Into the kitchen I went. How welcome a figure I can't say. Not very, probably, my sudden presence endured.
She wasn't making Complan though, she was dissolving some tablets in a glass, Disprin or the like.
'Are you all right?' I said. 'Headache?'
'I'm quite fine,' she said.
Last January twelvemonth I know she had a little scare, she fainted in the street while she was shopping, and was brought to Roscommon hospital. She was in there all day having tests, and in the evening one of the doctors innocently phoned me to come and get her. He probably thought I knew she was there. I was so alarmed. I nearly crashed the car coming out our gate, nearly hung it on the pillar, drove like a man drives his pregnant wife in the night to hospital, when the famous pains begin, not that she ever endured that, and therein maybe lies the crux of the matter.
She was staring now at the glass.
'How are the legs?' I said.
'Swollen,' she said. 'It's just water. That's what they said. I wish it would go away.'
'Yes, of course,' I said, taking some courage from the phrase 'go away', as in holiday. 'Look, I've been thinking, it might be nice, when I have everything sorted out at work, if we went away for a few days. A holiday.'
She looked at me, swilling the fizzing tablets in the glass, readying herself for the bitter taste. I am sorry to report she laughed, just a little laugh, that I suspect she would have liked not to have let loose, but here it was, a laugh, between us.
'I don't think so,' she said.
'Why not,' I said. 'Old times' sake. Do us both good.' 'Is that right, Doctor?' 'Yes, do us good. Definitely.'
It was suddenly difficult to speak, as if every word was a little lump of mud in my mouth.
'I'm sorry, William,' she said, and that was a bad sign, the full first name, no longer Will, just William, separate, 'I don't really want to. I hate to see all the children.'
'The what?'
'The people, with their children.'
'Why?'
Oh yes, depthless stupid question. Children. The thing we have none of. Infinite pains we took. Infinite. Unrewarded. 'William, you are not a stupid man.' 'We'll go somewhere where there aren't any children.' 'Where? Mars?' she said.
'Somewhere where there aren't any,' I said, lifting my face to the ceiling, as if that was a likely place. 'I don't know where that
is.'
Roseanne's Testimony of Herself
It was then the horror of horrors occurred.
To this day, I swear by my God, I do not know how it happened. Someone else or others surely know, or did while they lived. And maybe the exactly how of it is not important, never was, but only, what certain people thought had happened.
Not that it matters now, maybe, because all those people are swept away by time. But maybe there is another place where everything matters eternally, the courts of heaven as may be. It would be a useful court for the living but the living will never see it.
It was persons unknown that banged on the door then, and shouted out with harsh military voices. We were like a set of hidden woodlice then inside, scattering away in different directions, myself drawing back like a tragedian in a travelling play, such as might be seen in a damp hall in the town, the three Irregulars ducking down behind the table, my father drawing Fr Gaunt near to me, as if he might hide me behind the priest and his own love. For it was clear to anyone that there would be shots now, and just as I had that thought, the iron door pushed open on its big scraping hinges.
Yes, it was lads of the new army in their awkward uniforms. It would be thought as they came in that they had bullets aplenty, at least they levelled their guns at us in their own fierce moments of concentration, and to my young eyes, looking out through my father's legs, the six or seven faces that entered the temple looked only terrified in the light of the fire.
The long thin boy from the mountain, with the trousers not quite to his ankles, jumped up from behind the table, and for mad reasons of his own, charged against the newcomers as if he was out on a proper battlefield. The brother of the dead man was right behind him, maybe in his grief demanding this of himself. It is difficult to describe the noise that guns make in a small enclosed space, but it would make the bones drop out of your flesh. My father, Fr Gaunt and I reared back against the wall as one, and the bullets that went into the two lads must have made queer tracks through them, because I saw sudden exploding pocks in the plaster of the old wall beside me. First the bullets, and then a thin falling cascade of lightest blood, over my uniform, my hands, my father, my life.
The two irregulars were not killed, but writhed now on the ground caught up in each other.
'For the love of God,' cried Fr Gaunt, 'desist – there is a young girl in here, and ordinary people.' Whatever he meant by the latter.
'Put down your guns, put down your guns,' shouted one of the new soldiers, almost a scream it was. Certainly the last man our side of the table threw down his gun, and his handgun out of his waistband, and he stood up immediately and raised his hands. He looked back at me just for a second and I thought his eyes were weeping, his eyes were doing something or other, certainly piercing into me anyhow, fiercely, fiercely, like those eyes could be used to kill, could be better than the bullets they did not have.
'Look,' said Fr Gaunt. 'I believe – I believe these men have no bullets. Just everyone do nothing for a moment!'
'No bullets?' said the commander of the men. 'Because they've put them all into our men up on the mountain. Are you the bastards were up on the mountain?'
Oh dear, oh dear, we knew they were, and yet for some reason none of us spoke a word.
'You've killed my brother,' said the man called John on the ground. He was holding the top of his thigh, and there was a great strange dark pool of blood just under him, blood as black as blackbirds. 'You killed him in cold blood. You had him captured, you had him harmless, and you shot him in the stomach, three fucking times!'
'So you wouldn't be creeping down on us and murdering us where we went!' said the commander. 'Hold these men down, and you,' he cried to him who had surrendered, 'count yourself arrested. Bring them all out to the truck, lads, and we'll sort this out. In the dark of the night we catch you, in this filthy place, gathered like rats. You, man, what's your name?'
'Joe Clear,' said my father. 'I'm the watchman here at the graveyard. This is Fr Gaunt, one of the curates in the parish. I called him, for to see to the dead boy there.'
'So you bury the likes of him in Sligo,' said the commander, with extraordinary force. And he rushed around the table and held the gun to Fr Gaunt's temple. 'What sort of a priest are you, that would be disobeying your own bishops? Are you one of those filthy renegades?'
'Are you going to shoot a priest?' said my father in astonishment.
Fr Gaunt had his eyes closed fast and was kneeling now just the same as he might in the church. He was kneeling and I don't know if he was praying soundlessly, but he wasn't saying anything.
'Jem,' said one of the other Free State soldiers, 'there was never a priest shot yet in Ireland by us. Don't shoot him.'
The commander stood back and raised his gun away from Fr Gaunt.
'Come on, lads, gather them up, we're getting out of here.'
And the soldiers raised up the two wounded gently enough and led them out through the door. Just as the third man was being arrested he turned his face full on me.
'May God forgive you for what you done but I never will.'