‘Mary, lass, what are you doing under there?’
‘Hamish, don’t touch anything! Darling, please don’t.’ He was looking down at her through the engine. ‘Just … just let me deal with it. The wires must be connected to the ignition switch and the battery. I’ll just have to disconnect them at the blasting cap. Could you hold the light for me?’
When the thing was done and laid out on the workbench, Fraser fingered the pieces. She’d known exactly what to do, had been calm about it, so much so he had to stand in awe of her.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, not finding the will to look at him.
‘Ten past nine.’
At midnight she went outside to listen and he caught her standing in the rain looking off towards Tralane. ‘Lass, there’ll be no breakout. Dr. Connor simply handed all that dynamite you sent in there over to the major.’
10
From the top of Caitlyn Murphy’s Hill, the land stretched down and away in fields and woods to breaking rays of sunshine and the Loughie black among the folds. Mary stood alone, a last walk of a morn, a last look back to where so much had happened. She remembered that first day Hamish and she had looked at the house. They had had such hopes, the two of them, but did such things matter now?
Hamish would not be allowed to accompany her to Tralane. She had packed a small suitcase, a few personal things. Jimmy Allanby would come for her at 0900 hours and that would be it. On trial for treason, sent over to the Old Bailey to be made a spectacle of.
A Nazi lover. Would they shave her head? Women who’d had that done to them had always looked diseased.
Would they hang her in public and take photographs afterwards?
Idly she kicked a stone and watched as it rolled away. She ought, really, to try to escape but it’d be of no use, and when the black Rover the major used, and then an army lorry roared past her to turn in at the drive, Mary gave a last look round before starting down the hill to meet them.
Hamish had come outside to stand on the doorstep and close the door behind him. Jimmy, now dressed in parade-ground drill, was impatient. There were guns everywhere—guns to collect one lone woman.
‘Jimmy, I want the morning with my husband.’
‘You’ve had enough time.’
‘Mary, don’t. It’ll do no good.’
‘Then at least a walk round the drive? Look, I can’t run away, can I?’
Allanby wished she’d try. ‘All right, a walk. Doctor, get your coat.’
‘I don’t need my bloody coat. The lass and I have things to say.’
Unable to say those things, they had all but reached the road in silence when Mary took him by the hand and pulled him to a stop. ‘Darling, listen to me. As God is my witness, I love you very much. I’ve done all the wrong things, Hamish. I’m pregnant with Erich’s child—I would have cheated on you and lied about it if I could, but I do love you. I know that now.’
‘Lass, I’ll find a way to help.’
‘You mustn’t. For your sake and mine, let me think of you as before this happened. Try not to forget me. Know that if I could change things, I would.’
He was shivering, and when she tried to warm him by stepping closer, he was embarrassed, knowing Jimmy and the men were watching.
At the end, she couldn’t bring herself to let go of him and was forced to make a spectacle of herself. Shoved into the car, her wrists handcuffed, the door was slammed on her, slamming out the last glimpses of freedom. She should have tried to make a run for it, should have let them cut her down.
Bannerman kept her waiting all morning in one of the interrogation rooms. Only at 11.50 a.m. did he deign to see her. ‘Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser?’ he asked—was she now to be a nonperson?
‘You know that’s my name, Colonel.’
‘Please just answer the questions.’
The girl, Corporal Bridgewood, typed things down. The Sanderson woman had come into the room with Major Trant—wasn’t humiliation what jailers did to prisoners they wished to break?
The colonel still waited for her answer, Corporal Bridgewood’s fingers were poised over the keys. ‘Yes, my name is Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser and I …’
‘You will address me only as directed,’ said Bannerman.
‘Colonel, is it all to be a matter of form?’
‘Really, Mrs. Fraser, I would have thought you’d be willing to cooperate at this point.’
Trant had said that. There was no sign of Jimmy.
‘Did you willingly attempt to supply explosives to the prisoners through Dr. Connor?’
‘Of course I did, but not willingly. You know very well that I was being …’
‘Mrs. Fraser, must I remind you to simply say “yes” or “no”?’
‘Then no! I didn’t. Make of that what you will. You’ll get nothing further from me. I want a lawyer.’
It was Trant who told her she had no rights. ‘The prime minister and the chiefs of staff are demanding a signed confession. Let’s keep it simple, shall we?’
Did it really matter that she’d been blackmailed into helping the IRA, that Erich had used her? ‘All right, then yes, I willingly did so.’
‘You do realize the severity of the charges against you?’
Bannerman had said that. The Sanderson woman hadn’t taken her eyes off her for a moment. ‘Yes, I know I’ll be tried and found guilty.’
‘You’ll hang.’
That had been Trant, but must they keep on at it?
‘Did you take anything into Tralane other than those books of yours and sundry messages?’
Trant again, but was it that they still didn’t know about the revolver? ‘I want a lawyer, Major. Even when charged with treason, under British law a person has the right to a fair trial and that means a counsel for the defence.’
‘You’re full of it, aren’t you? You betray that husband of yours, betray your king and country, and yet have the unmitigated gall to take up our time with talk of a lawyer? Colonel, have her placed in the dungeons with Bauer. I’m sure that will clear her head of any further nonsense.’
Bannerman glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Confound it, Roger, I’m expecting a call from GHQ Belfast at any moment. I need that paper signed by her now. You know she’s to leave with Kramer and the others at fourteen hundred hours.’
‘Then allow me to take her for a little walk. We’ll soon straighten her out.’
‘She’s pregnant, Major.’
‘That is the least of our concerns, Colonel.’
‘Very well, see that it’s done.’
It was now 12.03 p.m. They would take the rampart walk which ran but a short three hundred feet from the barbican to the cantling tower. Once there, it would be the staircase, she held between the two women, Trant a step ahead of them and down, down, down. Guards with bayonets fixed, guards both behind and ahead of them.
The wind hit her as they stepped out on to the rampart. At once the crenellated, machicollated parapets of the cantling tower’s defences rose high above her, with slits for arrows, quicklime, hot stones and boiling oil. Forced to hurry, Mary almost ran, but would it be four or five minutes after 12.00 p.m.? Why should it matter? They’d be taking her in an armoured van to Belfast with Erich and the other officers of U-121 at 2.00 p.m. In chains, to be shipped off to London, the rope coarse—would they slip a black cloth bag over her head just before they put the noose around her …
For some reason Trant had stopped. Flinging out an arm, he indicated the bailey far below them. All the prisoners had been assembled; all stood perfectly to attention, their lines so straight and equally spaced it defied reason.
‘Sod the bastards, Mrs. Fraser. Sod them. They’re out there where we can keep an eye on them, and the sooner you and that lover of yours are gone from us, the better.’
A last glimpse of the battlements revealed machi
ne guns; another of the bailey, the same.
‘Think they’ll blow their way out of here, do they?’ shouted Trant. ‘Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?’
Seven … would it be seven or eight minutes past noon? she wondered, again asking, Why should it matter? As their steps pounded on the stairs, they spiralled down now, almost at a run to the clashing of bolts at the bottom, the image of an iron portcullis’s spearlike points being raised as they hurried underneath, only to come to a crowded halt.
The whole of the floor beneath her was an open grillwork of iron bars, and under this, standing in the dingiest of light and gazing up at her, Franz Bauer waited.
He was grinning at her and must have known they’d do this. A litter of straw and a wooden bench were all he’d been allowed. He was still in chains.
‘A nasty man, Mrs. Fraser. So what’s it to be?’ asked Trant.
There was a hole in the floor below, a drain of some sort, the latrine.
When she didn’t answer, he told the guards to open the trapdoor and lower the ladder. ‘You’ll be asked to climb down there, Mrs. Fraser. If you don’t do so willingly, we will force you to. You’ll be left alone with that animal, and I don’t give one sweet damn if you come out of there alive.’
He thrust a paper at her; she took the pen he offered. ‘I … I’d best use the wall or the floor back there. Look, I‘m sorry for what I did, Major, but I really had no other choice. Erich and the others would have told Hamish I’d betrayed him; Fay Darcy would have made certain Nolan killed not just myself but my husband.’
‘Madam, that is of no consequence. Sergeant Malcolmson has a table in the guardroom. See that you use it and sign that thing properly. I daresay there’ll be time enough for written confessions of your own later on.’
He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Not quite twelve thirteen,’ he muttered to himself. He was afraid and she wondered at this as she was taken to the guardroom.
‘Sign it here, m’am.’ Malcolmson stabbed a blunt forefinger at the last line as she took up the pen.
‘Shall I date it?’ she asked, surprised at how calm she felt now that it was all over.
‘Best to do so, I guess. They’ve forgotten to type it in.’
So they had. They must all be afraid of something. That was why the prisoners had been put on parade …
The nib was dry. Before opening the lever on the barrel, Mary held the pen to one side so as not to get ink on her coat—to think that she’d even worry about such a thing at such a time. ‘It’s empty,’ she said. ‘Have you got an ink bot …’
Flung back against the wall, dazed and bleeding from the nose and ears, she fought to clear her head. Dust filled the room—blinding, choking masses of it and splinters of stone, a hail of them, a constant rain. Mary tried to shield herself, tried to make sense of what was happening. The walls and floor reverberated, shaking again and again as blocks of stone fell. She must get up, must try to save herself, was numb, in shock and terrified as a hand groped for her through the darkness. Bauer … was it Bauer?
A rush of rubble fell and she could feel the blocks bouncing about yet there was now no sound, only a constant roaring in her head. Her head … she was going to pass out, but that hand had closed more firmly about the front of her coat. Deaf … were they all deaf?
Aching everywhere, she struggled to pull herself up into a sitting position only to bang her head on the table and realize that it must have helped to save her. Was that a light? she wondered, yelling, ‘Here! There are two of us!’ but hearing nothing, just the roaring in her head. Her ears—were they bleeding?
Later, much, much later, a distant shout came. Much closer there was a gasp. ‘My legs. I was just on my way in to you.’
Another rush of rubble came, and then someone distant yelled, ‘WATCH OUT, YOU BLOODY FOOLS!’
Then there was nothing, not another word, just more of the falling rubble, the choking clouds of dust and yes, the squeaking and sighing of blocks of stone as they moved against one another and finally came to a precarious rest.
‘Let go of me,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Major, I … I think I’m all right.’
‘Nolan. It was that bastard Nolan.’
Another rush of rubble came and then a scream, after which there was only a silence that grew and said that those who were searching had found it far too unsafe to continue.
Trant had passed out or died. Prying his hand away, Mary squeezed to one side and set his head gently down. There was hardly room to move. She knew she was badly bruised and that there were lots of little cuts, but nothing seemed to be broken. ‘Major … Major, are you still alive?’ she asked. His legs, he’d said.
With difficulty, she got to her knees. ‘HELP!’ she cried out. ‘CAN’T SOMEONE PLEASE HELP US? IT’S MAJOR TRANT.’
He would need tourniquets. Hurrying as best she could, she managed to pull off her stockings, couldn’t let him die, mustn’t. Later … how much later? she found a passageway off to their right and began to drag him inch by inch along it, but there were often tumbled blocks of stone and heaps of rubble to be got round. Avalanches continued. ‘Don’t die,’ she said. ‘Please don’t.’
Leaving him, for she could go no further with him, she crawled upwards over the rubble towards the light to drink in the cool, sweet air and call back, ‘Major, I think everything’s going to be all right. Just hang on a little longer. Hamish will be here. Hamish will know what to do.’
Rescue crews were feverishly at work on the battlements, Jimmy among them, Jimmy who when he noticed her, snatched up a rifle and aimed it at her, she now waiting for him to shoot her.
Mary told him she had the major, Allanby lowering the rifle to rap out a string of orders. Taking several of the men, he raced along the battlement and she caught sight of them now and then, was resting Trant’s head in her lap when they reached her.
‘Twelve fifteen, that it?’ managed Trant.
‘Please don’t try to talk. Just rest.’
He asked for a cigarette and one was lit and handed to her, she holding it to his lips. ‘Stupid of me,’ he managed. ‘Knew they would try something. Kramer … did Kramer get away?’
Jimmy had come to crouch beside them. ‘He and a lot of the others, Major. They bolted through a gap in the north wall just after the tower went up.’
‘But you’ll get them for us, that right?’
‘Major, please …’
‘Of course we’ll get them, sir. Derry’s been alerted. Colonel’s been on to them and to Belfast and Newry as well.’
‘Dublin? Best to let them know.’
‘Major, please just try to rest.’
Trant took another small drag. ‘You tried to save me. What did you do a thing like that for?’
‘Jimmy, can’t you do something? Hamish … Where is he?’
Someone lifted her from the major; someone else helped her to walk away. The tower’s walls had tumbled in on one another. Men were still crawling over the blocks of stone, trying to free the trapped. Bodies that had been pulled out, were being placed in a row. The Sanderson woman’s head had been crushed; the Bridgewood girl had lost all of her clothes and now stared emptily at the sky. ‘Please just leave me. I can walk. I must try to find my husband. Hamish should be here—why isn’t he?’
Put into a car, she was driven to the house and told that they’d come for her in a day or two, and that until they did, she would be left on her honour. Too worried to care, she stood in the drive wondering why Hamish hadn’t gone to Tralane. He would have heard the blast—everyone would have. Even now, though, he didn’t come out of the house, didn’t come to her. ‘Darling …’
The car wasn’t in the stables; the pony was in the paddock.
Spilling the cartridges from his revolver on to the kitchen table, Mary stood under the light and took aim before pulling the trigger. The gun was
heavy but if held with both hands, this helped to steady it. Though time was precious, she had best force herself to repeat the process and only when satisfied would break it open and reload it.
The night was dark, the garden quiet. Thumbing back the hammer, she shattered that silence, did so again and again, but if one simply pulled the trigger, all pressure on it had then to be released before the next round could be fired. It was something she would have to remember.
Going back into the kitchen, she reloaded and went outside to empty the gun at the stars. There were some eighty miles, as the crow flies, to the mainland off Inishtrahull, far more by road, for not only were Irish roads like no others, every road sign that might have been of use to invading Germans had been removed in May of 1940. By morning the whole country, North and South, would have been placed on full alert. The Royal Ulster Constabulary would be out in force in the North, the Garda in the South and in Donegal, too, and the British Army’s four divisions swarming everywhere and especially close in around Tralane. Every border crossing would be under surveillance. A lone woman on a bicycle, with a rucksack on her back, stood no chance of getting through.
Night would be best—this one. A good ten hours of darkness still lay ahead. Hamish … she had to try to save him. Having heard the explosions, he would have rushed off to Tralane, would have been so worried about her, but must have been stopped on the road—she was certain of this now. Erich Kramer, Liam Nolan—others perhaps, it did not really matter which of them—had forced him to pull the car over and then had made him drive across country. A stroke of luck for them, a disaster for Hamish and all those he could have helped.
‘A meeting place,’ O’Bannion had said; Nolan, ‘A place Huber would never forget.’ Somewhere up in the wilds of Inishowen, near Malin or Malin Head probably, far up in the north, in Donegal anyway. There’d be a border crossing to get through—it would have to be faced.
Sliding Hamish’s revolver into the breast pocket of her anorak, she added the box of cartridges, then twice tried the revolver and found that by leaving the top button undone, she could get it into hand easily enough.
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