by Stuart Woods
As the jet lifted over the green fields of County Limerick and turned toward the Atlantic, I thought about the callow youth who had landed here fifteen months before and what had happened to him since. In the washroom I splashed water on my face and looked into the mirror. The fellow who looked back at me was leaner, older, and quite definitely sadder than his predecessor. I wondered if he were wiser, too. More confident of himself he was, surely; more self-possessed, a better opinion of himself and what he was made of. But wiser? It would take some time to figure that one out.
I settled back into my seat with a groan and, gratefully, closed a chapter of my life in which women betrayed me and people shot at me. I didn’t know it then, but the place was well-marked; the book waited to be reopened.
56
I TOLD my parents everything, except about our IRA problems and my personal difficulties, and then I lost myself in mindless drudgery on the home farm. I replaced fenceposts, strung wire, sowed winter pasture, and helped paint a barn. I used work the way some people use sleep; instead of sleeping on it I toiled on it. I was angry at Mark for getting me shot at, angry with Connie for holding me at bay, angry with Annie for using me as a diversion. As I labored at my tasks, the barbs of my anger grew duller. There was still pain, but it was not as sharp.
I presented myself at the University of Georgia Law School on time and, with no fences to mend nor barns to paint, I plunged into the study of the law as if I were a terminally ill man who had been told that in those lectures and books lay a cure for my ailment and, if that failed, the key to the hereafter. I began the term as a student, and by Thanksgiving, I was becoming a scholar. Dean Henry began to nod at me when we passed in the hallways.
Mark wrote to me; the letter was postmarked St. Tropez. He and Annie had taken a job as paid skipper and cook on a ninety-foot ketch belonging to a friend of Derek Thrasher, wandering the Mediterranean. The owner was rarely aboard, and they had it mostly to themselves. Wave was safely laid up in a quiet, little yard in Falmouth, in case friends of Red O’Mahoney still had any interest. With continuing therapeutic exercise, Mark’s leg was coming along nicely; the steel brace had been replaced by an elastic bandage. They would return to England in mid-May to get the yacht launched and ready for the Transatlantic, the first week in June. He wanted me there as soon as I had graduated. I didn’t write back to him.
Derek Thrasher also wrote to me, saying he had seen the completed yacht and thanking me for my work. The letter was postmarked Paris, but there was no return address.
North Georgia had a particularly beautiful autumn that year, I kept hearing, but I hardly noticed. I had a single room in the law dorm, and it might as well have been a cell. I seemed to divide all my time between that room and the law library. I had bought a used Chevrolet, but it sat in the dorm parking lot while I walked the short distance to and from school. When I was ready to leave for home for the Thanksgiving holiday, I discovered the battery was dead, had been, probably, for some time. My old classmates had graduated, and I resisted new friendships. I got a very short haircut; mostly because everybody else was wearing his fashionably long. Everybody thought I was very strange, except Dean Henry, whose ideal young man was one who had a short haircut and spent all his time in the law library.
To say that I was unhappy would have been inaccurate. I was simply numb. My anger had shrunk into something cold and hard inside me; all other emotion I seemed to be able to channel into the law. If my parents were hurt because I didn’t visit home except for the major holidays, my first-term grades convinced them that I was using my time well. My father was spending a lot of time laying the groundwork for a run for the U.S. Senate in 1972. Senator Richard Russell had died in office, and Governor Jimmy Carter, whose opponent my father had supported, had appointed a man named Gambrell to fill the unexpired term. Even at Christmas, there was a constant stream of people at the farm, and we didn’t have much time to talk.
My mother tried. We went riding together during my Christmas vacation.
“Will,” she said as we walked the horses along a creek bank, “I’m awfully pleased about your academic record so far, but you’re not yourself, somehow.”
I laughed ruefully. “That isn’t like me, is it? Good grades.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. You’ve always had that capacity, and I’m glad you’ve suddenly decided to use it. Did something happen during your time in Ireland that you haven’t talked about?” We rode along silently. “A girl? Is it Connie?”
“Something like that,” I said. It seemed an easy way out of explaining.
“Well,” she said, “I think I’m bright enough to know that I can’t be of much help with that sort of problem, but if you want to talk about it sometime, I’ll do the best I can.”
I smiled at her. “I know you would, Ma, but don’t worry. I’ll work it out for myself.”
I didn’t even try to work it out. When I finally began to think about it, I did so in spite of trying not to. There was a spring day, April, first green abounding on the lovely, old campus, a lot of rain interspersed with brief periods of dazzling sunshine. I was nearly overwhelmed with a strange emotion; there was a rush of Ireland—the green, the damp, the soggy odor of the earth—just for a few moments. I walked faster toward the library, and it went away.
A day or two later, I got a letter from, of all people, Jane Berkeley. It was a surprise, because all our long-distance communication had always been by telephone, and that, brief and to the point. In Paris, our communication had been verbally telegraphic and physically expansive. Her letter was brief but illuminating. Derek Thrasher’s problems with the public prosecutor had been resolved with the discovery of a back-up computer disk in Avondale’s files, which confirmed the accuracy of the company’s original reports. The books given to the prosecutor by the accountant, Pearce, had thus been exposed as forgeries, and the man was being sought by the police in that connection. There was some sort of IRA involvement, too, through a brother, and they would want to ask him about the Berkeley Square bombing when they found him.
Derek, although cleared, had remained reclusive, growing even more so, if that were possible. She rarely heard from him, except through Nicky.
Then came her little bombshell. “I’m being married in June,” she wrote. “He’s French, from a wine and banking family; works in well with my plans and those of my family. You didn’t meet him, but he was at the New Year’s party, and at Brasserie Lipp the next day. We’d had a spat at that time. You were unwittingly helpful then and at Easter, too. Drove him mad. Can’t thank you enough. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll still see each other from time to time. Ring me for lunch when you’re in Paris. I won’t be able to resist.”
That stung. I had merely been a pawn in her game. And even though she wasn’t yet married, she was already suggesting that we could go on fucking whenever I was in town.
The pin of that prick to my ego lodged someplace inside me and brought on the old anger, hot and swelling. For someone who had not felt anything for months, it was nearly unbearable. I missed two days of classes, while I tried to figure out what was going on inside me. My anger, I discovered, was rooted in guilt, and that was particularly hard to deal with. My guilt about Connie was straightforward; I had used her badly, and she knew it. With Annie, it was harder to fathom, because I still believed she had wronged me. Why should I feel guilty? And yet I did.
I resumed classes but continued to pick at my emotional scabs. A week later, a letter arrived, postmarked Monte Carlo.
My dear Willie,
We are coming to the end of our glorious Mediterranean season and are turning our eyes toward England again, I, somewhat reluctantly. Mark has enjoyed himself down here, of course, but his heart is with Wave, and he won’t be content until he has her in the water and sailing again.
This paid holiday of ours has been the answer to a prayer. We’ve had the time and the peace to get to know each other again, and we both seem to like what we’ve foun
d.
I hope that enough time has passed that you feel we can be friends again. I hope you will come to Plymouth for the start of the race. Mark will have all the help he needs, of course, from all his service chums, but in a very important way Wave is as much yours as his, and for Mark, there will be a large gap in his effort if you are not here to share it. For myself, I miss you very much, and I want us all to be together again. I hope Connie will come, too. I’ve written to ask her. We’re planning a cruise of Cape Cod and Maine after the race. I hope you can both join us. It would be like old times.
Please let us hear from you. Write care of the Royal Western.
With love,
Annie
I read the letter again and again, plumbing its meaning. I still wasn’t sure why I felt guilty about Annie, but I was sure she had forgiven me.
With Connie, it seemed to me that I should begin from the beginning, to forget what was past and try to build again from scratch. I wrote her a chatty letter about school and springtime in Georgia, taking care to make no emotional statements or references. Three weeks later, I got an equally chatty letter in return, enclosing a snapshot of my bit of land and the ruined cottage near Kinsale. She thought I would like to remember the way it was in the spring, she said. The letter closed with “Love.”
It was the middle of May, now, and I quickly wrote her again, more warmly. “You have a stake in Wave, just as I do,” I said. “Without your help I would never have finished the work on her. I wouldn’t want to watch her sail from Plymouth without you there to see it, too. Please come.”
It took a week for a letter to reach Ireland, and a week for a reply. For the last week before graduation I was at the mailbox the minute class was over. The race was to start on Saturday, June 10. Graduation was on Monday, the fifth. I got a plane for New York the next morning and from there, a plane to London on Tuesday night.
There had been no reply from Connie.
57
MAEVE SAT in the June sunshine in the garden of a country pub west of London, reading the London Evening Standard:.
DUBLIN POLICE IN MAJOR COUP AGAINST PROVOS
Dublin police last night shot and killed six members of a Provisional IRA splinter group styling itself the “Irish Freedom Brigade, “ in a raid on a South Dublin house. The leader of the group, Michael Pearce, was thought to have taken his own life as police closed in.
The piece ran on, with a fairly accurate summary of the group’s activities over the past two years, not excluding her and Denny’s exploits. She had become quite used to news stories about the “Red Nun.” The English tabloids had had a field day when she had finally been identified. They had run photographs of her in habit and had even dug up her school pictures. Fortunately, there had been no recent likenesses available. They had identified Denny, too, but had not been able to come up with a photograph. The police artists’ impressions had not been accurate enough to hurt. She handed the newspaper back to Denny. “Just as well,” she said. “We’re lucky to have them off our backs. Now we can join up with our comrades in Europe.”
Denny shook his head. “I don’t know, Maeve. We’re low on just about everything in the way of matériel, except what’s in the caravan in Plymouth. Money, too. We’re going to have to do another bank, soon, and they’re getting tougher.” He looked terrible, she thought. He almost certainly had an ulcer; he had been living on stomach remedies for weeks. “I wouldn’t want to try getting through a ferryport or an airport just at the moment, either,” he said. Their last job had been only two days before, in Liverpool, and the country was very hot, now. “Besides, we’ve still got Robinson to do.” Denny was still smarting from the fiasco with Red O’Mahoney. They had made port in Oysterhaven, but the boat had sunk at dockside. Red had been badly burned.
“I know,” she said. “We’ll do that, no matter what. Maybe the curate will have something for us. Maybe that’s why he wanted this meeting.” They had not often seen the curate since their meeting at the London pub; most of their dealings had been over the telephone network.
At that moment he entered the garden from the pub. He walked straight over and sat down heavily at their table. Maeve thought he looked a bit drunk; his entrance had certainly been incautious.
“So?” she said.
“You’ve read the papers?” he said.
“Of course.”
“We’re done, then. There’s no one even to contact.”
Maeve tensed. “You’ve no other network on this side?”
He shook his head. “None. Michael was my only contact.”
It was the only time he’d ever referred to Michael Pearce as anything but the monsignor. “Michael Pearce was your brother, wasn’t he?” He had hinted as much when he assigned the curate as their contact.
Pearce nodded. “Yes. He was a brave man, Michael. Didn’t let the bastards take him alive.”
“So what resources do you have, now?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her, surprised. “None. Oh, I’ve a bit of money in a London savings bank, but I can’t touch it, now, not with them after me.”
“Why would they be after you?” Maeve asked, starting to worry.
“Oh, nothing about the cause, at least I don’t think so. Another thing entirely. Some books I cooked.”
Maeve exchanged glances with Denny, and they both began looking about the pub as casually as possible. “I think we’d better leave here. How did you come?”
“Train to the station and a taxi.”
They got up and moved without hurrying to the car. They put Patrick Pearce into the front seat next to Maeve, who drove. She turned down the first lane they came to and drove toward a grove of trees.
“Where are we going?” Pearce asked, suddenly taking note of his surroundings.
“We’ve got some gear buried down in the trees, there,” Maeve said smoothly. She met Denny’s eyes in the rear view mirror. He nodded. They couldn’t have anything further to do with this fool, who could easily have brought the police down on them with this stupid meeting.
She parked in the trees. “This way,” she said, striking out along a footpath. Pearce nodded, but he looked very tense, she thought. Oh, well, in a few minutes he would be relaxed. Pearce followed her, with Denny bringing up the rear. A dozen yards along the path she heard a grunt, followed quickly by a gargling sound. She turned, relieved that it was over. Then she threw herself sideways into some brush, clawing at her handbag. Denny was standing in the path, both hands to his throat, trying to stem a pulsing stream of blood. Pearce was coming toward her with a knife.
She had her hand in the pocketbook, but the gun was catching on the lining. She shot him twice in the face, right through the bag. He fell down beside her in the brush, rolled halfway over, and died. She leapt to her feet and ran for Denny. He was on his knees, now, in a muddy puddle of his own blood. He was trying to say something, but the wind was not getting past the bubbling slash in his throat. He was mouthing something. She knew what it was. His lips were repeatedly forming one word, “Robinson.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, then dodged out of his way as he fell forward on his face. She couldn’t be covered with his blood, she stepped carefully around the puddle on the way to the car.
In the village she quickly found the station and a phone box. She dialed a Cork number; it answered and the beeps started; she fed the machine all the ten-pence pieces she had, and the beeping stopped.
“Yes?”
“This is Sister Concepta.”
“You don’t sound well.”
“The priest and the curate have just given each other the last rites.”
There was a silence. “Don’t give me any details, now,” he said. “You know about the Dublin parish.”
“Yes.”
“There won’t be any more postings from there, nor from here. I’m shutting down the diocese.”
“I understand.”
“What are your plans?”
“I expect I’ll apply t
o an order on the continent when I’m finished here.”
“Finished?”
“You’ll recall that one major sinner remains that we have not ministered to.”
He was silent again. “I remember,” he said, finally. “You know where he is, of course.”
“It was all over Sunday’s Observer.”
“I think we’d better perform this particular ritual together,” he said.
She brightened. “I could certainly use assistance.”
“Do you have the matériel?”
“Yes, the caravan and a car are stored at a garage in the city in question.”
“Good. Can you be there by six tomorrow evening?”
“No problem.”
“I’ll get the afternoon plane. I’ll meet you at the main station at six. The event doesn’t begin until Saturday. That’ll give us thirty-six hours to plan.”
“That should be plenty.”
“Until we meet, then.”
“Yes.” She hung up and leaned against the wall, relieved. She wouldn’t be alone in this after all. She would have the support of the leader who had brought her into this. A train pulled into the station, pointing west. She ran for the ticket kiosk.
58
MY PLANE landed early Wednesday morning at Heathrow, beginning a day the terrible clarity of which I have often wished I could simply erase from my mind. It began well, certainly. Connie was waiting when I came out of customs.
“Hi,” she said breezily and allowed herself to be kissed on the cheek and briefly hugged. It was clear I still had a great deal of lost ground to make up.
“How did you know which plane?” I asked.