The Private Wound

  “Flurry, you’re tight. You’ll think better of it as time goes on. D’you want to be hanged yourself?”

  “I want to lay my hands on that fella. Sure what else have I to live for, now Harry’s gone?” His watering eyes turned to me. “What sort of a man d’you think I am?”

  “I think you’re a lazy man, an easy-going man at heart. You have a romantic urge to violence; but violence is against your nature. So you have to plunge into it blindfold. You’re a soft-hearted man really, and you resent that—you want an excuse for turning your heart to stone.”

  Flurry had gazed at me with increasing astonishment during this analysis. “Well, for God’s sake! Never did I hear such desperate crap. Dominic, you’re the one is tight. I can’t make head nor tail of what you’re saying.”

  “Nor can I, now you cast doubt upon it. But tell me this—I wouldn’t have asked it if I wasn’t drunk—why didn’t you strangle me when I—when I told you my secret?”

  “Secret?”

  “When I told you I’d been with Harriet the night she was murdered?”

  There was a long pause. Flurry seemed to be assembling his thoughts. “I nearly did, you know. But I’m not such a fool as I look. I worked it out for myself that no guilty man would dare make that confession to me and put his life in my hands. Sure you didn’t have to tell me that part of it, did you now?”

  “But—”

  “Wait a while. In the bad times once, I had to question a man we suspected of betraying two of his friends to the Auxiliaries. He denied it. He put on a great show of grief for his friends—they’d been tortured and shot. But it didn’t ring true. I knew in my bones it was not honest grief. Yours was. And yours felt like an act of true contrition. Now I’m talking like Father Bresnihan. To hell with it! This is a bloody dismal wake. We should have a song. D’you know ‘The Boys of Wexford’?”

  So I sang as much of it as I could remember, Flurry beating time on the table and joining raucously in the chorus. I went on to “The Harp That Once,” and then found myself singing “She Moved Through the Fair,” which reduced Flurry to tears. At some point Seamus must have come in, for I remember him supporting Flurry’s sagging figure and bellowing voice in some revolutionary songs.

  Finally Flurry collapsed into a chair. “That’s better. That’s more like it. He’s a grand voice, hasn’t he, Seamus?”

  “He has.”

  “No bloody keening about this wake. Did y’ ever hear the keening, Dominic?”

  “No.”

  “A god-awful din. Like a pack of wolves baying the moon. It’d freeze your bones.”

  “When did you ever hear a pack of wolves, Flurry?” asked Seamus.

  “I’ll hear it when the bailiffs come.”

  “Which reminds me—”

  “Ah, get out with you, Seamus! I’ll have no long faces at this wake. Drink up. D’you know, boys, it’s the first time I’ve been able to get drunk since Harry—— I must have a drink on that.”

  I laboriously thought back. It was only the fourth day since Harriet’s death. It seemed an age.

  “Well, we all loved her. To Harry, rest her soul!”

  We drank solemnly.

  “And now I drink to Dominic. May the devil fly away with the roof of the house where you and I are not welcome!”

  “And here’s to Seamus,” I said. “Seamus, I bequeath you my Connemara tweed hat. I can’t say fairer than that.”

  “I take it kindly, Mr. Eyre.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “That terrible old lid?” said Flurry. “Is that the best you can do for him? Sure there’s not anny old tinker’d be seen dead in it.”

  “Which reminds me—”

  “Ah, shut up, Seamus!”

  “No. Let the man speak. He has something of moment to connumicate—communicate, I should say.”

  “I couldn’t find hide nor hair of that tinker Mrs. Kevin says she saw. No one in the town set eyes on him.”

  “Why should they? They’d be all in bed, that time of night,” said Flurry.

  “And so should I be.” I looked at my watch. It said nearly one o’clock. I rose, only to fall against the table.

  “Dominic, you’re drunk.”

  “Will I walk you home, Mr. Eyre?”

  “You will not,” roared Flurry. “He’s staying here the night.”

  “Oh but—”

  “I’ll take no denial. D’ye hear me?” Seamus winked at me. “The commandant’ll take no denial.”

  “All right then. Thank you, Flurry.”

  “Tha’s better. For a West Britisher, I don’t mind you at all. Drink up now and shame the devil.”

  It was nearly two o’clock before we retired. Flurry led me to a small room next his own. “There’s something wrong with that bed, me boy,” he said, gazing bemusedly at it. “What is it now?”

  I cudgelled my reeling brain. “There’s no bedclothes on it.”

  “By God, you have it.”

  He reappeared with a bundle of sheets and blankets in his arms. He and I weaved around the bed, making it up.

  “Is there anything else you’ll be needing?”

  I thought hard again. “Yes. Pyjamas.”

  He returned with a pair of his own. “Good night now, and thank you for keeping me company to-day. Sleep well.”

  I didn’t. Unaired sheets are the worst somnifuges. I felt the damp creeping into my bones, as I tossed and turned. Presently I threw off the sheets and wrapped myself in a blanket. But all the liquor I had drunk over-stimulated my brain. I lay there with my eyes open, first to prevent the walls circling round me, and then, after I had them quietened down, thinking of all the times with Harriet, of the mystery I was caught up in, of Flurry’s strange personality and incalculable behaviour. Was I lying in bed next door to a murderer? Surely not. He was a man whose simplicity baffled me: but he was not a simple-minded man. He had the intuition, I reflected, of a first-class military leader; and the ruthlessness of a guerrilla. But one thing was sure—he had loved Harriet with a love which transcended jealousy.

  The uncurtained window appeared to grow light. Dawn already. I lit the candle and looked at my watch. Only five to three. I went to the window. At first it seemed as if some distant trees in the demesne were on fire. Then I saw the flames were well beyond them. And at that moment I heard running feet on the avenue. A man hurdled the stile into the garden, shouting.

  “Joyce’s is burning! Ring the brigade!”

  I rushed into Flurry’s room. He was snoring loud. But at the touch of my hand (I was to remember this later), he came full awake.

  “Ring the brigade, Flurry. My cottage is on fire.”

  He was half-way down the stairs before I had collected my own wits. The man was banging on the front door. When I let him in, I saw he was the neighbour of mine who lived a hundred yards down the lane from me. He was so out of breath, he could not speak at first. I heard Flurry’s voice on the telephone at the back of the hall. Then he rushed back. “They’ll be on their way. Hallo, Michael. Dominic, throw on your clothes.”

  It was only then that I noticed he himself had not undressed.

  Chapter 12

  A few minutes later, running breathlessly, we were at the cottage. A few neighbours stood on the track, admiring the flames. The thatched roof was burning cheerfully, giving off an occasional burst of smoking straws which floated down on our heads. The upper windows had cracked in the heat; the two little bedrooms up there must be red-hot.

  “Why the hell can’t you lousers do something!” bawled Flurry! “Get a ladder and some buckets!”

  “It’s no good at all, Mr. Flurry,” said a man. “Sure the place must have gone up like a bomb. It was a raging furnace when we arrived.”

  I made a dash for the door, unlocked it and plunged in. The smoke downstairs blinded me and the heat was hellish, but I groped my way to the table, snatched up my MSS and diary, and staggered out. A few moments later, the upper floor collapsed with a crash. Smoke
and sparks billowed out through the open door, and a torch of flame shot up thirty feet above the room. I unlocked my car door, and the men helped me push the car out of range of the conflagration.

  A few minutes later, two antiquated fire-engines arrived. Jets of water were directed at the roof, which hissed at them with derision. I began to shiver uncontrollably. Flurry, excitement in his eye, gripped my arm.

  “That’s a monster of a blaze. Aren’t you glad you slept the night with me?”

  “Why was it the top floor caught? I don’t understand it.”

  The other appliance which had arrived could not use its ladder against this inferno.

  “If there’s anyone there,” said the chief fire officer, “he’s destroyed.”

  “The cottage was empty.”

  “Did you keep much petrol in it? That’s not a natural blaze.”

  “No. I didn’t keep any.”

  “It looks like arson to me, then. We’ll have a search to-morrow, when we’ve got the place damped down. Though it’d be a miracle if we found anything. Is this gentleman a friend of yours, Mr. Leeson?” added the officer, with a somewhat suspicious look at me.

  “He is, and I’m taking him home to bed. He’s worn out, can’t you see?”

  I drove Flurry back to Lissawn House. “That was a great end to the wake,” he said heartlessly.

  “Oh, marvellous.”

  “Kevin’ll be wild, losing his cottage and five pound a week.”

  “A month. But look here, Flurry, not a soul knew I’d decided to spend the night with you. If someone did set the place on fire, he’d assume I was in it. And how would he get in? The door was locked.”

  “He’d have a key then.” Flurry did not seem to grasp the implications of this.

  “And locked up again behind him? To make sure I couldn’t get out? The windows are far too small to climb through.”

  “You must have left something burning then.”

  “But I wasn’t there after Concannon left, in the afternoon. I’d not lit the lamp. The turf fire was out.”

  “Be easy, Dominic. Keefe’ll sort it when he has the fire put out. Go to bed now. You’re dropping.”

  And believe it or not, damp sheets and excitement and all, I must have gone to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  I was awoken at 9.30 by the telephone bell ringing down stairs. Presently Flurry appeared. “Concannon wants a word with you.” I crawled down to the instrument, my head splitting. The superintendent’s first words did not clear up my sense of total disorientation.

  “Good morning, Mr. Eyre. So you thought better of it.”

  “Thought better? What on earth are you talking about?”

  There was a brief silence. “You’ll be at Lissawn House at two o’clock? I’m busy this morning.”

  “I could hardly be anywhere else, now someone has burnt down my cottage.”

  “I’ll be over there. You and Mr. Leeson had better not lose sight of each other till I come.”

  “And what’s the meaning of that sinister remark?” I asked sourly, but Concannon had already rung off.

  Flurry was frying eggs and bacon in the kitchen.

  “What on earth’s Concannon raving about?”

  “He asked when I’d seen you last, and I told him you were asleep upstairs, worn out with booze and excitement.” Flurry was in great shape. “It seemed to knock him all of a heap. And what did he tell you?”

  “To keep an eye on you—he’s turning up after lunch.”

  “Are you insured, Dominic?”

  “Do you mean my possessions or my life?”

  This caused him to laugh uproariously. He was certainly his old self again. “You’re a great joker,” he wheezed, in between fits of coughing. “I wouldn’t want you to lose the one nor the other.”

  “I didn’t have much in the cottage. A few books and clothes. Oh, and my binoculars. It’s a nuisance about the typewriter: but I rescued my MSS.”

  “That’s what you care about most,” he ventured, almost shyly.

  “I suppose so. But I’m beginning to think it’s a worthless novel.”

  “Ah well, you’ve your life before you. C’mon now and eat up. If you can keep the first mouthful down, you’re all right.”

  He gave me a cup of coffee laced with whiskey. “This’ll restore you. A hair of the dog, as the saying is.” He looked out of the window. “We’ll have a cloud-burst before the day’s end. So we can fish the river to-morrow, please God.”

  After breakfast I went out for a stroll in the demesne. I felt better, but my head still throbbed and the air was thunderous. A weight of indigo cloud was building up over the mountains inland. My feet took me, as if magnetised, to that green spot by the Lissawn. So dark was the day that I could imagine Harriet ghosting towards me through the trees in her white night-dress.

  The water was low and sullen. Rocks stood up out of it like tombstones. Flurry had told me that, the day after Harriet’s death, police in waders were searching that stretch of the Lissawn. In those days there were no skin-divers or metal-detectors—not in the West of Ireland, anyway. And the pool where he so often cast his fly was pretty deep. So, if the knife was there, it had not been discovered.

  I heard a car coming slowly up the avenue, and soon recognised it through the trees. I ran to cut it off, arriving neatly as Kevin climbed out. He turned round, and there I was. If I had hoped he might, in the shock, betray himself, it was a failure. He did not grow pale or start back.

  “How are you?” he said, gripping my hand warmly.

  “None the worse for being alive.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to have happened. It’s the mercy of providence you weren’t sleeping there last night.”

  “Oh, you’ve heard about the fire.”

  “Keefe told me—the fire brigade chief. Then I drove past on my way here. The place is gutted. Only the walls standing.”

  “Has Keefe found out how it started?”

  “He’s investigating. Of course he’ll have to call in the insurance company’s fire assessors. But it’s you I’m worried about: I’m afraid you must have lost everything. Anything I can lend you, just call on me—you’ll be wanting a replacement for your typewriter.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  By this time we were in the house. Flurry was in his fishing room, tying flies. “Hallo, Kevin,” he said, not looking up, “so you’re burning down your own houses now. You might have warned us.”

  “I don’t like that class of joke at all. Don’t you realise Dominic might have—”

  “Been fried to a crisp? Yes, I see your point: as the actress said to the bishop.”

  “This is no time to be making foul jokes, Flurry. I—”

  “Well, what did you come here for?”

  “To inquire after Dominic, of course. He’s had a dreadful ordeal.”

  “That’s true enough, Kevin. What’s changed your mind?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “If you’re so solicitous about him, why did you put the boycott on him?”

  “Damn that for a lie!” Kevin shouted. “I wasn’t even in the town when—— You watch what you’re saying, he knows damn’ well why.”

  Flurry laid down the cast, and ticked off on his huge fingers each incident of the boycott. “Brigid, Sean, Haggerty, Brian at the store—they’re all under your thumb.”

  “Maybe the people here did take against Mr. Eyre. And brother.”

  “So it was quite spontaneous?”

  “Like the combustion,” I said nastily, “at Joyce’s cottage.”

  “Don’t talk cod,” Kevin burst out furiously. “Everyone in Charlottestown knew about Harriet and Mr. Eyre—everyone except you, apparently. They’d have a right to suspect he’d murdered her. I don’t believe it myself, but—”

  “But you don’t object to anyone else believing it. Ah, come off it. What’s really worrying you, Kevin? You look like a treed fox.”

  And
he did. There was an uncertainty about his grim, shark-like mouth, a quite uncharacteristic violence in his manner. I got the feeling that he was on the edge of panic.

  “I’d like to talk to you alone, Flurry.”

  “No. Dominic is staying. Two minds are better than one, if there’s trouble in it.”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry for what I said just now, both of you. I am in trouble. You’ll hardly believe it, but Superintendent Concannon has nigh acused me of—of the murder. He’s been on at me again about the journey I took from Galway. As if I could remember every inch of the way and account for every minute of the night. It’s a great trial, when I’ve so much else on my mind.”

  “What else?” asked Flurry, gazing straightly at him.

  “Oh, business affairs,” said Kevin impatiently and, I thought, evasively. “Maire’s on at me too.”

  “Is she now?”

  “She thinks I—she’s jealous—she had a lunatic idea I’d been—well, a bit sweet on Harriet myself. She said it straight out only the other day. Sure I don’t know what way to turn.”

  “And of course you’d not been consorting with my wife?”

  “Don’t anger me!”

  A single crash of thunder made Kevin start in his chair. It was not repeated, but from now on I could hear a distant thunderstorm bumbling around in the mountains to the east. Flurry had begun tying a fly again: his fingers were amazingly nimble. Without looking up, he said,

  “There’s something else wrong, Kevin me boy. You may be the great panjandrum in Charlottestown, but you’re not the Almighty yet. What’ve you been getting yourself into?”

  His tone was gentle enough, almost appealing. But Kevin, though his long mouth twitched, remained stubbornly silent.

  “Well then,” continued Flurry. “I’ll make a guess at it. You’ve got yourself involved in some eejut political business, and now you’re so far in, you daren’t pull out: your associates would be after your blood if you tried to. You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, Kevin. But you’re my brother. I wouldn’t like to see you prisoned in the Curragh—or worse.”

  “You fought for Ireland yourself, once,” muttered Kevin.

  “And a bloody lot of good I did myself!”