‘By then it will be daylight.’
He nodded acceptance of the fact, reached for his coat, and Mary knew then that she had just witnessed the bond that was between two vastly different people who must live in constant danger. Though Ursula Tulford might think little of the IRA as a group, she both liked and respected Kevin O’Bannion.
The Shelbourne was just around the corner and he didn’t even bother to try to hide the fact, for there really wasn’t much he could have done about it. They went in at the tradesman’s entrance and climbed the back stairs to her floor. Following her into the room, he put the lock on just in case there might be trouble, and only then switched on the bedside lamp.
‘Don’t pay any mind to what Ursula might have said about us, Mrs. Fraser. The Germans are a funny lot of people.’
‘She’s right, though, about my memorizing this.’
‘Tuck it away for now. Leave first thing as I’ve said, but be sure to lie down here and not drift off, or you’ll miss your train.’
‘I couldn’t sleep anyway.’
‘Get out of those things of yours in any case or else the chambermaid will know it soon enough when she brings your tea.’
He watched as Mary took off her coat and went over to the closet to hang it up, watched as she began to unbutton the jerkin, gave no sign of leaving.
The jerkin went on to its hanger. Unfastening her skirt, this lover of a U-boat captain, stepped out of it and took the time to carefully smooth it down, knowing every second that she was still being watched but was she wondering what did he really see in her? A badly frightened woman, a traitor or nothing but a beautiful woman?
‘You’d best go, hadn’t you,’ she said, her voice strange-sounding in the half-light.
The blouse came off, and she stood there with it in hand, her back to him. O’Bannion knew he had to wonder why she’d not objected but had she a purpose of her own?
Unfastening her hair, she shook it out and ran the fingers of both hands through it, tilting back that head of hers, the slip white, no lace at all, just slender straps of satin across her shoulders, overtop those of her brassiere.
Still with her back to him, she began to take off her stockings, to reach up and under the slip to unhook the bloody things, knowing he was still watching her.
Switching off the light, he stepped quickly over to the windows to part the curtains and peer down at the street below. ‘A car,’ was all he said. Mary hadn’t even heard it, but somewhere now a lift door opened, he turning from the windows to swiftly say, ‘Get into bed. Look as if you’ve been asleep for hours but switch that light back on.’
The steps came soon enough and with them a panic she could not fight down. There were two men rushing along the corridor: the night clerk objecting to the intrusion, the other one having none of it.
O’Bannion had flattened himself against the wall so as not to be behind the door when it opened, but rather a little ways from it and still out of sight—a clear shot then at whoever it was, that person being distracted by her and by the bedside lamp.
Knocking shattered the silence. ‘Mrs. Fraser … ? Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser?’
Was she to be arrested? ‘Yes … Yes, what is it, please?’
‘The Garda, m’am. Detective Inspector Hanlan.’
Had something happened to Hamish? she wondered, panicking all the more and stumbling blindly into a chair, O’Bannion grabbing her by an arm. ‘Your dressing gown,’ he whispered. ‘For Christ’s sake, woman, look as though you’ve been asleep!’
He tussled her hair and nudged her with the gown before going back to stand with his back to the wall.
‘Mrs. Fraser, m’am, I must ask you to open this door.’
Mary tried to think what would be best. ‘I’m coming, Inspector. You’ve awakened me.’
Blinking at the supposedly unaccustomed light, she looked out into the corridor. Hanlan was in his late fifties, a big man with a wide moustache, black bowler hat and no patience.
‘Are you all right, m’am?’ he asked. She’d been asleep, she had, and was clutching the dressing gown about herself.
‘Is it my husband?’ she asked. ‘Has something happened to him? Well, has it? Please, you must tell me.’
Hanlan was genuinely baffled, ‘No, m’am. I just thought … That is … Ah th’ divil take it. I must have been mistaken.’
He had thought she wouldn’t have been in the room at all, or certainly not alone and not asleep, but she knew then, too, that they must have found Davies’s body and had come looking for answers. And yes, she had just let Kevin O’Bannion know she must still be very much in love with Hamish.
They didn’t stop her at the border, didn’t even bother to go through her luggage, just asked a few routine questions. The dry cell battery and pocket watch had been in her handbag with their respective proofs of purchase but she’d not even had to open it or mention them. There’d been no questions either from Trant or Jimmy or any of their men, no sign at all of them, and she’d not been followed home, she was as certain of this as she could be.
The murder of Davies must be hanging over them. Certainly they would suspect her of having met with the IRA, but they’d have no proof as yet, none either in so far as Mrs. Tulford was concerned, but Mary knew she was getting in deeper and deeper. This thing was not going to stop, and would only become far worse.
Unsettled, she lit the stove in the kitchen and then the copper boiler. It would take a good hour to heat water for a bath. Pulling on her gumboots and the old raincoat she wore for rough work, she went out to the stable to see to the pony, couldn’t help but think of having to move the dynamite, but O’Bannion had said they’d not need the blasting machine—had he tried to make things easier for her?
Finding two apples, Mary fed them to the pony, rubbed his muzzle and scratched behind his ears. ‘I think we should rename you Cuchulain or Brian Boru at least. You’re a dear, dear thing, and I know I love you very much.’
She fed him properly, brushed him down, mucked out the stall and listened to the rain. Standing in the doorway, she watched the puddles in the yard, the concentric rings the hammering droplets made and just as instantly destroyed. Would she have that fifty minutes? she wondered. Would the bomb even work?
At 4.30 p.m., and with the doors and windows all locked and Robbie over at Mrs. Haney’s, she went upstairs to the bath. Steam fogged the mahogany oval of the mirror that hung behind the sink. Large bronze hooks protruded from either side of it, but there were others on the back of the panelled door—that, too, was locked, though it wouldn’t keep anyone out if they really wanted to get at her.
The two bullets and the message lay on a corner of the sink. She would never be able to memorize the thing, would never be able to destroy it. ‘DKYBI,’ she began. ‘MZTUH …’
Forcing herself not to look, she tried printing it out on the fogged glass of the mirror, each of the letters giving slices of herself. The ring and the key were still around her neck, their string now soaked through and clinging to her. ‘DKYBI slash MZTUH slash VT … VTLIQ—yes, that’s it, I think.’
She would have to memorize it. Trant or Jimmy would have her thoroughly searched this time. And what about the bullets? Was she to leave them behind, and take them in only on a last visit?
‘DKYBI slash MZTUH slash VTLIQ slash BGZRO …’ Ducking her head, she hurriedly read the rest. ‘MWBSP slash RYWJE slash BYAPV slash YUBKJ slash CCRMR.’
There it was again at the end of the message. Deftly she printed it all out across the mirror, the condensation running down the glass beneath each stroke.
CCRMR couldn’t have meant Huber then, but rather their code name for the escape. Five letters out of forty-five this time, the message perhaps to read: HAVE AGREED TO IRA DEMANDS STOP ARRANGE ESCAPE NIGHT 7 NOVEMBER—would that be too soon? Wouldn’t the tenth be better, or even the fifteenth, somewhere c
loser to the full moon?
An island … would they use one as the rendezvous? There were lots of them off the west and northwest coasts and many of them were uninhabited.
HAVE AGREED TO IRA DEMANDS STOP ARRANGE 13 NOVEMBER STOP KRAMER AND OTHERS OF U-121 TO BE TAKEN OFF WITH HUBER TATLINGER STORCH AND TULFORD. Signed … ? What would their code name be for the operation? Tory Island? No mention of Nolan, none of Kevin, and none of herself either, but still far too many letters. Then what about: AGREE DEMANDS RENDEZVOUS 13 NOVEMBER AT 0100 HOURS STOP KRAMER TO BE TAKEN OFF WITH TULFORD?
There were still too many letters, and why, please, a code that wasn’t being used for normal clandestine transmissions unless the British really had broken the German naval codes or there was fear of this?
‘M’am, there’s a powerful lot of flour missing from this here bin. Was you baking bread and not letting it rise?’
‘Bread … ? Why, yes, I was, Mrs. Haney. I did spoil it. I should have waited for you to come back. I’m sorry if I’ve run you short. I … I fed it to the swans and the Brants down at Lough Loughie.’
And her looking across th’ water like Guinevere at King Arthur’s Camelot! ‘Parker’s wake was hard, m’am. With Bridget away the while, I shall have to take things easy.’
‘I wish you’d just stay at home and rest up. Hamish won’t be back for a week at least. I can manage on my own.’
And make mischief, was it, behind the dear doctor’s back, and him the saint he was? ‘Ah, and sure you can, but ’twill take my mind off the loss of my dear departed brother and give me something to do. Now it will, I say. It will.’
To argue would not be wise. ‘Let’s have a cup of one of your teas, then. The blackberry, I think. The scones I made are not nearly as good as your own, but all the same I’d like you to try them.’
The swans and the Brants hadn’t seen a particle of that flour. All of it had gone into making fake sticks of dynamite, but making the exchange would be the hardest part, though with William away, her caring for the pony would be excuse enough to visit the stable.
‘M’am, are there soldiers watching the house?’
‘Not that I know of. Why should there be?’
‘’Tis what I’ve asked myself.’
‘Did you see any of them?’
‘That I did. Robbie, being the dog he is, found them out and they told me, now they did, I do declare, that I was to keep that dog locked up.’
‘I see.’
The breath had gone right from Mrs. Fraser. ‘The doctor mustn’t stay away m’am. He must come back.’
They had their tea, with Robbie choosing to lie at Mrs. Haney’s feet.
‘M’am, is there something you would like to tell me? I’m not of them. I never was, nor my mother and father or my brothers. Parker … now Parker was, but that was over and done with long before they ever came to leave that blessed gelignite at his farm.’
‘He was a good man, Mrs. Haney. I liked him very much.’
‘That you did, now you did, and given time, I’m certain you’d have come to know us all.’
‘Mrs. Haney, tell me whatever you can about the O’Bannions.’
Kevin, was it? ‘Two strapping boys up to no good under the hand of a drunken, rebellious father near twice the age of his poor young wife, and she so swollen up with them, she died in the cowshed and left those boys to him.’
‘Did they have relatives in the west, in Donegal perhaps?’
Donegal was it now? ‘Who among us haven’t kin in the far corners of the earth? Ireland is the leaving-us country of them all.’
‘But Donegal, Mrs. Haney? An island perhaps?’
Islands was it now and herself being led by the nose yet letting it happen as two sisters would? ‘I mind there was one sprig of that family living in the northwest, I do. Inishtrahull it was, and them scratching what living they could from the stones and the sea, but they was all moved out years ago. In 1928 it was, and the place a terrible ruin by then.’
‘Did Kevin ever go there for a visit?’
And her using that one’s first name while fingering the rim of her saucer as a young girl would under watchful eyes. Caution would be best. ‘That I wouldn’t know. Now I surely wouldn’t.’
‘But it had a harbour?’
‘A cove of sorts, with a loading boom to snatch the little boats out for fear of them being dashed to pieces on the rocks.’
‘It’s very stormy there, is it?’
Lord save us but she had a powerful interest. ‘M’am, you’re not thinking of going there, are you?’
‘No. No, I … I just wondered.’
About storms and seas and places to land a boat. ‘Sure and it’s the worst of places for mean weather I ever did know, save for that Tory Island which is off to the west of it. But I was only a girl then. Just a slip of a thing, I was, me hugging my china doll and everyone so terrified the ship would go to pieces on them rocks and we’d all be drowned to death, we would.’
‘I didn’t know your family had once thought of emigrating?’
‘Haven’t all of us thought of getting out? Mother would have none of it after us fetching up on that blessed island. Sick, she was so sick we saw the inside of her toenails. Ship’s biscuit and all.’
‘So you came back home.’
‘And my father died of a broken back the very next year to the day, it was. The day, m’am, and me only ten years old. Ten, I was. You’ll have me crying, you will. Me who thought I was wrung dry of it all them years ago.’
And didn’t Mrs. Fraser reach across the table now to lay a hand on her own? Ria blinked away the tears of forgotten times. ‘Them scones are quite satisfactory, m’am. Now they are, I say.’
‘Be the friend that Parker was to me.’
She had meant it too. ‘Friend it is, for surely this old house must be a lonely place for a young woman like yourself.’
The sun came out in midafternoon and Mary took Robbie for a walk on the leash. From the road atop Caitlyn Murphy’s Hill there were breathtaking views all round but nowhere was there a sight of Jimmy and his men.
It had been good to get things straight with Mrs. Haney. One felt one had overcome a major difficulty and had acquired God on one’s side, if that was ever possible. Good, too, to know that Kevin O’Bannion must be thinking of Inishtrahull as a rendezvous.
Good just to be out walking with Robbie. The wind ruffled his fur. Shelties were such handsome dogs, so perfectly proportioned, but Robbie was something extra special even then. No wonder Hamish loved him.
‘What is it, Robbie? Can you smell them?’
He barked three times in quick succession, short, sharp barks as a sheepdog would, he facing intently off to the north-northeast, to a copse on the side of a lesser hill, down among the hedgerows and the green, green fields.
‘They can’t want you around, can they?’ she asked, saddened that it could only be true. ‘No one will try to contact me as long as you are here to give them away.’
Jimmy would have men hidden everywhere he could. Starting across country in the opposite direction, she had the thought they’d run into others and that it would be best to avoid them if possible. Jimmy’d be cursing Robbie and wishing he’d been kept at Mrs. Haney’s or had gone away with Hamish and Caithleen, custom’s regulations or no; the war, or no.
As always the fields accepted her. There’d been flax grown here, and in summer the blue of its flowers had been like no other. A good farm with rights of passage for herself and Hamish because it was land they had leased to Mr. Makepiece O’Fenlan.
And there it was: Thackeray again. The Virginians, then the Shelbourne where the great writer had once stayed, and now another connection she’d entirely forgotten: William Makepeace Thackeray. Had it meaning for her?
The leash tightened as they approached the far corner of the field. Th
ere were fieldstones in the lowland wall, bramble bushes along it, and hawthorn, and there it was again. Another coincidence—was that it only? Kevin O’Bannion and herself meeting in the ruins near the school, red berries and thorns, the same things here?
Robbie barked. ‘Robbie, sh!’ She yanked on the leash. Pointing, he stiffened. ‘Hush, do you hear me?’
Following the hedgerow, they soon came to where it cornered at the road. She could see the stable quite clearly now, could see the top of Caitlyn Murphy’s Hill.
‘Mrs. Fraser, get that bloody dog out of here.’
Robbie didn’t just bark. He let the world know about it, she yanking on the leash and pulling him back on to his hindquarters as Jimmy stepped from cover, the leash slipping from her. ‘Robbie, no!’
He darted in to nip at Jimmy’s heels and leap for the crotch, got a good hold of the trousers, snarled, pulled …
‘Sergeant, see to this bloody dog!’
A savage kick was given, Robbie bending almost in half only to land on his feet and go right back into the fight, she yelling, ‘ROBBIE, NO! IT’S ALL RIGHT. HE WON’T HURT ME.’
A bayonet flashed. He yelped, squealed, quivered—lay there in the grass panting, not knowing what had happened to him.
‘Mary, I’m sorry. The dog …’
‘You bastard!’ she screamed as she fell to her knees to take him up and hold him. Blood had gushed out as the bayonet had been withdrawn, and no matter how much she tried to wipe it from his fur, it wouldn’t stop. ‘Robbie … Robbie, please don’t die. Hamish will come home. He’ll need you then more than ever.’
‘Mary, leave him. Sergeant, see that she’s taken back to the house.’
‘NO! Don’t you dare have anyone “see to me.” I’ll take him home myself.’
After dark she moved the dynamite and buried Robbie in the garden where she’d first hidden it. She built the bomb, and when that was done, vomited into the bathroom sink, partly from the nausea the gelignite brought, partly from fear.
Wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she forced herself to look in the mirror, but could see only a person she loathed—threw her head forward, smashed it and the glass not once but twice, said, ‘Forgive me, darling,’ the blood spattering the basin and her hands. ‘Oh God, I’ve been such a stupid fool.’
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