by Stuart Woods
“Something between you and that fellow?” Mark asked as we made our way back to the Land Rover.
“Not really,” I said. “He had an interest in a girl I used to go out with here.”
“You afraid of him?”
I felt my ears go red. “We’ve never even spoken.”
He started the vehicle. “I remember that about the Irish in Belfast, that staring, on the streets when we were patrolling. A fellow looked at you like that, and you knew he was what you were patrolling for, although most times you had no hard evidence to know it.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at me again, sharply. “You afraid of him, Willie?”
“He … makes me uncomfortable,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
“Well, I’ve never seen him before today, Willie, but I can tell you this about him: let him know that, and he’ll make your life miserable, and he’ll enjoy doing it. You know what I’d do in your position?”
“What?”
“I’d pick the right moment, when he was crowding me just a bit, and I’d hit him—hard.”
I shrank from even the idea. “That doesn’t solve anything.”
“Don’t you believe it, mate,” he snorted. “Don’t you believe it. Sooner or later you’re going to have to fight him, you mark my words, and the sooner the better.”
11
SHE SAT QUIETLY and watched the twins. “He’s the one, I know he is,” Denny said, slapping his hand on the tabletop. “Ah, come on, Denny,” his brother said, “you don’t know anything for sure. It’s been a couple of years.”
“I remember. I remember the name. I think I remember his picture in the paper, in a Dublin paper.”
“So what if he is the one?” Donal asked, reasonably. What are you proposing to do about it?”
“I’d be for doing him, that’s what.”
“Oh, come on, mate,” Donal said, forcing a chuckle. “We’re not set up for that. We’ve not the authorization. You couldn’t do that without the authorization. You’d be in it from all sides then.”
She smiled to herself. They remained forever in character, these two, the hothead and the peacemaker. Donal was too smart to seem to be backing away from a fight; he’d invoked procedure instead. She liked that. “Just a minute,” she said. It was the first time she’d spoken. “You’ve both a point. If he’s the same one, something would need to be done; we couldn’t just let it pass.”
“Bloody right, we couldn’t,” Denny growled.
“But we don’t know, do we?” she continued, ignoring him. “We need to know for sure.”
“If he is the one,” Donal put in, “then do you think we might get the authority?”
“I think we might,” she said. “But before we even ask, we have to know for sure.”
“So how do we find out?” Denny asked. “Go to Dublin and paw through a great bloody lot of old newspapers?”
She shook her head. “Leave it to me,” she said, quietly, gazing out the window across Kinsale Harbour. “I’ll find out.”
12
THE NEXT DAYS we lived as if preparing for a voyage, for that was what the building of the yacht seemed to us, busying ourselves doing things we would have no more time for once the yacht’s keel was laid. Annie bought paint and wallpaper and set to decorating the cottage. I started—and finished—a large bookcase for the living room and a desk for the small bedroom, which Mark would use as an office when I was not sleeping there. Mark was buried in lists of materials and equipment and paid little attention to us, except at the end of the day, when, surprised, he would come upon our handiwork and offer compliments. We had done a good job, Annie and I, and we were proud of ourselves.
Annie seemed grateful for my company when Mark was so immersed in plans for the yacht. His concentration was such that all else was shut out, including her, and it was not hard to tell she didn’t like it much. He ignored even the most cutting remarks from her and ploughed on with his work. She complained wordlessly to me with shrugs and scowls, and, happy for her attention, I lapped it up.
We scoured the classified pages of the Cork Examiner for transportation. Mark found a serviceable Ford van, and I, after much searching, came upon a very neat Mini Cooper, a souped-up version of Britain’s smallest four-passenger car. It sat right down on the ground and went around corners at a great rate of knots; it was perfect for the Irish back roads, and I loved driving it fast.
We were asked to the castle for dinner by Lord and Lady Coolmore, who insisted on being called Peter-Patrick and Joan. I had expected the place to be run down, as many large, Irish country houses are, but it was kept in perfect condition by a full-time carpenter/painter and a domestic staff of three. We dined on fresh salmon and drank good wines. The Coolmores were comfortable with young people and had a knack for putting them at their ease, but I found myself grateful for my mother’s strict adherence to table manners in my upbringing. She, having grown up among people like the Coolmores, had kept a more formal house than those of my contemporaries, so I was at home with good crystal and more than one fork.
Joan Coolmore and Annie disappeared after dinner and left Lord Coolmore, Mark and me to coffee and brandy. I declined the cigars, which Mark, to my surprise, accepted with relish. I had never seen him smoke, but I think the clubbiness of Peter-Patrick Coolmore’s study overcame him. The conversation turned to Mark’s military career, and Mark discussed it easily, as he had with me and had not with Annie. Perhaps, I thought, now that he had the yacht as a new career, he found it less painful to talk about his lost one.
“Mark,” Coolmore said in his lazy, upper-class drawl, then tilted his head back to the leather and blew smoke rings at the frescoed ceiling. “Mark, I’m most interested to know about your experiences in the Royal Marines, but if I were you I should be a bit circumspect in discussing it hereabouts.” I looked up in mild surprise. When someone like Coolmore said one should “… be a bit circumspect …” about discussing something it meant that one should keep one’s bloody mouth shut about it.
Mark sipped his brandy idly. “You think my service might be a problem in Cork?”
“Well,” Coolmore sighed, “we’re a long way from Belfast, it’s true, and most people here are against the violence there, but there is an element …” He trailed off.
“You mean the IRA is active in County Cork?” I plunged in, ignoring the subtleties.
“Oh, no, no, nothing like that,” he came back quickly. “It’s just that there are those with …” he struggled for the word, “ … sympathies,” he said, finally. “During the troubles of the twenties feeling ran very strong indeed; people were burned out, that sort of thing.” He blew another perfect smoke ring. “Still, there are … romantics about.”
“How did your family fare in the revolution?” I asked.
He shot me a glance. “My family are Irish,” he said. “We came to Cork more than four hundred years ago, before Cromwell went to Ulster. We bought our land, paid for it, every acre. Then, during the famine my great-great grandfather sold off much of it to feed his tenants. During the troubles my father ran in guns in his yacht, like Erskine Childers. Fortunately, unlike Childers, he managed not to get shot.”
I knew from our dinner-table conversation that Coolmore was Harrow and Cambridge and the RAF in the Battle of Britain. I had not yet begun to fathom the relationship between the British and the Irish, nor the complex position in the society of people like Coolmore and my grandfather, whose accent and manners and war-time loyalties placed them with the English aristocracy, but who considered themselves Irish. Coolmore changed the subject. Later, I would realize what he had been trying, in his offhand way, to tell us, and I would wonder why he tried.
A few days before building began on the boat, Mark drove the van to Dublin to scout the chandleries there for what might be bought in Ireland, rather than sending to England and bothering with shipping and customs. He telephoned from there in the late afternoon and said he would be staying the night.
I
received this news from Annie in a stooped position, as I had been humping large chunks of granite around all day, in a project to repair the stone jetty outside the cottage. “Get yourself into a hot bath for a bit,” she said, laughing at my posture. “I’ll fix it for you later.”
I did as she instructed. By the time I had soaked for an hour it was dark, and she had an inviting dinner on the table. “Don’t bother to dress,” she called after me as I went into my bedroom. “Your dinner will be cold.” I grabbed a terrycloth robe and hurried to the table.
It was the first time I had ever been alone with her. “It’s nice not to talk about the boat,” she said, sighing. I was so happy when Mark got the sponsorship, but now I wonder if I can last the distance.”
“I suppose I’m guilty of talking of nothing else, too. It’s hard not to with Mark around.”
She washed down a bit of cheese with her wine and smiled. “I’m glad he’s not around,” she said.
“Do you like being married?” I asked. “I mean, don’t you ever feel confined? Boxed in?”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Not at first. At first it was a romantic dream. Still, I was old enough, had been about enough not to expect that to last. But I hadn’t expected Mark to be quite so absorbed with his career, either.”
“I guess a lot of guys are like that, not just the Royal Marines. There are workaholics in business and law and medicine—doctors’ wives are always complaining.”
She shook her head. “This was something different. It was like a religion to him. He was like a monk in some order that demanded utter devotion.”
“Well,” I laughed, “at least he didn’t have to be celibate.”
“No, he didn’t have to be.” The sadness was there again.
“Do you mean…?”
“Oh, no, we had a sex life of sorts, I suppose, but the commandos got more of his energy than I did.”
“Well, that’s over, anyway.”
“I wonder. He’s giving to the boat just about what he gave to the Royal Marines.”
I was stuck here; I didn’t know whether to offer to fill in for Mark in the bedroom or what. “We’ll have to get him out more often; go out to dinner and that sort of thing; get his mind off the boat once in a while.”
She suddenly stood. “I’d like a bath, now. Do you mind clearing up?”
“Not at all,” I said, beginning to gather dishes.
She passed through the kitchen on her way to the bathroom. “Why don’t you get a fire going?” she rubbed her arms. “It’s damp down here by the river.”
I finished the dishes and lit some kindling in the big fireplace. I added a stick at a time, staring into the flames, until it was hot enough to get the oak logs burning. The kitchen light went out, and I heard the tinkle of glasses. Annie walked to where I sat on the rug in front of the fire and handed me a brandy snifter. I turned to take it from her and found a tanned thigh at eye-level. She was wearing an old shirt of Mark’s. I wondered if she were wearing anything else. “Have a large swig of that to relax you, then I’ll do your back,” she said, sitting down, crosslegged beside me. I barely resisted the temptation to follow the thigh to its source. I took a gulp of the brandy straight down. It worked quickly.
“You aren’t going to walk on my spine like a Japanese girl, are you?”
She laughed and gave me a push, toppling me sideways onto the rug. “I weigh a couple of stone more than a Japanese girl—I’d cripple you for life.” She tugged at the robe. “Let’s have that off; I’ve got to get at the muscles, you know.” I shucked the garment off my shoulders, leaving my lower body covered. She snatched it away and tossed it onto the sofa, leaving me bare on the rug.
“I think there are a couple of baby pictures of me like this somewhere,” I said shakily. I could feel the goosebumps come up on the side of me away from the fire.
“Oh, shut up.” She slapped me sharply on the buttocks. I heard her unscrewing a bottle cap and her hands rubbing together. A slightly sweet scent reached me, and then I felt her hands rubbing warm oil onto my skin. She worked slowly up and down one side of my back, using more oil now and then, while I groaned with pleasure. Her breathing became faster as she worked. She had been on her knees on one side of me, then she changed to the other side, throwing a leg over and sitting back, straddling my thigh as she rubbed. It was now absolutely clear to me what she was wearing—or rather, not wearing—under the man’s shirt. Her hands were warm from the rubbing, but not as warm as the part of her that rested against me. She kept rubbing, moving down until she was massaging the large muscles in my buttocks. Soon, I thought, I would have to turn over, because my changing anatomy would be no longer accommodated by the hard floor beneath the rug.
She began to ease up and went over the whole of my back again lightly. Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the nape of the neck. “There you are, Willie.” Her voice was husky through her breathing. “You lie there for a minute.” She stood, and my thigh was wet where she had been sitting. Then she tossed the robe over me, and I heard her bare feet padding on the stone floor as she walked toward the large bedroom. She did not close the door. I heard covers rustle and springs squeak as she got into bed.
I’ll lie here until my heart stops that thumping, then I’ll decide what to do, I thought to myself. I turned on my back to free myself from being pinned to the hard floor. Gradually, my breathing and my heart slowed. I worked at relaxing everything, while my mind spun. The brandy helped.
I jerked awake sometime in the middle of the night. The fire had died, and I was cold. I got up stiffly from the floor and walked to the door of the large bedroom. The moonlight lit Annie’s form. She was turned on her side, and her hair spilled over her face, hiding it. I could hear her deep breathing. I crossed the living room and went to my own bed, but light was showing in the sky when I finally fell asleep again.
The sun was high when I awoke, and there was a note from Annie saying she’d gone for a walk. I had some breakfast, then pottered around the cottage until after lunch, all the while still in a state of sexual excitement. I got into the Mini Cooper and began to drive fast down the country lanes. I headed generally west, with no firm idea of a destination, and the concentration demanded by speed helped occupy my mind for a while. I was approaching Kinsale when I realized I had had a destination all the time. Soon I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I got out of the car, walked around and sat on a fender, facing the field. The hockey match was in progress, as if it had never stopped since my first visit. The match ended, and Connie Lydon walked toward me across the field. She stopped and beckoned, and a nun joined her.
“Hello, Will,” she said. “This is Sister Mary Margaret.” I turned and shook hands with a tall, fresh-faced girl in a black habit who seemed too young to be a nun. Connie had not taken her eyes from mine during the introduction. “You’re back for a bit, then?”
I nodded, returning her gaze. “For some time, it seems.”
There was a silence, then Connie asked, “Will you come to Sum-mercove for a drink? I’m finished here.”
“Sure.”
“You go ahead; I’ll get changed and get my car. The key’s in the window box.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said to the nun.
“Same here,” she replied, offering her firm handshake again. They walked away together across the field.
At her cottage I found the key where it had always been kept and moved impatiently about the place, picking up a book, looking at pictures. I heard her car pull up outside. She came into the room and started to mix a drink.
“Jesus, but I’ve missed you,” I said, with a feeling that surprised me. It seemed to surprise her, too.
She came quickly across the room and put her arms around my waist. Her hair was wet and she had not bothered to wear a bra under her sweater. “I missed you, too,” she whispered. “I said some things I shouldn’t have. I practically accused you of being a heartless bastard.”
I didn’t
say anything. I wasn’t sure I could deny it.
“Do you still want me?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said, with honesty. I had made no declarations, but I did want her.
“I want you, too,” she said.
I pulled her toward the bedroom, as I had tried to do so many times. This time she came with me. We made love quickly, inexpertly, awkwardly, even. We lay in each other’s arms for a while, then did it again, this time with more assurance and satisfaction for us both. If we were students of love, we were, at least, learning. One of us was pretending, too.
Later, she brought me a cup of tea and we lay propped up on pillows, talking. “Maeve thought you were dishy,” Connie said.
“Who’s Maeve?”
“Sister Mary Margaret, to you. We grew up together and were at university together, in Cork, before she went away. She studied to be a teacher, and after she took her final vows they sent her to our school.”
“Can you be friends with a nun?”
“Sure, as long as it doesn’t get too worldly, I suppose.”
“If she still thinks guys are dishy, you can’t be too good an influence. I wonder what the head nun would think of that.”
Connie laughed aloud. “She’d wet her pants.” We both laughed. “And you’ve become the great yachtsman.”
I was astonished. We’d kept so close to the cottage and the boatyard I didn’t think anyone knew I was back. I hadn’t even called my grandfather. “How do you know about that?” I asked.
“Helping the intrepid Brit get all ready for his race. Where’s he getting all the money?”
I told her about Cowes and Thrasher. I shouldn’t have told her about Thrasher.
“What’s he like, the great Captain Pemberton-Robinson?”
“He’s great; so’s his wife, Annie. You’ll like them.”
“I hear he shoots children in the streets.”