Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

Down on the sand all was like a dance, as if the Plaza itself had expanded to fill Sligo Bay. The rain was like huge skirts, swirling and lifting, with hammering pillars of legs driving down, the whole of the strand and the sea between Strandhill and Rosses blanked out by a million brushstrokes of grey and grey. I thought then that it was not so sensible to have taken to the sand, or at least, I was cursed by a change in the gear of the weather, an infinite swelling and belling of the storm, tearing at me and my stomach, my little creature of elbows and knees.

Then I was starting to slosh through shallow runs of water and knew I was not on a proper course. The sand that the cars favoured as they roared out to the dance sat higher than the rest, and on a summer's night was dry. I feared I was heading towards the channel of the Garravoge, a disaster unimaginable, and now I didn't know which way to turn. Where was the mountain, where was the bulge of the land? Where was Strandhill and where was Coney?

Suddenly in front of me loomed a monster – no, it wasn't a monster, it was a cone of carved stones, it was one of the bollards that were set up in a line to show the way to the island, along the best sand, the last sand to be covered as the tide came in. A thing the tide was beginning to do, I knew, because I could hear, inside the roaring of the storm, the other galloping sound of the sea, as it rushed in eagerly to take the empty places in its arms. But I reached the bollard and held onto its stones for a few moments, trying to calm myself, at least a mite encouraged to have found it. Unless I had turned myself around completely, I judged the river would be over to my right, and Strandhill somewhere to my left. At the top of the bollard was a rusty metal arrow, pointing to the island.

Fearsomely in the storm the Metal Man would be standing on his rock, pointing to deep water, pointing, pointing. He would have no time to help the likes of me.

I knew I had to keep going, if I stayed where I was the tide would simply gather in, cover the sand at my feet, and slowly slowly rise up the bollard. I did not dare go back towards the shore, where there might be a rising flood. But at high tide most of the bollards were covered, and there would be no safety here. It would be the realm of currents and fishes. I put the bollard at my back, taking a course from the arrow, and stepped forward into the storm, praying I could keep enough of a straight line from that compass, and reach Coney.

A swathe of blue angry light was cut into the storm, like a slice of mad cake, and suddenly I saw the great prow of Ben Bulben looming, like a liner that was going to run me down. No, no, it was miles away. But it was also where I had supposed it to be, and then I was able to gain the next bollard. Oh, I sent my heart to the Metal Man in gratitude. Now I could see indistinctly but distinctly enough the mound of Coney island ahead. I forged on towards it. As I moved from the next bollard I felt that water gush from me and briefly warm my legs. With another hundred aching strides I had reached the first rocks, and the black seaweed, and drove myself up the sloping path. Without that break in the storm I don't know what I would have done, except drowned in the hurrying sea. Because now the storm closed about me again like a room of utter madness, walls of water and ceiling of banging fire, it seemed, and I lay in a nest of boulders, panting, and half expired.

I awoke. The storm was still howling roundabout. I hardly knew who I was. I remember searching in my mind even for words. In my sleep or whatever state it was, I had heaved my back up against a mossy rock, I don't know why. The storm was howling, with enormous drenching drifts of rain. I was lying so still I had the mad thought that I was dead. But I was far from dead. Every so often, minutes or hours I couldn't tell, something took a hold of me, like I was being squeezed from the crown of my head to my toes. It was so painful it seemed to have crept beyond pain, I don't know how other to describe it. I pulled myself onto all fours, again not exactly deciding to, but responding to a will unknown. Looking now wildly forwards, I thought in the cascading sheets of rain I saw a person standing, watching me. Then the storm seemed to blot the figure out. I screamed out to whoever it was, screamed and screamed. Then another shock of pain gripped me, as if someone had cleaved my backbone with an axe. Who was it watching me in the rain? Not someone who was going to approach and help. More hours passed. I felt the tide recede again from the island, felt it in my veins. The storm burned down from the heavens. Or rather, I was on fire in all that wetness. My stomach was like a bread oven, gathering in heat. No, no, it could not have been. The time of human clocks flew away, the coming and going of the pain was the new marker of time. Did the pain come closer and closer now? Less time between? Had night fallen secretly to darken the storm? Was I blind? Now there was suddenness, arrival, blood. I looked down between my legs. I felt I had my arms outstretched like wings, ready to catch something falling from the sky. But it wasn't falling from the sky, it was falling down through me. My blood fell on the soaking heather and cried out to God to help me, His striving animal. The voice of my blood cried out. No, no, that was only madness, madness. Between my legs was only coals, a ring of coals burning so redly nothing could live if it passed through it. In that second of madness then was the crown of a little head, and in another second a shoulder, all smeared in skin and blood. There was a face, there was a breast, there was a belly and two legs, and even the storm seemed to draw its breath in silence, there was a silence, I looked, I took up the little creature, it drew out after it a vivid cord, I lifted the baby to my face and, again without real thought, bit the cord, the storm swelled up and howled and howled, and my child also swelled, seemed to form himself in the lashing dark, gathered his first diamond of air, and howled out in miniature, called out tinily, to the island, to Sligo, to me, to me.

When I awoke again, the storm had cleared away like a savage dress sweeping out of the room of Sligo. Where was the little creature? There was the blood and the skin and cord and the placenta. I started to my feet. I was as dizzy and weak as a newborn foal myself. Where was my baby? Such a wild feeling of panic and loss poured into me. I looked about with the frantic longing and fiery head of any mother, human or animal. I parted the low sprigs and plants of heather, I searched about me in circles. I called out for help. The sky was big and blue all the way to heaven.

How long had the storm been gone? I didn't know.

I fell back down, striking a hip against the rock. There was still a steady twine of blood coming out of me, dark blood, warm and dark. I lay there, staring out at the world like a woman who had been shot in the head, the peaceful beach, the sandbirds dipping and striking with their long beaks along the receding tideline. 'Please help me,' I kept saying, but there seemed to be no one to hear me except those birds. Weren't there a few houses on the island, hiding here and there from the wind? Could someone not come and help me find my baby? Could someone not come?

As I lay there a strange sharp hurting feeling came into my breast, it was the milk coming into them, I thought. I had the milk now, ready. Where, where was my baby to drink it?

Then down the winding road to the strand I saw a white van moving. I knew immediately it was an ambulance, because even so far away I could hear its siren in the stillness. It reached the sand and surged forward, taking its course, just as I had in the storm, from bollard to bollard. I stood again and waved my arms, like the shipwrecked sailor does when at last he sees the far-off ship to rescue him. But it wasn't me that needed rescue, it was that tiny person vanished from the space he should have occupied. When the men came up to me with their stretcher, I asked them to tell me where my baby was, I begged them.