“In Ireland?”
“Aren’t you an old sober-sides! Now I’m teasing you.”
Oh that ludicrous lovers’ badinage! It seemed to me then like a dialogue of angels. Harriet sat up, her hair cascading over my face.
“Tell me some more poetry. Go on with the one about the bay.”
“Well, it’s really ‘The grave’s a fine and private place’.”
“What a morbid idea! Did you make it up?”
“No. A man called Marvell.”
“I don’t like your Mr. Marvell then. Is that why you wouldn’t make love to me? The funeral we saw?”
“I don’t think so. But it did give me a turn.”
“You only live once. A short life and a merry one—that’s what I say.”
“‘Short’?”
“I don’t want to be a smelly old woman on two sticks.”
“Darling Harriet! You are sweet.”
She gazed at me boldly. “What’s your Phyllis going to say about all this?”
“I daren’t think. Sufficient unto the day.”
Harriet jumped to her feet. “Come on. Time to be off.”
But, three miles short of Charlottestown, we caught up with the funeral procession, still swinging along at that jaunty, indefatigable pace, three other cars now following it respectfully.
When finally we reached the Lissawn gates, Harry leant across to me, gave me a last kiss, and scrubbed at my face with a handkerchief. Then she made up her mouth, and got out.
“Shall I see you soon?” I asked.
“If you’re good.”
She walked up the drive, not looking back. I turned the car and went back to the cottage, leaving it on a little grassed patch at the side of the road, which served me as a lay-by. I entered the cottage, my head so full of Harriet that I did not notice for several minutes the disorder of my belongings. Someone had gone systematically through my papers, my books, the drawers upstairs and down, but had not taken the least trouble to conceal his search. It could hardly be Brigid, then. Some passing tinker? But nothing had been stolen. It was really very odd indeed; the local curiosity carried beyond all reasonable bounds. I automatically reached for the telephone to call the police, before I remembered that I didn’t have one. What did it matter anyway? I sat down and gazed into the turf fire, day-dreaming about Harriet.
Chapter 4
I had started keeping a diary a few days before this episode. Fortunately, the unknown person who had ransacked the cottage could have found nothing in the diary to betray the situation between Harry and myself, and he certainly would not in the future. Because I had to omit any intimate references to her, I have nothing to tell me when or where it was that we first made love.
How strange it is, that I cannot recall this—the occasion when my physical enthralment began. Well, I suppose it began on the day of our picnic. But which of all the nights or days in a summer so distantly, so piercingly remembered now, was the first to find us naked together? It was all a blur, shot through with sudden gleams, mystery and danger and recklessness pressing upon its edges.
The next morning I walked across to Lissawn House. Flurry was leaning over the half-door of the stable, talking to Seamus within. I told him how my cottage had been searched.
“Did ye hear that, Seamus?”
“I did.”
“Could it have been tinkers?”
“There was no tinker within twenty miles of here yesterday,” came Seamus’s voice.
“Besides, nothing was stolen,” I said.
“What ails you, then? People have a powerful curiosity hereabouts.”
“So I’ve noticed. I’m not worried. Just interested.”
Seamus came to the door, brush and currycomb in hand. “It could never be Brigid,” he said, looking hard at me.
“I didn’t suppose for a moment it was. I asked her this morning if she came back to the cottage after cleaning up yesterday. She didn’t. I believe her.”
“You should so. She’s an honest girl,” said Flurry.
Seamus chewed on the straw in his mouth. “Did anyone else know you’d be out on a picnic with Mrs. Leeson?”
“No. Well, I suppose anyone who saw us driving through Charlottestown might have guessed I’d be away for a bit.”
“D’you want me to ring the Garda?”
“No, Flurry, of course not.”
“They might have been after searching the cottage themselves,” suggested Seamus.
“Why on earth should they? Anyway, they wouldn’t do it in such an amateurish way.”
“Wouldn’t they indeed! Clancy’s a stuffed cod.” Flurry went into a rambling story about how Garda Clancy had conducted a search for one of the hidden I.R.A. arms dumps.
“Well,” I said sourly, “there’s no arms dump in my cottage.”
“Sure I know there isn’t, Dominic. But someone might have tipped off the Garda. Some informer with a bee in his bonnet. There’s a desperate lot of jokers in these parts.”
“I wish they’d keep their melodrama to themselves then. I’ll tell you the kind of person I think did it—if it wasn’t just idle curiosity.”
Flurry and Seamus looked at me steadily.
“Someone who wouldn’t give a damn whether I discovered a search had been made or not. Otherwise, he’d have taken more trouble to tidy up after him. Someone very sure of himself. And he wanted to find out more about me: he wouldn’t look through my papers for machine-guns. Any candidates?”
I caught an uneasy glance between Flurry and Seamus.
“Aren’t you the great detective now?” said the former, quite amiably.
“I must be getting on with my work,” said Seamus.
And that was that.
Flurry took my arm and walked me into the house. Harry was in the kitchen, sipping tea and reading one of her deplorable magazines. She waggled her hand at me, not even looking up. Did yesterday happen, or had I dreamt it? Flurry told her, at tedious length and with considerable embroidery, about how “Dominic had his cottage broken into by a horde of ruffians while you and he were canoodling on the strand.”
For a moment my blood ran cold: then I realised it was just Flurry’s typical badinage. I think that was the first moment when a covert excitement blended with my depreciating attitude towards him—the excitement of the intriguer.
Harry manifested no great interest. “You’d better keep your door locked,” was all she said.
“Oh, I’ve nothing worth taking.”
At that, she gave me a long look, her lip curling up at one corner. A shameless look. Surely even Flurry would notice it? But he was pottering about the kitchen, gazing in a lacklustre way at the tins on a shelf.
“Haven’t you anything to do, you old fool?” asked his wife.
“Will you listen, the way she talks to me?” Flurry’s tone was affectionate. “Sitting on her fanny there like the Queen of Sheba!”
I was acutely embarrassed. The telephone rang and Flurry shambled out to it. Harriet was out of her chair, lacing her arms round my neck. I could not shake her off.
“Not here. For God’s sake!” I muttered.
She pouted. “Hell’s bells and buckets of blood! Don’t you ever say anything but ‘not here’?”
She released me and pinched my bottom with a violence that made me yelp. I seized her hand and bent it back till she was kneeling in front of me. Bucolic horse-play. If my intellectual friends in London had seen it!
Flurry’s steps were returning along the passage. Harry and I were sitting decorously when he entered.
“That was Father Bresnihan. He asked will you have supper with him to-morrow. I said you would. You’re not doing anything else, are you?”
The Father’s housekeeper showed me into the study. “Make yourself at home, Mr. Eyre. Father Bresnihan’ll be with you in a minute.”
A prie-dieu, a crucifix. Two walls lined with books, a third with filing cabinets. A shabby sofa and two armchairs facing the turf fire. A table in the
middle, stacks of papers neatly arranged upon it. The room was more like an office than a study. In spite of the fire, I felt cold in it. I had only a minute to glance at the books—pastoral theology, philosophy, several histories of Ireland, 19th century novels—when the Father came in, with a tray holding a sherry decanter and two glasses. He poured out for me, gave the fire a kick, lit a cigarette (he smoked incessantly all the evening), inquired how I was getting on in the cottage.
“I hope Kathleen’ll have something nice for us. I’d thought of taking you out to the Colooney. They say in Dublin you can always tell a good hotel by the number of priests you’ll find eating there.” His worried, ascetic face broke into a smile. “I seldom eat at the Colooney.”
“You have delicious sherry.”
“Kevin Leeson gets it for me. A professor at Maynooth introduced me to it, years ago.”
“Kevin seems a universal provider. He’s been very kind to me about the cottage.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And you find you can work well there?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I envy you, being able to concentrate upon the one thing.” He waved an arm at the filing cabinet. “A parish priest has to be an educator, a business man, a charity organiser and the dear knows what else, besides a spiritual director. Just now I’m trying to raise funds for a new school. It’s a shocking poor part of the country, out here.”
“But surely the Government—”
“The Minister of Education is a good Catholic. But we do not look upon schools and teaching as a purely secular matter. You think that a very reactionary point of view, don’t you now?”
“Well, yes. A bit.”
One could not evade Father Bresnihan’s intelligent eyes, or mistake his sincerity. He was still making out a cogent case for the part the Church played in education, when we were called in to dinner. The saddle of lamb was delicious, the potatoes admirably cooked, the greens a revolting colour, between brown and mauve.
“Don’t touch them, Mr. Eyre. Kathleen has never mastered greens,” he said to me when she had left the room. “I eat them as a penance.”
The claret was certainly no penance. A young tortoise-shell cat leapt into his lap and curled up there, purring voluptuously. We got on to the subject of censorship. Father Bresnihan admitted that a large proportion of the most distinguished European and American writers had their books banned in Ireland. He deprecated the influence on Irish culture of “the slab-faced pig-breeders”: at the same time, the censorship was tied up with a need to preserve the sense of Ireland—a nation whose way of life was based upon religion—“you would not give a baby a box of matches to play with. Our peasantry are primitive and impressionable people, therefore they are much more open than a more sophisticated community to the harmful effects of books.”
“Do you believe a book can corrupt a man?” I asked.
“It can pave the way to moral laxness, Mr. Eyre. And the better it is as literature, the more dangerous it is.”
I felt again, though I disagreed with his arguments, the Father’s serene authoritativeness: he contrived, without giving the least impression of self-righteousness, to sound as if he had the right on his side.
After we had moved back to the study, I raised the topic of General O’Duffy’s Blueshirts and W. B. Yeats’ bizarre attachment to them.
“Willie Yeats always had a weakness for power: he’s no democrat. But he’ll soon see through that lot of posturers.”
“It’s a Fascist movement, anyway. It surely can’t have much influence here. The Irish are the most unregimentable people in the world.”
Father Bresnihan launched into an informed discourse on the origins of the Blueshirt movement in the Army Comrades Association, and the antagonism for it of the I.R.A. and the Fianna Fail party.
“It must all seem very small beer to you over in England.”
“We know so little about the present state of Irish politics, Father. Do you suppose Hitler is trying to use General O’Duffy’s movement?”
“That godless fellow! He might, he might. But de Valera is determined to keep the country neutral.”
“While the Blueshirts and the extreme Republicans would like to get it embroiled?”
“I dare say. But I’m no authority on politics,” he answered, smiling.
“Then you’re the only Irishman who isn’t.”
“Ah no, that’s not true. There’s too much bitterness in the country still: but most of our people are sick of violence: they only want peace.”
“The gospel of isolationism?”
“The gospel of building up a Christian society from the ruins of the last twenty years.”
“But isn’t it the duty of a Christian to fight against Nazi values and practices?”
“I think you’ll find a great number of Irishmen volunteer for the British forces, when the day comes.”
“But Dev. won’t hand us back the Treaty Ports?”
“He will not. That would be asking for a German invasion.”
Father Bresnihan poured me another cup of Kathleen’s execrable coffee, and broke open a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Is there any support for the Blueshirts in your parish?” I asked.
“Please God, there isn’t. Not to my knowledge. The Bishop has spoken very firmly against the movement. Mind you, you never know some ambitious young fellow might not try using the movement for his own ends.”
“Like Kevin Leeson,” I said idly. The Father looked quite shocked.
“Kevin? Ah no, he’s ambitious, but he’s terrible down on that lot. What makes Kevin tick, you know, is rivalry with his brother. Flurry’s the hero in retirement, but he has the glamour of his deeds still about him. Kevin didn’t fight in that war, or the Civil War. He’s a cautious fellow.”
“Seamus calls him a main-chancer.”
“Does he now? That’s a little hard. Seamus is one of the last romantics: a hero-worshipper. He’ll never admit that Kevin’s doing good work towards reconstructing the country.”
And lining his pockets, I refrained from adding. I said how hospitable Flurry and Mrs. Leeson had been to me. Father Bresnihan gave me a very straight look: I felt uncovered by it.
“I hope you will not mind if I give you a word of advice. Mrs. Leeson is a dangerous woman.”
“Dangerous?” A secret exultation bubbled up in me. I tried to keep it out of my face. “Dangerous? But why?” It was the first time I had seen the Father discomposed.
“She doesn’t fit in with our community here,” he replied, rather lamely.
“Could that not be the fault of the community, Father? An English girl. A foreigner. Country people are always suspicious of foreigners.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said sharply. He seemed to brace himself. “I have to guard against scandal in my parish. Mrs. Leeson is a cause of scandal.”
“But why?”
“Because—” But, whatever reason might have been vouchsafed, Father Bresnihan was interrupted by the cat. It had been lying peaceably on his lap: now it leapt with a screech from under his hand, and fled beneath the table. Its owner’s pale face reddened as he bent down to retrieve the cat. “Poor pussy! Did I hurt you? Come on up then, you silly thing.”
The cat’s eyes blazed from its refuge.
“Well, if you won’t, you won’t It’s a rebuke for talking scandal myself, Mr. Eyre. Not that that was my intention, please God.” He clasped his shaking hands on his lap. “I do not expect you to share my beliefs about mortal sin.”
I put on a puzzled expression. As if I could not understand his implication! Had he somehow caught sight of Harriet and myself on the strand? But who the hell was he to discipline me? I said that Mrs. Leeson and I had been for a picnic, and seen the funeral cortège moving across the sand. It was clear, from the way he replied, that he had not noticed us.
“You have to be careful there. They say there’s a stretch of quicksand in the middle of the bay.”
“I saw the cort
ège making a detour.”
We talked amicably enough about Irish funeral customs. I said how moving I found the solidarity of the mourners, and how inconvenient the way they hold up the traffic.
He laughed. “And that’s not the worst of it. There used to be a custom, here in the West, for the priest to sit beside the coffin and the mourners to give him money. The more money you gave, the deeper feelings it showed for the deceased. An emotional status symbol! Well, we’re rid of that practice now, anyway.”
It had been an agreeable evening, in spite of that one awkward passage. Father Bresnihan saw me to the door, his cat, reconciled with him again, curled up on one arm. I felt admiration and warmth for him. A good man, an intelligent man. He had every right to give me a warning: I could almost wish, in his company, that I was going to take it.
“Come again. God bless you,” he said, his beautiful voice neither perfunctory nor unctuous.
It was two nights later, my diary tells me, that I was invited to Kevin Leeson’s house for that repellent meal, high tea. The garden at the back of their square, solid house was a riot of children—which of them Maire’s I never got round to establishing. She put them through their paces for me, ending up with a jig, herself playing the piano through the open french windows—danced with solemn faces, rigid arms and bodies, and feet that twinkled like leaves in a storm.
“Kevin wants me to take a snap of you with them. D’you mind?”
Maire Leeson arranged the group and photographed us. “They’ll be honoured to have a picture of them with a famous writer. Won’t you, children?”
“We will,” muttered one or two, without noticeable conviction.
“And now, one of you alone, for my own album. Off you go, children. Your tea’s in the nursery.”
I submitted—graciously, I hope. However much he may affect to despise it, no writer really dislikes being lionised for half an hour or so. It’s the recollection of it that disgusts him: like that book which was sweet in the mouth but turned bitter in the belly. I even revised my opinion of Maire: she was more relaxed out of doors, among the children, with a tress of auburn hair falling across her flushed brow. A typical Irish bourgeoise, but this was her domain—the province of motherhood.