Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

'The mother?'

'Yes, yes, the mother.'

'And what in the name of God does she say?'

'Roseanne,' he said, fiercely, quietly, 'there's things about the mother you don't understand. There's things about her I don't understand. She's had her own vicissitudes when she was a child. The result is, she knows her own mind.'

'Vicissitudes? What vicissitudes?'

He was almost hissing now when he spoke, seemingly in a ferment not to be heard, but also, to impress something on me that was maybe impossible to impress.

'Old stuff. She's determined that Tom will make good, because, because – ould reasons, ould reasons.'

'You're talking like a lunatic,' I shouted. I might have burned him with a burning stick.

'But look, but look, the whole thing may blow over,' he said.

Somehow in my heart of hearts I knew if I turned about and left that dancehall that 'the whole thing' would most certainly not blow over. There is a moment to speak to a topic, just like there is a moment for every song, no matter how rare. This was a rare moment in a life and I knew that if I could just see Tom, or rather, just let him see me, the woman he loved so greatly, desired, revered and loved, everything would be all right, eventually.

But Jack was barring my way. No doubt about it. He was standing just a little sideways to me, like a salmon fisherman about to cast out across the stream, leaning his weight on his left foot.

Jack wasn't a bastard, he wasn't a cruel man. But in that instance he was a brother, not a brother-in-law.

He was also a mighty big obstacle. I tried to surge forward, to go past him by mere force of will, a substance much softer than he was trying to go through him. He was hardened by his sojourns in Africa, it was like hitting a tree, he put his arms around me as I tried to break away down the hall, and I was screaming, screaming for Tom, for mercy, for God. His arms closed around my waist, closed tight tight around, hamma-hamma tight, to use the words he had learned in Africa, the pidgin English he liked to mimic and mock, he drew me to him, so that my bottom was fastened into his lap, docked there, held tight, fast, impossible to get away, like a weird love embrace.

'Roseanne, Roseanne,' he said. 'Will you whisht, woman, whisht.'

Myself roaring and caterwauling.

That's how much I loved Tom and my life with Tom. That's how much I baulked at and hated the future.

Back in the corrugated-iron hut I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to bed to sleep but there was no sleep. A cold creeping feeling came into my brain, lending a physical pain, as if someone were opening the back of my grey matter with the sharp sharp blade of a tin opener. Hamma-hamma sharp.

There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures. The pain of childbirth is said to be one, but I cannot agree there. And the pain of whatever had happened to me is certainly not one either. Even as a sere old crone in this room I can still remember it. Still feel a shadow of it. It is a pain that removes all other things except itself, so that the young woman lying there in her marriage bed was just all pain, all suffering. I was drenched in a strange sweat. The chief part of the pain was caused by the enormous panic that nothing would ever arrive, no circus, Yankee cavalry, human agency, to relieve it. That I would always be sweltering in it.

And yet I suppose it was of no importance. In that I was of no account in the world, in a time of dark suffering much greater than mine, if the ordinary history of the world is to be believed. This comforts me to think of now, curiously enough, but not then. What would have comforted that writhing woman in a lost bed in the lost land of Strandhill I do not know. If I were a horse they would have shot me out of mercy.

It is no small thing to shoot a person, yet in those days it seemed to be considered a thing of small account. Generally, in the world. I know Tom was gone shortly with the General out to Spain to fight for Franco, and there was a lot of shooting there. They drove men and women to the edges of scenic abysses and shot them, and let them fall away into those fathomless places. The abyss really was both history and the future. They shot people into the ruin of their country, into the moil and the ruin, just like in Ireland. In the civil war we shot enough of each other to murder the new country in its cradle. Enough and more.

I am speaking for myself, as I see things now. I didn't know much about such things then. I had seen murder though, with my very eyes. And I had seen how murder could travel sideways and take other lives all unbeknownst. The very cleverness and spreadingness of murder.

Next morning it was an absurdly beautiful day. A sparrow had got into the house and was very dismayed and alarmed to see me when I came into the empty sitting room from the bedroom. I walked it into a corner, took its wild beating self into my hands, like a flying heart it seemed, brought it to the door which I had forgotten to close in my strange grief the night before, and walked out onto the porch, raised my arms, and released the little useless grey bird back into the sunshine.

As I did this, Jack McNulty and Fr Gaunt were coming up the road towards me.

As priests felt in those times that they owned the new country, I suppose Fr Gaunt felt he also owned the iron hut, and at any rate he walked straight in, and chose a rickety chair, not speaking a word yet, Jack striding in after him, and myself nearly backing into a corner like the sparrow. But I did not think somehow they would gather me in their hands and let me go.

'Roseanne,' said Fr Gaunt.

'Yes, Father.'

'It's been a little while since we spoke last,' he said. 'Yes, a little while.'

'You've been through a few changes since, I suppose that is true to say. And how is your mother, I haven't seen her either this long time?'

Well, I didn't think that needed answering, it was him had wanted to commit her to the asylum, and anyway I couldn't have answered it even if I had wanted to. I didn't know how my mother was. I suppose that was evil of me not to know. But I didn't. I hoped she was all right, but I didn't know if she was. I thought I knew where she was, but I didn't know how she was.

My poor beautiful mad ruined mother.

And of course I started to cry. Not for myself strangely enough, though I am sure I could have, with capital and interest, but no, not for myself. For my mother? Who can really itemise the cause of our human tears?

But Fr Gaunt wasn't interested in my stupid crying.

'Em, Jack here wishes to represent a certain family angle on things, isn't that correct, Jack?'

'Well,' said Jack. 'We want to keep the party clean. We want to act the white man here. Everything has a solution, no matter how knotted it has become. I believe this to be true. Often in Nigeria there have been problems that seemed insurmountable, but with a certain flair of application…Bridges over rivers that change their course every year. That sort of thing. Engineering has to meet all these problems.'

I stood there patiently enough and listened to Jack. Actually it probably qualified as the longest speech he had ever made to me, or at least in my presence, or my vague direction anyhow. He was looking very shaven, spruce, clean, his leather collar up, his hat set at a perfect angle. I knew from Tom that he had been drinking spectacularly for a few weeks past, but he didn't look at all unwell. He was engaged to be married to his Galway girl, and that, said Tom, had put him in a bit of a manly panic. He was going to marry her and bring her out to Africa with him. Tom had shown me pictures of Jack's bungalow in Nigeria, and Jack with groups of men, both white and black. Indeed I had been intrigued, enchanted maybe was the word, to see Jack in his nice open shirt and white trousers, with a cane, and in one picture there was a black man, maybe an official also, though not in an open shirt, but a full black suit, with waistcoat, and stiff collar and tie, in what degree of heat I did not know, but looking quite cool and confident. Then there was a picture of Jack with a crowd of nearly naked men, dark dark dark black, the lads maybe that had dug the canals there that Jack was building, long straight canals Tom had said, going off upcountry to bring the longed-for water to distant farms. Jack, the saviour of Nigeria, the bringer of water, the builder of bridges.