The Private Wound

by Nicholas Blake

  “If he’s secretly engaged in some extremist activity, and if he thought I’d discovered something about it—accidentally or as a spy for the English—”

  “Ah, get on!”

  I told them about overhearing Kevin and the stranger talking in the study. “He couldn’t be certain I don’t understand Irish. And I must say it is rather strange that he at once invited me to dinner, kept me under his eye the whole evening, and the moment I got back to the cottage—”

  “So you’d never have had time to pass on the information to anyone else?” Flurry’s lack-lustre eyes had lit up now: I could see the old flying-column commandant look through them. His next action was characteristic. He hurried from the room, and I heard him bawling outside for Seamus.

  While he was gone, I asked Harriet about the night I’d been set on. “Flurry was asleep with you, wasn’t he, by midnight?”

  “Yes. Why? Are you jealous?”

  “For God’s sake! Be serious for once! You’d have woken up if he’d left you?”

  “I should think so. We did go to bed a bit sozzled, though,” she replied indifferently. “What’s all this in aid of?”

  “I just wanted to make sure Flurry hadn’t crept out and clobbered me himself.”

  Harriet laughed merrily. “Oh boy, what drama!”

  “Of course he couldn’t have driven me to the strand and left me there in the car. He’d have had to walk all the way back.”

  “I expect he had an accomplice,” she said with childish mockery. “Oh Dominic darling, you are an ass! Be your age!”

  At that moment Flurry returned with Seamus O’Donovan. Seamus congratulated me on recovering so well from what he called, rather oddly, “your accident.”

  “Never mind about that. He’s alive. Dominic, tell Seamus what you just told us.”

  I did so.

  “Now then, Seamus me boy, you’re the eyes and ears of Charlottestown. Did you ever hear tell of my brother’s being mixed up in I.R.A. extremist activity?”

  Seamus took his time. The brilliant blue eyes were gazing away towards the mountains far beyond the window. “I did not,” he replied at last.

  “No rumours at all?”

  Seamus shook his head. “Not about him. There’s always gossip of this political stir or that. Some of the Civil War irregulars is always trying to stir up trouble. Sure there’s some ones round here is scared of their own shadows. But I never heard a one putting the talk on Kevin.”

  “The fella Mr. Eyre heard with Kevin—was there any stranger in Charlottestown that day?”

  “There was. A fella came to Sean’s garage for petrol. He seemed in a hurry, Sean told me—could hardly pass the time of day with him.”

  “What time of day would he have passed?” I asked.

  “About half six, Sean said.”

  “That could have been the man I heard talking to Kevin, then?”

  “Did Sean describe him?”

  “He did not, Flurry. I’ll ask him to. I’ll ask around and see if anyone else saw him.”

  “You do that, Seamus. But you’d only come at the half of it,” said Flurry. “There had to be one fella taking Dominic to the strand, and another fella with a second car to get the first one away.”

  “There would so. Unless Mr. Eyre’s attacker dumped him there and just walked back to wherever he lives.”

  They argued it for some while. I felt more and more like a dummy which had been used for an operation. Now these two ex-gunmen had taken it over. Courteously excluded from the conversation, I simmered with impatience at their maddening Irish blend of openness on the surface and opacity beneath. A devious race.

  Flurry and Seamus were still at it when I decided to leave. Absently they bade me good-bye. Harriet walked a little way along the river with me. When we were out of sight of the house, she pushed me against a tree and rammed her body at mine. I kissed her close, but could not respond more. Father Bresnihan’s words were in my mind; and I had a backlash of compunction about Flurry.

  “Don’t you want me any more, darling?”

  “Of course I do. But my head—I’m not absolutely fit yet.”

  She looked at me with that pitiless female insight. Why does one need lie-detectors when there are women about? However, she only smiled. “Will you be fit two nights from now? I’ll come to you by the river, if it’s a fine night. Do you know, it’s more than a week since last time?” She bit my ear hard, then whispered into it, “I’m wild for you, my poor little wounded hero. You’d better come or there’ll be trouble. Look after yourself till then.”

  And she was off through the trees, humming to herself, not looking back …

  So all went on as before. Well, perhaps not quite as before. There was a touch of desperation now in our love-making; and with it a certain tenderness seemed to have entered Harriet’s attitude towards me, which I had not felt before. She could never be a clinging woman, but the way she sometimes gazed at me now—there was a new softness, an almost sacrificial look.

  As for myself, I was still riding high in the insolence of lust. Now and then I spoke to Harriet harshly, testing my power over her. I did not seek to plumb the depth of her feeling for me. I had written to Phyllis, saying I did not think she and I were suited: Harriet had never asked me to do so, nor did I tell her I had. Phyllis wrote back without rancour, releasing me. But it never occurred to me that I might marry Harriet. She was a priestess in the temple of the body, adept and still a little mysterious: one did not marry priestesses. Beside, such was her sexual arrogance that I always felt in her an antagonist, a challenger. It was this arrogance which kept bringing my infatuation to white heat again, and prevented her (so I believed) from even noticing that in most other ways I found her the reverse of stimulating.

  Love-affairs have their watershed—a point where, unobserved may be by the participants, they level out and will soon start to go downhill. Ours, I should think, was reached that July. Disenchantment had not yet set in: but, as I say, there was a touch of desperation—like that one gets from blazing autumn flowers when the first frosts of the year have come.

  The result of this desperation, heightened by the coming war and my own equivocal position in Charlottestown, was to throw Harriet and myself together more constantly, and to make me still more reckless where Flurry was concerned. There had been no more attacks, no more warnings, no anonymous letters. It was as if the place had washed its hands of me. Father Bresnihan was distant, but polite. I saw the Kevin Leesons several times during the fortnight after the episode of the strand: they both seemed solicitous about my health and my work, and I could perceive no trace of guilt or anxiety in Kevin’s manner. Concannon came to see me twice, but he was distrait, and uncommunicative about his investigations: I imagined these had reached a dead end. My passport he found to be in order: I had not visited Germany, on this one, at any rate: but, if I were a secret agent, no doubt I’d have had a drift of false passports at my disposal.

  What form Flurry’s and Seamus’s investigations were taking I had no idea. I assumed that Flurry was making them, not for my sake, but for his brother’s. Though he talked about Kevin as a figure of fun, Flurry had, I came to realise, a certain protective feeling for him: also, as Harry told me one day, it would be a disastrous thing for Kevin to be disgraced, since he helped Flurry out with his debts from time to time.

  From Flurry himself, so boisterous, so boring, I’d begun to develop a sense of immunity. He was like a stationary obstacle—a bunker on a golf-course, say—which one had learnt to avoid, and then got a kick from skirting ever more closely. Harriet and I did indeed seem to lead a charmed life. One day, for instance, we were making love in the hayloft. We heard Flurry come in below. “Are you there, Harry?” he said. And she called back, “I’m up here. With Dominic. What d’you want?” “What the hell are you doing?” he called good-humouredly. “We’re up to no good,” she replied, not even reaching for her jumper. “Ah, go on with you!” She bit me hard on the shoulder, stradd
ling over me. “Shut up! He may—” I tried to push her off. “Don’t be so windy!” she whispered. “He won’t climb ladders.” Flurry’s footsteps receded, out into the cobbled yard. “You see? it’s quite safe. Now I’m mounted. Come on.”

  It must have been a week later—the last week in July—that I drove them to a small town in Galway. There was to be a horse-show there, and a few races in the afternoon.

  “Harry’s to ride a horse we sold last year to a fella out there,” Flurry told me. “I’m putting my shirt on it. Even Harry couldn’t lose with Barmbrack under her.”

  We set off at eleven o’clock, Seamus at the back of the car with Flurry, Harriet beside me, heavily made up, in her best riding clothes.

  “Where’s your cap, Mrs. Leeson?” asked Seamus when we had gone a few miles.

  “I don’t need it, not for a flat race.”

  “Cleopatra wants to show off all that beautiful hair,” remarked Flurry. “You ought to have a cap, you silly cow.”

  “Oh, pipe down.” She gripped my thigh painfully. I never ceased being surprised at the strength of her delicate hands. She was already in a state of high excitement.

  “I don’t know if you’re a devotee of the turf, Dominic,” said Flurry, “but you’ll find our races out here in the West very different from Ascot.”

  “He will,” said Seamus.

  “No top hats or champagne. Just horses and riders and most of them couldn’t sit a spavined ass.”

  “Sure your wife could ride a whirlwind,” said Seamus. “But watch out now for the last furlong, Mrs. Leeson. There’s apt to be a drove of drunks on the rails there, and you’d never know what they might be doing. Barmbrack’s a nervous animal, remember.”

  The steep main street of the town was jammed when we arrived. Countrymen in thick black suits, tinkers, beggars, hordes of children, priests, Gardai; cars and traps and asscarts; a few county-looking women; a sprinkling of tourists, some of them wearing Connemara jerseys and sweating in the heat. A gentle babble came up from the crowd. The air smelt of whiskey, porter, Guinness, petrol and dung.

  We followed a belated horse-box down the hill, and parked in a field near the river. A lane led to the grassy expanse where the show was being held. It was lined with cheapjaoks bawling their wares, sinister-looking characters inviting the concourse to try their luck at Spot-the-Lady and other money-losers, and stalls of lemonade, repulsive-looking food and souvenirs. Through the pandemonium cut a megaphone voice, adjuring the laggards in some class to “put a sthreak into it! Numbers 3, 7 and 16, we’re waiting for you. Come on now, bring those horses in! We can’t wait all day for you.”

  We took our sandwiches and drink to a low ridge that overlooked the arena. Harriet toyed with her food, then went off at her rolling gait to find the owner of the horse she was going to ride.

  The results of a class were given through the loudspeaker.

  “It’s a fix!” exclaimed Seamus. “It’s a bloody fix! The owner of that horse bought a couple others last month from the chief judge. Sure he’d give her the prize if she showed a tinker’s caravan beast with the mange. He’d give her the prize if she was riding a three-legged stool. Is there no decency left in this bloody place?”

  An altercation broke out with a group of men who dissented from Seamus’s opinion. So I slipped down to take a closer look at the judging ring. I have nothing against horses: they are preferable, en masse, to writers—better looking and debarred from speech. In Ireland too, the horsey folk are more animated than their English counterparts.

  A class for Connemara ponies was next to be judged. The glossy, wild-eyed creatures were led round the ring, stepping daintily, elegant as porcelain figurines. A group of Germans, the women looking like film stars, the men with dark glasses, huge binoculars and expensive tweed suits, were talking nearby in loud, authoritative voices. I moved away, to come across Kevin and Maire Leeson. We exchanged a few words. Then I said, nodding towards the Teutonic group,

  “I don’t know how you can stand those people in your country.”

  “They bring in money,” replied Kevin. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “You brought Harry over, did you?” asked Maire, in neutral tones. “Do you go racing much in England?” She faintly accented the last word.

  “Harry, and Flurry and Seamus. They’re all here somewhere. Flurry says he’s put his shirt on Barmbrack.”

  “He’ll not have any shirts left if he goes on this way.”

  “You think it’ll not win after all?”

  She shrugged. “I’d be in terror of putting my money on any horse. Betting’s a vice with some, like alcohol.”

  “One little bet, and you might become an addict?”

  “My father nigh went bankrupt that way, God rest his soul.”

  While we were talking, I noticed a nondescript man make a slight sign to Kevin, who presently sauntered off after him through the crowd.

  By four o’clock the judging was over. I found Flurry—who, like most of the men on the field had paid periodic visits to the town’s snugs—and we strolled with Seamus to the race track. The finish was at the lower end of the field: the course stretched away a mile along the grassy flat by the river. By now Harry must have ridden out there to the start—I’d not set eyes on her all the afternoon and was feeling a bit disgruntled.

  We found places by the rails on the far side from the river. Seamus was going on about another “fix.” Apparently Barmbrack’s only dangerous rival, a horse called Letterfrack, was now to be ridden, not by his owner, but by a quite well-known English amateur rider who was staying as his house guest. The bookies had shortened the odds against Letterfrack.

  A bell clanged somewhere, and relative silence fell. Harry’s was to be the last race on the programme. We watched three others, Flurry getting more nervous all the time. I did not like to ask him how much money he actually had on Barmbrack. Certain characters, on the rails opposite us, were growing unruly. A Garda stood behind them, but they paid him no attention.

  “They’re off!”

  This was Harry’s race. Standing on tiptoe I trained my field-glasses on the distant horses. Out of the blur, two presently detached themselves—a powerful roan, ridden by a man in full hunting kit, and Barmbrack, a black horse. Harry’s hair was streaming, like a flag in a gale. As far as I could tell, she was a few yards behind Letterfrack, but going well. The finish was twenty yards to our left. The two of them were now fifty yards away from us, the roan still in the lead. “Mother of God! I can’t stand it,” Flurry muttered.

  “Bring her up now!” yelled Seamus.

  As if she had heard him, Harry leant forward, spoke into the horse’s ear, and dug in her heels. Barmbrack shot forward.

  And then it happened. A drunk on the far side of the rails gave a shout and took a swipe with his ashplant. No doubt he intended to put off the English rider. But his reactions were slow. At this very instant Harry, close to the rails, was squeezing past the Englishman. Whether the drunk actually hit her horse, I could not tell: but, alarmed by his shout and the flail of the ashplant, the nervous Barmbrack swerved to her left and cannoned violently into Letterfrack. I saw Harry flung to the ground. The Englishman just managed to keep his seat and rode on to the finish.

  Seamus turned to Flurry and me, tears in his eyes. “And she had it won.”

  But Flurry had vaulted the rail and was running towards his wife, who lay motionless on the turf. Seamus followed. They ignored the other horses galloping down on them. I saw Flurry go on his knees beside Harry, stare wildly at her, lift her head on to his lap. Whatever he was saying to her could not be heard in the pandemonium. Many of the crowd were convinced that the Englishman had bored into Harry and unseated her: a threatening group of men followed him towards the paddock; a line of Gardai formed up against them.

  As I came up, Flurry cocked his head towards the far rails and said to Seamus, “Mark that fella and keep him for me.” Seamus withdrew. Flurry looked up at me: tears were ro
lling down his cheeks. “Here you are at last, Dominic.”

  “Is she—?”

  “Concussion. Where the hell are those fellas with the stretcher?”

  Harriet was lying on the grass, her hair fanned out: with all that make-up on her face, she looked like a doll some child has flung on the floor. A crowd stood around us in a respectful circle; voices commiserated with Flurry. He glanced up wildly. “Letterfrack’s near hind must have struck her as she fell.” He bent down again. “Harry, old girl, wake up.”

  But she did not. She was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital. A doctor told us presently that she had no bones broken, only severe concussion: “She’ll be as right as rain in a day or two, Mr. Leeson.”

  “Please God she will.” Flurry mopped his brow. “She’s a head like iron. Mind you look after her well,” he said to a nun standing beside the doctor: then, to the latter, “I’ve a little business in the town. I’ll be back in an hour. C’mon, Dominic.”

  We walked back into the main street. I had felt excluded since Harriet’s fall. I could not show more than a friend’s proper concern. And now, as we threaded through the crowds, I had the helpless sensation of an object drawn into a field of force.

  “And fifty pounds gone down the drain too,” Flurry muttered. He turned into a pub, but after one look round went out again, myself at his heels.

  “Who’re you looking for?”

  “A fella I have business with.”

  Several people hailed Flurry, but he paid them no attention. Which was as odd as him going into a pub and not taking a drink. In the third one we visited, I spotted Seamus at a table with a glass of Guinness before him. He nodded to Flurry, then rose unhurriedly and tapped the shoulder of a man at the bar.

  “You’re wanted, mister.”

  The man turned round, a hulking red-faced fellow.

  “Who wants me?”

  Flurry stepped forward. “I do.”

  The man reached for his stick, but Seamus had quietly removed it.

  “You’re the bloody fella who lost my wife the race.”