No Enemy but Time (34 page)

The lunch went on until late afternoon. Claudia was going to friends in Cork that evening. Since Claire had to fly back to London, she couldn't possibly be left alone in the house. As the last of the guests were leaving, Claudia came up to Frank. She looked very haggard and old, in spite of the make-up. She hadn't cried during the funeral. She wasn't the kind of woman to make a public display. She had done her crying in private.

‘Thank you for arranging everything,' she said. ‘It was very well done. Old Greenway gave a very good address. Your father would have been pleased. So many people came … that was nice.'

He said, ‘I'm sorry he's dead. I'm sorry so much went wrong between him and me, but I want you to know I'm here if you need anything.'

Claudia wished he'd go. He was driving Claire to the airport. She had seemed stunned and silent all through the day. Claudia didn't want to talk to him about his father. The house was full of Philip, as if his spirit had stayed behind. Later it would be gone. Later she could come back and resume her life. He was sorry, he said. He looked unhappy, she admitted. She had noticed their friends giving him the cold shoulder in a subtle way. What a pity, she thought, but bad blood will out. He had only himself to blame for being the outsider on that day. He was so like Philip as a young man standing in front of her. So alike and yet quite different. Mongrel blood, she thought, and was immediately ashamed.

‘Frank,' she said. ‘You know there's nothing in the will. But if there's anything you want out of the house, please let me know. Some of the pictures …' She let the sentence die.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘It's kind of you to offer. But I don't want anything.'

‘Think about it,' Claudia insisted. ‘You may change your mind. Now, if Claire's going to catch her plane, she really ought to go.'

In the car Claire took off her black hat. The sun made a bright halo of the blonde hair.

‘I feel numb,' she said. ‘I don't know what's the matter with me. I can't believe I'll never see him again.'

‘You mustn't upset yourself,' Frank said. ‘He wouldn't want that. He doted on you.'

She turned towards him. ‘I loved him, Frank, but it was never quite the same after what he did to you. If Claudia wills me Riverstown, I'm going to give it to you.'

‘I wouldn't want it,' he said gently. ‘But I knew you'd say that. I've got my own place and I'm happy there. Besides, Claudia will live to be a hundred, so don't start thinking like that.'

‘What are your plans?' she asked him.

‘Nothing special, I'm very busy. I've a trip planned to the States in the autumn.'

Claire looked at him. ‘You're not going to speak at another rally, are you?'

He didn't answer. ‘You couldn't get away, I suppose? I'd love to take you round the East Coast.'

‘I don't think Neil would like it,' she said. ‘What a stupid bloody world we live in! There we are, me not able to come back to my own country, except I've got to fly in and out like a criminal, and you can't come and stay with me because of my husband's political career. We meet in hole-and-corner pubs for a few hours and talk on the telephone when he's out of the house! I'm fed up with it, Frank. I'm fed up with his friends and the phoney life we lead. I'm the perfect Minister's wife, with the two regulation children and a regulation Cotswold manor house with a swimming pool and a herbaceous border. Sometimes I feel I'd give my soul for a bit of Irish mess and madness!'

He slowed down as they turned into the airport. ‘Leave it then,' he said. ‘Bring the children over here. You shouldn't have married him in the first place.'

‘I can't,' she said. ‘Don't keep saying it.'

She didn't open the car door. He saw that for the first time her eyes were full of unshed tears.

‘With Dad gone and everything different, I feel so lost. And nothing makes up for it. Not Neil, not even the children. Don't get out, say goodbye to me here. I don't want that waving goodbye in the departure lounge.'

He put an arm round her. ‘Wipe your eyes,' he said. ‘Goodbye, Clarry. You made up to Dad for everything. Remember that and don't grieve. I'll ring you in a couple of days. When's a good time?'

‘Any time,' Claire said. ‘I'm finished pretending.' She got out of the car and hurried through the doors into the airport building without looking back.

Three men met at the house at Santry. Sean Filey, his superior, Jim Quinlan, and Hugh Macbride, who'd come down from the North. Filey had called the meeting to discuss Frank Arbuthnot.

Macbride was impatient. His was the pressing problem and he hadn't come across the border to listen to their troubles.

‘For God's sake,' he interrupted, ‘if the bastard turns lily-livered, you don't have to sit and talk about it. Get rid of him!'

Filey said coldly, ‘Your money supply will soon dry up if we do.'

Macbride brought his fist down on the table. ‘That's why I'm here! We're running short of funds. America's dried up since Mountbatten.'

‘That's temporary,' Quinlan protested. ‘Give it a few months for public opinion to settle. Noraid will get the cash flowing through to us again.'

‘We haven't got a few months,' Macbride snapped. It was easy for them to talk about time. They had time in the Republic. The Brits weren't breathing up
their
arses. ‘We've lost two major arms stores in the last nine months. Fifty Armalites, ten thousand rounds of ammo, boxes of grenades and explosives. And no money coming through. We've had to halt operations.' He lit a cigarette, then threw the match on the floor. ‘We've been offered a big shipment,' he went on. ‘It's a new supplier and he wants the money up front first.'

‘He'll have to wait,' Filey said. ‘It won't be long.'

‘He won't wait,' Macbride said flatly. ‘He's got other customers. We need a hundred thousand pounds and we need it by the end of June. Otherwise we lose the shipment, and we'll lose more than guns. We can't afford to stay quiet. It's hard enough keeping our people together. If we lie low, they'll start to drift away. I've come down to ask you to get the money for us.'

‘How? A hundred thousand – how in the name of Jesus are we going to get that?' Quinlan demanded.

Macbride glared at him. ‘The way we've had to get it before now,' he said. ‘Rob one of your fat Dublin banks.'

There was a long silence. Then Sean Filey said, ‘Why do you have to come down here for that? You've got banks in Ulster.'

‘We've got fuckin' fortresses,' Macbride countered. ‘It'd take an army to get near one of them. We've milked that cow dry, I can tell you.'

There was another silence. Then Quinlan said, ‘If we do it, we'll need Arbuthnot to bank the money and launder it through.'

Macbride stubbed his cigarette out. He coughed, cleared his throat and swallowed. Sean was certain that at home he'd have spat on the floor.

‘It's a fine time to have doubts about him,' he remarked.

‘Doubts or not, he's the only one,' Quinlan retorted. ‘We're not risking our lads to have them picked up at the border with the money on them. It goes through the usual channels and your man can be paid in Monte Carlo.'

‘You'll get it then?' Hugh Macbride demanded.

‘You'll have the money,' Quinlan promised. ‘The how and the where you can leave to us.'

The meeting broke up, and Sean offered Jim Quinlan a lift in his car back to the centre of Dublin.

Quinlan said, ‘How much of what Marie said do you believe, Sean? I remember when she wanted him admitted to the Council. Can we trust him with this?'

Sean weighed his answer. Neither had felt free to go into the matter in too much detail, with Macbride listening. His answer to everything was a bullet.

‘I think she's part right, but only part. He hasn't pretended to like some of the things we've had to do. He's soft, because his kind could afford to be. Except when
they
felt threatened. But he's been straight with me and said so. I think we can rely on him for one more major contribution. After that …' He shrugged.

He dropped Jim Quinlan off at Heuston station and went on to his practice in Fitzwilliam Square.

Neil's official car met Claire at London Airport. The Minister was delayed in London and would be coming up later by train. She had expected him to meet her. But, of course, he was busy and, after all, he'd sent his car. She thought, It's funny, he's doing everything wrong, without knowing it. And whenever he tries, it's in the wrong way and for the wrong reason. She felt tired and drained. If he were late she could skip dinner and go to bed. But when she came into the house the drawing-room door opened and there was Michael Harvey. And her son, Peter, in his pyjamas, holding on to his hand.

‘I hope you don't mind,' he said. ‘Neil asked me to spend a couple of days with you. I got leave unexpectedly. And Peter wanted to wait up till you got home.'

Claire came and kissed her son, who wanted to be picked up and hugged. He was very heavy, or else she was very tired.

‘I'm so glad you're here,' she said. ‘Of course Neil couldn't tell me. You know where I've been?'

‘I know,' he said quietly. ‘I'm so sorry. Here, old chap, don't strangle your mummy. Come on, don't let me down now. You promised to go to bed if I persuaded Iris you could stay up.'

She watched the little boy scamper happily up the stairs. ‘He's mad about you, Michael,' she said. ‘Let's have a drink and then I'll go and change out of this awful black. Will Neil be home for dinner?'

‘Yes, he rang about half an hour ago, wanting to know if you'd arrived.'

‘The traffic was bad,' she explained. She liked Michael Harvey, but now she couldn't escape and go to bed. Not to sleep, but to cry if she wanted to, to be alone and try to collect herself before life knocked on the door the next morning and expected to be lived.

He gave her a stiffer drink than usual, she noticed. He sat down and said, ‘Neil was very upset he couldn't go with you.'

‘He shouldn't be,' she answered. ‘He can't go to Ireland even for a funeral, in case someone throws a bomb at him. Any more than I could stay a night with my mother. She had to go to friends. I'm so bored with it all, I can't tell you. Do let's talk about something else.'

Harvey thought, She won't forgive this. I know the Irish. She'll hold this against him for ever. Because if it was the other way round, she'd have chanced it and gone with him. Poor sod, he's on a hiding to nothing here. Women don't give a damn. All they see is the personal issue. Like my wife did. By all means, let's talk about something else.

When Neil came in, they were watching a television comedy and, so far as he could see, Claire seemed quite relaxed. Thank God for Michael Harvey. He was a good buffer when tension rose between them. And he was someone Neil could talk to. In his own way he seemed to sympathize with Neil and understand. Most men would have taken one look at Claire and sided with her.

After dinner she excused herself and went to bed. The two men stayed up talking. Not about the problem in their midst, but about the wider issues in their respective worlds. When Neil went upstairs his wife was asleep, and he was careful not to wake her, although what he most wanted was to take her in his arms and ask her all about her father's funeral, to comfort her as deeply as he knew she was hurt. But the moment had eluded him, as it so often did these days, and she would have slipped a little further away from him as a result. When they woke together the next morning, she smiled brightly at him, brushed all enquiries off by saying she was fine, and locked herself into the bathroom to keep him at bay.

The following evening, in Michael Harvey's hearing, she telephoned her brother in Ireland. He went out of the room, closing the door. His two days' unexpected leave was neither leave nor unexpected. Someone had to tell the Minister that his wife was meeting Frank Arbuthnot in secret when he came to England. As a friend Neil Fraser trusted, Michael Harvey was the choice. He saw at that moment that Claire had made it easy for him. He went out to the garden, where Neil was sitting in the warm dusk, smoking a cigar.

After they'd spoken he said, ‘How much do you tell her about what's going on?'

Neil said slowly, ‘Confidential stuff, do you mean? Nothing. And she never asks. She's not interested. She'd never pass it on.'

‘Not intentionally,' Harvey countered.

Neil looked at him. ‘You don't understand,' he said. ‘It's not that kind of relationship.'

‘Just the same, I'd be a bit careful. It's amazing what someone can let drop without realizing it.
He
might pass it on, or he might not. You can't take the chance.'

Neil smoked on in silence. Michael Harvey felt very sorry for him. He had never suspected that Claire was deceiving him. It was certainly a shock.

‘You say she didn't make any bones about ringing him up?' he asked after a time.

‘None at all. I think she wanted me to hear. Probably wants you to know too. That's a very good sign, believe me.'

‘If you say so.' Neil finished his cigar. ‘I'm not sure. I think she's sending me a signal.'

Harvey looked up sharply. ‘What do you mean? What kind of signal?'

‘That from now on, she's going her own way. I should have gone to that funeral. I should have told the Security people to stuff it and gone with her. They tried to stop her going, but there was no way. I made a terrible bloody mistake, Mike.'

Harvey agreed with him, but he didn't say so. ‘And what would have happened if you'd been targeted and they'd made their hit? I'll bet you that there was a contingency plan in case you turned up at Riverstown. Even if it was some poor half-baked kid who'd been told he was doing it for Ireland. Someone, somewhere, was waiting to take a pot at you if you'd shown your face. If Claire's blaming you, then it's time someone pointed out the facts of life. I thought she'd have got the message after that last scare, when they picked up the jokers in Liverpool. Would you like me to remind her about that? After all, that's how I'm here now.'