The Private Wound (12 page)

What form Flurry's and Seamus's investigations were taking I had no idea. I assumed that Flurry was making them, not for my sake, but for his brother's. Though he
talked about Kevin as a figure of fun, Flurry had, I came to realise, a certain protective feeling for him: also, as Harry told me one day, it would be a disastrous thing for Kevin to be disgraced, since he helped Flurry out with his debts from time to time.

From Flurry himself, so boisterous, so boring, I'd begun to develop a sense of immunity. He was like a stationary obstacle—a bunker on a golf-course, say—which one had learnt to avoid, and then got a kick from skirting ever more closely. Harriet and I did indeed seem to lead a charmed life. One day, for instance, we were making love in the hayloft. We heard Flurry come in below. “Are you there, Harry?” he said. And she called back, “I'm up here. With Dominic. What d'you want?” “What the hell are you doing?” he called good-humouredly. “We're up to no good,” she replied, not even reaching for her jumper. “Ah, go on with you!” She bit me hard on the shoulder, straddling over me. “Shut up! He may—” I tried to push her off. “Don't be so windy!” she whispered. “He won't climb ladders.” Flurry's footsteps receded, out into the cobbled yard. “You see? it's quite safe. Now I'm mounted. Come on.”

It must have been a week later—the last week in July—that I drove them to a small town in Galway. There was to be a horse-show there, and a few races in the afternoon.

“Harry's to ride a horse we sold last year to a fella out there,” Flurry told me. “I'm putting my shirt on it. Even Harry couldn't lose with Barmbrack under her.”

We set off at eleven o'clock, Seamus at the back of the car with Flurry, Harriet beside me, heavily made up, in her best riding clothes.

“Where's your cap, Mrs. Leeson?” asked Seamus when we had gone a few miles.

“I don't need it, not for a flat race.”

“Cleopatra wants to show off all that beautiful hair,” remarked Flurry. “You ought to have a cap, you silly cow.”

“Oh, pipe down.” She gripped my thigh painfully. I never ceased being surprised at the strength of her delicate hands. She was already in a state of high excitement.

“I don't know if you're a devotee of the turf, Dominic,” said Flurry, “but you'll find our races out here in the West very different from Ascot.”

“He will,” said Seamus.

“No top hats or champagne. Just horses and riders and most of them couldn't sit a spavined ass.”

“Sure your wife could ride a whirlwind,” said Seamus. “But watch out now for the last furlong, Mrs. Leeson. There's apt to be a drove of drunks on the rails there, and you'd never know what they might be doing. Barmbrack's a nervous animal, remember.”

The steep main street of the town was jammed when we arrived. Countrymen in thick black suits, tinkers, beggars, hordes of children, priests, Gardai; cars and traps and asscarts; a few county-looking women; a sprinkling of tourists, some of them wearing Connemara jerseys and sweating in the heat. A gentle babble came up from the crowd. The air smelt of whiskey, porter, Guinness, petrol and dung.

We followed a belated horse-box down the hill, and parked in a field near the river. A lane led to the grassy expanse where the show was being held. It was lined with cheapjaoks bawling their wares, sinister-looking characters inviting the concourse to try their luck at Spot-the-Lady and other money-losers, and stalls of lemonade, repulsive-looking food and souvenirs. Through the pandemonium cut a megaphone voice, adjuring the laggards in some class to “put a sthreak into it! Numbers 3, 7 and 16, we're waiting for you. Come on now, bring those horses in! We can't wait all day for you.”

We took our sandwiches and drink to a low ridge that overlooked the arena. Harriet toyed with her food, then went off at her rolling gait to find the owner of the horse she was going to ride.

The results of a class were given through the loudspeaker.

“It's a fix!” exclaimed Seamus. “It's a bloody fix! The owner of that horse bought a couple others last month from the chief judge. Sure he'd give her the prize if she showed a tinker's caravan beast with the mange. He'd give her the prize if she was riding a three-legged stool. Is there no decency left in this bloody place?”

An altercation broke out with a group of men who dissented from Seamus's opinion. So I slipped down to take a closer look at the judging ring. I have nothing against horses: they are preferable,
en masse,
to writers—better looking and debarred from speech. In Ireland too, the horsey folk are more animated than their English counterparts.

A class for Connemara ponies was next to be judged. The glossy, wild-eyed creatures were led round the ring, stepping daintily, elegant as porcelain figurines. A group of Germans, the women looking like film stars, the men with dark glasses, huge binoculars and expensive tweed suits, were talking nearby in loud, authoritative voices. I moved away, to come across Kevin and Maire Leeson. We exchanged a few words. Then I said, nodding towards the Teutonic group,

“I don't know how you can stand those people in your country.”

“They bring in money,” replied Kevin. “Beggars can't be choosers.”

“You brought Harry over, did you?” asked Maire, in neutral tones. “Do you go racing much in England?” She faintly accented the last word.

“Harry, and Flurry and Seamus. They're all here somewhere. Flurry says he's put his shirt on Barmbrack.”

“He'll not have any shirts left if he goes on this way.”

“You think it'll not win after all?”

She shrugged. “I'd be in terror of putting my money on any horse. Betting's a vice with some, like alcohol.”

“One little bet, and you might become an addict?”

“My father nigh went bankrupt that way, God rest his soul.”

While we were talking, I noticed a nondescript man make a slight sign to Kevin, who presently sauntered off after him through the crowd.

By four o'clock the judging was over. I found Flurry—who, like most of the men on the field had paid periodic visits to the town's snugs—and we strolled with Seamus to the race track. The finish was at the lower end of the field: the course stretched away a mile along the grassy flat by the river. By now Harry must have ridden out there to the start—I'd not set eyes on her all the afternoon and was feeling a bit disgruntled.

We found places by the rails on the far side from the river. Seamus was going on about another “fix.” Apparently Barmbrack's only dangerous rival, a horse called Letterfrack, was now to be ridden, not by his owner, but by a quite well-known English amateur rider who was staying as his house guest. The bookies had shortened the odds against Letterfrack.

A bell clanged somewhere, and relative silence fell. Harry's was to be the last race on the programme. We watched three others, Flurry getting more nervous all the time. I did not like to ask him how much money he actually had on Barmbrack. Certain characters, on the rails opposite us, were growing unruly. A Garda stood behind them, but they paid him no attention.

“They're off!”

This was Harry's race. Standing on tiptoe I trained my field-glasses on the distant horses. Out of the blur, two presently detached themselves—a powerful roan, ridden by a man in full hunting kit, and Barmbrack, a black horse. Harry's hair was streaming, like a flag in a gale. As far as I could tell, she was a few yards behind Letterfrack, but going well. The finish was twenty yards to our left. The two of them were now fifty yards away from us, the roan still in the lead. “Mother of God! I can't stand it,” Flurry muttered.

“Bring her up now!” yelled Seamus.

As if she had heard him, Harry leant forward, spoke into the horse's ear, and dug in her heels. Barmbrack shot forward.

And then it happened. A drunk on the far side of the rails gave a shout and took a swipe with his ashplant. No doubt he intended to put off the English rider. But his reactions were slow. At this very instant Harry, close to the rails, was squeezing past the Englishman. Whether the drunk actually hit her horse, I could not tell: but, alarmed by his shout and the flail of the ashplant, the nervous Barmbrack swerved to her left and cannoned violently into Letterfrack. I saw Harry flung to the ground. The Englishman just managed to keep his seat and rode on to the finish.

Seamus turned to Flurry and me, tears in his eyes. “And she had it won.”

But Flurry had vaulted the rail and was running towards his wife, who lay motionless on the turf. Seamus followed. They ignored the other horses galloping down on them. I saw Flurry go on his knees beside Harry, stare wildly at her, lift her head on to his lap. Whatever he was saying to her could not be heard in the pandemonium. Many of the crowd were convinced that the Englishman had bored into Harry and unseated her: a threatening group of men followed him towards the paddock; a line of Gardai formed up against them.

As I came up, Flurry cocked his head towards the far rails and said to Seamus, “Mark that fella and keep him for me.” Seamus withdrew. Flurry looked up at me: tears were rolling down his cheeks. “Here you are at last, Dominic.”

“Is she—?”

“Concussion. Where the hell are those fellas with the stretcher?”

Harriet was lying on the grass, her hair fanned out: with all that make-up on her face, she looked like a doll some child has flung on the floor. A crowd stood around us in a respectful circle; voices commiserated with Flurry. He glanced up wildly. “Letterfrack's near hind must have struck her as she fell.” He bent down again. “Harry, old girl, wake up.”

But she did not. She was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital. A doctor told us presently that she had no bones broken, only severe concussion: “She'll be as right as rain in a day or two, Mr. Leeson.”

“Please God she will.” Flurry mopped his brow. “She's a head like iron. Mind you look after her well,” he said to a nun standing beside the doctor: then, to the latter, “I've a little business in the town. I'll be back in an hour. C'mon, Dominic.”

We walked back into the main street. I had felt excluded since Harriet's fall. I could not show more than a friend's proper concern. And now, as we threaded through the crowds, I had the helpless sensation of an object drawn into a field of force.

“And fifty pounds gone down the drain too,” Flurry muttered. He turned into a pub, but after one look round went out again, myself at his heels.

“Who're you looking for?”

“A fella I have business with.”

Several people hailed Flurry, but he paid them no attention.
Which was as odd as him going into a pub and not taking a drink. In the third one we visited, I spotted Seamus at a table with a glass of Guinness before him. He nodded to Flurry, then rose unhurriedly and tapped the shoulder of a man at the bar.

“You're wanted, mister.”

The man turned round, a hulking red-faced fellow.

“Who wants me?”

Flurry stepped forward. “I do.”

The man reached for his stick, but Seamus had quietly removed it.

“You're the bloody fella who lost my wife the race.”

“Ah, c'mon now. Sure I was only aiming a stroke at that Englishman.”

“Well, now you'll have a stroke aimed at you—you son of a clappy whore.”

Several of the man's friends grouped round him, threatening Flurry with words and gestures. Instantly Seamus was in front of them, hand in coat pocket.

“If anny of you lousers interfere I'll plug him in the belly,” he said, his voice as deadly calm as Flurry's. The group shrank back a little.

“Will you fight then,” said Flurry, in a voice so cold it would have taken the skin off your hand. Once again, in this shambling, drifting man, I saw the commander of the flying column who had over-matched the Black-and-Tans in ruthless savagery. “Will you fight? or will I put a rope round your neck and drag you home to your poxy mother's sty?”

Enraged, the man lashed out. Flurry blocked the blow and countered with a swing that nearly sent him over the counter. The man snatched a pint glass from it, smashed it on the counter's edge and thrust it at Flurry's face.

“Drop that or I'll plug you,” shouted Seamus.

“Let him be,” Flurry commanded. “Keep out of it,
boy.” He backed a step, then let fly with his boot at the man's knee. In jumping back from it, the man got off balance: before he could recover, Flurry brought the side of his hand down on the man's wrist and the tumbler fell to the floor.

“Now he'll have him destroyed,” Seamus said to me happily.

Flurry's opponent had sobered up and he was a powerful fellow. But Flurry began to demolish him. He took a few round-arm swings himself to the side of the head; and then his huge fist shot out, with an impact that must have broken the man's nose. As he covered up, head in hands, Flurry hit him low in the belly. The man bent double, retching in agony, which enabled Flurry to lock his neck under one arm and drive the other fist into the man's face—four times in a couple of seconds. He then flung the fellow reeling to the floor, and before he could roll away stamped the heel of his boot down on to the man's crutch.

What Flurry would have done next to his victim, I hardly dare contemplate. But Seamus dragged him away from the writhing, screaming hulk on the floor.

“That's enough, Flurry! Stop now or you might hurt the bugger.”

Flurry looked round the bar, panting. “Anyone else like a work-out?” The offer was declined. Those who had not jumped over the bar counter were standing stiff against the far wall. “All right then, Seamus. March.”

He led the way out of the pub. As we walked back up the street, I said to Seamus, “Lucky you had that gun.”

“Gun? What'd I be doing with a gun? I borrowed this out of your car.” Seamus pulled a spanner from his pocket and handed it to me with a slight flourish.