Lord Slough looked out the window, at last. Deirdre’s face was still before him. Still in the shape of the bleak land. She said the Irish laughed because God cried enough for them. She told a story about the burren families and of how they had stood on the point of Galway Bay and watched the ships pass on their way to America, and of the tears of those left behind.
He imagined her now, in the reflected window glass of the car, as she had been. On that last night and last morning, up until the moment she had gone to the door. He saw her as the fresh-faced teacher who had first come to Clare House after Margaret had died. He saw her alive because he would not look at her broken face in the Chateau Frontenac. He had refused because he had seen enough bodies in the war — bodies of friends — and he could never think of those friends again as they had been in life; they were always only bodies, bits of bone and flesh, mangled for eternity by death. He had not wanted to remember Deirdre like that. So he had refused to look at her.
He sighed.
Feeling the presence of Brianna next to him, he thought he should do something. Tell her something.
At last, he reached and touched her hand and held it. It was all he could think of.
Enough. She pressed next to him. When she was a baby, she’d had milky breath. He thought he smelled it now, the same innocent breath.
“Home, Brianna,” he said at last. The word included the car and the plain hills. It was all he could think of.
She knew he meant to comfort her.
11
Inspector Cashel of the Special Branch, Dublin, piled his heavy bag into the black Ford Anglia. He could have taken a police auto, but the black Ford — the first car he had ever owned — was his not-so-secret joy. Cashel, who would go on and on about the mechanical wonders of the sturdy little car, did not realize that he and the vehicle were an object of fun in his division. And if he had known, he would not have seen the humor of it.
A surprisingly tender kiss from his wife, a little wave, and then he was gone, plunging into the streets of empty Dublin.
He turned down Baggot Street, past St. Stephen’s Green and the Shelbourne Hotel and the mile of colorful old homes and just as colorful public houses. At the bridge over the little trickle of water that eventually becomes the broad Shannon River, he turned again, following the road to Limerick. The highways of Ireland have no name or number designations — they are merely roads which guide at intervals with white stakes pointing toward cities. It was a system considered confusing by tourists and comfortable by people like Cashel.
The windshield wipers clicked at the rain and the little heater warmed Cashel. His broad face reddened, making his black mustache seem blacker, blue eyes more blue. He thought of taking a pipe but decided to defer the pleasure of the first bowlful until he broke his journey in midmorning.
In a little while, he was in the country.
He would be at Clare House before noon, he thought.
Denisov stood in the dark doorway of St. Anne’s Church. He had been waiting for an hour.
He glanced again at his watch and saw the time; he waited for the bells to tremble the hour in the belfry above him. They finally did, two minutes late by his reckoning.
From where he stood, he could look down the hilly O’Donnell Road to Flanagan’s public house, still blazing lights past closing time. Denisov had tried mightily to understand the pub-closing laws of England, Ireland, and Scotland and the exceptions to them and the history of them, and he still could not. He had waited in the church door an hour too long.
The rain had been falling since afternoon when Denisov had begun his search for O’Neill. He knew about O’Neill, of course, and Hastings and the connection in Edinburgh with Devereaux; but he did not understand the content of Devereaux’s mission or the extent of Hastings’ information. There were moments — now, waiting in the doorway, feeling cold and almost ill — when he did not understand his own reason for being there.
He yearned for the warmth of Asia to warm his cold bones. He yearned for games he could understand.
He felt in the pocket of his raincoat for the little Beretta. Old-fashioned weapon, light, not terribly accurate. So they told him. But he didn’t care. He never intended to use it.
Finally, Flanagan’s began to close in the slow and reluctant way of bars all over the world. He watched the patrons stagger out of the pub, stand on the steps and talk in the rain, and then scatter to their separate streets. He was amused to see one carrying on a conversation while he leaned against the fence around the vacant lot and urinated. The lights of the pub were extinguished, one by one, and, at last, he saw the figure of O’Neill trudging up the hill to St. Anne Road.
He did not like contact; he was basically a gatherer of information, and contact always made him feel a little uneasy.
O’Neill began singing, inexplicably, in the darkness of Belfast and in the rain falling straight down. Denisov heard snatches of lyrics carried on the wind as O’Neill came nearer:
“… It’s not the leavin’ of Liverpool,
That’s grievvvvvvvin’ me,
But the love I’ll leavvvvve behind.…”
Denisov smiled and then stepped from the shadow of the doorway.
“You sing well.”
O’Neill was startled but not frightened; he turned to the stranger and smiled. “C’mon inter the light like an honest man,” he cried and waved vaguely towards the darkened street.
Denisov complied.
O’Neill’s face was red and bloated and rain-streaked; his collar was damp and a red tie was knotted at his throat.
“Who’re ya?”
“My name is Denisov.”
“What kinda bloody name is it, then?”
“Russian.”
“Yer a fuggin’ Russian then?”
“I am,” said Denisov.
O’Neill seemed to absorb this information slowly but with equanimity. “Well, let’s go inter the city and find a jar.”
“A jar—”
“A bloody jar of Guinness—”
“Stout—”
“Porter—”
Denisov shrugged. “The pubs are closed—”
“But not the hotels. Not the bloody hotel bars, not by a sight. And me, the O’Neill himself, has got the quid fer it and he’ll buy even a fuggin’ Communist a drink on it.”
“That’s very nice,” said Denisov.
They walked along St. Anne Road together; Denisov had been there before. They strolled past the place where Blatchford had died and Devereaux had nearly been killed. It looked like every other spot on the pavement.
O’Neill began to sing “The Leaving of Liverpool” again. He sang it through in a steady, off-key voice and Denisov did not interrupt him. The feeble lights of the center of the city beckoned ahead. Magically, the rain ceased, too.
“Ah, it’s a bloody climate, man. I don’t know how ya can stand it,” O’Neill said at last, wiping rain from his broad, mottled forehead. His face was so bloated that Denisov thought it looked about to burst.
“It is less violent than the Soviet Union,” said Denisov.
“Aye. I’ve heard about Russian winters,” said O’Neill in sudden comradeship. He slapped Denisov painfully on the back. “Yer don’t look like a Russian,” he said.
Denisov shrugged. It was probably meant as a compliment.
They found a bar at last. They sat with the late crowd, sipping at Guinness. O’Neill — warm, dry, and with drink — said, “I’m a commercial traveler — what’s yer line?”
“Similar,” said Denisov. He sipped manfully at the thick, sweet black beer.
At the second round, Denisov began slowly. “You know a man named Devereaux.”
“What? Oh, aye. I met him once. He came to the house one mornin’. Yesterday? The day before? I fergets.”