No Enemy but Time (45 page)

‘Wait here,' Harvey said softly. ‘Don't move. My car's in there.'

She shrank back in the shelter of the archway. Dust and ivy embraced her. She watched him creep towards the line of half-open doors, many of them loose on a broken hinge. And then he stopped. Without turning his head, he raised his left hand to warn her not to move. He'd pulled the door across to hide his car. The drag marks were on the ground, scored deep into the dirt. A second lot of marks overlapped them and ran on by a good foot. Someone else had pulled that heavy door across since he'd been there.

He knew, as he had known in other situations, that there was a human being hiding there, waiting for him to show himself. He made a decision in the next few seconds. He grabbed the door and pulled. It lurched, unbalanced by its own weight and lack of proper support. Harvey dropped flat as it fell off its hinge. The figure of Hugh Macbride crouched in the corner, his gun levelled in both hands, came into Harvey's view, He fired before Macbride loosed off a single shot. Macbride was dead before he fell.

They didn't drive to the airport. They drove to the centre of Dublin, where Harvey changed his car for another make and left Claire sitting in the car hire office with a cup of tea and a man who never spoke a word. When he came back, he'd changed his clothes to the corduroys and jacket he'd worn when he left England.

‘All fixed. Thanks, Bob,' Michael Harvey said to the man behind the desk.

He got up, nodded to Claire and went out. Harvey's manner was brisk. He wasn't going to be sympathetic. She had to keep going.

‘I've fixed a private plane,' he said. ‘We'll drive straight out to the airport now. It's not very big. I hope you're not airsick. Right, come on.'

She was numb in mind and in body. It was as if she were being moved about like a counter in some nightmare game. She couldn't think or feel. She did what he told her because if she questioned anything it meant she had to think. They arrived at the airport and she followed him obediently, boarded the Piper Comanche, strapped herself into the seat and shut her eyes as they took off. Beside her, Harvey decided she would just about last the trip.

‘How long before we get to London?' she asked.

‘We're not going to London,' he said. ‘We're going to Belfast. There's some decent transport waiting there.'

He put his hand on hers and squeezed it. She was freezing cold and her hand was shaking as if she had a high fever.

‘It's all over,' he said. ‘You were bloody good. You'll be home and safe with Neil and the kids in a few hours. Here, take a big swig of this.'

He gave her a half-bottle of brandy. He had to unscrew the top for her. She couldn't stop her hands from trembling, and her body was shaking with them.

‘I'm glad I killed him,' she said. ‘I'm very glad I killed him.'

She wouldn't be so glad, he thought, when the shock wore off.

‘I wish I hadn't seen his face,' she said.

No, she shouldn't have to bear that too.

‘You didn't shoot him,' he said. ‘I got him first. I saw him going up the tower wall. An Armalite bullet makes a fair mess, you know. Forget about it. It wasn't anything you did.'

The call from Belfast had come through to Neil's office. His secretary didn't even knock. She came bursting in to give him the message. Direct via the Army. Mrs Fraser was on her way home, and would be landing at RAF Highmore at six o'clock. She had been seen by an army doctor, but she was unharmed and Major Harvey was travelling with her.

She couldn't help herself. She said, ‘Oh, Minister, thank God!' and blinked back tears. She couldn't be sure as she hurried out in embarrassment, but he looked as if he were doing the same.

Claire had been given a sedative. It was very mild, the doctor assured her. Just enough to take the edge off, after what she'd gone through. She was offered sandwiches, which she couldn't eat, and coffee. The coffee was a godsend. She was very thirsty. There was a terrible dragging emptiness inside which made it an effort to speak.

People were being kind and protective, fussing over her because she was Neil Fraser's wife. She'd seen her brother die and two men killed. They hovered round her. The doctor and a senior WRAC officer sat and kept an eye, in case she cracked up. She wished they'd go away and leave her alone. How many Irish women in the past few years of conflict had coped with violent death, Claire wondered. No VIP treatment for them.

In the end, she said, ‘I'm quite all right. Please don't worry about me.'

‘Of course you are.' The girl in her smart uniform was comforting. She repeated Michael Harvey's words, ‘You'll be home with your family in no time, Mrs Fraser.'

They sat side by side in the army transport plane. Now he could be easy on her.

‘Claire,' he said. ‘I meant it, you were marvellous. Now you've got to put it all behind you and get on with your life.'

She turned and looked at him. ‘I don't want to go home,' she said.

They were flying steadily above the clouds. Michael Harvey drew a deep breath. He was fond of her. He admired her courage and her loyalty. She had guts and integrity and intelligence. But suddenly he was very angry.

‘What about Neil?' he demanded. ‘He'll be there waiting for you. What are you going to do, walk away from him?'

‘I don't know,' she answered. ‘I don't know what to do or where to go now.' A slow tear seeped out and ran down her cheek.

Harvey said quietly, ‘Then I'll tell you what you do and where you go. You go back to your poor bloody husband who loves you, and your two little children. Your brother's dead. You walk out now and you'll spend the rest of your life looking for him. But you'll never find him. There'll be another man and that won't work either. Nothing would have worked so long as he was alive. And you know it.'

She put her hands to her face. He didn't spare her. He was fighting harder for this marriage than he'd ever fought to save his own.

‘That chapter's closed. Neil loves you, he's always loved you. The kids need you; especially Peter. Go back and make it up to them all, Claire. It's the only way you'll be happy in the end.'

She didn't answer. She had stopped the silent weeping and sat with her head turned away from him. Make it up to them. She didn't ask him what he meant by that because she knew. As they came in to land she said, ‘I don't want Frank moved. I want him left where he is. I don't want anyone disturbing him.'

Harvey nodded. ‘I said in my report that he was dead. I didn't say where. It's up to you.'

‘Thank you, Michael,' Claire said simply. ‘Thank you for everything. Not just for saving my life.'

The plane taxied to a halt. He stood up and held out his hand to help her out of her seat.

‘If you want to thank me,' he answered, ‘go out and meet your husband.'

He let her leave the aircraft first. He saw Neil Fraser waiting on the tarmac.

For a moment Claire stopped. She had seen him too. It seemed a very long pause to Michael Harvey. Then she began to walk towards him. Moments later she and Neil Fraser were locked together.

Harvey began to walk down the tarmac, taking his time. They were still holding tight to each other as he came up to them.

‘So far, so good,' he said under his breath.

The bodies of Willie and Hugh Macbride were taken away by their own people and given a military funeral in a lonely graveyard far to the north in the wilds of County Tyrone. Shots were fired over their graves and the tricolour flag of Ireland draped their coffins. They were heroes who had died in the course of their duty.

Sean Filey was tipped off that he was being watched by the Dublin Special Branch. There wasn't enough evidence to bring him to trial on a charge of kidnapping Frank Arbuthnot, and Claire couldn't be involved. His name and Marie Dempster's were passed to the Irish government as dangerous subversives. Filey applied for a visa to visit the United States for a conference of psychiatrists in Cincinnatti. He decided to accept a two-year fellowship, and his practice in Dublin was closed down. Patients, rich and poor, grieved at the loss of him. He had been a gentle healer of sick minds.

Marie Dempster was shot dead as she drove back from a party to her flat in Howth. The catastrophe which cost the life of Hugh Macbride was not to go unpunished. The sentence was pronounced upon her in the North. It was generally agreed up there that she must have connived at Arbuthnot's escape. If they'd been fobbed off with his alibi and Filey's defence of her before, it didn't hold any water now. Macbride himself had been suspicious and said so. It was reported as a robbery because her jewellery was taken. It was broken up and sold. The money went into a fund for widows and orphans of men killed in the struggle in the North.

Joe Burns applied for and got a transfer to a Gardai station in Trim. The family couldn't understand why he wanted to go. A better chance of promotion, he explained. He wasn't a nervous man, and he didn't have a twinge of conscience, but he didn't like driving past old Gorman's empty cottage of an evening. Once or twice he thought he'd heard those dogs of his barking in the darkness.

‘Mummy,' the little boy said. ‘I'm looking forward to Christmas.'

Claire smiled down at him. He liked to sit beside her on the sofa in front of the big open fire when he came back from school.

‘So am I, Peter. It'll be nice to have Granny with us, won't it?'

‘Yes,' he nodded happily. Claudia had a brisk no-nonsense attitude to children which pained the modern school of parents. Children loved it. She was affectionate but firm, and they felt entirely secure with her. ‘Is she coming for long?' he asked.

‘Quite long,' Claire answered. ‘She's going to look for a house near us. That'll be nice too.'

A year ago she would have been impatient and brushed the questions aside. His dark eyes were always searching her face for reassurance. She could never have imagined that a child could be company. A lot had changed since her life ended that spring in Ireland and began again in the months that followed. Slowly and painfully sometimes, with an ache of sadness. It hadn't been easy for Neil or for her. But a new kind of love was growing between them and it started when he had held her on the windy tarmac of the military airfield.

‘My darling, thank God, thank God …' was all he said.

And she had said simply, ‘I'm so sorry, Neil.'

‘Mummy, isn't Granny going back to Ireland any more?'

‘I don't know, darling. I expect she will.'

Claudia didn't need persuading. ‘I can't stay here,' she told them. ‘I see poor old Billy walking those dogs by the river every time I look out of the window … I'd as soon sell up if you don't want the house yourself.'

And Claire hadn't hesitated either. Neil, waiting for the answer, heard her say, ‘No, Mum. You put it on the market.'

Peter edged a little closer to his mother. ‘Will Granny be with us when the new baby comes?'

‘I'm sure she will,' Claire answered. ‘It'll be nice to have a baby, won't it? Lucy's growing up so fast.'

He didn't say anything for a moment. He had very dark hair and she ran her hand gently over his head.

‘You won't love it better than Lucy and me, will you?'

She turned him to look at her. He glanced downwards and away, so that her heart turned over in recognition. ‘You'll never find him,' Michael Harvey had warned her. He was right about everything else, but wrong about that. The Arbuthnot genes were strong in her son.

‘No,' Claire said firmly. ‘I'll never love anyone better than you and Lucy. Now I think that's Daddy's car outside. Let's go and meet him, shall we?'

Snow fell in Ireland that winter. There was no hunting. No foxes ran at Cloncarrig any more. The Flanagans had refused the hunt permission to cross their land for many years.

Snow fell at Riverstown and it was so cold that part of the river froze. There was a new bus stop put up on the Naas road, and two women waited there, huddled against the driving wind. Such a winter was unknown. Everybody talked about it. It was grand for the children, throwing snowballs.

One woman was old, the other young. They worked at a very grand stud about a mile up the road, cooking and house cleaning for the family. There was a large ‘For Sale' sign nailed up beside the gates of Riverstown. The young woman looked at it, pulling her collar close round her neck.

‘I heard the missus say she'd gone to England,' she remarked.

‘She had so,' the old woman said. ‘The trouble was too much for her.'

‘They were here a long time,' the girl said. ‘My auld dad said they came here after Wolfe Tone.'

‘Maybe they did, so,' the old woman muttered. ‘They come. But in the end they go. Thanks be to God, here comes the bus.'

About the Author

Evelyn Anthony is the pen name of Evelyn Ward-Thomas, a female British author who began writing in 1949. She gained considerable success with her historical novels—two of which were selected for the American Literary Guild—before winning huge acclaim for her espionage thrillers. Her book,
The Occupying Power
, won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize, and her 1971 novel,
The Tamarind Seed
, was made into a film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Anthony's books have been translated into nineteen languages. She lives in Essex, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.