So few people took on individuality in her mind, and this priest was definitely not one of them. A big tall man in his sixties, as tall as Reegan but not so straight, bloated, a tracery of thread-like purple veins under the red skin of his face. She was detached, she could watch: he was sitting on a chair at the bedside, a priest supposed to be comforting a dying woman; she didn’t care. Sometimes the pressure of his talk oppressed her to near craziness, as if she’d been dragged close as inches to the steel singing far away across the lake, and she felt like crying at him for some ease or silence. Mostly she didn’t hear what he was saying but agreed with him mechanically as she watched him, his bloated appearance fascinated her most, and she’d think how strange it was how some wore down to skin and bone and others puffed out to burst like a pod in the sun.
The one thing she’d fear if she could care enough was his aggressiveness, when he began to suspect that her total acquiescence wasn’t agreement but the evasion it actually was.
“You must pray to Mary, she has the ear of God, she speaks to God for us, we’re one of the few nations in the world who understand Her importance. Don’t you think we should have great devotion to Mary?” he impressed hotly one evening.
“Yes, of course,” she answered wearily.
“There’s no of course about it, we should, and that’s all,” he said.
She went hot with resentment, the instinct to savage him rose and as quickly died. He was simply a person to be avoided if she had a choice in the matter but she didn’t care whether she chose or was chosen any more, it was all the same. For a moment a picture of the ridiculous village presbytery, the hideous Virgin Mary blue of doors and windows in the whitewashed walls at the end of the lovely drive of limes, showed itself to her eyes and she wanted to laugh. “Yes. That’s quite right,” she said. She was able to agree. She’d save herself that much noise.
It was hard enough to accept the reality of her situation; but it was surely the last and hardest thing to accept its interpretations from knaves and active fools and being compelled to live in them as in strait-jackets. To be able to say yes to that intolerant lunacy so as to be able to go your own way without noise or interruption was to accept everything and was hardest of all to do.
A worn and dry craving to see the back of this priest would take possession of her; for Reegan to come from the bog with turf-mould dried in sweat to his face and hands; for them to kneel down about her bed so that she could hear them chant.
Mystical Rose,
Pray for us.
Tower of David,
pray for us.
Tower of Ivory,
pray for us.
House of Gold,
pray for us.
Ark of the Covenant,
pray for us.
Gate of Heaven,
pray for us.
Morning Star.
The rosary had grown into her life: she’d come to love its words, its rhythm, its repetitions, its confident chanting, its eternal mysteries; what it meant didn’t matter, whether it meant anything at all or not it gave the last need of her heart release, the need to praise and celebrate, in which everything rejoiced.
She grew worse, she began to sink, though they didn’t know when it would end. As she felt herself go she tried to say once to herself, “This is not my life. This is not the way I lived. What’s happening now was never part of my life. I have lived in health, not in sickness in death,” but suddenly it was too tiring or futile to continue and the resolution was soon lost, as everything was.
Reegan spent most of these May days on the bog, scattering the barrow heaps out into the drying. The weather was dry and hard, white frost at nights, a still low mist white in the morning that couldn’t be penetrated as far as the navigation signs at the mouth of the lake from the barrack door; the sun would beat it away before ten and rise into a blazing day, getting quite cold again towards evening. It was the best possible weather for saving turf, and Reegan was on the bog with Sheila and Willie the day she died, Una let stay in the house with Mrs Casey because the illness had reached the stage when some one had to be all the time with her in the bedroom.
She had drowsed through the morning, stirred once to get her dose of drugs, and was breathing heavily when the Angelus rang.
“That was the bell, Willie, wasn’t it?” she said to the child.
“’Twas, Elizabeth,” Una answered, and there was noise and smells of Mrs Casey cooking in the kitchen.
“I wasn’t sure, all day I seem to hear strange bells ringing in my mind, church bells. It was the bell, wasn’t it?”
“’Twas,” the child was growing uneasy.
“Did they come from the bog yet?”
“No, not till evenin’, Daddy has a day’s monthly leave, they brought bread and bottles of tea in the socks.”
“But they were to be back to go to devotions, it grows cold on the bog in the evenings. But that was the first bell, wasn’t it?”
“No,’ twas the Angelus, Elizabeth,” the child gave a short laugh, though it couldn’t be possible that Elizabeth was trying to play tricks with her.
“It’s the bell for the Angelus,” Elizabeth repeated, obviously trying to understand.
“It’s the bell for the Angelus, late no more than usual, twenty past twelve on the clock now,” the child said with the faint suggestion of a laugh, the unpunctual ringing of the bells was a local joke.
“But why did you draw the blinds?”
“What blinds?” the child was frightened.
“The blinds of the window.”
“No, there’s no blinds down, but it’ll not be long till it’s brighter. The sun’ll be round to this side of the house in an hour.”
“There’s no clouds?”
“No, no,” the child said, trying to behave as if everything was usual, but she was stiff with fright. The wide window where she stood was open on the summer, changing corrugations of the breeze on the bright lake and river, glittering points; butterflies, white and rainbow, tossed in the light over the meadows, wild flowers shining out of the green, the sickly rich heaviness of meadowsweet reaching as far as the house.
“No, there’s no cloud,” the child said, and stood in terror. Elizabeth’s head fell slack; the breath began to snore and rattle; her fingers groped at the sheets, the perishing senses trying to find root in something physical; and the childran calling to Mrs Casey in the kitchen.
After the first shock, the incredulity of the death, the women, as at a wedding, took over: the priest and doctor were sent for, the news broken to Reegan on the bog, the room tidied of its sick litter, a brown habit and whiskey and stout and tobacco and foodstuffs got from the shops at the chapel, the body washed and laid out — the eyes closed with pennies and her brown beads twined through the fingers that were joined on the breast in prayer. Her relatives and the newspapers were notified, and the black mourning diamonds sewn on Reegan’s and the children’s coats.