The Secret Scripture

John Kane enters Roseanne’s room to clean, “muttering and pushing his brush” (44). Roseanne tolerates him, though “his flies [are always] open” (44). He remarks on her books, wondering how she can read without spectacles. She tells him that she can read just fine without glasses.

Many years before, John Kane led Roseanne to safety during a fire. Now, he offers her “[h]alf the shell of a bird’s egg, blue like the [veil of] veins in his face” (46). Roseanne had found it “in the gardens many years before” (47). John, meanwhile, complains about the constant dust in the room, “ancient dust” (47). Despite all the years in which they have known each other, John asks for Roseanne’s name, as though he doesn’t know it. Roseanne claims to have forgotten her name. He replies that he knows it anyway.

When John leaves the room, Roseanne ruminates on her brother-in-law, Jack, who fought in the Second World War for England. There was also a civil war fought in Sligo “and all along the western seaboard” (48). Roseanne was 14 at the time and observed a lot of hatred. Being only a teenager, however, she worried about little more than her hair, wishing to give it curls.