Not After Midnight & Other Stories

'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 Who wants to command a ship in peacetime when a vessel is obsolete before she's even launched?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.