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Authors: Sebastian Barry
Tags: prose_contemporary
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against me, even what I myself am writing here, because I have no heroic history to offer. There is no difficulty not of my own making. The heart and the soul, so beloved of God, are both filthied up by residence here, how can we avoid it? These seem not my thoughts at all, but maybe are borrowed out of old readings of Sir Thomas Browne. But they feel as if they are mine. They sound in my head like my own belling thoughts. It is strange. I suppose therefore God is the connoisseur of filthied hearts and souls, and can see the old, first pattern in them, and cherish them for that.
He had better be in my case, or I may dwell with the devil shortly.
Our house was clean, but did not look so clean the day that Fr Gaunt came to visit us. It was Sunday morning about ten, so I may assume Fr Gaunt was between masses and had hurried from his church along the river to knock on our door. As my mother had an old mirror balanced on a yellow brick in the window of the sitting room, we could always see without showing ourselves who was at the door, and the sight of the priest sent us scurrying about. A fourteen-year-old girl is always vividly aware of her appearance, or thinks she must be, or whatever it is, but speaking of mirrors I was at that time a slave to the one in my mother's bedroom, not because I thought I looked well, but because I did not know how I looked, and laboured many a minute to adjust myself into a picture I could trust, or was content with, and never could achieve it. The gold of my hair looked like some wet grass gone wild to me, and for the life of me I did not know the soul of the person that peered back at me in my mother's mossy little mirror. Because the edges of the mirror were strangely decayed, she had actually bought some unusual enamel paint in the chemist as may be, and decorated the edges of the mirror with tiny black stems and leaves, that lent everything that appeared in that less-than-poetical mirror a funereal look, which perhaps had suited my father's profession, at least up to now. So my first action was to dash up our few little stairs to the mirror and make an assault on my fourteen-year-old sense of horror.
When I got back down to the living room my father was standing in the middle of it, looking about him like a baulking pony, his eyes lighting first on the motorcycle, then on the piano, then on the spaces in between, his hand dashing now to a cushion on the 'best' chair. When I glanced out into the tiny hall, my mother was merely lodged there, stuck there, not moving a muscle, like an actor waiting to go out on a stage, gearing up her courage. Then she lifted the latch.
As Fr Gaunt edged into our room, the first thing I noticed was how glistening he seemed, his face shaved so closely you could write on it with a pen. He looked so safe, the safest thing in Ireland in an unsafe time. Every month of that year was the worst month, my father had said, as every person killed echoed in him. But the priest looked sacrosanct, pristine, separate, as if separate from the history of Ireland itself. Not that I thought this at the time, God knows what I thought, I don't know, only that this cleanliness made me fearful.
I had never seen my father quite so fussed. He could only speak in rushes and gaps.
'Ah, but, yes, sit down there, Father, do, now,' he said, nearly advancing on the unsmiling priest, as if to knock him back into the chair. But Fr Gaunt sat down steady as a dancer.
I knew my mother was in the hallway, in that little gap of privacy and silence. I stood at my father's right side like a watchman, like a sentry against the storm of an attack. My head was filled with some unknown darkness, I couldn't think, I couldn't continue that long conversation we make in our heads, as if an angel were writing there unbeknownst.
'Hmm,' said my father. 'We'll make tea, how about that?' he said. 'Yes, we will. Cissy, Cissy, will you heat the kettle, dear, do.'
'I drink so much tea,' said the priest,
He had better be in my case, or I may dwell with the devil shortly.
Our house was clean, but did not look so clean the day that Fr Gaunt came to visit us. It was Sunday morning about ten, so I may assume Fr Gaunt was between masses and had hurried from his church along the river to knock on our door. As my mother had an old mirror balanced on a yellow brick in the window of the sitting room, we could always see without showing ourselves who was at the door, and the sight of the priest sent us scurrying about. A fourteen-year-old girl is always vividly aware of her appearance, or thinks she must be, or whatever it is, but speaking of mirrors I was at that time a slave to the one in my mother's bedroom, not because I thought I looked well, but because I did not know how I looked, and laboured many a minute to adjust myself into a picture I could trust, or was content with, and never could achieve it. The gold of my hair looked like some wet grass gone wild to me, and for the life of me I did not know the soul of the person that peered back at me in my mother's mossy little mirror. Because the edges of the mirror were strangely decayed, she had actually bought some unusual enamel paint in the chemist as may be, and decorated the edges of the mirror with tiny black stems and leaves, that lent everything that appeared in that less-than-poetical mirror a funereal look, which perhaps had suited my father's profession, at least up to now. So my first action was to dash up our few little stairs to the mirror and make an assault on my fourteen-year-old sense of horror.
When I got back down to the living room my father was standing in the middle of it, looking about him like a baulking pony, his eyes lighting first on the motorcycle, then on the piano, then on the spaces in between, his hand dashing now to a cushion on the 'best' chair. When I glanced out into the tiny hall, my mother was merely lodged there, stuck there, not moving a muscle, like an actor waiting to go out on a stage, gearing up her courage. Then she lifted the latch.
As Fr Gaunt edged into our room, the first thing I noticed was how glistening he seemed, his face shaved so closely you could write on it with a pen. He looked so safe, the safest thing in Ireland in an unsafe time. Every month of that year was the worst month, my father had said, as every person killed echoed in him. But the priest looked sacrosanct, pristine, separate, as if separate from the history of Ireland itself. Not that I thought this at the time, God knows what I thought, I don't know, only that this cleanliness made me fearful.
I had never seen my father quite so fussed. He could only speak in rushes and gaps.
'Ah, but, yes, sit down there, Father, do, now,' he said, nearly advancing on the unsmiling priest, as if to knock him back into the chair. But Fr Gaunt sat down steady as a dancer.
I knew my mother was in the hallway, in that little gap of privacy and silence. I stood at my father's right side like a watchman, like a sentry against the storm of an attack. My head was filled with some unknown darkness, I couldn't think, I couldn't continue that long conversation we make in our heads, as if an angel were writing there unbeknownst.
'Hmm,' said my father. 'We'll make tea, how about that?' he said. 'Yes, we will. Cissy, Cissy, will you heat the kettle, dear, do.'
'I drink so much tea,' said the priest,
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