The Private Wound (24 page)

“And how many ghosts did
you
see?”

“Never a one. Only the water, and it boiling up against
the great rocks all night. There's a powerful flood in it off the mountains. Mr. Flurry'll not be catching anything this morning.”

“Mr. Flurry'ld draw a fish out of the river of hell, if he had a mind to it. Anyway, it's overcast and there's no wind.”

In a few minutes I walked out into the demesne, picking up Flurry's old field-glasses on the way. It was one of those morbid mornings when everything seems shut-in, silent, inanimate—a cataleptic trance of nature. Cattle stood about, their heads bowed, stupidly regarding the grass in front of them as if it were an insoluble problem. The birds might have gone into retreat: not a cheep or a flutter from the trees. The only sound was the faint roaring of the Lissawn, away to my left, amplified in the windless air, and presently the noise of a car driving up the avenue.

It was Kevin's. I intercepted it, and Maire leant out of the driver's window.

“Is the Father here?”

“Yes, Flurry's just taken him out by the river.”

“I rang him last night, but Kathleen said he was too tired to see anyone. And when I rang again after breakfast, she told me he was visiting over here.”

“Well, there's no hurry, is there? Get out, and we'll go and find him.”

“I must talk to him about Kevin,” said Maire, rather wildly. “I have a terrible load on my mind, Dominic.”

She drove her car on to the grass beside the avenue, hitting its front bumper against an ash tree, and got out. “I don't seem able to do anything right nowadays,” she muttered, almost in tears. Her eyes were downcast; what had happened yesterday between her and me might never have happened. The proud face looked frozen.

A vague idea came into my mind. I would take Maire to the place, overlooking the green spit by the Lissawn, from
which that night she had seen Harriet and the murderer—or had seen Harriet and murdered her. I would make her envisage the scene again. Perhaps that would cause her to betray herself. As we walked silently over the grass, I tried to imagine myself pouncing hard on Maire with brutal questions, like a policeman, though what questions I could ask her were not in the least clear to me. I felt myself on the edge of some revelation, nervous and fatalistic.

“I haven't had a word yet from the superintendent,” she said out of the silence.

“They took Kevin on some political charge,” I replied uncomfortably. “Not the murder.”

“Oh? I don't understand this at all.
Political
?” But Maire had no time to ask the questions that must have been crowding to her tongue; for we had arrived at the screen of trees, and were met by a sight so bizarre that for a moment I really believed I had gone mad.

Fifty yards away, his back to us, Flurry stood at the water's edge holding a rod. The river hurried and foamed past him. And in the middle of it a black-clad figure floundered, then disappeared from view into the deep pool, and presently emerged again, holding something up in its right hand. I focused my glasses on it. The figure was Father Bresnihan's, water streaming down his distraught face. Maire gave a cry and made to run forward, but I clamped a hand on her wrist.

What had led up to this weird scene I can only reconstruct from Flurry Leeson's statement, which Concannon gave me the gist of next day.

Shortly before I came down to breakfast, Father Bresnihan had turned up. He told Flurry he must have a talk with him at once, privately. Flurry was just ready to go out and thrash the river, so he asked the Father to accompany him.

“You've heard my brother has been arrested?”

“Kathleen told me of it.”

“The poor silly eejut—he over-reached himself. Politics are the ruin of this country. You're not looking too well yourself, Father. That retreat doesn't seem to have done you any good. You look like death warmed up, saving your presence.”

Father Bresnihan made no reply. When they reached the green spit, he stopped.

“Well, Father,” said Flurry good-humouredly, “have you come to hear my confession?”

“That is not a subject I like to hear jokes made about,” replied Father Bresnihan automatically.

“Well then, what do you want of me?”

The Father turned his eyes full upon his companion. They flared up from the extinguished face. “I have come to make a confession to you, Flurry. It was I who killed your wife.”

“You?—ah now, Father, you're not well. You don't know what you're saying.”

“I tell you, I killed your wife. You must believe me.”

“Sure you'd never do a thing like that. Of course I don't believe you.” Embarrassed, Flurry fiddled with his fishing gear.

“Leave that alone and listen to me,” ordered the priest.

“Be easy. I'll get the doctor out. He'll put you right in no time.”

“Nothing will ever put me right!” It was like a cry from a damned soul. “God will not forgive me. How can I ask you to? All I want is for you to understand me—my actions. Then I shall give myself up.”

“Very well,” Flurry answered, in the tone of one humouring a lunatic. “You killed Harriet. How did it come about?”

He sat down on the grass beside Father Bresnihan, who started to tell his story, trying to control his twitching face.
Sometimes the Father's words became a muttering gabble, so that Flurry could hardly make out what he was saying; at others, the beautiful voice slowed and cleared, as if he must convince Flurry at all costs.

“When I left you that night—you remember?—I thought I'd take the short cut along the river here. I was tired. I needed some air. I'd just got to this spot—it
was
here, wasn't it?” Father Bresnihan said, as if he'd only just awoken to the fact. “I came on your wife, lying on the grass. Naked. Shameless. I stood over her, to rebuke her. It was my duty to do so. My duty, you understand?”

“Of course it was,” said Flurry, humouring him still. “You can't have naked women lying about all over your parish.”

“And it was your duty, as I'd told you half an hour before, to keep your wife in order.” Father Bresnihan passed his hand over his face, as if brushing away cobwebs. “The woman was drunk and insolent. Then she tried to clasp me round the knees. I thought at first it was a gesture of supplication. I was wrong. She she she was attempting to seduce me.”

The Father was now talking to himself—Flurry might not have been there at all. “She disgusted me. The smell of drink on her. The smell of her body.”

“A powerful ordeal for you, Father.”

“She would not let go of me. She began a tirade against me. She hissed at me like a serpent. She was in a fury because I had persuaded Dominic Eyre of his evil ways, and he had promised me never again to indulge himself in acts of immorality with her. I told her she was living in mortal sin. It was my duty, though she did not belong to our faith. I told her she was a whore, she would burn with the damned if she'd not change her ways.”

“Strong words, Father.”

“She mocked at me—told me I was no man, only a
eunuch, a eunuch. I should have left her then.” Father Bresnihan gave Flurry a wild look. He shuddered. “But she was terrible strong. She dragged me down to her. I can see now she was set on taking revenge: she wanted to destroy my soul. The flesh. The sweating of flesh. Horrible. The woman was like a mad animal, swarming over me, her hand seeking to expose me. I could not break away from her. She had the strength of the Devil.”

The priest broke off, wiping the spittle from his mouth. “I'll not deny you, Flurry, I was tempted,” he went on in a different voice. “Sore tempted. I prayed to be delivered from sin. She was laughing. What a triumph for her, to ruin a priest! Now it was my own body, my sinful flesh I had to fight against as well as hers. The place stank with lust. I managed to pull out my penknife and open it. I was frantic. It seemed like driving a knife into my own corrupted flesh. She fell away from me. I had saved myself.”

There was a long silence. Father Bresnihan was shivering like a terrified horse.

“I see. And what did you do next?” asked Flurry.

“I had a fearful revulsion. I threw away the knife—the blade flashed in a bit of moonlight—I saw it fall into the deep pool yonder.”

“And then?”

“I ran away. I staggered home. There was not a soul in the street to see me. I thought, one place on the track, I heard a bicycle behind me; but it never passed me. It must have been a delusion.” Father Bresnihan's sunken eyes regarded Flurry desperately. “I said once, in this house, that murder cannot be condoned—it can only be forgiven. I was wrong. I do not expect you to forgive me. All I want is you should understand why I did it. I have written to the Bishop: now I shall go and give myself up.”

“Understand you, Father? Sure I don't even believe you
—not one word of it. You've had a nervous breakdown. You're not yourself at all.”

“But I—”

“You were always terrible down on the sins of the flesh. Now they've had their revenge on you. You've imagined the whole thing.”

“I wish that was true, Flurry. But it's not.”

“Where's the blood then?”

“The blood—?”

“I burnt them in the incinerator when I got back to the presbytery. Kathleen doesn't sleep in. I had the whole night. I soaked them in petrol first. The police would never come looking for a murderer in a priest's house, anyway.”

Flurry gazed at him silently.

“And
you
cannot believe a priest would do such a thing, Flurry. We're men, like you, and sometimes our discipline goes.”

“You killed Harry because you were frightened of her—of what she was trying to do to you? Degrading you? Is that it?”

“She'd have destroyed my vocation and been the ruin of my soul. Can't you see that?”

“So you killed her in self-defence? Her and my unborn child?”

“Yes,” said the Father, almost eagerly, “you could put it that way.”

“And then you went into retreat?”

“I was not running away, Flurry. I had to make my peace with God, before I gave myself up.”

“And did you succeed?”

Father Bresnihan stared out at the foaming river. “No,” he said at last. “God turned his face from me.”

Flurry lifted the rod from the grass beside him. “Well,
Father, this is a queer tale. You'll not get anyone to believe it.”

“But
you
believe it?” the priest implored.

“I do not. You're overwrought. You need a good long rest.”

“But it is true! I tell you, it's true!”

“
Prove it then.
”

“Prove it? But how—?”

“You say you threw your knife into the river. Was that the one with your initials on it?”

“Yes.”

“Fetch out that knife, and I'll believe you.”

Father Bresnihan stared at him. Did he have any notion, in his disordered brain, of what was happening to him? or why he had been so determined to convince Flurry that his fantastic tale was true? We shall never know.

For myself, I still have the greatest admiration for him. He was a strong character, intelligent, brave and honourable, and I have no doubt a most conscientious priest. Although his silence had put me into a week of misery, wondering if I myself had killed Harriet, knowing myself suspected of it, I could never hold this against him. And I have long forgiven him the killing of Harriet. The extreme loathing, the insidious upsurge of lust which made that loathing even more lurid, because now it was turned upon himself—how could any man have dealt with them? Father Bresnihan remains a tragic figure for me; and tragedy comes, as the Greeks believed, from a fatal flaw.

Bresnihan, in his ignorance and contempt of sex, had all his life defied the most merciless of the gods, Aphrodite. It was she who in a few minutes turned on him and destroyed him.

Perhaps, too, he could be convicted of the sin of pride—an overweening confidence that he would always be armoured against the Aphrodite in woman. I don't know. Harriet
never disgusted me; but I can imagine her driving me to a crisis when I would have to draw a knife on her—to hack myself free from those liana-like arms.

At what point Flurry became certain that the Father was telling him the truth, we cannot know. It may have been some while before he challenged him to find the knife. Flurry, after Harriet's death, had turned into a man with but one purpose in his head. I suppose you could say he too, like all monomaniacs, was insane. He was a simple-minded man—half a peasant in his values, a guerrilla by training; amazingly generous when generosity could least be expected—to me; but beneath all this a crafty and ruthless man, to whom an enemy, a man who had destroyed what was nearest to him, was quite simply a life he must take in retribution, and no argument about it

So, when I saw the last act of the tragedy playing itself before my eyes, I stood as helpless as a Greek chorus, first in a bewildered lack of comprehension, then frozen into immobility.

“Fetch out that knife and I'll believe you,” Flurry had said.

And at once Father Bresnihan plunged into the river. The force of the current, the uneven river-bed, caused him to stumble several times. But he forged his way towards the pool, and began clumsily diving into it. Flurry told Concannon that the priest dived in time and again, only to surface empty-handed. It must have been a pitiable sight—the desperate face, the fingers clawing at the rock to prevent him being swept downstream.

It was then that Maire and I arrived. The man in the water held up something, with a cry of triumph as if it had been a pearl. I focused the glasses on him, and saw what it was.

“Wedged in a rock,” I could just hear Father Bresnihan shouting.

But why on earth had Flurry sent him out to retrieve it? Then the Father lost his footing again and disappeared, to emerge a little farther downstream, swimming clumsily.