Now Keig beckoned me over.
‘You used to remember the number of Caveen’s Bar,’ he said.
‘Caveen’s?’
‘Yes, I want you to talk to Cormode for me. And that’s where he’ll be now, isn’t it?’
I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. Yes, I supposed, just at this time almost certainly Peter Cormode and his cronies would all be ensconced in the snug at Caveen’s Bar. They used to be there every evening without exception. No doubt they would still be there. After all, it was really only four months or so since we had seen them.
‘But why me, talk to him?’ I asked Keig.
‘Because I’m not used to these things,’ he said, jerking a nod at the telephone.
‘All right. What do you want me to say?’
Keig went back to the table and fetched his big piece of slate. He was later to abandon this curious but effective method of keeping temporary notes, but at a time when pieces of paper mercifully did not much come our way it served its purpose admirably.
On it now he noted down a list of the points he wanted making to Peter Cormode as we discussed them in whispers. When he had finished I turned to a quite forgotten area of my brain and from it I produced the Dublin telephone number of Caveen’s Bar. Heaven knows I had rung up Cormode there often enough in the days when I had had nothing better to do than assist him with his plans and dreams. But the number seemed now to be a piece of obscure information about life on another planet.
I turned to the telephone, propping the big piece of slate against the wall on top of the little varnished box, took the earpiece off its hook and put it to my ear.
‘What number are you wanting?’ a voice answered quite promptly.
I gave the Dublin number.
‘Hold on then,’ the operator said.
I stood there waiting, thinking to myself that never since the age of ten, say, had I gone for four whole months without making a single phone call. Keig in the meanwhile was quietly but firmly putting the lugubrious landlord out of the room.
‘But who’s to pay for all this?’ I heard the man protesting.
‘We’ll pay and you know it,’ Keig answered.
Querulous muttered remarks about not forgetting to ask the cost of the call were still going on at the door when into my ear there came suddenly a thick Dublin voice.
‘Caveen’s Bar.’
One of the Irish ‘curates’ the Oceana-born Caveen had employed.
I gulped.
‘Is Mr Cormode there?’ I said, blurting it out and feeling a fool.
‘Sure. Hang on.’
And it was as easy as that. A few moments later a familiar voice sounded in my ear.
‘Peter Cormode speaking.’
‘This is Michael Quine,’ I said.
‘Who? Who? Who’s that?’
‘Michael Quine. I’m speaking from Oceana.’
There was silence at the other end. I thought I might have lost the connection. But then Cormode spoke again.
‘Michael? It’s you? I thought you were dead.’
‘Far from it. Alive and well.’
‘But where are you? Can you speak to me?’
‘I am speaking to you,’ I answered, growing more elated with every second the call lasted. ‘I won’t tell you just where we are, though. Someone between me and you may be listening in. We’re in the north of the island, not all that far from Lesneven.’
‘You’re on your own? You’ve not been captured?’
‘Of course not.’
At the far end Cormode began babbling hard. I gathered that we had been well and truly written off when our departure for the island had leaked out and complete silence had followed. Finally Cormode sorted himself out a little.
‘Well, my heartiest congratulations,’ he said. ‘And you’re quite safe from capture?’
‘I should hope so,’ I replied tartly. ‘Keig has a force of pretty well a hundred men now, and more coming in daily. The Keepers are packing it in fast.’
I felt I owed it to Keig to paint as rosy a picture as possible within the bounds of truth, and I was enjoying rubbing in the details. But Keig, who had come back from dealing with the landlord, now hissed deafeningly in my free ear.
‘Weapons.’
I nodded.
‘But, look, Peter,’ I said, ‘this is by way of being a business call. There’s certain things we want you to get to us.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Cormode sounded abruptly wary.
‘Mylchraine’s been buying armoured cars,’ I said. ‘We’ve put some of them out of action, but we haven’t got any guns that can really deal with them. Keig’s most anxious to get hold of some.’
I had thought earlier, without going into things very carefully, that the scout-car menace was over. But Keig had surprised me while he was giving me his list of points to raise by the vehemence with which he had insisted on our need for more powerful guns.
In Caveen’s Bar in Dublin Cormode was humming and hawing.
‘Well, listen, Michael, I’ll certainly do my best to see what can be done. You can rely on that. But in the meanwhile give me more details of what you’ve done so far. A force of a hundred men, did you say? We must get that to the papers.’
‘All right. That’s no bad idea. You can tell them that we attacked a column of some two hundred Keepers in camp to the north of Carnack. You know Carnack?’
‘Yes, yes. I was through it once.’
‘Well, we destroyed six armoured cars in a night engagement there, as well as a large number of lorries and motor-cycles and enemy casualties are estimated at—’
But again Keig was hissing in my ear. Like a steam-engine.
‘The guns. Can he buy them?’
‘But, Peter,’ I said, ‘about dealing with Mylchraine’s other armoured cars. We can’t rely on surprising them the way we did before. What we must have now is anti-tank guns. Now look, Keig plans to get down as far as the beaches just south of Hoddick quite soon. We’ll be ready for supplies from you there in four weeks from today. You’ve got that?’
‘Yes, yes. But tell me more about this defeat you inflicted on Mr Mylchraine. You realize not a word of this came out?’
‘I’m not surprised. But, listen, first I must tell you the full arrangements. We may be cut off at any time. This call’s going through Lesneven, you know.’
‘Yes, but look, Michael, don’t count on anything, will you? I’ll do my best but it may take some time to get hold of anti-tank guns.’
Some of Keig’s pent-up ruthlessness simmering behind me got into my bloodstream at this.
‘Now listen here,’ I said. ‘A month from today exactly we’ll be waiting on those beaches. Every night from midnight on we’ll signal out to sea with a red torch if it’s safe to land. Get the guns, get hold of a boat and be there. And you’ll see our signal, a red light flashing the letter K in Morse. K for Keig. Got it?’
‘Yes, yes, Michael. But isn’t this all going a bit fast?’
‘No, it’s not. We need those guns. And there’s another thing. We want a wireless set too. Something we can keep in touch with you by. You could get hold of that in Dublin tomorrow.’
‘Not tomorrow. It’s Sunday.’
‘Oh. Oh, is it? I’d no idea. Well, on Monday then.’
‘Well, all right, I suppose I can manage that. But about getting your story into the papers. Will they actually believe all this—about defeating a hundred Keepers?’
‘Two hundred.’
‘Oh. Two hundred, yes. Well that’s worse. I mean, how am I going to convince them it’s all happened?’
‘You can tell my old paper you had it from me, direct,’ I said. ‘But now I want your assurance that that boat’ll be there on time. It means a lot to us.’
‘I quite see that, Michael,’ Cormode said compliantly. ‘And I’ll arrange about the wireless right away. And I’ll certainly look into the question of guns and do my best for you.’
Those were almost
the last words of the conversation, since we hardly wanted to risk betraying the whole plan by keeping the line open longer than necessary. I was irritated by them at the time as being deplorably imprecise. Later I was to realize with unpleasant force that they were anything but imprecise.
7
As soon as I had hung that old-fashioned telephone ear-piece back on its hook Keig and I set out on a last round of inspection, a thing which had become almost a fixed habit with him. On this occasion, however, before leaving he stood for a moment looking at the recumbent form of young Alan Duckan, who had continued to sleep peacefully through the whole of our momentous getting into touch with the outside world again. I was used to a certain paternal solicitude that Keig often showed for the boy and stood waiting till he had satisfied himself that the lad’s slumbers were untroubled.
But Keig, instead of turning away after a few moments, suddenly took up his long axe and gave the boy a gentle poke in the ribs. I almost protested out loud.
The lad woke at once. Keig looked down at him.
‘D’you want to come for a walk, lad?’ he said. ‘We’re just going out to make sure everything’s all right.’
Young Alan was on his feet in a moment. He was after all a boy still and here was a treat, going out like the grown-ups.
We left Francis Crowe in the bar to keep an eye on things and off we all went, myself just a little puzzled as to why the boy was there.
Keig did nothing to enlighten me. The three of us went the rounds of the various sentries posted here and there in the little sleepy town with hardly a word spoken. But when we had seen that nothing was amiss Keig did something else a little unexpected. Instead of marching back to the hotel and getting down to some work until the arrival of the midnight courier as had been his custom, he took an abrupt turning off our route back and led the pair of us away in the direction of the low-roofed church which, surrounded by its graveyard, presided over the northern end of the little town. And no sooner had he led us off on this unexplained detour than he began to talk.
‘Do you know what we did while you were asleep, Alan lad?’ he said.
‘No, Mr Keig.’
‘We talked on the telephone to a fine gentleman in Dublin. We told him we were still here in the world, lad. And what’s more we made him a bit of a request.’
Alan looked at Keig in the dusk of the silent street approaching the squat little church. He was plainly quite uncertain what to make of all this.
‘Yes, it’s true, lad,’ Keig said.
‘Quite true,’ I added. ‘And a very good night’s work.’
Alan looked over at Keig, marching along and lightly swinging his axe.
‘What was the request you made then, Mr Keig?’ he asked.
‘A request for guns, lad. Guns that’ll knock Mylchraine’s scout-cars to pieces, just like that.’
I almost at that point put in a rider about Cormode’s hesitancy over getting the guns. Perhaps I would have done if Alan had not been there, but I had a slight unaccounted for objection to discussing business in front of a boy. And besides Keig seemed so uncharacteristically elated that I did not like to appear to be putting a damper on him.
We strode into the churchyard, and as we did so I realized what the whole business was about. We were going to be treated to another of those displays of virtuoso axemanship that were Keig’s way, his sole way, of expressing feelings of triumph.
It would have been a curious sight if there had been anybody near that deserted churchyard in the last of the summer evening to see it. Myself and the boy stock-still just inside the lychgate and perfectly silent, and Keig half way down the broad path to the church door, standing there with his feet firmly planted a little apart and sending that axe up into the evening air, up time and again, catching it and whirling it and sending it higher and higher and all without a single sound. But there was no one to see. The citizens of Carnack were all at home, if not in bed, and the whole extraordinary display was conducted in conditions of simple secrecy.
And even young Alan sensed, when at last Keig stopped, that this was something which could not be commented on. In silence the three of us strode back to the hotel and let ourselves in.
If I had improved on our success a little for Cormode’s benefit, it turned out that I was anticipating events by only a matter of hours. Next day one of our patrols briefly entered the small village of Hoddick which lies at the extreme northern end of the beaches which stretch down towards Lesneven, and soon we even moved into the place ourselves. From the low hills above we were able to look at Lesneven closely through the couple of pairs of field-glasses we had succeeded in picking up. So we were near the capital indeed. But it was also evident from our observations that we could not expect to get into it unless we had the means of dealing with the scout-cars that prowled between us and its streets.
Nor could we easily get further down south. The country inland from Lesneven was as well patrolled as the area immediately in front of us, at least so far as concerned the wolds, which stretch here some fifteen miles westwards only before meeting the mountains that run all the way along the length of the island on the west Atlantic-facing shore. And if the mountain terrain defeated the scout-cars, it was not a lot kinder to us. Attempting to push farther south that way with more than a handful of men would have required an effort in surmounting the formidable natural obstacles on our path for which we were as yet by no means strong enough.
However we were left in control of the whole northern part of the island, rather more than a quarter of Mylchraine’s territory. Not that, in fact, there was very much control about it, except that no Keepers paraded their feather-cockaded hats within the area. I suppose no one there at that time paid any taxes, but otherwise the people went on much as they had always done.
And Mylchraine’s rule, we found to our chagrin, had not been thought of everywhere as an unmixed curse. It had brought to the country the twin excitements, and twin underminers, of whiskey and witchcraft.
Whiskey, we discovered as we got to know more of our new domain, had become in a matter of a few years every bit as much of a necessity to the people as tobacco. I pieced together at various times how this had happened. It was not a pretty story. But I really believe that Mylchraine had sat there and concocted a vast scheme to gain himself very real, if intangible, power through control of the island’s hard-liquor supply, first making it dirt-cheap and, incidentally bringing about a large increase in crimes ranging from hooliganism to rape, and then some time in the year or two before our landing putting the price sharply up again. But by this time the weakness had taken hold. However much the stuff cost there were hundreds, even thousands, of people in the island now—both in Lesneven and throughout the countryside—who were not going to go without their one night of blissful drunkenness a week.
The full extent of the whole scheme I discovered only by dribs and drabs over a long period of time. But I was confronted with the results of his other method of sapping the people of the island in a more dramatic fashion.
It was on the first of August, a date I was soon to have cause to remember, and getting on towards midnight. With Keig I had been making the rounds of our headquarters sentries at Hoddick. They were positioned some distance from the tiny village itself surrounding the single row of empty terraced ‘villas’ that we had taken over, a dozen narrow-fronted houses put up for the benefit of holiday-makers by a builder whose enterprise had extended only to coming this far out of Lesneven and there copying what he had been building in the town itself.
Keig and I were walking back through the sticky darkness of a thundery midge-whining night when a chance puff of breeze, rising and dying at once, brought a curious sound to our ears.
We stopped and listened. After a while we caught the sound again—it might have been the low moaning of chained dogs only it was interspersed with a long-drawn cackling that could not have come from any cock or hen alive—and were able to decide that it was coming from the direction o
f the village. We set off towards it.
‘I think it’s from the church,’ I whispered when we had got near enough to be able to hear the noise all the time.
The village church was hardly more than a big hut without tower or spire. Keig and I approached it. At the gate in the low wall surrounding the churchyard we saw that there were lights inside, though it looked as though sacks had been hung across the windows. The noise was now quite loud.
‘What sort of a randybooze is going on here?’ Keig said sharply.
He strode up the straight path which led to the ecclesiastically shaped double-doors of the church, grasped the wrought-iron handle, jerked it round and shoved. The two doors flew apart.
An exceedingly curious sight met our eyes. The church was smokily lit by torches, flaring lengths of rough-hewn wood, a few stuck here and there on the walls and others carried by some of the thirty-odd people there. These were for the most part hopping and capering up and down the wide aisle making the noise we had heard, part moaning, part cackling. All of them were stark naked—men and women, young and old—and most of them had heavy weals running across their backs.
At the far end of the building, up on the low dais where there stood the small slab of the plain altar covered with a dark green cloth, a singular ceremony was taking place. A short file of worshippers stood jigging up and down on the broad steps, all plainly in a state of violent sexual excitement. And there bent over on the altar itself, receiving worship, was a white-buttocked prostrated figure. In front of him a young man knelt at the moment about to embrace him in a kiss.
The notorious Kiss of Shame. It might have been a scene of the wildest most degenerate romance. Except that the Participants were anything but romantic figures. I knew them, almost every one. They were the villagers with whom I had occasionally passed the time of day since we had come to Hoddick, guarded, solid, respectable folk, most of them fat, few of them young. Especially I recognized, even down the whole length of the building, the central figure of the ceremony, the master of this esbat.
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