The Past by Neil Jordan Page A

innocence to the age of reason (and here she pauses, implying a multitude of ages, the texture of which you cannot imagine) this droplet becomes tarnished by the grains of hours and experience and only our own efforts can wash it back to something like its original purity. And you accept this image but fortify it with your own one, of that ocean in reverse washing over every hour of your days. And there is a slanting pencil of light coming through the window, falling on your hands, which are to yourself and from yourself, shaking slightly because of the wind on the umbrella of buds outside, because between your hands and the sunlight there is the tree. And Sister Paul
has continued to describe to you the sacraments that belong to the age of reason, those of Confession and Communion. She asks you to rehearse the reality. Each of you is to confess to her seat-mate the actions which, in the light of reason, can be seen to be sinful. Lili confesses to you a series of misdemeanours but the air of secrecy and confidence generated by your bowed heads is such that she ends with the confession that she loves you. And you confess to her another series and end with the confession that you love her. And thus you suspect a mystery in reason, sin and in the droplet of water far more bountiful than that which Sister Paul has explained; though watching her distribute the tiny pieces of wafer which are to substitute for Communion bread, you suspect she knows more than she has explained. And feeling Lili’s hand curl round yours on the wooden desk you sense that reason, far from having tarnished your droplet of water, has washed it even purer and even more, has magnified it to a point beyond which it can no longer be considered a droplet, for such is the feeling welling inside you, you suspect it would fill a whole glass. All the other details of the age of reason seem ancillary to this: the Act of Contrition which Sister Paul writes on the blackboard, the pennies of bread which she distributes, which you place on Lili’s tongue and she places on yours. And when the big day comes and you wear your white dress that comes nowhere near the brilliance of the yellow irises, when the events you have rehearsed take place, your real Confession seems to you a pale imitation of your first, rehearsed one. And perhaps you realise that the form of our public acts is only a shadow of that of our private ones, that their landscapes are just reflections and like that real sea below that imaginary sea, with its piers and palms and beaches, reflections in reverse.

    IT’S SOON AFTER that that your father collects you, dressed in civvies for once, in a tweed suit and a hat like any middle-class man, a reticent figure in the doorway whom the nuns don’t recognise, whose daughter runs to him, whom he holds on his hip in the old way, where she can sit comfortably for once. He carries her through the school to the yard, her blonde hair almost matching the white flecks in his tweed and there’s a car there, a young soldier at the wheel. You notice the soldier’s ridiculously large cap, you stretch out and tilt it to one side. He doesn’t react so you stretch out your hand again but your father stops you, lifts you over the door and places you in the front seat. Then he opens the door and steps in himself, sits you on his knee. The canvas roof of the car is rolled back. The young man drives, but instead of turning right towards home he follows the coast road, past the tall houses of Monkstown, through the sedate sea-walks of Kingstown, up towards Killiney and the large mansions with their shutters barred. Your father says little on the drive. He asks you what you did at school and like most children, you tell him nothing. There is a slight pressure from his large hand round your waist which increases as you enter the wide sweep of the Vico Road, which he remembers from the train he took with his six-month wife and his three-month daughter,