Daphne du Maurier - Not After Midnight & Other Stories

'This way. You'll get your feet wet, but it can't be helped.'

She could see nothing around her but water and reeds and sky. She stumbled after him on the soggy ground, clinging to his hand, the fair boy just ahead, the mud oozing through her shoes. They were leading her on to some sort of track. A shape loomed out of the shadows. It looked like a van, and a man she did not recognise was standing beside it. He opened the van door. Nick got in first, dragging Shelagh after him. The fair boy went round to the front beside the driver, and the van lurched and lumbered up the track until, topping what seemed to be a rise, it came to a smooth surface that must be road. She tried to sit upright, and banged her head against a shelf above her. Something rattled and shook.

'Keep still,' said Nick. 'We don't want all the bread down on top of us.'

'Bread?'

It was the first word she had spoken since leaving the island. He flicked on a lighter, and she saw that the partition between themselves and the driver was shut. All around them were loaves of bread, neatly stacked upon shelves, and cakes, pastries, confectionery, and tinned goods as well.

'Help yourself,' he told her. It's the last meal you'll get tonight.'

He put out his arm and seized a loaf, then broke it in two. He flicked off the lighter, leaving them in darkness again. I couldn't be more helpless, she thought, if I were riding in a hearse.

'Have you stolen the van?' she asked.

'Stolen it? Why the hell should I steal a van? It's on loan from the grocer in Mulldonagh. He's driving it himself. Have some cheese. And a spot of this.' He put a flask to her lips. The neat spirit nearly choked her, but gave warmth and courage at the same time. 'Your feet must be wet. Take your shoes off. And fold up your jacket under your head. Then we can really get down to it.'

'Down to what?'

'Well, we've a drive of some thirty-six miles before we reach the border. A smooth road all the way. I propose to scalp you.'

She was travelling by sleeper back to boarding-school in the north of England. Her father was waving goodbye to her from the platform. 'Don't go,' she called out, 'don't ever leave me.' The sleeper dissolved, became a dressing-room in a theatre, and she was standing before the looking-glass dressed as Cesario in Twelfth Night. Sleeper and dressing-room exploded…

She sat up, bumped her head on the rack of loaves. Nick was no longer with her. The van was stationary. Something had awakened her, though, from total blackout-they must have burst a tyre. She could see nothing in the darkness of the van, not even the face of her watch. Time did not exist. It's body chemistry, she told herself, that's what does it. People's skins. They either blend or they don't. They either merge and melt into the same texture, dissolve and become renewed, or nothing happens, like faulty plugs, blown fuses, switchboard jams. When the thing goes right, as it has for me tonight, then it's arrows splintering the sky, it's forest fires, it's Agincourt. I shall live till I'm ninety-five, marry some nice man, have fifteen children, win stage awards and Oscars, but never again will the world break into fragments, burn before my eyes. I've bloody had it….

The van door opened and a rush of cold air blew in upon her. The boy with the mop of hair was grinning at her.

'The Commander says if you're fond of fireworks come and take a look. It's a lovely sight.'

She stumbled out of the van after him, rubbing her eyes. They had parked beside a ditch, and beyond the ditch was a field, a river surely running through it, but the foreground was dark. She could distinguish little except what seemed to be farm buildings around a bend in the road. The sky in the distance had an orange glow as if the sun, instead of setting hours ago, had risen in the north, putting all time to odds, while tongues of flame shot upwards, merging with pillars of black smoke. Nick was standing by the driver's seat, the driver himself alongside, both of them staring at the sky. A muffled voice was speaking from a radio fixed near to the dashboard.

'What is it?' she asked. 'What's happening'?'

The driver, a middle-aged man with a furrowed face, turned to her, smiling.

'It's Armagh burning, or the best part of it. But there'll be no damage done to the cathedral. St Patrick's will stand when the rest of the town is black.'

The young man with the mop of hair had bent his ear to the radio. He straightened himself, touched Nick on the arm.

'First explosion has gone off at Omagh, sir,' he said. 'We should have the report on Strabane in three minutes' time. Enniskillen in five.'

'Fair enough,' replied Nick. 'Let's go.'

He bundled Shelagh back into the van and climbed in beside her. The van sprang into action, did a U-turn, and sped along the road once more.

'I might have known it,' she said. 'I should have guessed. But you had me fooled with your cairns in the wood and all that cover-up.'

'It isn't a cover-up. I've a passion for digging. But I love explosions too.'

He offered her a nip from the flask but she shook her head. 'You're a murderer. Helpless people away there burning in their beds, women and children dying perhaps in hundreds.' 'Dying nothing,' he replied. 'They'll be out in the streets applauding. You mustn't believe Murphy. He lives in a dream world. The town of Armagh will hardly feel it. A warehouse or two may smoulder, with luck the barracks.'

'And the other places the boy mentioned?'

'A firework display. Very effective.'

It was all so obvious now, thinking back to that last conversation with her father. He had been on to it all right. Duty before friendship. Loyalty to his country first. No wonder the pair of them had stopped exchanging Christmas cards.

Nick took an apple from the shelf above and began to munch it. 'So…' he said, 'you're a budding actress.'

'Budding is the operative word.'

'Oh come, don't be modest. You'll go far. You tricked me almost as neatly as I tricked you. All the same, I'm not sure I quite swallow the one about the friend with naval connections. Tell me his name.'

'I won't. You can kill me first.'

Thank heaven for Jennifer Blair. She would not have stood a chance as Shelagh Money.

'Oh well,' he said, 'it doesn't matter. It's all past history now.'

'Then the dates did make sense to you?'

'Very good sense, but we were amateurs in those days. June 5, 1951, a raid on Ebrington Barracks, Derry. Quite a success. June 25, 1953, Felstead School Officers' Training Corps, Essex. Bit of a mix-up. June 12, 1954, Gough Barracks, Armagh. Nothing much gained, but good for morale. October 17, 1954, Omagh Barracks. Brought us some recruits. April 24, 1955, Eglington Naval Air Base at Derry. H'm… No comment. August 13, 1955, Arborfield Depot, Berkshire. Initial success, but a proper cock-up later. After that, everyone had to do a lot of homework.'

There was an Italian opera by Puccini with a song in it, '0! my beloved father'. It always made her cry. Anyway, she thought, wherever you are, darling, in your astral body, don't blame me for what I've done, and may very well do again before the night is over. It was one way to settle your last request, though you wouldn't have approved of the method. But then, you had high ideals and I have none. And what happened in those days was not my problem. My problem is much more basic, much more direct. I've fallen hook, line and sinker for your onetime friend.

'Politics leave me cold,' she said. 'What's the point of banging off bombs and upsetting everyone's lives? You hope for a united Ireland?'

'Yes,' he replied, 'so do we all. It will come eventually, though it may be dull for some of us when it does. Take Murphy, now. No excitement in driving a grocer's van around the countryside and being in bed by nine. This sort of thing keeps him young. If that's to be his future in a united Ireland he'll die before his seventieth birthday. I said to him last week when he came to the island for briefing, "Johnnie's too young"-Johnnie's his son, the boy sitting beside him in front now "Johnnie's too young," I told him. "Maybe we shouldn't let him risk his life yet awhile." "Risk be damned," says Murphy. "It's the only way to keep a lad out of trouble, with the world in the state it is today."'