The Secret Scripture

When Dr. Grene enters Roseanne’s room, she notices that he’s shaved his beard. He notices Joe Clear’s volume of Religio Medici. Roseanne tells him that she likes to think that her grandfather had given her father the book, thereby bestowing the volume with a history of the hands of her people. Joe’s name is written in the book. He figures that Joe Clear was “an educated man” (98). Roseanne tells him that Joe Clear was “a minister’s son” from Collooney, a place that suffered during the Troubles in the Twenties (99).

Dr. Grene asks Roseanne again about the circumstances that brought her to the Sligo asylum. She recalls “terrible dark things” from there, as well as “loss, and noise” (100). While wanting to tell Dr. Grene something about herself, Roseanne detects that something is wrong with him. He confesses that his wife, Bet, died by suffocation and that it’s his birthday.

Roseanne lapses back into her testimony and recalls the gloomy December afternoon when she slipped into the Catholic cemetery where her father worked, out of nostalgia for her past visits there. She was 16. Nothing there had changed. Joe Clear’s kettle and enamel cup were still there.