Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

I pushed in the thick Bakelite bell. It made no sound going in, but on withdrawing, I heard its petulant rattle inside the hall. Nothing happened for a long time. I could hear my own distressed breathing in the close porch. I thought I heard my heartbeat. I thought I could hear my infant's heartbeat, willing me on. I pushed in the fat button again. Would that I were anyone else ringing there, a butcher's boy, a travelling salesman, and not this heavy, panting embarrassment of a creature. I had a vision of Mrs McNulty's miniature form, her neatness, her face as white as the flower honesty, and just as I did, I heard a scuffling the other side of the door, and the door pulled open, and herself in the gap.

She gazed out at me. I don't know if she knew immediately who it was. She might have thought me a beggerwoman, or a tinker, or something escaped from the madhouse where she worked. Indeed I was a sort of beggarwoman, begging another woman to understand my plight. Forsaken, forsaken was the word that began to ring in my head.

'What do you want?' she said, understandably, probably eventually realising it was me, the undesirable woman her son had married and not married. I supposed she had plotted against me years before, but that did not concern me now. I didn't know how many weeks I was. I was almost afraid I would start to bring forth the baby on her doorstep. Maybe better for the baby if I had.

I didn't know what to say to her. I had never known anyone in my situation. I did not know what my situation was. I needed – I desperately needed someone to…

'What do you want?' she said again, as if inclined to shut the door if I didn't speak.

'I'm in trouble,' I said.

'I see that, child,' she said.

I tried to peer into her face. Child. That sounded there in the porch with the force of a beautiful word. 'I am in desperate trouble,' I said.

'You're nothing to do with us any more,' she said. 'Nothing.'

'I know that,' I said. 'But I've nowhere else to go. Nowhere.'

'Nothing and nowhere,' she said.

'Mrs McNulty, I am begging you to help me.'

'There's nothing I can do. What could I do for you? I am frightened of you.'

This suddenly gave me pause. I had not considered that. Frightened of me.

'I'm not to be frightened of, Mrs McNulty. I need help. I'm,

I'm -'

I was trying to say pregnant, but it didn't seem a word that could be said. I knew in her ears if I said the word it would have the same meaning as whore, prostitute. Or she would hear those shadowing words in the word pregnant. It felt like there was wood in my mouth, the exact shape of my mouth. A big heave of wind came up the path behind me and tried to bundle me into the door. I think she thought I was trying to force my way in. But I was so weak on my legs suddenly, I thought I was going to collapse.

'I know you have had your own troubles in the past,' I said, desperately trying to remember what Jack had said at the Plaza. But had he said anything? Whatever you say, say nothing.

'Vicissitudes, he said. In the long ago?'

'Don't!' she shouted. And then she shouted, 'Tom!'

Then she whispered, as woundable as a wounded bird.

'What did he tell you, what did Jack tell you?'

'Nothing. Vicissitudes.'

'Filthy gossip,' she said. 'All it was.'

I don't know how Old Tom had heard her, maybe by long attention to her voice, but in a few moments he appeared around the house in his coat and hat, looking like a half-drowned mariner.

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' he said. 'Roseanne.'

'You have to get her to go away,' said Mrs McNulty.

'Come on, Roseanne,' said Old Tom, 'come on, come back out the gate.'

I did obediently as I was told. His voice was friendly. He was nodding his head as he drove me backwards.

'Go on,' he said, 'go on,' like I was a calf in the wrong part of the field.

'Go on.'

Then I was out on the pavement again. The wind drove along the street like a gang of invisible lorries, roaring and piercing.

'Go on,' said Old Tom.

'Where?' I said, with utmost desperation.

'Go back,' he said. 'Go back.'

'I need you to help me.'

'There's no one to help you.'

'Ask Tom to help me, please.'

'Tom can't help you, girl. Tom's getting married. You know? Tom can't help you.' Married? My God. 'But what will I do?' 'Go back the road,' he said. 'Go on.'

I didn't go back the road at his bidding but because I had no other choice.

My thought was, if I could reach the hut again, I could dry myself, and rest, and think of another plan. But only to get out of the rain and the wind, and be able to think.

Tom marrying again. No, not again, for the first time.

If I had had him in front of me then, I might have killed him with whatever implement I could find. I might have torn a stone from a wall, a stick from a fence, and battered him, and killed him.

For bringing me with love into such wretched danger.

I don't think I was walking then but sort of heaving myself along. The little girl was still behind the window-glass as I passed, still with her doll, still waiting for the storm to abate, so she could go outside and play. This time for some reason she didn't wave.

They say that we come from apes and maybe it is the residing animal in us that knows things deep down that we almost don't realise we know. There was something, some clock or engine, beginning to stir in me, and my whole instinct was to hurry my steps, to hurry my steps, and find somewhere quiet and sheltered where I could try and understand that engine. There was an urgency in it, and a smell to it, some strange noise rose from me, and was whipped away by the wind. Now I was out on the tarmacadam road to Strandhill, green fields and stone walls around me, and the visible rain striking the surface of the road and leaping about with a sort of anger. It was like I had music in my belly, strong driving drumming music, the 'Black Bottom Stomp' gone over the edge, the piano player going wilder and wilder at the keys.

The road took a slow turn and then the bay began to be visible below. Who did I have to help me? No one. Where was the world? How was it I had managed to live in the world with no one? How was it that the inhabitants of the few houses along the way didn't rush out to me, to hurry me into their houses, to hold me in their arms? A savage sense entered me, of being of such small account in the world that I wasn't to be helped, that priest and woman and man had put out an edict that I wasn't to be helped, I was to be left to the elements, just as I was, a walking animal, forsaken.

Maybe it was then that some part of me leapt away from myself, something fled from my brain, I don't know.

Refuge. A forlorn being seeks refuge. I had the fire covered in ashes in my hut, and all it would need would be the ashes knocked off the turves, and more turves added, and soon I would have a decent fire. And I could peel off my old coat and my dress and my slip and my shoes and dry myself exultant in the dry room, laughing, victorious, having gained a victory over storms and families. I had a simple stew in a covered pot and I would eat that, and then when I was dry and fed, into the bed with me, and I would lie there looking out on Knocknarea, poor old Queen Maeve above in her own stone bed, feeling maybe the worst of the storm so high up, and I would look at my belly as I liked to do, and see the elbows and the knees poking out and disappearing as my baby stretched and stirred. I had about six miles to go before I reached this longed-for safety. I could see from the cut of the land that if I went out on the beach as the motorcars used to do at low tide, I would take a good two miles from the journey. I noted even in my distress that the tide was at its lowest ebb, though it was hard to make this out with the armies and legions of rain that lashed across it. So I cut down from the high road along a steep boreen, not minding the rough stones too much, contented in my mind I was shortening my way, and indeed so numb in my feet and legs I think I no longer felt much pain there. The pain was all in my stomach, the pain was all about my child, and I was fear-somely anxious to gain my advantage. Beautiful once, but beauty ended.