Selected Stories

It was as Murtagh had represented her that the Virgin came to him the second time, not as she had been before, which was in a likeness that was almost his mother’s. He had not understood, that second time, why there should again be disruption in his life. He understood now. At the abbey he had learned piety, had practised patience, been humbled by his companions’ talents, strengthened by their friendship. But in his solitude he was closer to God.

Still standing on the crag that rose above the others, he knew that with a certainty that came freshly to him in the evening of every day. During all his time here he had not seen another person, had spoken only to God and to himself, to animals and birds and the butterflies that so strangely arrived, occasionally to an insect. The figments that congregated in his imagination did not create an alien mood; nostalgia was always checked. This evening, as he prepared his food and ate it, it pleased him that he had cut the roof sods and settled them into place while it was fine. That was a satisfaction, and he took it with him when he lay down to rest.

Colour came from nowhere, brightening to a vividness. There was a fluttering of wings closing after flight, scarlet birds of paradise, yellow-breasted, green. Archways receded into landscape; faint brown and pink were washed through the marble tracery of a floor. Rays of sunlight were like arrows in the sky.

The Virgin’s dress was two shades of blue, her lacy halo hardly there. This time her features were not reminiscent of what Michael’s mother’s once had been, nor of a gospel illumination: there was such beauty as Michael had never before beheld in a human face or anywhere in nature - not in the rock flowers or the heather, not in the delicacy of the seashore shells. Pale, slender hands were raised in a gesture of affection.

‘Michael,’ the Virgin said and there was a stillness until, unkempt and ragged, he stood before her, until he said:

‘I am content here.’

‘Because you have come to love your solitude, Michael.’

‘Yes.’

‘In this month of the year you must leave it.’

‘I was content on my father’s farm. I was content at the abbey. This is my place now.’

Through denial and deprivation he had been led to peace, a destination had been reached. These words were not spoken but were there, a thought passing through the conversation.

‘I have come to you the last time now,’ the Virgin said.

She did not smile and yet was not severe in the serenity that seemed to spread about her. Delicately, the fingers of her hands touched and parted, and then were raised in blessing.

‘I cannot understand,’ Michael said, struggling to find other words and remaining silent when he could not. Then it was dark again, until he woke at dawn.

It was a Thursday. Michael sensed that in nervous irritation. The day of the week was irrelevant when, this morning, there was so much else. ‘Blessed among women,’ he beseeched. ‘Our Lady of grace, hear me.’

He begged that his melancholy might be lifted, that the confusion which had come in the night might be lightened with revelation. These were the days of the year when his spirits were most joyful, when each hour that passed brought closer the celebration of the Saviour’s birth. Why had this honouring of a season been so brutally upset?

‘Blessed among women,’ Michael murmured again, but when he rose from his knees he was still alone.

The greyness of early morning made his island greyer than it often was, and the images of the dream – brightly lingering – made it greyer still. ‘A dream’s no more’n a dream,’ Fódla’s young voíce echoed from the faraway past, and Michael saw his own head shaking a denial. Though feeling punished after the previous occasions of the Virgin’s presence, he had not experienced the unease of irritation. He had not, in all his life, experienced it often. At the abbey there had been the dragging walk of Brother Andrew, his sandals flapping, a slow, repetitive sound that made you close your eyes and silently urge him to hurry. Every time Brother Justus stood up from the refectory table he shook the crumbs from the lap of his habit, scattering them so that the floor would have to be swept again. There was old Nessan’s cough.

This morning, though, Michael’s distress was bleaker than any mood engendered by such pinpricks of annoyance. The prospect of moving out of his solitude was fearful. This was his place and he had made it so. In his fifty-ninth year, it would enfeeble him to travel purposelessly. He would not bear a journey with the fortitude he had possessed in his boyhood and in his middle age. If he was being called to his death, why might he not die here, among his stones, close to his heather and his gorse, close to his little garden of lettuces and roots?