So the blasting cap went into the stick of dynamite, the fuse into the cap, and the head of a match into the other end of the fuse.
‘There’ll be a spout of flame near two feet long when you lights it, missus, so don’t be afraid. Just drop the ould soul and run like th’ divil for cover.’
‘And the electrical method?’
O’Shane had the notion to tell her to buzz off home and come back another day, but she didn’t look as though she’d leave. ‘Them electrical blasting caps are different. They has two wires sticking out of one end.’
‘So you make a hole in the end of the stick of gelignite, fit the cap in and then wire it up to the battery?’
Well now … ‘That you do, missus, that you do, but God help the poor sinner who has the stick in one hand and the battery in the other.’
‘How much electrical wire would you need?’
‘Enough to give you cover.’
‘Five hundred feet?’
‘And a wall or a house or a hill between you and them, but I doesn’t know a thing of this, only what I’s heard. I be but a poor farmer with a handful of cows.’
‘Good ones, too. Mary still producing well?’
Jesus save us! ‘As well as can be expected in these troubled times.’
‘Do the dogs really sniff out the dynamite?’
O’Shane reached for the pitchfork. He’d suck on his pipe and try not to look at her, for she’d a powerful interest, she had, but then it wasn’t every day that a girl found a dozen sticks at a party. ‘Not if there’s ripe manure about, missus, the riper th’ better. Urine, too. A healthy good piss is always best even if you’ve the freshest to do your hiding.’
The faint but grateful smile she gave made him want to haul her aside and say, Now listen here. Don’t play where fools would play, but he held his tongue, for she’d said, ‘Thanks, Parker. Thanks a million. I’ll be seeing you soon,’ as one would to a friend.
‘Lest you blows yourself up, or was you only asking for interest’s sake?’
‘For interest. I … I was just curious, that’s all. Ever since I found that bomb, I’ve been asking myself what it should have looked like.’
‘Bundles of six, with the primer in the middle.’
‘The primer?’ she bleated.
And wasn’t she that dismayed you’d think the bloody Bank of England had foreclosed or she had accidentally swallowed one of them cyanide pills the Nazis keep hidden in their back teeth! ‘The one stick that does it all, missus. The one with th’ blasting cap.’
‘Oh.’
She rode away on that bicycle of hers looking as fresh as a Michaelmas daisy but grim and thinking things no daisy should ever have thought. ‘Manure,’ he muttered. ‘Manure’s the only thing lest one pisses on it, too, and the dogs catch the scent and find they have t’ piss themselves and are distracted and wander off elsewhere.’
‘William, I need some manure for the roses.’
‘The gardener will look after that, m’am. ’Tis early yet to bed the roses.’
‘I can’t wait for a gardener who never shows up. Just help me to fill this barrow and be quick about it.’
William was all of fifteen, a young man growing—spindly, sandy-haired, wild-eyed at times like this and ducking away to hide the truth. ‘Well, what is it?’ she demanded. ‘Not more of your lies.’
‘No, m’am. I doesn’t lie. I doesn’t. Now I doesn’t.’
‘All right, all right—good God, you’ve got me repeating myself!’
‘’Tis th’ manure, missus. If you use this, you’ll burn th’ roses like they was in the fires of hell.’
‘But manure is manure, isn’t it?’
‘No, missus. It has t’ rot, it does. Th’ doctor, he be putting it in three piles. This year’s, last year’s and th’ year before that.’
The smell would have vanished by then but saying that she wanted to hide six sticks of gelignite would do no good. ‘Just show me, and we’ll do it together.’
They carted six loads to the rose garden and banked the manure up against the brick wall on which the red ramblers grew. ‘Hamish loves these roses,’ she said, working the spade in hard. ‘He even enjoys looking at the rose hips in winter.’
‘That he does, missus. That he does.’
It took them all of two hours and at the end of the digging and the heaving she was tired. Hamish and Robbie came out to see what they’d been up to. ‘That’s a bit rich,’ was all he said, he like the Abbot Gregor Mendel in his Augustinian herb garden. Slippers and steamer robe of brown camel hair with tassels at the ends of the purple cord and Robbie giving the manure a good working over for beetles and worms and things.
‘I’m trying, Hamish,’ was all she could find to say, letting him think what he would.
Later, under cover of darkness, she buried the six sticks of dynamite next to the wall, using a Grant’s shortbread tin she’d been saving up. The seal around the lid was carefully wrapped with electrician’s black sticky tape to keep out any moisture. A last look under hand-blinkered torchlight seemed to satisfy, but the night was so silent, even the sound of her breath came easily now as the earth and ripe manure were softly spilled into the hole, but as she put the shovel away in the stables, there was a sound. ‘Who’s there? I know you’re there,’ Mary heard herself bleat, but would they think she had reached for the shovel to protect herself?
Nolan’s voice came first, caught as she was under their torchlight. ‘Mrs. Mary Fraser it is.’ No laughter now, no teasing, not this time. Manure and earth on her boots, shovel still in hand …
Fay Darcy snorted, ‘Out and about at this hour and suspecting the worst, is it?’
‘What the hell do you people think you’re doing by coming here like this?’
‘It’s yourself who should be answering why you’re out and about in your nightdress and gown,’ said Fay.
‘I … I thought I heard someone.’
Fay switched off the torch and stepped closer. ‘Not us. Most likely that husband of yours. Hears a lot more then he should, he does. Goes about looking where he shouldn’t.’
The colonel’s party … ‘You didn’t need to hit him so hard. He’s got a concussion.’
‘Oh and has he?’
The Darcy woman was now so close, the sour odour of endless nights and days on the run was evident. Mary felt her robe being touched and leapt. ‘Where’s Kevin?’
The Fraser woman was not even aware that Liam had removed himself and was watching out. ‘Kevin, is it? You’d be feeling safe with him, now would you, Mrs. Fraser? Safe as an angel in his arms.’
‘Look, it’s crazy of you to have come here. If I hadn’t been outside, what would you have done?’
The cord around her waist was now being fingered.
‘Gone inside, I suppose,’ said Fay. ‘Liam’s good at that sort of thing. Very quiet he is. Like a lady’s slipper what falls on her lover’s carpet.’
Had Nolan left them? ‘What do you want?’
The cord came undone and the robe fell open of its own accord.
‘Please don’t touch me. I’ll … I’ll scream.’
‘You do and you’ll be getting the lesson of your life. We want the girl. You’ve not been to Dublin like you said you would and can go in there right now and bring her out. Now, I’m saying!’
‘I can’t. I won’t. I refuse absolutely. She’s suffered far too much.’
‘Liam?’
‘Fay, cut it out! You know what Kevin said. There’s far too much at stake. It’s not her fault Brenda was killed.’
‘My sister, Mrs. Fraser. Shot up and some and heaving her guts out in the road while the bastard Garda laid them into her just for the fun of it. Kevin’s in the South, having a look into things, seeing as no one should have known Brenda and me was having a meeting. No one.’
The woman stepped away. The pony snorted nervously in its stall, and from somewhere in the inky darkness came a click and then another, the cylinder of a revolver. ‘Please, I … I didn’t have anything to do with that. How could I? And as for taking Caithleen to Dublin …’
The sound wasn’t that of a revolver. The Darcy woman was over by the car, and must be flicking a fingernail at it in the darkness. ‘Look, I haven’t met with Erich’s superior officers yet, have only set that up. There simply hasn’t been enough time.’
The pony was getting restless.
‘Time? That’s something only rich people have,’ breathed Fay. ‘You’ll meet with them tomorrow and you’ll tell them you need something solid to send over on that wireless, otherwise Caithleen O’Neill will be hanging from a tree and you yourself will come to an untidy end.’
‘How can you talk like that to anyone?’
Nolan came back, saying they must be away. Mary had never heard him anxious before, but the Darcy woman gave no sign of wanting to leave.
‘Your gallant Captain Allanby is out there a-raiding, Mrs. Fraser, with the tracking dogs and all. You wouldn’t have told him where to look for us, now would you?’
‘Dear God, I don’t know where you’ve been hiding! How could I? I can’t even see you now.’ They were crazy, the two of them. Crazy!
Nolan crowded close. ‘Fay, we’ve got to go.’
‘Liam, shut yours. Allanby won’t think to come here. It’s too good a place. Dublin, Mrs. Fraser. On Sunday it is, with a message for them fellows in Berlin.’
‘The colonel will refuse to let me take Caithleen. I … I haven’t got any other excuse. Not now. It’s … it’s a dead giveaway if I try to go there by myself.’
‘Liam?’
‘Fay, you know what Allanby’s like. The horses …’
So they’d come on horseback. That must mean they had left them down the road a piece in a copse perhaps, or at the very back of the garden, in under the apple trees. The garden … Had they heard her digging and decided not to say a thing of it? Had they? ‘I’ll tell the colonel that Franz Bauer was the one who hanged the Second Lieutenant Bachmann.’
Back to hangings was it? Leaving the car, Fay closed the gap between them.
‘Bauer … Franz Bauer was involved, this much I do know, but … but if I tell the colonel, Bauer will try to kill me. I’m sure of it, in … in spite of their wanting Erich to escape.’
‘Liam, take hold of the slut.’
‘Fay …’
‘Do it, damn you!’
Mary knew she’d choke as the nightgown was lifted, that she’d scream for help if she could and try to get away, but would be beaten down.
Fay’s hands were cold but the muzzle of Nolan’s pistol was being pressed behind her right ear, the woman breathing into her face as her nipples were pinched and held.
‘You’ll give the colonel that booger’s name, you will, do you hear? Him that wants shall receive but only after the giving of his promise to let you take Caithleen on Sunday.’
‘Fay …’
‘Liam, there’s a small matter we must discuss with this collaborator of the Germans. That of the six sticks of gelignite that went missing.’
Her breasts were still being held but no answer was forthcoming. ‘There were eighteen, Mrs. Fraser, and you took six of them. Now tell us why?’
‘I didn’t. Allanby said there were twelve. He … he must have wanted to downgrade the size of the bomb. Now get your filthy hands off me.’
‘Filthy, are they?’
‘Fay, leave her be. We haven’t time for this.’
‘A pity. Well, later then. So it’s a meeting tomorrow, it is, a giving of a name, and then off to Dublin’s fair city with you on Sunday.’
Nolan pressed two cartridges into her hand and said, ‘Those are for good behaviour.’
Things had been speeded up.
Dropping the nightgown on the floor beside her bed, Mary tried to rub away the feel of Fay Darcy’s hands but it was no use. She wished Erich hadn’t lied to her, wished she’d never been unfaithful to Hamish, wished she had her wedding ring, wished so many things.
Nolan and Fay Darcy might well come to think she must have buried the dynamite in the garden. They would let her believe it safe, then would shove the evidence in her face, and that … why that would bring its punishment.
Wishing was, of course, of no earthly use, and she couldn’t go out there now to see if they’d taken it. The truth was, she’d never know with them, but then that was also true of Trant and the others.
She could hear the colonel saying, ‘Bauer … Oh yes, we rather thought he might have been involved. He’s not the only one who put the noose around that chappie’s neck, Mrs. Fraser. Oh my, no. There’d have been others. The Nazis never do a thing like that without a proper tribunal. At least three, I should say, perhaps even four or five. Find out for us. There’s a good girl, hmm?’
‘Caithleen …’ she’d say.
‘A bit of a bother, is she?’
‘Colonel, the IRA might try to take her from the house.’
‘Perhaps we’d best leave her there, then, Major?’
Trant would allow a brief, effacing little smile, and would say, ‘We’ve been having the house watched round the clock for just such a thing.’
She’d have to beg. ‘Please let me take her to Dublin on Sunday. It isn’t fair. I’ve done what you wanted. Well, some of it anyway.’
The colonel would have none of it. ‘Mrs. Fraser will have to go before the courts with this Bauer thing, eh, Major? It would be best then to have the names of all of them.’
Hans Schleiger and Erich Kramer—she knew that’s what they would want her to say but was it true? If Bauer was one of them, and ‘Franz’ such a good man in a pinch, then hadn’t he been acting under orders and wasn’t that why Helmut Wolfganger had said, ‘It’s a good thing they hanged Bachmann when they did’?
‘Mary … Mary, what is it?’
‘Nothing! I … I couldn’t sleep.’
She was caught in the passing moonlight of drifting clouds, was over by the windows, naked and so very lovely it hurt to look at her.
‘Hamish, please leave. I … I just need to be alone.’
‘Lass, for God’s sake let me help. Och, I know you’re in love with Erich. I canna fault you for that, but is there something else?’
They’d kill him if she said anything, and when he took hold of her, she pressed her forehead against him.
‘I love you, lass. I always will.’
She mustn’t cry. ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my wedding ring, Hamish. It did mean something very special.’
In words that were so hard to find she told him of the child she had had to leave behind in Canada—she owed him that much at least—and he told her he’d always known she had had a child but hadn’t felt it his place to ask though had seen how terribly upset she’d been with herself and still was. ‘The tears caught at an introspective moment when you’d be alone and looking out into the garden, Mary, the times I’d see you longingly linger over the dolls and toys in some shop. Och, if there’d been something I could have done to bring Louise back to you, I would have. I know you ache for her, but it’s us we have to settle. Erich will be sent to Canada soon. He’ll be out of our lives and wasn’t meant for you in any case.’
They’d kill him. ‘Get out. Get out of my room.’
‘Mary, he doesn’t care two pins for you.’
‘Hamish, I know that. Now please go.’
‘And have the house turned into a prison?’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s it exactly!’
1 Rock candy.
2 The short sword.
3 Extra rations of sugar were made available at preserving time, though Mrs. Haney could have used honey from her own hives.
Again at dawn the hills were wrapped in mist, and the green of them was like a dream, but then the sound of gunfire came. Three short bursts from a Thompson submachine gun, then a longer one, a whole clip that time, the singular flat reports of Lee Enfield rifles breaking through with the pop, popping of pistols and revolvers and then another long burst and more of the other.
Mary found she couldn’t move. The patient gurgling of the Loughie beneath the bridge was as horrid laughter, but no more gunfire came and the silence went to a hush that hurt, she straining to listen.
The lolling toll of Parker O’Shane’s lead milker returned, the cow tossing her head for some reason. Distant beyond the hills came the faraway honking of migrating geese, wanderers from the high Arctic: Brants or Canadas.
The gunfire had been over towards Parker’s farm. Three short bursts and then a longer one. A confusion of singles with one final shot as if to finish things off.
Trembling, she shut her eyes, tried hard not to cry, hadn’t slept, had come out here to watch the sun climb over the hills to burn off the mist or be drowned in the rain. It was Thursday, the day of her meeting with Erich’s superior officers, yet the dawn had brought something other than the peace of mind she’d so desperately needed, and it had come swiftly, unexpectedly.
‘Mary, don’t go near him.’
There was no memory of having ridden from the bridge to the farm, none whatsoever of dropping the bicycle in the road. No memory of the men, the sweat-lathered horses with their military saddles, the uniforms, the Sam Brown belts and guns, the guns.
Smoke from the turf fire in the thatched-roofed cottage trailed thinly into the air … ‘Jimmy, let go of me!’
The smell of him, that of his horse, of the hay, of cowpats, ragwort, Michaelmas daisies, rotting apples and hawthorn berries came to her. ‘Parker … Parker, what happened?’
Mary shook Allanby off, but the men stood round watching her, some out in the adjacent fields, some over by the paddock gate, a cluster by the stables, one standing near the manure pile with a pitchfork in hand. A pitchfork!
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