Betrayal (30 page)

‘The Shelbourne on Saint Stephen's Green, please.' She wouldn't go to the White Horse Inn on Wilton Terrace, not this time, not if she was being followed.

‘Right you are, m'am. Just wrap that fine blanket about your knees and we'll be off.'

Trant had anticipated things and had called ahead. A car had been waiting at the station, and before either she or Hamish could object, the three of them had been driven to the dockside.

Hamish and Caithleen had been sent on their way—there'd been no question of it, he saying at the last, ‘No, we mustn't kiss good-bye, lass. We must let them think what we want them to believe.' He grim and unforgiving, or so it must have seemed, she knowing it would be best that way and extending a hand.

Even though she had wanted it, the separation had come too soon, too suddenly, too unexpectedly. A loss she had felt deeply and still did. Trant hadn't wanted Hamish around any more than had the IRA. There'd be questions now, and she'd have to keep saying Hamish and she had parted for good.

One had to sit sideways in these horse-drawn cabs. It gave good views of the streets and let her watch both behind and in front. Dublin was, as always, bustling in its quiet, dignified way. Not like London or Paris or New York before the war but more like Toronto used to be. There was lots of traffic around Tara Station and on Pearse Street. A lovely city. Georgian to its core. Fanlights above the painted doors, green letter boxes, green call boxes, Gaelic signs to mark the streets.

When another cab pulled out from the kerb, Mary knew she really was being followed, but the worst thing was, she couldn't get a good look at the person. A woman, this much she knew. Young, too. Not Fay Darcy, though. It couldn't be Fay.

It wasn't. It was some British agent, someone from MI6 or MI5.

Cyclists swarmed past, all going to their appointed destinations to the clip, clopping of the horse.

Hamish hadn't given her back her wedding ring, though she'd known he had wanted to desperately. He had left that to Caithleen. It was still clenched in a fist. One of the cabs passed by, a man in a bowler hat in that one, he touching its brim in salute and smiling.

A Guinness lorry came next, it honking loudly as if they'd collide, the ring falling to the blanket to roll away, its gold catching the light as she made a desperate grab for it and stuffed it into her coat pocket to lie there safely with the bullets.

She would wear it around her neck on the string that held the key to her cedar chest. She wouldn't put it back on her finger, not yet, but it was good to know Hamish still loved her. It made her feel warm inside and able to face things better. He'd be out of the way for a while and safe, and when it was all over, would forgive her even if no one else did.

¹
Train service to Dublin and within the South soon began to lessen due to the ever-increasing shortage of coal, which was obtained from England.

8

‘Will there be just yourself, m'am?' asked the waiter.

‘Yes, thanks. Would you bring me a gin sling, the prawn soup followed by the smoked salmon and then a salad, please?'

‘And for the main course?' Gin at the supper table and she not English, Irish or from any of those parts. An American, was it?

‘The beef Wellington,
¹
I think, and an iced sherbet, and coffee if you still have it. Yes, coffee.'

‘You'll be wanting a brandy, then, to top it all off, will you?' Was she away to the races in the middle of the night?

‘A double, but … but let me have it in this.'

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a bloody flask and silver, no less, from the Highlands! ‘That I will, m'am. That I will.'

The main dining room at the Shelbourne was all a-glitter. A last bastion of British rule, the hotel had been done over in the late 1880s. Life-size statues of bare-breasted Nubian princesses stood outside the entrance in all weathers, holding the lamp standards: turbaned ebony and gold, wrought iron and gas lamps. The foyer was grand and very Victorian, the ceilings high and done with exquisite plasterwork in swirls of leaves and roses, doves and cherubs.

The chandeliers were of Waterford crystal. The grand piano gleamed. The tables, with their silver, crystal, candles and starched white linen, were all occupied now, the men in dinner jackets and black bow ties, the ladies dressed to the nines and off to the Abbey Theatre. All very elegant and unlike the war and the North, but Dublin, she knew, was a city of much beauty and great poverty. From Saint Stephen's Green to Trinity College Park, and from that line stretching to the southeast right to the Grand Canal and beyond it some, there was one of the finest residential districts anywhere. Once outside of this area, in the adjacent Irishtown or Belleville or over further west into the industrial area of Dolphin's Barn and up north, across the Liffey into the heart of old Dublin and watch out.

There were huge and depressingly poor areas of what had been loosely called ‘decayed housing.' Gorgeous old Georgian houses gone to rack and ruin, their fanlights broken out, the paintwork chipped and the red bricks of someone's former delight now scrawled in chalk with all manner of trash. Garbage reeked, cats and people squalled, fought, kicked, punched, swore like blue murder, the kids with runny noses and their clothes hanging out each way, the adults not much different. Young women with the faces of the old, the men a shambles of crumpled stovepipe suits, hats, boots and cigarettes, most of them out of work and hating it but knowing there was little they could do but one thing, that being to join someone else's war.
²

She didn't want to have to go into any of those districts tonight. They'd not understand why she was there in the fog, would think her lost perhaps, or simply try to rob her.

This afternoon, after finally getting rid of the people Trant had tailing her—the man and the girl at the station—she had telephoned Mrs. Tulford from a call box only to find that the woman no longer worked at the White Horse Inn. ‘Was you the lady from up north, missus?' the man on the reception desk had asked.

He had told her to ring back at 10.00 tonight. Ten, and a fog rolling in from Dublin Bay with the stench of soot and sewage.

‘Your gin sling, m'am.'

‘Oh, thanks. I'd forgotten about it. Look, could I ask a favour? Would you bring me a large Bushmills instead? I'll pay for the two of them.'

‘A large whiskey it is, m'am.' And was she going out a-whoring tonight with them melting eyes of hers? Canadian, be Gad. From Orillia, no less, and where th' divil would that be? Among the savages?

She was dressed fine enough for the whoring, though more for the likes of this place. A russet suit of good cloth and exceptional fit, a cameo at the throat and a jerkin of soft yellow mohair with buttons down the front and her hair pulled back into one of them ponytails as if she really was going off to the races and had just come in from a jaunt.

The dogfights? he wondered. One saw all types even in the fanciest of hotels. An attractive woman, this Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser and she claiming the sanctity of marriage but without the wearing of her wedding ring.

A Protestant. She'd have to be one of them. It being Sunday tomorrow, she'd sleep in heavy.

When he brought the whiskey, she asked for a pencil and paper, and he thought that she'd give him the room number of her gentleman friend and ask that the note be passed along but she just set the bloody things off to her left for later, and took to sipping her whiskey. A little water was added, then a dollop more.

Mary set the gold pocket watch she'd bought this afternoon in a shop on Grafton Street beside the silver-plated candlestick. Hamish and Caithleen would be in Holyhead. There had been nothing on the news to say there'd been an attack by submarines or enemy aircraft over the Irish Sea, but still it was a worry. They'd probably have to take the train to Birmingham and change over there. Birmingham had been hit severely. London got so much of it, but other places did too.

She hoped they'd make it, hoped things would all be over by the time Hamish got back. The change to whiskey hadn't just been because of what lay ahead of her tonight, but as a salute to the man she'd married and deceived and now loved again with all her heart. How could she ever have strayed from that?

It wasn't the time to ask such questions nor to anguish over guilt. The pocket watch was a Longines whose gold case had been made in Canada but whose jewelled movement was Swiss. Not a new watch but one that had been brought in for repairs and never collected. She had wanted a Longines especially because her wristwatch had never let her down and she couldn't have that happen. No she couldn't.

The hands were Big Ben-ish, with the minute hand nearly a quarter of an inch longer than the hour. The sweep second was enclosed in its own circle towards the hinge, so well below the centre and well out of the way of what she needed. Undisturbed progress.

Moving the watch, Mary brought it a little closer to the candlestick, knew that people would be looking at her and wondering why she was alone, knew that Trant's people would be waiting in the foyer probably or chatting up the desk. The redhead, with her lovely long legs, would be in the Horseshoe Bar having a gin sling or tonic. The one with the black bowler hat, the manner and the smile, would be the go-between, now to the desk, then to have another peep into the dining room to see how the dinner was being taken, then off to the bar for a visit with Miss Long Legs or up to Mrs. Mary Fraser's room to search through her things, such as they were.

They'd find nothing. The watch was here, the bullets and the message safely tucked away, but she really was playing a very dangerous game.

The prawn soup arrived though she hardly tasted it. The Longines was ticking, the second hand sweeping round while the minute hand moved much slower and much more decisively.

Hamish had given her one of his mother's diamond rings but she had never worn it much, believing it far too valuable. She would use it when she got home to drill a small hole in the watch crystal up near the number ten. That would give her fifty minutes if both of the hands were set at the twelve.

Gold was a good electrical conductor but when silver was added, in an amalgam, this did tend to slow the passage of electrical currents—she'd found that out in the library and had probably baffled Trant's people by poring over a handful of metallurgical tomes and would have to think what to say to them. Trant would want a reason, and she'd have to have something good unless he was too busy with other matters.

Yet if the candlestick represented the dry cell battery she'd purchased from a shop in Henry Street, one wire must run from a terminal to one of the wires of the blasting cap that had been pushed into the end of the primer stick.

All well and good. The other wire was the problem.

She set her soup aside to make room for her hands only to have the waiter whip the smoked salmon in front of her with its dainty wedges of toast, she not even looking up. A woman, then, he'd think, whose mind was so fixed on the time, she had set the watch in front of her! And what was she doing staring at a man's pocket watch? he'd be wondering.

The watch must be the break in the circuit, she silently said. From the other terminal of the battery, a wire would have to run to the watch and be fastened securely to the fob loop. Good electrical contacts, then. Battery all wired up and placed back in the shortbread tin next to the dynamite.

Now for the tricky part. The other wire from the blasting cap must run to the watch but never touch the face or any other part except for the crystal, since glass was a nonconductor, an insulator.

That meant fixing the bare, cleaned-off end of the wire down into the watch through the hole so that it didn't touch the face. Then when the minute hand came round to the ten, it would come up against the bare wire to complete the circuit and set off the bomb.

‘Is the salmon not to your taste, m'am?'

‘Did I finish the soup?' she asked, blinking up at grey mutton chops and severe blue eyes that were full of puzzlement, the cheeks flushed by the liquor he'd taken, namely one discarded gin sling.

‘The soup?' she reminded him.

‘That you did, m'am. Well, the most of it.' Now what the devil was the matter with her? Had that bloody pocket watch of hers stopped?

‘Just let me take my time,' she said. ‘I've lots of it.'

Two timepieces of it, the other on her wrist!

‘I bought this for my husband,' she said, all dreamy like and looking like Dierdre of the Lost Sorrows herself. ‘I was testing it.'

Oh and were you now? ‘Enjoy the salmon, m'am. Would a glass of the white not suit?'

‘Instead of the whiskey? No, the whiskey's fine, thanks.'

The thought of walking alone through Dublin's back streets frightened her. She had found a set of stairs that had led down to a service entrance and from there to a lane. She would telephone the White Horse Inn from a bar, but not from here.

Nibbling at the salmon, Mary used the pencil and paper to sketch the battery, the primer stick, blasting cap and watch. It would have to work. There would be the smell, though, and she would have to worry about that later, but would wiping down the inside of the tin with vanilla help?

Twisting the paper, she burned it in the candle flame, tossed off the rest of the whiskey and laid into the salmon so much, she had to ask for another portion and if they had any capers to go with it.

Capers and lemon and stuffed baked tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cauliflower with a cheese sauce, bags of buns with butter, and a beef Wellington that would melt in the mouth. Then the lemon ice and the coffee, and more of the latter and another brandy, she being forced to fill the flask herself in front of everyone.

The room was small and squalid, the tenement to the north of Tyrone House near Summer Hill, she thought, but the trouble was, she really had no firmer idea. Two men had picked her up near the southwest corner of Saint Stephen's Green, the fog so thick the car had appeared as if out of nowhere.

There had been drunks in the street outside the tenement, drunks in its doorway and some even on the staircase sleeping it off. The stench of rotting garbage and urine had been everywhere, still was, for that matter, the wallpaper hanging in long strips and curls, or absent entirely.

O'Bannion raised a tired hand in salute but wouldn't smile. ‘You find us on the run, I'm afraid, and not staying in any one place for more than a night. How have you been?'

A chair, a small suitcase, an iron cot without a mattress, a stoneware chamber pot, washstand and basin seemed to be it—he could see this in the glance around she gave. There were two blankets on the cot and a filthy pillow without a slip, the feathers sticking through, and for as long as she lived, she'd remember panicking at the thought of lice, and he could see this passing through that mind of hers like lightning. A fancy woman after all and petrified by the sight of life as it really was.

He'd indicate the chair; she'd refuse it and did, had seen the revolver lying beside him and would have to be told. ‘You're being followed everywhere you go, Mrs. Fraser. What are the major and the captain up to?'

‘I don't know. My husband put me on to them. I …'

‘That husband of yours has been making a nuisance of himself.'

‘He's gone with Caithleen to Edinburgh. He'll give you no more trouble.'

‘Let's hope so, but a correction is needed, I think. The doctor was forcibly exited from the scene. Am I right?'

‘Why make me say it?'

‘I won't, but what are Trant and Allanby up to, not to mention Bannerman?'

‘They … they must know I intend to meet with you.'

The truth at last, but pulled from her. He'd take out a cigarette but decide not to light it, would keep himself sitting on the edge of the bed in his undershirt, trousers and boots. She'd notice that his hair was wet, would know he'd been out and about himself, and would wonder where the devil he'd been. ‘Oh they know you'll be meeting me, but even I'm not what they want. That'd only be the half of it, now wouldn't it?'

The carousing, the whoring and the crying all seemed to reverberate through the tenement. Mary knew that he had wanted her to experience it, that he'd had to give her reasons for what he did. He looked grey and gaunt and not at all like she'd remembered from the ruins near the school on the outskirts of Ballylurgen.

When she didn't answer, he said, ‘You see it's this way. De Valera and his government don't want us dealing with the Nazis for fear the Brits will step in and occupy the country, having first bombed the hell out of it—what they don't want of it, that is. They also think we're a threat to their precious government in other ways, so they've had a talk with the major, they have. Let us keep an eye on Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser and see where she goes. Let us cooperate with you. Send in MI5 and we'll turn a blind eye for a bit so long as you let us in on it. Have you gone over to the other side, I wonder?'