‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
She had had to wear the polite smile for rather a long time.
Roger started.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. That is, is Miss Hogan here?’
Etain Bloom looked across to the empty desk opposite hers.
‘She left early,’ she said. ‘She had to order some stationery.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. No doubt you can tell me what I want to know.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s about Eric Smith. I was wondering if he’d left any papers that I ought to look into.’
‘No, that’s quite all right,’ she answered. ‘All his papers have gone up to Professor O Nuallain’s. He sent a special request for them. In fact he was in so much of a hurry I thought it was rather like speeding the parting plough.’
‘Everything went up?’ Roger asked.
‘Absolutely everything. I did it myself. I went along to his lab and had a thoroughly good turn-out. Every scrap of paper there was went up to Palmerston Gardens.’
Roger hesitated. He bit his lower lip.
‘Did you go over it before you sent it off?’ he asked.
She glanced up at him. A faintly puzzled frown.
‘Do you know what the professor’s instructions were?’ she said.
‘No, it’s the first I’ve heard of them.’
‘Oh, well then, I’d better not say any more. It’s no good allowing even the least bit of lassitude to creep into a business like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say. Look, I know you were a friend of Eric’s and all that, but I simply can’t say a word.’
‘That’s all right. There’s nothing to get worked up about. It was just a passing thought. I suddenly wondered if any of his results might be lying about unpublished.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you. I couldn’t, actually, even if I wanted to. But please don’t press me.’
‘Certainly not,’ Roger said.
She looked faintly flushed.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Roger went on, ‘Professor O Nuallain was mentioning your name only this afternoon. I’ve just been up to see him. He said he had known you since you were a schoolgirl.’
She blushed.
‘How is he?’ she asked eagerly. ‘The poor old pet, I feel terribly sorry for him. I remember him giving me sweets when he came to see Daddy. And then he was awfully decent about getting me this job. I mean I only just scraped through college and my shorthand’s pretty appalling.’
‘He’s very ill, of course,’ Roger said.
For fear of saying more. Something not to be put into words. Because in words it would be too clearly seen. The death of a hero. The loss. The bereft disciple. The blankness.
Etain Bloom was looking up at him again. Eyes, behind the ridiculously gay butterfly spectacles, wide.
‘You mean he’s dying, don’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
They were both silent.
‘He knows,’ said Roger after a while. ‘He told me he was quite ready to go.’
Again a silence.
‘Of course, he was too weak to talk much,’ Roger said quickly. ‘That was why he didn’t mention Eric’s papers to me, I expect. What was it he said about them?’
A plunge.
He could see her back and shoulders straightening under the pale blue woollen frock.
‘I’m afraid I can’t possibly say. I’ve been told not to mention them at all, no matter under what pretence they were asked about.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to over-persuade you. I – er. Well, I suppose it’s about time I was pushing off.’
Checkmate.
Roger turned and walked out of the office, through the bare hallway, out of the front door and down the steps into the square. Deep in dejected thought.
The big black car drawing up quietly alongside him. The docker sliding out on to the pavement. Roger being bundled into the car like a piece of cargo discharged on piece-rates.
The docker scrambled in after him and the car shot off at speed.
‘You know, my dear fellow,’ said the Bosun, raising his piping voice above the noise of the engine, ‘you simply aren’t up to it. You’re hopeless, perfectly hopeless.’
Roger glowered.
‘As soon as we get to my new little home,’ the Bosun went on, ‘I’m going to give myself the pleasure of having you held down and getting that deplorable bit of moustache shaved off. And what about the hair dye? Does it wash away?’
‘I shan’t hesitate to bring an action for assault,’ Roger said.
The Bosun gave a short giggle.
‘The situation will not arise,’ he said.
‘What makes you think that, I should like to know.’
‘Such aggression. And you used to be so persistently mild. It was one of the things I liked about you.’
The car stopped at some traffic lights. Roger suddenly dived towards the door handle. The Bosun was too fat to do much to prevent him, but the docker leant forward and wrapped an iron arm round his chest to prevent him. Roger wriggled hard. A muscle in his side protested. He got the handle of the door fully down, but the docker was holding him too tightly for him to be able to move the door itself.
‘You had better stop it,’ the Bosun piped.
Roger found that his disengaged arm came near the point where the Bosun’s trouser button was undone. He gave himself the satisfaction of digging in hard with his elbow.
The slight shift in position caused by this side skirmish brought Roger’s weight slightly against the car door. Slowly it began to swing open.
‘Drive on, drive on,’ the Bosun shouted.
The little man with a round jet black head sitting at the wheel let in the clutch without a word. The lights were still against them, but no traffic was coming on the cross road.
The car shot forward. As they were about half way across there was a heavy squealing of brakes as a cattle lorry coming up fast at right angles to them was forced to a sudden halt. A volley of hooting followed them as they headed away from the intersection with swiftly gathering speed.
‘You’re lucky there were no Guards about,’ Roger said.
He flopped back in his seat. The docker still kept an arm pinioning him. The Bosun leant forward and pulled the swinging door to.
‘Guards,’ he said petulantly. ‘Why can’t they call them policemen?’
‘Sure, there won’t be trouble with the Guards now?’ the docker said.
An unexpected voice. An unexpected point of view.
‘Well,’ said Roger sharply, ‘you can’t go shooting lights like that and expect to get away with it every time. Let alone grabbing hold of peaceful citizens and pushing them into cars against their will.’
‘Ah, sure, that was only a kind of joke like,’ the docker said.
He seemed happier.
‘Of course it was,’ the Bosun said.
He gave the docker a malevolent glare.
The docker hung his head.
By now the car was at the edge of the city, heading fast along the good road to Bray. Roger looked out of the window. Across the sweep of Dublin Bay the lights were twinkling in the black darkness on the Hill of Howth.
The docker kept his arm resting lightly on Roger’s lap. The man with the black slicked down hair in the driver’s seat stared straight ahead at the broad road reeling out in front of him. He drove with concentration and skill as fast as the car would let him.
A shower of rain hit them and the car seemed to lurch for an instant. But it was only the black-haired driver slowing down by a few miles an hour to accustom himself to the different conditions.
Roger twisted a little further round. The lights of Dublin were fading away.
‘Yes, that’s the last you’ll see of Blackpool,’ the Bosun said. ‘I prefer to call it Blackpool, you know, the literal translation of the Irish Dubh Linn, or dark pool.’
‘The Irish nam
e is Baile atha Cliath. It means the town of the hurdle ford.’
‘I believe there is a move to call it that. But I prefer Blackpool. It puts the place in its proper provincial rank.’
‘It’s where I choose to live,’ Roger said. ‘And you won’t find it so easy to get me away from it and over to Leeds against my will.’
‘Against your will,’ echoed the Bosun.
He giggled again.
A good joke.
Roger looked at the pink balloon face floating in front of him oddly illuminated by the flash of the road lights.
A feeling of disquiet. Something in store.
And without warning the smoothly purring engine stopped.
‘Hell,’ said the driver.
It was the first word Roger had heard him speak.
He steered the powerless vehicle to the edge of the road and pulled on the brake.
The docker’s iron band of an arm tightened across Roger’s chest.
‘What the devil is happening?’ said the Bosun.
The driver got out without a word. Bending his head down against the spears of cold rain he went round to the front and lifted up the bonnet. He was a very small man, Roger could see now that he was standing up. His face under the jet black oiled hair was dead white. He walked with bow legs. He might have been a stable lad with a prison pallor.
They sat in silence in the stranded car. The Bosun staring angrily at the hood of the bonnet sticking up in front of the windscreen like the conning tower of a submarine. The docker looking at Roger. Roger looking from side to side.
And seeing no way of escape.
A car swished by them going fast. Roger watched its red rear lights go round the bend just ahead of them and quickly disappear.
‘What the hell is going on?’ the Bosun asked.
He made no attempt to get out of the warmth of the car to go and see. The stable lad-chauffeur remained hidden behind the bonnet hood.
The sharp tapping on the nearside window beside the docker made all three of them jump. In the darkness it was just possible to make out the pale shape of a face through the trickles of rain on the glass.
‘Go away,’ said the Bosun. ‘We’re quite all right. We don’t need any help. Go off.’
The figure evidently was unable to hear through the tightly closed window. They – it was impossible even to tell whether it was man, woman, or boy – continued to tap at the glass.
The Bosun leant forward across Roger and gestured violently. But the tapping continued.
‘Open the window a bit and make them sheer off,’ the Bosun said to the docker. ‘Speak to them in a voice they’ll understand. What the hell does Collins think he’s doing?’
The docker turned and wound the window down a couple of inches. Before he had a chance to say anything the face on the outside bounced up to the narrow gap. It belonged to an old woman with her head wrapped in a blanket shawl.
‘If yez wants to get back to Dublin,’ she cackled, ‘there’s a bus coming just this minute. I’m after waiting for it meself.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger loudly, ‘I do.’
He slipped out of the docker’s grasp quite easily. In turning to deal with the window his grip had considerably slackened. Plainly he was a one-thing-at-a-time man.
In a flash Roger had got the door open on the Bosun’s side, had pushed past the inflated bulk and stepped into the coldness of the rain.
As he did so the lights of the Dublin bus swept round the corner ahead of them. Roger heard the little old woman scuttering across the road beside him, murmuring a cross between a prayer and a series of oaths. He ran forward as the brightly lit bus came to a stop.
The old woman scampered into it as if the whole incident had been specially contrived by the devil to prevent her getting into Dublin that night. Roger swung himself on to the platform at her heels. The conductor peered briefly into the darkness and sharply rang his bell. The big bus pulled away from the stop.
Roger looked behind. The Bosun had got out of the warmth of the car at last. He was standing looking towards the bus. With intent.
For the whole of the journey back into Dublin Roger kept a sharp eye out of the back window of the bus. If the squat stable lad, Collins, could get the car’s engine going again it would not take them long to overtake the lumbering bus. Roger looked at the few bedraggled passengers staring glumly ahead at the lights of the city. They looked as if their reactions to a kidnapping would be almost non-existent. Perhaps afterwards they might refer to it. With caution.
But the bus completed its journey without disturbing melodrama. Roger stayed on it until it pulled into its terminus just at the south side of O’Connell Bridge. It was still raining when he clambered off. He turned up his coat collar and started to walk towards the bridge and the comfort of his flat.
A familiar face caught his eye. He looked again. Standing waiting for another bus was Etain Bloom.
Roger buried himself further into his coat and began to walk by as if he had failed to see her.
Suddenly he stopped. For a moment or two he stood still on the pavement with the cold rain beating on his head. Then he made up his mind.
Etain still had not seen him. He looked at her speculatively. She was wearing a mackintosh with a hood but a wisp or two of the blonde hair protruded and clung damply to her face. She had taken off the butterfly spectacles and was blinking shortsightedly at the numbers of the buses as they approached the stop.
The attempt at direct questioning had been a decided failure.
A bus moved up and Etain moved forward to board it.
Roger shook the rain off his hair, held his head higher and moved in behind her.
Chapter Nine
When Etain Bloom eventually got to the head of the queue and pulled herself up into the dripping wet bus she went up the stairs to the upper deck. There were seven people between her and Roger. At the moment Etain got on the conductor began counting out aloud as each person set foot on the platform.
Roger lifted his head and strained to hear, but the conductor was simply counting without shouting out how many places he reckoned he had on the bus.
Four, five, six.
The conductor raised his arm. Down comes the chopper to chop off …
What? A chance to open up a path that had appeared to be barred, possibly the path to the Infiltraitor.
‘Full right up.’
The conductor’s arm swept down in front of Roger.
‘I say, couldn’t you take just one more,’ Roger said. ‘It’s very important.’
The conductor looked at him malevolently.
A desiccated man of forty-five with uncompromising spectacles set close to his eyes, giving nothing away.
‘Sure, it’s important for everyone to be getting home on a night like this,’ he snapped.
He raised his arm to ring the bell.
A chorus of voices from the upper deck.
‘More room here.’
‘Seats up here, conductor.’
‘More room, more room.’
‘Ah, sure, why tell him? Do yez want to wait all night?’
This last voice seemed to decide the conductor. He glared at Roger and darted up a few of the steps to peer into the upper deck.
An irate crab.
He bounced down again, placed himself dramatically guarding the passengers on the lower deck from any violation of their privacy, and with a curt jerk of his head indicated to Roger that he could go up.
He shot forward like an animal released from a trap.
At the top of the stairs he found that there were five or six vacant seats on the top deck of the bus. One of them was next to Etain. He paused a moment and looked at her hooded figure staring damply out of the steamed up window beside her. Someone from behind pushed up against him. He stumbled forward along the narrow aisle, forcing his way past the clammy bulging wet shoulders on either side.
He sat down beside Etain.
She moved a little nearer the win
dow and continued to peer out into the rain-splashed darkness without looking round.
For a minute he sat waiting. Then he took a deep breath.
‘Why, Miss Bloom,’ he said. ‘What a surprise.’
She turned.
‘Mr Farrar,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you came out this way.’
Roger licked his top lip.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you ought to call me by my Christian name, Roger.’
She blinked at him and scrabbled in her large handbag.
‘I – I don’t exactly come out this way,’ he said.
She produced the butterfly spectacles from her bag and put them on.
‘This rain is terrible,’ she said.
She shook her head. Now that she had the spectacles on she seemed to be seeing him more clearly, taking him in.
‘How far are you going then, Roger?’ she said.
He looked blank.
She smiled.
‘Honest to God,’ she said, ‘you look as if you don’t know.’
‘I don’t.’
His mind racing.
‘That is I – I’m going all the way.’
‘Right out to Howth on a night like this?’ she said.
‘Howth,’ said Roger.
‘You sound as if you didn’t know this was a Howth bus.’
‘Oh well, yes, of course I did. I must have done, mustn’t I? I mean I wouldn’t get on a bus not knowing where it was going to, would I?’
‘To tell you the truth, you look as if you would, you do really.’
‘Do I?’
Roger found no more to say.
The bus sloshed through the rain. Steam rose up from the coats of the passengers. It became impossible to see anything through the windows.
‘Er – how far do you go, Etain?’ Roger said. ‘Do you live out this way?’
‘Well not really,’ she replied. ‘My parents have a house on the south side. That’s my home, I suppose you might say. But I managed to persuade them to let me have a flat and I found this place out this way. It’s just on the edge of the city, in a big old Protestant rectory that’s been divided up a bit. It’s by no means what you might call shipshape and country fashion, but I like it.’
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