Betrayal

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Allanby. ‘Mary, I’m so …’

  ‘Corporal Monaghan, see to Mrs. Fraser,’ snapped Trant.

  It was him. She felt the corporal grip her by an arm, threw him off and pushed past Jimmy, hitting the door with a shoulder as she stumbled inside, her voice rising … ‘Hamish? Darling, it’s me. I … Oh God, no, Hamish! No!’

  He was lying face down on the pebbly floor among the shattered remains of several flowerpots. A litter of earth, bulbs and baskets lay about him. His shoes were caked with mud and one of them had come off and was next to his head. The tweed trousers were wet through and yes, he still clutched a bottle by the neck. Gin on top of Scotch and wine. Gin!

  Everything inside of her collapsed. There was blood on the back of Hamish’s head and when she touched it, her fingers were not warmed but left cold and sticky. ‘Hamish … Hamish, what happened?’ She had never seen him like this. Never!

  Allanby took her by the shoulders to lift her away from the corpse but she threw him off and shrieked, ‘Leave me alone!’

  Trant crouched to lay three fingers against the doctor’s neck. They all could hear the snores as he looked up, first to herself and then to Jimmy.

  ‘I … Damn it, Major, I thought he was dead.’

  He had hoped it true. Trant must have left them with a snort of disgust, for all Jimmy said was, ‘Come on, then. Let’s take him home. Corporal Monaghan …’

  ‘SOR?’

  Jimmy leapt. ‘God damn you, Corporal! Don’t you dare SOR me again or I’ll have you up on a charge. Now get this man into the backseat of his car and be quick about it! I’ll take Mrs. Fraser in mine and follow you.’

  There was no thought of bathing Hamish’s head or of making him comfortable, just that of disgusting old drunk who, by the stench, had urinated in his trousers.

  In the late afternoon of the following day pools of water gave mirror images to the branches and the tall grasses that had, last night along the road, looked so like an old woman’s hair.

  Mary hadn’t slept. Hamish had a concussion—Dr. Connor had come out from Armagh; a few days in bed had been insisted on. Caithleen was looking after the patient, and if not the girl, then Mrs. Haney and Bridget, the house having gone to the medicinal quietude of a mortuary, the rain coming down so much, standing at the windows of her own bedroom or in any of the others—Hamish’s most particularly—had done no good.

  ‘One of us has to apologize,’ she had said after Dr. Connor had gone. ‘It might just as well be me.’

  Hamish had shown no signs of wanting drink and that, too, hadn’t been right, for an alcoholic is driven to swill it for days on end. ‘Och, lass,’ he had said, ‘I feel so ashamed of m’self, I could gladly fit the noose and pull the drop lever.’

  He’d been watching her for signs of sympathy; she’d answered tartly, ‘You behaved abominably. I ought to hate you for it.’

  ‘Take th’ colonel’s signpost back. I canna rest knowing I’ve stolen it.’

  ‘And six silver teaspoons. Would you have pawned them in Armagh on your next visit?’ she had asked.

  ‘There’s th’ half-pound of pipe tobacco, too, and six Havanas, no matter th’ shortages, lass,’ he’d said, implying the colonel had a black-market source for both items. ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

  ‘Some,’ she had answered gruffly.

  ‘Lass, I’ve heard whispers of a bomb. Say it was na true.’

  She had wished he’d not used that brogue. His head had been bandaged—he’d no memory of what had happened. A complete blank, he’d said. He had been sitting up in that acorn bed of his, two books open in his lap, several others lying about and the newspapers scattered. There’d been a well-fed fire in the grate, and Robbie looking sorrowfully up at her from under his hand.

  ‘There was a bomb. I gave it to Jimmy.’

  ‘Did you? That was good of you. I’m grateful. I dare say we all are.’

  Mrs. Haney would have told him what had happened, and if not her, then Bridget. News travelled so fast. One couldn’t keep a thing secret from the Irish. Not a thing. Not for long.

  Suddenly she realized that she was sitting in the car at the side of the road opposite to where she had sat last night with that bomb, her mind going over everything. Trant would be bound to ask questions she’d have to answer. He’d be worried about the two telephone calls, would know that the lines had been down earlier and that she must have had a prior warning.

  Try as she did, no answers would come and she started off again to turn in at the colonel’s and face the music for Hamish. Just how she would unload everything she didn’t know. The truth perhaps, but would Dotty Bannerman understand?

  Of course not, though the colonel would have been told of the bomb and the woman ought rightly to be grateful.

  The colonel’s adjutant met her at the door, one look being enough. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, handing him the lead sign on its ramrod post.

  ‘Colonel and Mrs. Bannerman’s sons were both killed in action, Mrs. Fraser. Was there something …’

  ‘Killed? But I thought …’

  ‘A bloody awful mix-up, I’m afraid. Colonel tried to send off a cable of congratulations and got back the truth.’

  The rain came down, she awakening to it. ‘I’m so sorry. Please tell them both how sorry Hamish and I am.’

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Only that the door to their potting shed was damaged and that my husband and I will pay for it.’

  ‘I’ll give Colonel and Mrs. Bannerman your condolences, Mrs. Fraser. I think this …’ He hefted the sign. ‘Had best go back in the lawn where it came from.’

  She took the sign. He closed the door, shutting herself off from the house and from what she had really wanted to tell them, for the mix-up in telegrams could only have been Liam Nolan’s way of saying he hadn’t wanted the news to spoil the party.

  The ramrod staff went in easily enough for the ground was spongy. Leaving the car, she walked round the house and through to the shed. The door would have to be replaced. As she stood looking at it, the sound of the rain on the whitewashed glass came to her, and she smelled the apples, recalled each detail of what had happened.

  Hamish could just as easily have been trying to hit someone with that gin bottle. There were grooves in the earth to the left of the path which showed clearly that he’d been dragged to the shed.

  That right shoe of his had then been tossed in after him.

  1 Women’s Royal Naval Service, and First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.

  6

  At dusk and then at dawn it was the same. The gossamer of a mist would wrap the hills, hugging the valley to lie like grey cotton wool atop the black, still waters of Lough Loughie. Across from her, Tralane Castle appeared as if from a distant land, a medieval stronghold whose flags, wrapped in the drifting mist, hung at half-mast.

  Mary knew she couldn’t help but feel terrible. She wasn’t clever, was in fact a very ordinary person. At 2.00 p.m. today she’d present herself at the barrier bar and ask to be let in. There’d be one bundle of books. Short of a strip search, the bullet would be safe. No hobbling about this time. Why she hadn’t thought of hiding it in her brassiere before, she’d no idea. False modesty perhaps.

  Trant would want to question her, though, and not just about the bomb. He’d want answers she had as yet no idea how to give, would want more information about the hanging—would persist in that even though things had moved by leaps and bounds on to a new and far more dangerous plateau where something was bound to break.

  Nolan had forced the issue—she knew that now. He and the others wanted her to meet with the German High Command. Erich was no longer enough. They wanted the names of the officers as proof she’d met them. The negotiations with Berlin weren’t going well. Berlin was being difficult.

  If she did
n’t meet with them and get that proof, Fay Darcy would see to it that her hair was hacked off, her clothes torn from her and her body tarred and feathered. They’d tie her to a post in some farmer’s field or in the village, and Fay would kill her because Fay would do that sort of thing, and Nolan would watch as she did it.

  A Webley service revolver had only chambers for six cartridges, but—and this was crucial—was Kevin O’Bannion using the deliveries as a means of setting the time of events to come? She must never forget that he was their leader and that what had happened at the colonel’s house could not have been done by Nolan alone.

  The swans came back and she watched them and the mist. The deaths of the colonel’s two sons could only cast a pall on things, making security within the castle far tighter. There might, however, be a brief period in which grief overshadowed the anger and hatred such a loss would bring. Not that the colonel was a cruel and vindictive man. She didn’t think that, not really. Only, that if she had lost two sons herself, it would be hard not to want to take it out on the enemy.

  And Trant? she asked. Trant would realize this long before it happened, so he’d be planning to use it as best he could.

  And Jimmy? Jimmy might want her love and friendship no matter the lie of it, but when the chips were down, he’d put duty to his country above all else and would be the harshest of them all.

  Dew had condensed on the handlebars of her bike, and on its bell and lamp. Hamish wasn’t one for bicycles, not any more at least, but he had gone to great lengths to get her exactly what would suit best. At times he seemed to know intuitively what she needed, but he’d offered no answers, no explanations as to what had actually happened to him. Not that she had asked him outright. They’d played cat and mouse.

  Pulling off her gloves, Mary rubbed warmth into her fingers only to again feel the absence of her ring. Did Hamish have it? she wondered. Caithleen had been giving her funny looks; Bridget had been in on it, Mrs. Haney shut right out but for how long?

  Were there four bullets to go and then the prison break—was that how it was to be? A meeting place somewhere on the north coast most likely, and a rendezvous with a German submarine.

  She’d lose the child. They’d be bound to find it aborted at her death and Hamish … Hamish would forgive her because … why because he was like that, like one of the swans gliding eerily through an Irish mist so that she could only catch glimpses now and then of what he was up to or thinking. Grand and dignified, wise and serene, but always holding himself back—was he giving her a chance to prove herself? Was this what he was really on about?

  He hadn’t been drunk and she knew this now though he’d used the threat of it to make her stay away from him at the party. That he suspected she was up to mischief was one thing, that he might well know far more than he was letting on, quite another. ‘Darling, please be careful. Don’t do anything stupid. Not with these people, not even if you think you know them through and through and better than they do themselves.’

  Silently the swans departed, she wishing they wouldn’t. Whatever had come between Hamish and herself ought not to have, but had he found out about Louise, about the little girl she had had to leave behind in Canada? Had that made him think her callous? He’d never said, but it could well have been that. If so, it was long past the time she should have talked to him about Louise, of how it had hurt so much to have to leave her, of how it still did.

  ‘I was destitute,’ she said, as if to that castle over there. ‘Flat broke and without a hope or penny.

  ‘Admit it, you just wanted to get away.

  ‘I had to. No one was going to forgive me.’

  She had worked her passage as cook’s helper on an Italian freighter out of Montreal, and if one thought that had been easy, one had best think again, but the deal she’d made had meant that she could never write to Louise, never see her again.

  Hamish did love children—there had been none from his first marriage. He wanted them and she had always known this. He’d view the giving up of a child as the ultimate act of betrayal. In that, he was only being the good, solid Presbyterian he’d once been, though he hadn’t darkened the door of a church in years, not since the Great War. But he would think less of her, and yes, she had sensed this and hadn’t had the courage to tell him, though as a doctor you’d think he’d have known she’d had a child. Weren’t doctors usually the dumbest of people when it came to themselves and their wives?

  He hadn’t been what one would have called a good lover. His intuitiveness hadn’t extended to the bedroom—perhaps that was why he read Freud? He’d been far too shy with her, far too passive, as if still in love with the wife who’d left him, as if he was bound to break things he had no desire to break.

  Not cold. Not untouching, either. Just not touching enough. Not like Erich.

  The shed, though unheated, was warmer than outside. Again she pulled off her gloves. Trant, like Nolan, had done the unexpected and come to her with his questions. His car was out front. She had, at best, perhaps three, maybe four minutes to collect her thoughts. The dynamite, wrapped in old burlap sacking, was hidden under the rafters above and behind stacks of old boards and windows, no problem with its smell, not here, for she’d splashed turpentine about.

  The bullet was snug in preparation for this afternoon.

  ‘I have no other choice but to face him,’ she murmured to herself. She’d been doing a lot of this lately, she had to admit. ‘He’s chosen his moment wisely, when I’m least able to lie. He’ll talk to me in front of Hamish.’

  The two of them were in the study by the fire. She’d best extend the hand of friendship, best sound happy to see him. ‘Major, you’re early. It’s good of you to pop in to see how Hamish is getting on. How are the colonel and his wife bearing up?’

  Trant took her in swiftly but he would say nothing of the rosy cheeks, the coldness of her hand or the fact that for a woman who ought really to be exhausted and in bed, she’d been out and about so early herself. ‘As well as can be expected. It’s a dastardly thing to have happened but war is war, and the colonel certainly aware of this. Please.’ He indicated she should join them. ‘Hamish and I were just discussing it.’

  ‘Mary, it seems that the real telegram did get through but was stopped at GHQ Belfast and a false one sent on.’

  ‘How awful. How could anyone have done such a thing?’

  ‘Our thoughts entirely, Mrs. Fraser. The IRA had a man inside, a Protestant no less. Needless to say, that man has been identified.’

  ‘And caught, I hope.’ Dear God, it was coming now—she could see it in his watchfulness.

  He’d nod grimly, thought Trant. He’d give her a little as an opener, would let the husband flesh things out and get the two of them going. ‘Apprehended as of two thirty this morning. One Tim Pat Sheehy, fifty-two years of age and twice decorated for service beyond the call of duty on the Somme.’

  ‘The IRA are insidious,’ said Hamish. ‘Mary, the major says they’ve just suffered their final reversal in the South, that the organization has been smashed to pieces in the Republic, but that up here in the North we have the last stronghold.’

  And now for a little more, thought Trant. ‘Our informants tell us Liam Nolan and the Darcy woman are living in the rough, flitting back and forth across the border into the counties Monaghan and Cavan, as is Kevin O’Bannion.’

  Their informants … Could she possibly keep the emptiness from her voice? ‘County Armagh’s home to all of them.’

  Quite possibly she could have asked that of someone after the O’Neill girl’s tarring. ‘They know the countryside far better than we do, Mrs. Fraser. Captain Allanby’s being given the runaround. If we use horses, they have a van or a lorry or motorcar and plenty of petrol. If we have those, they’ve got the horses or are on foot and so well tipped off they’re miles from where they should have been by the time we get there.’

 
‘The Darcy woman was seen in Kinsale with her sister, Mary. The Garda caught up with them but Fay escaped in a hail of bullets. The sister’s been badly wounded and is not expected to survive.’

  Trant had let Hamish tell her, but why? Was he now about to accuse her of having met with that very sister?

  Fortunately Mrs. Haney chose to bring their breakfast. Coffee, jam, and toasted muffins. Three fried eggs each with rashers of bacon for the major and two kippers on the side for Hamish. A bowl of sliced apples and pears as well.

  ‘M’am, will you be eating th’ morn?’

  Mary felt her stomach involuntarily tighten at the sight of the food. ‘Later, thanks, Mrs. Haney. A cup of that coffee perhaps, if it’s not too much trouble.’

  Trouble was it? and the missus about to show the world the bottom of her stomach but so china sweet it would make rock1 run in the mouth! ‘It’s no trouble at all, m’am. I’ll be sending Bridget in directly with another cup and saucer. M’am, a button cannot be found for that lovely blouse the doctor gave you in Edinburgh. Begging your permission, I’ll be sending that wretched girl along to Ballylurgen the day t’ see if Mr. Brian Kelly’s wife can help.’

  The butcher’s wife. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Haney. Be sure to tell Bridget to thank Mrs. Kelly for her trouble.’

  ‘She’s a button box bigger than the Tower of London and a tongue to go with it, she has.’

  The major had taken it all in, as had the doctor, thought Ria, but had she said something she shouldn’t have? The missus was looking like she’d just had th’ skean2 run right through her! ‘I will tell the girl not to waggle her tongue, I will, m’am. You need have no fears on that score, not from His Honour the doctor’s house.’

  ‘By jove, a superb breakfast, Mrs. Haney,’ said Trant, clearing away Hamish’s books and things. ‘You’ve done us proud in these days of shortages. The army could use a woman like yourself.’

  But which army—was that it? wondered Mary. Trant was deliberately hinting at things far back in the O’Shane, the O’Hoolighan, or the Haney past, but Mrs. Haney, by the look, was having no part of it.