How long had the storm been gone? I didn't know.
I fell back down, striking a hip against the rock. There was still a steady twine of blood coming out of me, dark blood, warm and dark. I lay there, staring out at the world like a woman who had been shot in the head, the peaceful beach, the sandbirds dipping and striking with their long beaks along the receding tideline. 'Please help me,' I kept saying, but there seemed to be no one to hear me except those birds. Weren't there a few houses on the island, hiding here and there from the wind? Could someone not come and help me find my baby? Could someone not come?
As I lay there a strange sharp hurting feeling came into my breast, it was the milk coming into them, I thought. I had the milk now, ready. Where, where was my baby to drink it?
Then down the winding road to the strand I saw a white van moving. I knew immediately it was an ambulance, because even so far away I could hear its siren in the stillness. It reached the sand and surged forward, taking its course, just as I had in the storm, from bollard to bollard. I stood again and waved my arms, like the shipwrecked sailor does when at last he sees the far-off ship to rescue him. But it wasn't me that needed rescue, it was that tiny person vanished from the space he should have occupied. When the men came up to me with their stretcher, I asked them to tell me where my baby was, I begged them.
'We don't know, ma'am,' one said, with perfect manners. 'What are you doing out here on Coney having a baby? It's no place to have a baby, now, that's for sure.'
'But where is it, where is my baby?'
'Was the tide in high, ma'am, and washed it away, God bless the poor mite?'
'No, no, I had him in my arms, and slept, and kept him close, and warm. I knew he could be warm beside me. Look, I had him here, in my breast, look, the buttons are undone, I had him safe and warm.'
'All right,' said another. 'All right. Do calm yourself. There's still bleeding,' he said to his colleague. 'We'll have to try and stop that.'
'You mightn't stop it,' said the man.
'We'll get her to Sligo quick.'
And they loaded me into the back. But were we abandoning my child? I didn't know. I scrabbled at the door when it closed.
'Look everywhere,' I said. 'There was a child. There was.'
Oh, then when they started the engine, it was like falling through floors, I swooned away.
Now I begin to encounter difficulties. Now the roads seem to take two courses through the forest, and the forest is so deep in snow there is only whiteness.
Someone took my child. The ambulance brought me to the hospital. For days I know I was still bleeding inside, and they did not expect me to live. These things I remember. I remember they did an operation on me because I know I stopped bleeding and that I lived. I remember Fr Gaunt coming in and telling me that I was going to be taken care of, that he knew where he could put me for my own safety, and that I would like the place, and that I wasn't to worry. I asked again and again about my child and each time he just said the word 'Nazareth'. I didn't know what he meant. I was so weak I think I must have done what the prisoner will do with his jailer, I looked for Fr Gaunt to help me. I may have asked him for his help. I certainly wept a great deal and I have even a memory of him holding me while I wept. Was there anyone else there? I can't remember. Soon I saw the two towers of the asylum looming above me and I was given forth to hell.
I cried out that I wanted to see my mother, but they said, 'You cannot see her, no one can see her, she is beyond seeing.'
Now memory falters. Yes. It shudders, like a motor trying to start at the turn of the crank, but failing. Phut, phut, phut. Oh, is that Old Tom and Mrs McNulty in the darkness there, in a dark room as may be, and myself there also, and are they measuring me with their linen tapes, for an asylum smock, not saying anything, except the measurements, the bust, the waist, the hips? Like they had measured all the other inmates as they came in, for a smock, and all the inmates as they went out, for a shroud?
Now memory stops. It is entirely absent. I don't even remember suffering, misery. It is not there. I remember Eneas coming in his army uniform one night, charming the staff into seeing me. He had a major's uniform on that day and I knew he was only a private soldier but he confessed to me that he had gone and borrowed his brother Jack's and very well he looked in it, with the epaulettes. He told me to dress myself quickly, that he had my baby outside and he was going to free me. We were going to go away together into another land. I had no dress to put on except the rags I had already, I knew I was filthy and lice-ridden, there was blood dried on me all over, and through the dark corridor we crept, Eneas and I, and he creaked open the great door of the asylum, and we went out under the old towers and across the gravel, me not minding the sharp stones at all, and he gathered the baby from the high pram where it had waited for us, a lovely baby boy he was, and he took the bundle in his arms, and led me on across the lawn with my bleeding feet, and we had to cross a little fresh river at the bottom of the slope. He crossed over and walked up onto a beautiful green meadow with lofty grass. The moon was speckling the water of the river, my old owl was calling, and as I stepped into the river my dress dissolved and the water cleaned me. I stepped out the other side from the rushes and Eneas looked at me, I know in my heart I was beautiful again, and he handed me my baby and I felt the milk come into my breast. And Eneas and I and our child stood in the meadow in the moonlight and there was a line of enormous green trees being stirred gently by a warm summer wind. And Eneas took off his useless uniform, it was that warm, and we stood there as content as ever people were, and we were the first and last people on the earth.
A memory so clear, so wonderful, so beyond the bounds of possibility. I know it.
My head is as clear as a glass.
If you are reading this, then the mouse, the woodworm and the beetle must have spared these jotters.
What can I tell you further? I once lived among humankind, and found them in their generality to be cruel and cold, and yet could mention the names of three or four that were like angels.
I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us, and yet aren't like them.
If our suffering is great on account of that, yet at close of day the gift of life is something immense. Something larger than old Sligo mountains, something difficult but oddly bright, that makes equal in their fall the hammers and the feathers.
And like the impulse that drives the old maid to make a garden, with a meagre rose and a straggling daffodil, gives a hint of some coming paradise.
All that remains of me now is a rumour of beauty.
chapter twenty-one
Dr Grene's Commonplace Book
Well, I finally made my trip over to Sligo, having found a gap in all these preparations for leaving the hospital. Such a short journey really, and yet I have rarely made it over the years. Beautiful spring day. Yet even on such a day, Sligo Mental Hospital looked so gloomy, with its unpromising twin towers. It is a vast building. In common parlance it is called the Leitrim Hotel, as Roseanne explained to me, since half of Leitrim is said to be in it. But that no doubt is just a regional prejudice.
Considering I was once so friendly with Percy Quinn I suppose it is strange that we have not really kept in touch, with so few miles between us. Some friendships though, even strong and interesting ones, seem to have quite a short term, and cannot be prolonged. Nevertheless Percy, with his receding hair and a new plumpness I didn't remember, was exceedingly cordial when I found his office, which occupies one of the towers. I don't know much about his reputation, how progressive he is, or to what degree he sits back and lets things take their course, as I am afraid I have often been guilty of myself, I do believe. Not that I would confess this anywhere but here, but I am sure St Peter is taking notes against me.