The Dangerous Islands Read online

  ‘He’s clever,’ Mrs. O’Malley pronounced. ‘He’s doing great things for the people here—new medicines, and getting them away to Castlebar for operations. There’s many that wish he would be in it always; he’s so learned, as well as kind.’

  Julia felt that one question at the back of her mind—was Dr. Feinstein a trustworthy person?—had been more or less answered. ‘Clever’, ‘learned’, and ‘kind’ were all pointers in a single direction.

  At this point John Thomas appeared with a bag of tools, and they all went up to Jamieson’s tiny bedroom, where with the help of a hammer and chisel the window was forced open at the bottom.

  ‘Couldn’t you make the top half open, Mr. O’Malley?’ Julia asked. ‘One gets better air that way.’

  ‘No—the top is shtook completely,’ John Thomas said, pushing in a small wooden wedge to hold the lower half of the window up. ‘There now—that’ll have to do ye.’

  Julia tried to pay; this was refused, but John Thomas consented to come down to the bar for a drink. The crowd was beginning to thin out, and when the carpenter had consumed his John Jamieson he said, wiping his lips—‘Well, I’ll be hoppin’ along now, with the help o’ God.’

  Julia and Jamieson followed him out, after paying.

  ‘Let’s go down to the quay,’ the girl said.

  They strolled down the jetty. The mail-boat and one or two curraghs rocked gently at their moorings; otherwise the place was completely deserted. Julia sat down on a heap of bales of wool, piled up waiting for the wool-boat to take the Island’s principal crop to the mainland, and reported to Jamieson what Dr. Feinstein had said to her.

  ‘He actually saw those three pseudo-Swedes installing the plant?’

  ‘Yes—and he constantly sees the Czechs jotting down the times when the aerials go up.’

  ‘Wonder how reliable he is,’ the Colonel speculated. Julia repeated Mrs. O’Malley’s remarks.

  ‘Hm’—yes, that doesn’t sound bad. Why did he tell you?’

  ‘He said, because he’d been rude to me, and I was British, and England had been so good about taking in Jewish refugees.’

  There was a pause. Then—‘ I simply must get back to the mainland and report all this,’ Jamieson said.

  ‘You’ll have to see the other installation first, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I must.’ He considered. ‘You say this little Yank Jew actually told you that the satellites were going to be used for dropping bombs?

  ‘That’s what he said. Are they?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jamieson said thoughtlessly. ‘But I wonder how the hell he knows.’

  ‘He has a chum in electronics.’

  ‘Well, we’d better go in. Of course I shall have to check on him, too. Let’s get off early.’

  Early starts are not easy to achieve in Ireland. Breakfast next morning, promised for nine sharp, appeared at twenty-past; Pat and his side-car, carefully settled for nine-thirty, appeared at ten minutes to ten. The Czechs had managed better; they were finishing their toast and coffee by the time the breakfast ordered by Julia appeared.

  ‘You make an expedition?’ the little woman asked.

  ‘Yes—to see the fulmars.’

  ‘Ah—we also.’

  In all respects the Czechs managed things more cleverly than Julia and Jamieson. The shortest and quickest way to reaching the top of the cliffs at the northern end of Clare Island is to follow a track on the east side to the Lighthouse, whence a shorter, though steep climb takes one up to the long summit. But Pat took the way they had followed the previous day, along the western coast—he was dying to show them the Tower, let alone the Abbey. Julia, having learned from Old Charlie that the second installation was in fact on the western slope of the cliffs, agreed to that route, though she refused firmly to get out and look at the Tower.

  ‘It was built as a look-out post for the Excise-men, so that they could spot the smugglers’ boats coming in to the south end of Achill Sound,’ she said, in reply to a question of Jamieson’s. ‘All the wealthy Irish families used to employ their private smugglers to bring in brandy and tobacco from France—didn’t they, Pat?’

  ‘They did that, Miss Probyn,’ Pat replied, laughing.

  After stabling the mare at Tor Mor they struck inland and uphill to a high shoulder, whence they traversed across a steep grassy face to the cliffs; they pushed through the rusted and rotten strands of the decayed wire fence, and looked over the edge. The cliffs were broken both vertically and horizontally: vertically by deep clefts cutting into the land, horizontally by ledges anything from four to ten feet wide, covered with the rich grass which tempted Mr. Ruddy’s sheep to their death. Here the fulmars were very much in evidence, skimming in and out, to and fro, across the wide chasms; some were clearly to be seen sitting on their nests. From the point of view of birds it was an impressive place. Gulls wailed; choughs, with their coral-pink feet, tumbled down through the air like black rags with a stone tied in them—a favourite play of the species; cormorants sat in upright groups, like politicians, on rocks in the sea.

  Jamieson was careful to get out his binoculars and make some remarks to Pat about the fulmars; then he muttered to Julia in French—‘Ask him where the doings are.’

  ‘Pat, where’s that wireless thing the French crabbers have put in up here?’ Julia enquired. ‘Mr. Ruddy told us about it.’

  ‘Ah, ’tis a bit higher up.’ Pat led them another hundred feet or more up to a point where a bluff projected further than usual from the main face of the cliffs.

  ‘There ye are,’ he said. ‘What that glass bowl is for I can’t know, but here’s where the wireless mast comes out’—he placed his heavy country boot against the all-too-familiar metal socket.

  ‘Oh, I wish I could see it!’ Julia exclaimed. ‘Old Charlie said it was blue and white—so odd.’

  ‘Aye, ’tis. But ye never know when ‘twill appear.’

  ‘I’d like to check on these,’ Jamieson muttered, this time in German. ‘Can you deflect the chum’s attention?’

  Julia asked Pat to come with her to the lip of the cliff and hold her hand while she looked over—‘I get giddy sometimes.’ Most men, if invited to hold Julia’s hand, readily did so, and Pat was no exception; while he held her long white hand tightly in his rough brown one, she peered cautiously over the sheer rocky edge.

  ‘Oh Pat, there is a sheep down there!’ she exclaimed. ‘See— to the left.’

  ‘There is all right.’ The Irishman let go of her hand, and to Julia’s dismay scrambled down the cliff and proceeded to chase the foolish sheep along a horribly narrow ledge, till he and the dotty creature disappeared round the curve of the bluff. Julia stepped a pace or two away from the vertiginous edge, and looked up at Jamieson. He had been examining the instrument case and the batteries; as she watched he began to stamp the turfs which concealed these back into position. But who were those two figures, bearing down on them from the highest point? One was a man, the other a woman, both so short and thickset that they could only be the Czechs—and from the slope above they must have seen everything. She forced herself to walk very slowly up to her companion.

  ‘Here come the Commies,’ she said. ‘Don’t look—but they’ll certainly have seen all.’

  ‘Damn! How the devil did they get there?’ As he spoke Jamieon lit a cigarette, with elaborate casualness, before he glanced up the slope.

  ‘Round by the Lighthouse, and over the top.’

  ‘What a curse!’ He walked slowly over to the edge of the cliff and began to focus his binoculars on the sea-birds.

  ‘They must have seen what you were doing,’ Julia repeated. ‘Never mind—leave this to me.’

  In a few moments the small couple came up to them—the man’s face was quite flushed; he spoke irritably.

  ‘So you do not only watch fulmars, Colonel Jamieson—you examine other things.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Jamieson’s voice and manner were equally cool.

  �
��I saw you inspecting this installation!’

  ‘Oh yes. How enterprising of the French fishermen to put in a radio here, to report their catches.’

  The little Czech was caught completely off balance by this unexpected remark. The islanders would never have dreamt of mentioning their peculiar theories to these rather unacceptable aliens.

  ‘The French fishermen, you say?’ the little man asked.

  ‘Yes, of course—the crab-catchers; they radio to Le Havre or somewhere, so that the refrigerator-boat can come across and take their catch back.’

  The Czech burst out laughing—the relief in his expression was evident. At that moment Pat, driving the strayed sheep before him, appeared over the edge of the cliff above them.

  ‘Oh, you got her!’ Julia exclaimed. ‘Good! Is she one of Charlie’s?’

  ‘Aye. The old fella will be pleased all right.’

  The Central Europeans stared bewildered at this interchange.

  ‘Pat, come and tell this foreign gentleman about the French crabbers’ radio,’ Julia said. ‘All this time he’s been on the Island’ and he never seems to have heard of it.’

  Pat explained. ‘Mind you, we’re not all that keen on the Frenchmen coming to catch our crabs and lobsters,’ he ended— ‘but that’s the way they work it. I bet that machinery costs a bit!’

  They all perforce walked down together to Tor Mor, Pat driving the sheep in front of him. Old Charlie appeared at his door, and rather than feel obliged to give the Czechs a lift Julia accepted his offer of a cup of tea; she, Jamieson, and Pat went in and sat in the kitchen, while the Central Europeans stumped off along their homeward road.

  ‘They’re a kind of person we don’t understand,’ old Charlie said, when his daughter rebuked him for having failed in hospitality. ‘They’re in it a long time, but no one knows what they’re after, and I can’t understand their speech.’

  ‘All the same, ye did wrong, Father. One should give a welcome to the stranger.’

  ‘Well you’re giving a welcome to us,’ Jamieson said.

  ‘Miss Probyn’s no stranger here,’ Miss Ruddy said firmly.

  ‘And I come in on her apron-strings?’ Jamieson replied, bringing a laugh to the rugged face.

  ‘Ah, get on with ye! I see ye’re one of those gets away with murther, with your clever tongue!’

  ‘Now Bridie,’ her father remonstrated. ‘Keep a watch on your own tongue, as Blessed St. James said.’

  Julia intervened.

  ‘Mr. Ruddy, would you tell us the story of your grandfather and Counsellor O’Malley? I’d like Colonel Jamieson to hear that.’ She wanted to spin out the time, so as not to have to pick up the Czechs on the road.

  The old man was delighted to oblige. When his grandfather was a young unmarried man Sir Samuel O’Malley’s bailiff came to ‘drive his cattle for the rent’—a common proceeding in Ireland in old days, as Julia knew.

  ‘Charlie was reaping in the field with the hook when they went up to drive them, and he hung the hook round his neck and followed after, but he never went next or nigh them. When the bailiff saw my grandfather with the hook he was frightened, and he left the cattle and went to the police and said Charlie had tried to cut off his head with the hook. That night the police came and took Charlie from his bed in his mother’s room, and away to the Castle—’twas the police bark’ (old Charlie meant barrack) ‘then; and they held him there for fourteen days and fourteen nights.’

  Jamieson could not know that it was the custom in the past for unmarried sons to sleep in their parents’ room; the phrase ‘took him from his bed in his mother’s room,’ sounded unpleasantly like the Gestapo.

  ‘What happened then?’ he asked with deep interest.

  ‘They had a trial, but they could bring no proof against him; so they let him out on bail till there would be a second trial. Charlie went to see a man called Counsellor O’Malley, a great man at the law; he lived on the mainland. So when Counsellor O’Malley heard all that he said to my grandfather—“Go back and tell that bailiff, if there’s wool in his coat I’ll have the wool out of it, if he brings another trial.”’ The splendid old man paused, and then repeated, with immense relish—‘“If there’s wool in his coat, I’ll have it out of it,” —that’s what Counsellor O’Malley said.’

  ‘And was there a second trial?’ Jamieson asked.

  ‘No, the bailiff let it be. Liameen (Small Billy) they called him. Eh, he was a proper little tyrant!’

  Jamieson was fascinated by this story. He realised that what he was hearing was folk-lore in the making, recounted by someone in whom the oral tradition was still strong, uncontaminated by press or radio; Counsellor O’Malley’s very words (like those of the curse which drove away the grouse) were being repeated to him verbatim, halfway through the twentieth century—and in the shadow, almost, of two satellite-tracking stations. It was delightful; somehow it was comforting—Europe’s beautiful, civilised past of traditions here still alive, still growing. He disliked the two little Czechs more than ever.

  If it had been possible he would have liked to get back to the mainland that night, and post his report, but except on a Holy Day, nothing short of an earthquake would have persuaded Martin O’Malley to take the mail-boat across to Roonagh after the normal hours. The tempo of life in the West of Ireland is as relaxing as the climate, and as restful. After the midday meal the Colonel and Julia strolled out together and discussed their plans, as usual, on the bales of wool on the quay.

  ‘All right, we’ll leave tomorrow,’ Julia said at length. ‘Shall I tell Mrs. O’Malley you’re feeling ill?’

  ‘Can’t you be feeling ill?’

  ‘No, they all know I’m never ill. You can have a grumbling appendix. You go and write your report, and I’ll get Mrs. O’M. to telegraph to Rostrunk and the Oldport Hotel to say we’re coming back. Oh dear!—it is so nice here.’ Clare Island had been in a way an escape; she dreaded facing even beloved Helen again, with this known wretchedness between them.

  Colonel Jamieson was accustomed to using his portable typewriter in every sort of inconvenient situation—in his minute bedroom in the O’Malley Hotel he placed the machine on the bed on his despatch-case, and typed away at this improvised desk. His window, wedged open by John Thomas the previous evening, gave directly onto the quay beside the harbour, but he was wholly concentrated on his task, and when a sharp cry came in through the little opening he paid no attention to it. The cry was repeated, and now with words he heard: ‘Help! Philip, help!’

  This time he ran to the window. The jetty had deep water on the harbour side, but on the other a mixture of sand and rocks, only covered with shallow water at half-tide; it was half-tide now, but the curve of the jetty, and the pile of bales, prevented him from seeing the outer side to its farther end. What he did see was the two Czechs, in a dinghy, rowing quietly across the harbour towards the Castle. He called out sharply—‘Julia! Where are you?’

  ‘Down by the quay. Please come.’

  ‘Coming!’ Jamieson shouted back. He tore the sheet he was at work on out of his typewriter, and locked it and the previous ones in his despatch-case before he left the room. As he raced down the little staircase he almost collided with Mrs. O’Malley.

  ‘What happened Miss Probyn? I thought I heard her call out,’ the landlady said anxiously.

  ‘I’m going to see.’

  ‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, let her not be hurt!’ Mrs. O’Malley said.

  Jamieson hastened along the quay. He could see that Julia was not in the water on the harbour side of the jetty, nor was she visible on the outer side, before the pile of bales cut off his view—when he reached these he called again. ‘Julia! Where are you?’

  ‘Beyond the wool.’ Her voice came rather faintly to him. He hurried past the obstruction—there, half in and half out of the shallow water, he saw her lying on a shelf of rocks. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I think I’ve broken my leg. Can you get a boat round? There
aren’t any steps this side.’

  It was in fact a most awkward place in which to break a leg. The jetty was almost twenty feet high, and the water outside it so shallow as to make it difficult to bring a boat at all near to where the girl was lying.

  ‘What happened?’ Jamieson asked anxiously.

  ‘Let’s say that I slipped,’ Julia replied, with her calm grin. Seeing her so smiling up at him, injured and soaking, and yet giving a careful eye to the cover-story, made the man’s heart turn over; he realised that something different must have happened—Julia was not the sort of person to fall off the quay on her own account.

  ‘Right, I’ll get a boat round as fast as I can,’ he said. ‘Have you got any gaspers?

  ‘Yes, but they’re soaking.’

  ‘Well, try to catch these. Ready?’ As she held up her cupped hands he took careful aim and pitched a packet of Players down—to his immense relief she caught them. ‘Matches?’ he asked.

  ‘I think my lighter’s still dry—wait a second.’ She tried it out; it worked, and she lit a cigarette, and stuffed the packet down the front of her jersey. ‘That’s lovely,’ Julia said, inhaling thankfully. ‘Remember I slipped,’ she added.

  Jamieson hastened back to the hotel. It was not so easy to get a man and a boat on Clare Island in the late afternoon; the men were either fishing, or working on their holdings. But Mrs. O’Malley, hearing that Miss Probyn had slipped off the quay and hurt herself, routed her husband out of his regular publican’s afternoon nap and made him row Jamieson down the harbour and round outside the jetty to collect the casualty.

  ‘That’s as near in as I can get—ye can walk it from here,’ Mr. O’Malley said, back-watering with his oars. ‘But don’t be wasting any time—the tide is rising.’

  Jamieson slipped expertly over the stern of the boat and waded across to where Julia was half-lying, close to a bale of wool—now a little deeper in the water than before.

  ‘Tell me if I hurt you, but I’ve just got to carry you to the boat,’ he said—as he spoke he stooped, picked her up, and slung her over his shoulder. Julia was tall and fully built, for all her beautiful legs; it was as much as the Colonel could do to carry her ten-and-a-half stone, or thereabouts, out to Mr. O’Malley’s dinghy, wading through eighteen inches of water, over an uneven surface.