The Secret Scripture

And I had the curious sensation of looking out on someone else's world, someone else's Tom, someone else's Sligo. Like I wasn't going to be there very long, and had not been there long enough, or even had never been there. Like a ghost to myself and certainly not for the first time.

I went to bed and lay in the cool sheets and tried to be calm. I tried to be myself, and yet could not really locate that person. Rosea

I awoke in the small hours, nudged into wakefulness by little sounds of Tom in the room. There was a huge moon over Knocknarea, the cairn visible as if in the very sunlight. I was still caught in a dream, and just for a moment thought I saw a figure atop the cairn, in black clothes, with a great fold of bright wings behind him. But of course it was far too far away for that.

'Are you awake, pet?' said Tom, and when I looked at him, he was struggling out of his braces.

'You have blood on your face,' I said, sitting up.

'I have blood all over my blessed shirt,' he said, 'although you can barely see, what with the blue.'

'My God,' I said, 'whatever happened, Tom?'

'Nothing at all. We had a bit of resistance from the guards in Sligo. We were marching as good as gold, when out from Quay Street comes a fierce little muster of lads, fellas brought in from Collooney I suppose, because they were not regular Sligo guards. And one of them gave me such a swipe with a stick, I tell you, it hurt like the bejaysus. And the General starts roaring at them, and the guards roaring back, "You have no permit to march in Sligo!" And the General the head of the same guards only a few years ago. Well. There was such shouting and frothing about generally. So we were very glad to get out to the hall, let me tell you. And didn't we have a great time then. Such a crowd you never saw.'

By this time he had his nice striped pyjamas on and then he went to the washstand basin and vigorously flung water at his face, and wiped it off in the towel, and then threw himself into the bed beside me.

'What did you do?' he said. 'You ought to have come. It was great.'

'I went walking,' I said.

'Oh ho,' he said, 'did you? And why not?'

Then he put his left arm under my hand and held me close to him, and after a while, between the blood and moonlight, we went to sleep.

Dr Grene's Commonplace Book

There was absolute panic in the building yesterday. I must say I was almost encouraged by the level of response, because so often in the past there has been what felt like a cloud of inaction hanging over these old roofs. But the young lady who had been found upset and bloodstained had then disappeared. The ward nurse was terrified, because her sister had just been in, and given her a gift of a nice new dressing-gown. Nurse had noted the belt made of the same light material as the gown, but had not had the heart to remove it straight away. So she was tearing about the wards, asking everyone had they seen the poor unfortunate woman, and generally making the ancient patients stir for the first time in many years. In the end it was discovered not that she had hanged herself, but that she had gone down to front office in her dressing-gown, and signed herself out, as she has the perfect right to do under the new legislation. And had gone down to the main road and hitched a lift to the town, and from there boarded a bus to Leitrim, all of this still in the gown. It was like a magic coat, carrying her back to Leitrim. Her husband rang last night to tell us, and he was a very angry voice at the other end of the phone. He said the hospital was supposed to be a place of refuge. The head nurse spoke to him, and was very submissive, not in the style of the old matrons we used to have here. I don't know what resolution this will have, but it struck me as having all the qualities of a rescue. I wish the poor woman well and I am sorry we were of so little use to her, quite the opposite. And I am very glad the nurse's panic was unfounded.

This morning I went up to Mrs McNulty's – no, no, Rosea

The room had a little bit of sideways spring sunlight, that seemed to have crept in through the window-glass with an almost apologetic delicacy. A little square beam of it sat across Rosea

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 Rosea

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 Wy

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 Qui