Страница 26 из 65
There was nothing about me that her father liked, a man who had been one of the subcontractors on the great Sha
Her greatest wish I should think was that I would remain exactly as I was, and how I regret that that was not to be. It was only for her roses that she wished for change, the strange moment of floral enchantment when the branch of a rose mutates, and shows a 'sport', something new arising from the known rose. A leap in beauty.
'I'm going out to the garden to see if there's any news,' she would say, at almost any time, because she had roses going the whole length of the year.
She was waiting for whatever God, whatever secret magician, decided things for roses to do His stuff. I am afraid I showed scant interest in all that. Mea culpa. I tried to, but couldn't locate that passion in me. I should have been out there with her, with the gloves and the secateurs, like someone geared for miniature battle.
Little sins of omission that loom large now. You could go mad.
Anyway for my sanity I am writing here. I am sixty-five years old. Past the Beatles song. By some accounts this is young. But when a man wakes on his fortieth birthday he may safely say he has no youth ahead of him. I suppose this is infinitely petty and ridiculous. A healthy person might be content with life as a quality in itself, and look to the passing of the years, and the gaining of age, and then great age, with interest. But I am miserable before the task. When Bet died I looked in the mirror for the first time in many years. I mean, I had glanced every morning in the mirror, trimmed my beard and the like, but had not looked in it at myself. I was amazed at what I saw. I did not know myself. My hair was thi
Sixty-five. In a few years I will retire. It is not just this building is reaching its point of ultimate depreciation. Retire. To do what? Knock about Roscommon town? Yet there is Rosea
Actually I did not mean to write anything about myself here. What I meant to write about was Rosea
For there is a mystery there. I suspect that somewhere in the distant past, in just such an institution as this, she suffered in some way at the hands of her 'nurses'. This would not be unusual in these old histories. Her suffering in the realm of real life, in the so-called outside world, was no doubt even greater. I have attempted a series of cautious questions, of the sort that would not scare her or drive her into silence. She is quite capable, and always has been, of playful and even fanciful talk. Myself and Bet used to be like that, years ago. At our ease – but no, let me leave all that alone. But I wonder is Bet lonely where she lies now? How odd it was at last to ring the funeral directors whose unwished-for premises I had passed in the car so many times, with the posh entrance, the yard of hearses at the back, the quiet efficient phrases, the numbers, the tea, the sandwiches, the grave documents, the service, the removal, the this and the that of death. Then just this morning the discreet bill, the things itemised, the coffin I chose in a sudden fit of mea
Every nuance of her, every turn of the head, every moment of tenderness between us, every gift, every surprise, every joke, every outing, holidays in Bundoran and later Benidorm, every kind word, helpful sentence, it all gathered together like a sea, the sea of Bet, and rose up from the depths of our history, the seabed of all we were, in a great wave, and crashed down on the greying shore of myself, engulfed me, and would that it had washed me away for good.
Oh, dear. Again I have strayed. But this has been the pattern of the recent weeks.
Rosea
I would like from sheer curiosity to find an old photograph of Rosea
At first I could find out nothing about her. In fact it is safe to say I expected there would be little trace of her in the records, given her great age. What did I know about her? After all I had spoken with her now and then for as many as two dozen years! So few facts. That she was someone called once Mrs McNulty, that she had no known relatives still in touch with her or other contacts, no one had visited her ever in the hospital, and perhaps I had a vague sense that she had been transferred here from Sligo, but maybe forty years ago or more. How I knew this I do not know, unless I had seen once some document that said so, when I was young and came here first from England. Naturally Bet wanted to be near her family and I knew from my father that I had Irish co
Accident, mere accident, everything. How surprised and pleased I had been, flattered, to receive a letter seemingly out of the blue from the then registrar here, Mr Amurdat Singh, offering me a junior post. How he had got my name I didn't know, and I was only a few months out of college, jobless, and desperate to marry Bet. And a job in Ireland, the very thing she had wanted. It was like a miracle. The Arabs say that everything is already written in the book of life, and our job is merely to fulfil the narrative already there, invisible, unknown. I thought Mr Singh had perhaps attended the same college as me, but it wasn't so, he had trained himself in Ireland, under one of the old imperial networks, still persisting long after both Irish and Indian independence, in the way of these things. I don't know if someone had given him my name, and why would they, when I must confess my degree wasn't exactly glittering, if adequate. But nonetheless the miraculous letter came, and I responded joyfully, youthfully and joyfully. I suppose you might say I had not seen Roscommon. But if it was a backwater, it was a backwater beloved by Bet. We had every chance to be happy here.
Amurdat Singh, God rest him, was a sort of saint. Perhaps because of his race he didn't flourish in Ireland as he might have. He deserved to be made Chief Psychiatrist of Ireland. His hospital while he lived was a true haven, and he had radical and exciting views. Jung and R. D. Laing were his gods, and they made a potent mix. Sadly he died a relatively young man, possibly even took his own life. I think on balance I am still glad that he sent for me, however mysteriously.