There was firing from the northeast and from the east, another flare, another crash of the eighty-eight-millimetre gun, the pom-pom thudding of its antiaircraft guns.
Instinctively Hamish pulled her down as the torpedoes came on and she knew they’d hit the sub that she and Hamish would have to fight Kevin and the others.
In rapid sequence, two thunderous explosions rocked the shore as the torpedoes struck the island. ‘The other boat must have missed the sub too,’ shouted Hamish. Uncertain still, he got to his feet and reached to help her up. ‘They’ll retreat and wait for the RAF now, lass. Huber and the others will try to get off before they come back.’
The motor torpedo boats had lost themselves in the darkness. The submarine was out there some place too. An Aldis lamp flashed from its conning tower, rapidly winking in the night. Huber answered from the ruins.
‘They’ll want the wireless set, Hamish.’
Fraser caught the sadness in her voice but before he could say anything, Mary had started down the hill with it. Carrying the rifle at the ready, he followed at a distance.
Mary knew that Hamish could not know that for them things could never be the same again, and when Kevin met her on the road halfway to the cove, he was carrying a Lee Enfield, and she knew that he had come alone and that he hadn’t expected to find her here at all.
‘Where’s Dermid?’ he asked as if he still couldn’t believe it was her with the suitcase.
‘He’s dead, Kevin.’
The emptiness in her voice told him she still thought him worthy of more than lying.
‘Just put the rifle down on the road,’ shouted Hamish from behind her.
‘All right, I will,’ said O’Bannion, no doubt reminding her of Liam but knowing, too, that the bloody Thompson guns were good at times and a curse at others because they were always needing a bit of oil and sand grains could do things to them even then.
Out to sea, the firing had started up again.
‘The Nazis will only cheat you, Kevin. It will all have been for nothing.’
The wind tugged at her hair, blowing it about. Having set the suitcase down, her hands were now in the pockets of her anorak. ‘We should have known each other in better times,’ he said.
Though he’d not see it, she would shrug at this.
‘Ireland will be free some day, Mary.’
‘The border should never have been put there in the first place.’
‘And we’ll never stop fighting until it’s gone.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? I can’t condone the killing, the things you people did to Caithleen, Kevin, any more than I can this war. It’s all so stupid. Life’s the greatest gift we have. We shouldn’t take it from others, nor should others force us into situations where we have to.’
‘You’re still too soft. The Brits will never leave until we’ve driven them out.’
‘I agree they have to leave, but the trouble is they won’t until you people stop, and by then the whole of Ireland will be empty. It’ll lift up its silence on the altar of its ruins just as this island has. No God will be listening, Kevin, because there will be no one to speak to Him.’
‘What’s to prevent the two of you from trying to stop us from getting off the island?’
‘Only our word. There’s been enough killing. We’re done with it unless you come after us.’
Fraser, who had remained all but out of sight behind her, had said so little it had to make one wonder if he wasn’t in awe of her himself. ‘Then it’s good-bye to you, and I’m off.’
She would say nothing further, Mary told herself, would simply let him walk away into the night because it had to be left this way. In his heart of hearts Kevin had always known it would all be for nothing and that for him the cause was over, yet she could not help but remember the ruins by the school and knew that he had been the only thing that had stood between Fay Darcy, Liam Nolan and herself.
‘You’ve no harsh words?’ asked Hamish.
‘The time for them has passed.’
They didn’t retreat to the hill. Taking him by the hand, she led him well out into the fields to stand alone, he no longer questioning her reasons, simply letting her lean back against him as he held her.
The RAF came back. Curtains of fire streamed from each of the motor torpedo boats, the sub answering them as parachute flares lazily drifted down, lighting up everything with a brilliance that frightened. The curragh was in the water. Kevin and the young man called Kenneth McGrath were at the oars, Huber in the stern, Mrs. Tulford near the bow. Cockleshell to the waves, it rose and fell as the two sets of oars rhythmically skimmed the water. They still had too far to go, would never reach the sub, would be shot to pieces.
With a deafening crash, the sub’s eighty-eight-millimetre cannon hit one of the torpedo boats. There was a flash of burning diesel fuel. Parts of the boat—whole sections of it—flew into the air, disintegrating as they tumbled over and over.
One of the planes dropped its depth charges. Detonation after detonation threw fountains into the air around U-397. Kevin and the others had now left the cove. They were pulling strongly at the oars. The sub had seen them and was giving covering fire. More flares were dropping. Now the sea was illuminated and everywhere there was a ghostly light and more and more firing. They would never get away, never do it.
Another plane began to drop its depth charges. As the drums pitched out, the sub fired up at them with its antiaircraft guns. The eighty-eight-millimetre cannon flashed fire at the pinpoint of the streams of tracer shells that were pouring from the last of the torpedo boats. Again there was a tremendous detonation, shreds of debris spinning through flashes of fire to hit the waves and disintegrate. There’d be bodies, men blown to pieces …
In tears, Mary wanted to tell them to stop, but the planes came over again, this time one after the other to rake the sea with cannon fire. The curragh hadn’t a chance. It was lifted up on a wave, only to drop away to nothing yet Kevin kept rowing. Again the little boat lifted, again the oars dipped. Splash points raced across the water as the boat hit the side of the submarine. The flares were still falling, men rushing now to throw ropes and secure the curragh. Mrs. Tulford tried to scramble up the side of the sub but slipped and fell into the water. The curragh was thrown towards her—Huber was leaning over, trying to reach out to the woman as Kevin … Kevin slung the suitcase up and it was taken and passed from hand to hand to disappear inside the conning tower.
The RAF, having given them all they had, were heading back to Derry as fast as they could.
‘Darling …’
‘Hush, lass. Let’s just hope and pray we’ve seen the last of them.’
Mrs. Tulford had been dragged from the water. Kevin was climbing the ladder of the conning tower. Reaching back, he caught the woman by the arm. Huber was helping her, too. Kenneth McGrath had clambered aboard …
The bomb went off. It flashed so brilliantly, Mary ducked and buried her face against Hamish.
‘That suitcase … ’ he began. ‘Their scuttling charges have detonated. Lass, what the hell have you done?’
He made her turn, made her look at it. A huge hole had been ripped in the sub; the eighty-eight-millimetre cannon had been knocked askew. Men hung limply over the gun mounts and the top of the shattered conning tower. Men …
They began to slip and fall away into the sea. The sub dipped down into the waves, was filling with water, was sinking. There was now no sign of the curragh, not even a bit of its wreckage. No sign of Kevin, nor of Huber or of either of the other two.
As the last of the flares went out, great geysers of water lifted but there was no longer any sight of the submarine. Then in one final detonation, its bow rose up suddenly as if to come back at them before the jagged teeth if its net cutter slid silently beneath the waves.
At dawn they walked among the bodies. Som
e of the men were very young, others not even of middle age.
There was no sign of Kevin, nor of Mrs. Tulford. Alone among the Nazi dead, the body of Kenneth McGraw lay with strands of kelp across his broken chest. Thousands of one- and five-pound notes floated about or clung to the oil-slicked rocks and the bodies.
‘Come away, lass. There is nothing you or anyone else can do for them.’
Did Hamish despise her for what she’d done and become, a woman who could kill with a vengeance—had there ever been vengeance?
Crouching, she picked up one of the notes. The face of King George VI was very clear and sharp.
Sodden, the bill fell from her fingers to cling to the rocks.
‘Lass, I’m sorry it had to end this way. Och, you know I’ll stand by you.’
There would be an inquest, a trial and then a hanging, and nothing she or Hamish could ever say or do would stop them.
The man who sat across the desk from her in the bunker below 10 Downing Street was angry.
Winston Spencer Churchill thumbed through the dossier and the signed statement of thirty pages she had given at the inquest. Everything that had happened in what was now being dubbed ‘The Tralane Affair’ had been documented in the neatest and most precise of handwritings. The damnable inquest had gone on for weeks and it hadn’t entirely been hushed up.
‘Just what the devil am I to do with you?’ he asked, chewing on his cigar. ‘The Royal Navy and the RAF, in spite of repeated attempts, fail to sink this Nazi submarine but you … you, Mrs. … Oh damn it, what was it?’
‘Fraser … Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser.’
‘Scottish! The Scots have always been trouble!’
He hunkered forward to fix her with a piercing gaze. ‘Do you know what’s happened? The Irish press has had the unmitigated gall to release stories of this sordid affair. Fleet Street was never cosy with them but by God, the Times and the Daily Mail are suggesting I step down!’
Those bluest of eyes bulged in anger. ‘From being labelled another Mata Hari, you’ve become a heroine, Mrs. Fraser. Condemned to hang by the neck while myself and His Majesty are left with the decision of what to do with you.’
Mr. Churchill reached for his glass, the bulldog of the war lacking all patience. ‘London … Dear old London,’ he said with sudden sentiment that only set those eyes to watering, ‘is being bombed to pieces, Mrs. Fraser!’
She wished he’d not blame her for the Luftwaffe’s raids.
‘That husband of yours has given a lengthy interview to the Times and the Daily Mail. I have it on good authority that the Manchester Guardian and others have also received this “interview” but we do have censorship laws in effect, so I will say no more of it.’
He flipped through the pages. She had sunk this U-397, had learned on her own to use explosives and to shoot with the best. Instinctively she had handled herself remarkably well in very tight situations. ‘There was mention of a child, I believe?’ he said with sudden rancour.
‘Yes, I … I lost it shortly after we left the island. On the boat, actually.’
That couldn’t have been pleasant for her. ‘Did you love this Nazi?’
How could you—Mary knew that was what he’d implied. ‘I thought I did at the time but soon learned not to and … and in the end, caused his death.’
‘And that of more than sixty others!’ jibed Churchill only to see the tears he’d caused and to say with all sincerity, ‘My dear, you must forgive me. This business has not been easy. Taken alone, it was a war on our very shores. We won it only by the dogged determination and spirit of will of one of our citizens. Can you begin to imagine what the nation wants of you in these deeply troubled times? You are a heroine, Mrs. Fraser, a British citizen who …’
‘I … I’m a Canadian, Prime Minister. Though I’m married to a Scot, I’ve not yet …’
‘A Canadian—from the Dominions, eh?’ he accused as if that explained everything. ‘Damned fine people, the Canadians. Damned good fighters.’
Drawing on his cigar, he paused to give her a moment. ‘How is it that you have learned to speak and write French?’
Alarmed, puzzled by the question, she threw those big brown eyes of hers up at him in doubt and hesitation.
Her voice a whisper in the hush of the bunker, Mary briefly told him of the little girl she had had to leave behind in Montreal. ‘My French is Parisian, but my accent Canadian, Prime Minister.’
‘That could be ironed out, I should think. French was never a gift I’d have chosen for myself, though I speak it well enough.’
‘I learned it against all opposition in a city where the English didn’t bother to speak it. I needed friends, Prime Minister. I wanted to get to know my neighbours and the woman who looked after my little girl when I went out to work. I lived with French Canadians, not with the English. It was a lot cheaper and far friendlier.’
Churchill knew he was impressed, that this wasn’t just anyone sitting so properly in front of him in that beige suit of hers, but a very resourceful young woman. She was tired and thin, and terribly worried but not afraid to pay for what she’d done.
‘What has happened to that husband of yours?’ he asked, adopting a rather bland and disinterested tone.
‘He’s here in London, staying with friends. He … he comes to see me every day.’
And talks to the press! ‘Why isn’t he in the services? Good, qualified surgeons are desperately needed.’
‘Hamish fought in the Great War.’
‘I did so myself. Come, come, there has to be something else. He’s not one of those conscientious objectors, is he?’
‘Prime Minister, I think you know Hamish was disqualified for having helped a destitute young girl out of a very bad situation. That girl lived and has gone her way, while he …’
‘Became a country doctor in Northern Ireland and doctor to the Nazis at Tralane. My dear, please do not think ill of me. We can use him in North Africa. War provides the forgiveness time alone can never allow.’
Again he would give her a moment. Tribunals were seldom what they should be. Reaching for his glass, he found it empty. ‘My dear young woman, the Nazis grind virtually the whole of Europe beneath their jackboots. Day by day men and women are being tortured and shot for having defied them. Are you aware in the slightest of what those brave souls must face?’
She wished he’d not accuse her of anything more but knew he was in a very difficult position, that Tralane and Inishtrahull, while the least of his problems, had become paramount. ‘I think I know what they must feel, Prime Minister. Each day out there on the island and since, a good part of me has died. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. I’m ashamed of it.’
‘But you have changed, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I’ve changed and I know this.’
Churchill drew on the cigar. She was uncommonly fetching, still unassuming and not revealing any of that tough inner spirit and instinctive will and talent that had allowed her to survive and to singlehandedly accomplish so much. Indeed, though he had little use for them, she reminded him of a schoolteacher—no, a secretary. Yes, that was better. Had she the gift of languages, he wondered, a knack for learning them? She’d had a bit of college Deutsch. Could she take it up again in addition to polishing the French?
He thought so, he thought her a treasure but had she already been through too much? Only time would tell. ‘Will you agree to go into Occupied France for me?’
The cigar was poised, the question had been given quietly. Occupied France …
‘As an agent of the Special Operations Executive, Mrs. Fraser. Sworn to secrecy as of this moment for such “agents” do not exist beyond the minds of but a chosen few.’
Her heart still ached from Inishtrahull; she still had nightmares …
‘We will train you, Mrs. Fraser. We will give you every benefit of our diver
se knowledge.’
When she looked away from him, he realized that every last particle of her ordeal had suddenly returned. Instinctively she knew exactly what she would have to face in France, a most opportune and healthy sign.
‘I … I’d like to talk to Hamish. The two of us … we’ve been apart, Prime Minister. I need to be with him; he … he needs to be with me.’
‘And the rope?’ he asked, despising himself for the reminder.
‘Yes, I’ll go to France for you but first I want a fortnight with my husband.’
‘A show of anger is always refreshing, Mrs. Fraser. Don’t get yourself pregnant. See that he volunteers for service in North Africa. Everything will be taken care of. Let us get on with this war. Let us crush the Nazis so that they may never again rise up.’
The house in all its Georgian eminence lay in the gathering dusk. Seen from the top of Caitlyn Murphy’s Hill, it drew the night exuding warmth and refuge.
Mary couldn’t believe that she was actually seeing it again. Mrs. Haney would be in her kitchen. Bridget and William were back but the clock, the watch could never be rewound, and she knew this.
Hamish slid an arm about her waist. ‘The IRA would never let us stay here in peace, lass. Och, we both know it and so will Ria.’
Yet they’d have a few days to themselves. ‘Darling, couldn’t we keep it? Couldn’t you persuade Mrs. Haney to look after it for us? Then maybe when this war is over …’
‘Is it that you’ve come to love the house so much you would dare to come back?’
‘You know I have. These people need you, Hamish, and we both need them.’
Mary felt his hand come to rest on the back of her neck, felt him caressing her. Things had been good for them in bed, far more than she’d ever thought possible.
‘There is just a slender hope,’ he said. ‘Let me speak to Ria about it.’
They took their time. The scent of wet hay and peat was in the air, of turf smoke too, and the distant sounds of cowbells and lolling sheep. ‘I love you, Hamish. I want so much for us to have a life together and to have children of our own.’
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