I read Roseanne’s account of things like a scholar of her life, making a mental concordance of facts and events.
The first feeling I had reading it was privilege. How strange to think of her secretly writing it, like a monk in a scriptorium, all the while I was endeavouring to assess her, and getting virtually nowhere. The sense that she might be addressing it to me overwhelmed me.
It differs from Fr Gaunt’s history in many ways, not least the long account of her father and his experiences. For a woman 277
who knows no one virtually and has spent the last sixty-odd years of her life in a place like the hospital, she seems at times to me to be a surprising celebrator of life and people. Many mysteries remain. But I have tried to orchestrate the little that I know and have fallen on names I recognise with gratitude. Sean Keane who figured in Percy Quinn’s records seems to have been a son of John Lavelle. Furthermore it seems he was to some degree brain-damaged. There is one person I know who I can ask about this, because my suspicion is that our John Kane is the same man. There is a story here of a strange loyalty and protection. His father asked him to look after Roseanne, and he seems to have done his utmost to do so.
Who took Roseanne’s baby though is not really answered, and the fact remains that the evidence is against her about her father’s work. If this is wrong, then other things she writes may also be ‘wrong’. It cannot be taken at face value, but maybe no more than Fr Gaunt, who was obviously sane to such a degree it makes sanity almost undesirable.
I think I certainly can surmise that she was falsely accused in the matter of John Lavelle, unless I am reading her wrong, although I recognise that in the mores of the time, the morass, I almost wrote, just to have been seen with him in that way, just the suspicion, was crime enough. Morality has its own civil wars, with its own victims in their own time and place. But once she became pregnant she was utterly doomed. A married woman who had never been married. She could never have won that one. I write all this, and immediately have some niggling concerns. The use of the word ‘wrong’ for instance. What is wrong about her account if she sincerely believes it? Is not most history written in a sort of wayward sincerity? I suspect so. In her account, she relates a very sincere and even touching account of how her father sought to show her that all things from hammers to feathers fall equally. She seems to have been about twelve when it happens (now I am forced to look again at her 278
manuscript, because I may be rewriting). Yes, about twelve. And then the dire events at the graveyard, and then the ratcatching, and eventually, when she is about fifteen (blast it, must check again), her father’s death. But Fr Gaunt has him being murdered by the rebels, the first attempt in the very round tower Roseanne so fondly remembers, his mouth stuffed with feathers and him beaten by mallets or hammers, which in terms of post-traumatic stress, sounds like what really happened, and suggests that Roseanne for survival’s sake has sanitised it completely, even moving the event back to a time of relative innocence. But this in my experience seems an enormous and unusual transference, all things considered. Then there is the fact that the man that Fr Gaunt suggests Roseanne should marry, Joe Brady, the inheritor of her father’s job at the graveyard, is presented in Roseanne’s account as an attempted rapist, a passage that reads very ‘strangely’ to me. And not only that, but Fr Gaunt in passing mentions the name on the gravestone where the guns were buried as the same name, though he must have known. Then of course, I am thinking, Fr Gaunt, while maybe sincere in his great desire to have her committed, was also subject to mere error of memory, and he may have found the name floating in his head, and wrongly given it as the name on the grave. The one thing that is fatal in the reading of impromptu history is a wrongful desire for accuracy. There is no such thing.
So, as if to prove this, I have just gone back to Fr Gaunt’s actual account, which I summarised here rather than transposed, and I find to my absolute astonishment and even shame that in his account of the events in the tower, he doesn’t actually say Roseanne’s father’s mouth was stuffed with feathers, just that he was beaten by hammers. For some reason, in the gap between reading his account and summarising, my own brain must have supplied this detail, stealing it from Roseanne I would like to think, except at that point of course I hadn’t 279
read her account. At this juncture I find myself in the wildest, woolliest jungles of Laing himself. It is almost a disgusting thought to me that I might have intuited this detail out of the aether, and supplied it unconsciously, anticipating a story that I had not yet read. For this implies all sorts of horrible sixties theory about the circular and backward natures of time, and I do not subscribe to that. We have enough problems with linear narrative and true memory. Nevertheless I must conclude that to a large degree, both Roseanne and Fr Gaunt were being as truthful as they could be, given the vagaries and tricks of the human mind. Roseanne’s ‘sins’ as a self-historian are ‘sins of omission’. Her father showed her the nature of gravity at the tower, and some years later an attempt was made to kill her father in the tower, both of which events she witnessed, but would not record the second. So that my first inclination to identify her memory as a traumatic one, with details transposed and corrupted, and the ages changed, was even if unlikely, actually too simple. Then there was of course my own weird interpolation – oh dear, oh dear. Of course, of course, it is just possible that years and years ago she told me about the hammers and feathers as an anecdote, and I simply forgot all about it. And that reading about the tower in Fr Gaunt’s deposition brought them into my mind. And indeed, even as I posit this, even as I ‘invent’ it, I actually seem to have a vague memory of it. Disastrous! But leaving that aside, there is something good in this conclusion. I may say before God (of all people, I hear myself say) that I believe they have written not so much wrongful histories, or even competing histories, but both in their human way quite truthful, and that from both of them can be implied useful truths above and beyond the actual verity of the ‘facts’. I am beginning to think there is no factual truth, although I can hear Bet say in my ear, ‘Really, William?’
I have decided anyhow on the strength of reading her account to make the journey to England. She seems to have 280
addressed her story almost to me, or at times at least to me, as her friend perhaps, and I feel it not only my duty but my great desire to follow this to the end, and see what the terminus is. I cannot imagine that I will achieve very much by this, as Dr Wynn does not expect her to regain consciousness, ‘very sad news’ he called it, and asked me had she any family I needed to contact. Of course I was able to say, no. I did not think so. Not a soul living that could fall under that heading, except this mysterious child. And that is a further reason to go to England, on the very unlikely chance that there is someone to notify in the event of the death of this person some might deem a nobody, but to me has assumed the proportions of a friend, and is a sort of justification of my work here, such as it has been, and my choice of this profession, such as it is. I must never forget that in my moment of deepest travail she crossed the room and put her hand on my shoulder, an utterly simple gesture perhaps, but more graceful and helpful to me than the gift of a kingdom. By such a gesture she sought to heal me, supposedly the healer. As I do not seem able much to heal, then maybe I can simply be a responsible witness to the miracle of the ordinary soul.
I am profoundly grateful that I did not use Fr Gaunt’s account to question her with, aggressively or subtly, whichever, and that I followed my own instincts. I see now it would have been an assault on her memory. Similarly her own account should not be used as an instrument of further probing. My main thought is, let her be.
Soon I was ready to go, but before I did, I decided to write a note to John Kane, in case words written down had a better chance to penetrate him.
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Dear John (I wrote) , it has come to my notice some acts of kindness performed by you in respect of our patient Roseanne Clear, formerly Mrs McNulty. I think I know who your
own father was, John, I think he was the patriot John Lavelle? and I would very much like to ask you a few questions when I return from England, where I hope to discover more about Roseanne Clear’s child. Perhaps we can compare notes? Sincerely, etc.
I hoped this made sense to him. I put in the word patriot to take any possible note of threat out of it. Perhaps I was completely wrong and he would gaze at it as the work of a lunatic. It hardly made sense to me, but off I went anyhow.
The cheapest flight was Dublin to Gatwick, so I found myself driving the five hours eastward. But I think it would surprise Roseanne that there is now an airport in Sligo, that I saw on a website, right in Strandhill. But the little planes only fly to Manchester.
I took with me my passport, naturally, also whatever documents I have in relation to Roseanne, the various histories, and a note from the nun in Sligo. I was well aware how famously or infamously secretive these old institutions can be, no more than ourselves, a mixture of worry, lost power, perhaps even concern. That the truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that facts not only lead forward to resolution, but backwards into the shadows, and sometimes into the various little hells we make for each other. So despite the nice nun, who anyway had not offered to phone Bexhill, or otherwise intervene, and despite the championing by Percy, I fully expected to be stonewalled or otherwise frustrated. 282
Of course, I also took with me Roseanne’s copy of Religio Medici, just in case. Now I must confess I risked my father’s turning in his grave, and on the airplane I opened the book, took out the letter boldly, and opened it, just in case it would be of some help. I don’t know why I thought it might be. Perhaps there was a baser motive, mere nosiness and curiosity. I was very surprised to find it was a letter from Jack McNulty. I looked at the date it was posted again and realised he must have been an old man himself when he wrote it. The wandering spideriness of the handwriting certainly suggested as much. The address was given as King James Hospital, Swansea. I have the letter here before me so I may as well enter it here, so as to have a copy.
Dear Roseanne,
I am lying here in hospital in Swansea and alas I am assailed by a cancer of the colon. I am writing to you because I have made enquiries about you and have been informed reliably I hope that you are still alive. I have been given my own marching orders and I suppose it is God’s will but it is not likely I will be among the living much longer. I must say I have taken an interest in life and have enjoyed the visit as they say but when your number’s called you must go. I do not know if you are aware I went soldiering in the war, I served in India near the Khyber Pass with the Gurkha Rifles I am proud to say, though I saw no Germans or Japanese or the like. Nevertheless if the mosquitoes had been on the German side we would have lost the war. I am writing to you because when a person is told he is going many things pass through his mind. For instance, the fact that my wife Mai after strug- gling with the alcohol died at the age of fifty-three. Though she led me a merry dance betimes I never for a moment regretted marrying her, as I adored her. Nevertheless I sup- pose she was an arrogant, wounding woman to some, to you 283
in particular. This is why I am writing. It is greatly on my conscience what happened all those years ago, and I wanted to write and tell you that. There is no need, indeed I believe no likelihood, that you will forgive me, but I am writing to you in order to tell you that I regret it enormously, and hardly know what to make of it as an event in all our lives. I suppose it is all long long ago, but not so long ago that it does not seem like yesterday, and is often in my thoughts and in my dreams. I wanted to tell you that Tom married again and had chil- dren, but maybe you will not want to hear this. Tom died about ten years ago of a stomach complaint, he died in Roscommon General Hospital, his second wife by then also having died. We never spoke of you though we saw each other often, and yet I felt it was always there unspoken between us when we met. The truth is, it was something in his life that changed him forever, he was forever just a different man after that, never again the easy-going old Tom we knew. Maybe you will say, proper order, I don’t know. Maybe you would be right. I want to say a few words now about my mother, who as you may know was the chief instrument in all that time of difficulty. I want to tell you things about her that I could only tell you as a dying man, and maybe only like this, faceless, behind the cover of a letter. Because it is also true that she treated your – I was going to write ‘case’ but you know what I mean – with uncharacteristic hardness. About twenty years ago when she was dying herself, she told me the story of her birth. It was sometimes whispered in Sligo that she was illegitimate, though you may not have heard this whisper. As it happens, she was adopted, her real mother having died young, and her family, being wealthy, and not approving the marriage in the first place, then con- triving to give her away. Her mother was a Presbyterian woman called Lizzie Finn. Her real father was an army offi- cer, and it seems she was given to his batman, a Catholic of 284
course, to be reared as his own. It is a shadowy story, but I saw with my own eyes the marriage certificate of her parents in Christ Church some years after she died. How relieved she would have been to know they were married I can’t say. Perhaps in heaven these are small matters. Before Tom died, he also had occasion to tell me his secret, which in some ways is more pertinent to you, and may make you wonder why she did not show more compassion to you. For he confessed to me that he and I only shared a mother, his own father being other than Old Tom, though who he was he did not know, though he tried to find out, not least from my mother. My mother never shared this with anyone and brought the man’s name to her grave. We must remember that my mother was only sixteen when I was born, and not much older when brother Tom came (or half-brother I should say). Why am I telling you all this? Because of course it might explain if not excuse her enormous desire that Tom should not endure so confused a life as hers, and was a slave to her own ideas of rectitude, as only a person who thinks they have fallen can be.
Eneas? In the sixties I traced him through the War Office to an hotel on the Isle of Dogs in London. I went there one evening, was told he was out, and to come back the next day. The following morning when I approached the dosshouse, I found it a smouldering ruin. Perhaps alarmed at the news that there was someone from Sligo to see him, thinking it was his old enemies and he was to be assassinated, even after all those years, he may have burned the hotel himself, to cover his tracks. Or maybe some men had been shadowing me as I searched for him, and did the poor man in. Whatever hap- pened, I could never pick up his trail again. He disappeared utterly. I suppose he is dead and may he rest in peace. This is my letter and maybe it is of no good to you. It is all greatly on my conscience. Roseanne, the truth is, Tom did love 285
you but failed in his love. I am afraid we were all more than a little in love with you. Forgive us if you can. Goodbye. Respectfully and sincerely,
Jack
By any mark a strange and unexpected letter. There were things in it that I didn’t quite understand. Suddenly of course I hoped and prayed that it was the damp had closed the letter again, and that she might once have opened it. Certainly, she had kept it, unless she had put it unopened in the book and forgotten it. Maybe it was the only letter she had ever received. Christ. I was certainly very pensive as the plane set down in Gatwick. Bexhill is only about fifty miles from Gatwick in that part of England so English it is almost something else, unnameable. The names reek of candyfloss and old battles. Brighton, Hastings. It is on the coast that ironically holds the sites of a million childhood holidays, though I do not think the orphans of long ago would concur. Looking up flights on the internet, and directions for Bexhill, I found a discussion site, contributed to by survivors of those days. The raw pain flared up from the words. Two girls were drowned there in the sea in the fifties, the other girls trying to form a human chain to save them, while the nuns prayed bizarrely on the beach. It is like a painting stolen from the museum of inexplicable cruelty. I confess I
wondered about Mrs McNulty’s daughter, and confess also that for some reason I hoped she was not among those praying nuns. If Roseanne’s child had ended up there in the forties . . . These were my muddled thoughts as I took the train from Victoria. It seems I am fated to record the dismaying bleakness of institutions. It is a constant, unwaveringly. Nazareth House Bexhill was no exception. Their stories seem to be in the very mortar like those ancient seashells, the very redness of the 286
bricks. You could never wash them out, I thought. The very silence of the place suggested other silences. I rang at the front door feeling suddenly very small and strange, as if I were myself an orphan arriving there. Soon the door was opened, I stated my business to the woman, a lay person, and I was led up the long hallway, with its darkly shining linoleum, and items of solid mahogany furniture, one of them graced by an Italian statue of St Joseph. I know it was St Joseph because his name was on the plinth. The woman stopped at a door, and smiled, I smiled, and I entered the room.
It was a sort of little dining room, at least the table had plates of sandwiches and cakes, and a setting for one, with a teacup ready. I hardly knew what to do, so sat down, wondering if I was in the right place, or the right person in the right place. But soon a tall smiling nun glided in, and filled my cup from a ceramic pot. It had I noticed a picture of the Bexhill seafront on it.