English to me. What's they saying. Like some old Black song from the Southern States. But Jack didn't say. 'Can I go back and see Tom?' I said. 'Tom doesn't want to see you.' 'Of course he does, Jack, he's my husband.' 'Well, Roseanne, we'll have to see about that.' 'What do you mean, Jack?'

Then suddenly he wasn't icy any more. Maybe he remembered other days, I don't know. Maybe he remembered I was always friendly to him, and respectful of his achievements. I liked Jack, God knows. I liked his sternness and his queer quick gaiety now and then, when he would suddenly shake out his legs, and do what he called an African dance. At a party as may be, just all of a sudden, no warning, an enormous gaiety that would seem to get a hold of him and sweep him all the way to Nigeria. I liked him, with his nice coats and his even nicer hats, his thin gold watchchain, his car that was always the best car in Sligo, bar the big saloons of the toffs.

'Lookit, Roseanne,' he said. 'It's all very complicated. There's a book opened for you up at the shop in Strandhill. You won't starve.'

'What?'

'You won't starve,' he said.

'Look,' I said, 'there's no reason for me not talking to Tom. Just to have a word. This is what I came down to do. I don't expect to – to play in the band, for God's sake.'

This was not very logical, and I do believe I shouted the last few words. This was not a good move with Jack, who was so extremely selfconscious, and hated a scene above all else. I don't suppose his precious Galway girl ever made a scene. Nevertheless Jack kept his cool, and came a few inches closer to me.

'Roseanne, I've always been a friend to you. Trust me now, and go back to the house. I'll be in touch. This whole thing may blow over yet. Just calm down and go back to the house. Go on, Roseanne. The mother has spoken on this matter and there's no going against the mother.'