J. Janes - Betrayal

Awakening to his presence, she didn’t want him to see that there were no tears. ‘Frank’s been killed. Four months ago. April twenty-fifth, in Egypt, at a place called the Halfaya Pass.’

Hamish had been told that she’d been engaged to Frank Thomas, an up-and-coming lawyer from Orillia, in Ontario, Canada, and that they’d broken it off for some reason, but he had never once asked that of her.

He took the letter from her; Mary let him read what there was of it.

If only you and Frank had married. If only you hadn’t thrown him over like that and run away .

It had taken her more than three-and-a-half years to make that crossing to England, an interlude she’d have on her conscience for the rest of her life, but he’d say nothing of it now, though he’d waited long enough.

1Southern Armagh being predominantly Catholic.

2Believing it too difficult and troublesome, the British government did not introduce conscription in Northern Ireland.

3Official rationing began in Britain in July 1940 but was never as strict in Northern Ireland. In southern Ireland, it began later, in May 1942, and again it was not as harsh. Although private motoring was banned in the South on 30 April 1942, it didn’t completely cease until early in 1943. September 1941 thus gives a ‘window of opportunity,’ though this was fast closing. Early on in the war, tea-which had become scarce in southern Ireland and rationed in the North-led people to travel into the North to obtain it, while those there travelled south to buy sugar. There was also, of course, a vigourous, if clandestine, black market, the border being almost impossible to thoroughly police.

4This change from Hydra to Triton began in the late autumn of 1941 and was essentially complete by February 1942, but was only done with the Atlantic U-boats, though it resulted in huge increases in convoy losses there. Elsewhere, Hydra continued to be used by surface naval vessels and Arctic U-boats and was read by the British, who eventually mastered Triton.

5Southern Ireland never had a blackout, but rather a dim-out later on in the war.

6Pilot-navigator error during this raid saw two bombs fall on Dublin, they thinking they were over Belfast where, in addition to the 700 in April, another 150 were killed.

Ballylurgen held its market day three times a week, ‘for want of something better to do,’ Mrs. Haney would always say, though the thought didn’t bring a smile to Mary. Halfway between the house and the village, an old road took off into the woods and hills to Newtonhamilton some ten or twelve miles to the southwest, if one was foolish enough to attempt such a thing. Once over the first of the hills, this road began to peter out among the whin before passing through crowding blackberry canes, elderberry, stunted hawthorn and apple trees that had gone to ruin. At the Loughie there was a small wooden bridge now half rotted through and so overgrown one couldn’t see the rot at first.

Stopping on this bridge, she got off her bike. Instinct warned that she wasn’t alone-instinct and that emptiness the land could bring, the silence through which the trickle of the Loughie came as it made its way between the green grass of the banks.

Yes, she wasn’t alone. Her heart began to race, she to regret ever having suggested that if it were best, she might be contacted here on the first of the week’s market days, held each Tuesday. Another lie to everyone else-Hamish included but Mrs. Haney in particular. She would have to say she’d had a puncture-an excuse for not having gone into the village.

The rotten, sometimes fallen-in timbers at her feet came into view, she not budging. Around a half-sunken log, the water, always dark, gurgled, the smell of peat and rotting vegetation joining that of forgotten apples, but then there was the warm scent of blackberry leaves.

Nearly two weeks had passed since she’d come back from the South. There had been no chance whatsoever of getting into the castle. Determined to find the man or men responsible for the hanging of the Leutnant zur See Bachmann, Jimmy Allanby, Major Trant and Colonel Bannerman were equally determined, as were the High Command in Belfast and Derry, to find and kill or bring to justice one Liam Nolan, now dubbed by the press as ‘The Mad Bomber of London.’

The British Army would turn the whole of Northern Ireland upside down if necessary. Nolan’s photographs hadn’t been complimentary. Jimmy had thrown them down on the coffee table in the main living room at the house and had demanded, ‘Well?’

‘Well, what ?’ she had asked, sitting on one of the sofas with her knees clasped.

‘Is that the man you gave a lift to?’

‘Certainly not. I’ve never seen him before.’ But why had he suspected her? Why?

As if in answer, Nolan stepped onto the road at the other end of the bridge. The grey tweed cap, open-collared blue work shirt and blue-black jacket of heavy serge, the boldness of stovepipe trousers and black boots were like those of a dockworker. The arms hung loosely at his sides, the hands thin and long-fingered, the wildness of a grin lighting up swift blue eyes that taunted, took her in, stripped her naked, no doubt, and laughed at her predicament while coldly assessing her.

The face was narrow and thin, the features sharp, the hair that washed-out shade flax has after it’s been beaten and the sun has yet to come out.

‘Mrs. Fraser, it is. Mary, I believe.’

The shock was not that the photographs had told her so little, but that the voice hadn’t been what one would have expected. The accent was soft and that of a man with an education and a very good one. But a man of what? she wondered, not moving a muscle.

Thirty-two-was he that old? Six feet, two inches or so in height and weighing perhaps 160 pounds, but all arms and legs, he not moving a muscle either, the cheeks pinched, the nose thin and long, the end of it tilted up and to his left, the imp, the eyes beneath and well back of the brows as if looking out from a cave.

One would never know what to expect from him, and at once this was the thought that frightened most and would, she knew, linger with her. Nolan … Liam Nolan.

Unseen, except out of the corners of her eyes, two others stepped onto the road, one on either side of her, another man and a woman. ‘What is it you want with me?’ she asked, her voice leaping as she tried to be calm and not betray herself.

Nolan touched the peak of his cap in deference. ‘A word, that’s all, m’am,’ the all so soft and melodious it went with the A of his m’am and was like the spilling of flour on a pastry cutting table.

‘But not here,’ said the woman sharply. Grinning swiftly, darkly, this one clamped a cold, moist, pudgy hand firmly over her own right which held the bike pulled in tightly against a hip.

It wasn’t Brenda Darcy but a suggestion of her, both in the coarseness of the face and lankness of the reddish brown hair. Sisters, then?

The woman was probably four years younger than Nolan and there was a hardness to her sea-green eyes that could not be avoided. A chipped, upper left front tooth automatically drew a second glance for the whole half-corner had been knocked away at an angle of forty-five degrees and it lay next to a gap no woman would have wanted.

‘Enough of this hanging about,’ said the other one who was at Mary’s left, he crowding her so closely she could smell the stale tobacco smoke on him.

They rushed her into the woods-there was no time to object, only for Brenda Darcy’s words to come back. ‘You’re in it now, Mrs. Fraser. Don’t ever think you can get out!’

Nolan, having leapt nimbly from the end of the bridge, was in the lead, then came the woman and lastly the other one who had a revolver jammed into the waistband of his trousers and had his hand on the seat of the bike, he pushing her and it along so that she was forced to run.