Reckless (35 page)

‘I love you, John. I miss you.’

‘Tell him you know you’ll see him again.’

‘I’ll see you again, John.’

‘Now tell him goodbye.’

The whisper almost inaudible: ‘Goodbye, my darling.’

She made a slight movement of her upper body. Mary opened her arms. Harriet came into her embrace, kneeling there by the cot.

Now the tears came. Mary rocked her weeping in her arms. Then slowly the crying ceased, and they parted. Harriet rose to her feet.

‘I should do something about all these baby things,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘They’re good as new.’

‘I could help you.’

‘Do you think anyone would want them?’

‘I’m sure of it. The church I go to, they have a jumble sale coming up this Saturday.’

‘We’ll get new wallpaper. New curtains.’ She turned to Mary. ‘It could be your room.’

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be staying,’ said Mary.

‘I want you to stay for ever. I was so lonely until you came.’

‘But you’ve got Hugo,’ said Mary.

‘Yes. Darling Hugo. Where would I be without him?’ She gave Mary an uncertain look, asking for reassurance. ‘I know it might seem, with the headaches and everything … Pamela said he was sympathetic. Of course I do understand what she means, but even so … ’

‘Pamela’s still young.’

‘Yes, she is. She’s just a child, really. It’s not her fault that she’s so pretty.’

They found some empty wine boxes in the wine store and packed away the baby things: the little quilt, the cot mattress, the never-used nappies, the woolly lion. The cot itself came apart into flat frames. They carried the boxes and the dismembered cot downstairs and stacked them in the front hall.

Harriet said, ‘I never could have done that without you.’

When Hugo came home that evening he saw the boxes in the hall.

‘What’s all this?’ he said.

‘It’s a new beginning,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m going to be so much stronger from now on.’

*

The next day Rupert called on them, back from Ireland.

‘Just the man,’ said Mary. ‘You can help me carry these boxes down to the church hall.’

‘The poor man’s only just walked in the door,’ said Harriet.

‘Then he can walk out again,’ said Mary. ‘My mam always said you should never let a man sit down. Once down, they never get up.’

So Rupert took hold of the unwieldy cot frames, and Mary took one of the wine boxes, and they set off down the road.

‘So how was Donegal?’ said Mary once they were out of the house.

‘Beautiful,’ said Rupert. ‘Sad.’

‘It is that.’

‘Mountbatten has a castle there, right on the sea. It’s grand, but I wouldn’t want to live there.’

‘What does the man want for God’s sake with a castle in Ireland?’

‘It’s his summer home. He goes there to relax.’

‘So you were relaxing, were you?’

‘And working,’ said Rupert.

‘I should hope so,’ said Mary. ‘If great men like you aren’t working to make the world a better place, then what’s the use of you?’

They carried the box and the cot frames into the church hall. A parish helper was there, sorting through the donations.

‘Baby things! They’ll go in a trice!’

They returned up the road to get the rest of the boxes. For a
while they walked in silence. Then Mary spoke, very low.

‘You went there, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Rupert, not pretending he didn’t understand.

‘How did you know?’

‘Pamela told me.’

‘Yes. Of course she would.’

She was closing up against him. Running away again.

‘Was I wrong to go there?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Mary.’

‘I want you to forget you ever went there,’ she said.

In the house again, by wordless agreement they said no more. But once out in the street, boxes in their arms, she began again.

‘So now you’ll be thinking I’m a mad woman.’

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘You were only a child.’

‘A child making a holy show of herself. Telling stories she should be ashamed of.’

‘Is that what you were doing?’

‘That’s what you’re thinking I was doing.’

She was proud and angry.

‘You don’t know what I’m thinking,’ he said.

‘You don’t believe in God,’ she said. ‘Why would you believe in my visions? So of course I made it all up. And that’s what you think of me. I’m a story-teller and a liar.’

‘Mary,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you made it all up.’

‘Then what do you think?’

‘I think you saw what you say you saw. The sea went still, and Jesus came to you, walking on the water.’

‘But you don’t believe in Jesus.’

‘I believe in you.’

They carried the boxes into the church hall. From there, instead of going back out into the street, they went into the church itself. It was empty. They walked down the centre aisle
towards the altar. The stained-glass windows threw coloured light over the pews.

‘The priest here’s a fine deep man,’ said Mary, ‘with a fine deep voice.’

‘The priest in Kilnacarry seemed to me to be a good man.’

‘He is a good man,’ she said.

She sat down in the front pew, and he sat down across the aisle from her.

‘Now you’d better tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘None of your soapy English manners. What do you mean by what you say?’

She spoke sharply, as if she was offended by him. She wouldn’t look at him.

Rupert found her question hard to answer. What exactly did he mean?

‘I think you had a real experience,’ he said, ‘and you used the language you’d been given to make sense of it.’

‘The language I’d been given?’

‘Sinfulness. Suffering. Being made clean. And the figure of Jesus, of course.’

She listened in silence, frowning, looking down at her hands.

‘But I do think the experience was real,’ he said. ‘I know it was real.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because others have had it. They all describe it in their own way, but it’s obvious it’s the same experience. The mystics talk of it as a kind of surrender. They call it a surrender to God. Others talk of a short precious moment when they escape the walls that shut us all in. Somehow they slip out, into something else. Into everything else. Even I’ve felt it, in a very small way. We have this constant awareness of how we’re separate from everything that isn’t ourselves. It’s what we call loneliness. Then sometimes the walls disappear, and we know we’re not alone after all.’

Mary said nothing. He could hear her soft rapid breathing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll think I’m trying to explain it away. That’s not what I meant at all.’

She looked up at last.

‘You wouldn’t lie to me? Not even out of kindness?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You really do believe me?’

‘Many people believe you, Mary.’

‘Oh, it’s not me they believe!’ She pulled a face at the thought. ‘That’s their own foolish fancies. They come looking for a cure for the toothache. They’re after miracles and all sorts of nonsense. It’s like they’re playing the pools, they’re all hoping for a big win. I could be a statue for all they care. But the way you talk, that’s something else. Even the priest never said such things to me.’

‘I’m only trying to make sense of it my way. I’m not telling you Jesus didn’t appear to you. After all, he gave you a message. He spoke to you.’

She lowered her head and sat in silence.

‘They’re all waiting for your return,’ he said. ‘So they can be given the final message.’

‘I’ll never return.’

‘You have to go back one day, Mary.’

‘I can’t.’

‘If you told the priest ahead of time, I’m sure he’d do his best to manage things so you didn’t get bothered by the pilgrims.’

She shook her head.

‘If it were only that,’ she said.

‘Tell me what it is,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help.’

‘You?’ She gave a low laugh. ‘You’re the last one can help.’

There was nothing more to say. She showed no sign of wanting to leave the church. So they sat there quietly, and time passed.

You’re the last one can help.

He puzzled over this. What was it about him that so disqualified him? He watched her sitting there, hands clasped in her lap as they had been when he first saw her on the park bench. He recalled the look in her eyes then. It had been a look of despair.

Suddenly he understood.

‘You don’t believe in your visions any more,’ he said.

He heard her give a sharp intake of breath.

‘I’m right, aren’t I? That’s why you can’t go back.’

‘You’re the devil, Rupert Blundell.’

‘That’s why you’ve run away.’

She kept her gaze lowered, avoiding his.

‘What happened? Did you just wake up one day and think it was all a dream?’

Still she didn’t answer. Head bowed, hands clasped, like one anticipating a coming storm, or punishment. Then, slowly, as if speaking to herself:

‘I think I always knew. Right from the start. But they all believed me, and wanted it to be true. And I wanted it to be true. And there was the attention and all. I was such a little show-off. You wouldn’t think it to see me now. But it all got too big, and the bishop came, and people said they saw what I’d seen, and these miracles started happening, and I was … I was caught. How could I tell them?’

‘That you made it all up?’

‘I never meant to make it up. It all came to me. But a whole lot of things came to me when I was a child. I used to talk to the fairies, and they’d talk back.’

‘So seeing Jesus on the water, and his words to you – that all just came to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘As in a vision?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you did see a vision, Mary.’

‘I thought I did.’

‘You saw what you saw. No one can take that away from you.’

‘I’ll never forget it.’

She looked up at him shyly, and for a moment he saw there on her face a shadow of the shining glory that had been on the child’s face, in the photograph.

‘It was a glory,’ she said.

‘Tell me what you saw.’

‘You won’t laugh at me?’

‘No.’

She turned away so she couldn’t see his face while she spoke. The coloured light from the stained-glass window was now glowing red and gold on the aisle between them.

‘I stood on the beach, and the sun was setting, and everything became still. Not a dead kind of stillness. A perfect stillness. It was just like you said, it was like I slipped out of myself. I was part of everything. Then seeing Jesus coming to me over the water – I don’t know that I saw him – it was like there had to be a way to show how grand it was, how it was the grandest moment of my life. So I wanted Jesus to come to me, to make sense of the feeling.’

‘And to speak to you.’

‘That was to make sense of the feeling too.’

‘What was this feeling?’

‘How perfect the world was, and how fragile. How there was goodness at the heart of it. How easily the goodness could die. That was what I felt, more than anything. This fragile world, that was so still and so beautiful, and was going to die.’

‘Yes,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ve felt that.’

She looked up quickly, eagerly.

‘Have you? Have you? It’s grand, isn’t it? And it’s a terrible
fear comes over you. That’s why I knew I had to tell everyone. To warn them. But what I said … I don’t know where it came from.’

‘You used the words you’d been given,’ said Rupert. ‘What else could you do?’

‘I knew it was wrong. After the third evening I knew I was making it up. I could feel it. All those people, all watching me, all writing down everything I said. That goes to a girl’s head, you know? I was the star. And after that, when I thought it would all go away, it got bigger and bigger. People came to see me, and I had to tell it all again. And they acted like I was holy, like I was a living saint. And Mam was so proud. And the priest was so good to me. So I couldn’t tell them. I kept waiting for someone to pull my arm and say, “That’s enough of all this foolishness, Mary Brennan.” But they never did.’

‘So you ran away.’

‘Oh, after the longest time. I stayed as long as I could. They all expected me to live the rest of my life in a convent. Dear Lord, I expected it myself. It’s terrible what a Catholic childhood does to you. A convent! Shut away with half a dozen miserable old women! If you want to know how Jesus suffered on the cross go into a convent, and you’ll know for sure that God has abandoned you.’

‘Is that what you felt? That God had abandoned you?’

‘Of course. Hadn’t I taken his name in vain? It was my punishment, living with the nuns. My punishment for all my terrible wickedness.’

‘And you never told a soul?’

‘What was I to tell them? That I was a wicked liar? There were all these other people who came to Buckle Bay and had visions and miracle cures and all sorts of wonders. That was me, started it all. If I was a liar, were they all liars?’

‘You’re not a liar, Mary.’

‘But you see, Rupert, no one, in all my life, has ever said to me what you’ve said today. I thought my visions were either from God, or they were my own lies. But here you are, a man who doesn’t believe in God, telling me I don’t need God for my visions to be true.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you, Mary.’

‘Then God bless you!’ she said with fervour. ‘And even if you don’t have a God, I’ve got a God, and my God blesses you.’

‘And you know something else about your God?’ said Rupert. ‘God knows everything. God knows you better than you know yourself. So all along, God has known your secret. How you made it up, and never told anyone. You can’t keep secrets from God.’

‘You talk so like a priest, Rupert Blundell.’

‘I was raised in the church. I can talk the talk.’

She jumped up out of the pew, suddenly filled with energy.

‘Oh, dear Lord! I want to run about.’

‘Run about, then. Run up and down the aisle.’

She raised her arms and did three rapid pirouettes, her eyes finding him on each turn. She looked radiant.

‘I want to fly,’ she said.

‘Now that would impress me.’

‘Darling Rupert. Can I hug you?’