The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘What are they for?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Ah, ’tis the French crabbers that put them in. Now they can radio to Paris, or wherever ’tis, when they have a good catch of crabs, and a trawler comes across to pick them up—with refriger aytion on board.’

  ‘How clever,’ Julia said blandly. Jamieson’s eyes were almost starting out of his head at this novel explanation of the object of his search—for what else could a blue-and-white aerial be?

  ‘Do you get many foreign trawlers in here?’ Julia went on.

  ‘No, only the Frenchmen, bad luck to them! Wait now— there was a Swedish boat in it a while back, with three fellas on board, but she didn’t wait very long, only two-three days. She wasn’t a trawler—just a motor-boat, like the mail-boat.’

  ‘Funny, Swedes coming here,’ Julia commented carelessly, though in fact she was greatly interested by this information. ‘Mr. Ruddy, I’d love to see the French crabbers’ wireless. Whereabouts on the Doon is it?’

  ‘In the old Danish fort, right on the point,’ Charlie replied. Mayo country-people always describe any ancient forts, prehistoric or not, as ‘Danish’, the Danish raids being still a lively folk-memory; in many cases the Danes built a fort over the prehistoric one.

  ‘Let’s go down and look, shall we?’ Julia said to Jamieson. ‘What fun!’

  ‘Ah, I’ll be here a while yet. But there’s not much to see, unless the wireless stick comes up—just a kind of a glass bowl; I can’t know what that’s for—’twill be part of the machinery.’

  Julia and Jamieson knew well enough the purpose of the ‘glass bowl’. As they walked down towards the headland fort Jamieson said—‘This is quite splendid. If that marvellous old man says there are only two, I bet he’s right.’

  ‘Oh yes—Charlie knows everything. I told you that.’

  Jamieson would have liked to be able to devote more time and attention to the fort itself. It had three turf-built walls on the landward side, and the circular rampart of the fort proper; in this they came on exactly what they expected to find—the plastic cover over the main installation, the metal socket for the wireless aerial, and newly-cut sods covering the batteries.

  ‘Don’t lift those,’ Julia said. ‘Charlie will be watching our every movement, and he still has eyes like a hawk. Talk about your fulmars when we go back—we must have some cover.’

  ‘Yes—right.’ Jamieson had pulled out his prismatic compass, and was taking bearings; he scribbled these down in his notebook. ‘You’ve handled this splendidly, Julia,’ he said. ‘But how are we to find the other one?’

  ‘We’ll leave that till tomorrow—it’s too late today. I bet Pat knows exactly where it is—if not we’ll get Charlie to show us. Obviously all this is common knowledge.’

  ‘That’s what is so extraordinary,’ Jamieson said, as they walked back uphill towards the dark figure of Mr. Ruddy seated on the turf bank. ‘They know the facts, and yet have made a completely imaginary interpretation of them.’

  ‘You’re in Ireland,’ Julia reminded him.

  ‘So ye found it all right—I saw ye got to the very spot,’ the old man said.

  ‘Yes. I do wish we could see the aerial go up—did you say it was blue and white?’

  ‘’Tis. I can’t know why.’ Jamieson was struck by the repetition of the phrase ‘I can’t know’, obviously meaning ‘I don’t know’. But he dutifully turned the conversation onto the subject of Fulmars. Would he see them on the big Stack beyond the Tower?

  ‘Aye, and up in the cliffs of the Bank; ’tis there they nest mostly. Many come to see them, since they came in a few years back. I’m hearing an Englishman, a great expairt, wrote a book on them; I saw him when he was in it—a small darkish fella, very pleasant.’

  Jamieson said he had read the book; that was what had brought him to Clare Island. Mr. Ruddy replied that for his part he wished it was the grouse that had come back, rather than ‘these foolish birds sailing in and out of the cliffs.’

  The Colonel’s interest was at once aroused by this. Had there been grouse on the Island? he asked.

  ‘Aye, one time ’twas full of them. When I was a boy, in the spring the young birds would be running like chickens in the hill. I used to go fowling with the praste, Father Tom Haley. When the fog would be in on the hill, we’d go.’

  ‘But are there none now?’

  ‘Divil a one.’

  ‘And why did they leave?’ Jamieson, like all Scotsmen, was much interested in the curious migrations of grouse, and their inexplicable disappearances and reappearances. What Mr. Ruddy now told him, however, was something quite outside his experience.

  ‘’Twas this way. There was one Macdonnell was agent to Sir Samuel O’Malley, that owned the Island. He used to bring parties of gentlemen in the autumn to shoot, and ’twas reported to him—I never knew who it was that done it—that the praste was shooting the grouse. So one day, after he had been shooting, Mr. Macdonnell sent a pair of grouse to the praste. Father Haley took the birds, and gave the old man that brought them two or three taps on the back with them, and he said—“Take them back to him, and tell him, ‘When he’ll see them again, he’ll shoot them.” And after that the grouse disappeared away altogether out of it.’

  Jamieson was rather aghast at the implications of this story.

  ‘The grouse left that very year?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, the same year. They’re never been in it since.’

  Julia, familiar with West Mayo, was not in the least aghast; she was delighted. The curious form of the priest’s curse—‘When he’ll see them again, he’ll shoot them’ was in the best old tradition of ‘riddle-talk’; serious threats, such as the curse which drove away the grouse, always had to be made in an ambiguous form, as she explained later to Jamieson.

  ‘Oh, like the curse of the Kennedys. “And I will not be praying that you will have no one to come after you in your place”. Yes, we have that in the Highlands too.’

  This conversation took place over high tea in the little hotel, eating an enormous crayfish accompanied by toast, home-made butter, and a fresh lettuce out of Mrs. O’Malley’s garden, which Julia insisted on dressing herself.

  ‘Well that was a splendid meal,’ Jamieson said, pushing back his chair and stretching out his legs; he had asked for Guinness, but Julia, at home with the local habits, drank several cups of strong tea. ‘Do we have coffee in the other room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The little sitting-room was already occupied by a small couple, the other residents in the hotel; they were short, squat, and blond, with pale blue eyes and snub noses; when Julia gave them the customary courteous greeting they replied in broken English. The girl unhesitatingly asked them where they came from—they proved to be Czechs, and explained that they had come to Clare Island to see the famous fulmars.

  ‘Oh yes. Of course you wouldn’t have them at home— Maritime Bohemia was an invention of Shakespeare’s,’ Julia said cheerfully. The woman smiled politely; the man frowned.

  ‘We no longer speak of Bohemia; we speak of Czecho-Slovakei,’ he said rather gruffly.

  ‘Oh really.’ But Julia’s suspicions of foreigners were easily roused that summer; when they had drunk their coffee she suggested to Jamieson that they should take a stroll. Outside, in the warm July evening, as they pottered round the harbour on the white dusty road she said: ‘I don’t like those people—I wish they weren’t here.’

  ‘I never like Czechs anywhere,’ the Colonel replied—‘except poor Jan Masaryk.’

  ‘Well look,’ Julia said, ‘I’d laid Pat and the side-car on for ten tomorrow—do you think we’d better make it earlier? We don’t a bit want these little Iron Curtain creatures up on the Bank with us, and Czechs are terrific walkers. How do you suppose they got leave to come out here, anyhow? And why?’

  ‘For no good reason, I’ll be bound—certainly not fulmars! Where does Pat live?’

  ‘Up the road—but I expect he’ll be in the bar now. Let’s try
that first.’

  The bar of the O’Malley Hotel—which opened off the road at a respectable distance from the main entrance through the garden—was crowded when they went in. A small man seated on the bar itself, swinging his legs, hailed Julia as she entered with—‘Well, sweetheart, what do you think of the Sterling Area?’

  ‘If you are addressing me,’ Julia replied coldly, ‘I think the same of it as I have thought all my life—I was born here.’

  Mr. O’Malley applied his inn-keeper’s tact.

  ‘Doctor, you’re making a mistake. Miss Probyn isn’t an American; she’s been coming to the Island for years.’

  The little American jumped down, shook hands with Julia, and apologised nicely.

  ‘Okay,’ Julia said. She looked round. ‘Oh, Pat, would you come outside for a moment?’ Out in the road, smelling of dust and flowers, she arranged for the side-car to meet them half an hour earlier—then she went back into the bar, where to promote good feeling she and Jamieson each had a whiskey. Heads turned after Julia’s tawny loveliness all the time, but she managed to get in a word with the landlord about their fellow-guests. ‘How long have that little foreign couple been here?’ she asked.

  ‘’Twill be a month now, or a bit more.’

  ‘Are they Catholics?’ Julia asked skilfully.

  ‘Well, they be’s at Mass every Sunda.’

  ‘And what do they do?’

  ‘Watching birds and picking flowers, mostly,’ the landlord replied.

  ‘How nice.’ Julia put her next question in a roundabout fashion.

  ‘It was grand to find old Charlie in such great shape,’ she said. ‘Wonderful old man, he is.’

  ‘Ah, he is that. Pat told me ye had speech of him.’

  ‘Yes. I was so glad. Charlie told me about these funny wireless things that the French crabbers have put in,’ she pursued. ‘We went and looked at one. And did you see those three Swedish men who came in a motor-boat? Charlie was speaking of them too.’

  ‘Aye, they were in here. Nasty sour fellas, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘Oh, I thought Swedes were supposed to be so nice—their King going about in trams, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well these boys weren’t Kings, and they grumbled at the price of their drinks,’ Mr. O’Malley said vexedly. ‘Slept on the boat, too.’

  ‘Oh, how horrid,’ Julia said. ‘But perhaps you wouldn’t have had room for them all, if the Czechs were here when they came?’

  ‘They brought them!’ the landlord replied. ‘Dumped them here on me! And they never buy a drink, don’t that pair. ’Tis just coffee, coffee, coffee—the wife is killt out making it, and all these packed lunches every day! Cutting sandwiches is a slow job—and with good food ready in the house,’ he added indignantly. ‘’Tis ham or tongue they want always, and look at the price of those things!’

  Julia expressed her usual easy sympathy.

  ‘How terribly tiresome for Mrs. O’Malley. But why on earth do they stay so long? They’ve had time to count the fulmars by now, and to pick every flower on the Island, I’d have thought.’

  Mr. O’Malley laughed at Julia’s crack about the Czechs counting the fulmars, but he had to refill the glasses of several of his thirsty customers at that point; the little American doctor seized the opportunity of talking to her again—evidently he had overheard her conversation with the landlord.

  ‘I don’t believe those Czechs care a dime for birds or flowers, he said, in a low tone. ‘I’m a stand-in for the local doctor, who’s on holiday, and I’m all over the Island every day, so I see a lot. They spend most of their time watching these wireless installations, and logging the times when the aerials go up—I’ve seen them often, writing in little books.’

  ‘But why should Czechs be interested in French crabbers’ reports?’ Julia asked innocently.

  ‘Oh, French crabbers nothing! That just shows how silly people can get.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand,’ Julia said.

  ‘Well let me tell you. I’m sorry I was so brash when you came in,’ the American said, ‘but I don’t want anyone to pull the wool over your lovely eyes. You’re British, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, come outside.’ Julia, glass in hand, followed the American out into the warm road. ‘These wireless installations are Communist ones; those three types calling themselves Swedes, that Mr. O’Malley doesn’t care for all that, put them in—I actually saw them digging on the Doon, very late one night; I stayed and watched.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Yeas. It was a calm evening, with a full moon, and when they’d dug the holes they brought their motor-boat round and carried the machinery up from the sea, and stamped the sods in over it.’

  ‘Gracious!’ Julia said. ‘Why do you think they weren’t really Swedes?’

  ‘They were talking Russian. I was brought up on the old Polish border, and I speak Polish—so I can recognise Russian when I hear it. Those Czechs are just Communist spies, reporting home about how well the system works.’

  Julia studied the little American’s face in the faint late twilight.

  ‘Why do you tell me this?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I was fresh with you—and you’re so beautiful,’ the American said simply.

  ‘Does anyone else know what you saw?—those bogus Swedes digging the holes, I mean?’

  ‘No—why should I tell anyone here? I don’t worry about the Irish!—why had they to be so mean to the British about their bases? I’m a German Jew from the Bronx—name of Feinstein; and I do know that before the War little Britain, poor as she was, took in 78,000 refugees when the Nazis got going, while Ireland did nothing, and the U.S.A. next to nothing—just the big names like Einstein and Reinhold Niebuhr. That’s made me pretty pro-British,’ the little man said. ‘I was lucky, and got over to America early on; but lots of my relations got taken in by Britain when the States wouldn’t have them.’

  ‘But why do you think Britain needs to worry about Russian wireless installations out here?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Now listen! I have a friend in electronics, and I’ve had a look at this machinery; my guess is that its use is to track the course of space satellites dead accurately. So that when the satellites are used for dropping bombs—as they will be, presently—the bombs will be dropped accurately too.’

  Julia was horrified, standing there in the sweet quiet of the July night; the scent of the flowers in Mrs. O’Malley’s garden was borne on the soft air, the great stars stood high in heaven above the hill; very gently, the lapping of water on the sea-wall came to her ears. She thought of old Charlie and his sheep, and of all the quiet farms studding the Island; through the lighted windows of the little bar she could see the faces of country-people, enjoying their evening drink in company, after a day’s hard work. It sickened her to think of bombs in connection with all this innocent, quiet, productive peace.

  ‘Well?’ the American said, as she remained silent.

  ‘I was thinking.’ She paused. ‘And you haven’t let anyone in England know about this?—since you’re so pro-British?’ she asked.

  ‘Now look,’ Feinstein protested—‘how would I let anyone know from here? You can’t telephone, and I’m pretty busy. Anyhow, I wouldn’t know who to tell. I had thought of flying to London when Dr. MacGovern gets back—but now I’ve told you. Can’t you use this?’

  Julia was rather frightened by the question. Why should Dr. Feinstein think she could ‘use’ what he had told her?

  ‘Oh, I’ve no idea,’ she said, with studied vagueness. ‘I’m not in touch with official people.’

  ‘Well, if Britain wants this information, you’ve got it. Over to you,’ the American said. ‘Goodnight.’

  Chapter 10

  Julia did not at once return to the bar. It was rather a habit of hers, when confronted with some larger issue, to tackle small immediate things, and she walked round outside the hotel into the kitchen, where Mrs. O’Malle
y and Bernadette were having a last cup of tea, and posed the question of getting the Colonel’s bedroom window to open—he had complained that it wouldn’t.

  ‘Ah, ’tis the new paint. Does he want it open tonight?’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ Julia said firmly.

  ‘Bernadette, go see if John Thomas is in the bar—if he isn’t, run down and ask him would he come up.’ Bernadette vanished. ‘Would you take a cup of tea, Miss Probyn?’

  Julia put down her glass and accepted a cup of tea—a chat with the landlady might be useful.

  ‘A lovely lunch, and a heavenly tea, Mrs. O’Malley,’ she said. ‘You are a good cook!’

  ‘Was the gentleman pleased?’

  ‘He was indeed.’

  ‘Are ye marrying him, Miss Probyn? Ye’ll forgive me for asking.’

  This question, which up to yesterday evening had merely been a slight bore, had now become acutely painful. However, Julia managed to turn it off with a laugh.

  ‘Who knows? I might one day, if he asked me.’

  ‘He didn’t ask ye yet? Now listen to me, Miss Probyn. He’s the man for you—and he will ask you,’ Mrs. O’Malley said, with profound conviction.

  ‘Why should you think that?’ the girl asked, as casually as she could.

  ‘I see people—and I get to know them. He loves you, dear—and if I’m not a long way out, you love him too,’ the landlady-cum-postmistress said. As so often, Julia’s beautiful ripe-apricot blush betrayed her—it did not escape Mrs. O’Malley.

  ‘Ah, I see I’m in the right of it! Well, God bless ye both. I didn’t think you’d be staying here with him, unless ye meant to marry him.’

  ‘Thank you—how kind you are,’ Julia said; she was at once touched, and profoundly embarrassed. All day she had been trying to forget about ‘Susan’, and in her concentration on their task she had occasionally succeeded. Now she was brought up against it all again. She turned the conversation.

  ‘Tell me about this little American doctor who’s here just now,’ she said. ‘I met him in the bar.’