An Irish Heart Read online

  An Irish Heart

  C.M. Blackwood

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 C.M. Blackwood.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.

  I see thee better in the dark,

  I do not need a light.

  The love of thee a prism be

  Excelling violet.

  I see thee better for the years

  That hunch themselves between,

  The miner’s lamp sufficient be

  To nullify the mine.

  And in the grave I see thee best –

  Its little panels be

  A-glow, all ruddy with the light

  I held so high for thee!

  What need of day to those whose dark

  Hath no surpassing sun,

  It seem it be continually

  At the meridian?

  – LXXIX, Emily Dickinson

  Chapter 1

  The rain fell thickly upon the windowpane, making such a noise that I could hardly keep my eyes shut, for the want of ensuring that those cold rivulets of water weren’t running down the wall. The old house leaked everywhere; and I was tormented with the thought that it would flood while I slept. So I opened my eyes, again and again, to look at the discoloured spot of wall beneath the window.

  Needless to say, I got very little sleep when it rained.

  I eventually forced myself to roll over onto my back, and train my eyes on the ceiling. There were water spots there, too, a large cluster of them in the very centre. I turned my eyes from them, and tried to look elsewhere – but really there weren’t many other choices. The room was a very small one. I had only three pieces of furniture: my small bed, a chest of drawers, and an old wooden rocking chair that once belonged to my mother. The latter was of dark mahogany construction, and was polished to a remarkable shine (the polishing being a task I never failed to perform). The head and arm rests were engraved with small roses, their stems twisting round and round the wood in an intricate pattern of loops and spirals.

  It was a beautiful piece of furniture. I had often seen my father eyeing it as he passed down the hall, as if trying to estimate the amount of money for which he could pawn it away.

  The chair, as I said, had been my mother’s. She died when I was a small girl, and the chair was one of the only things that remained of her. It had been given her by her own parents when she left home to marry my father; and I tell you was not, under any circumstances, a comparable benefit to the impending endeavour. I could have told you this, I expect, from my early days in the cradle.

  I closed my eyes once more, but the sound of the rain echoed in my ears. I turned my back to the window. Finally I began to grow drowsy; and then it started to thunder. My eyes snapped open, and closed no more.

  And so my mind became all filled up with worries: worries that plagued me throughout the day, and which followed me inexorably to the sometimes-damp blankets of my bed. I shook the blankets presently, and scowled darkly at the spotty ceiling.

  I did not like to think that I had an exceptionally hard life. This thinking, I say now, was the deciding factor concerning the question of whether a significant constituent of youth is idiocy. And yet, though I didn’t like to think it difficult, still I could not help but feel that it left quite a bit to be desired. I have always thought of myself as the kind who does not like to complain – but that may have just been something that I liked to tell myself.

  I took a moment to wonder, where does the rain hide until it falls? Are the skies filled always with water, knee-deep and chilly? Is that place that they call heaven nothing but an ocean? Perhaps the angels all live in arks, built by Noah after he died and ascended. Before that, they must have had to swim everywhere; and to sleep, floating on their backs.

  Drip, drip, drip – it was all I could hear. The water was rising too high, and the arks were coming too close to that glass ceiling above the skies, which encloses the seat of God’s kingdom and prevents it from spinning off into the universe. Gabriel had only just issued the order for the floodgates to be opened; and the seas of heaven were falling down now upon the earth.

  ***

  The morning of October twelfth, 1914, dawned clear and bright, with no sign at all of the weather which had prevailed the night before. I rose quickly, wanting to dress and leave the house before my father woke, but I could not help stopping to stand before the window for a moment or two. The sky was so perfectly blue, the sunlight so undeniably cheerful – I was certain that there wasn’t a soul who could look upon that sky and not feel their spirits lift, if only a little.

  After I had dressed in a white blouse (slightly yellowed in some places) and an old brown linen skirt, I examined my reflection in the glass above my little chest of drawers. I pinned my hair up hastily, not much caring how it looked. Yet I found myself straightening it anyway. I took in the locks of hair – dark brown in colour – at the side of my face, that had sprung from their prison at the back of my head. A pair of green eyes (indeed, the two very brightest things I owned) stared out from a thin, rather wan-looking face.

  I saw nothing very remarkable in my countenance. I had been told otherwise on several occasions; although I ventured to guess, that men were apt to say such things to most every girl who was quite old enough to leave her father’s house. Whenever a young man tried to strike up a conversation with me, I always felt inclined to chuckle a little – at his own expense. How could he know that I would never marry? My reasons were varied, but the truth of the matter was all the same. I would forever be a servant in the house of Timothy O’Brien.

  Knowing this, still I was not sure that I would want to leave the home I had always known, in order to make another with a person I hardly knew. And, after all, who was to say that the man I might marry, would prove to be any better than my father? I doubted that any man would prove better – and, for that reason, I found the mere change of space quite undesirable.

  Which was the first and foremost reason why I had declined, all of the past three times, the proposals of Jeffrey Donovan. He was more than adamant, but I was less than open to persuasion. I hated the awkwardness which ensued, each time I stumbled across him – though I’ll admit that it didn’t happen terribly often, seeing as he was usually busy with his work. He owned a timber delivery service across town, and was most always caught up in some aspect of the process of obtaining, cutting, and distributing massive quantities of wood. (Well, not him, of course – but any of the many men whom he employed to do such things; and who, I will note, were compensated rather unfairly for their labours.)

  Donovan & Sons’ Timber (one of which indicated sons had been killed by said timber, in an accident wherein some thousands of pounds of wood somehow ended up atop his head; and it was really a pity, for he had been the more tolerable fellow) was mainly a service for the wealthier end of the town spectrum. All the rest of us – a group in which I, of course, was included; and in which my father, of course, was not – went out and found our own wood. Jeffrey had offered me free bundles in the past; but I was wary to accept them, knowing that the act of reception would lead him to feel that I owed him rather more than I wished to give.

  Finally taking my eyes from my face, with a firm shake of the head to clear away the excess thoughts, I quit the room. My heavy black boots clunked along the wooden planks in the hall
; and as I stumped along, I dearly hoped that the sound would not rouse my father.

  I ate a bit of the hard bread from the cupboard. It was utterly dissatisfying, and nearly broke one of my front teeth, but I managed to choke down an entire piece of it. After that, I emptied the glass jar that stood on the kitchen table. It held the small amount of money that my father placed there at the end of each week, after he had been paid by the shoemaker for whom he worked. He kept most of it for himself, but was always sure to leave a bit for food.

  I poured the money into a little leather pouch on my belt. The coins clinked about, jingling and jangling, as I made my way from the house.

  The sun fell warm upon my skin, and there was a gentle breeze that blew the loose strands of hair all about my face. I took a few deep breaths of the cool autumn air, before heading off down Wimple Street, which my own house sat at the very end of. It led to Schullery Road (a long and winding road, it was), which ran, in turn, all the way to town.

  Along the way, I passed old Mrs O’Neill, who was sitting on her front porch in a rocker. She waved to me as I went by. Then I saw Mr Grady standing in his garden, watering a great patch of colourful vegetables. When I was younger, I used to help him plant tomatoes and squash, and took a child’s humble pride in seeing them sprout so full and healthy. Yet in all of my two-and-twenty years, I could not remember ever having seen them look quite so splendid as they did that day.

  It was but little more than a mile before I reached Cobbler’s Corner. The little square was surrounded by sidewalks and shops, but still maintained a fair distribution as an open-air selling place.

  The market was fixed in about the centre of town, and then many miles away from the sea – so that one would never find oneself in danger, even if the very earth turned suddenly half-way upside down, of tumbling down into the waves. Now, if it were to turn all the way upside down – well, I could make no assurances under those conditions. I had never gone so far Southwards, however, as to be placed in that precarious situation; had indeed only ever gone Northwards – all the way to Dublin, though I was so young at the time that I could not actually remember having been there.

  I was taken to the city at the age of two, for my mother’s burial. Her own

  family was from Dublin – though that was all I knew of them. I knew that I had once had a grandmother there, but I had not seen her – or, rather, I should say that she had not seen me, for I could not recollect ever having met her at all – since the funeral.

  Perhaps one should not think such things of family members (albeit very

  estranged ones), but considering that my father pledged her age at the burial to be near seventy, I was rather inclined to think her dead.

  I roamed round the market for a bit, looking into the small stands that stood in great long lines all up and down both sides of Cobbler Street. I passed a booth that displayed a large assortment of needle and thread; remembered that I had reminded myself two days ago to buy a new thimble; and made my small purchase from an elderly woman who wore a black veil upon her face. I wondered if I should offer my condolences – but was deterred from the gesture, thinking it would be immensely rude to make an apology for what mightn’t even have been a lost loved one, but rather only a disfigured physiognomy.

  I bought my potatoes, and I bought my bread. That fairly finished me off as far as the funds attached to my belt; but I continued to wander about, examining most everything I saw. After all, this was my day of freedom! My father did not like for me to have more than just the one. Of course, he gave no valid reason – just as he gave no reason for anything else that I should or could not do.

  But I had an aunt who lived a short ways away, and whom I liked to sit and talk with. I had never told my father about my frequent visits – and would have been a fool to have, for he seemed to think that I hadn’t the capacity for interaction with anyone save himself. What detrimental subjects I could have pursued with Aunt Aggie were a mystery to me – sweet old woman that she was! Had evildoing been less of a treachery to Aggie than it seemed to be to me, then the two of us might have plotted the very death of Mr O’Brien some years ago, and rid the world of him already.

  Though, perhaps, this is not the most proper thing to jest about – the reasons for which, I assure you, will be made all but evident in a very short space of time.

  As I was making my way back to Schullery Road, I saw Mrs Stiles approaching with her young son, Toby. Mrs Stiles had once been a kind of nanny to me, long before she had Toby. In the years after my mother’s death, when I was too young to be alone (a notion of Mrs Stiles’s which my father never did manage to comprehend), she had kept an eye on me while my father worked. She was never paid for it; and never asked to be.

  I heard that Toby was putting up an awful fuss, quite as usual. Today he was whining about his shoelaces.

  “They’re too tight, Ma!” he cried, pulling at them with a chubby little hand. “Why’d you tie them so tight? Oh, they’re making my feet sore!”

  “Be quiet, Toby!” Mrs Stiles said exasperatedly. “If it’s not your shoelaces, it’s something else . . . oh, hello, Kate! How nice to see you.”

  “Hello, Mrs Stiles,” I said pleasantly. I smiled reluctantly at Toby, who was still tugging at his shoes. I decided he was lucky that I wasn’t his mother; for I most likely would have removed one of his shoes, and beat him round the ears with it.

  “How are you, then, love?” Mrs Stiles asked me.

  “Just as well as always, Mrs Stiles, thank you. And yourself?”

  I saw her look almost imperceptibly down at Toby before answering. She held his

  hand gingerly, as though to take it full in her own would be more than she could bear.

  “Oh, I’m all right, dear,” she said. “Just off on a few errands. I would have left Toby at home – he doesn’t much care for the market – but you see Mr Stiles has suffered a back injury. He’s not at all feeling up to chasing round after a six-year-old boy, I’m sure!” She glanced at Toby; frowned; and added, “Though I can’t exactly say that I’ve the energy for it anymore, either. Anyway, there was an unfortunate accident in Burt Baker’s field – something to do with a plough – and poor Mr Stiles, you know, getting on in his years . . .”

  “I’m so sorry,” said I; meaning, of course, sorry for the fix it presented to Mrs Stiles; and not at all sorry for any discomfort on the part of her undeniably worse half.

  Mr Stiles was known as something of a lady-chaser, though Mrs Stiles pretended not to notice. I did feel for the woman. She was so very honest and good, she certainly did not deserve a husband of that sort – though of course I had come to believe that there weren’t many husbands of any other sort.

  “Oh, it’s no matter, dear, no matter,” said Mrs Stiles. “I’m sure he’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

  She looked again to Toby, who was yanking violently upon her arm.

  “Oh, Ma, can’t we have a look at the candy? I want some chocolate, Ma, really I do! Won’t you buy me some? Please, Ma? Please?”

  Mrs Stiles sighed before asking, “And how’s your father, dear?”

  “He’s well,” I answered. “Just the same as usual. Still working for Mr Shaughnessy, he is.”

  Mrs Stiles’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know about that man,” she said. “I’ve heard things about him. You know, dirty business and the like. Underhanded kinds of things.”

  “I don’t disbelieve it,” said I. “Though I’m not very well acquainted with him.”

  “Best to keep it that way, dear,” said Mrs Stiles. “We’ve got enough trouble a’brewing round here, without having to worry about sour characters of our own.”

  I looked at Mrs Stiles and her small son – and wondered if there would ever be a time when one could stop in the market for a chat, without politics, or the English (which things were rather the same thing; and which things had grown incredibly irksome to me) creeping darkly alongside the bounds of the conversation.

  Oh, Irel
and! How torn and grizzled ye had become!

  “And how about that handsome fellow of yours?” asked Mrs Stiles.

  I was lost to her meaning for only a moment. “Oh,” I said. “You mean Mr Donovan.”

  “Aye, aye – Mr Donovan. How has he been? I hope that the two of you are getting on well.”

  “I don’t have quite as much to do with him as you seem to think, Mrs Stiles. He’s not my – fellow.”

  Mrs Stiles frowned. “I thought I heard tell of his proposing to you, dear.”

  I felt myself flush. “He did,” I admitted. “But I said no.”

  Mrs Stiles clapped a hand to her chest. “My goodness! You didn’t do that, did you, dear? He’s such a fine man! Successful, too! You’d never fret over a thing, if you was married to him.”

  I desperately wanted to change the subject. “What’s done is done,” I said hurriedly. “No worries, Mrs Stiles.”

  She smiled. “Of course, my dear. Don’t mind me!” There came a sort of glazed look into her eye; and she added bitterly: “Who am I to tell you of love?”

  She seemed ready, then, to end our talk; for Toby was pulling harder than ever at her hand, and threatening with each passing moment its permanent detachment. “Well, I’d best be off,” she said wearily. “Do say hello to your father.”

  She hugged me quickly, and then allowed herself to be dragged away by Toby towards a candy stand. I stared after them for a moment, but then continued on my own way.

  Back on Schullery Road, I turned South towards Aunt Aggie’s. The scenery was plain and familiar – comforting, in a way. The worn expression upon Mrs Stiles’s face vanished quickly from my mind; and the annoying little voice of Toby drifted clear of my ears. I forgot about stale bread, leaky roofs, and unpleasant fathers.

  I turned, after a considerable time, onto the wide cobblestone path that led up to Aggie’s house. I climbed the stoop to the front door, and knocked firmly. Dear Aggie was so often away in a world of her own making, either talking or singing to herself, that it was sometimes difficult to catch her full attention. But this is usually the case with those eternally cheerful people of the world; otherwise their lingering in the real world would render them not half so buoyant.