Run Before the Wind (21 page)

"Two things," I replied, and they both seemed small to me.

"First, if the word does get out, and the right people buy it, Thrasher will be out of the picture for them; they'll believe they can't get at him by sabotaging the project. Second, the crew might not walk off the job right away if they think you're getting the money another way. It could buy us some time, in case Derek does come through."

Mark shrugged.

"It might help. At least if they hear the story, we'll know how they got it."

The next day, Wednesday, work went on as usual on the yacht.

Finbar said nothing about the payment. Then, at half past four, Murray from the bank turned up with another man. Both were carrying brief cases. Finbar went into the office with them. Through the glass partition we could see him shaking his head and arguing with them. The man with Murray seemed to be trying to get Finbar to accept a folded piece of paper. The telephone rang. Pinbar answered it and stuck his head into the shop.

"Captain Robinson, telephone for you."

Mark went to the office. I followed and stood in the door.

"Yes?

This is Captain Robinson." He listened for a moment.

"When?"

He listened again.

"Thank you very much." He hung up. He started back into the shop, ignoring Murray and the other man, then paused.

"Oh, Pinbar, I nearly forgot." He walked to where his coat hung on a peg, got his checkbook from a pocket, and dashed off a check.

"Here you are," he said, handing it to Finbar.

"Thirty-three thousand, four hundred pounds."

Finbar looked as astonished as I did. Mark walked briskly back into the shop with me in tow. I looked back into the office and saw Finbar tuck the paper into Murray's coat pocket.

"I'll be having a word with your regional manager about this, Mr. Murray," he said.

The two men looked embarrassed.

I caught up with Mark.

"Jesus, is that check good?"

Mark grinned.

"That call was from Messrs. Coutts & Company in London. Fifty thousand pounds has been lodged to my account."

He laughed aloud.

"It was delivered in cash by an armored car just at closing time. Blew the manager's mind, I think."

Later, as Mark and I were leaving for the day, Finbar stopped us.

"I want you to know that I'd have stood up to the bank as long as I could have. I told Murray I'm going to his boss and complain about the pressure. His boss will have his ass. And the lads are behind you, too. They came to me today and offered to work without wages as long as they could in the hopes of seeing you get the money."

"Even Denny O'Donnell?" Mark asked.

Finbar grinned.

"Donal did the talking for them all, but Denny went along."

"Well, thank them for me, will you, Finbar? And thank you too for standing up to Murray."

"Not at all. Captain, I enjoyed it. And Captain," Finbar's face took on a sorrowful expression, "I'm sorry you had to sell the farm. I truly am."

Mark patted him on the back.

"Not to worry, Finbar. At least we're sure of being able to finish the boat, now."

"Well, Derek came through, and not a moment too soon," I said as we walked toward the car.

"Too bloody right, mate." He clapped me on the shoulder.

"You came through, too. I think we'll have a breathing spell, now.

They'll want us to finish the boat."

"And we know a bit more than we did, too," I said, thinking of Connie. I would have to go and apologize for yelling at her. She had come through for us.

"Still, even though they think Derek's out of the picture, they've still got their version of Belfast to hold against you. They're going to remember that before long."

"Maybe, but now they're thinking their jobs depend on the .

boat's being finished. We'll have a breathing spell until then."

But what, I wondered, would happen when the yacht was finished?

CHRISTMAS CAME, and it was one of the best I can remember.

My parents arrived, and my grandfather clearly enjoyed having his daughter home. He threw a huge cocktail party and buffet dinner;

half the county seemed to be there. I found a fashionably cut dinner jacket at a Cork men's shop just in time to keep from disgracing the family.

My parents were much taken with Mark and Annie, and with Connie. If anything, my mother approved too much of Connie.

"There," she said pointedly, when she had my ear at the punch bowl, "is a young woman of substance."

"Come on, now, Patricia, you just want grandchildren with a bit of Irish in them."

"I should be so lucky," she sighed.

"Anyway, she's more your style than Lady Jane, I think."

"Ah, now you're worried I'll bring a Brit home." I wasn't so sure just what my style was, anyway.

The party was the first time I had seen Connie since our conversation about the good Sister Mary Margaret. She had been cool on the phone when I invited her, but I think she was curious to meet my parents. She was cool when she arrived, too, and I had to ask her to dance to get a private word with her.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you the other day; I was pretty upset."

"I thought you were way out of line. Will Lee, but I did as you asked."

"I know you did."

"I was ashamed ..." she began, then stopped.

"What?"

I pulled her into my grandfather's study and told her what had transpired. She seemed stunned.

"I don't understand what's happening. I don't understand why Maeve would do that to me."

"It's not too hard to figure out. She's made it pretty clear where her sympathies lie."

"But she's not supposed to have any sympathies."

"Well, she's human. That's not so hard to understand."

"Not for you, maybe. You're a bloody Protestant. You don't have any real grasp of the discipline of her order."

"I guess not."

"I've got to talk to her."

"Now listen, you can't let her know that we know. That would put us right back where we were before, just waiting for something to happen to the boat ... or to one of us."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

I told her about the wrecking of the cottage. Her reaction was a shocked silence.

"This can't be happening," she said, finally.

"But it is happening, and it might keep happening. Is that what you want?"

"Of course not."

"Things seem to be stabilized, now; we've got some sort of breathing spell for a while, and you can't do anything to upset that.

You must be very careful with Maeve. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," she said resignedly, "I suppose I do."

We opened our presents in front of a roaring fire in my grandfather's library on Christmas Eve. I gave my mother some Waterford crystal, and my father some yards of a Tipperary tweed, enough for a suit. I had found a bottle of a fine Champagne Cognac, vintage 1928, in London for my grandfather. My parents surprised me with a really good suit of foul weather sailing gear from Captain 0. M. Watts' London chandlery and completed the outfit with a pair of top quality Swedish sea boots and some leather sailing gloves. I was delighted.

But my grandfather rattled me. When all the gifts had been opened, he handed me a buff envelope, sealed with wax. Inside I found a folded sheaf of papers. I spread them out and found a surveyor's map of an area down by Kinsale Harbour. There was a heavy line drawn around a rectangular patch of land. I looked at the other papers and discovered a deed. It was in my name. I looked at my grandfather.

He grinned at me, still clenching his pipe in his teeth.

"There's a bit more than four acres there; and a cottage. It's something of a ruin, but it can be fixed up. You seem to like it there, down by the water. You've ridden my hunters there often enough."

"You're an Irish landowner, now," my mother said, "so you be careful what you say about your people from now on, you hear?"

I was too surprised to speak. I knew my grandfather must have meant well, but I thought I felt my family reaching out subtly to take away my newly won freedom. I thanked my grandfather profusely and tried to seem pleased, but somehow the deed in my hand troubled me.

On Christmas morning I saddled two of my grandfather's hunters, and my mother and I rode out toward the harbor to visit my land.

We made a full gallop of it, and she beat me by a length, pulling up on a hill overlooking the water. I got out my surveyor's map and looked around for the property lines. It was easy enough to define my new holding. It was bordered on one side by a roadway and a hedgerow, on another by an old stone wall, and on the other two by Kinsale Harbour, near the mouth. I could look down on a sheltered inlet that was part of my property.

"If there's enough water there, it would be perfect for a little dock," I said to my mother, pointing.

"I could keep a boat." I consulted the map again. Curved lines representing one, two, and three fathoms followed the outline of the inlet. It seemed ideal.

Hangman Cove, it was called. The headland on the eastern side of the harbor entrance was Hangman Point. A large grove of trees ran up from the water, concealing and sheltering the cottage. They had been shaped into a smooth, flowing line by decades of winds.

"It's beautiful," my mother said.

"I'm so glad he chose this spot to give you."

We crossed the road and entered a gap in the stone wall where a gate had once been. At the edge of the trees we dismounted and walked the last few yards along the rough, dirt road, leading the horses. The cottage appeared through the trees. The slate roof seemed largely intact, but the insides were a shambles. Generations of sheep and cattle had sheltered in the place, but the walls still stood straight. It could be recovered.

"I used to play down here when I was a girl," my mother said.

"An old woman named Nellie lived here; she was the widow of a man who had worked for years for my grandfather, and he gave her the place for her lifetime. She died not long after Billy and I were married. I think she kept going just to see me wed."

I looked at her closely. In spite of all my suspicions, I could see nothing in her that wanted to confine me, and I felt ashamed for my reaction the day before. I looked at all the beauty around me and thought if this was entrapment, I wanted to be trapped.

ON THE MORNING after Christmas I drove my parents to the airport, detouring along the way to show my father my cottage and land. The road led along the eastern shore of Kinsale Harbour, through Summercove, past Connie's cottage.

"Let's stop and say goodbye to Connie," my mother suggested.

I didn't want to see Connie at that moment, but we had time, and I couldn't think of an excuse not to stop, so I pulled over.

Connie was on her school Christmas holiday and was home. She chatted brightly with both my parents for a few minutes, and I told her about my new holding, further along the harbor.

"We'll be neighbors, it appears."

She walked us toward the car.

"What a nice thing for your grandfather to do," she said. She didn't seem very enthusiastic about the prospect of having me for a neighbor.

"Did you have a good Christmas with your folks?" I asked.

"Sure, fine," she said. She seemed tired, tense. I had never seen Connie tired.

I pulled her aside.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked.

"You look a bit on" your feed."

"Oh, just a bit nackered from all the Christmas cheer," she said.

"Not to worry."

"Dinner tonight?"

"Can't. I'm going to Dublin with my parents to visit some relatives. We're staying until after New Year's."

"Oh."

"Anyhow, you're on your way to Paris, aren't you?"

"Uh, no, I've got to work a few more days on the boat before

I join them." She looked at me sharply; then she turned and walked back to her cottage without another word.

I got into the car and headed for Hangman Cove.

"Something wrong between you and Connie?" my mother asked.

"Not that I know of."

"She seemed a bit odd to me."

I laughed.

"Well, she's a woman," I said, "and Irish."

I showed my father my new bit of Ireland. He approved, and we started for the airport. As we passed Connie's cottage in Summercove I saw the convent van parked outside.

We made our farewells at Cork Airport. It had been a perfect Christmas for me, for all of us, it seemed, but it would be some time before we saw each other again.

"You take care of yourself, now," my father said.

"I'll do that."

"I hope we'll see you in the autumn," my mother said. This was a reference to law school, I knew.