The Private Wound (7 page)

“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 cortège 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.

The drawing-room we entered was sadly depressing, filled with a brand-new suite of furniture which looked as if it had been mail-ordered out of a catalogue. The room didn't feel lived in. I could imagine the Leeson children shivering through their music lessons at the upright piano.

Kevin came in. The blunt head, the shark's mouth. Preoccupied but affable. Here in his own house he seemed more noticeably to play second fiddle to his handsome wife. The table was loaded with an assortment of food—scones, soda bread, sardines, beetroot, boiled eggs, custard, iced cakes, pickles, ham and tongue—to which Maire assiduously pressed me. “You need feeding up, Mr. Eyre, after all those scratch meals you're having in the cottage. You're terrible thin. Isn't he, Kevin?”

“Don't pester the man, Maire. Sure he knows what's good for him. Let him be.”

I told them I had dined with Father Bresnihan two nights before.

“You did so. He told me he'd had a great old talk with you,” said Maire. “You must have discussed very deep subjects, the two of you. Books and the like.”

“Politics mostly, Mrs. Leeson. He was very interesting on—”

“There's too much politics in this country,” said Kevin. “The clergy'd do well to be discouraging it.”

“Leave it to the politicians? Like yourself?”

“Oh, I've quite enough to do without—”

“But I heard you'd be standing for the Dail before long.”

“Well, I might. They need some common or garden business man's sense there. Half these boyos are still blethering away about things that's best forgotten. We're starving ourselves, Mr. Eyre, chewing over our past history. There's no nourishment in it at all at all.”

I sounded him about the Blueshirts—how they compared with Mosley's lot in Britain. He talked about the temporary alliance between General O'Duffy's movement and the Cumann nan Gaedheal party in the early Thirties. “There was a rumour they planned to set up a dictatorship if the election results went against them, but nothing came of it.” Kevin did not seem greatly interested; but I sensed a certain wariness in him, as if we were on the edge of moving into dangerous ground.

“Of course, though I've no use for those fellas, I'll not deny that what we need in this country is order,” he said, his shark's mouth snapping tight on the word.

“Now, Kevin, Mr. Eyre doesn't want to be running on about politics,” said Mrs. Leeson. It always amuses me—the way women think they have a prerogative to say what a man wants.

“Well, Mrs. Leeson, I seem to have got involved in them, whether I like it or not. Someone made a search of my papers the other day.”

“He didn't!”

“Searched your papers?” exclaimed Kevin. “What an extraordinary thing! D'you mean, broke into the cottage?”

“Hardly that. It's not locked.”

“But it's a scandalous thing. Did you call in the Garda?”

“No. Nothing was missing.”

“Well, isn't that a mystery?” said Maire.

It occurred to me that there was a mystery in the Leesons, at the centre of the Charlottestown grape-vine, not having
heard about it. But when Kevin asked me what day it had happened, he said he'd been in Dublin at the time.

“Kevin's always running about the country on his business affairs,” remarked Maire.

“Perhaps it was a spy—”

Kevin put on one of his shut expressions.

“—a spy from the Irish censorship, come to see if I was writing a pornographic book,” I said flippantly.

“Ah, go on, Mr. Eyre! Sure you'd never do that, a nice young man like you!” Maire Leeson was quite shocked.

After which, she was soon embarked on a fervent declamation about the purity of Irish culture, the tradition of the ancient literature in Irish, the language revival, and so on. Names of old bards flowed out—O'Bruadair, O'Rathaile, Raftery, O'Carolan, Merryman. I knew now, from the way she talked, that she must have been a school mistress, and a good one. I had to revise my opinion of her as a mere culture snob. Kevin listened with obvious pride. It would have been cruel to suggest that the Irish language was a dead end for literature to-day: and this was no place to recall the story of the politician who perorated at an election meeting, “Irish culture owes nothing to Byzantium. Irish culture owes nothing to Greece or to Rome. Irish culture owes nothing to Great Britain (storms of applause). Irish culture is a pure lily blooming alone in a bog.” (Voice from audience “And that's the bugger of it, misther.”)

I contented myself with putting up a case for the Anglo-Irish literature from Swift to Yeats, as the greatest glory of the country. We argued a bit about Tom Moore, whom Maire regarded as a perverter of native folk-tunes. I got quite heated about this—I'd been brought up on the Irish Melodies. And presently she had fished out a volume of them and sat down at the piano to accompany me. I used to sing a lot in those days. As an accompanist, Maire was a
bit wooden; but the Moore settings are absurdly ornate anyway.

“You have a beautiful voice,” she said, after the first song.

“Go on, now,” said Kevin. “You two get along famously.”

But my strongest memory of that evening was glancing through the french window while I sang “She is far from the land,” and seeing a huddle of children outside, in their night-dresses, staring back at me silent and rapt, the last light of the sun turning their ruffled hair into aureoles …