by Stuart Woods
“You well know what it is,” I said, hoping to embarrass her into silence, but that only brought on more hysteria.
“So how’s Mister Society?” Connie asked archly.
“What?”
“Oh, the darling of the aristocracy,” Maeve/Sister Mary Margaret chimed in.
“Okay, you two, what’s going on here?” Then I saw the London tabloid on the coffee table. Lady Jane Berkeley looked disdainfully straight ahead, accustomed to this unwanted attention, while I, new to the game, gaped blankly at the camera. I looked quite foolish.
“Oh, that,” I said lamely. “A blind date. We had dinner with my parents, in fact.”
“Did you, now?” Connie came back.
“We did.”
“And who fixed you up so nicely, then? Must have been Mark’s friend, Mr. Thrasher, eh?”
I looked quickly at Maeve, who seemed to know everything and be vastly amused by it. “No, she picked me up in a pub,” I said, regaining my composure. I wondered how the hell Connie came up with that connection and quickly glanced through the article. The presence of neither Thrasher nor Genevieve Wheatley at the Connaught had escaped the newspaper, though they both had escaped the photographer. There was a picture of Mrs. Wheatley at the time of her husband’s death, and one of Derek Thrasher that must have been ten years old. His hair had been cut severely short at the time and he had worn glasses. I would never have recognized him had the photograph not been captioned.
“You’d be better off in a pub than in that company,” Maeve said, with a vehemence that surprised me.
“I wouldn’t have eaten nearly as well, though.” I was trying to think of a way to change the subject. “And I wouldn’t have seen my folks.”
“Are they well?” Connie asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, grateful for a way out of the Thrasher corner. “Just great. Mother had already heard about you from Grandfather; she was very curious.”
“Holy Mother of God!” the nun exclaimed, looking at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to make a move, Mother Superior will have my … ” she stopped herself, and we filled the space with laughter. She gathered herself together, said her goodbyes, still giggling, and drove away in the van.
“Are you sure that’s a nun?” I asked Connie. “She doesn’t fit the image at all.”
“She’s just Maeve when she’s with me. By the time she gets back to the convent she’ll be Sister Mary Margaret again, don’t worry.”
“You shouldn’t have told her about Thrasher, Connie. Mark asked me to keep that quiet. I shouldn’t even have told you.”
“Well, even if I hadn’t told her, you’re all over the papers with him, now, so it hardly matters. Why is Mr. Thrasher’s sponsorship a secret, anyhow?”
“He seems to like to do things quietly at the best of times, and this isn’t the best of times. Did you hear about the bomb in Berkeley Square?”
“Oh, yes, that was intended for his company, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and I don’t think it would improve our relationship with the locals if there were a connection with Thrasher. Have you told anybody else about him?”
She shook her head. “No, and your secrets are always safe with a nun. Mind you,” she said, pulling me toward the sofa, “I’m not sure you’d be safe with that particular nun if I weren’t about.” She pulled me down on top of her. We were soon groping at each other’s clothing and made love half dressed. I still had one leg in my trousers when we had finished and lay panting on the floor where we had fallen.
“I think you got all turned on having a nun about the place,” Connie teased.
“I’m a Baptist, remember. My fantasies were never about nuns the way yours probably were about priests.”
We got dressed, and Connie made coffee.
“What’s Maeve’s story, anyway? Why did she become a nun?”
“To tell you the truth, I’ve never really understood it. Had something to do with men, I think. When we were kids the boys were all after her; she’s really a great looking girl. Donal O’Donnell had the most awful thing about her when we were about sixteen, but I think she preferred Denny.”
“God, I can’t imagine anybody being sweet on Denny. What a complete jerk! Donal’s okay, but even he’s been acting funny lately, while Denny … ” I stopped short of telling her about the incident at the cottage.
“Denny just hates Brits, that’s all, and you’re buddies with a Brit.”
“But that’s all so stupid, so futile. Jesus, Mark’s project is paying Denny’s wages for several months.”
“All the more reason for Denny to hate him, because he’s taking his money. Denny’s and Donal’s grandfather was a great republican, you know, during the troubles.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“His problem was, when the troubles were over, he kept settling his differences the way he had during the troubles. They say he burned a couple of fellows out, and eventually he was hanged for killing a man.”
“By the government he had fought for?”
“Yes. And I think there’s a lot of his grandfather in Denny.”
21
THE PHOSPHORESCENT GLOW of the cathode ray tube flitted about the darkened room, changing slightly with the click of each key. Pearce stared into the computer terminal like a surgeon searching for a tiny, hemorrhaging vein to tie off. He shook his head angrily, removed the floppy disk from its drive, and inserted the next disk—a thin wheel of mylar plastic held rigid by a paper envelope.
It had taken weeks to be allowed to stay in the computer room after hours, but finally enough accounting work had piled up so that his offer to toil late had been received with enthusiasm instead of suspicion. Each night for nearly two weeks he had spent an hour rapidly posting figures into the computer’s general ledger program and two hours searching the magnetic storage records. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it.
Now he thought he saw it. Since the labels on the disks were coded and the codebook locked away, he had had to view each one individually to have an idea of its contents. The title of the disk now in the drive made him stop breathing for a moment.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE APPLICATIONS LEDGER, 1968-69
Pearce scrolled quickly through the figures and almost immediately began to see his opportunity. He found the operating systems manual in a desk drawer and referred quickly to its index. Then he went to the supplies cupboard, found a blank disk, inserted it into the number two drive, and carefully following the instructions in the manual, imaged the data from the original disk to the new one. Now he had what he needed. He returned the original to its storage envelope and replaced it in the file drawer.
He inserted the new disk, invoked the systems editor and began to scroll slowly, carefully, through the columns of figures. Every fourth or fifth line, he changed a number, doubling or tripling it. Pearce glanced at his watch. He wouldn’t be able to finish this in one evening or two, but he had made a start. He switched on the printer and instructed the computer to make a hard copy of the first ledger. As the machine rapidly spat the eighty-column paper, he flipped through the continuous-form pages, viewing his handiwork. He began to grow excited; it was going to work. A few more evenings of this and he would have a cooked ledger that would be devastating.
When the printout was complete, Pearce put the new disk into its envelope and taped it to the bottom of his center desk drawer, working it a couple of times to be sure the envelope did not foul as the drawer slide in and out. He gathered the printout into its original accordion folds, loosened his belt, tucked the sheaf of papers under his shirt and into his trousers and buckled up again. With his coat and mackintosh on and left unbuttoned there was no noticeable bulge.
Still, on his way out of the building, he approached the security desk with some trepidation. He need not have feared. The guard was by now accustomed to his late hours.
“Still burning the midnight oil, Mr. Pearce?” the man asked.
&n
bsp; “Yes, but I think I’ll be done in a few days’ time. All done.”
“Good night, then. Mind how you go; wet out tonight.”
“Good night.” Pearce walked quickly from the building toward the car park, his heart pounding joyfully. He hoped his mother could feel his happiness, his triumph. After what she had gone through, it would be sweet satisfaction.
22
I SLEPT with the loaded riot gun under my bed for a week. Nothing happened. No more visitors, no threats of any kind. I tucked the shotgun away into my clothing cupboard and left it unloaded, which would not have pleased Mark but made me more comfortable. I continued to see light green Volkswagens at every turn. I even saw the one with the OOP number plate once, parked in front of a cinema in Patrick Street, in Cork. If I hadn’t been in a hurry to get Connie Lydon into bed at the time, I might have hung around until the movie let out to see who was the driver.
In spite of my loving Annie from afar, as it were, and lusting for Jane Berkeley from an even greater distance, I was attracted to Connie in a way that endured. She was always fresh and new to me whether we were at a hooley, in the tub together, or sailing Toscana in Cork Harbour on a Sunday afternoon. Although I had never done anything as rash as to profess love, she seemed happy and made no demands for declarations, to my relief. Pressed into a corner, I probably would have told her anything she wanted to hear; I was much happier seeing her than not.
We continued to sail, even as the weather turned cooler, then cold, and ever wetter. It rains a lot in Ireland, almost any time of year, but in the late autumn it gets serious. We’d slip the mooring in front of the cottage, motor down past the Royal Cork Yacht Club, and sail idly around the big harbor, tying up at Dirty Murphy’s, a pub on the eastern shore, and have a Guinness in front of a turf fire in the smoky lounge bar. Sometimes Connie would cook dinner aboard, and we would make love in the forepeak double berth and not pick up our mooring until nearly midnight, having slipped past the moored yachts at the club on our way upriver.
Work on the yacht continued steadily. By mid-November we were ready to turn the hull, which had been constructed upside-down, and begin work on the interior structure and the decking. The job went surprisingly quickly. We rigged a chain hoist from an overhead support system to one side of the hull, hauled it as far upright as we dared without having it fall on top of us, then braced it, took the chain hoist to eyes set in the wooden keel and, while everybody stood bracing with four-by-fours, let down until the hull was suspended upright from the chains, hanging just over the lead keel, which had been ordered from England. We then lowered the hull gently until the stainless steel keelbolts mated with the holes in the wooden keel and then screwed down the nuts tightly. The hull was left resting on its lead keel, which held it some six feet off the floor, and the keel, in turn, rested on a sturdy little rail car, on which it would roll to the water at launching time. The chain hoist would not be powerful enough to lift the whole boat when it was completed, so the car had to be in place early. The hull was then braced all round with four-by-fours, which were chocked, and, finally, the chain lift was unhooked. The hull stood gleaming with its seven skins of varnish, three more still to come when the entire boat was nearer completion.
“Jesus,” Mark said. “She begins to look like a yacht, doesn’t she?” It was the first time he had referred to the hull as ‘she.’ “
“Have you decided on a name, yet, Mark?” I asked. We had once made a list of possibilities, but Mark had ignored it, saying that the proper name would emerge at the proper moment.
Mark grinned. “She’s going to cost 150,000 pounds sterling before she’s all done. I think I’ll call her Expensive.”
I laughed. “You’ll certainly have the sympathy of every boat owner in the world.”
The entire crew, except for Denny O’Donnell, stood and looked at her in awe for a moment. She was the largest vessel to have been built at Cork Harbour Boatyard: sixty feet in length, fourteen feet of beam, and eight and a half feet of draft. Denny O’Donnell was already out of the building before anyone else stirred. His twin looked sorrowfully after him. The brothers did not seem to be getting on well lately. Donal was now arriving in his own car, and rumor had it that he had moved out of his lodgings with Denny and found a place of his own. Denny had returned to his usual sour disposition, and Donal, while still friendly, seemed somehow detached.
Mark and I were the last to leave the yard, and it was nearly seven when we arrived home, exhausted. “I thought you two would never show,” Annie said. She was wearing a dress, a rare event. “Peter-Patrick and Joan Coolmore have invited us all to dinner at the Royal Cork, and I accepted for us. We’re due there at seven-thirty. Mark and I exchanged a glance. We were careful not to rile her these days, after her earlier explosion. Annie continued, “Mark, you have the tub first, and you and I will go ahead. Willie can join us when he’s got himself together.” We did as we were told.
They had been gone half an hour before I was bathed and dressed, and as I tied my necktie, a sudden memory hit me. Mark had left the building shed first and I had come after him, carrying an armful of wood scraps that we burned in the cottage fireplace. I had not gone back to lock the shed door. The padlock had been left hanging open on the hasp, and I would have to go and lock it before joining the Coolmores at the yacht club. Cursing my carelessness, I raced over the back roads to the boatyard and skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel before the shed door. The wind was getting up a bit and the skies were threatening; a nearly full moon lit the big shed intermittently as clouds scuddered past it. The door was wide open, banging against the shed as the wind whipped it back and forth. As I was about to close it I glanced inside the shed and noticed that the light in Finbar’s office was on. I must have forgotten that, too, I thought; I stepped inside, secured the banging door, and walked toward the office. On the other side of the chocked-up yacht, a rat ran at the sound of my footsteps, making little scraping noises on the cement floor. Then I heard another, different sound that stopped me in my tracks.
Over the howl of the wind around the tin shed, I heard it again: a creaking of timber under strain. I looked over at the hull, its size seemingly increased by its confines, and thought just for a moment that I saw it move. That was absurd, of course; it was carefully chocked in place. I jerked as I might have if struck by lightning; yet another sound caused this—the sound of a four-by-four piece of timber striking concrete and bouncing. By the time the second four-by-four struck the floor I was moving toward the hull; when the third one fell, I was running. Now the sound was of timber scraping across cement as the huge hull began to lean toward me. All around the hull, four by fours were falling as they came loose; the timber nearest me maintained contact with the hull at its center, but the other end of it slid slowly, noisily across the concrete floor.
Stupidly, I flung myself at it as if tackling a running back head on. Miraculously, it stopped sliding. Pushing hard against the timber with my shoulder I looked about me; the hull was leaning toward me, hovering over me at an angle of about thirty degrees off the vertical; all of the seven other four-by-fours supporting it had fallen and lay scattered about; the only thing keeping the hull from crashing to the concrete floor was the single timber to which I clung. And, I quickly discovered when I moved, all that was holding the timber in place was my weight.
I tried jamming it further into place, but every time I took any weight off it, the timber’s end slid further along the floor away from the hull, and the hull leaned even further toward me. It was absurd. A single timber, fortuitously placed at exactly the right spot along the hull’s length, was all that kept the hull from falling. If it had been placed a foot differently in either direction, the unreinforced hull would have spun on its keel and crashed to the concrete floor, ruining weeks, months of work. I saw that if I released the timber now, this would still happen, and moreover, the bloody thing would fall on me.
I looked around for some way of shoring up the hull so that I coul
d move. Another of the four by fours was no more than five feet from me. I reached out with a toe in an attempt to drag it toward me. At the shift in my weight, the timber to which I clung slid a bit more, and the whole hull threatened again to fall. That was clearly no good. I tried to think of some way to call for help; the telephone was thirty feet away on Finbar’s desk. No good, either. There was no point in shouting, because the shed was a hundred yards from the road. Even a passer-by on foot would not hear me, what with the wind putting up such a howl. It slowly became clear to me that I was stuck in this ridiculous position until help arrived or the hull crashed down on top of me, whichever came first.
I lay on top of the timber and wedged a toe under its tip. That allowed me to relax one leg a bit, but I had to push hard with the other leg to keep the pressure on the timber. I looked at my watch. There was no watch. In my rush to dress and get to the Royal Cork I had forgotten to wear it. I tried to figure out what time it was. It had been almost 7:30 when Mark and Annie had left the cottage; I was about half an hour behind them. It took ten or twelve minutes to drive to the yard, and I had been there, what, all of five minutes? They wouldn’t even miss me until they had had a couple of drinks and were getting hungry, say about 8:30, then they would call the cottage to see if I had left. When they got no answer they would assume I was on the way and would be there momentarily. When I didn’t show, then what?
The leg with which I was pushing was starting to get very tired. By pushing extra hard on the timber, I was able to get my other toe under it and shift the load to my other leg. I had to do this about every five minutes, I reckoned, in order to keep from getting leg cramps. How had this happened? We had chocked all the timbers, hammering them in firmly with a sledge. Of course, if one slipped, then the opposite one might, too, with less pressure on it. But all of them? Could there have been some sort of chain reaction? Or was that really a rat I’d heard when I walked into the shed?