Dallas Sweetman

  I was received into the household as a valued man.

  I was more than servant then. Mountifort was interested in my birth, he too had cousins in the Barony Forth of Wexford, and knew that ancient story, of Englishness alive and fostered in that place. For the first time since young manhood I felt myself to be a man, a personage of some weight, a living heart.

  In many things he consulted me from that day forth, and always looked to me for special wisdom, though wisdom I had not. Such was the ways of Mountifort Longfield, the very ways that Lucinda of course had seen, even as she knelt on the quay.

  Yes, yes, and I changed my cloth. I turned my blessed coat. I thought, if Lucinda is to be Protestant, so must I.

  What a fearing change was that?

  Would I not burn in that Catholic Hell, my soul boil like an onion in that vast soup of human tears? I supposed it might. Yet was I willing to cross over, against all the centuries of my sort, because – because my life in the human present was given back to me.

  And no, Lucinda was not immune to age. She aged as we all do. Nor no children as a blessing given. She narrowed and paled with the years, her first beauty rubbed out like a final gold line on an evening landscape.

  She rose into a different beauty, that a civil face may keep, a more perfect beauty because made by the hiding soul itself.

  And if she was to be old, how much older I? Grievous and withering, with ‘shrinking shank’ indeed.

  But what of that truly?

  Oh, Lucius died, but also, not many years later, died away all his world, the signs and wonders of his kind, vanishing away in slaughter and hindrance, like many in Ireland before them, in the long and painful turning of time.

  But I have seen great goodness on the earth of Ireland, and that is no little thing. I saw Lucius Lysaght, the finest of Catholics, deal in the world with grace. And his daughter Lucinda, peerless Protestant, show her light to the wondering world.

  And though I am small, and dark, and of no import, I gauge the width of my own self by these things.

  Saying, these matters I saw for myself on the earth, these matters I witnessed, and puzzled for myself.

  In Ireland, that puzzle which cannot be puzzled out – and may God commend it.

  And as I teeter here on the edge of some second death, and wait for God the great pirate of Araby to fetch me off, and talk to you, my friends, my judges, I commend you all to God.

  And commend all Englishmen in Ireland to Him, and all who deserve it, as I may myself.

  Dallas stands in silence.

  Have I spoken fully? Have I spoken well?

  Mrs Reddan In your faces he throws his watery truth.

  His story, his history, cancels out his soul, he is rescinded, burned away, like a wishbone in a bonefire, where the truth is flames.

  Lucinda and Mountifort had not many days of happiness. For soon Mountifort Longfield was found slain. Some secret man, as first we thought, in rage and anger, seeming to approach Lucinda’s husband with gladness and cheer, came close to him, all close, like a friend or a brother, and drawing a short sword that he had hidden in his coat, drove it into the reverend gentleman to the hilt, murdering him in cold and terrible murder.

  Yes, yes, Dallas Sweetman.

  The murderer fled away, nor was found again in the general mire of Ireland.

  Lucius withered and thinned, till his face had the skin of the flower Honesty. The sorrow and grieving of his daughter famished him.

  She vanished also from our ken. News came now and then of her being sighted in some vicinity, she seemed to thread her way through the English towns of Ireland, asking here and there her patient, terrible question. She was seeking a man and, item by item, described him where she went. For years she journeyed, even as Elizabeth died and James came to the throne. But great matters of history were nothing to her now. I imagined her growing ragged and dark, an image of avenging love, ever looking for the murderer of her husband.

  My lovely old Lucius, bent with horrid care, rowed in his gristled strength a little skiff out to Sherkin Island, must have walked in some state of perplexity to the cliff, and from there fell.

  An act of murder just as sure as if Dallas Sweetman had put that same sword into his heart.

  Speak, speak, Dallas, the darkness is falling round these ancient roofs, night’s old cloak thrown casually round us, speak now, speak now.

  Dallas My story – my history. That I undertook to tell you. As proof of my innocence. And of Mrs Reddan’s lies.

  It seemed true as I spoke it. It did. In many respects was true.

  But my mouth is full of ashes.

  My judges, you have paid heed to me, conferred on me I think the compliment of belief.

  I thank you.

  Is not God also in this great hull of stone, this passing ship that does not pass, this rearing place that clenches to the earth? He is, He is, may He protect me.

  I hear the roaring of the waterfall, right enough, and taste the mist that it engenders. I am to fall.

  But so –

  With angry heart I went to Cork, just as I said.

  I had my sword nesting in my cloak.

  Mountifort Longfield rose up, just as I said, oh yes, oh yes, to greet me. God give me that scene again in reality, so I may change it, but even He cannot.

  Yet I would still go back, ask old Father Time to wend back that way with his scythe, leading me along the road, go back, go back, speaking all language backwards, telling all stories backwards, till we reach again that moment, when I might have shown – not mercy exactly.

  The love I owed her, as the owner of my heart.

  I drew out my sword, his face opened in amazement. He spread his arms, it was as if to welcome my thrust, how could that be? He neither ran nor feinted sideways. He uttered a prayer to his God. This put more rage in me. And he opened his palms towards me.

  I drove in the sword, I hacked at him as he fell, and broke his head.

  I killed him, killed him, that good man.

  The true love of the woman that I loved.

  I fled from that place of ruin, Lucinda’s calling, crying voice behind me, tying about my soul in twines of iron.

  Mrs Reddan Oh, foolish, broken, mortal man.

  Dallas And Lucius killed himself, after, after I left his house, and I had done my work against the gentle reverend. I can well conjure why. He will have thought that, in speaking against Mountifort in my presence, in such raging terms, he had inadvertently seemed to commission me to kill him, and had destroyed his daughter’s happiness thereby – no repentance enough for that.

  That was the infinite discrimination of his mind.

  And if that is also to my charge, I accept it, and take his life also as a cancellation on my soul.

  No repentance enough – and still to live.

  God strike me down, condemn me, break me under His holy heel, unable to forgive, unable to forgive.

  This I know.

  My judges. My judges.

  I fled away, to find such wilderness where only wolves would live, and men like wolves, all those wide and lonely tracts of Ireland, where it is dangerous even for a robin to alight and seek a worm. And there for a long time I roamed, dirtied and ragged, with a lengthening beard, till I was a very wolf myself, worthy only of slaughter.

  Weeks, months later, I hardly knew the why, I asked benediction of one of those new priests, of the new faith, and turned my coat, in hopeless hope to be something of what she was.

  To be at length, at least, close to her in Heaven.

  Then coming into a little dirty village, somewhere near Baltimore as it happened, by my old districts wandering, and stopping for an hour in a low drinking-house, I heard my own story in the mouth of a stranger, how Lucius had died, and how his daughter sought everywhere the killer of her love.

  And that seemed a dark miracle, till I thought, it is now the first-told story of this place, casually told to all.

  For all suffering becomes at length a mer
e story, as a mocking afterlife of all our pains.

  ‘I shal tellen thee a feithful tale,’ quod he.

  The stranger, not knowing me, told the tale as you might a fable, or a little handful of cindery lies.

  But it was all truth, I knew.

  Terrible, hurting, killing truth.

  Mrs Reddan There, in his mouth, at last, the wakening coal of truth, red on his trembling tongue, burning and mining down into his throat, to touch his foul heart, brambled and cut by his deeds. Now I can nest in silence, tuck my coat, and go, and wander back across those fields I do not know, the neat cold farms of this Kent, and dwindle away, a figure in the distance, till distance snuffs me out. Not the victory I envisaged as we began, which was to see him sucked down before me into Hell, his lies packed back into his soul like fire, but I am strangely content.

  There is sorrow enough everywhere in this tale to engender in me the glimmer of forgiveness.

  A mystery.

  She goes.

  Dallas After that, I went looking for her. It was strange to be looking for someone I knew was looking for me, to dispatch me. But, I could not find her. Maybe an old man can find no one. An old man, like an old house with one last light in it. My desire was not to explain, not to be forgiven, but to be near her. So she could do as she wished, and desired, do what was proper to her. Because that was all that remained of me, the last tincture of myself, and maybe in the upshot the truest part of me, my love for her.

  I am to be swallowed up in Hell, to cry out like Jonah in the fiery smithy of the whale.

  And yet as I burn in the eternal flame, something of me will burn harder, brighter, my love, my laughable, ruinous and unnoticed love.

  From far off appears a glimmering figure, which starts the long walk down to him through the body of the cathedral. Music.

  It’s a woman in her travelling cloak.

  When she reaches Dallas, she pulls down the hood.

  Lucinda I am Lucinda Lysaght, do you know me?

  Dallas Yes, yes, I am your servant.

  She reveals a sword under the cloak, raises it above him.

  Lucinda I will strike you, Dallas, for the safety of your soul. You have done such wrong to me, you whom I loved as a child, you who watched over me, who taught me all the mysteries and the wonders, of the stars and the sun, of the Greeks and the Carthaginians, the rising and the falling of men and empires, of all human things.

  Dallas looks up at her, spreads his arms, and turns the palms towards her.

  Dallas Lucinda, Lucinda. I welcome it. It is just.

  Lucinda You are in every way beyond justice, Dallas, for what you did to my beloved.

  Dallas No man is beyond justice, though he may lie out on the margins of forgiveness, as I do myself. But I look in over the human fields, and yearn to be there again.

  Lucinda I have searched for you and searched for you, I have looked in cabins and in little cities, I have asked for you by name, and drawn your face, and shown it, and searched and searched.

  Dallas And all the while I went out to find you.

  Lucinda Why to find me, when you knew I would have you dead?

  Dallas That I might stand near you again, and see your face, just for a moment. The wren flies into his nest, in a twinkle. I desired only so much time.

  Lucinda You see my face now. Are you satisfied? Before I bring this sword down on your head?

  Dallas I am satisfied. I have done you wrong so great I believe you are just in your action. By your action now you may bring me back into the book of life. But the stranger thing is, this great happiness in me, just to see you. Your face radiates for me like a country lamp, like the sun in childhood, like the fire of my parents, like my favourite word, like the robin’s wife to the robin when she returns in the summer.

  Lucinda Your happiness is unwelcome, ridiculous, disgusting. You destroyed my own. You killed Mountifort Longfield, my husband.

  Dallas I did. I confessed to that, you know?

  Lucinda Do you boast of your contrition?

  Dallas May God forgive me. You need not. Strike me down. If it is what fits the crime, what must be done, let it be done.

  Lucinda You are almost brave. I took you for a creeping coward now, all changed and ruined, but I see there is something of Dallas Sweetman in you still, that kindly servant of my father’s, whom I loved.

  Dallas I have been made braver by being made smaller, by the wearing down of the wheel of living, the great grindstone of God which grinds us, till we are only dust for a loaf. Strike me.

  Lucinda Do not ask me to strike you. Resist me. Cower before me, cry out for life, beg me for forgiveness, creep and crawl, let me take your much-desired life for the much-desired life you took. In my head I carry him, in my heart I bear him, in my soul I have him nesting. And still, and still I know there is nothing there, because you made nothing of him. You saw him, ordinary and simple in his life, and put in this sword where his living self was beating, and destroyed him. So that my face cracked, my bones became slivers, my hands became hooks of torture, you laid on my backbone a great tonnage of grief, and I died at waking, and died at sleeping, it was all deaths with me, for the loss of him. The one perfect answer to my human question, the wood pigeon that answered my wood pigeon’s call, co-co-co-rico. To be endlessly sounded now, till the woods have fallen, the sky has burned out to black, and the earth is a cinder in the hearth of God, and it is all gone, all love, all present feeling, all future of laughter, all future of tears, till the last thing left is the cry of a woman, all her loves taken from her, a last cry, till God presses it smaller and smaller, till it is gone, infinitely gone, but still at the heart of it, the very heart of nothing, the invisible centre, my grief, my grief. Lay out your bare head to be killed.

  Dallas Like so, like so? Is this crawling enough? I have seen you, and now need no more life. I am content. I am ready to go. Like old St Thomas, I desire it.

  Lucinda raises the sword higher as if to bring it down on his head, Dallas closes his eyes, waiting, waiting, but at the last moment she seems to lose her strength and lets it fall clattering onto the ground.

  (Wearily.) Rise up, Dallas Sweetman, I cannot kill you now.

  Rise up, rise up.

  She almost has to reach down and help him up. He gets to his feet.

  I am too weary. I have a long way to go. I cannot go alone. I cannot. Will you follow me? Will you be my servant again?

  Dallas (utterly surprised, and eager) I will, I will.

  Lucinda Though we walk through the woods of wolves, though we pass through the mires of demons and saints?

  Dallas No matter, I will.

  Lucinda Through the fields of blood, through the halls of difficult histories, will you follow me?

  Dallas I will.

  Lucinda And what of human love, the darkest mire of all, will you follow me through that?

  Dallas I will. I will gladly.

  She touches his arm, exhausted.

  Lucinda Then, follow me.

  They hold there a few moments. Music.

  They go, Dallas following Lucinda.

  End.

  About the Author

  Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His novels and plays have won, among other awards, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Costa Book of the Year award, the Irish Book Awards Best Novel, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He also had two consecutive novels, A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. He lives in Wicklow with his wife and three children.

  By the Same Author

  fiction

  THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

  ANNIE DUNNE

  A LONG LONG WAY

  THE SECRET SCRIPTURE

  ON CANAAN’S SIDE

  plays

  BOSS GRADY’S BOYS

  PRAYERS OF SHERKIN

  WHITE WOMAN STREET

  THE ONLY TRUE HISTORY OF LIZZIE FINN

&
nbsp; THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM

  OUR LADY OF SLIGO

  HINTERLAND

  FRED AND JANE

  WHISTLING PSYCHE

  THE PRIDE OF PARNELL STREET

  DALLAS SWEETMAN

  TALES OF BALLYCUMBER

  ANDERSEN’S ENGLISH

  poetry

  THE WATER-COLOURIST

  FANNY HAWKE GOES TO THE MAINLAND FOREVER

  Copyright

  First published in 2008

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Sebastian Barry, 2008

  Cover design by www.nebulostrata.com

  The right of Sebastian Barry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights whatsoever in this work are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever, including performance rights, must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to Independent Talent Group Ltd, 40 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2RH. No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31915–2

 

 

  Sebastian Barry, Dallas Sweetman