The Private Wound Read Free Page B

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 canmeet him then, Mr. Eyre, and fix it up about the cottage. I’ll ring you here in the morning.”
    â€œHe’s Dominic.”
    â€œWho’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.
    â€œAh well, I don’t blame you. Harry’s cooking is notorious the length and breadth of the West.”
    â€œShut 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?”
    â€œReally no, thanks.”
    â€œGood night so.”
    â€œGood 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.
    â€œThat one’ll have somebody destroyed one day,” said a drinker.
    â€œIt wouldn’t be the first,” said another.
    â€œIt 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?”
    â€œWell—”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI’m sorry I wasn’t here to attend to you when you drove in, Mr. Eyre. Peadar’s no use at all.”
    â€œThe old fellow—?”
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œI hear you’re thinking of settling down here, Mr. Eyre.”
    â€œFor a little, perhaps.”
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œIf 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