Tears was it? and look who had opened the floodgates! ‘Just you leave it to me, m’am. Stand aside while I cuts to the quick of it!’
Lost buttons and lost wedding rings, was it now? And there was that half-brother of hers rolling his eyes to the heavens above while denying the two of them had talked at all, at all about the O’Bannions and the Darcys, to say not a blessed thing about Liam Nolan.
‘There’s something going on around this house, Mrs. Fraser, and I aims to get to the bottom of it, I does.’
She had left the kitchen, had vanished just like her ring. Caithleen came running only to have the sheet torn from her hands and flung over the kitchen table, snapped to make it fly and settle without a hand needing to smooth it.
‘Now you put that box down and stand there before it, the two of you. Bridget! close the lid. That was my mother’s, and before ever we searched, we said us a prayer, we did. So bow your heads now, I say, and draw your hands together in penitence.’
The two of them were a pair, Caithleen the taller, Bridget the plumper. Ria drew in a breath. Girls had to be dealt with firmly where stealing was involved. ‘Now say after me, Dear God—repeat it now, the two of you.’
They did, and their voices were most humble and that was as it should be. ‘Dear God, Who is the One and Only God, Father of the Son and Blessed Father to us all, I do swear on my grave to come and that of my ancestors back unto the tenth generation that I have stolen nothing from this house. Bridget, you being employed and all by that kindest of men, we’ll overlook them Christmas raisins and currants I be saving and we’ll settle on Mrs. Fraser’s ring. Did you steal it?’ she hissed, making the girl fling back her head as if struck.
Bridget burst into tears. ‘No, m’am. No! I wouldn’t do such a terrible thing. You know I wouldn’t. I’m a good girl. I goes to Mass. I says my prayers. I …’
‘That’ll be enough, girl. Now look at that box of my mother’s. See the inlay of it, do you? ’Tis the Star of David himself, it is, given in the circle of the world and come by ship from the very Plains of Abraham on the death to the third or fourth generation or more of a dearly departed relative. Now answer me again, girl. Did you take that ring because if you did, your heart is smaller than the smallest button in that box unless you repent and give it up this instant!’
The girl would have troubled Noah on the fortieth day, and him with the last of the doves in his hand. ‘Fair enough, Bridget. Now don’t carry on. I has to know, girl.
‘Caithleen, you being a guest in this house and dear to us, I’ll ask it of you too. If you did take Mrs. Fraser’s wedding ring, it’ll be a secret known only to the three of us.’
The girl didn’t cry. Where there should have been tears there was only anger.
‘I did not, Mrs. Haney. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. The doctor’s my friend.’
‘Then let us find a button for that blouse.’
Caithleen wanted to say, There’s no need. I have one, but she held her tongue. Dr. Fraser had the wedding ring. She had seen him looking sadly at it, but when she’d come along the corridor towards him, he had simply tucked it away in his waistcoat pocket and had said nothing. Not a blessed thing, though he’d seen her looking at it.
5
The sound of the car was all that passed between them, the lights on the dash glowing dimly, the road ahead being dark, Hamish late as usual. Even on a Sunday he would be called away.
‘Darling, I wish you’d say something. My ring will turn up. I didn’t lose it on purpose.’
‘And I didn’t say you had.’
‘Then what’s bothering you? You know I can’t stand your being upset with me any more than I can our having to go to another of these wretched do’s of the colonel’s.’
Deliberately he left his foot off the brake as they rounded a hairpin bend. Her stomach lifted. Bends and ups and downs had always been a problem, only the more so now. Her stomach felt so queasy. Every morning it was as if she couldn’t keep a thing down. ‘I wish you’d let me drive.’
‘We’d never get there. Blame Mrs. O’Brian, if you like, for letting her son play Tarzan with his cousins on my day of rest. Blame the fathers, too, for giving the boys the ropes and iron hoops they thought the little nippers would need.’
‘You’re enjoying this.’
‘I am not. You know I can never forgive Trant and the colonel for the way Jimmy threatened Caithleen and had us shoved about, but I have to keep up a pretense of sociability!’
‘How much have you had to drink? Look, I know the Bushmills is gone. There was a half left last night when I went to bed.’
‘You sound like a fishwife.’
‘I’m only telling you the truth.’
He gripped the wheel with one hand and, digging into his jacket pocket, thrust the flask at her. Mary knew then that he really was upset with her but that he’d say nothing of it. ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my ring, Hamish. I really do.’
‘Mrs. Haney questioned the girls. If I’ve understood it correctly from Caithleen, the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t have been worse.’
‘Please don’t make fun of it. That girl has to go. She’s upsetting Bridget and Mrs. Haney.’
‘Mary, how can you say a thing like that when you know it is yourself she’s upset?’
Hamish had always been one for the truth. Abruptly she turned from him to stare emptily out the side windscreen. After the ‘Inquisition’ she had searched the house, had even gone into his study, though it couldn’t have been left in there.
‘I didn’t drink the Bushmills, lass. I took it up to Clarence Malloy so as to give the old man a bit of comfort. That flask of mine is empty.’
Instinctively she flung herself from the windscreen to hug his arm and lean against him, then to snuggle down with her feet curled up on the seat and her head in his lap. ‘Don’t hate me,’ she said.
Fraser eased off on the accelerator. He couldn’t let her go into the colonel’s without her ring—it wasn’t right of him. They’d all notice. Dorothy Bannerman was a royal pain in the ass, and God knows, he hated these things as much as Mary, but had she taken the ring off on purpose or instinctively and not even realized it? She’d been at the castle yesterday. At breakfast this morning she’d been quiet, hadn’t looked well and had got up suddenly to leave the room, he having only just broken the yolks of two poached eggs on toast. He’d found her in the conservatory watering the plants and looking pale.
Erich Kramer was far more her age, sensitive too, when he’d a mind, and intelligent—the two of them had several interests in common. They’d got on well—hadn’t he seen it coming, fool that he’d been? Hadn’t he encouraged it, if not for both their sakes then simply because Mary had been lonely and feeling so out of place, but now? he had to ask. What now? He had thought that once Erich had gone back to Tralane it would have been the end of the matter, but then had come the offer of books from the lending library in Newry and his own suggestion that she help out, since the librarian there had insisted on someone responsible being left in charge. Trant and Bannerman had talked it over at length, and had finally agreed.
Again he had only himself to blame but what the hell was he to do? Pull over to the side and switch off the motor?
She was asleep. Fraser knew this, felt it, had to ask, Exhaustion? and answer, Oh dear, oh dear.
‘Mary … Mary, we’re almost there. Do you want to straighten your hair?’
She stirred, got more comfortable and murmured, ‘Darling, take me away from Ireland. Take me some place where I don’t know anyone but you.’
‘Is it Erich, lass? You can tell me if it is.’
‘Erich? It’s … It’s just this place. It’s got to me. I can’t stand it anymore and yet I know I’m going to have to.’
Fraser felt an utter fool—angry with her for not being honest, angry with himself for wanting to pitch
the ring out on to the road! Slamming the car into first, he started off again. Doctors had the right not to tape their headlamps to blackout pinpoints. He had compromised by going the half and leaving the centre swath free but felt like getting out and tearing the things off.
They got to the lane soon enough, the colonel and his wife living in a Tudor ‘cottage’ that was set in five acres of well-treed grounds near Armagh and solid comfort but Bannerman must have always looked out for himself, and Dotty, with her face powder, blush and creams, had simply tagged along. They had a poodle named Schnapps, a cat named Robustus, and two sons in the war, and they had a sign on a ramrod staff that had been cast out of Sudanese musket balls and was stabbed into the lawn to simply read: DULSE AND DOTTY AT HOME. Och, how many times had he vowed to steal the bloody thing and never had the courage?
Mary heard him fling it into the boot and knew then that he might well go on a bender that could last for days, that he was not only furious with her but with himself. Whiskey did things to him. First the talk, then the fun, and then the pain. He hadn’t done that in a long, long time, not since she’d first known him and he’d come to love her.
The cocktails were over and they were just going in to dinner when Hamish rang the bell. They said their hellos and gave their apologies, his voice loud and boisterous. ‘A fractured right humerus and the left femur, Colonel. Assorted bruises, abrasions and cuts, and a gash like the leavings of a hurley stick. I packed the lad off to Newry in his father’s donkey cart with enough morphine to turn him into a dope addict.’
‘All the Irish are the same. They breed them that way,’ roared the colonel, in good form.
‘Don’t they,’ shouted Hamish. ‘Mary … Mary, lass, let me tak your coot.’
‘Coats upstairs for the ladies, Mrs. Fraser. Third on the right. Can’t miss it. Powder on the left. Hamish, glad you could make it. Been wanting to have a chat. Informally, if you get the gist.’
‘Oh I do, Colonel. I do. Captain Allanby, nice to see they’ve given you a night off. Major, have the gates been left wide open?’
Mary could hear them from the top of the stairs and then from the bedroom whose bed was heaped with coats. So Jimmy was here and the major, and damn it, what was she to do? Sit with them at dinner? She’d throw up all over the place.
Somehow she got herself together and went down but didn’t have to sit with either. Dotty Bannerman had given her Father Eugene O’Donnell on her right and the Reverend Frederick Mountjoy, pastor of All Saints in Belfast, on her left. Perhaps the woman had thought she’d be the cushion between them, perhaps the cement that bound these two old chunks of granite into some sort of conversational bridge.
There were, however, three RAF—smashing types, as the Brits were fond of saying—all in their uniforms with wings, five officers from the Royal Navy and a good sprinkling from the army, several WRNS and FANNYs,1 even two unattached but soon-to-be-attached Anglo-Irish girls by the looks they gave the boys, and assorted others both male and female.
It wasn’t the usual, not quite. In fact, it was a darned sight different, and she wondered then as Father O’Donnell waited patiently for his turn to say the blessing, if the colonel and the major hadn’t done it all on purpose. To cut her off from Hamish and single her out in the company of younger people like herself. Younger people who were at war and on leave, something she’d know little of.
‘Antisubmarine patrols out of Derry. It’s jolly fast and furious when we see them and have a chance to run in, but terribly boring most of the time.’
‘And cold. Bloody awful, I should say.’
‘My da’s a farmer. Sheep and cattle mostly, and the pigs. Me mam’s a hairdresser and I’m a secretary.’
‘My father’s a lawyer and doing very nicely, I’ll thank you kindly.’
‘You lot should try the North Atlantic in gale force ten. Whips the tops right off the waves. Makes Jerry want to submerge just to steady the crockery.’
Destroyers, that one, felt Mary, but wasn’t gale force ten the maximum, or was that twelve? They had had the soup and the poached salmon and were now on the main course. The chandeliers gave their light among the assorted crystal, the laughter and the conversation. Wineglasses were refilled constantly, no shortages here, not even a hint of them. The waiters had all been recruited from the hotels in Armagh and were very attentive in black bow ties and dinner jackets.
Snatches of conversation kept coming at her, glimpses of flashing blue and brown eyes, of white, white teeth, for the Anglo-Irish girls had cozied up to the two RAF across the table. The girls were plump-breasted things with necklines that plunged dangerously every time they leaned over, having deliberately dropped a fork or spoon. The one would toss her long raven-hair back; the other would bat her big brown eyes and smile.
‘King Billy was the curse of all Ireland,’ said Father O’Donnell briskly, the two clergymen talking across her as if she didn’t exist.
‘And Patrick, I be thinking, though there are those of us who would claim him as our own,’ said Mountjoy with spittle.
‘Father, would you pass me the cranberry sauce, please?’
‘That I will, miss. As I was saying, Father Mountjoy …’
‘Pastor … It’s pastor.’
‘That it is, if you’re claiming it.’
‘I saw you refereeing the boys at hurley the other day, Father.’
‘That you did, miss. Now please don’t interrupt me.’
Trying to tuck in a bite, she saw the two flying officers across the table laughing at her predicament. Flashing them a smile and shrugging with her eyebrows only made the Irish girls furious, but what could one do? ‘Are you really on antisubmarine patrols out of Derry?’ she asked. It was all but a shout.
The one nodded, the other grinned and said, ‘Would we lie to you about a thing like that?’ to which the Irish girls got huffy and the Royal Navy second lieutenant added, ‘They haven’t hit a thing yet, Mrs. Fraser,’ and the Catholic priest pricked up his ancient ears.
‘Mrs. Fraser, ah now I have your name and take cognizance of it.’ Without her wedding ring, she was, and with an eye for the lads and the husband down at the far end making mischief with the wine.
‘Aren’t they very hard to detect?’ she asked, hiding her left hand in her lap and leaning over the table so as to be heard.
‘Very,’ said the Royal Navy officer. ‘Like the proverbial needle in the haystack.’
‘I’ve seen lots of them,’ said one of the pilots. ‘From the air we can spot them better. Besides, we’ve got …’
‘Jack, steady on. Ears, eh what?’
‘Oh, sorry, Chris. Sorry. Need to keep my mouth zipped, Mrs. Fraser.’
‘But are you detecting them better than before?’
He gave her a nod. The raven-haired girl tossed back her hair. ‘My dad says there are lots of U-boats in the South, off Cork and other places.’
‘In the West,’ said the brown-eyed one. ‘There are hundreds of places for them to hide. Dingle Bay, for sure. Thousands of little coves and no one in sight for miles around.’
Someone asked her jokingly how she could be so certain and she answered swiftly, ‘My da knows more than pigs, he does.’
The Royal Navy officer suggested she should offer her services to the War Office to which the poor girl blushed crimson and said, ‘Me mam’s from Glenbeigh, so there, Your Highness, and my grandda’s seen three of them German U-boats which is more than th’ whole lot of ye have seen, I suppose.’
A girl of spirit. ‘Good for you, Maevis. That’s telling them,’ said the raven-haired one looking darkly across the table as if this Mrs. Fraser was to blame for it all.
‘Three?’ asked the pilot named Jack. He wasn’t going to leave it. ‘Up Derry way we’re seeing three a week sometimes. They come to raid the convoys.’
‘Oh, and do they? Convoys is it? Ships
from America, Erin. In the films, I’d be for sure and you, too, what with them eyes of yours that are such a lovely shade of violet and that ebony hair.’
They talked about America. One had best pick at the roast chicken and try a bit of the beef but definitely not ask Pastor Mountjoy to pass the forgotten horseradish.
Hamish was on his feet. Someone was dinging a glass, and soon everyone was following suit. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you His Majesty, the King,’ he said, raising his glass. He had such a strong voice and good bearing when he wanted.
‘The King … The King,’ they all chimed in.
‘And the war,’ he said, looking down the length of the table towards her.
‘Here, here,’ shouted someone. ‘The war.’
‘Please let’s not have any talk of that beastly business, not tonight,’ said their hostess from the other end of the table. ‘Dulsey, you know we agreed.’
She was really looking most dismayed and likely to blubber at any moment.
‘Boys in a bit of a dust-up with Rommel’s chaps,’ apologized the colonel gruffly. ‘Gone missing in action. We’ve been waiting for weeks for news. Sorry, luv. Dr. Fraser meant well.’
‘Oh I did indeed,’ said Hamish clearly, ‘but what I meant was the U-boat war in the North Atlantic. May it go so well every one of the damned things is sunk!’
With the loss of all hands. She must look at him; mustn’t concentrate on the mashed potatoes picked at in their gravy before her with bits of dressing—did they call it stuffing in England and Ireland? The cranberry sauce she had fought so hard to get had been left untouched.
‘Are you finished, madam?’
‘Yes. Yes, thanks.’ Hamish had sat down at last, and the talk had gone back to other things, to films, to fishing, to books read and not yet read, to dancing and thoughts of Christmas leave to come. At least the talk here had. And religion. And the war between the North and the South. Would that blasted business ever end?
Hamish was looking rather pleased with himself. Though she couldn’t see them, she thought then that Major Trant and Captain Allanby must be sitting across the table from him and that he had said it as much for their benefit as her own.
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