J. Janes - Betrayal

Turning at his nod, she began to walk the bike away, only to remember the books, but she couldn’t tuck a note into any of them, couldn’t chance asking that they be given to Erich or one of the others, since she’d mentioned Jimmy’s name.

‘Sergeant?’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘Mrs. Could I ask that you see that these books are delivered to the library?’

‘Library’s off limits until further notice.’

All recreation, such as it was, must have been cancelled, but had it all been for nothing, the trip South, the meeting with Brenda Darcy, the crossing of the border?

Back at the house, Mrs. Haney didn’t wait. ‘A hanging, m’am. A hanging!’

Bridget Leahy, all of seventeen, was jumping. ‘By the neck it was, m’am, and he one of their own!’

‘But not one enough, I’m thinking,’ said Mrs. Haney with a grim, sharp nod, she waiting for some response while Bridget remained wild-eyed and all over the place, but Mrs. Haney chose not to discipline the girl in front of others.

‘Sure and didn’t I tell you they’d be up to no good in that place and you being turned away like that,’ the woman said, fiercely clucking her tongue. ‘You was turned away, Missus Fraser? Am I right now, m’am? Sure it is that I am.’

‘Mrs. Haney …’

‘M’am?’ and she looking pale and bleached about the gills and coming into the kitchen like that for answers now. Answers!

Wanting to shout at her, ‘Don’t you dare insinuate such things!’ Wanting to wipe that brooding Celtic look from that thick, brown-brow of a face with its swift brown eyes that saw everything, Mary said, ‘Nothing … It’s nothing. Bridget, would you do a bit of tidying up in the doctor’s library for me, please?’

Ria reached for the long-handled iron spoon that hung above the cast-iron range but paused. ‘Bridget! You bring me them taters from the garden like I asked you.’

‘Mrs. Haney …’

‘M’am?’

‘Oh never mind! Just never mind!’ Retreating quickly, visions of the woman followed of their own accord. The front, the back, the side-all were nearly of the same dimension-a tower of strength, a pillar of it, the woman standing firmly in her kitchen, her territory where others, the owner’s wife and mistress of the house, her employer, for God’s sake, were persona non grata, the jade-green skirt being hitched up, the off-white blouse with its bits of lace her mother’s likely, and two bulky knitted cardigans, the outer being unbuttoned always, the inner, the newer, being buttoned and of a deeper green!

The carpet slippers were for around the house because they ‘eased,’ spelled aized her feet, her bunions, spelled boonians and the sagging woollen socks were ‘of the army,’ and, ‘for the warmth of a morn.’

‘Oh damn that woman, damn her anyway!’ swore Mary under her breath as she stopped in the foyer to check the morning’s mail.

There was nothing from Dublin, thank fortune, but there was a letter from Canada, from home. Opened by the censors and then resealed. Posted a good four months ago and come all the way across the Atlantic by convoy to England under threat of German U-boats and then by packet across the Irish Sea.

Nothing stopped the Royal Mail, not even a war.

It was a letter from Frank Thomas’s mother, but she’d leave it for a moment, and climbing the stairs, went along to the bedroom Erich had used, to stand in its doorway feeling lost and alone.

Erich had needed to have his appendix out early in March. Things had gone well but he’d been run-down and after some weeks in the castle’s infirmary, still hadn’t been right: a fever that doggedly came and went. A low-grade thing that would suddenly flare up for no apparent reason.

Puzzled by it, Hamish had gone to the colonel, and Erich had been brought to the house. He’d spent a fortnight here-over a week in bed and then a few days around the place, but had Hamish seen it coming? He had had to go out on a call. She’d gone downstairs with him, hadn’t been sleeping well and had heard him get up. It had been late-nearly 2.00 a.m. She’d asked if he’d like her to come with him but he had only shaken his head in that way he always did, and had told her to go back to bed, Mrs. Haney and the others never sleeping in the house. Erich … Erich had caught her all but in darkness on the upstairs landing. Her back had hit the wall as he’d kissed her and she’d tried to pull away.

‘Don’t lie about it. You wanted him,’ she said. Even now she could still feel how her nightgown had slipped from her shoulders as it had fallen to the floor.

But to understand how it could happen in the castle-in a prisoner of war camp-one had to understand the workings of the place. The British and the Anglo-Irish of the British Army were always about, but there were no armed guards within those parts of the castle that had been assigned to the prisoners-just guards without their guns. At any moment one or more of them could come into the library and often did-everything was always more or less in a state of flux and she was always accompanied in any case, and always there would be at least one of them standing at the door.

Being officers, the prisoners weren’t locked into rooms or anything like that. They were fully responsible for their own well-being and had duty rosters organized, even their own cooks. They organized their own recreation and had the run of the central courtyard-acres for soccer, which they played nearly every day after their calisthenics.

There were lectures, too, on history, on bridge building or making wine, even on things like fishing and tying flies for salmon or trout-oh, they had them on any number of subjects and were a very diverse group. They built beautiful model ships, played cards, wrote letters home, received Red Cross parcels and had somehow managed to acquire two Ping-Pong tables.

Music was a favourite, of course, but mostly a choral group for which she was always trying to find new scores. They had a piano the Catholics in Armagh had sent along with two accordions, a gramophone and stacks of records. Hence the ‘parties’ now and then when things were going well and they were especially behaving themselves, which was exactly what Colonel Bannerman wanted most, of course. Even a bit of beer and once … why once, a drop of whiskey-she’d mentioned the absence of a bottle to Hamish and he’d only touched his lips and said, ‘Sh!’

Many of the men simply walked and talked among themselves or to her if they could, using up their precious tobacco rations and trying to follow the war without news beyond what they were allowed to be given or learned from the clandestine radio they’d built-they must have. But the guards could not be everywhere at all times, and they could be distracted, singled out, cut off, isolated. One of Erich’s men would keep a watch. Another would act as a discreet relay, a third watching yet another approach, their exit if needed.

Together, she going first or following at a distance, they would manage to slip away. It hadn’t happened that much-five times, that’s all. Just five since here, since when it had first happened. Well, since Erich had left the house. Each time there had been the apprehension, the terror of discovery, the shame of such a thing, but the incredible sexual tension that fear and darkened corridors and empty rooms could bring, the presence of others close by. Had they listened? They must have.

She’d been a fool, a terrible fool.

When Fraser found her, Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed. The last of the sunlight caught her and he wondered why she’d come in here to read a letter from home, and he thought he knew the reason.

‘Lass, what is it? What’s happened?’