The Private Wound

by Nicholas Blake

  The drawing-room we entered was sadly depressing, filled with a brand-new suite of furniture which looked as if it had been mail-ordered out of a catalogue. The room didn’t feel lived in. I could imagine the Leeson children shivering through their music lessons at the upright piano.

  Kevin came in. The blunt head, the shark’s mouth. Preoccupied but affable. Here in his own house he seemed more noticeably to play second fiddle to his handsome wife. The table was loaded with an assortment of food—scones, soda bread, sardines, beetroot, boiled eggs, custard, iced cakes, pickles, ham and tongue—to which Maire assiduously pressed me. “You need feeding up, Mr. Eyre, after all those scratch meals you’re having in the cottage. You’re terrible thin. Isn’t he, Kevin?”

  “Don’t pester the man, Maire. Sure he knows what’s good for him. Let him be.”

  I told them I had dined with Father Bresnihan two nights before.

  “You did so. He told me he’d had a great old talk with you,” said Maire. “You must have discussed very deep subjects, the two of you. Books and the like.”

  “Politics mostly, Mrs. Leeson. He was very interesting on—”

  “There’s too much politics in this country,” said Kevin. “The clergy’d do well to be discouraging it.”

  “Leave it to the politicians? Like yourself?”

  “Oh, I’ve quite enough to do without—”

  “But I heard you’d be standing for the Dail before long.”

  “Well, I might. They need some common or garden business man’s sense there. Half these boyos are still blethering away about things that’s best forgotten. We’re starving ourselves, Mr. Eyre, chewing over our past history. There’s no nourishment in it at all at all.”

  I sounded him about the Blueshirts—how they compared with Mosley’s lot in Britain. He talked about the temporary alliance between General O’Duffy’s movement and the Cumann nan Gaedheal party in the early Thirties. “There was a rumour they planned to set up a dictatorship if the election results went against them, but nothing came of it.” Kevin did not seem greatly interested; but I sensed a certain wariness in him, as if we were on the edge of moving into dangerous ground.

  “Of course, though I’ve no use for those fellas, I’ll not deny that what we need in this country is order,” he said, his shark’s mouth snapping tight on the word.

  “Now, Kevin, Mr. Eyre doesn’t want to be running on about politics,” said Mrs. Leeson. It always amuses me—the way women think they have a prerogative to say what a man wants.

  “Well, Mrs. Leeson, I seem to have got involved in them, whether I like it or not. Someone made a search of my papers the other day.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “Searched your papers?” exclaimed Kevin. “What an extraordinary thing! D’you mean, broke into the cottage?”

  “Hardly that. It’s not locked.”

  “But it’s a scandalous thing. Did you call in the Garda?”

  “No. Nothing was missing.”

  “Well, isn’t that a mystery?” said Maire.

  It occurred to me that there was a mystery in the Leesons, at the centre of the Charlottestown grape-vine, not having heard about it. But when Kevin asked me what day it had happened, he said he’d been in Dublin at the time.

  “Kevin’s always running about the country on his business affairs,” remarked Maire.

  “Perhaps it was a spy—”

  Kevin put on one of his shut expressions.

  “—a spy from the Irish censorship, come to see if I was writing a pornographic book,” I said flippantly.

  “Ah, go on, Mr. Eyre! Sure you’d never do that, a nice young man like you!” Maire Leeson was quite shocked.

  After which, she was soon embarked on a fervent declamation about the purity of Irish culture, the tradition of the ancient literature in Irish, the language revival, and so on. Names of old bards flowed out—O’Bruadair, O’Rathaile, Raftery, O’Carolan, Merryman. I knew now, from the way she talked, that she must have been a school mistress, and a good one. I had to revise my opinion of her as a mere culture snob. Kevin listened with obvious pride. It would have been cruel to suggest that the Irish language was a dead end for literature to-day: and this was no place to recall the story of the politician who perorated at an election meeting, “Irish culture owes nothing to Byzantium. Irish culture owes nothing to Greece or to Rome. Irish culture owes nothing to Great Britain (storms of applause). Irish culture is a pure lily blooming alone in a bog.” (Voice from audience “And that’s the bugger of it, misther.”)

  I contented myself with putting up a case for the Anglo-Irish literature from Swift to Yeats, as the greatest glory of the country. We argued a bit about Tom Moore, whom Maire regarded as a perverter of native folk-tunes. I got quite heated about this—I’d been brought up on the Irish Melodies. And presently she had fished out a volume of them and sat down at the piano to accompany me. I used to sing a lot in those days. As an accompanist, Maire was a bit wooden; but the Moore settings are absurdly ornate anyway.

  “You have a beautiful voice,” she said, after the first song.

  “Go on, now,” said Kevin. “You two get along famously.”

  But my strongest memory of that evening was glancing through the french window while I sang “She is far from the land,” and seeing a huddle of children outside, in their night-dresses, staring back at me silent and rapt, the last light of the sun turning their ruffled hair into aureoles …

  I suppose I remember that with particular vividness because of what happened later. How many days later, I do not remember: or whether it was the first time. That green spit by the Lissawn became a place of assignation for Harriet and myself.

  It is midnight, with a half moon dandled by the rocking branches. I am waiting for her there, trembling with excitement and fear. I see her figure ghosting towards me through the copse. She is wearing a long white night-dress. We fall into each other’s arms. I mutter something about Flurry: she says he always sleeps like a log, with the drink taken. In the moonlight her face has softened: she looks supernaturally beautiful. I take off her night-dress and my own clothes. We kneel up, facing together, our bodies touching, two white figures on a tomb, and gaze at each other. I want to hold the moment for ever. But she is impatient: she pulls me down on top of her into the lush grass, then lies passive.

  The rocks of the Lissawn are sucking at the stream. A light mist rises from it, and in my body the sweetness rises—or was the mist in my eyes? is it only in my memory? For me, the wave topples over too soon. There are the diamond drops back on her lashes, and she sobs a little.

  Presently, I enter her again. She seems passive, yet she fits her movements fluently to mine. It is like swimming in nectar, her breasts and belly the little waves. And now her arms clutch me tighter, tenacious as garlands of white flowers strung on wire. I hear that familiar straining noise in her throat—she never cried out loud any time I made love to her—and feel her body melting, collapsing.

  We lie inert, side by side, not talking. Two animals which have escaped from time and the fear of the hunters. After a while she leans over me, her breasts trembling, the nipples like buds put to sleep. She kisses me lazily, murmurs “good night,” puts on her night-dress, and flits away from me through the trees.

  Chapter 5

  When I read it through again, I nearly struck out that last passage. Brute copulation hallowed by time. The coacervation of two mounds of flesh, seen through a moondust haze. But then I thought, no. While I wrote the passage, I became the young romantic I was writing about: dishonest to view him through disillusioned eyes: I am not compiling a textbook about sex in the West of Ireland. Rule 1 for the novelist—don’t fall in love with your characters. But I was in love with Harriet. And with myself? Yes: a lover does that to one.

  And what did she think about me? Goodness knows. She was a strange mixture of delicacy and coarseness. The delicate wrists and ears and ankles: the coarse, fat upper arms, the buttocks which felt as hard as p
olished marble. The absurd genteel mouthings when she ate; the foul language she used, the hobbledehoy teasings: but also a touching simplicity of mind.

  “I’d been pure so long till you came,” she said to me once.

  “Pure?”

  “You know what I mean.” She blushed faintly.

  I did. It was such an extraordinary word to use. Nor did I entirely believe her, for she had implied more than once that Kevin’s pass at her had been followed through—though perhaps that was said just to rouse my jealousy.

  She would be called a nymphomaniac to-day, no doubt. She was certainly insatiable. Yet, when we lay together, she used none of the experienced woman’s verbal tricks to arouse me, none of that shameless, titillating love-talk. Her lust put on no trimmings: it was simple as an animal’s.

  It was only in public that she was shameless, walking with me through Charlottestown, jeering at me and wrestling with me, like a child, in front of her husband’s eyes. I never ceased to be embarrassed by this. But I learnt to close that part of my mind which liked Flurry, and use only the part which had grown to think of him as a complaisant cuckold and a bore.

  Did Harriet plan her campaign? I simply don’t know. After our first flare-up, she would sometimes let a week or ten days pass before she sought me again; and if we did meet, treated me almost with indifference. Was it a calculated way to keep my desire on the boil? Somehow, I suspect not. And yet she enjoyed stratagems, the more outrageous the better. But then she would lose interest completely, become bored and peevish; and again I would wonder if she had it all worked out so as to keep me her slave, in a state of uncertainty.

  One day I would think her a paragon of women; the next day, a whore.

  During the periods she was off me, I was not unhappy. I had my book; and I spent long afternoons wandering around the coast with my field-glasses, watching sea-birds.

  Harriet’s recklessness endeared her to me—and communicated itself to me. She never used contraceptives, for instance, and refused to let me do so. She believed in the “safe period”; and anyway, she said, she had never conceived with Flurry, so obviously she couldn’t with anyone else. It did not seem so obvious to me. But her care-free moods infected me; I was hopelessly infatuated with her, and not in the least deflected from my course by finding a note one evening late in May, propped up against my typewriter—

  LAY OFF IT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

  I am as cowardly as the next man, and I cannot pretend this anonymous scrawl gave me no qualms. For a day or two, I felt paranoiac symptoms. But, when I told Harriet about it, she was going through one of her off periods and showed only the most perfunctory concern. Flurry, for some reason, I did not tell. Guilt, no doubt; but also partly because I could not believe him the kind of man to issue anonymous warnings. I used to wonder if this one were the work of the person who had searched my cottage: but what on earth was he warning me to lay off?

  Besides, I was caught up in Harriet’s recklessness, and like any young man wanting his girl’s admiration, determined not to let her catch the least whiff of my fear.

  And now the persecution campaign, if that is what it was, seemed to have been dropped. Harriet and I were together again. The assignations by night on the grassy spit recommenced. Sometimes she would walk over to my lonely cottage, and we made love on the floor, too impatient to climb the ladder to the bed upstairs. Wherever we happened to be—under trees in the Lissawn demesne, on a mountainside or on a strand, she would grip me with her delicately strong hands and pull me down. I was enchanted by her. It was a kind of madness. The sun shone all day, burst out from rain-storms and sent the clouds packing. England, my friends there, the imminent war, all seemed a life-time away.

  Harriet and I went for some rides together. She was indeed a marvellous horsewoman and I followed her lead over banks and stone walls—as in other things—determined not to let her see me frightened. There was something gallant in her bearing on horseback: she seemed to me almost a mythical figure.

  It was when we’d returned one June evening with the horses to Lissawn House, and I was walking back alone to the cottage, that someone took a pot-shot at me from the thick bushes lining the left-hand side of the lane.

  The gun appeared to go off in my ear, so loud was the explosion. I had never been under fire before, so I stood a few moments utterly stupefied. My tall Connemara tweed hat had flown off my head. I bent down dazedly to pick it up, and heard footsteps pounding away from the ambush. There were two pellet holes in the top of the hat. The bushes are very thick just there, and I could not break through them even if I had the nerve to follow my assailant. But I was now angry enough to run back along the lane to Lissawn House.

  Flurry was sitting in his fishing-room, a glass of whiskey at his side. I banged on the window and rushed in.

  “What the devil ails ya, Dominic? You’re white as a sheet.” His voice was slurred, and a bit petulant

  “Someone’s just taken a shot at me. From the bushes. Look at my hat.”

  Flurry’s eyes focused with some difficulty. “By God, you’re right! Did ye see the fella?”

  “No.”

  He poured me half a glass of neat whiskey. “Drink up. This’ll never do at all. Who’d be wanting to shoot you, in the name of God?”

  “Search me.”

  “Maybe he was after a rabbit.”

  “A flying rabbit?”

  “Well now, that’s a point. But there might be some bold young sinner around with his da’s shotgun. We’ll ask Seamus did he see anyone.”

  Seamus was in his room above the stable, cleaning harness. No, he’d not seen anyone in the demesne, but he’d been rubbing down the horses the last half-hour. He asked me a number of questions, the efficient adjutant.

  “Will I tell you what I’m thinking, Mr. Eyre?”

  “Of course.”

  “If the fella was so near to you, he’d be apt to blow your head off.”

  “But he was. The explosion damn’ near deafened me.”

  “So he must have deliberately aimed high. The charge went over your head, except for two pellets. That’s the size of it.” Seamus didn’t seem greatly concerned.

  “But why should anyone want to aim over his head?” asked Flurry interestedly. I felt like an academic problem under discussion, and said so.

  “Why should anyone want to fire at me at all?”

  Seamus regarded me politely, coolly. “Only yourself would be after knowing that, Mr. Eyre.”

  “Sure, Dominic is a quiet fella. He wouldn’t be making enemies,” offered Flurry. I hardly heard him. Had Seamus hinted at something? Involuntarily, my eyes went round the room. There was no shotgun to be seen; and I could hardly search the outbuildings and demesne in case Seamus had dumped it somewhere.

  “You’re not frit, Mr. Eyre?” he said. “Will I walk back with you?”

  “Oh, I’m scared stiff. I’ll go to the Garda to-morrow and demand police protection,” I replied satirically. I thought I saw a look of respect in Seamus’s eyes.

  “That’s the boy,” said Flurry tipsily. “To hell with them all. C’mon and have a bite to eat. Harry’ll be done bathing by now. I don’t know why that woman’s got so desperate to take baths nowadays.”

  I declined his invitation politely. The next morning I went to the Garda in Charlottestown and had a long conversation with a somewhat incredulous sergeant.

  “Well, I didn’t blow two holes in this hat myself,” I said after a while, exasperated by the slow-motion talk.

  “Sure you didn’t,” replied the sergeant soothingly. “We’ll look into it.”

  “And I’m talking about my hat, not through it.”

  He thought this extremely witty. “That’s a good one! I must tell the inspector. Are you over here for long? D’you like the country?”

  “Very much. Except when I’m taken for a pheasant.”

  “You have it, Mr. Eyre! The boys do a terrible lot of poaching round here. Yes, the fella must have been aiming at a
bird.”

  “Let’s hope so. But there were no birds about.”

  “Were there not? How d’you know?”

  “I use my eyes.”

  “And them great field-glasses, so I hear.”

  “Yes. I like bird-watching.” So I’d even been under observation by the police.

  “You’re an ornithologist, Mr. Eyre?”

  “No. Just a bird-watcher.”

  There was a puzzled expression on his face, but he let it pass. I debated whether to tell him about the search of my cottage: perhaps unwisely, I decided not to increase his confusion, or suspicion, or whatever it was. We parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

  Getting into my car down the road, I was hailed by Father Bresnihan. He leapt off his bike beside me, his thick eyebrows and burning eyes came very close to me. “So you didn’t take my warning, Mr. Eyre,” he stated without preamble.

  “Your warning?” I was thinking of the anonymous message. “But surely—”

  “My advice,” he said irritably.

  Oh yes. When I dined with him. About the dangers of associating with Harriet Leeson. I pretended not to know what he meant. He shore through my resistance like a razor.

  “You know well what I’m talking about.”

  “But Father—”

  “I am not your Father. I have no responsibility for you. But I am responsible to weed out evil practices from my parish.”

  The angry, condemning look in his eyes roused my own anger. “You mean it’s your duty to listen to tittle-tattle and slander?”

  “Don’t try my patience too hard, young man.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well.” His spittle sprayed my face as he said, “Your association with Mrs. Leeson is causing scandal.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Am I supposed to have committed adultery or merely to be contemplating it?”

  Father Bresnihan forced himself under severe restraint. I could see the hairy backs of his hands shaking as he gripped my car door.