The Private Wound

  “Ah, get on! We don’t have so many visitors in this God-forsaken hole that we can afford to leave them be. Do we now, Harry? Are you staying here long?”

  I explained about the car.

  “What do you think of the place?”

  “It’s a wonderful country. I don’t know that Charlottestown is exactly a beauty spot, though. That must be your shop I passed—”

  “No such luck. It’s my brother’s—Kevin. My younger brother. We call him the Mayor. He owns half the town. An ambitious fellow, Kevin. And what do you do, if I may ask?”

  “I write books.” It was out before I had time to check it. I could have kicked myself harder still for knowing it was said in an attempt to impress Harry. I looked round furtively. No one seemed to be listening.

  Flurry’s eyes widened. “A book-writer?” he said, putting a very long “oo” on the words. “D’ye hear that, Harry? Maire’d be mad to meet him.”

  “I shall call him Boo,” announced his wife.

  “Don’t you dare! No, seriously, I don’t want people to know—”

  “Are you ashamed of writing books?” she asked forthrightly.

  “Of course not. But—”

  “So you’re here to study the natives? Incognito?” said Flurry.

  “No, no. I just wanted to find a quiet place where I could write my next novel. It’s not going to be set in Ireland at all.”

  Flurry gave me a violent clap on the shoulder. “You’ll stay with us then,” he exclaimed. “As long as you like. We’ve dozens of rooms. Harry, wake up! Isn’t that a powerful idea?”

  It was an extremely disconcerting one. I’d heard all about Irish hospitality, but this was too much. I explained that I wanted to rent a cottage where I could be alone with my work.

  “If it’s money that’s on your mind, you could rent a room in our house. What sort of a price could you pay?”

  So that’s what this hearty oaf is after, I thought. He must have seen my involuntary expression. “You could be company for Harry—two English in a nest of wild Irishmen. Never mind, though. If you won’t you won’t.”

  There was a pause, filled up with another round of drinks ordered.

  “What about Joyce’s?” said Harry unexpectedly: she had been silent a while, gazing into her glass.

  Flurry slapped his knee with a huge hand. “By God, you have something there.” He launched into an enthusiastic sales talk about a cottage, half a mile from his own house. Its last occupant, the widow Joyce, had died recently, and Kevin Leeson had bought it and done it up for letting to visitors. He’d not yet got a tenant for the summer, so far as Flurry knew. With a sly look at me, he added, “And I can sting brother Kevin for a commission, so we’ll all be happy.”

  The Irish intuition, penetrating into one’s secret thought and turning it against one—perfectly diabolical.

  “We must have one on it,” said Flurry, as if the bargain had already been made. He scooped up our glasses and went to the bar.

  I found Harry’s eyes on me, a long meditative look. Taking off the absurd cap, she shook out her hair. How well I remember that moment—the scent of the smouldering turf fire, the hideously ornate “modernised” room, the voices flickering and falling, and my sense that a charmed circle had imperceptibly formed itself round us two. She nodded slightly, as if she’d found some answer in her own mind. We spoke, together.

  “D’you ride?”

  “Why ‘Harry’?”

  “It’s what Flurry’s always called me,” she replied indifferently.

  “You’re the last person who should have a man’s name.”

  She gave no sign of being gratified by the compliment. “‘Harriet’ is so stuffy and old-fashioned. What’s yours?”

  “Dominic.”

  “My God! That’s worse. It makes me think of a pi little schoolboy.”

  She was certainly a pert young woman.

  “I used to ride a bit, when I was a boy.”

  “But you’re above all that sort of thing now you’re a famous writer?”

  “Certainly not.” I spoke with some irritation. “And I’m not a famous writer.”

  The faintest look of complacence touched her mouth. I was too young then to know how a woman may first try out her power on a man by rousing his anger, or that she will not do so unless she is interested in him.

  “Go and get our drinks, Boo. Flurry’s forgotten us.”

  “Not if you call me that.”

  “You are a touchy man. Dominic, then.”

  At the bar, Flurry was deep in conversation with a red-haired man. I bought the drinks myself and returned with them.

  “Cheers,” she said. “Who’s Flurry talking to? Oh, it’s Seamus.”

  “Who’s Seamus?”

  “Oh, he’s our sort of bailiff. Seamus O’Donovan. I don’t know what Flurry’d do without him.”

  “A fine-looking fellow.”

  “I suppose so. He bores me. Always telling us we’re ruined, we’ve got to sell a pasture, we need to re-roof the cow-shed. You know.”

  “But that’s a bailiff’s job, isn’t it?”

  She yawned and stretched, showing her pretty teeth, the body beneath her green jersey. “Damn, now I’ve finished my cigarettes. Flurry,” she yelled, “get some fags.”

  I gave her one of mine. She was always smoking.

  Her husband returned with a packet. “I’ve sent Seamus to tell Kevin come along to-morrow afternoon. You can meet him then, Mr. Eyre, and fix it up about the cottage. I’ll ring you here in the morning.”

  “He’s Dominic.”

  “Who’s Dominic? Oh, him. A quick worker, isn’t she, Dominic? Watch out now or she’ll have you tied in knots. C’mon, Harry, I want my dinner.” Flurry staggered slightly and brought down his hand on the table for support. I noticed two fingers were missing. “Why don’t you have dinner with us?”

  I muttered excuses.

  “Ah well, I don’t blame you. Harry’s cooking is notorious the length and breadth of the West.”

  “Shut up, you silly old man.”

  He lugged his wife to her feet, and turned to me. “Sleep well. I’ll see you to-morrow. Are you sure you won’t come back with us?”

  “Really no, thanks.”

  “Good night so.”

  “Good night, Boo,” said Harry.

  Shortly after, there was an explosion outside. I could see through the window Flurry, with his wife riding pillion, weaving off on a motorbike.

  “That one’ll have somebody destroyed one day,” said a drinker.

  “It wouldn’t be the first,” said another.

  “It would not.”

  Chapter 2

  Flurry Leeson rang me next morning. I was to come to Lissawn House for tea. “You can’t miss it. Take the road south past the hotel. Then first turn right. Drive a mile till you come to the bushes. Our gate is just beyond on the right. Mind you close it behind you or the beasts’ll be galloping out,” he said, in between paroxysms of coughing. “Are you a fisherman?”

  “Well—”

  “I’ll lend you a rod.”

  Flurry rang off abruptly, before I had time to tell him I’d not fished since I was a boy.

  Sean had demonstrated his mastery over the machinery when I strolled along to the garage at midday. The engine was running sweetly again.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to attend to you when you drove in, Mr. Eyre. Peadar’s no use at all.”

  “The old fellow—?”

  “That’s him. My second cousin. They put him out to grass ten years ago. He likes guarding the pump for me when I’m away: it gives him an interest in life.”

  Sean was a bright-eyed, dark young man, with a trick of wiping his oily fingers on the waist of his jersey.

  “I hear you’re thinking of settling down here, Mr. Eyre.”

  “For a little, perhaps.”

  “You’d do worse than old mother Joyce’s cottage, God rest her soul.”

  One had about as
much privacy here, I thought, as a goldfish in a bowl. Yet there was something rather winning about this fascinated interest in the stranger.

  “If it’s a holiday you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. Mind you, all the young ones here are mad to get to the Big City, or America. It’s no life for them here at all. But every man wishes to be where he isn’t—amn’t I right? Gerronoutathat!” Sean suddenly yelled at a freckled boy who was trying to climb on to the bonnet. “There’s a bit of meat in the back, Brian asks will you take out to Lissawn for the mistress. His van’s broken down again.”

  If the cars were unreliable hereabouts, the bush telegraph was in fine working order.

  The sky had been overcast all the morning. But, in the temperamental way of Irish weather, the sun burst out after lunch and in an hour the sky was a bright blue, the far mountains violet, and the nearer land patched with brown and an emerald so dazzling that it almost hurt the eye.

  I took the first turn to the right, on to a pot-holed lane which led between fields sprinkled at the edge with spring flowers. The land stretched empty before me, but by each of the few cottages I passed a collie was lying in ambush and darted out snarling as if it wanted to bite the tyres off my wheels.

  The track, getting worse every moment, snaked about through the bumpy little pastures. I had visions of its petering out altogether and myself driving through an uncharted sea of green: but presently Flurry’s landmark appeared—the track took a dive through a tunnel of high bushes, and beyond them was the gate.

  A winding avenue of trees—mostly ash, I think—led me for about a quarter of a mile, and there at last was the house. I don’t know what I had expected: certainly not this elegant, white building, two-storied, with tall sash-windows on either side of the door, and a bow window jutting out towards a river which slid along through rocks only a few yards away from it, to the right of the house.

  I gazed at Lissawn House for a while, almost wishing I had accepted its owner’s lavish invitation to become his guest. Then I got out of the car, climbed a stone stile over the low wall which separated the demesne from a strip of garden. Now I could see that first impressions had been deceptive. The brick path up to the door was ruinous: the door must have needed a new coat of paint for ten years, and the charming fanlight above it was partly shattered. Where once the bell had been, there was a rusty hole. The brass knocker looked as if it had lain on a sea-bed for centuries.

  I knocked. And again. Silence, but for the incessant mumbling of the river. I pushed the door open—no one locks his door in Ireland—and called out, “Is there anybody there?” feeling like the traveller in that over-anthologised poem. Footsteps came from the back of the house.

  “It’s you. How are you? Welcome to Lissawn. The missus is tarting herself up for company. We have the Mayor honouring us with a visit, and his domestic chaplain. He’ll be later than he thought; so he asked me, will I show you the cottage.”

  Flurry Leeson, in the light of day, looked even more ashen-faced. “I’ve a terrible hangover,” he said. “C’mon now. It’s only a step.”

  We walked out of the garden, along the river. Through a coppice, we came to a place where a spit of lush grass projected into the water. “See that pool? I got a five-pounder there last month. But the water’s low now: we need rain. I thought we’d get some this morning. You didn’t bring your rod over?”

  “Well, actually I’m not so keen on—”

  “Never mind, we’ll fit you out. I’ve plenty rods.”

  Like many bores, I thought, Flurry Leeson pays no attention to what anyone else says.

  “The house is called after the river, is it? Is Lissawn the Irish for Leeson?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” He winked ponderously. “Don’t tell anyone, but the truth is I hardly know a word of Irish. A bloody awful language to get your tongue round. My great-grandfather came over here from Wexford and built the house. He was no scholar, but a great horseman. They say all Irishmen get concussed sooner or later but the Leesons are born concussed.”

  He paused to slap his thigh, bellowing with laughter. We were on a bridle-path which curved away from the river, and shortly arrived at the back of a cottage.

  “Wait now while I get your key.”

  Flurry emerged, and we walked a hundred yards on. “Kevin has to keep it locked while it’s empty,” he said apologetically. “My brother is the one unconcussed Leeson. He aims to be standing for the Dail at the next election—not that half the deputies aren’t dumb as haddocks. Wait ten years and we’ll all be shouting ‘Kevin Leeson for Taoiseach!’ What d’ye think of it now? A jewel of a place, isn’t it?”

  We were on the track which led to Lissawn. A high fuchsia hedge screened the cottage from the track: above it, a fairly solid thatched roof showed. The cottage was newly whitewashed, outside and in. The door led straight into a room—two knocked into one, perhaps—the length of the house, with tiny windows on either side. It was sparsely furnished, in the usual atrocious taste; but there was a new calor-gas stove at one end, a sink, and a row of unused cooking utensils and crockery; at the other a table, two hard-backed chairs and an antique-looking armchair. Up an almost vertical ladder were two small rooms, a feather bed in one, a camp bed and a hip bath in the other.

  “I wouldn’t like to climb that with drink taken,” Flurry shouted up at me. “Has Kevin fitted it out all right for you?”

  There seemed to be a sufficiency of everything. I came down. Flurry pointed out a good stack of turf, a pump, and an Elsan closet in the garden, the rest of which was given over to weeds, and an unspeakable rubbish dump.

  I felt absurdly attracted to the place. “It might do. What’s your brother asking for it?”

  “That I can’t tell you. But you need to stand up to him. He’s a desperate man for a bargain: he’d sell his grandmother’s skin if he’d a chance. What you want to do is put the comether on Maire: she has Kevin tamed. You should bring your wife out—you and she’d be snug as bugs in a rug here.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Are you not? I’d have thought the girls would be stampeding after a fella like you.”

  “I’ve not seen any signs of it yet.”

  “Ah well, we must alter all that.”

  The enthusiastic Flurry was clearly going to shove me into marriage as well as his brother’s cottage. He could not know that what attracted me to the latter was its isolation, the pure silence all round it, the thought that I could be happily alone there with the creatures of my imagination.

  We walked back along the lane, through the bushes, up the winding avenue to Lissawn House.

  We went round to the back. A weedy yard, outbuildings on two sides. Flurry called “Seamus! Are y’ there?” A stocky, red-haired man came out of a horse-box. “This is Seamus O’Donovan. He runs the place. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

  Seamus wiped his hand on his trouser-leg and shook mine, giving me a shy glance. There was something guarded about him, I felt; he had a horseman’s straddling gait and quiet hands.

  “Kitty could be for foaling to-night, Flurry,” he said.

  The two talked for a minute. No man-master relationship here. I sensed some closer bond between the two.

  “Anything you want, just tell Seamus. He’ll fix it for you. Mr. Eyre’s going to take Joyce’s cottage. Did my brother come yet?”

  “He did not. Clancy’d take the foal.”

  “He would indeed. But what’d he pay?”

  The two men conversed again. Seamus shot me an occasional look from his very bright blue eyes. He stood at ease beside Flurry, who overtopped him by eight inches or so, in the attitude of a brisk adjutant with his C.O. A fumbling sort of C.O. at that: which made all the odder the way Seamus looked at him—a look of more than respect; I’d have called it hero-worship, if Flurry had not been so unlikely a subject for such a feeling. Or was it simply a solicitousness for his big, shambling, rather futile employer?

  “Mrs. Leeson wants
Fergus to-morrow,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t you trust her with him?”

  “I’d rather exercise him myself, Flurry. He’s bold this time of year.”

  “She couldn’t handle him?”

  “She could ride the devil. There’s nothing wrong with her hands. But Fergus isn’t a woman’s horse.”

  “Harry’ll skin me if I tell her no.”

  “Ah now, she won’t. We don’t want Fergus destroyed leppin’ stone walls, not just now, and you know if Mrs. Leeson saw the great wall of China, she’d have to be leppin’ over it.”

  “All right then, Seamus.”

  I heard the distant noise of a car.

  “That’ll be them. C’mon, Eyre, and meet your doom.”

  I followed Flurry into the back of the house. We entered the room with the bow window overlooking the river—a shabby, cluttered room, damp stains on one wall, a turf fire smouldering, a few lovely pieces calling for attention among the featureless rabble of furniture. Harriet Leeson was there already: a check skirt, and a puce-coloured sleeveless jumper which showed her upper arms to be as thick as a cook’s—a curious contrast to the delicate wrists and hands. She waggled a finger at me, not taking her eyes off a trashy woman’s magazine she was reading.

  “What’ll the reverend say to all that stuff on your face?”

  “He knows I’m past praying for, Flurry,” she said indifferently.

  “Go and wash it off, Harry. You only do it to vex Maire.”

  “To hell with Maire.”

  Voices in the hall. Three people entered. Maire Leeson was a handsome woman; auburn-haired, high cheekbones, a scrubbed-looking face, large, slightly protuberant eyes. She was followed by Father Bresnihan, a middle-sized man with bushy eyebrows, hair on the back of his hands, and a pale, thin face in which very dark eyes glowed with intelligence or fanaticism, or both. Kevin Leeson turned out to be the man I had seen coming out of Leeson’s store the previous afternoon. He was like a cleaned-up version of his elder brother, decisive, neatly dressed, consequential, long upper lip, long shark-like mouth.

  Introductions all round. Then a moment’s embarrassed silence.

  “Mr. Eyre likes it, Kevin. Just the place for him.”