Betrayal Read Free Page B

this.
    The maps were being sorted. She signed the declaration papers—two bottles of Bushmills—it was so hard to get whiskey in the North even though the Bushmills distillery was there; and yes, silk stockings hadn’t been seen in Dublin either since before the war.
    Reluctantly Mary paid up the duty. ‘There’s nothing else but the motorcar to settle, Mr. O’Toole. My husband has posted the bond on a more-or-less permanent basis, as you know.’
    One third the cost of the Austin. Each time a person entered the North behind the wheel of a car, the bond was handed over in trust; the same when entering the South. You’d think they might have at least got together on this. You’d think that every car owner who had passed through here had been in the used-car business. You’d think that by now they’d know her well enough, but oh no. Every time it was the same.
    Every time but this.
    Jimmy ran a smoothing hand over one of the county maps. ‘Been down to Kinsale, have you, Mrs. Fraser?’ he asked, suddenly looking up at her with nothing in those dark brown eyes of his but the emptiness of a military man in a time of war.
    â€˜Kinsale?’ he asked, reminding her of it.
    â€˜Of course not,’ she heard herself answering. ‘Hamish and I did want to take a little holiday this past summer, but …’
    Again her shoulders lifted in that shrug of hers. ‘But what?’ he asked.
    He wasn’t going to leave it. ‘But work at the castle didn’t allow for it. That map’s from summer. That’s why the Old Head of Kinsale and Roaring Water Bay have been circled in pencil.’
    She’d remembered it from summer—perhaps. She’d forgotten about the cigarette butts. Allanby thought then that he’d best let her forget about them. Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser was thirty-two. There were amber flecks in the large brown eyes with their touches of green—one noticed them when she was at one of the staff do’s in the common room. One noticed her, one had to, but did lying make the amber come out? She had the blush of windburn about her, the cold of the rain against her cheeks, but was it also from the salt spray of some hidden little cove? She liked the sea, liked it a lot, liked being alone, too, the young wife of a Scottish country doctor—not a good one, not really. One who had messed up his life some place down the line and had been ditched by the first wife because of the drink only to find a niche in which to sit out the war. Bloody old Ireland and all that it entailed.
    â€˜Are you done with me?’ she asked tightly.
    â€˜No, I’m not quite done with you.’ She wasn’t beautiful, but handsome. Yes, that’s the word he wanted, but defiantly proud of what? Her body, her mind, her place in things, or what she’d been up to?
    Something, by God. Something!
    The rain had plastered the hair to her brow and made its thickness cling to the whiteness of a slender neck and the broad collar of her coat. Her chest rose and fell quite easily enough. Calm now, was it? he wondered, even with all the others stealing little glances at her. What the blazes had she been up to?
    â€˜This farmer you gave a lift to. Describe him for me.’
    So he’d decided to press on with it regardless. Yet again then, she would shrug, thought Mary, but this time would pull off her gloves as if they were soiled. ‘About seventy-five, I should think, and speaking Erse in spite of my telling him I couldn’t understand a blessed word. Blue eyes—lots of the Irish have those, don’t they, Jimmy? Wrinkles—he’d have had those too, wouldn’t he, Captain? You see, I wouldn’t really know, now would I, my eyes being on the road?’
    Allanby waited. At some hidden thought her lips curved gently upwards in a faint and hesitant smile, then she said, ‘Sheep. He was into sheep and potatoes, this much I do