Not After Midnight & Other Stories

A Border-Line Case

HE HAD BEEN asleep for about ten minutes. Certainly no longer. Shelagh had brought up some of the old photograph albums from the study to amuse her father, and they had been laughing and going through them together. He seemed so much better. The nurse had felt free to go off duty for the afternoon and take a walk, leaving her patient in the care of his daughter, while Mrs Money herself had slipped off in the car to the village to have her hair done. The doctor had reassured them all that the crisis was past; it was just a matter of rest and quiet, and taking things easy.

Shelagh was standing by the window looking down into the garden. She would remain at home, of course, as long as her father wanted her-indeed, she could not bear to leave him if there was any doubt about his condition. It was only that, if she turned down the offer the Theatre Group had made to her of playing the lead in their forthcoming series of Shakespeare plays, the chance might not come her way again. Rosalind… Portia… Viola-Viola surely the greatest fun of all. The yearning heart concealed beneath a cloak of dissimulation, the whole business of deception whetting appetite.

Unconsciously she smiled, pushing her hair behind her ears, tilting her head, one hand on her hip, apeing Cesario, and she heard a sudden movement from the bed and saw her father struggling to sit upright. He was staring at her, an expression of horror and disbelief upon his face, and he cried out, 'Oh no… Oh, Jinnie… Oh my God!', and as she ran to his side, saying to him, 'What is it, darling, what's wrong?' he tried to wave her aside, shaking his head, and then he collapsed backwards on his pillows, and she knew that he was dead.

She ran out of the room, calling for the nurse, then remembered that she had gone for a walk. She could have gone across the fields, anywhere. Shelagh rushed downstairs to find her mother, but the house was empty, and the garage doors were wide open-her mother must have gone somewhere in the car. Why? What for? She had never said she was going out. Shelagh seized the telephone in the hall with shaking hands and dialled the doctor's number, but when the answering click came it was not the doctor himself but his recorded voice, toneless, automatic, saying, 'This is Doctor Dray speaking. I shall not be available until five o'clock. Your message will be recorded. Please start now…', and there was a ticking sound, just as when one rang to know the time and the voice said, 'At the third stroke it will be two, forty-two, and twenty seconds…'

Shelagh flung down the receiver and began to search the telephone directory feverishly for the number of Doctor Dray's partner, a young man lately joined the practice-she did not know him-and this time a live voice answered, a woman. There was the sound of a child crying in the distance and a radio blaring, and she heard the woman shout impatiently at the child to be quiet.

'This is Shelagh Money speaking, of Whitegates, Great Marsden. Please ask the doctor to come at once, I think my father has just died. The nurse is out and I'm alone in the house. I can't get Doctor Dray.'

She heard her own voice break, and the woman's reply, swift, sympathetic, 'I'll contact my husband immediately', made further explanation impossible. She couldn't speak, but turned away blindly from the telephone and ran up the stairs again into the bedroom. He was lying as she had left him, the expression of horror still on his face, and she went and knelt beside him and kissed his hand, the tears pouring down her cheeks. 'Why?' she asked herself. 'What happened? What did I do?' Because when he cried out, using her pet name Jinnie, it was not as if he had been seized with sudden pain on waking from sleep. It did not seem like that at all, but more as though his cry was one of accusation, that she had done something so appalling that it suspended all belief. 'Oh no… Oh, Jinnie… Oh my God…!' Then trying to ward her off as she ran to his side, and dying instantly.

I can't bear it, I can't bear it, she thought, what did I do? She got up, still blinded by tears, and went and stood by the open window and looked back over her shoulder to the bed, but it was no longer the same. He was not staring at her any more. He was still. He had gone. The moment of truth had vanished for ever, and she would never know. What had happened was Then, was already past, in some other dimension of time, and the present was Now, part of a future he could not share. This present, this future, was all blank to him, like the empty spaces in the photograph album beside the bed, waiting to be filled. Even, she thought, if he had read my mind, which he often did, he would not have cared. He knew I wanted to play those parts with the Theatre Group, he encouraged me, he was delighted. It was not as though I were planning to go off at any moment and leave him…. Why the expression of horror, of disbelief? Why? Why?

She stared out of the window, and the carpet of autumn leaves scattered here and there on the lawn was suddenly blown in a gust of wind up into the air like birds and tossed in all directions, only to drift apart, and tumble, and fall. The leaves that had once budded tight and close upon the parent tree, to glisten thick and green throughout the summer, had no more life. The tree disowned them, and they had become the sport of any idle wind that chanced to blow. Even the burnished gold was reflected sunlight, lost when the sun had set, so that in shadow they became crinkled, barren, dry.

Shelagh heard the sound of a car coming down the drive, and she went out of the room and stood at the top of the stairs. It was not the doctor, though, it was her mother. She came through the front door to the hall, peeling off her gloves, her hair bunched high on her head, gleaming and crisp from the drier. Unconscious of her daughter's eyes she hovered a moment before the mirror, patting a stray curl into place. Then she took her lipstick from her bag and made up her mouth. A door banging in the direction of the kitchen made her turn her head.

'That you, Nurse?' she called. 'How about tea? We can all have it upstairs.'

She looked back into the mirror, cocking her head, then dab- bed off the surplus lipstick with a tissue.

The nurse appeared from the kitchen. She looked different out of uniform. She had borrowed Shelagh's dufflecoat for her walk, and her hair, usually so trim, was dishevelled.

'Such a lovely afternoon,' she said. I’ve been for quite a tramp across the fields. It was so refreshing. Blown all the cobwebs away. Yes, let's have tea, by all means. How's my patient?'

They are living in the past, Shelagh thought, in a moment of time that does not exist any more. The nurse would never eat the buttered scones she had anticipated, glowing from her walk, and her mother, when she glanced into the mirror later, would see an older, more haggard face beneath the piled-up coiffure. It was as if grief, coming so unexpectedly, had sharpened intuition, and she could see the nurse already installed by the bedside of her next patient, some querulous invalid, unlike her father, who teased and made jokes, while her mother, dressed suitably in black and white (black alone she would consider too severe), replied to the letters of condolence, those from the more important people first.

Then they both became aware of her, standing at the top of the stairs.

'He's dead,' Shelagh said.

Their upturned faces stared at her in disbelief, as his had done, but without the horror, without the accusation, and as the nurse, recovering first, brushed past her up the stairs, she saw her mother's carefully preserved and still lovely face disintegrate, crumple, like a plastic mask.

You must not blame yourself. There was nothing you could have done. It was bound to happen, sooner or later…. Yes, thought Shelagh, but why not later rather than sooner, because when one's father dies there is so much that has been left unsaid. Had I known, that last hour sitting there, talking and laughing about trivial things, that there was a clot forming like a time-bomb close to his heart, ready to explode, I would surely have behaved differently, held on to him, at least thanked him for all my nineteen years of happiness and love. Not flipped over the photographs in the album, mocking bygone fashions, nor yawned halfway through, so that, sensing boredom, he let the album drop to the floor and murmured, 'Don't bother about me, pet, I'll have a kip.'

It's always the same when you come face to face with death, the nurse told her, you feel you could have done more. It used to worry me a lot when I was training. And of course with a close relative it's worse. You've had a great shock, you must try and pull yourself together for your mother's sake…. My mother's sake? My mother would not mind if I walked out of the house this moment, Shelagh was on the point of saying, because then she would have all the attention, all the sympathy, people would say how wonderfully she was bearing up, whereas with me in the house sympathy will be divided. Even Doctor Dray, when he finally arrived in the wake of his partner, patted her on the shoulder before her mother and said, 'He was very proud of you, my dear, he was always telling me so.' So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time. Let me run upstairs for you… Let me answer the telephone… Shall I put on the kettle? An excess of courtesy, like mandarins in kimonos bowing, and at the same time an attempt at self-justification for not having been there when the explosion happened.

The nurse (to the doctor's partner): 'I would never have gone for a walk if I hadn't been quite sure he was comfortable. And I believed that both Mrs Money and her daughter were in the house. Yes, I had given him the tablets…' etc., etc.

She is in the witness-box, on trial, thought Shelagh, but so are we all.

Her mother (also to the doctor's partner): 'It had entirely slipped my memory that Nurse was going out. There has been so much to think of, so much anxiety, and I thought it would relax me to pay a quick visit to the hairdresser, and he had seemed so much better, really his old self. I would never have dreamt of leaving the house, leaving his room, if I had thought for one moment…'

'Isn't that the trouble?' Shelagh burst in. 'We never do think, any of us. You didn't, Nurse didn't, Doctor Dray didn't, and above all I didn't, because I'm the only one who saw what happened, and I shall never forget the look on his face as long as I live.'

She stormed along the passage to her own room, sobbing hysterically in a way she had not done for years-the last time was when the post-van smashed into her first car when it was parked in the entrance drive, all that twisted metal, the lovely plaything ruined. That will teach them a lesson, she told herself, that will shake them out of this business of trying to behave so well, of being noble in the face of death, of making out that it's a merciful release and everything is really for the best. None of them really minding, caring, that someone has gone forever. But forever…

Later that evening, everyone gone to bed, death being so exhausting to all but the departed, Shelagh crept along the landing to her father's room and found the photograph album, tactfully tidied away on a corner table by the nurse, and carried it back with her to her own bedroom. Earlier, during the afternoon, the photographs had been without significance, familiar as old Christmas cards hoarded in a drawer, but now they were a kind of obituary, like stills flashed in tribute on a television screen.

The befrilled baby on a rug, mouth agape, his parents playing croquet. An uncle, killed in the first world war. Her father again, no longer a baby on a rug but in breeches, holding a cricket-bat too big for him. Homes of grandparents long dead. Children on beaches. Picnics on moors. Then Dartmouth, photographs of ships. Rows of lined-up boys, youths, men. As a child it had been her pride to point to him at once. 'There you are, that's you', the smallest boy at the end of the line, then in the next photograph slimmer and standing in the second row, then growing quite tall and suddenly handsome, a child no longer, and she would turn the pages rapidly because the photographs would be of places, not of people-Malta, Alexandria, Portsmouth, Greenwich. Dogs that had been his which she had not known. 'There's dear old Punch…' (Punch, he used to tell her, always knew when his ship was due home, and waited at an upstairs window.) Naval officers riding donkeys… playing tennis… running races, all this before the war, and it had made her think, 'unconscious of their doom, the little victims play', because on the next page it became suddenly sad, the ship he had loved blown up, and so many of those laughing young men lost. 'Poor old Monkey White, he would have been an admiral had he lived.' She tried to imagine the grinning face of Monkey White in the photo turned into an admiral, bald-headed, perhaps, stout, and something inside her was glad that he had died, although her father said he was a loss to the Service. More officers, more ships, and the great day when Mountbatten visited the ship, her father in command, meeting him as he was piped aboard. The courtyard at Buckingham Palace. Standing rather self-consciously before the press photographer, displaying medals.

'Not long now before we come to you,' her father used to say as he turned the page to the full-blown and never-to-him-admitted rather silly photograph of her mother in evening dress which he so much admired, wearing her soulful look that Shelagh knew well. It embarrassed her, as a child, to think that her father had fallen in love, or, if men must love, then it should have been someone else, someone dark, mysterious and profoundly clever, not an ordinary person who was impatient for no reason and cross when one was late for lunch.

The naval wedding, her mother smiling in triumph Shelagh knew that look too, she wore it when she got her way about anything, which she generally did-and her father's smile, so different, not triumphant, merely happy. The frumpish bridesmaids wearing dresses that made them fatter than they were- she must have chosen them on purpose not to be outdone-and the best man, her father's friend Nick, not nearly so good-looking as her father. He was better in one of the earlier groups on the ship, but here he looked supercilious, bored.

The honeymoon, the first house, and then her own appearance, the childhood photographs that were part of her life; on her father's knee, on his shoulders, and right through childhood and adolescence until last Christmas. It could be my obituary too, she thought, we've shared this book together, and it ends with his snapshot of me standing in the snow and mine of him, smiling at me through the study window.

In a moment she would cry again, which was self-pity; if she cried it must not be for herself but for him. When was it, that afternoon, that he had sensed her boredom and pushed the album aside? It was while they were discussing hobbies. He had told her she was physically lazy, didn't take enough exercise.

'I get all the exercise I need in the theatre,' she said, 'pretending to be other people.'

'It's not the same,' he said. 'You should get away from people sometimes, imaginary and real. I tell you what. When I'm up and about again and in the clear we'll go over to Ireland and fish, the three of us. It would do your Mum a power of good, and I haven't fished for years.'

Ireland? Fish? Her instinct was selfish, one of dismay. It would interfere with her Theatre Group plans. She must joke him out of it.

'Mum would hate every minute,' she said. 'She would much rather go to the south of France to stay with Aunt Bella.' (Bella was her mother's sister. Had a villa at Cap d'Ail.)

'I dare say,' he smiled, 'but that wouldn't be my idea of convalescence. Have you forgotten I'm half-Irish? Your grandfather came from County Antrim.'

'I've not forgotten,' she said, 'but grandfather's been dead for years, and lies buried in a Suffolk churchyard. So much for your Irish blood. You haven't any friends over there, have you?'

He did not answer immediately, and then he said, 'There's poor old Nick.'

Poor old Nick… Poor old Monkey White… Poor old Punch… She was momentarily confused between friends and dogs she had never known.

'Do you mean your best man at the wedding?' she frowned. 'Somehow I thought he was dead.'

'Dead to the world,' he said shortly. 'He was badly smashed up in a car crash some years ago, and lost an eye. Lived like a recluse ever since.'

'How sad. Is that why he never sends you a Christmas card?'

'Partly… Poor old Nick. Gallant as they come, but mad as a hatter. A border-line case. I couldn't recommend him for promotion, and I'm afraid he bore me a grudge ever afterwards.'

'That's hardly surprising, then. I'd feel the same if I'd been somebody's close friend and they turned me down.'

He shook his head. 'Friendship and duty are two separate things,' he said, 'and I put duty first. You are another generation, you wouldn't understand. I was right in what I did, I'm sure of that, but it wasn't very pleasant at the time. A chip on the shoulder can turn a man sour. I'd hate to think myself responsible for what he may have got mixed up in.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Never mind,' he said, 'none of your business. Anyway, it's over and done with long ago. But I sometimes wish…'

'What do you wish, darling?'

'That I could shake the old boy by the hand once more and wish him luck.'

They turned over a few more pages of the album, and it was soon afterwards that she yawned, glancing idly about the room, and he sensed her boredom and said he would have a kip. No one could die of a heart attack because his daughter was bored…. But supposing he had had a nightmare in which she had figured? Supposing he had thought himself back in that sinking ship during the war, with poor old Monkey White, and Nick, and all those drowning men, and somehow she had been with him in the water? Everything became jumbled up in dreams, it was a known thing. And all the time that clot getting bigger, like an excess of oil in the workings of a clock. At any moment the hands would falter, the clock stop ticking.

Somebody tapped at her bedroom door. 'Yes?' she called.

It was the nurse. Still professional, despite her dressing-gown. 'Just wondered if you were all right,' she whispered. 'I saw your light under the door.'

'Thanks. I'm O.K.'

'Your mother's fast asleep. I gave her a sedative. She was fussing about tomorrow being Saturday, and the difficulty of getting an announcement in The Times and Telegraph before Monday. She's being so plucky.'

Was there hidden reproach in her voice because Shelagh had not thought of taking charge of these things herself? Surely tomorrow would have done? Aloud she said, 'Can nightmares kill?'

'What do you mean, dear?'

'Could my father have had a terrible nightmare and died of shock?'

The nurse advanced to the bed and straightened the eiderdown. 'Now, I told you earlier, and the doctors said the same, it would have happened anyway. You really must not keep on going over it in your mind. It doesn't help. Let me get you a sedative too.'

'I don't want a sedative.'

'You know, dear, forgive me, but you're being just a little bit childish. Grief is natural, but to worry about him in this way is the last thing your father would have wanted. It's all over now. He's at peace.'

'How do you know he's at peace?' Shelagh exploded. 'How do you know he's not hovering beside us at this minute in an astral body absolutely furious that he's dead, and saying to me, "That bloody nurse gave me too many pills"?'

Oh no, she thought, I didn't mean that, people are too vulnerable, too naked. The poor woman, shaken out of professional calm, sagged in her dressing-gown, drooped before her eyes, and in a tremulous voice said, 'What a terribly unkind thing to say! You know I did no such thing.'

Impulsively Shelagh leapt out of bed and put her arms round the nurse's shoulders.

'Forgive me,' she pleaded, 'of course you didn't. And he liked you very much. You were a wonderful nurse to him. What I meant was'-she searched in her mind for some explanation- 'what I meant was that we don't know what happens when a person dies. They might be waiting in some queue at St Peter's gate with all the other people who have died that day, or else pushing into some awful purgatorial night-club with the ones who were destined for hell, or just drifting in a kind of fog until the fog clears and everything becomes clear. All right, I will have a sedative, you have one too, then we'll both be fresh for the morning. And please don't think any more about what I said.'

The trouble is, she thought, after she had taken her sedative and gone back to bed, words leave a wound, the wound leaves a scar. The nurse will never give out pills to patients again without a doubt somewhere at the back of her mind as to whether she is doing the right thing. Like the question-mark in her father's conscience about not passing poor old Nick for promotion and so giving him his chip on the shoulder. it was bad to die with something on your conscience. One ought to have some warning, so that one could send a telegram to anyone who might have been wronged, saying, 'Forgive me', and then the wrong would he cancelled, blotted out. This was why, in the old days, people flocked round a dying person's bed, hoping, not to be left something in the will, but for mutual forgiveness, a cessation of ill-feeling, a smoothing out of right and wrong. In fact, a sort of love.

Shelagh had acted on impulse. She knew she always would. It was part of her character, and had to be accepted by family and friends. It was not until she was on her way, though, driving north from Dublin in the hired car, that her journey, hastily improvised, took on its real meaning. She was here on a mission, a sacred trust. She was carrying a message from beyond the grave. It was absolutely secret, though, and no one must know about it, for she was sure that if she had told anyone questions would have been asked, arguments raised. So, after the funeral, complete silence about her plans. Her mother, as Shelagh guessed she would, had decided to fly to Aunt Bella at Cap d'Ail.

'I feel I must get right away,' she had said to her daughter. 'You may not realise it, but Dad's illness was a fearful strain. I've lost half a stone. I feel that all I want to do is to close my eyes and lie on Bella's sun-drenched balcony, and try to forget the misery of the past weeks.'

It was like an advertisement for some luxury soap. Pamper yourself. A naked woman deep in a bath of bubbling foam. In point of fact, the first shock over, her mother looked better already, and Shelagh knew that the sun-drenched balcony would soon fill up with Aunt Bella's very mixed bunch of friends socialites, bogus artists, boring old homos, what her father used to call 'phoney riff-raff', but they amused her mother. 'What about you? Why don't you come too?'-the suggestion half-hearted but nevertheless made.

Shelagh shook her head. 'Rehearsals start next week. I thought, before going to London, I'd push off alone in the car somewhere. No sort of plan. Just drive.'

'Why not take a friend?'

'Anyone would get on my nerves at the moment. I'm better alone.'

No further contact between them on anything more than the practical level. Neither said to the other, 'How unhappy are you really? Is this the end of the road for me, for you? What does the future hold?' Instead there were discussions about the gardener and his wife coming to live in, visits from lawyers left until after her mother returned from Cap d'Ail, letters to be forwarded, etc., etc…. Without emotion, like two secretaries, they sat side by side reading and replying to the letters of condolence. You take A to K. I'll take L to Z. And more or less the same message to each: 'Deeply touched… Your sympathy so helpful…' It was like sending out the Christmas cards every December, but the wording was different.

Looking through her father's old address book, she came across the name Barry. Commander Nicolas Barry, D.S.O., R.N. (Retd.), Ballyfane, Lough Torrah, Eire. Both name and address had a line through them, which generally meant that the person had died. She glanced at her mother.

'I wonder why that old friend of Dad's, Commander Barry, hasn't written?' she asked casually. 'He isn't dead, is he?'

'Who?' Her mother looked vague. 'Oh, you mean Nick? I don't think he's dead. He was in some frightful car crash years ago. But they were out of touch before that. He hasn't written to us for years.'

'I wonder why.'

'I don't know. They had some row, I never heard what about. Did you see this very sweet letter from Admiral Arbuthnot? We were all together in Alexandria.'

'Yes, I saw it. What was he like? Not the Admiral-Nick.'

Her mother leant back in her chair, considering the matter.

'Frankly, I never could quite make him out,' she said. 'He'd either be all over one and the greatest fun, especially at parties, or ignoring everybody and making sarcastic remarks. He had a wild streak in him. I remember him coming to stay soon after Dad and I were married-he was best man, you know, at the wedding-and he turned all the furniture upside down in the drawing-room and got very tight. Such a silly thing to do. I was livid.'

Did Dad mind?'

'I don't think so, I can't remember. They knew each other so well, served together, been at Darmouth as boys. Then Nick left the Navy and went back to live in Ireland, and they somehow drifted apart. I had the impression actually that he had the sack, but I never liked to ask. You know what an oyster Dad was about Service matters.'

'Yes…'

(Poor old Nick. A chip on the shoulder. I'd like to shake him by the hand again and wish him luck….)

She saw her mother off at the airport a few days afterwards, and made her own plans for departure to Dublin. The night before she left, searching amongst her father's papers, she found a scrap of paper with a list of dates and the name Nick alongside with a question-mark, but no word of explanation as to what the dates referred to. June 5, 1951. June 25, 1953. June 12, 1954. October 17, 1954. April 24, 1955. August 13, 1955. The list bore no relevance to the rest of the papers in the file, and must have been slipped in there by accident. She copied them down, and put them in an envelope inside her tourist guide.

Well, that was that, and here she was, on the road to… to do what? To apologise, in her deceased father's name, to a retired naval commander passed over for promotion? Wild in his youth? The greatest fun at parties? The image conjured up was not one to whip the appetite, and she began to picture a middle-aged buffer with a hyena laugh who put booby-traps on the top of every door. Perhaps he had tried it on the First Sea Lord and received the boot for his pains. A car accident turned him into a recluse, an embittered one-time clown (but gallant, her father said, which meant what-plunging into oil-infested waters to rescue drowning sailors in the war?) who sat gnawing his fingernails in some old Georgian mansion or mock castle, drinking Irish whisky and regretting all those apple-pie beds.

Some seventy-odd miles from Dublin on a balmy October afternoon, though, with the countryside becoming greener, lusher, yet somehow sparsely inhabited, the glint of water more frequent away to the west, and suddenly a myriad pools and lakes with tongues of land thrusting between them, the prospect of ringing the bell of a Georgian mansion faded. Here were no high walls encircling stately demesnes, only wet fields beyond the road, and surely no means of access to the silver-splintered lakes beyond.

The description of Ballyfane in the official guide had been laconic. 'Situated west of Lough Torrah with numerous smaller loughs close to the village.' The Kilmore Arms had six bedrooms, but there was no mention of mod. cons. If the worst came to the worst she could telephone Nick his old friend's daughter stranded in the neighbourhood, could he suggest a comfortable hotel within ten miles, and she hoped to call upon him in the morning. A butler would answer, an old retainer. 'The Commander would be pleased if you would accept his hospitality here at Ballyfane Castle.' Irish wolfhounds baying, and her host himself appearing on the steps, leaning on a stick….

A church tower appeared over the crest of the road, and here was Ballyfane itself, a village street straggling up a rise flanked by a few sombre houses and shops, names like Driscoll and Murphy painted on boards above doors. The Kilmore Arms could have done with a coat of whitewash, but marigolds in a window-box making a valiant attempt at a second flowering suggested someone with an eye for colour.

Shelagh parked her Austin Mini and surveyed the scene. The door of the Kilmore Arms was open. The entrance hall that also served as a lounge was bare and neat. Nobody was in sight, but a handbell standing on the counter to the left of the entrance seemed there for a purpose. She rang it briskly, and as a sad-faced man emerged from an inner room, limping and wearing spectacles, she had a fearful feeling that it was Nick himself, having fallen on hard times.

'Good afternoon,' she said. 'I was wondering if I could have tea?'

'You can,' he told her. 'A full tea or just the pot?'

'Well, full, I think,' she replied, with a vision of hot scones and cherry jam, flashing him the smile she generally reserved for the stage-doorkeeper.

'It will take about ten minutes,' he said. 'The dining-room is to the right, just three steps down. Have you come far?'

'From Dublin,' she said.

It's a pleasant drive. I was in Dublin myself a week ago,' he told her. 'My wife, Mrs Doherty, has relatives there. She's away sick at present.'

She wondered whether she should apologise for giving trouble, but he had already disappeared to get the tea, and she went down the steps into the dining-room. Six tables laid ready, but she had the impression nobody had eaten there for days. A clock on the wall ticked loudly, breaking the silence. Presently a little maid emerged from the hack regions, breathing heavily, bearing a tray that had upon it a large pot of tea and, not the scones and cherry jam she had anticipated, but a plate with two fried eggs and three fat slices of bacon, as well as a heap of fried potatoes. A full tea…. She would have to eat it, or Mr Doherty would be offended. The maid vanished, and a black and white cat that had made its appearance with the tea arched itself against her legs, purring loudly. Furtively she fed it the bacon and one of the eggs, then tackled the remainder. The tea was piping hot and strong, and she could feel it searing her inside as she swallowed it.

The little maid emerged once more. 'Is the tea to your liking?' she asked anxiously. 'I could fry you another egg if you're still hungry.'

'No,' said Shelagh, 'I've done very well, thank you. Could I see your telephone directory? I want to look up the number of a friend.'

The directory was produced and she thumbed the pages. Barrys galore, but none in this district. No Commander. No Nicolas Barry, R.N. (Reid.). The journey had been in vain. Her mood of high expectancy, of daring, turned to despondency.

'How much do I owe for the tea?' she asked.

The little maid murmured a modest sum. Shelagh thanked her, paid, and went out into the hall and through the open doorway to the street. The post office was on the opposite side. One last enquiry and then, if that was unlucky too, she would turn the car round again and make for some hotel back on the road to Dublin, where she could at least relax in a steaming bath and spend the night in comfort. She waited patiently while an old woman bought stamps and a man enquired about parcels to America. Then she turned to the postmaster behind the grille.

'Excuse me,' she asked, 'I wonder if you can help me? Do you happen to know if Commander Barry lives anywhere in the district?'

The man stared. 'He does,' he said. 'He's lived here these twenty years.'

Oh joy! Oh, the relief! The mission was on again. All was not lost.

'The thing is,' Shelagh explained, 'I couldn't find his name in the telephone directory.'

'That isn't surprising,' the man said. 'There is no telephone on Lamb Island.'

'Lamb Island?' repeated Shelagh. 'You mean he lives on an island?'

The man stared as if she had asked a stupid question. 'It's on the southern side of Lough Torrah,' he said, 'about four miles from here as the crow flies. You can't reach it except by boat. If you want to get in touch with Commander Barry you'd best write for an appointment. He doesn't see many people.'

The chip on the shoulder… The recluse…

'I see,' said Shelagh. 'I hadn't realised. Can one get a glimpse of the island from the road?'

The man shrugged. 'There's a turning down to the lough a mile or so out of Ballyfane,' he told her, but it's no more than a rough track. You can't take a car there. If you have stout shoes it's an easy enough walk. Best done in daylight. You would miss your way if it came on for dusk, and the mist rises too over the lake.'

'Thank you,' said Shelagh, 'thank you very much.'

She went out of the post office with the feeling that the postmaster was staring after her. What now? Better not risk it this evening. Better endure the doubtful comforts of the Kilmore Arms and indigestion. She returned to the hotel and came face to face with Mr Doherty on the doorstep.

'I suppose,' she said, 'you couldn't let me have a room for the night?'

'I could indeed, you'd be very welcome,' he told her. 'It's quiet now, but in the tourist season you'd be surprised-we've seldom an empty bed. I'll bring in your baggage. Your car will come to no harm there in the street.'

Anxious to please he limped to the boot of the car, brought out her suitcase, conducted her inside the Kilmore Arms and led the way upstairs, showing her into a small double room overlooking the street.

'I'll only charge you for the one bed,' he said. 'Twenty-two shillings and your breakfast. There's a bathroom across the passage.'

Oh well, it was rather fun-and mod. cons. after all. Later on the locals would come into the bar and break into song. She would drink Guinness out of an enormous tankard and watch them, join in herself, perhaps.

She inspected the bathroom. It reminded her of digs on tour. One tap dripping, leaving a brown stain, and when she turned it on the water gushed forth like the Niagara Falls. Still, it was hot. She unpacked her night things, bathed, dressed again and went downstairs. Voices drifted down the passage. She followed the sound and came to the bar. Mr Doherty himself stood behind the counter. The voices ceased as she entered, and everyone stared.

Everyone being about half-a-dozen men, and amongst them she recognised the postmaster.

'Good evening,' she said brightly.

A mumbled response from all, but uninterested. They went on talking amongst themselves. She ordered whisky from Mr Doherty and felt suddenly self-conscious, perched there on the stool, which was perfectly ridiculous, because she was used to going into every sort of bar on tour, and there was nothing very singular about this one anyway.

'Is it your first visit to Ireland?' asked Mr Doherty, still anxious to please, pouring out the whisky.

'Yes, it is,' she told him. 'I'm rather ashamed I've never been over before. My grandfather was Irish. I'm sure the scenery is lovely around here. I must do some exploring tomorrow, down by the lake.'

She glanced across the bar, and was aware of the postmaster's eye upon her.

'You'll be with us for a few days, then?' asked Mr Doherty. 'I could arrange some fishing for you, if that's what you like.'

'Oh well… I'm not sure. It rather depends.'

How loud and English her voice sounded on the air, reminding her of her mother. Like a socialite out of a glossy magazine. And the local chatter had momentarily ceased. The Irish bonhomie she had visualised was absent. Nobody here was going to seize a fiddle and dance a jig and burst into song. Perhaps girls who stayed the night in pubs on their own were suspect.

'Your dinner is ready when you are.' said Mr Doherty.

She took the cue and slipped from the bar-stool and so on into the dining-room, feeling about ten years old. Soup, fish, roast beef the trouble they had taken, when all she needed was a wafer slice of ham, but impossible to leave anything on her plate. Trifle to finish with, doused in sherry.

Shelagh looked at her watch. It was only half-past eight. 'Will you take your coffee in the lounge?'

'Thank you, yes.'

'There's a television set. I'll switch it on for you.'

The little maid drew up an armchair close to the television, and Shelagh sat down to the coffee she did not want while an American comedy, vintage 1950, flickered from the box. The murmur of voices droned on from the direction of the bar. Shelagh poured the coffee back into the pot and crept upstairs to fetch her coat. Then, leaving the television blaring in the empty lounge, she went out into the street. There was nobody about. All Ballyfane was already in bed or safe within doors. She got into the car and drove away through the empty village, back along the road she had travelled earlier that afternoon. A turning, the postmaster had said, a mile or so out of Ballyfane.

This must be it, here on the left. A crooked signpost with the lettering 'Footpath to Lough Torrah' showed up in the glare of her head-lights. The footpath, narrow and twisting, led downhill. Silly to attempt it without a torch, and the moon, three-quarters full, giving only a fitful gleam behind banks of racing cloud. Still… She could go part of the way, if only for the benefit of the exercise.

She left the car close to the signpost and began to walk. Her shoes, luckily flat, squelched in the mud. As soon as I catch a glimpse of the lake, she thought, I'll turn back, and then be up early tomorrow and come here again, bring a packed lunch, decide upon my plan of attack. The footpath was opening out between the banks, and suddenly before her was the great sheet of water, encircled by jutting lips of land, and in the centre was the island itself, shrouded in trees. It had an eerie, sombre quality, and the moon, breaking through the clouds, turned the water silver, while the island remained black, humped like the back of a whale.

Lamb Island…. Inconsequentially it made her think of legends, not of Irish chiefs long dead or tribal feuds, but of sacrifices to ancient gods before the dawn of history. Stone altars in a glade. A lamb with its throat cut lying amidst the ashes of a fire. She wondered how far it was from the shore. Distances were hard to judge by night. A stream on her left ran down into the lake, fringed by reeds. She advanced towards it, picking her way carefully amongst the pebbles and the mud, and then she saw the boat, tied to a stump, and the figure of a man standing beside it.

He was staring in her direction. Foolish panic seized her, and she backed away. It was no good, though. He walked swiftly up the mud and stood beside her.

'Were you looking for someone?' he said.

He was a young man, strongly built, wearing a fisherman's jersey and dungarees. He spoke with the local accent.

'No,' Shelagh answered, 'no, I'm a visitor to the district. It was a lovely evening and I thought I'd take a walk.'

'A lonely spot for a walk. Have you come far?'

'Only from Ballyfane,' she told him. 'I'm staying at the Kilmore Arms.'

'I see,' he said. 'You're here for the fishing, maybe. The fishing is better the other side of Ballyfane.'

'Thank you. I'll remember that.'

There was a pause. Shelagh wondered if she should say any more or whether she should turn and go, bidding him a cheerful goodnight. He was looking beyond her shoulder towards the footpath, and she heard the sound of somebody else's footsteps squelching through the mud. Another figure loomed out of the shadow and advanced towards them. Shelagh saw that it was the postmaster from Ballyfane. She was not sure whether to be sorry or relieved.

'Good evening again,' she said, her voice a shade too hearty. 'You see I didn't wait until morning after all, I found my way successfully, thanks to your advice.'

'So,' replied the postmaster. 'I noticed your car up there on the road parked by the turning, and thought it best to follow in case you came to harm.'

'That was kind of you,' said Shelagh. 'You shouldn't have bothered.'

'No bother at all. Better be sure than sorry.' He turned to the young man in the fisherman's jersey. 'It's a fine night, Michael.'

'It is, Mr O'Reilly. This young lady tells me she's here for the fishing. I've explained she'll have better sport the other side of Ballyfane.'

'That's true, if it's fishing she's after,' said the postmaster, and he smiled for the first time, but unpleasantly, too knowing. 'The young lady was in the post office this evening asking for Commander Barry. She was surprised he was not on the telephone.'

'Fancy that, now,' said the young man, and disconcertingly he produced a torch from his pocket and flashed it in her face. 'Excuse the liberty, miss, but I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before. If you'd care to tell me your business with the Commander I will pass on the message.'

'Michael here lives on Lamb Island,' said the postmaster. 'He's by way of being a watch-dog to the Commander, and keeps unwelcome visitors at bay, you might say.'

He said this with the same knowing smile which she found so unpleasant, and she wished she could be away and out of it, back in the neat little bedroom at the Kilmore Arms, not here beside the sinister lake with these two strange men.

I'm afraid I can't give a message,' she said. 'It's a private matter. Perhaps it would be better if I wrote to Commander Barry from the hotel. He isn't expecting me, you see. It's all rather difficult.'

Her loss of composure was evident to the two men. She saw them exchange glances. Then the young man jerked his head at the postmaster and drew him aside, and they spoke together out of earshot. Her uneasiness increased.

The young man turned back to her. 'I tell you what I'll do,' and he was smiling now, but a shade too broadly. 'I'll run you over to the island in the boat, and the Commander shall decide for himself whether he wants to see you or not.'

'Oh no…' said Shelagh, backing away, 'not tonight. It's much too late. I'll come back in the morning, and you can run me across then.'

'It would be better to get it over with tonight,' said Michael.

Get it over with? What did he mean? A few months ago she had boasted to some friends after a first-night party that she had never been frightened of anything in her life, except drying-up. She was frightened now.

'They'll be waiting up for me at the hotel,' she said quickly. 'If I don't return soon Mr Doherty will get in touch with the police.'

'Don't fret yourself,' said the postmaster. 'I have a friend standing by up the road. He'll drive your car back to the Kilmore Arms and we'll make it all right between us with Tim Doherty.'

Before she could protest further they had seized her arms and were marching her between them down to the boat. It can't be true, she thought, it can't be happening, and a strangled sob escaped her, like that of a terrified child.

'Ah, sshh now,' said Michael, 'no one's going to touch a hair of your head. You said yourself it's a fine night. It's finer still on the water. You may see the fish jumping.'

He helped her into the boat and pushed her firmly on the stern seat. The postmaster remained on shore. That's better, she thought, at least there's only one of them.

'So long, Mr O'Reilly,' Michael called softly, starting the engine, then loosening the painter from the mooring-post.

'So long, Michael my boy,' called the postmaster.

The boat glided away from the reeds on to the open lough, the chug-chug of the little engine quiet, subdued. The postmaster waved his hand, then turned back and started walking up the shore towards the footpath.

The journey from mainland to island took barely five minutes, but seen from the lake the mainland appeared dark, remote, the hills in the distance an ominous smudge. The comforting lights of Ballyfane were out of sight. She had never felt so vulnerable, so alone. Michael said nothing until the boat drew in alongside a small landing-stage built out from the narrow shore. The trees clustered thickly to the water's edge. He tied up the boat, then held out his hand to her.

'Now then,' he said when he had helped her on to the landing-stage, 'the truth is that the Commander is away at a meeting the other side of the lough, but he should be back by midnight or thereabouts. I'll take you up to the house and the steward will look after you.'

The steward… The Ballyfane castle and the Georgian mansion had returned to the land of fantasy whence they had sprung, but steward had a mediaeval ring to it, Malvolio with a tapering staff, stone steps leading to an audience chamber. Wolf-hounds guarding doors. A faint measure of confidence returned to her.

Michael was not going to strangle her under the trees.

Surprisingly, the house was revealed after little more than a hundred yards, set in a clearing amidst the trees. A long, low, one-storied building, built surely of timber put up in sections, like pictures of relief hospitals erected by missionaries in jungles for sick natives. A verandah ran the whole length of it, and as Michael led her up the steps and paused before a door marked Galley Entrance a dog barked from within, not the deep-throated baying of a wolf-hound but shriller, sharper, and Michael laughed, turned to her and said, 'They don't need me as watchdog when Skip's around. She'd smell strangers twenty miles away.'

The door opened. A short, stocky, middle-aged man stood before them, dressed in the uniform of a naval steward.

'A small problem for you, Bob,' said Michael. 'The young lady here was wandering down by the lough just now in the darkness and all, and it appears she was enquiring off Mr O'Reilly for the Commander.'

The steward's face remained impassive, but his eyes travelled down from Shelagh's face to her clothes, and her jacket pockets in particular.

'There's nothing on her,' said Michael, 'and she must have left her handbag in the car beside the road. The young lady is staying up at the Arms, but we thought it best to bring her straight here. You never can tell.'

'Please come inside, miss,' said the steward to Shelagh, his voice courteous but firm. 'You're from England, I take it.'

'Yes,' she replied. 'I flew over to Dublin today, and drove straight here. My business with Commander Barry is a personal matter, and I don't want to discuss it with anyone else.'

'I see,' said the steward.

The little dog, a schipperke, with pricked ears and bright, intelligent eyes, was sniffing daintily at Shelagh's ankles.

'Would you give me your coat?' asked the steward.

A strange request. She was wearing a short tweed jacket and matching skirt. She handed over the jacket, and he examined the pockets and placed it over the back of the chair. Then-and this was disconcerting he ran his hands in a brisk professional way over her body, while Michael watched with interest.

'I don't know why you're doing this,' she said. 'You've hijacked me, not the other way round.'

'It's a way we have with visitors we don't know,' said the steward. 'It saves argument in the long run.' He jerked his head at Michael. 'You did right to bring the young lady along. I'll explain matters to the Commander when he returns.'

Michael grinned, winked at Shelagh, raised his hand in a mock salute and went out, shutting the door behind him.

'Will you come with me, please?' said the steward.

Reluctant to see the last of Michael, who seemed suddenly an ally, not a prospective rapist, Shelagh followed Bob the steward (not Malvolio after all) along a corridor to a room at the further end. The steward threw open the door and ushered her in.

'Cigarettes on the table by the fire,' he said. 'Ring the bell if there is anything you require. Would you care for coffee?'

'Please.' said Shelagh. If she was going to sit up all night coffee would help.

The room was spacious, comfortable, a blue carpet fitted wall-to-wall. A settee, a couple of deep armchairs, a large flat-topped desk near the window. Pictures of ships on the wall. A log-fire burning brightly in the hearth. The setting reminded her of something. She had seen some place like it in the past, reminding her of childhood days. Then she remembered. It was a duplicate of the captain's cabin in Excalibur, her father's cabin. Lay-out, furnishings, were identical. The familiar surroundings were uncanny, it was like stepping back into the past.

She wandered round the room, trying to take it in. She crossed to the window and drew aside the curtains, half-expecting to see the deck outside, and beyond, in the distance, other ships at anchor in Portsmouth harbour. There was no deck, though, no ships. Only the long verandah, the shrouded trees and the pathway to the lough, the silver water shining beneath the moon. The door opened once again, and the steward brought in coffee on a silver tray.

'The Commander won't be long now,' he said. 'I've just had word his launch left fifteen minutes ago.'

Launch… They had more than one boat, then. And just had word. There had been no sound of a telephone ringing, and anyway the house wasn't on the phone. He went out and closed the door. She began to panic once again, realised she was lost without her bag, left in the car. No comb, no lipstick. She hadn't touched her face since before going down to the bar at the Kilmore Arms. She peered into the mirror hanging on the wall beyond the desk. Hair dank, face white and pinched, she looked frantic. She wondered whether it would be best for him to find her sitting in one of the armchairs, drinking her coffee, seemingly relaxed, or standing rather boyishly before the fireplace, hands in her jacket pockets. She needed direction, she needed someone like Adam Vane to tell her what to do, how to place herself before the curtain rose.

She turned round from the mirror, facing the desk, and saw the photograph in the blue leather frame. The photograph of her mother as a bride, her veil thrown back, the irritating smile of triumph on her face. There was something wrong, though. The groom standing beside her was not Shelagh's father. It was Nick, the best man, hair en brosse, supercilious, bored. She looked closer, baffled, and realised that the photograph had been cleverly faked. Nick's head and shoulders had been transposed on to her father's figure, while her father's head, sleek-haired, smiling happily, had been shifted to the lanky figure behind, standing between the bridesmaids. It was only because she knew the original photograph on her father's desk at home, and had a copy herself somewhere, stuck away in a drawer, that she recognised the transposition instantly. A stranger would think the photograph genuine. But why on earth? Whom did Nick want to deceive, unless it was himself?

Shelagh moved away from the desk, uneasy. People who were mentally sick deceived themselves. What was it her father had said? Nick had always been a border-line case…. She had been frightened before, standing on the shore by the lake questioned by the two men, but that had been physical fear, a natural reaction in the face of possible brutality. This was different-a feeling of revulsion, a strange apprehension. The room that had seemed warm and familiar became kinky, queer. She wanted to get out of it.

She went to the French window and pulled aside the curtains. The window was locked. No key, no way of escape. Then she heard the sound of voices in the hall, and this is it, she thought, I've got to face it. I must lie, make up my lines, improvise. Fm alone here, but for the steward, with someone who is sick, who is mad. The door opened, and he came into the room.

Surprise was mutual. He had caught her, literally, on the wrong foot, hovering between armchair and coffee-table, semi-bent, an awkward position, no sort of poise. She straightened herself and stared. So did he. He was not in the least like the best man in the authentic wedding group, except for the figure, lanky and tall. The hair was no longer en brosse because there was little of it, and the small black patch over the left eye suggested Moshe Dayan. The right eye was very bright and blue. The mouth thin. As he stood there, staring, the little dog pranced in behind him. He called over his shoulder to the steward. 'See that Operation B goes forward as of now, Bob,' he said, without taking his eye off Shelagh, and 'Aye, aye, sir,' replied the steward from the corridor.

The door closed, and Nick came into the room and said, 'I see Bob brought you some coffee. Is it cold?'

'I don't know,' Shelagh replied. 'I haven't drunk any yet.' 'Add some whisky to it, you'll feel better.'

He opened a wall-cupboard and brought out a tray with decanter, soda syphon, and glasses upon it. He put it on the table between the two chairs, then flung himself down on the one opposite her, the dog on his lap. Shelagh poured some whisky into her cup of coffee, aware that her hand trembled. She was sweating, too. His voice was clear, rather clipped, authoritative, reminding her of a director who used to teach at drama school and had half his students in tears. All except her. She had walked out of class one morning, and he had had to apologise.

'Come on, relax,' said her host. 'You're as taut as a bow-string.

I apologise for the abduction, but it was your own fault for wandering down by the lake late in the evening.'

'The signpost said footpath to Lough Torrah,' she replied. 'I didn't see a notice forbidding trespassers, or warning people away. They ought to advise visitors at the airport never to wander after sundown, but I suppose they can't, it would hit the tourist trade for six.'

Stuff that up, she thought, and tossed down her whisky-laced coffee. He smiled, but not with her, at her, and began to stroke the smooth, sleek coat of the little dog. The one eye was disconcerting. She had the impression that the left eye was still there behind the patch.

'What's your name?'

Her reply was instinctive. 'Jinnie.' she told him, and added, 'Blair.'

Jennifer Blair was her stage-name. Shelagh Money had never sounded right. But nobody except her father had ever called her Jinnie. It must have been nerves that had made her blurt it out now.

'M'm,' he said. 'Jinnie. Rather nice. Why did you want to see me, Jinnie?'

Improvisation. Play it by ear, Adam Vane always said. This is the situation, take it from here. Starting now….

There was a cigarette box on the table, and a lighter. She leant forward and took a cigarette from the box. He did not attempt to light it for her.

'I'm a journalist. My editors want to run a new series in the spring about the effects of retirement on Service men. Whether they like it, whether they're bored. Their hobbies, and so on. You know the kind of thing. Well, four of us were given the assignment. You were on my list, and here I am.'

'I see.'

She wished he would take that eye off her for one moment. The little dog, in ecstasy at the stroking hand, was now lying on its back, paws in the air.

'What made you think I should be of any interest to your readers?'

'That wasn't really my problem,' she told him. 'Other people do the check-ups in the office. I was merely given brief particulars. Service career, good war record, retired, lives at Ballyfane, and told to take it from there. Bring back a story. Human interest, and all that….'

'Curious,' he said, 'that your bosses should have picked on me when there are many far more distinguished persons living over here in retirement. Generals, rear-admirals, scores of 'em.'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'If you ask me,' she said, 'they pick the names out of a hat. And someone, I forget who, said you were a recluse. They love that sort of thing. Find out what makes him tick, they told me.'

He poured himself a drink, then leant back again in his chair. 'What's the name of your paper?' he asked.

'It isn't a newspaper, it's a magazine. One of the new glossies, very up and coming, published every fortnight. Searchlight. You may have seen it.'

Searchlight was, in point of fact, a recent publication. She had skimmed through it in the aircraft coming over.

'No, I've not seen it,' he told her, 'but then, living as a recluse, that's hardly surprising, is it?'

'No, No, I suppose not.'

The eye was watchful. She blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

'So it was professional curiosity that took you wandering to the lake by night, rather than wait until daylight to approach me?'

'Naturally. And the fact that you live on an island. Islands are always mysterious. Especially by night.'

'You're not easily scared?'

'I was scared when your henchman Michael and the rather unpleasant postmaster seized me by the arms and forced me into the boat.'

'What did you think they were going to do?'

'Assault, rape, murder, in that order.'

'Ali, that's what comes of reading the English newspapers and writing for glossy magazines. We're a peaceable lot in Ireland, you'd be surprised. We shoot each other up, but that's traditional. Rape is uncommon. We seldom seduce our women. They seduce us.'

Now it was Shelagh who smiled, in spite of herself. Confidence was returning. Parry and thrust. She could keep this sort of thing going for hours.

'May I quote you on that?' she asked.

'I'd rather you didn't. Bad for the national image. We like to think of ourselves as devils. We get more respect that way. Have some more whisky.'

'Thank you, I will.'

If this was rehearsal, she thought, the director would tell me to change position. Pour myself another drink from the decanter and stand up, look about the room. No, on second thoughts better stay put.

'Now it's your turn to answer questions,' she said. 'Does your boatman make a habit of hi-jacking tourists?'

'No, You are the first. You should be flattered.'

'I told him,' she went on, 'and the postmaster as well, that it was too late for an evening call, and I'd come back in the morning. They wouldn't listen. And when I got here your steward searched me frisked me, I believe they call it.'

'Bob's very thorough. It's an old naval custom. We used to frisk the local girls when they came aboard. It was part of the fun.'

'Liar,' she said.

'No, I assure you. They've put a stop to it now, I'm told Like the daily tots of rum. Another reason why youngsters won't join the Navy any more. You can quote me on that, if you like.'

She watched him over the rim of her glass. 'Do you regret leaving the Service?'

'Not in the slightest. I had all I wanted from it.'

'Except promotion?'

'Oh, to hell with promotion. Who wants to command a ship in peacetime when a vessel is obsolete before she's even launched? Nor did I fancy sitting on my backside in the Admiralty or some establishment ashore. Besides, I had more worthwhile things to do here at home.'

'Such as?'

'Finding out about my own country. Reading history. Oh, not Cromwell and all that-the ancient stuff, which is much more fascinating. I've written thousands of words on the subject which will never get printed. Articles appear sometimes in scholarly journals, but that's about all. I don't get paid for them. Not like you, writing for magazines.'

He smiled again. It was rather a good smile. Not good in the accepted sense of the word, but in hers. Whipping-up, in fact, challenging. (Ile used to be such fun at parties.') Had the moment come? Did she dare?

'Tell me,' she asked, 'I know it's personal, but my readers will want to know. I couldn't help noticing that photograph on your desk. You've been married then?'

'Yes,' he said, 'the one tragedy of my life. She was killed in a car crash a few months after we were married. Unluckily I survived. That's when I lost my eye'.

Her mind went blank. Improvise… improvise.

'How terrible for you,' she murmured. 'I'm very sorry.'

'That's all right. It happened years ago. I took a long time to get over it, of course, but I learnt to live with the situation, to adapt. There was nothing else I could do. I'd retired from the Navy by then, which admittedly didn't help matters. However, there it was, and, as I told you, it happened a long time ago.'

Then he really believed it? He really believed he had been married to her mother, and she had been killed in a car crash? Something must have happened to his brain when he lost the eye, something had gone wrong. And when had he tampered' with the photograph? Before the accident or afterwards? And why? Doubt and mistrust returned. She was just beginning to like him, to feel at ease with him, and now her confidence was shattered. If he was insane, how must she handle him, what must she do? She got up and stood by the fireplace, and how odd, she thought, the movement is natural, it's not acting, not a stage direction, the play is becoming real.

'Look,' she said, 'I don't think I want to write this article after all. It isn't fair to you. You've been through too much. I hadn't realised. And I'm sure my editor would agree. It's not our policy to probe into a person's suffering. Searchlight isn't that sort of magazine.'

'Oh really?' he replied. 'How disappointing. I was looking forward to reading all about myself. I'm rather conceited, you know.'

He began stroking the dog again, but his eye never left her face.

'Well,' she said, searching for words, 'I could say a hit about your living here alone on the island, fond of your dog. keen on ancient history… and so on.'

'Wouldn't that be rather dull and hardly worth printing?' 'No. not at all.'

Suddenly he laughed, put the dog on the floor and stood up on the hearth-rug beside her. 'You'd have to do rather better than this to get away with it,' he said. 'Let's discuss it in the morning. You can tell me then, if you like, who you really are. If you're a journalist, which I doubt, you weren't sent here to write about my hobbies and my pet dog. Funny, you remind me of someone, but I can't for the life of me think who it is.'

He smiled down at her, very confident of himself, not at all mad, reminding her… of what? Being in her father's cabin on board Excalibur? Being swept up in the air by her father, screaming with delight and fear? Oh, the smell of eau-de-cologne that he used, and this man too, not like the stinking after-shave they all swamped themselves with today….

'I'm always reminding people of somebody else.' she said. 'No personality of my own. You remind me of Moshe Dayan.'

He touched his eye-shade. 'Just a gimmick. If he and I sported them pink, we'd be ignored. The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men.'

He walked across the room and threw open the door. 'Bob?' he called.

'Sir,' came the reply from the kitchen.

'Operation B under way?'

'Sir. Michael coming alongside now.'

'Right!' He turned to Shelagh. 'Let me show you the rest of the house.'

She inferred, from the nautical language, that Michael was standing by to escort her by boat to the mainland. Time enough when she got back to the Kilmore Arms to decide whether to return in the morning and brazen it out, or forget all about the mission and beat it for home. He escorted her down the corridor, throwing open one door after the other, with names upon them. Control Room… Signals… Sick Bay… Crew's Quarters… This must be it, she told herself. He has a fantasy of living on board ship. This is how he has come to terms with life, with disappointment, with injury.

'We're highly organised,' he told her. 'I've no use for the telephone communication with the mainland is by shortwave radio. If you live on an island you've got to be self-sufficient. Like a ship at sea. I've built all this up from scratch. There wasn't even a log house when I came to Lamb Island, and now it's a complete flagship. I could control a fleet from here.'

He smiled at her in triumph, and he is mad, she thought, raving mad, but for all that attractive-very, in fact. It would be easy to be taken in, to believe everything he said.

'How many of you live here?'

'Ten, including myself. These are my quarters.'

They had reached a door at the end of the corridor. He led the way through it to a separate wing. There were three rooms and a bathroom. One door had Commander Barry written upon it.

'I'm in here,' he said, throwing open the door, revealing a typical captain's cabin, with a bed, though, not a bunk. The layout was familiar, giving her a sudden poignant nostalgia.

'Guest-rooms next door,' he said. 'Numbers One and Two. Number One has a better view of the lake.'

He advanced into the room and drew aside the curtains. The moon had risen high, and shone down upon the sheet of water beyond the trees. It was very peaceful, very still. There was nothing sinister about Lamb Island now. The situation was reversed, and it was the distant mainland that seemed shrouded, drear.

'Even I should become a recluse if I lived here,' she said, and then, turning from the window, added, 'I mustn't keep you up. Perhaps Michael is waiting to take me back.'

He had switched on the bedside lamp. 'You're not going back. Operation B has been put into effect.'

'What do you mean?'

The single eye was upon her, discomfiting, amused. 'When I was told that a young woman wanted to see me, I decided upon a plan of action. Operation A meant that whoever it was signified nobody of interest, and could be returned to Ballyfane. Operation B meant that the visitor would be my guest, and her luggage fetched from the Kilmore Arms and matters explained to Tim Doherty. He's very discreet.'

She stared at him, her sense of unease returning. 'You didn't give yourself much time to consider. I heard you give orders about Operation B as soon as you came into the room down there.'

'That's right. I'm in the habit of coming to quick decisions. Here is Bob with your things now.'

There was a cough, a quiet knock on the door. The steward came in bearing her luggage. Everything had evidently been put back into her suitcase, all the small litter from her bedroom at the hotel. He also had her maps and her handbag from the car. Nothing had been forgotten.

'Thank you, Bob,' Nick said. 'Miss Blair will ring down for breakfast when she wants it.'

The steward placed her things on a chair, murmured, 'Goodnight, miss,' and withdrew. So that is that, thought Shelagh, and where do we go from here? He was still watching her, the smile of amusement on his face. When in doubt, she told herself, yawn. Be casual. Pretend this sort of thing happens every night of your life. She picked up her bag and found her comb, ran it through her hair, humming a tune under her breath.

'You should never have retired,' she said. 'Such a waste of your organising powers. You ought to be commanding the Mediterranean Fleet. Planning an exercise, or something.'

'That's exactly what I am doing. You'll get your orders when this ship is at action stations. Now I've got some work to do, so I'll leave you. By the way…' he paused, his hand on the door, 'you don't have to lock this, you're perfectly safe.'

'I wouldn't dream of locking it,' she replied. 'As a journalist I'm used to shake-downs in the most unlikely places, and prowling about unknown corridors in the middle of the night.'

Punch-line, she thought. That will teach you. Now disappear and turn all your furniture upside down….

'Ah,' he said, 'so that's your form. It's not a case of you locking your door but of me locking mine. Thanks for the warning.'

She heard him laughing as he went down the corridor. Curtain. Damn. He had had the last word.

She went to her suitcase and threw it open. The few clothes, night-things, make-up, neatly packed. Her handbag untouched. A lucky thing the papers for the hired Austin were all in her stage name. Nothing to connect her with Shelagh Money. The only thing that had been shaken and folded differently was the map and the tourist guide. Well, that didn't matter. She had marked Ballyfane and Lough Torrah with blue pencil, but a journalist would have done that anyway. Something was missing, though- the copper-coloured paper-clip had gone. She shook the tourist guide, but nothing fell out. The envelope was no longer there. The envelope containing the slip of paper with the dates upon it, which she had copied from the file in her father's study.

When Shelagh awoke the sun was streaming into the room. She glanced at her travelling-clock beside the bed. A quarter-past-nine. She had slept soundly for nearly ten hours. She got out of bed and went to the window, drawing the curtains aside. Her room appeared to be at the extreme end of the building. and immediately beyond her window a grass bank sloped towards the trees, and through the trees themselves a narrow clearing led down to the lake. The glimpse she could catch of the lake showed the water to be sparkling blue, the surface that had been so still last evening now turned to wavelets, whipped by a scudding breeze. Nick had told the steward she would ring down for her breakfast, and she picked up the telephone by the bed. Bob's voice came at once.

'Yes, miss. Orange-juice? Coffee? Rolls? Honey?'

'Please…'

Service, she thought. I shouldn't be getting this at the Kilmore Arms. Bob brought the tray to her bedside within four minutes. The morning paper was also upon it, neatly folded.

'The Commander's compliments, miss,' he said. 'He hopes you slept well. If there is anything else you require you have only to tell me.'

I'd like to know if it was Mr Doherty at the Kilmore Arms or Mr O'Reilly from the post office who took the envelope from the tourist guide, she was thinking. Or could it be you, Malvolio? Nobody would have bothered about it if I hadn't scribbled on the envelope, 'N. Barry. Dates possibly significant.'

'I have everything I need, thank you, Bob,' she said.

When she had breakfasted, dressed herself in sweater and jeans, and made up her eyes with rather greater care than she had done the day before, she was ready to face whatever surprises Nick had in store for her. She walked down the corridor, passed through the swing-door and came to the living-room. The door was open, but he was not there. Somehow she had expected to see him at his desk. She went across to it, glancing furtively over her shoulder, and stared at the photograph once again. Nick was much better now than then, she thought. As a young man he must have been irritating, over-pleased with himself, and she had a feeling that his hair had been red. The whole truth was, she supposed, that they had both been in love with her mother, and when her father won this had helped to turn Nick sour. Started the chip. Odd that her mother had not mentioned the fact. She generally preened her feathers about old admirers. Disloyal, Shelagh knew, but what had both men seen in her except that very obvious pretty-pretty face? Far too much lipstick, like they wore in those days. And a bit of a snob, always name-dropping. She and her father used to wink at each other if she did it in front of other people.

A discreet cough warned her that the steward was watching her from the corridor beyond.

'The Commander is in one of the wood clearings, miss, if you were looking for him. I can point you the way.'

'Oh, thank you, Bob.'

They went out together, and he said, 'You'll find the Commander working down on the site about ten minutes' walk away.'

The site… Felling trees, perhaps. She set off through the woods, the foliage thick and green on either side of the path, dense as a miniature forest, without a glimpse of the lake to be seen. If one strayed from the path, she thought, and wandered amongst the trees, one would be lost instantly, striking for the lake and not finding it, moving round and round in circles. The wind sighed in the branches above her head. No birds, no movement, no lapping water near at hand. A person could be buried here in all the undergrowth and never found. Perhaps she should turn back, retrace her steps to the house, tell the steward she preferred to wait indoors for Commander Barry. She hesitated, but it was too late. Michael was advancing through the trees towards her. He carried a spade in his hand.

'The Commander is waiting for you, miss. He wants to show you the grave. We've just uncovered it.'

Oh God, what grave, for whom? She felt the colour drain from her face. Michael was not smiling. He jerked his head towards a clearing just ahead. Then she saw the others. There were two other men besides Nick. They were stripped to the waist, bending over something in the ground. She felt her legs weaken under her, and her heart began thumping in her breast.

'Miss Blair is here, sir,' said Michael.

Nick turned and straightened. He was dressed like the others, in singlet and jeans. He did not carry a spade, but had a small axe in his hand.

'So,' he said, 'the moment has arrived. Come over here and kneel down.'

He placed his hand on her shoulder, and drew her towards the crater that opened wide before her. She could not speak. She could only see the brown earth piled on either side of the crater, the tumbled leaves, the branches tossed aside. Instinctively, as she knelt, she buried her face in her hands.

'What are you doing?' He sounded surprised. 'You can't see with your eyes covered. This is a great occasion, you know. You're probably the first Englishwoman to be present at the uncovering of a megalithic tomb in Ireland. Court cairns, we call them. The boys and I have been working on this one for weeks.'

The next thing she knew was that she was sitting humped against a tree with her head between her legs. The world stopped spinning, gradually became clear. She was sweating all over.

'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said.

'Go ahead,' he replied. 'Don't mind me.'

She opened her eyes. The men had all disappeared and Nick was crouching beside her.

'That's what comes of only having coffee for breakfast,' he told her. 'Quite fatal starting the day on an empty stomach.'

He rose to his feet and wandered back to the crater.

'I've tremendous hopes of this find. It's in a better state of preservation than many others I've seen. We only stumbled upon it by chance a few weeks ago. We've uncovered the forecourt and part of what I think is a gallery for the burial place itself. It's not been disturbed since about 1,500 years B.C. Can't have the outside world getting wind of it, or we shall have all the archaeological chaps over here wanting to take photographs, and that would put the fat in the fire all right. Feeling better?'

'I don't know,' she said weakly. 'I think so.'

'Come and have a look, then.'

She dragged herself to the crater and peered into the depths. A lot of stones, a sort of rounded arch affair, a kind of wall. Impossible to show enthusiasm, her misunderstanding and fear had been too great.

'Very interesting,' she said, and then to her shame, far worse than being sick, she burst into tears. He stared at her, momentarily nonplussed, then taking her by the hand began walking briskly through the wood without speaking, whistling between his teeth, until within a few minutes the trees had cleared and they were standing by the side of the lake.

'Ballyfane is over to the west. You can't see it from here. The lake broadens to the north on this side, and winds in and out against the mainland like a patchwork quilt. In winter the duck fly in and settle amongst the reeds. I never shoot them, though. In summer I come and swim here before breakfast.'

Shelagh had recovered. He had given her time to pull herself together, which was all that mattered, and she was grateful to him.

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but frankly, when I saw Michael with the spade and he said something about a grave, I thought my last moment had come.'

He stared at her, astonished. Then he smiled. 'You're not so hard-bitten as you like to pretend. That swagger of yours is all bluff.'

'Partly,' she admitted, 'but it's a new situation to me, being dumped on an island with a recluse. I see now why I was hijacked. You don't want anyone leaking about your megalithic find to the press. O.K., I won't. That's a promise.'

He did not answer immediately. He stood there, stroking his chin.

'I–I'm,' he said after a moment. 'Well, that's very sporting of you. Now, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go back to the house, get Bob to make up a packed lunch, and I'll take you for a tour of the lake. And I promise not to push you overboard.'

He's only mad, she thought, nor-nor-west. He's sane in every respect save for the photograph. But for that… but for the photograph she would come clean at once and tell him the truth about herself, about her reason for coming to Ballyfane. Not yet, though.

Nothing could be more different, Shelagh decided several hours later, than the Nick described by her father, with a chip on the shoulder, a grudge against the world, soured by disappointment, than this man who put himself out to entertain her, to see that she enjoyed every moment of the hours spent in his company. The twin-engined launch, with a small cabin for'ard-not the little chug-chug craft in which Michael had brought her to the island the day before-glided smoothly across the lake, dodging in and out amongst the tongues of land, while he pointed out to her, from the helmsman's seat, the various points of interest on the mainland. The distant hills to the west, a ruined castle, the tower of an ancient abbey. Never once did he allude to the reason for her visit, nor press her for information about her own life. They ate hard-boiled eggs and cold chicken seated side by side in the small cabin, and she kept thinking how her father would have loved it, how this would have been just his way of spending a day had he lived to take that holiday. She could picture him and Nick together, chaffing, slanging away at each other, showing off, in a curious sort of way, because she was there. Not her mother, though. She would have wrecked the whole thing.

'You know,' she said in a burst of confidence, the effect of a tot of whisky before the Guinness, 'the Commander Barry I imagined wasn't a scrap like you.'

'What did you imagine?' he asked.

'Well, because of your being this recluse they told me about, I pictured someone living in a castle filled with old retainers and baying wolf-hounds. Rather a buffer. Either grim and very rude, shouting at the retainers, or terribly hearty, playing practical jokes.'

He smiled. 'I can be very rude when I choose, and I often shout at Bob. As to practical jokes… I've played them in my time. Still do. Have another Guinness?' She shook her head and leant back against the bulkhead. 'The trouble was,' he said, 'the sort of jokes I played were mostly to amuse myself. They've gone out of fashion, anyway. I don't suppose you, for instance, ever put white mice in your editor's desk?'

For editor's desk substitute star's dressing-room, she thought.

'Not white mice,' she replied, 'but I once put a stink-bomb under my boss's bed. He hopped out of it pretty quick, I don't mind telling you.'

Manchester it was, and Bruce never forgave her, either. What he thought was boiling up to be a discreet affair between them vanished in smoke.

'That's what I meant,' he said. 'The best of jokes are only fun for oneself. A bit of a gamble, though, to pick on your boss.'

'Self-protection,' she told him 'I was bored at the thought of getting into bed with him.'

He started to laugh, then checked himself. 'Forgive me, I'm being hearty. Do you have a lot of trouble with your editors?'

She pretended to reflect. 'It all depends. They can be rather demanding. And if you're ambitious, which I am, it earns you promotion. The whole thing's a chore, though. I'm not really permissive.'

'Meaning what?'

'Well, I don't strip down at the flick of a hat. It has to be someone I like. Am I shocking you?'

'Not in the least. A buffer like myself likes to know how the young live.'

She reached for a cigarette. This time he lighted it for her.

'The thing is,' she said, and she might have been talking to her father after Sunday supper, with her mother safe in the other room, only actually this was more fun, 'the thing is, I find sex over-rated. Men make such a fuss, put one off, all that groaning. Some even cry. The only reason one does it is to claim a scalp, like playing Red Indians. The whole thing's a dead loss, in my opinion. But there, I'm only nineteen. Plenty of time to ripen up.'

'I wouldn't count on it. Nineteen is getting on a bit. It's later than you think.' He rose from the locker, strolled over to his helmsman's seat and switched on the engine. 'It gives me enormous satisfaction,' he added, 'to think of all those heads you've scalped, and the groaning that goes on in Fleet Street. I must warn my friends amongst the press that they had better watch out.'

She looked up at him, startled. 'What friends?'

He smiled. 'I have my contacts.' He turned the launch back in the direction of Lamb Island, and it's only a matter of time, she told herself, before he checks my press credentials, discovers they don't exist. As for Jennifer Blair, he'd have to contact a fair number of theatre managers before one of them said, 'You mean that brilliant young actress the Stratford people have been trying to get hold of for next season?'

Too soon by far he was bringing the launch alongside the landing-stage-cum-boathouse of his domain, cunningly masked by the thickly planted trees, Michael there to receive them, and she remembered her fright of the morning, the partly uncovered megalithic cairn in the heart of the wooded island.

'I've spoilt your day,' she said to Nick. 'You were all of you working on that site, and would have gone on with it but for me.'

'Not necessarily. Relaxation takes various forms. The digging can wait. Any news, Michael?'

'Some signals received, sir, up at the house. Everything in order.'

Metamorphosis was complete by the time they reached the house. The companion had become brusque, alert, intent upon matters other than herself. Even the little dog who leapt into his arms as soon as she heard her master's voice was swiftly put down again.

'Everyone in the control-room for briefing in five minutes, Bob,' he said.

'Sir.'

Nick turned to Shelagh. 'You must amuse yourself, if you don't mind. Books, radio, T.V., records, all in the room we were in last night. I shall be busy for several hours.'

Several hours… It was only just after six. Would his business, whatever it was, take him until nine or ten? She had hoped for something different, a long intimate evening stretched out in front of the fire when anything might happen.

'O.K.,' she said with a shrug. 'I'm in your hands. I'd like to know, by the way, how long you intend to keep me here. I have certain commitments back in London.'

'I bet you have. But the scalping will have to wait. Bob, see that Miss Blair has some tea.'

He disappeared along the corridor, the dog at his heels. She flung herself down on the settee, sulking. What a bore! Especially when the day had gone so well. She had no desire to read or listen to records. His taste would be like her father's, old Peter Cheyneys and John Buchans, he used to read them over and over again. And music of the lighter sort, probably South Pacific.

The steward brought in her tea, and this time there were cherry jam and scones, freshly baked, what's more. She wolfed the lot. Then she pottered around the room, inspecting the shelves. No Peter Cheyney, no John Buchan, endless books on Ireland, which she expected anyway, Yeats forever, Synge, A.E., a volume on the Abbey Theatre. That might be interesting, but, 'I'm not in the vein,' she thought, 'I'm not in the vein.' The records were mostly classical, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, stacks of the damn things. All right if he'd been in the room and they could have listened together. The photograph on the desk she ignored. Even to glance at it produced intense irritation. How could he? What had he seen in her? Indeed, what had her father seen, for that matter? But for Nick, obviously more intellectual than her father had ever been, to go round the bend about somebody like her mother, granting she had been pretty in her day, passed all comprehension.

'I know what I'll do,' thought Shelagh, 'I'll go and wash my hair.'

It was frequently a remedy when all else failed. She walked along the corridor, passing the door with the words Control Room upon it. She could hear the murmur of voices from within. Then Nick laughed, and she hurried past in case the door opened and she was caught trying to eavesdrop. The door did open, when she was safely on her way, and glancing back over her shoulder she saw a boy come out, one of those who had been helping to uncover the cairn that morning. She remembered his mop of light hair. He couldn't be more than eighteen. They were all young, now she came to think of it. All except Nick himself, and Bob. She passed through the swing-door to her own room and sat down on her bed, stunned by a new idea that had suddenly come to her.

Nick was a homo. They were all homos. That was why Nick had been sacked from the Navy. Her father had found out, couldn't pass him for promotion, and Nick had borne a grudge ever afterwards. Perhaps, even, the dates she had copied from the list referred to times when Nick had got into trouble. The photograph was a blind-homos often tried to cover themselves by pretending they were married. Oh, not Nick… It was the end. She couldn't bear it. Why must the only attractive man she had ever met in her life have to be like it? God damn and blast them all, stripped to the waist there down by that megalithic tomb. They were probably doing the same in the Control Room now. There was no point in anything any more. No sense in her mission. The sooner she left the island and flew back home the better.

She turned the taps in her wash-basin, and plunged her head into the water furiously. Even the soap-Aegean Blue-was far too exotic for a normal man to have under his roof. She dried her hair, twisting the towel round it turban fashion, tore off her jeans and put on another pair. They didn't look right. She dragged on her travelling skirt instead. 'That will show him I've no desire to go around apeing boys.'

There was a tap at her door.

'Come in,' she said savagely.

It was Bob. 'Excuse me, miss, the Commander would like to see you in the Control Room.'

'I'm sorry, he'll have to wait. I've just washed my hair.'

The steward coughed. 'I wouldn't advise you, miss, to keep the Commander waiting.'

He could not have been more courteous, and yet… There was something implacable about his square, stocky frame.

'Very well,' said Shelagh. 'The Commander must put up with my appearance, that's all.'

She stalked along the corridor after him, the twisted turban giving her the appearance of a Bedouin sheik.

'Beg pardon,' murmured the steward, and tapped on the door of the Control Room. 'Miss Blair to see you, sir,' he announced.

She was ready for anything. Young men sprawling in the nude on bunks. Joss sticks burning. Nick, as Master of Ceremonies, directing unspeakable operations. Instead, she saw the seven young men seated round a table, Nick at the head of it. An eighth man was sitting in the corner with headphones over his ears. The seven at the table stared at her, then averted their gaze. Nick raised his eyebrows briefly, then picked up a piece of paper. She recognised it as the list with the dates upon it that had been missing from her tourist guide.

'I apologise for interrupting the haute coiffure,' he said, 'but these gentlemen and I would like to know the significance of these dates that you were carrying in your tourist guide.'

Obey the well-tried maxim. Attack is the best form of defence.

'That is exactly what I would have asked you, Commander Barry, had you granted me an interview. But I dare say you would have avoided the question. They obviously have great significance for you, otherwise your gentlemen friends would never have pinched them in the first place.'

'Fair enough,' he said. 'Who gave you the list?'

'It was with the other papers which the office gave me when I was put on to this job. They were just part of the briefing.'

'You mean the editorial office of Searchlight?'

'Yes.'

'Your assignment was to write an article about a retired naval officer-myself-and describe how he filled his time, hobbies, etc?'

'That's right.'

'And other members of the staff were to write similar articles about other ex-Service officers?'

'Yes. It sounded a bright idea. Something new.'

'Well, I'm sorry to spoil your story, but we've checked with the editor of Searchlight, and not only have they no intention of publishing such a series of articles, but they don't possess a Miss Jennifer Blair even amongst the most junior members of their staff.'

She might have known it. His contacts amongst the press. Pity she wasn't a journalist. Whatever it was he was trying to hide would win her a fortune if it was published in one of the Sunday newspapers.

'Look,' she said, 'this is a delicate matter. Could I possibly speak to you alone?'

'Very well,' Nick said, 'if you prefer it.'

The seven rose to their feet. They were a tough-looking bunch.

She supposed that was the way he liked it.

'If you don't mind,' Nick added, 'the wireless operator has to stay at his post. Messages are continually coming through. He won't hear anything you say.'

'That's all right,' she said.

The seven young men shuffled from the room, and Nick leant back in his chair. The bright blue eye never wavered from her face.

'Take a seat and fire away,' he said.

Shelagh sat down in one of the vacant seats, conscious suddenly of the twisted towel round her head. It could hardly add to her dignity. Never mind. It was his dignity she hoped to shatter now. She would tell the truth up to a certain point, then improvise, wait for his reaction.

'The Searchlight editor was perfectly right,' she began, drawing a deep breath. 'I've never worked for them, or for any other magazine. I'm not a journalist, I'm an actress, and few people on the stage have heard of me either, as yet. I'm a member of a young theatre group. We travel a lot, and we've just succeeded in getting our own theatre in London. If you want to check up on that you can. It's the New World Theatre, Victoria, and everybody there knows Jennifer Blair. I'm booked to play the lead in their forthcoming series of Shakespearean comedies.'

Nick smiled. "That's more like it. Congratulations.'

'You can keep them for the opening night,' she replied, 'which will be in about three weeks' time. The director and the rest of the group know nothing about this business, they don't even know I'm here in Ireland. I'm here as the result of a bet.'

She paused. This was the tricky part.

'A boy-friend of mine, nothing to do with the theatre, has naval connections. That list of dates came into his hands, with your name scribbled beside it. He knew it must signify something, but didn't know what. We got slightly lit up one evening after dinner, and he bet me twenty-five quid, plus expenses, that I wasn't a good enough actress to pose as a journalist and bounce you into an interview just for the hell of it. Done, I told him. And that's why I'm here. I must admit I hadn't expected to be hi-jacked on to an island as part of the experience. I was slightly shaken last night to find the list had been pinched from my tourist guide. So, I told myself, then the dates did stand for something which wouldn't bear reporting. They were all in the 'fifties, around the time you retired from the Navy, according to the naval list which I ran to earth in a public library. Now, candidly, I don't give a damn what those dates signify, but, as I said before, they obviously mean a lot to you, and I wouldn't mind betting something pretty shady too, not to say illegal.'

Nick tilted his chair, rocking it gently to and fro. The eye shifted, examined the ceiling. He was evidently at a loss for an answer, which suggested her arrow had scored a bull's eye.

'It depends,' he said softly, 'what you call shady. And illegal. Opinions differ. You might be considerably shocked by actions for which my young friends and I find perfect justification.'

'I'm not easily shocked,' said Shelagh.

'No, I gathered that. The trouble is, I have to convince my associates that such is indeed the case. What happened in the 'fifties does not concern them-they were children at the time but what we do jointly today concerns all of us very much indeed. If any leak of our actions reached the outside world we should, as you rightly surmise, find ourselves up against the law.'

He got up and began to straighten the papers on his table. So, Shelagh thought, whatever illegal practices her father had suspected Nick of, he was still engaged in them, here in Ireland. Smuggling archaeological finds to the U.S.A.? Or had her hunch this evening been correct? Could Nick and his bunch of friends be homosexual? Eire made so much fuss about morality that anything of the kind might well be against the law. It was obvious he wouldn't let on about it to her.

Nick went and stood beside the man with the headphones, who was writing something on a pad. Some message, she supposed. Nick read it, and scribbled something himself in answer. Then he turned back to Shelagh.

'Would you like to see us in action?' he asked.

She was startled. She had been prepared for anything when she came into the Control Room, but to be asked point blank… 'What do you mean?' she asked defensively.

Her turban had slipped on to the floor. He picked it up and handed it to her.

'It would be an experience,' he said, 'you are never likely to have again. You won't have to take part in it. The display will be at a distance. Very stimulating. Very discreet.'

He was smiling, but there was something disconcerting in the smile. She backed away from him towards the door. She had a sudden vision of herself seated somewhere in the woods, by that prehistoric grave, perhaps, unable to escape, while Nick and the young men performed some ancient and unspeakable rite.

'Quite honestly…' she began, but he interrupted her, still smiling.

'Quite honestly, I insist. The display will be an education in itself. We shall proceed part of the way by boat, and then take to the road.'

He threw open the door. The men were lined up in the corridor, Bob amongst them.

'No problem,' he said. 'Miss Blair will give no trouble. Action stations.'

They began to file away down the corridor. Nick took Shelagh by the arm and propelled her towards the swing door leading to his own quarters.

'Get your coat, and a scarf, if you have one. It may be cold. Look sharp.'

He disappeared into his own room. When she came out again into the corridor he was waiting for her, wearing a high-necked jersey and a windcheater. He was looking at his watch.

'Come on,' he said.

The men had all vanished, except the steward. He was standing at the entrance to the galley door, the little dog in his arms. 'Good luck, sir,' he said.

'Thank you, Bob. Two lumps of sugar for Skip, no more.'

He led the way down the narrow path through the woods to the boathouse. The engine of the launch was humming gently. There were only two men on board, Michael and the young man with the mop of hair. 'Sit in the cabin and stay there,' Nick told Shelagh. He himself moved to the controls. The launch began to slip away across the lake, the island disappearing astern. Shelagh soon lost direction, seated as she was inside the cabin. The mainland was a distant blur, coming close at times and then receding, but none of it taking shape under the dark sky. Sometimes, as she peered through the small porthole, they passed so near to a bank that the launch almost brushed the reeds, and then a moment afterwards there was nothing but water, black and still, save for the white foam caused by the bow's thrust. The engine was barely audible. Nobody spoke. Presently the gentle throbbing ceased-Nick must have nosed his craft into shallow water beside a bank. He lowered his head into the cabin and held out his hand to her.

'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."'

'You're all of you raving mad,' said Shelagh. 'I'll feel safer when we're back across your side of the border.'

'My side of the border?' he repeated. 'We never crossed it. What do you take me for? I've done some damnfool things in my time, but I wouldn't bounce about in a grocer's van in hostile territory. I wanted you to see the fun, that's all. Actually, I'm only a consultant these days. "Ask Commander Barry," somebody says, "he may have a suggestion or two to make," and I come in from clearing cairns or writing history, and get cracking on the short wave. It keeps me young in heart, like Murphy.' He began pulling down some of the loaves from the rack and settling them under his head. 'That's better. Gives me support for my neck. I once made love to a girl with my backside against a heap of hand-grenades, but I was younger then. Girl never fluffed. Thought they were turnips.'

Oh no, she thought. Not again. I can't take any more just yet. The battle's over, won. I'll sue for peace. All I want to do now is to lie like this, with my legs thrown across his knees and my head on his shoulder. This is safety.

'Don't,' she said.

'Oh really? No stamina?'

'Stamina nothing, I'm suffering from shock. I shall smoulder for days, like your barracks in Armagh. By the way, I belong by rights to the Protestant north. My grandfather was born there.'

'Was he, indeed? That explains everything. You and I have a love-hate relationship. It's always the same with people who share a common border. Attraction and antagonism mixed. Very peculiar.'

'I dare say you're right.'

'Of course I'm right. When I lost my eye in the car crash I had letters of sympathy from dozens of people across the border who would gladly have seen me dead.'

'How long were you in hospital?'

'Six weeks. Plenty of time to think. And plan.'

Now, she thought. This is the moment. Go carefully, watch your step.

'That photograph,' she said, 'that photograph on your desk. It's a phoney, isn't it?'

He laughed. 'Oh well, it takes an actress to spot deception. A throwback to the days of practical jokes. It makes me smile whenever I look at it, that's why I keep it on my desk. I've never been married, I invented that tale on the spur of the moment for your benefit.'

'Tell me about it.'

He shifted position to ensure greater comfort for both of them.

'The real bridegroom was Jack Money, a very close friend. I saw he died the other day, I was sorry for it. We'd been out of touch for years. Anyway, I was his best man. When they sent me a print of the wedding-group I switched the heads round and sent a copy to Jack. He laughed his head off, but Pam, his wife, was not amused. Outraged, in fact. He told me she tore the thing up and threw the pieces in the waste-paper basket.'

She would, thought Shelagh, she would. I bet she didn't even smile.

'I got my own back, though,' he said, moving one of the loaves from under his head. 'I dropped in on them one evening unexpectedly. Jack was out at some official dinner. Pam received me rather ungraciously, so I mixed the martinis extra strong, and had a rough-and-tumble with her on the sofa. She giggled a bit, then passed out cold. I upset all the furniture to look as if a cyclone had hit the house, and carried her up to her bed and dumped her there. On her own, I may add. She'd forgotten all about it by the morning.'

Shelagh lay back against his shoulder and stared at the roof of the van.

'I knew it,' she said.

'Knew what?'

'That your generation did perfectly revolting things. Far worse than us. Under your best friend's roof. It makes me sick to think of it.'

'What an extraordinary statement,' he said, astonished. 'No one was ever the wiser, so what the hell? I was devoted to Jack Money, although he did bog my chances of promotion shortly afterwards, but for a different reason. He only acted according to his lights. Thought I might put a spoke in the slowly-grinding wheels of naval intelligence, I presume, and he was bloody right.'

Now I can't tell him. It's just not on. Either I go back to England battered and defeated, or I don't go at all. He's deceived my father, deceived my mother (serve her right), deceived the England he fought for for so many years, tarnished the uniform he wore, degraded his rank, spends his time now, and has done for the past twenty years, trying to split this country wider apart than ever, and I just don't care. Let them wrangle. Let them blow themselves to pieces. Let the whole world go up in smoke. I'll write him a bread-and-butter letter from London saying, 'Thanks for the ride,' and sign it Shelagh Money. Or else… or else I'll go down on all fours like the little dog who follows him and leaps on his lap, and beg to stay with him forever.

'I start rehearsing Viola in a few days' time,' she said. "My father had a daughter loved a man…" '

'You'll do it very well. Especially Cesario. Concealment like a worm in the bud will feed on your damask cheek. You may pine in thought, but I doubt with a green and yellow melancholy.'

Murphy did another U-turn and the loaves rattled. How many miles to Lough Torrah? Don't let it end.

'The trouble is,' she said, 'I don't want to go home. It's not home to me any more. Nor do I care two straws for the Theatre Group, Twelfth Night, or anything else. You can have Cesario.'

'I can indeed.'

'No… What I mean is, I'm willing to chuck the stage, give up my English status, burn all my bloody boats, and come and throw bombs with you.'

'What, become a recluse?'

'Yes, please.'

'Absurd. You'd be yawning your head off after five days.' 'I would not… I would not…'

'Think of all that applause you'll be getting soon. Viola-Cesario is a cinch. I tell you what. I won't send you flowers for your opening night, I'll send you my eye-shade. You can hang it up in your dressing-room to bring you luck.'

I want too much, she thought. I want everything. I want day and night, arrows and Agincourt, sleeping and waking, world without end, amen. Someone warned her once that it was fatal to tell a man you loved him. They kicked you out of bed forthwith. Perhaps Nick would kick her out of Murphy's van.

'What I really want,' she said, 'deep down, is stillness, safety. The feeling you'd always be there. I love you. I think I must have loved you without knowing it all my life.'

'Ah! ' he said. 'Who's groaning now?'

The van drew up, stopped. Nick crawled forward, threw open the doors. Murphy appeared at the entrance, his furrowed face wreathed in smiles.

'I hope I didn't shake you about too much,' he said. 'The side roads are not all they should be, as the Commander knows. The main thing is that the young lady should have enjoyed her outing.'

Nick jumped down on to the road. Murphy put out his hand and helped Shelagh to alight.

'You're welcome to come again, my dear, any time you like.

It's what I tell the English tourists when they visit us. Things are more lively here than what they are across the water.'

Shelagh looked around her, expecting to see the lake, and the bumpy track near the reeds where they had left Michael with the boat. Instead, they were standing in the main street of Ballyfane. The van was parked outside the Kilmore Arms. She turned to Nick, her face 'a question-mark. Murphy was knocking on the hotel door.

'Twenty minutes' more driving time, but worth it,' said Nick. 'At least for me, and I hope for you as well. Farewells should be sharp and sweet, don't you agree? There's Doherty at the door, so cut along in. I have to get back to base.'

Desolation struck. He could not mean it. He surely did not expect her to say goodbye on the side of the street, with Murphy and his son hovering, and the landlord at the entrance of the hotel?

'My things,' she said, 'my case. They're on the island, in the bedroom there.'

'Not so,' he told her. 'Operation C brought them back to the Kilmore Arms while we were junketing about on the border.' Desperately she fought for time, pride non-existent.

'Why?' she asked. 'Why?'

'Because that's the way it is, Cesario. I sacrifice the lamb that I do love to spite my own raven heart, which alters the text a bit.'

He pushed her in front of him towards the door of the hotel. 'Look after Miss Blair, Tim. The exercise went well, by all accounts. Miss Blair is the only casualty.'

He had gone, and the door had closed behind him. Mr Doherty looked at her with sympathy.

'The Commander is a great one for hustle. It's always the same. I know what it is to be in his company, he seldom lets up. I've put a thermos of hot milk beside your bed.'

He limped up the stairs before her, and threw open the door of the bedroom she had quitted two nights earlier. Her suitcase was on the chair. Bag and maps on the dressing-table. She might never ha'e left it. 'Your car has been washed and filled up with petrol,' he continued. 'A friend of mine has it in his garage. He'll bring it round for you in the morning. And there's no charge for your stay. The Commander will settle for everything. Just you get to bed now and have a good night's rest.'

A good night's rest…. A long night's melancholy. Come away, come away, death, and in sad cypress let me be laid. She threw open the window and looked out upon the street. Drawn curtains and blinds, shuttered windows. The black-and-white cat mewing from the gutter opposite. No lake, no moonlight.

'The trouble with you is, Jinnie, you won't grow up. You live in a dream world that doesn't exist. That's why you opted for the stage.' Her father's voice, indulgent but firm. 'One of these days,' he added, 'you'll come to with a shock.'

It was raining in the morning, misty, grey. Better, perhaps, like this, she thought, than golden bright like yesterday. Better to go off in the hired Austin with windscreen wipers slashing from side to side, and then with luck I might skid and crash in a ditch, be carried to hospital, become delirious, clamour for him to come. Nick kneeling at the bedside, holding her hand and saying, 'All my fault, I should never have sent you away.'

The little maid was waiting for her in the dining-room. Fried egg-and-bacon. A pot of tea. The cat, come in from the gutter, purred at her feet. Perhaps the telephone would ring, and a message would flash from the island before she left. 'Operation D put into effect. The boat is waiting for you.' Possibly, if she hovered about in the hall, something would happen. Murphy would appear in his van, or even the postmaster O'Reilly with a few words scribbled on a piece of paper. Her luggage was down, though, and the Austin was in the street outside. Mr Doherty was waiting to say goodbye.

'I hope I shall have the pleasure,' he said, 'of welcoming you to Ballyfane again. You'd enjoy the fishing.'

When she came to the signpost pointing to Lake Torrah she stopped the car and walked down the muddied track in the pouring rain. One never knew, the boat might be there. She came to the end of the track and stood there a moment, looking out across the lake. It was shrouded deep in mist. She could barely see the outline of the island. A heron rose from the reeds and flapped its way over the water. I could take off all my things and swim, she thought. I could just about make it, exhausted, almost drowned, and stagger through the woods to the house and fall at his feet on the verandah. 'Bob, come quick! It's Miss Blair. I think she's dying…'

She turned, walked back up the track and got into the car. Started the engine, and the windscreen wipers began thrashing to and fro.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

It was still raining when she arrived at Dublin airport. First she had to get rid of the car, then book a seat on the first available 'plane to London. She did not have long to wait there was a flight taking off within the next half-hour. She sat in the departure lounge with her eyes fixed on the door leading back to the reception hall, for even now a miracle might take place, the door swing open, a lanky figure stand there, hatless, black patch over his left eye. He would brush past officials, come straight towards her. 'No more practical jokes. That was the last. Come back with me to Lamb Island right away.'

Her flight was called, and Shelagh shuffled through with the rest, her eyes searching her fellow-travellers. Walking across the tarmac she turned to stare at the spectators waving goodbye. Someone tall in a mackintosh held a handkerchief in his hand. Not him-he stooped to pick up a child…. Men in overcoats taking off hats, putting dispatch-cases on the rack overhead, any one of them could have been, was not, Nick. Supposing, as she fastened her safety-belt, a hand came out from the seat in front of her, on the aisle, and she recognised the signet-ring on the little finger? What if the man humped there in the very front seat she could just see the top of his slightly balding head should suddenly turn, black patch foremost, and stare in her direction, then break into a smile?

'Pardon.'

A latecomer squeezed in beside her, treading on her toes. She flashed him a look. Black squash hat, spotty faced, pale, the fag end of a cigar between his lips. Some woman, somewhere, had loved, would love, this unhealthy brute. Her stomach turned. He opened a newspaper wide, jerking her elbow. Headlines glared.

'Explosions Across the Border. Are There More to Come?'

A secret glow of satisfaction warmed her. Plenty more, she thought, and good luck to them. I saw it, I was there, I was part of the show. This idiot sitting beside me doesn't know.

London Airport. Customs check. 'Have you been on holiday, and for how long?' Was it her imagination, or did the Customs Officer give her a particularly searching glance? He chalked her case and turned to the next in line.

Cars shot past the bus as it lumbered through the traffic to the terminal. Aircraft roared overhead, taking other people away and out of it. Men and women with drab, tired expressions waited on pavements for red to change to green. Shelagh was going back to school with a vengeance. Not to peer at the notice board in the draughty assembly-hall, shoulder to shoulder with giggling companions, but to examine another board, very similar, hanging on the wall beside the stage door. Not, 'Have I really got to share a room with Katie Matthews this term? It's too frantic for words', and smiling falsely, 'Hullo, Katie, yes, wonderful hols, super', but wandering instead into that rather poky cubby-hole they called the dressing-room at the bottom of the stairs, and finding that infuriating Olga Brett hogging the mirror, using Shelagh's or one of the other girls' lipstick instead of her own, and drawling, 'Hullo, darling, you're late for rehearsal, Adam is tearing his hair out in handfuls. But literally…'

Useless to ring up home from the air terminal and ask Mrs Warren the gardener's wife to make up her bed. Home was barren, empty, without her father. Haunted, too, his things untouched, his books on the bedside table. A memory, a shadow, not the living presence. Better go straight to the flat, like a dog to a familiar kennel smelling only of its own straw, untouched by its master's hands.

Shelagh was not late at the first rehearsal on the Monday morning, she was early.

'Any letters for me?'

'Yes, Miss Blair, a postcard.'

Only a postcard? She snatched it up. It was from her mother at Cap d'Ail. 'Weather wonderful. Feeling so much better, really rested. Hope you are too, darling, and that you had a nice little trip in your car wherever it was. Don't exhaust yourself rehearsing. Aunt Bella sends her love and so do Reggie and May Hillsborough, who are here on their yacht at Monte Carlo. Your loving Mum.' (Reggie was the fifth Viscount Hillsborough.)

Shelagh dropped the postcard into a waste-paper basket and went down on to the stage to meet the group. A week, ten days, a fortnight, nothing came. She had given up hope. She would never hear from him. The theatre must take over, become meat and drink, love and sustenance. She was neither Shelagh nor Jinnie, she was Viola-Cesario, and must move, think, dream in character. Here was her only cure, stamp out all else. She tried to get Radio Eire on her transistor but it did not succeed. The voice of the announcer might have sounded like Michael's, like Murphy's, and roused some sort of feeling other than a total void. So on with the damned motley, and drown despair.

Olivia. Where goes Cesario?

Viola. After him I love,

More than I love these eyes, more than my life…

Adam Vane, crouching like a black cat at the side of the stage, his horn-rimmed glasses balanced on his straggling hair, 'Don't pause, dear, that's very good, very good indeed.'

On the day of the dress rehearsal she left the flat in good time, picking up a taxi en route for the theatre. There was a jam at the corner of Belgrave Square, cars hooting, people hanging about on the pavement, mounted policemen. Shelagh opened the glass panel between herself and the driver.

'What's going on?' she asked. 'I'm in a hurry, I can't afford to be late.'

He grinned back at her over his shoulder. 'Demonstration,' he said, 'outside the Irish Embassy. Didn't you hear the one o'clock news? More explosions on the border. It looks as if it's brought the London-Ulster crowd out in force. They must have been throwing stones at the embassy windows.'

Fools, she thought. Wasting their time. Good job if the mounted police ride them down. She never listened to the one o'clock news, and she hadn't even glanced at the morning paper. Explosions on the border, Nick in the Control Room, the young man with the headphones over his ears, Murphy in the van, and I'm here in a taxi driving to my own show, my own fireworks, and after it's over my friends will crowd round me saying, 'Wonderful, darling, wonderful!'

The hold-up had put her timing out. She arrived at the theatre to find the atmosphere a mixture of excitement, confusion, last-minute panic. Never mind, she could cope. Her first scene as Viola over, she tore back to the dressing-room to change to Cesario. 'Oh, get out, can't you? I want the place to myself.' That's better, she thought, now I'm in control. I'm the boss around this place, or very soon will be. Off with Viola's wig, a brush to her own short hair. On with the breeches, on with the hose. Cape set on my shoulders. Dagger in my belt. Then a tap at the door. What the hell now?

'Who is it?' she called.

'A packet for you, Miss Blair. It's come express.'

'Oh, throw it down.'

Last minute touch to eyes, then stand back, take a last look, you'll do, you'll do. They'll all be shouting their heads off tomorrow night. She glanced away from the mirror, down to the packet on the table. A square-shaped envelope. It bore the post-mark Eire. Her heart turned over. She stood there a moment holding it in her hands, then tore the envelope open. A letter fell out, and something hard, between cardboard. She seized the letter first.

Dear Jinnie,

I'm off to the U.S. in the morning to see a publisher who has finally shown interest in my scholarly works, stone circles, ring forts, Early Bronze Age in Ireland, etc., etc., but I spare you… I shall probably be away for some months, and you can read in your glossy magazines about a one-time recluse spouting his head off in universities to the American young. In point of fact it suits me well to be out of the country for a while, what with one thing and another, as they say.

I have been burning some of my papers before leaving, and came across the enclosed photograph amongst a pile of junk in the bottom drawer of my desk. I thought it might amuse you. You may remember I told you that first evening you reminded me of someone. I see now that it was myself! Twelfth Night was the bond. Good luck, Cesario, and happy scalping.

Love, Nick.

America From her viewpooint it might just as well be Mars. She took the photograph out of its cardboard covers and looked at it, frowning. Another practical joke? But she had never had a photograph taken of herself as Viola-Cesario, so how could he have possibly faked this? Had he snapped her when she wasn't aware of it, then placed the head on other shoulders? Impossible. She turned it over. He had written across the back, 'Nick Barry as Cesario in Twelfth Night. Dartmouth. 1929.'

She looked at the photograph again. Her nose, her chin, the cocky expression, head tip-tilted in the air. Even the stance, hand on hip. The thick cropped hair. Suddenly she was not standing in the dressing-room at all but in her father's bedroom, beside the window, and she heard him move, and she turned to look at him. He was staring at her, an expression of horror and disbelief upon his face. It was not accusation she had read in his eyes, but recognition. He had awakened from no nightmare, but from a dream that had lasted twenty years. Dying, he discovered truth.

They were knocking at the door again. 'Curtain coming down on Scene Three in four minutes' time, Miss Blair.'

She was lying in the van, his arms around her. 'Pam giggled a bit, then passed out cold. She'd forgotten all about it by the morning.'

Shelagh raised her eyes from the photograph she was holding in her hand and stared at herself in the mirror.

'Oh no…' she said. 'Oh, Nick… Oh my God!'

Then she took the dagger from her belt and stabbed it through the face of the boy in the photograph, ripping it apart, throwing the pieces into the waste-paper basket. And when she went back on to the stage it was not from the Duke's palace in Illyria that she saw herself moving henceforth, with painted backcloth behind her and painted boards beneath her feet, but out into a street, any street, where there were windows to be smashed and houses to burn, and stones and bricks and petrol to hand, where there were causes to despise and men to hate, for only by hating can you purge away love, only by sword, by fire.