My life is like a feather on the back of my hand, Waiting for the death wind.
It is spoken by Simeon, the man who wished to live long enough to see the newborn Messiah. I do not think Roseanne is waiting for that. I thought also of those self-portraits of Rembrandt van Rijn, so faithfully faithless to the idea of our own looks that we carry as an antidote against remorse. How we decide not to allow the fact that our skin is dropping down our jaws and coming away underneath our chins like plaster detaching from its laths in an old-fashioned ceiling.
Her skin is so thin you can see the veins and whatnot, like roads, rivers, towns, and monuments on a map. Something stretched for purposes of writing on it. No monk however would have risked the nib of a pen on such thin parchment. And again I thought, how beautiful she must have been, if she is so oddly beautiful now at one hundred years old. Good bones, as my father used to say, as if, growing old himself and those he knew growing old around him, he knew the value of them.
She has a rash on one side of her face though, quite red and 'angry' as they say, and I thought her tongue was rather in the way of her talking in some way, like it was a little swollen at the root. I must get the medical doctor Mr Wynn to have a look at her. She may well need an antibiotic.
Whether she caught my mood or what, I don't know, she was very responsive, even revealing. She was at her ease in a curious way. Maybe it was happiness. I know she absolutely delights in the improvement of the weather, in the turning of the year. She puts a lot of faith in those daffodils along the avenue, planted there by some old grandee when this place was a great house and estate, in those old vanished days. With fearful delicacy on my own part, trying to take my cue from the sunlight, I finally broached the subject of her child. I say 'finally' as if I have successfully broached a thousand other subjects, or have been leading up to the child. But I had not. But the whole matter has been much on my mind, because of course, if what Fr Gaunt wrote is true, then the whole question of her state of mind and her long presence here and in Sligo is decidedly and probably permanently vexed. Speaking of Sligo, I have written again to ask if I may visit there sometime soon, and talk to the administrator, who it turns out is an old acquaintance, a man called Percival Quinn, I think the only Percy I have ever heard of in the present era, let alone met. It was he apparently who made the extra effort to dig out Fr Gaunt's deposition, and there may well be other files there that even Percy feels can't be communicated, but I don't know. We are like MI5 sometimes in this our profession of psychiatry. All information becomes sensitive, worrying, and vulnerable, even sometimes I think the mere time of day. However, I will follow my instincts.
Tonight there is total calm in the house. It is almost as eerie as the knocking was. But I am grateful. Human, alone, ageing, and grateful. Would it be out of place to write here, to write here directly to you, Bet, to say, I love you still, and am grateful?
Roseanne was so vulnerable, so admirable, so open in my meeting with her, I knew I could have asked her anything, pursued any topic, and probably got the truth, or what she believes is the truth. Well I knew it, my advantage, and if I had pressed it, I would have gained a great deal but, maybe, lost something. Today was the day she might have told me everything, and today was the day I opted myself for her silence, her privacy. Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.
Roseanne's Testimony of Herself
Dr Grene came in, very upbeat, drew up his chair like he certainly meant business. I was so taken aback that I actually engaged in a certain amount of conversation.
'It is a lovely spring day,' he said, 'and I am emboldened to ask you again some of these wearying old questions that I am sure you wish I would stop asking. But I do feel there may be some gain in doing so. Just yesterday I heard something that makes me feel that nothing is impossible. That things that at first sight seem dark and intractable may actually be able to admit some light, some unexpected light.'
He talked like that for a while and finally reached the question. It was again about my father and I was content enough, for the second time, to tell him that my father was never in the police. I told him though that there was a police connection in the McNulty family.
'My husband's brother called Eneas was in the police. He joined them in about 1919, which was not a good time to seek employment there,' I said, or words to that effect.
'Ah,' said Dr Grene, 'so you think that may be how the police connection was – was mooted?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Are the daffodils out yet on the old avenue?'
'They are nearly out, they are threatening to come out,' he said. 'They may be fearful of a last frost.'
'The frost is nothing to the daffodils,' I said. 'Like the heather, they can bloom in the snow.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I believe you are right. Now, Roseanne, the second topic I thought I might raise with you is the topic of the child. I am reading in the little deposition I mentioned that there was a child. At some point.'
'Yes, yes, there was a child.'
Then I said nothing because what could I say. I am afraid I started to cry as quietly as I could.
'I don't mean to upset you,' he said, with great softness.
'I don't think you do,' I said. 'It is just that – looking back, it is all so -'
'Tragic?' he said.
'That is a big word. Very sad anyhow, it seems to me.' He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little folded paper handkerchief.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'I haven't used it.'
I took the useless little object gratefully. Why wouldn't he have used it, him with his own troubles so recently? I tried to imagine him sitting somewhere in his house, a place of course unknown to me. With his wife gone from him. Death as ruthless as any other lover, taking her away.
And I dabbed at my tears. I felt like Barbara Stanwyck in a stupid weepie, or at least Barbara Stanwyck when she was a hundred years old. Dr Grene was gazing at me with a face so miserable I laughed. Then he perked up at this and laughed too. Then the two of us were laughing, but very softly and quietly, like we didn't want anyone else to hear.
I must admit there are 'memories' in my head that are curious even to me. I would not like to have to say this to Dr Grene. Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard searching in them, and things to boot thrown in that don't belong there. I certainly suspect – well, I don't know what I certainly suspect. It makes me a little dizzy to contemplate the possibility that everything I remember may not be -may not be real, I suppose. There was so much turmoil at that time that – that what? I took refuge in other impossible histories, in dreams, in fantasies? I don't know.
But if I put my faith in certain memories, perhaps they will serve as stepping stones, and I will cross the torrent of 'times past', without being plunged entirely into it.
They say the old at least have their memories. I am not so sure this is always a good thing. I am trying to be faithful to what is in my head. I hope it is trying also to be as faithful to me.
It was the simplest thing in the world. He just never came home. For a whole day I waited. I cooked the hash as I had promised him in the morning, because he had a weakness for foods mashed up and reheated, even though it was his brother Jack was the navy man. It is a great favourite with sailors and soldiers, as my own father might attest. But the food cooled again under its cover. Night closed over Knocknarea, over Sligo Bay, over Ben Bulben, where John Lavelle's brother Willie had been murdered. On the upper slopes, in the privacy of the thinner air and the heather. Shot in the heart, was it, or the head, after surrendering. John Lavelle saw that from his hiding place. His own brother. The brothers of Ireland. John and Willie, Jack and Tom and Eneas.