An Irish Heart

by C M Blackwood

  Myrne came back into the room, and dropped down into a chair; but I did not look at him.

  “I apologise for the inconvenience,” I said stiffly. “It was not your mess to clean.”

  “Damn right it wasn’t. Now tell me who this is.”

  “Her name is Niamh Carlin. She turned me over to the soldiers who brought me to prison. I stayed with her after I nearly got my leg blown off in April.”

  Abbaline turned her attention on Niamh. “You did that?” she asked.

  Niamh looked like she was about to faint. “It’s not what you think –”

  “What I think,” Abbaline interrupted, “is that you are a no-good, filthy little rat. I should shoot you right now.”

  “Please, I –”

  “Oh, shut up. I’m not really going to shoot you. If it hadn’t been for you, this one here –” (she gestured to me) “would probably be dead already.”

  I saw Niamh breathe a sigh of relief.

  “But that doesn’t mean you’re welcome here,” Abbaline said. “You should leave now.”

  Niamh looked at me. “Kate, please let me –”

  “I know that it’s probably getting very irritating,” said Abbaline, “not being able to finish your sentences and all, but I really don’t think that Kate is in the mood for a chat with you. I suspect she never will be, and I have absolutely no reason to be, so please don’t come back.”

  Niamh got to her feet. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  She was almost to the door when Abbaline said, “Oh – and I almost forgot. If you tell anyone we’re here, I will shoot you.”

  Niamh looked very frightened, as she exited the house.

  We were all quiet for a few minutes. I had no desire to speak; and I knew that Myrne did not want to force me. Yet I saw Abbaline out of the corner of my eye, leaning forward in her chair, and waiting to pounce upon me.

  “Well,” she said finally. “That was quite a show. Now I know all about Miss Helpful – but you still haven’t responded to this other matter.”

  I had my eyes closed. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Oh no! I’m talking to the idiot boy here. Use your sense.”

  “You needn’t call me names, Abbaline,” said Myrne.

  “Hush up, or I will shoot you.”

  He grumbled a few unintelligible words.

  “Well, Kate?” said Abbaline.

  I tried to keep my voice from quaking. “What matter is that, Abbaline?”

  “Please don’t play games with me, Kate. I’m very tired.”

  “Why don’t you go away, then? I’m tired, too.”

  “Another few minutes by that river, and you would have been granted the gift of eternal sleep!” Her voice was like acid. “Now speak.”

  I tried desperately not to cry, though I felt so weak that I could scarcely summon up the energy to fight it. I tried to ignore the sound of Abbaline’s voice, though it was cold and sharp as my blade which still lay by the river.

  “You don’t understand,” I said, my voice weak and strained. “I didn’t want you to find me. I didn’t want to have to explain myself. Why should I have to, when all I want to do is fall asleep and stay that way?” I breathed quickly, in and out, almost in a state of hyperventilation. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why did you do that to me?”

  I turned the side of my face against the pillow, so that I could see her. There was something different about the way she had said that. Not so hard; not so angry.

  “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Naturally, that’s what you’d say. You thought not of me, or of Myrne, or of anyone else. How very selfish of you.”

  “It had nothing to do with you.”

  “And everything to do with you,” Abbaline said softly. “Did you think about what would happen after it was done? You should have seen poor Myrne – you weren’t even dead yet, and he was crying like a baby!”

  “Thank you, Abbaline,” said Myrne, his face turning red as a tomato.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “You were crying, too.”

  “Of course I was. I was only stating a fact.”

  I stared at them.

  “Please understand,” said Abbaline, “that I don’t mean to be hard. It’s only a very difficult thing to deal with.”

  I nodded slowly, my eyes half-shut. “You needn’t tell me.”

  ***

  The morning sun was piercingly bright. I blinked slowly, looking all around, completely confused as to where and when I was.

  It took a few moments for everything to fall together; and when it finally did, I felt my fury return like a raging tide. Everything looked so normal; everything sounded so normal. There was only the singing of the birds, such a natural and careless sound – and those birds went on and on, oblivious to the goings-on beneath them, unaware that I was still screaming inside.

  What was I supposed to do with all of this pain, and with of all this anger that had built up inside? It had been there for so long, even if I were to try and shove it away, to compartmentalise it somehow amidst all of the other things I was meant to be feeling, it would leave a thick and permanent layer of residue, upon all of those places which it had been pressed against.

  There was no cleaning something that you could not even see.

  So I spoke out loud, with the excuse that I did not know to whom – if only to try and convince myself that I did not know to whom.

  “I’m so tired,” I said quietly, my voice rasping from a dry throat. “I’m so tired of waking up every morning, and having no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m so tired of going to bed, and trying to sleep, and having no idea what it was that I did. I’m just so . . .”

  I could not think of a word of appropriate strength.

  “Can’t you do something?” I asked. “Can’t you help me? I’ve never asked you for anything, not once, in my entire life.”

  I took a long, shallow breath, trying to quell the acute ache which was persisting in my chest.

  “I’m sorry if I never believed in you. I suppose I only felt that I had no reason to. I shouldn’t have used that as an excuse; I should have prayed anyway, I should have prayed more because of it. I’m sorry. I don’t know if that’s enough for you, I don’t know if there’s something else that I have to do, to make you want to help me. But I’m asking you now, and I hope that you won’t only laugh at me for it. I don’t know how else to ask, and I don’t know anything more to say. I just hope that you can hear me. I hope that you’ll forgive me for anything, for everything, I have ever done wrong.”

  I waited for some kind of voice inside my head, some feeling that would let me know, that my words had been heard; that they had been heard, registered, and set aside for further inspection.

  But there was nothing.

  Nothing but my aching arms.

  “I should have been nicer to you.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Ian Platt was standing beside me.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I only wish – well, I only wish that I had been kinder to you, when you tried to talk to me.”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” I said coldly, pulling the blanket up to my chin. “I wish you would just go away.”

  He smiled – the first time I had ever seen him smile. “Even if I do,” he said, seeming to recall my own words to him, “I can’t go terribly far.”

  I sighed. “I didn’t mean it, anyway.”

  He sat down in a chair, and looked upon me for a while in silence, before he finally asked:

  “Are you all right?”

  “For the most part.”

  He sat in the chair until I fell asleep. I kept opening my eyes, wondering if he was still there – and every time I did, I saw him. Eventually, though, I nodded off.

  When I woke, he was gone.

  ***

  I lay on the sofa all day.

&nbs
p; No one came into the parlour. I supposed that they had been given specific instructions not to do so.

  When the sun finally disappeared from the window, I threw the blanket off my legs, and left the room. I had nowhere to go; I did not want to go to my room; I just walked about, pacing the hallway for a bit before turning into the kitchen.

  Naturally, that’s where I found Abbaline.

  She did not say anything at first; she did not even look up at me from her paper. She just sipped at her coffee, flipping page after page until I was sure that she wasn’t really even reading them.

  “Have a good rest?” she asked finally.

  I said nothing.

  “I’m guessing you’re hungry.”

  I wasn’t.

  “Well, if you are, you’re pretty much out of luck. All that’s left is a bit of bread.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “I don’t blame you. I think it’s gone mouldy.”

  I went to the table, and pulled up a seat beside Abbaline. She did not turn her head, but I saw her inspecting me out of the corner of her eye.

  “Feeling better?” she asked. It was impossible to interpret her tone.

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, are you or aren’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, it’s your business, anyway.”

  “That’s not what I meant by it.”

  “I didn’t say that it was.”

  “I’m going to have a baby.”

  Whether or not it would have taken less, to finally make her look at me – well, that I did not know. Yet that had not been the objective, anyway. Her bulging eyes were only an unfortunate side effect of the statement which had flown forth from my lips, just as a bullet from a rifle.

  Abbaline choked on the coffee she had just started to swallow, speaking and spitting into her cup at the same time.

  “What in the hell did you say?”

  “Probably whatever you heard.”

  She slammed her fist down on the table. “You know, I knew that this would happen. I always knew, I tell you! But Myrne? I mean, really, Kate, he’s a nice boy, but –”

  I would have laughed, really I would have, if the hilarity of her expression had matched the grimness of the truth.

  But it didn’t.

  “You’re not following,” I said simply.

  Abbaline stared at me. “Not Myrne?”

  “No.”

  “Blackie, then?”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “God, Kate. There have been any number of men in this house, these past two months! Don’t tell me that I have to name them all?”

  I was almost offended.

  “Well?” she persisted.

  I had to force the next set of words. “It wasn’t my choice,” I said slowly. “I’m three months along.”

  I watched Abbaline’s silent calculations. It was almost sad, the way her face fell.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, her knuckles white round the handle of her mug. “Kate, why didn’t you . . .?”

  “Why didn’t I what? Tell you straightaway? Tell everyone all about it? I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to shout it about.”

  “I understand that. But you still should have told me.”

  “I only just found the courage to say it out loud.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too bad that it could only come after what happened last night.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “I’m not sure that that’s healthy, but whatever you say.”

  We sat in silence for a very long time, each of us sifting through our own assortment of thoughts. It was Abbaline who spoke first.

  “Three months, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if you can get yourself through the next six, you should be bringing a tiny little person into the world come June.” She peered over at me. “Whatever the way it came about, don’t you think that that’s reason enough to stay?”

  I felt myself smile, and I knew that it was true. A seed of peace drifted down into my heart, and sprouted the thin roots of transitory acceptance. It would have been only too easy, for a bout of misery to rise up and rip them from their tender plot; but I held fast to them, and covered with both hands the places where they had begun to bloom, so that they might have a better chance of taking hold.

  Chapter 39

  Winter crept by in a swirl of snow and doubt, my belly swelling week by week. It was an immensely uncomfortable process. I was convinced that the baby was intentionally kicking my bladder; and by April, it seemed that I was running to the bathroom twice every hour.

  “You’re getting really round,” said Myrne.

  “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

  “No. It was just an honest observation.”

  “Well, keep your observations to yourself.”

  “All right.”

  “Will you really?”

  “Of course not. But do you know what’s funny? Your stomach is sticking out past your feet, but everything else is still skinny.” He laughed. “It looks like someone planted a watermelon in the wrong place.”

  “I’d hit you, if I could catch you.”

  He tilted his head, staring at my stomach. “Can you see your feet?”

  “Shut up, will you?”

  He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms and pursing his lips.

  “Don’t sulk,” I said. “You’re acting like the baby I’ve not even had yet.”

  “What do you think it will be like?” he asked, brightening up in an instant.

  It didn’t take much with him.

  “How do I know?” I said. “It will be a little wee thing that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Don’t say that,” Myrne hissed. “It can hear you.”

  “Don’t give it too much credit.”

  “Oh, stop being such a grouch. This is going to be great!”

  “Fine,” I said loudly. “You want me to be happy, you take this thing and carry it around in your stomach! You push it out in two months, and then tell me how happy you are!”

  “Gosh,” he said. “You’re dreadful.”

  I glowered at him.

  He smiled. “Hey, can I be the uncle? I’d make a good uncle.”

  “I don’t care. But I should inform you now, uncle privileges come with excessive duties.”

  “Oh, how bad can they be?”

  I smirked.

  ***

  As for Ian Platt – well, he had disappeared. (And I don’t mean disappear as he did when he popped out of one place and into another.) I went looking for him in the attic one morning; and he was gone. I looked for him all day, calling his name all over the house, hoping he might appear to me just when I had begun to think that he wouldn’t – but he just never did.

  I knew not where he had gone; but I could think of only two possibilities. Either he had found the place where he was meant to go (which seemed a bit of a long shot, after having not been able to find it for one hundred and nine years), or he had simply never been there at all.

  I had never found out anything about him. I knew not how he had died; I knew not why he had been imprisoned for so long, in that great house on Shealittle Road. I knew nothing about him – except that his name was Ian Platt, and that he wore a chest of chain mail; and that he kicked a metal helmet all about the attic, as the nearest form of sport he could invent.

  I kept remembering the last time I saw him, that day in the parlour. I remembered the look in his eyes, of sympathy and understanding, without which I still believe that I may not have survived that day. No one else had been able to provide me with that exact amount and combination of emotions; and I’m not sure if he ever knew just how much he had done for me. I remembered all this – but I don’t know if I ever completely decided whether or not he had been real. All I knew, was that he had been real to me.

  When it comes to so
mething that only you yourself can see, is that not all that really matters, anyway?

  April 10, 1917

  I have not opened this book since Abbaline gave it back to me in November. I have not written in it since last January.

  Everything, yet nothing, has changed.

  There is something about touching this book, that makes all the places I’ve been seem more real. It’s not just the words, because those came from my mind, and my mind remembers just as well as ever. It’s the thing itself, the tangibility of it. I hold it now, and I remember holding it on Wimple Street; on Lennox Lane; and somewhere in betwixt Marcker Street and Brazier Street. After that, it all just falls away. I recollect these words, which belonged to Myrne, that first night we escaped from our prison. I have come to realise the verity of these words, and to finally understand exactly what it was that he meant. I see and remember the past; for how could I not? But I have attained the ability to look upon it as something cold and distant, like a winter passed which I cannot regain; for another has dawned, just as cold and unfeeling; and I must live only in what passes at present, so that I might avoid the grip of madness and grief!

  There is nothing in this book about Tyler, nothing about Abbaline or all of those important people whom I met last year; there is nothing about Niamh Carlin (a disgusting yet important piece of the puzzle) or my short prison sentence; there is nothing about Stan Asley, Mickey Dee or countless others, who I would like to forget but will ever be forced to remember. There is nothing about Myrne, or my return to Shealittle Road.

  Well, now I suppose that there is something of all of that. Details are not necessary; for I will always remember those.

  What else is there to say? It seems redundant, to write down all of those things which I already know. There are things, though, that I do not like to talk about – things that I only think about. The bandages came off my wrists months ago; but I still keep them covered with my sleeves. They are not very pretty to look at. The skin is puffy and scarred, almost like lines of bubbles that will never burst. I look at them often; and then down at my enormous belly, never forgetting that the former was supposed to prevent the latter.

  But it’s too late for that now. I have made it this far, and I suppose that whatever is inside me deserves the chance to at least enter out into this terrible world, and attempt to fare as best it can. I don’t know if I can love it – I don’t even know if I will be able to look at it – but I can only worry about that later.