An Irish Heart Page 4

  By Sunday morning, I was thoroughly exhausted. I was not sure why; for it certainly wasn’t as though I had especially exerted myself. The most strenuous activity I had completed, was the propping up of my bed on a pile of books. Nearly all the books I owned. Only Lord Jim had I saved, unmatched as I was to the task of sacrificing it.

  It seemed that, every time I went to sleep, I woke feeling even more tired than I had been beforehand. And when I moved about, I became much more weary than I should

  have done.

  I dropped off a bucket of dirty suds in the kitchen, before meandering into the parlour for a short rest. I sat down in an armchair, intending only to close my eyes for a few moments.

  Naturally, I was asleep in an instant.

  When I woke, the clock on the mantel read two in the afternoon. I curled up in my chair, wincing at the pain in my back.

  I fell again into a light sleep, still running awkwardly amidst the clutter of my thoughts. I slept for about half an hour, before Ellie began to low out in the barn. I listened to her for a while, not wanting to get up from my chair; but finally I rose, for I knew that her udder must be full.

  I slipped into my boots, and led Ellie back into the barn, where I positioned a bucket beneath her. We went through our familiar ritual, and then left the barn, me with my heavy pail of milk, and Ellie with an itch to roam the field.

  I could not find the will to do much of anything else. I stood in front of the parlour window for a time, staring out into the field, and watching the clouds roll slowly across the sky. I envied their freedom and their leisurely pace. I wished that I could live as they did (if, indeed, you could say that a cloud lived), floating all around the world as I saw fit.

  I stepped away from the window; and stopped in front of the glass that hung beside it. I examined the long cut on my cheek; lifted a hand to touch it gingerly. It was healing over now, and was covered with a thin scab that felt strange under my fingers. I picked it away, just as I knew I shouldn’t, till the line of brown had turned to white.

  ***

  My father came home for lunch next day. I had no idea why.

  “Didn’t you take the food I left in the bag?” I asked, referring to the bread and cheese I had put on the counter for him.

  “What was I supposed to do with a cheese sandwich?” he asked. “You know I hate cheese.”

  “It was all we had.”

  “Well, I didn’t want it.”

  “So what are you wanting me to do, exactly?”

  “Make me some real food.”

  “I just told you. We don’t have anything.”

  “Watch your tone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I’m sorry, Da.”

  He rose from the table, and came to stand directly in front of me.

  “Why don’t you make me some eggs, girl?”

  “We don’t have any.”

  “No eggs. Then tell me, why do we have chickens?”

  “I used the last two eggs we had, to make you breakfast this morning. The hens haven’t laid yet.”

  “Seems a rather lousy production, don’t you think?”

  He grabbed hold of my arm, and began to pull me towards the back door.

  “I’m going to show you something,” he said. “Make sure you pay close attention. It’s called a ‘motivational technique.’ Follow me, now.”

  As though I had any other choice but to follow, as he dragged me along behind him, I remained silent and moved my feet quickly to match his long strides.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to show you something,” he repeated. “I’ve only ever done it once, because we don’t have all that many chickens to begin with. But sometimes it just gets down to the point where you’ve got to do something – desperate times calling for desperate measures, do you know what I mean?”

  “Please don’t –”

  “Hush now, and watch carefully.”

  He left me standing in the doorway of the barn, as he walked over to the hay nests. Ellie watched curiously; and I could not tear my eyes away.

  “First,” he said, “you’ve got to size them up. You pick out the most pathetic-looking one of all, and then” – he plucked an exceptionally emaciated hen, one which I called Benny, from its nest – “make sure that the rest of them are watching.”

  “Don’t, Da, I’m begging you –”

  “Shut up! Just watch.”

  He waved the hen in the air, back and forth three times; and it seemed that, when he finally lowered it again, the rest of the hens really were watching him. He reached for his pocket-knife, extracted the blade, and jammed it into the feathered-flesh till it could jam no more. With the blade trapped inside, and the resistance of the hilt holding the bloody bird a little away from his hand, he began to twirl the knife over his head. The bird went round and round, and the blood rained down and down.

  When he lowered Benny again, and retracted his knife from her middle, she attempted a feeble snap at his hand. But he only moved his hands to her throat, and twisted it ruthlessly. I turned my head away. Several hens began to squawk in fear.

  “Goddamn it, Katharine, are you watching?”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  He took Benny’s head in one hand, the lifeless, feathered body in the other, and then pulled. Benny’s head popped off with a disgusting, sucking, snapping sound.

  “There,” he said, throwing both the head and the body to the floor. “Fear is a motor for production, Katharine. They’ll be laying like mad in no time!”

  I stood frozen beside the door. My father stepped over to me, and studied my face.

  “Now you know what to do, if things slow up again,” he said. “Just don’t do it too

  often.”

  I could not speak. I simply stared at the broken and bloody body on the floor of the barn. I tried not to think of it as “Benny.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re not – not really. What, are you upset over the damned chicken?” He grabbed hold of my face. “Look at me!”

  I raised my eyes to his, trying not to let them tear up. I was afraid – but also I was ashamed. For God’s sake, I was more than twenty years old! But still I did not know how to make him let go.

  “Do you know what I think?” he asked. “I think you’re the problem. You’re too soft on these sorry animals. It’s you who’s pathetic – not them. They only follow by example.”

  I tried to pull my face away. “Let go of me,” I pleaded.

  And so he did. But then he pulled back a hand, and slammed it into the side of my face. I fell to the ground.

  Then he was gone. I sat still for a long while, holding my aching cheek, unable to take my eyes from Benny’s mangled body. Staring at her, then, I could not help but think of something that had happened long ago – something maybe not so terribly serious, but something which had hid itself away in the compartments of my mind, to rush out now and upset me thoroughly.

  I was very young. It was summertime, and I was playing outside.

  “Da!” I called, running through the open door with a small field mouse cupped in my hands. “Look what I found, Da!”

  “What are you yelling about?” he grumbled. He flapped his newspaper, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

  I opened my hands, holding the tiny creature up for him to see. “Isn’t he cute, Da?”

  He looked down. “Jesus, Katharine!” he hollered, slapping the mouse out of my hands. It fell down to the floor, and, momentarily stunned, did not move.

  It was a moment too long; for a moment was all it took, for my father’s boot to come down hard upon it. I heard the tiny bones crunching underfoot.

  I was too shocked to say anything; too shocked even to cry.

  “Don’t bring those nasty things into this house,” my father said, getting to his feet. He reached down and grabbed me by the shirt, and then threw me down to the k
itchen floor. “You should know better. Now clean it up.”

  And so I got down on my five-year-old knees, and scraped the bloody mess – which had seconds ago been an adorable little mouse – off of the floor.

  I blinked my twenty-two-year-old eyes in the bright sunlight; pushed the memory away; and shook my head all about.

  ***

  My father was gone, by the time I returned to the house. I suppose he had decided that, no matter how many times he hit me, I still would not be able to find anything to make him lunch with.

  After I had gotten a drink of water (I always seemed so unbearably thirsty lately), I settled into the armchair in the parlour, and closed my eyes. But I could not sleep.

  So I rose, and began to walk about the house, touching things without knowing why. I fingered the small knickknacks on the bookshelves and end tables; rearranged the dishes in the cupboards; held my mother’s dress up to my own body before the glass in my bedroom, then sat clutching it in the rocker beside my bed.

  I was having trouble breathing. I rocked back and forth some, but then got to my feet in restlessness.

  Once I had regained my somewhat-shallow breath, I folded my mother’s dress neatly, and replaced it in its drawer.

  For the first time in years, I went into my father’s room. The curtains were still drawn. I supposed that he never opened them. So I pulled them to the sides, and looked round the room; but saw nothing much out of the ordinary.

  The bed was unmade. Several articles of clothing lay scattered across the floor.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, and folded my hands in my lap. The room was even barer than mine, with only a small chest of drawers placed directly beside the bed, atop which sat a candle in a tarnished silver holder. I did not quite know what I was looking for, or why I was even sitting there in that room; but I knew that I could not leave until I had found it out. So I went to the bureau, and pulled open all the drawers; but they were empty.

  I went then to the closet, which I found to be vacant also. There was nothing but a pair of dusty shoes down at the bottom. But I felt around the top shelf; and my hand brushed against something hard. I stood on tiptoe and stretched out my arm, trying to pull the object down from its hiding place. With a final sweep of my arm, it came rushing out at me, flying out and smacking me in the head as it fell to the floor. I bent down to pick it up, and was surprised to find myself gazing at a photograph album. I blew the dust off the cover, and took up my seat again on the bed.

  I opened the album, and looked at the first page, without being able to so much as register what I was seeing. I flipped through the book quickly, wanting to be sure of what I was looking at. The album was thick, not to mention heavy – but it contained only one photograph.

  Yet it was enough to leave me breathless. I stared down at the most beautiful woman I had ever seen – knowing who she was, but not understanding how I could have found myself in possession of her lost countenance. My mother stood beside my father, holding a very tiny version of me in her arms.

  I could not believe that I had finally found my mother’s face; the face I had been searching for in my dreams, for so many years! She was so beautiful – more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. But the most amazing thing was the eyes. Bright, round, green eyes, just like mine. My eyes were her eyes. I reached up and touched my own face, as though feeling something both familiar and alien there for the very first time.

  I sat silent with her face, for what must have been nearly an hour. But then I stood up, slid the picture from the page, replaced the album in the closet and shut the door. I drew the curtains back to their usual position of miserable darkness.

  I hid the photograph in my own bureau, within the folds of my mother’s dress. I could not help but wonder why my father had saved it – when he had burned so many other things that reminded him of her. Perhaps he had simply forgotten about it. Judging only by the dust, it must have sat alone on that shelf for years!

  I knelt beside the drawer for a while, still visualising her fair face in my mind – until my knees grew sore, and I shifted myself to the rocking chair. It must have been nearly three o’clock, hours before my father would be home – and I had nothing at all to do. I almost wished that he was home, if only so he could bark an order at me, and fill the vast spaces of silence which were opening up around me.

  So I sat again in the parlour, until the sun began to burn off in the purpling sky. I watched as its dying light slipped slowly across the floor, up the wall and out the window; lingering for just a moment in final farewell.

  I lit a candle beside me, and fell to watching the shadows which danced across the wall. I felt a familiar drowsiness coming over me.

  I slumbered for a short time. When I awoke, the time was seven o’clock. I looked all around, feeling disoriented, but seeing nothing out of place. I wanted my bed. I disliked the shadows, now, that played over the wall. They made me nervous.

  I began to tremble. If my father had not shown himself by now, then he was not at home. No one here to save me from the shadows.

  I took up the candle and started from the room, walking slowly down the hall, with a strange fear welling up inside me. My knees buckled several times before I reached the open door to my room; so I hurried inside before I could fall, and jumped directly into bed. My candle I set on the floor, between the bed and the window. I lit another for good measure, to increase the radiance which emanated from that otherwise dark space.

  Then I realised that my curtains were still open. I went and drew them quickly, and then scurried back under the covers, like a small child afraid of the monsters that lurk beneath one’s bed.

  I sat for a long time with my quilt drawn round my shoulders, feeling as if it would protect me in some way. Still I did not know what it was that I felt I needed to be protected from, but my heart pounded just the same, leaping about in my chest like a panicked frog.

  But finally I felt somnolence return. My eyelids began to sag, and I found myself falling forward in my sitting position. So I laid back against the pillows. I considered blowing out the candles, but thought better of it.

  I closed my eyes, and was very near asleep, when I heard a strange sound. It was an odd rapping, tapping, knocking or banging – I wasn’t sure which. It was not the cry of

  an animal, or the rustling of the trees in the wind; it was not the settling of the house, or the sound of horses’ hooves coming up the drive.

  It was a softer sound. Like knuckles on glass.

  I sat up slowly, blanket pulled tightly around me, my childlike protection against supernatural foes. I stared directly at the window, and was very glad that the curtains were drawn. I did not know what was on the other side of the glass – but I was very glad of the knowledge that neither could it see me.

  Was it only a nighttime creature, infatuated with the candlelight that shone through the crack in the curtains? But what harmless nighttime creature was so large, that it might reach the window? I grew suddenly afraid of wolves – for reasons which were all but mysterious. Could it break in through the window, if it wished? Surely it could.

  But what if it wasn’t a wolf? Suppose it was a man – a criminal who would venture into my bedroom and kill me? I would have cried aloud that I had no valuables to steal, nothing worth his time. But I could not make a sound.

  Again came that unsettling rapping upon the windowpane, that sound that was causing my imagination to run away with me. Suppose it was just a little bird, pecking at the glass? But surely not! A bird, past the setting of the sun? And whoever heard of an owl who gave a fig, one way or the other, what events might be passing behind a pair of curtains?

  The rapping continued. I felt a cold sweat break out across my forehead, and fear began to overtake me. I started, much to my own surprise, to cry. I wept with a fear that clogged my throat, and caused my heart to beat double-time within my breast. I could no longer breathe properly. My shoulders shook, and my tears fell down onto the quilt. I was
certain that I would die within a matter of minutes. Whatever stood outside would lose patience – it would burst into the room in only a moment or two, fangs or knife (respectively, depending upon either wolf or murderer) glinting in the candlelight. And I would be nothing more than skin and bones in a pool of blood, dead upon the bed when my father finally stumbled into the room . . .

  “Oh, God help me,” I cried. “I know I haven’t been a very good servant, but, oh, please, God, don’t let me die . . .”

  “Kate?”

  The voice was muffled, but I recognised it nonetheless. I knew then who was standing outside my window, and I continued to weep, but now in relief. I stood up, blanket and all, pulled the curtains aside, and tugged up on the window.

  Theodora Alaster’s face swam out of the darkness.

  “God, Kate,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  I stood back, and let her pull herself up into the room. She did not ask for a hand, and I did not offer one; for I was too busy crying.

  Once she had two feet on the floor, she turned back and shut the window, drawing the curtains over it. Then she looked to me. What a mess I must have been! What with my rumpled hair and tear-stained face, blanket like a makeshift cloak about my shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I did not know how to explain. True, I knew now that it had only been her, outside

  my window – that there had never really been anything to fear. But still I felt that overwhelming panic inside, encircling my heart like an iron fist.

  “I thought you were going to kill me,” I said simply; though that had not been what I really meant to say.

  She stared for a moment more, and then reached out to touch my face. “My God,” she murmured. “You’re hotter than a greased skillet. Come here, now, and lie down for a moment.”

  I moved as though I wore boots of lead, scared to walk but more afraid to stand still, glancing over my shoulder at the window, certain that a wolf still lingered beneath it.

  “Lie down, Kate,” said Theodora Alaster, pushing me down by the shoulders to make me lie flat. “Please,” she added; and the tone of her voice, so much softer than any voice which had ever been spoken into my ear, made me still.