The Secret Scripture

When Roseanne thinks back on the burning of the orphanage, she wonders if she should have told the authorities what she knew, though it would have meant betraying her father.

Though Roseanne has been at Roscommon for many years, she came from Sligo Mental Hospital, which she entered sometime during the Second World War. Dr. Grene was just an infant then. One day, he shares with Roseanne an early memory of going to the Cornish bay with his parents. This piques Roseanne’s curiosity about his family. She thinks about asking what Dr. Grene’s father did for a living, sensing that they’re on the subject of fathers, but she decides against it.

Dr. Grene asks why Roseanne switched from the Sligo asylum to Roscommon. She tells him that her father-in-law, Old Tom, arranged for it. He worked in the Sligo asylum. Roseanne senses Dr. Grene’s curiosity; he senses her fear. Indeed, she feels “rats of shame bursting through the wall [she has] constructed with infinite care” and tries to hide them (80). She retreats into another memory.

One winter evening, while returning home from school, Roseanne met up with her father. They both saw Mr. Fine—“a tall, loping gentleman of the town” coming out of their house (81). Mr. Fine stopped and mentioned the “terrible occasion” of the orphanage fire (81). After Fine left, Joe Clear wondered if it was right to mention Jesus to him, given that he’s Jewish. Roseanne is confused: didn’t the Jews also have Jesus? Joe Clear told her about how Father Gaunt said that Jewish people killed Jesus, but that all of this occurred during “troubled times” (81).

Joe Clear and Roseanne went back into the house. Around bed time, Joe Clear asked Cissy what Mr. Fine was doing at the house. Cissy suddenly burst into tears, cursing the “cold cruel country” of Ireland with its “filthy rain” and “filthy people” (82). She then leapt up and “struck herself on the leg with the shovel,” causing “a few jewels of dark blood [to glisten] there” (83).

The next evening, Joe Clear went to see Mr. Fine at the latter’s grocery store. When he returned home, Roseanne told him that Cissy had gone out “into the dark” (83). They intended to look for her, but Joe Clear stayed put. He explained to Roseanne that Mr. Fine lent Cissy money to buy “a square porcelain” clock with an “elegant dial” (83). Mr. Fine was coming every week to collect the money in installments. When Cissy returned, she told her husband and daughter that she bought the clock in the expensive shop Grace’s of the Weir. However, she didn’t allow it to tick, out of fear that “[they would] follow the sound and find it” (84). She was referring to rats. Cissy suggested that she smash the clock instead of returning it. She then does just that. She smashes the clock onto the concrete floor. The elegant Ansonia clock chimed for the first and last time.

Soon after this episode, Joe Clear was found dead. He hanged himself “in a derelict cottage” that he was working to rid of a rat infestation, at the request of neighbors living near the house. After so many years, Roseanne still feels grief over the loss of her father.

At Joe Clear’s wake, the Presbyterian minister, Mr. Ellis, and the Catholic clergyman, Father Gaunt, “supposed enemies or rivals in Ireland” stood in the corner, “[sharing] a witticism” (87). Roseanne peered closely at her dead father and saw that his eyes had been “pierced,” as if with “tiny black [arrows]” (87). The “arrows” made her think of “the black metal hands from [Cissy’s] Ansonia clock” (87). Joe Brady, the “queer fattish man,” who replaced Joe Clear at the cemetery, was also present (88). Roseanne felt as though her head were “aflame with the deep, dark pulse of grief” or “a rat on fire” (87).

The narrative switches to “Dr. Grene’s Commonplace Book,” in which Dr. Grene notes that keeping this book reminds him that he has a rich inner life. When he arrived home the previous night, Bet was on the landing. She then descended, bathed in moonlight. She embraced her husband and kissed him passionately. They then made love and, afterward, rested on their “Axminster carpet like slain animals” (89).

The narrative reverts to “Roseanne’s Testimony of Herself” in which she recounts what her life was like after her father’s death and burial. She had to leave school, where the nuns beat the poor girls while showing the richer ones “solicitous kindnesses” (89). Worse, her mother went mad, forcing Roseanne to go to work.

One day, Father Gaunt went to the Clear house. Roseanne served him tea from “a farthing […] sadly already used three times” (92). Father Gaunt politely sipped from the cup. He asked what Roseanne was going to do, with no one to care for her. She said that she would get a job. Father Gaunt advised Roseanne to use her remarkable beauty to her advantage and marry Joe Brady. Father Gaunt explained that Joe Brady had lost his wife two years before and wanted to remarry. Moreover, he had no children. Roseanne figured that Joe Brady was around 50.

Father Gaunt insisted upon marriage for two reasons: firstly, so that Roseanne would not be a temptation to the boys and men of Sligo; secondly, to find “a good Catholic husband” to protect her from the “upheavals” in the country, which did not favor Protestants (94). Father Gaunt figured that Joe Brady wouldn’t mind Roseanne’s “origin” because she had been “graced […] with so much beauty” (95). Father Gaunt told Roseanne that she was “the most beautiful young girl [they had] ever seen in Sligo” (95). He then told her that she would probably need to commit her mother to the asylum.

At hearing the “fearsome words” about her mother, Roseanne doubled over and vomited onto the carpet (95). She wanted to apologize but sensed that she never needed to apologize to Father Gaunt— “a force unknown, like a calamity of weather waiting unknown and un-forecast to bedevil a landscape” (96). Roseanne told him that she couldn’t marry. Father Gaunt assures her that she’s still in mourning and cannot be expected to make good decisions. Therefore, he suggested that she allow him to serve as a surrogate father on this matter. He told Roseanne to think about the prospect of marriage and thanked her for the tea; she remained silent. After Father Gaunt left, and only the smell of his soutane lingered, Roseanne bade him goodbye.