An Irish Heart

by C M Blackwood

  I remembered the way I had felt in the kitchen, only a few hours earlier, as I watched the sunlight streaming through Thea’s hair . . . And then I remembered the night I came back from the river, and the day I spent on the sofa, all alone but for the company of a ghost. The two thoughts jostled back and forth, each trying to take up the space of my consciousness, until I felt that I would burst; for both thoughts could not exist simultaneously.

  It was several long moments before Thea tore her eyes away from the scars I had presented to her, and lifted them back to my face.

  “Oh, Katie . . ”

  “I don’t want you to – I’m not trying to –” I took a shaky breath. “I just want you to understand.”

  “Come here,” she said, taking me into her arms. “Please let me be real. Don’t push me away.”

  “I want to keep you this time,” I sobbed.

  “I didn’t want to lose you the last time. But I did, and I can’t get back what I lost.” She kissed me gently, taking away any breath I had left. “But we’re not dead yet. Far from it, if I have anything to say about it.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “Just close your eyes, and pretend that I do.”

  Chapter 42

  Seeing as we were only gone for about an hour or so, it was no surprise that quite everyone was still there. There was something different going on, though. The air of calm and congeniality had vanished, and was replaced with something that resembled panic.

  “What are we going to do?” cried a woman on the sofa. She seemed always to be clad in a long, red dress. Consequently – and none too cleverly – I had come to think of her as the Woman in Red.

  “Calm down, now, Beatrice,” said Jonathan Banks.

  “How am I supposed to do that, Jonathan?” she asked loudly.

  “However you can manage it best, I suppose,” said another woman (otherwise known as the Queen of Smoke). She held a cigarette in her right hand, in a rather lofty position beside her ear; and blew a perfect smoke ring, quite casually, as though trying to convey the fact that she, for one, was quite calm.

  Beatrice glared.

  “Now listen,” said Abbaline, walking out into the middle of the room, so as to stand next to Banks. “It’s obvious that we have a problem here. It’s a very large problem, I won’t skate around the truth – but it may not be as large as we think. We shall just have to wait and see.”

  “Why?” asked a small man in a grey suit. (The Blue-Bearded Dwarf.) “Because you said so?”

  “Aye, Davis! Because I said so.”

  “I, for one, want to hear what Mr Banks has to say.”

  All of the others fell quiet.

  Banks looked at Davis. “I think we shall just have to wait and see.”

  Abbaline beamed at Banks.

  “What’s going on?” Thea whispered to me.

  I had just taken Joseph from Myrne, and was resuming my place in the doorway, out of the way of whatever was taking place in the parlour. “I don’t know,” I answered. “None of their people came to get them last night. I think they may have just found out why.”

  And that was when I spotted what must have been Dr Parker’s messenger boy. He was standing, looking quite tiny, beside his man. His face was still shining with sweat. His cheeks were flushed, and his hair was damp. I told Myrne to go and fetch him something to drink.

  “I won’t deny that the situation seems quite miserable,” said Banks. “But, as little Danny here has told us, he isn’t sure of all the facts. He saw someone dead, this much is true. But he doesn’t know who. The building was empty, this much is true. But we don’t know why.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said the Queen of Smoke. “We all know why. Someone located that base, and extinguished it.”

  “Then why was only one person found dead?”

  “It’s obvious that they were all extracted for information,” she said, taking a puff of her fag and watching Banks with narrow eyes. “And I’ll never understand how you got to be so prominent. You haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Abbaline. Banks started to look just a little bit more sure of himself before she added, “He isn’t prominent at all.”

  With that, she strode out of the room, leaving the Queen of Smoke to her chuckling, and Banks to his frowning.

  “What’s all this about?” I asked Abbaline.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Just the last bit.”

  “Well, that was all you needed. Before that, it was just an assorted variety of shouting and arguing, fretting and panicking. The last few exchanges were all that really made sense.”

  “Were they all going back to the same place?”

  “There was a meeting scheduled today.” She sighed. “It seems that someone left all of the paperwork lying about, for every soldier and his brother to see. Everyone’s name was on it; everyone’s information was on it.”

  “That was unwise.”

  “You’re telling me. Now we have to find some kind of a safe-house for all these people.”

  “Here?”

  “Where else?”

  I shrugged.

  “Unconcerned again, are you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Goodness me!”

  “Goodness you what?”

  “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Too aloof, you are! Take a little responsibility, why don’t you?”

  “No – I don’t think you ever said that.”

  “I say it now!”

  Thea, who did not know that this was the typical banter of Abbaline Elson, glared at Abbaline and asked, “What is the matter with you?”

  “Thea,” I said, putting a hand on her arm.

  “It’s all right, Kate,” said Abbaline, smiling unexpectedly. “She hasn’t had time to grow used to my sense of humour.”

  “You know, Abbaline,” said I, “there are many people who will never grow used to your sense of humour.”

  She nodded, seeming to take me seriously. Then she asked Thea: “Are you one of those people, young lady?”

  “Too soon to tell,” said Thea shortly.

  “Nonsense. It’s never too soon to tell. But I’ll let you off the hook, because I’ve things to attend to. Excuse me, both of you.”

  And, with that, she was off. Where she could have been rushing off to, I had no idea. But already I was tiring of all those problems of which her world consisted – and I felt a great need to escape.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Thea, tugging her towards the staircase.

  “And you’re going to leave me here, all alone?” Myrne asked. “I don’t want to listen any more than you do.”

  “Then find something else to do.”

  “I don’t have anything to do.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Then go to church.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, that’s not my problem, is it?”

  He sighed. “Won’t you at least play cards with me, or something?”

  “If you can find them.”

  “I think they’re in the kitchen.”

  “Then go get them.”

  Myrne went off to find the cards, and I started towards the stairs – but Thea hung back. “I’ll be up in a minute,” she said. “I need something to drink.”

  I continued alone up to my room.

  Myrne was the first to arrive, tattered pack of playing cards in hand. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready to win. Same as always.”

  “You don’t always win.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I win sometimes.”

  “When was the last time you won?”

  He thought about it. “Well, that last – oh, no. You won that one.” He frowned.

  “I told you so.”

  He shuffled the cards, then dealt them. “I don’t care,” he sa
id. “At least I’m not a sore sport like you. Remember when you played with Blackie, and he won five times in a row? You nearly knocked his head off.”

  “I was only kidding.”

  “I don’t think he knew that. He still steers clear of you.”

  I shrugged, drawing a card from the deck. I had a terrible hand.

  “I wonder what’s taking Thea?”

  “She was sitting at the table, when I saw her,” Myrne told me, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I think she was in the whiskey.”

  “I thought the whiskey was gone?” said I, attention fixed on my cards; until I realised the purport of what Myrne had said, and added, “Thea doesn’t drink whiskey.”

  He set down a run, smiling at himself. “First of all,” said he, “I happen to know that Abbaline always keeps a bottle hidden, in a place where none of her friends – especially old Seymour – will find it. And second of all – Thea asked me this morning, before we got into the kitchen, whether there was any sort of potable lying about. I only told her where it was, because I wanted to see the look on Abbaline’s face, when she goes for her little stockpile and finds it all drunk away.”

  Thea did not come upstairs till I had already won the game, and was setting up for another. I had been thinking of going down to see about her – but something kept me from it.

  “Go on with your game,” she said. “I just want to lie down.”

  She settled herself down on the bed, back turned towards us. It was only a minute or two before I heard her, breathing the heavy breath of sleep.

  I thought I could smell whiskey on the air.

  ***

  I woke in the middle of the night, thinking through my sleepy thickness that I had heard something downstairs. Yet when I listened, I heard nothing, though I strained my ears to their maximum capability. Dolly was listening too; and that, of course, gave me the impression that it had not been my imagination.

  With no new sound to stimulate my wakefulness, I fell right back asleep – though only for what seemed a few minutes. When I woke again, I was certain that something had happened, because even Thea was sitting up beside me.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. Should we go and find out?”

  “Something tells me that we’ll find out soon enough.”

  She looked at me, her frightened expression full illuminated by the pale moonlight. She seemed ghostly in that light, and somehow tenuous – as if she could be snatched away at any moment.

  Joseph was still sleeping, of course. He would have been able to sleep through the collapse of the house.

  But Dolly was whining in that terrible, high-pitched way of hers.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” I said softly, getting up slowly to inch towards the door.

  “Where are you going?” Thea hissed, sounding as if she thought that it would be much wiser not to approach the source of possible malevolence.

  “To get Myrne.”

  “He’s a grown man, he’ll be fine!”

  “If he was awake, he would be here already. I have to go and get him. Please, just stay with the baby?”

  She sighed discontentedly – and I took that as my cue to slip out into the hall.

  Myrne’s door was shut. I did not bother to knock, knowing that he would not hear me. I simply opened the door, and passed over to his bed.

  Something felt terribly, terribly wrong.

  “Meniah,” I whispered, shaking him by the shoulder.

  “What?” he spluttered, rolling on his back in a snap.

  “Get up. Come on.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you just do it, you oaf?”

  “That’s no way to facilitate compliance.”

  “Goddamn it, Myrne –”

  And that was when the first shout came from down below. Myrne sat up like a shot, bouncing off the bed and hurrying with me towards the door.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “How would I know?” I answered irritably, pulling his door shut behind me. If anyone came up the stairs – as I knew they would – I wanted nothing to look out of place. They would have to check every room, opening one door at a time.

  As my own room was at the end of the hall, it would buy us at least a few minutes.

  Thea was standing in the middle of the room, holding the baby. “I heard them downstairs,” she said. “He started crying; I was trying to keep him quiet.”

  “You’re doing well so far,” I said, moving to the window so as to look down out of it. As you know, we were on the second floor; and it was a big house. It would be hard enough for three lone adults trying to jump down to the ground – never mind accompanied by a baby and a dog.

  “What is going on?” Myrne repeated.

  “I swear to God,” said I, “if you ask me that one more time –”

  “Hush,” said Thea. She cocked her head, as though trying to hear something far away.

  No – not so far away. More shouting from downstairs; and gunshots; and then voices, coming up the staircase.

  “Damn it,” I said, reaching to pull up on the window. “Come on, we’re going to have to make this work.”

  Myrne looked at me. “We’re going out the window?”

  “Would you rather use the stairs?”

  “All right, I see your point.” He pushed my hands aside, and had the window open in an instant. There was a narrow ledge that ran all round the second storey, shingled quite the same as the roof. I wished, for a moment, that I had taken Thea and Joseph with me, when I went to wake Myrne; so that we might have tried to make it up to the attic, whence we would have issued out (much more safely, I would wager) onto the expanse of the roof.

  But Myrne only surveyed what was available to us, with a calm look of readiness. “I’ll go first,” he said, “and you can pass me the baby. I’ll hold him while you two come out. Then we can shut the window; maybe that will at least throw them off.”

  I nodded, liking the sound of his plan better than any that I could come up with. I watched as he stole quietly out of the window, disappearing for a moment behind the wall. But then his arms came back into sight, reaching for the baby. I passed him out as quickly and carefully as I could.

  “Come on, now,” Myrne whispered. “Hurry up.”

  How we all made it out onto that ledge – window closed behind us – before anyone entered the bedroom, I’ll never know.

  I was tempted to peek back through the window, when I heard my bedroom door being slammed back against the wall; but Thea grabbed me firmly by both shoulders.

  Imagine, for a moment, if you were stuck up on a ledge (three foot wide), with a hundred-foot descent to the ground below – and then not even to see the reason why! I sighed, and sank against the side of the house.

  ***

  We sat on that ledge for what seemed like hours. At first, we looked all about for some kind of attachment to the roof above, which we could use to climb upwards. But there was nothing, at least on the North side of the house; and to toddle precariously upon the ledge, in an attempt to traverse it and perhaps find some sort of path to the roof – well, that just seemed like something less than a good idea.

  Though the mysterious heralds of doom did not keep long to my room, they must have searched the rest of the house quite thoroughly. By the time they all departed – we could hear them driving away – the lower half of my body was entirely numb.

  Surprisingly enough, the baby was far more complacent than I. He cried not once, whereas I think I did several times. Dolly had hopped up onto the ledge just after me, and was huddled against me quite fearfully, with an occasional whine issuing forth from her throat.

  Finally, the sound of the vehicle disappeared into the distance, and we began slowly to pour ourselves back into the house, stiff joints and all. Though we were almost completely convinced that the house was empty of threat, still we were cautious as we made our way downstairs.

  Just as we reached the bot
tom of the staircase, I heard the front door being quietly shut. I whispered to the others to wait.

  Footsteps began to approach. We looked around for somewhere to hide, but there was no time; it was only moments before we found ourselves face to face with two rifle barrels.

  We all screamed.

  “Why are you shouting?” Abbaline hollered.

  All we had seen, in the shadows of late night, were the guns – and not a bit of the faces behind them.

  “Why are you trying to shoot us?” I asked, hiking an oblivious and unflustered Joseph up onto my shoulder.

  “What? I’m not –” She looked down at her gun. “Oh, that,” she said. “Just a precaution. I wouldn’t have actually shot you.”

  “Spot-on job convincing us otherwise,” said Myrne.

  “There’s no one else with you?” Abbaline asked. “I’ve only got Banks here with me, and some others outside.”

  “We’re the grand finale,” I said. “Can we please get out of here?”

  “In a minute, now, in a minute. Let me have a look around.”

  “I won’t be joining you,” I said, striding quickly past.

  But I could not avoid, seeing what I wanted most not to see.

  It was like a bad dream – with the accompanied certainty of reality. It may have been bearable, if it weren’t for that.

  I saw the bodies, littered all over the parlour floor. The worst were the ones with the eyes still open. It was as if they were staring at me, judging me – blaming me for being alive.

  It wasn’t just a bad dream. It was a recurring nightmare.

  “Oh, God,” said Abbaline, moving up beside me. “I didn’t see that on the way in.”

  “What does God have to do with this?” I whispered, choking on my own words.

  “I’ve yet to figure that out,” said Abbaline, sighing heavily. “I doubt if I ever will.”

  ***

  There were only four others outside: Kerry and Mary-Anne Warner; the Queen of Smoke; and a fellow whom I called the Dashing Gentleman.

  “These – these are the only ones left?” I said to Abbaline.

  She nodded.