An Irish Heart

by C M Blackwood

  I knew from the start, that she and I would never be friends – that we would never forge a friendship the likes of which I had shared with Tyler. Even when we spoke – even when she was very close – it was as though she were miles away. There was never any real connection.

  It may have been loneliness; it may have been a kind of desperate despair. There were no words for what I felt. All I knew was that, along with whatever I was feeling for Niamh, I was beleaguered by a persistent sense of shame. It did not matter that Niamh was unaware of my notice; it was irrelevant that I had absolutely no intention of taking that notice any farther than it had already gone (which was not very far at all, in practical terms). It was enough that I felt what I was feeling.

  I spent most of my darkened hours – from about eleven to seven – sorting through whatever it was that I was feeling, whatever it was that had taken hold of me as it had done. True enough, I felt nothing for Niamh in comparison to what I felt for Thea – but everything in comparison to everyone else. She was almost an obsession, and definitely a distraction.

  For a while, I considered asking Niamh if I could be excused from rounds at the infirmary. One night, I began a discussion about it, but was immediately confronted with complications.

  “Why don’t you want to go?” she asked, looked truly baffled.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “I just don’t want to.”

  “You’re getting on with Robby, aren’t you?”

  “I like Robby just fine.”

  She still looked puzzled.

  “If you’d like me to go,” I said, attempting to convey the fact that it was still much against my wishes – “I will.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “If you don’t want to, then I don’t want you to. I just don’t understand it is all. I thought you liked it there.”

  “It’s not that I don’t. It’s not really – well, it’s not even that I don’t want to go. Well, it is –but I only –”

  She cut me off. “Are you saying that you do, or that you don’t?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then what exactly are you trying to say?”

  I took that opportunity to examine her face. It was very pretty – lovely, in fact. It displayed emotion with ease, showcasing each transition with little to no subtlety. Her eyes were the clearest shade of grey I had ever seen. And her hair was so red.

  “I’m not sure what I’m saying,” I admitted.

  “I’m confused, Kate. Is everything all right?”

  “Of course. Yes.”

  “You don’t look all right.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. You just don’t seem like yourself.”

  I refrained from pointing out, that she knew very little indeed about who I really was. But I could not help asking:

  “How am I, exactly?”

  Her bewilderment appeared to increase exponentially. “I – what does that mean?”

  “If I’m not myself – then how am I, usually?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only known you for a short while. What I really noticed, though – as soon as I met you – was your strength. You don’t show weakness. You just – I don’t know, you just keep on. Who knows what you went through? You don’t talk about it, though.”

  “Some might call that a defensive technique,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If you needed to let your guard down a little – well, it’s not as though you’re alone.”

  She reddened slightly.

  I simply asked, “Am I not strong today?”

  She seemed really to ponder that. “No,” she said finally. “It’s not that. You just seem a little lost.”

  “I’m sorry if I am.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m only telling you what I see.”

  We sat quietly for the rest of the evening. As Niamh rose to head to bed, though, she stopped beside the chair in which I was sitting, and looked down at me for a moment.

  “Should I not wake you in the morning?”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t have to. But if there’s anything that you want me to do around the house – you can just leave me a list.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “I can at least have dinner ready for you.”

  “You sound like a housewife.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  “As long as you promise not to start walking around in an apron, baking the world and scrubbing the floors – then I suppose you can make dinner.”

  “You don’t like clean floors?”

  She looked straight into my eyes. “Not that clean. Sweeping always works just fine for me.”

  Her gaze unsettled me. “Well, goodnight,” I said pointedly.

  “Goodnight, Kate.”

  Chapter 30

  A good night, my arse. I slept hardly a wink. I drifted off only once; but woke soon after, to a dream that I could not remember. It was the sort of dream that leaves an impression – but not one exact detail. The most irritating kind, if you ask me.

  Sleep was impossible, after that. I went into the parlour to retrieve the book I had forgotten; and was surprised to find that Niamh was already there.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  She smiled. “Neither can I.”

  I stood still in the doorway, looking towards the little table where my book lay.

  “I hate it when I can’t sleep,” said Niamh, her eyes on her sewing. I watched the needle going up and down, in and out, held firmly between Niamh’s fingers.

  I wondered how it would feel to be that needle.

  “I always feel so tired the next day,” she went on. “I sit up all night, wide awake – and my eyes start to drift shut, just as the sun rises. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Not so funny as irritating,” I said, trying to find something, which was not her, to rest my eyes upon.

  “Good point.”

  Finally she raised her eyes, and said, “You could sit down, at least. It makes me nervous, when people stand in front of me like that.”

  I took a seat on the sofa.

  “You know,” she said, “I really don’t even mind that you don’t like to talk. It’s still nice to have the company.”

  “Would you like me to talk more?” I asked, my eyes on the wall.

  “I’d like to know why you hardly ever look at me. You speak, and you look at something else.” She laughed softly, as if only to herself. “Does my face offend you?”

  “No,” I said. “No – it doesn’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aye. Quite sure.”

  She tossed her sewing aside. “Why do you look so nervous?”

  It was true enough – she made me very nervous. She represented something which I knew I should not take; because I was not really meant to have it. When I reached for it, it only rose up high above me, overtaking me like an relentless wind.

  What she made me feel, was not quite even a good feeling – it was just incredibly strong. Heady, potent, and a little fierce.

  “I’m only tired, I think,” said I, forcing myself to look up and smile. “Just when I think sleep won’t come – that’s when it does.”

  I was almost gone from the room when she said, “You’re lying.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not tired. You were tapping your foot, the whole time you were sitting on the sofa.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t mean to be rude – but what business is it of yours what my foot is doing?”

  She leant back in her chair. “I think we’ve got something strange going on here, Kate. You might not want to admit it – but it’s there, anyway.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  She laughed, and her expression turned darkish. “You don’t? Then I suppos
e that you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

  I just stared at her.

  “No, I suppose not,” she said, picking up her sewing again. “That’s too bad.”

  “What is the matter with you?” I burst out, my fists shaking by my sides. I could not say why her words made me so angry; but my ire rose just the same.

  She glanced up, looking pleased. “There’s a little of what I thought I saw! I was nearly disappointed.”

  “I don’t know what it is you want from me.”

  “Not much,” she said. “You should know. It’s the same thing you want.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  She grinned. “Are you sure?”

  “Entirely.”

  She shrugged. “Who am I to argue? One can’t be right all of the time.”

  I stood for a few moments, wringing my hands.

  She pretended not to notice.

  “Just for the sake of conversation,” I said finally; “what exactly is it – that you think I want?”

  She did not raise her eyes, but said simply:

  “You want something that takes up everything, for only a moment – and means hardly anything in the end. That way, you can forget that it ever even happened.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  I thought that I meant what I said – but my hands continued to shake, and my palms were growing damp. I looked at Niamh in the muted lamplight, and it was as though I could see only her eyes. They stared out at me from a strange mask that I had never seen before. It seemed that all I thought I knew about her was false; for there was no kindness in that mask. I feared now that I had mistaken manipulation for compassion; exploitation for sympathy.

  But I had been right about the power. I felt it from my place across the room.

  “I don’t think you’re lying about that,” she said. “I’m sure that you’re not – like that. But you have to understand, Kate. I am like that, and you appear to have stepped into my atmosphere.”

  “Please,” I said harshly, “allow me to step out.”

  But my words were only for show.

  “If that’s really what you want, feel free to leave.” Her eyes bore into mine. “But feel free to stay, as well.”

  I should have left. I should have walked straight out of the room – and proceeded straight out of the house.

  But – as we often do when it comes to the things that we really, really ought to do – I failed to follow through.

  She saw that I had no intention of leaving; so she rose from her chair, and crossed the room. She moved like water through grasping fingers, unattainable – yet unavoidable.

  “You should see yourself,” she said, moving closer to me. “You look like a wild animal. I’m almost scared of you.”

  “I have a hard time believing that you’re scared of anything.”

  She shrugged. “How else would I have got by so long on my own?”

  I did not want to get into that – because I did not particularly care. The less I knew about her, the better. (I felt already like I knew too much.) What was happening in that moment, was unlike anything that had ever happened to me. When it came to Thea, there was not a single thing that I did not want to know; there was not a shred of evidence concerning her existence that I wished to be unaware of. When I touched her, it was because I loved her. I could never hold her tight enough.

  But this, this was not honest. It was only evil and cold.

  But I wanted it anyway. So what did that say about me?

  ***

  When I woke next morning on the parlour floor, Niamh was gone. A look at the clock told me that she had already quit the house.

  A blanket covered me, but my clothes were in a heap by the doorway. I looked at them, and then down at myself.

  I remembered that night, oh so many months ago, when I spoke of David Warner’s attentions to Thea – and I thought of her response. I could hear her voice, echoing inside my brain.

  Do you really think that I would do the things you accused me of? I would never do anything like that.

  I pinched my arm, twisting the skin between my fingernails, needing to feel the realness of the pain.

  I love you, not anyone else.

  There was so much happening – so many people, from so many places, were going through such terrible things. Was it selfish of me to be riding upon such a steep wave of self-pity, created by my own lies and hypocrisy?

  I was not quite ashamed; and I was not altogether angry. I was empty. All that lay within me, at exactly that moment, was a pulsing devastation that had come to take on a life of its own. It rose up in my throat, choking me.

  I swallowed thickly, and hurried from the room.

  ***

  Supper had come to be something of an uncomfortable time for me. I was forced to sit at the table with Niamh, forced to try and look at her as I had in those first days at the infirmary – but was forced to accept the fact that she was now forever tainted. Come late June, those kitchen sessions had grown nearly intolerable, and left me shaking and cursing in such a way, that I was obliged to escape the house for at least an hour every night, and give myself up to the darkened streets which surrounded that beacon of misery.

  Niamh leant back in her chair, holding her stomach. “I ate too much,” she groaned.

  “That’s your own fault,” I said snappishly.

  “Well, you’ve only just quit burning suppers. I’m eating all I can, in case you start up again.”

  I sighed. “Can we not get through one night without some kind of an insult?”

  “I don’t know. Can we?”

  “I suppose not.”

  She tried to catch my eye, but I would not comply. So she stood, and made to take up her plate.

  “No,” I said, taking it away from her. “I’ll clean up.”

  “I can help.”

  “I don’t need any.”

  She yawned exaggeratedly. “Fine, then,” she said. “I’ll just go to bed.”

  “Goodnight,” I said.

  “Goodnight.”

  I brought the plates into the kitchen, looking around at the mess I had made. Just when I was about to start chipping away at it, though, Niamh appeared in the doorway, scaring me half out of my wits.

  I put a hand to my chest. “Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, picking up a wet rag to scrub at some dried gravy on the counter. But then I realised, that Niamh was not leaving.

  “Is there something you wanted?” I asked.

  “Will you make me say it?”

  I kept my eyes down, as I piled the dishes into the sink. “It’s done with,” I said. “I meant it when I said it.”

  “Can you pretend that you didn’t mean it, just for tonight? You can go back to meaning it again tomorrow.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Fine,” she said, clearly incensed. “But I just don’t understand it. It’s not as though I want you to love me! Don’t you know, that I don’t love you either?”

  “Thank you for making that clear.”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you that I love you? Will that change anything?”

  I stared at her blankly. “Nothing will do that.”

  She started to shout. “Do you know what? I don’t even care. I don’t give a good goddamn about you, how do you like that?”

  “To be honest? I don’t really care, either.”

  “Well, I’m off, then,” she said angrily, turning to go. I had just reached again for my rag – but was delayed yet again, when Niamh turned back into the kitchen, and wrapped me in an unexpected embrace.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” she whispered in my ear.

  Then, without another word, she walked quickly out of sight. I heard her stamping loudly up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Chapter 31

  I had a dream that night – a drea
m of my mother. When I thought back on it later, after all was said and done, it reminded me of the one I had on Marcker Street, the night before my world fell apart. Only this time, there was no ball of light – the woman who was its subject looked as real as could be, and stood before me with a grave expression on her face.

  But still she did not speak. I imagined it was because I could not remember her voice; for I had not heard it since I was two years old. I could see her face, though, because I had studied it so many times in her photograph.

  For that reason, I think, she just stood there, looking at me somewhat sadly.

  I snapped awake with a start. I looked all around the room, feeling frightened and disoriented. I could scarcely even remember the reason I had been torn so violently from sleep; for I could not remember my dream. I only felt a persistent tugging at the edge of my mind, which I may have been able to recognise, if I had only taken the time.

  I looked out the window and saw the round, white moon, looking nearly full against the pitch-black sky. It seemed, for a moment, as if it had a single eye; and that eye seemed then to wink at me.

  The house was completely silent – which did not seem strange, of course, given the time of night. I went to the window, and gazed up at the sky, trying to quell the strange disquiet inside me. It felt something like a hard little stone, that had lodged itself halfway between my stomach and my chest. I looked again at the moon, listening to the silence.

  When sound came, of course, it was even more unsettling than its quiet predecessor. I thought at first that it came from outside; but when I listened, straining my ears, I realised that it came from inside the house. Two voices – no, three. I cocked my head to one side. A female voice – Niamh’s – combined with two male voices. I could not hear what they were saying; but I was sure that they were saying something. I was sure that I was not imagining it.

  Now I heard footsteps coming down the hall. They came to a stop just outside my door. I turned to the window, and tugged up at the latch. I knew not why I should be afraid – I was not sure, in fact, whether I was actually dreaming – but I knew that I had to get out of that room. I examined the latch, which would not give way; and saw that it had been painted over. I tried to scratch the paint away, but the finish was too hard. So I stilled my hands and listened.