'Wouldn't that be rather dull and hardly worth printing?' 'No. not at all.'
Suddenly he laughed, put the dog on the floor and stood up on the hearth-rug beside her. 'You'd have to do rather better than this to get away with it,' he said. 'Let's discuss it in the morning. You can tell me then, if you like, who you really are. If you're a journalist, which I doubt, you weren't sent here to write about my hobbies and my pet dog. Funny, you remind me of someone, but I can't for the life of me think who it is.'
He smiled down at her, very confident of himself, not at all mad, reminding her… of what? Being in her father's cabin on board Excalibur? Being swept up in the air by her father, screaming with delight and fear? Oh, the smell of eau-de-cologne that he used, and this man too, not like the stinking after-shave they all swamped themselves with today….
'I'm always reminding people of somebody else.' she said. 'No personality of my own. You remind me of Moshe Dayan.'
He touched his eye-shade. 'Just a gimmick. If he and I sported them pink, we'd be ignored. The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men.'
He walked across the room and threw open the door. 'Bob?' he called.
'Sir,' came the reply from the kitchen.
'Operation B under way?'
'Sir. Michael coming alongside now.'
'Right!' He turned to Shelagh. 'Let me show you the rest of the house.'
She inferred, from the nautical language, that Michael was standing by to escort her by boat to the mainland. Time enough when she got back to the Kilmore Arms to decide whether to return in the morning and brazen it out, or forget all about the mission and beat it for home. He escorted her down the corridor, throwing open one door after the other, with names upon them. Control Room… Signals… Sick Bay… Crew's Quarters… This must be it, she told herself. He has a fantasy of living on board ship. This is how he has come to terms with life, with disappointment, with injury.
'We're highly organised,' he told her. 'I've no use for the telephone communication with the mainland is by shortwave radio. If you live on an island you've got to be self-sufficient. Like a ship at sea. I've built all this up from scratch. There wasn't even a log house when I came to Lamb Island, and now it's a complete flagship. I could control a fleet from here.'
He smiled at her in triumph, and he is mad, she thought, raving mad, but for all that attractive-very, in fact. It would be easy to be taken in, to believe everything he said.
'How many of you live here?'
'Ten, including myself. These are my quarters.'
They had reached a door at the end of the corridor. He led the way through it to a separate wing. There were three rooms and a bathroom. One door had Commander Barry written upon it.
'I'm in here,' he said, throwing open the door, revealing a typical captain's cabin, with a bed, though, not a bunk. The layout was familiar, giving her a sudden poignant nostalgia.
'Guest-rooms next door,' he said. 'Numbers One and Two. Number One has a better view of the lake.'
He advanced into the room and drew aside the curtains. The moon had risen high, and shone down upon the sheet of water beyond the trees. It was very peaceful, very still. There was nothing sinister about Lamb Island now. The situation was reversed, and it was the distant mainland that seemed shrouded, drear.
'Even I should become a recluse if I lived here,' she said, and then, turning from the window, added, 'I mustn't keep you up. Perhaps Michael is waiting to take me back.'
He had switched on the bedside lamp. 'You're not going back. Operation B has been put into effect.'
'What do you mean?'
The single eye was upon her, discomfiting, amused. 'When I was told that a young woman wanted to see me, I decided upon a plan of action. Operation A meant that whoever it was signified nobody of interest, and could be returned to Ballyfane. Operation B meant that the visitor would be my guest, and her luggage fetched from the Kilmore Arms and matters explained to Tim Doherty. He's very discreet.'
She stared at him, her sense of unease returning. 'You didn't give yourself much time to consider. I heard you give orders about Operation B as soon as you came into the room down there.'
'That's right. I'm in the habit of coming to quick decisions. Here is Bob with your things now.'
There was a cough, a quiet knock on the door. The steward came in bearing her luggage. Everything had evidently been put back into her suitcase, all the small litter from her bedroom at the hotel. He also had her maps and her handbag from the car. Nothing had been forgotten.
'Thank you, Bob,' Nick said. 'Miss Blair will ring down for breakfast when she wants it.'
The steward placed her things on a chair, murmured, 'Goodnight, miss,' and withdrew. So that is that, thought Shelagh, and where do we go from here? He was still watching her, the smile of amusement on his face. When in doubt, she told herself, yawn. Be casual. Pretend this sort of thing happens every night of your life. She picked up her bag and found her comb, ran it through her hair, humming a tune under her breath.
'You should never have retired,' she said. 'Such a waste of your organising powers. You ought to be commanding the Mediterranean Fleet. Planning an exercise, or something.'
'That's exactly what I am doing. You'll get your orders when this ship is at action stations. Now I've got some work to do, so I'll leave you. By the way…' he paused, his hand on the door, 'you don't have to lock this, you're perfectly safe.'
'I wouldn't dream of locking it,' she replied. 'As a journalist I'm used to shake-downs in the most unlikely places, and prowling about unknown corridors in the middle of the night.'
Punch-line, she thought. That will teach you. Now disappear and turn all your furniture upside down….
'Ah,' he said, 'so that's your form. It's not a case of you locking your door but of me locking mine. Thanks for the warning.'
She heard him laughing as he went down the corridor. Curtain. Damn. He had had the last word.
She went to her suitcase and threw it open. The few clothes, night-things, make-up, neatly packed. Her handbag untouched. A lucky thing the papers for the hired Austin were all in her stage name. Nothing to connect her with Shelagh Money. The only thing that had been shaken and folded differently was the map and the tourist guide. Well, that didn't matter. She had marked Ballyfane and Lough Torrah with blue pencil, but a journalist would have done that anyway. Something was missing, though- the copper-coloured paper-clip had gone. She shook the tourist guide, but nothing fell out. The envelope was no longer there. The envelope containing the slip of paper with the dates upon it, which she had copied from the file in her father's study.
When Shelagh awoke the sun was streaming into the room. She glanced at her travelling-clock beside the bed. A quarter-past-nine. She had slept soundly for nearly ten hours. She got out of bed and went to the window, drawing the curtains aside. Her room appeared to be at the extreme end of the building. and immediately beyond her window a grass bank sloped towards the trees, and through the trees themselves a narrow clearing led down to the lake. The glimpse she could catch of the lake showed the water to be sparkling blue, the surface that had been so still last evening now turned to wavelets, whipped by a scudding breeze. Nick had told the steward she would ring down for her breakfast, and she picked up the telephone by the bed. Bob's voice came at once.
'Yes, miss. Orange-juice? Coffee? Rolls? Honey?'
'Please…'
Service, she thought. I shouldn't be getting this at the Kilmore Arms. Bob brought the tray to her bedside within four minutes. The morning paper was also upon it, neatly folded.
'The Commander's compliments, miss,' he said. 'He hopes you slept well. If there is anything else you require you have only to tell me.'
I'd like to know if it was Mr Doherty at the Kilmore Arms or Mr O'Reilly from the post office who took the envelope from the tourist guide, she was thinking. Or could it be you, Malvolio? Nobody would have bothered about it if I hadn't
scribbled on the envelope, 'N. Barry. Dates possibly significant.'
'I have everything I need, thank you, Bob,' she said.
When she had breakfasted, dressed herself in sweater and jeans, and made up her eyes with rather greater care than she had done the day before, she was ready to face whatever surprises Nick had in store for her. She walked down the corridor, passed through the swing-door and came to the living-room. The door was open, but he was not there. Somehow she had expected to see him at his desk. She went across to it, glancing furtively over her shoulder, and stared at the photograph once again. Nick was much better now than then, she thought. As a young man he must have been irritating, over-pleased with himself, and she had a feeling that his hair had been red. The whole truth was, she supposed, that they had both been in love with her mother, and when her father won this had helped to turn Nick sour. Started the chip. Odd that her mother had not mentioned the fact. She generally preened her feathers about old admirers. Disloyal, Shelagh knew, but what had both men seen in her except that very obvious pretty-pretty face? Far too much lipstick, like they wore in those days. And a bit of a snob, always name-dropping. She and her father used to wink at each other if she did it in front of other people.
A discreet cough warned her that the steward was watching her from the corridor beyond.
'The Commander is in one of the wood clearings, miss, if you were looking for him. I can point you the way.'
'Oh, thank you, Bob.'
They went out together, and he said, 'You'll find the Commander working down on the site about ten minutes' walk away.'
The site… Felling trees, perhaps. She set off through the woods, the foliage thick and green on either side of the path, dense as a miniature forest, without a glimpse of the lake to be seen. If one strayed from the path, she thought, and wandered amongst the trees, one would be lost instantly, striking for the lake and not finding it, moving round and round in circles. The wind sighed in the branches above her head. No birds, no movement, no lapping water near at hand. A person could be buried here in all the undergrowth and never found. Perhaps she should turn back, retrace her steps to the house, tell the steward she preferred to wait indoors for Commander Barry. She hesitated, but it was too late. Michael was advancing through the trees towards her. He carried a spade in his hand.
'The Commander is waiting for you, miss. He wants to show you the grave. We've just uncovered it.'
Oh God, what grave, for whom? She felt the colour drain from her face. Michael was not smiling. He jerked his head towards a clearing just ahead. Then she saw the others. There were two other men besides Nick. They were stripped to the waist, bending over something in the ground. She felt her legs weaken under her, and her heart began thumping in her breast.
'Miss Blair is here, sir,' said Michael.
Nick turned and straightened. He was dressed like the others, in singlet and jeans. He did not carry a spade, but had a small axe in his hand.
'So,' he said, 'the moment has arrived. Come over here and kneel down.'
He placed his hand on her shoulder, and drew her towards the crater that opened wide before her. She could not speak. She could only see the brown earth piled on either side of the crater, the tumbled leaves, the branches tossed aside. Instinctively, as she knelt, she buried her face in her hands.
'What are you doing?' He sounded surprised. 'You can't see with your eyes covered. This is a great occasion, you know. You're probably the first Englishwoman to be present at the uncovering of a megalithic tomb in Ireland. Court cairns, we call them. The boys and I have been working on this one for weeks.'
The next thing she knew was that she was sitting humped against a tree with her head between her legs. The world stopped spinning, gradually became clear. She was sweating all over.
'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said.
'Go ahead,' he replied. 'Don't mind me.'
She opened her eyes. The men had all disappeared and Nick was crouching beside her.
'That's what comes of only having coffee for breakfast,' he told her. 'Quite fatal starting the day on an empty stomach.'
He rose to his feet and wandered back to the crater.
'I've tremendous hopes of this find. It's in a better state of preservation than many others I've seen. We only stumbled upon it by chance a few weeks ago. We've uncovered the forecourt and part of what I think is a gallery for the burial place itself. It's not been disturbed since about 1,500 years B.C. Can't have the outside world getting wind of it, or we shall have all the archaeological chaps over here wanting to take photographs, and that would put the fat in the fire all right. Feeling better?'
'I don't know,' she said weakly. 'I think so.'
'Come and have a look, then.'
She dragged herself to the crater and peered into the depths. A lot of stones, a sort of rounded arch affair, a kind of wall. Impossible to show enthusiasm, her misunderstanding and fear had been too great.
'Very interesting,' she said, and then to her shame, far worse than being sick, she burst into tears. He stared at her, momentarily nonplussed, then taking her by the hand began walking briskly through the wood without speaking, whistling between his teeth, until within a few minutes the trees had cleared and they were standing by the side of the lake.
'Ballyfane is over to the west. You can't see it from here. The lake broadens to the north on this side, and winds in and out against the mainland like a patchwork quilt. In winter the duck fly in and settle amongst the reeds. I never shoot them, though. In summer I come and swim here before breakfast.'
Shelagh had recovered. He had given her time to pull herself together, which was all that mattered, and she was grateful to him.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but frankly, when I saw Michael with the spade and he said something about a grave, I thought my last moment had come.'
He stared at her, astonished. Then he smiled. 'You're not so hard-bitten as you like to pretend. That swagger of yours is all bluff.'
'Partly,' she admitted, 'but it's a new situation to me, being dumped on an island with a recluse. I see now why I was hijacked. You don't want anyone leaking about your megalithic find to the press. O.K., I won't. That's a promise.'
He did not answer immediately. He stood there, stroking his chin.
'I–I'm,' he said after a moment. 'Well, that's very sporting of you. Now, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go back to the house, get Bob to make up a packed lunch, and I'll take you for a tour of the lake. And I promise not to push you overboard.'
He's only mad, she thought, nor-nor-west. He's sane in every respect save for the photograph. But for that… but for the photograph she would come clean at once and tell him the truth about herself, about her reason for coming to Ballyfane. Not yet, though.
Nothing could be more different, Shelagh decided several hours later, than the Nick described by her father, with a chip on the shoulder, a grudge against the world, soured by disappointment, than this man who put himself out to entertain her, to see that she enjoyed every moment of the hours spent in his company. The twin-engined launch, with a small cabin for'ard-not the little chug-chug craft in which Michael had brought her to the island the day before-glided smoothly across the lake, dodging in and out amongst the tongues of land, while he pointed out to her, from the helmsman's seat, the various points of interest on the mainland. The distant hills to the west, a ruined castle, the tower of an ancient abbey. Never once did he allude to the reason for her visit, nor press her for information about her own life. They ate hard-boiled eggs and cold chicken seated side by side in the small cabin, and she kept thinking how her father would have loved it, how this would have been just his way of spending a day had he lived to take that holiday. She could picture him and Nick together, chaffing, slanging away at each other, showing off, in a curious sort of way, because she was there. Not her mother, though. She would have wrecked the whole thing.
'You know,' she said in a burst of confidence, the effect of a tot of whisky befor
e the Guinness, 'the Commander Barry I imagined wasn't a scrap like you.'
'What did you imagine?' he asked.
'Well, because of your being this recluse they told me about, I pictured someone living in a castle filled with old retainers and baying wolf-hounds. Rather a buffer. Either grim and very rude, shouting at the retainers, or terribly hearty, playing practical jokes.'
He smiled. 'I can be very rude when I choose, and I often shout at Bob. As to practical jokes… I've played them in my time. Still do. Have another Guinness?' She shook her head and leant back against the bulkhead. 'The trouble was,' he said, 'the sort of jokes I played were mostly to amuse myself. They've gone out of fashion, anyway. I don't suppose you, for instance, ever put white mice in your editor's desk?'
For editor's desk substitute star's dressing-room, she thought.
'Not white mice,' she replied, 'but I once put a stink-bomb under my boss's bed. He hopped out of it pretty quick, I don't mind telling you.'
Manchester it was, and Bruce never forgave her, either. What he thought was boiling up to be a discreet affair between them vanished in smoke.
'That's what I meant,' he said. 'The best of jokes are only fun for oneself. A bit of a gamble, though, to pick on your boss.'
'Self-protection,' she told him 'I was bored at the thought of getting into bed with him.'
He started to laugh, then checked himself. 'Forgive me, I'm being hearty. Do you have a lot of trouble with your editors?'
She pretended to reflect. 'It all depends. They can be rather demanding. And if you're ambitious, which I am, it earns you promotion. The whole thing's a chore, though. I'm not really permissive.'
'Meaning what?'
'Well, I don't strip down at the flick of a hat. It has to be someone I like. Am I shocking you?'
'Not in the least. A buffer like myself likes to know how the young live.'
She reached for a cigarette. This time he lighted it for her.
'The thing is,' she said, and she might have been talking to her father after Sunday supper, with her mother safe in the other room, only actually this was more fun, 'the thing is, I find sex over-rated. Men make such a fuss, put one off, all that groaning. Some even cry. The only reason one does it is to claim a scalp, like playing Red Indians. The whole thing's a dead loss, in my opinion. But there, I'm only nineteen. Plenty of time to ripen up.'
Not After Midnight & Other Stories Page 15