Claire Kilroy: The Devil I Know

I lasted, they tell me, three days in the priest hole. This I find hard to believe. Harder to believe than the literally unbelievable things which I know to be true. As far as I was concerned, I was banged up in there a fortnight, licking the dripping wall for sustenance. I heard Deauville’s footsteps from time to time. Tocka tocka, tocka tocka . I can tell you a thing or two about mortal fear. My blood pounded so thickly it felt like muscle, a mass of muscle lodged in my neck pumping like a heart. Doom, doom , it went. I didn’t move an inch. There wasn’t an inch in which to move. The priest hole had no back door, no escape hatch. It was a very good place to do away with a priest. Maybe the crumbling matter on the floor was priest — another thought to slam the door on. I huddled there with my jaw locked open in panic, waiting for a knock knock knock on the wooden panel.

Who is the corpse in the coffin, young master?

Sweet Jesus, it’s me.

For an extended portion of my confinement — and each portion was an extended one, and each one was confined — I grew convinced that Deauville was in that cell with me, as indeed he possibly was. When I moved, he moved fluidly around me to ensure we never collided. Sometimes I swiped the air to catch him out, but there is no catching the Devil out. And for one dire passage of time, one truly diabolical interlude, I became convinced that I was not under the castle hiding from Deauville, but already in Hell, and that this was it for eternity. Imagine. A stone cell too dark to see in, too small to stand in, too cold to sleep in, and not another soul to speak to ever again. The fear almost paralysed me. The recollection of it still does. Doom, doom . Hell.

This is where the crucifix came in. There was a crucifix nailed to the wall. It seemed when my hands first discovered it that the sheer force of my terror had caused it to materialise. I channelled many feverish thoughts into this crucifix during that period, thoughts I would never have suspected a rational mind like mine capable of producing. I have since seen the cross in the cold light of day. I requested it from my hospital bed, but when the garda took it out of the bag, I told him that he had brought the wrong one.

It was made of wood all right, a grainy greyish oak, but the face of Jesus didn’t hold a candle to the one I had seen in the dark. That face had even fleetingly alchemised into that of my mother and we were together again. The face on the cross that the garda produced was rudimentary, and yet when I closed my eyes and ran my fingertips over the notches, the sweet countenance appeared once more. It just goes to show. What precisely it goes to show — what precisely the whole sorry mess goes to show — I cannot yet say, none of us can yet say, other than that it demonstrates the power of two interrelated and potentially disastrous variables regarding the impossibility of certitude on the one hand and the infinite pliability of the human imagination on the other. One can never truly know where one stands, and yet one can be adamant about that position.

I put the crucifix into the drawer of the nightstand and pushed it shut. The garda looked disappointed. I should perhaps have given the relic its day in the sun after centuries spent nailed to an underground wall, but I was done with all that Higher Power stuff. A piece of wood wasn’t going to save me.

*

I woke one… I was going to say one morning, but there was no telling whether it was day or night in the priest hole. I thought my eyes would acclimatise, but there was nothing to acclimatise to. I couldn’t see my own hand. It is terrifying to wake in true darkness. I woke because something had crashed to the ground out in the passage. This was followed by a curse, a big mucker curse — Ah fer Jaysus’ sake — and then a second object clattered to the stones, betraying a level of incompetence and general clumsiness uncharacteristic of M. Deauville. Evil incarnate did not accidentally knock things over. Evil incarnate was deft.

I jumped to my feet and got a hammer blow to the crown of my head from the low ceiling. I managed to slide the wooden panel across before slumping through it and passing out.

I came around to a blaze of light. The garda flicked the torch beam at the mouth of the priest hole to establish that it was empty before speaking into his lapel. ‘Lads,’ he began in a high-pitched voice, then cleared his throat and started again, an octave lower: ‘Lads, I think I have him.’

The torch returned to my face. ‘How are you getting on there, sir?’

All authoritative now, doing his best to sound professional because he was just a big schoolboy underneath the uniform, jubilant at being the one to have found the fugitive. They’re all big children, essentially, the Gardaí, and although that may sound like a criticism, I intend it as praise of the highest order. It is the greatest compliment I can pay my fellow man. The ones who were never childlike are the ones you have to watch out for. The ones who have mastered their emotional impulses. The ones who are cold. Strip the place of valuables while you still have a chance . The garda’s face lit up at having found me and it was a heartening thing to see, and then it was a disheartening thing, because I realised that my own life was to be empty of such innocent triumphs, empty of clear-cut achievements, empty in general. No I found him! moments for me, because I never found things, I only lost them. Anyway. Back to the question.

‘How are you getting on there, sir?’

Stunned, was the answer. Too stunned to recognise that I was stunned. I was lying on my side unable to raise my head from the stone floor. Grand, Garda, I tried to respond, but nothing came out, so I blinked up in friendship at him, wagging my tail like one of the setters to say, Boy am I glad to see you! Or at least I lay there thinking that I was wagging my tail because I was seriously confused by the wallop to the skull. But that is by the by. Now that this whole protracted palaver is coming to an end, I find that I can’t keep from blurting random incidental stuff, like the bore at the cocktail party who, sensing that he is losing you, takes a firm hold of your sleeve and keeps talking, only faster.

‘Are you Tristram St Lawrence?’ the garda enquired for the record.

I wagged up an affirmative.

‘Aidan,’ he said into his lapel, ‘we’re going to need an ambulance.’

He helped sit me up against the wall — ‘Jesus, your hands are freezing’ — and unbuttoned his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. It is the moments of kindness that stand out. Perhaps because there have been so few of them. I am not asking for sympathy. I am not asking for anything. I am just saying that it is the moments of kindness that stand out.

The garda shone his torch into the priest hole. We both watched in fascination as the beam of light excavated its dimensions. So that’s what it looked like. A coal bunker.

‘Were you on your own down here the whole time, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and then, ‘no.’ I lowered my head in embarrassment. ‘Actually, I’m not entirely certain.’ Tears sprang from my eyes, forming pale channels in the centuries-old grime that coated my face, as I was to discover some hours later when I met my reflection over a metal hospital sink, although it wasn’t the grime that made me recoil. The grime could be washed off.

The guard patted my shoulder. ‘Not to worry. We’ll have you out of here in no time.’ I suppose he thought I had lost my mind. And I suppose I had.

The sound of other voices reached our ears. I managed to master my tears, which was a relief to us both. The intimacy had been awkward. I have no talent for it. Neither did the guard. ‘Help is on its way,’ he repeated more than once, reassuring himself as much as me. Help was blundering down the passage, bumping into the objects the guard had already knocked to the floor, sending them scudding across the flagstones until they came to rest, whereupon Help tripped over them again. The garda winced. ‘We’re up ahead, lads,’ he bawled. ‘And would ye in the name of God take it handy! Those are priceless antiques.’