from a great curl of water off her bow, as she drove her way westward.
Now he could see the light on Strumble Head. Four short flashes, then a seven-second gap, and four more.
The commander walked back inside, feeling, curiously less tense than he had all day. The feeling of the open sea, where he was used to being the acknowledged master, had a calming effect. It was, he understood, home. The only home he had ever had. And, possibly, the only home he ever would have.
He sank back into the armchair and closed his eyes. Sleep engulfed him immediately and when he next awakened it was a little after 0530. Along the wide companionway at the end of his lounge was a big right-angled ship’s bar that served alcohol, soft drinks, coffee, and biscuits. A few passengers were scattered, mostly sleeping, at various tables. No one was speaking.
Ben strolled along and sat at one of the high barstools, and ordered black coffee and a small package of shortbread, which had a Scottish tartan emblem on the wrapper. He remembered them from Faslane, and he munched them slowly, thinking again of his days training with the young British submarine officers at Commanding Officers’ Qualifying, all of them under the all-seeing but fair eye of the young Commander MacLean, the Teacher. He smiled despite himself, despite everything.
Five more minutes went by before his daydreams were interrupted. An unshaven young man, no more than nineteen, dressed in a cheap, black-leather jacket, jeans, and running shoes, came and sat one stool away and ordered a pint of Guinness. Except that he just said, “stout,” pronouncing it “stoht,” but the barmen knew what he meant, and, slowly allowing the creamy head to settle, placed the glass of jet-black Irish nectar before the young man.
“Good lock,” he said, then, turning to Ben, added, “Will you have a jar?”
It was not until that moment that Ben realized the young man was extremely drunk, and would be a bit lucky to make it to the car deck, never mind the road out of Rosslare. “No, I won’t thank you,” he said. “It’s a bit early for me.”
“Early? Jaysus, I t’ought it was a bit late.”
Ben smiled. The Irishman was a handsome kid, with black hair and a narrow, serious face. He smoked deeply, taking inward breaths that pulled the tobacco fumes deep into his lungs. Ben judged him to be a man with a lot on his mind, despite his youth.
“Now what might you be doing on this terrible bloody ship at this time of the night?” he asked with that disarming frankness of the Irish.
“I missed the earlier ferry, and had to hang around Fishguard,” replied Ben. “How about yourself?”
“I’ve been attending to a bit of business. Late finish. Had to get down from London on the train. Takes for bloody ever. You change at Swansea.”
“Should have got a plane,” said Ben.
“Not worth it. Costs a fortune. And I live in the south. Waterford. When I’m there, like. Someone’ll pick me up at Rosslare.”
Ben had not had a harmless chat like this for literally years. It was against everything he knew. Idle chatter. Loose thoughts. Leaving an impression upon another person. Matters that are forbidden to men who work undercover. He had to stop himself spilling out any salient facts, and he told himself to tell only lies. That way he would be more or less immune to indiscretion.
“What line of country are you in?” asked the Irishman, but before Ben could answer, he leaned over, quite suddenly, thrust out his hand, and added, “Paul, Paul O’Rourke. You don’t live in Ireland, do you?”
Ben shook his hand, and said, “Ben Arnold. I’m from South Africa. Mining’s my trade.”
“Oh, roight. I’m in politics meself.” And he drew deeply on his Guinness.
There was silence between the two for almost a minute, then: “Now then. You, sir, I can see, are a man of the world, so you’ll not mind my mentioning this. But there’s been a lot of trouble in your country over the years… you know, the poor native blacks striving to get some of their lands back from the whites who took it away. What do you think about that? About a people who were savagely dispossessed, and are trying to assert themselves, to get a dacent loife?”
“Well,” said Ben, “we don’t quite look at it like that. You see there were almost no indigenous blacks in South Africa when the whites settled it. They have arrived from the north over the years, trying to get work in a country built from scratch by Europeans, Dutch, and English.”
“Jaysus. I t’ought the buggers had always been there.”
“Paul. You thought wrong. South Africa was always white.”
“Is that why it’s so bloody rich, unlike the rest of Africa?”
“I suppose so. All its industry was built by the whites. My own corporation employs thousands of black workers…but I’m not saying we didn’t make mistakes. We did. We should have provided more opportunity, years ago, to bring the best of the blacks onside, into white society. Apartheid was never right. And it turned out to be very damaging.”
“I read a lot about it in college,” said Paul. “Before I dropped out. I was doing a degree in world politics at UCD. But I missed the part about the blacks being itinerant workers, visitors to the white state.”
“Well, that’s what they were. And that’s how most of ’em got there in the beginning. Streaming over the borders from places like Nyasaland. And, of course, many more immigrants came over from India.”
Again there was silence. Then Ben asked quietly, “And what was it, Paul, that was so pressing in your life, you decided to abandon your university degree?”
“Oh, not much really. I just got caught up in politics.”
“What kind of politics? You thinking of running for office sometime?”
“Perhaps sometime I might. But I got into the more practical end of t’ings.”
Ben sensed that Paul O’Rourke was about to say more than he should. He watched the boy, smoking nervously, gulping great swallows of Guinness, his hand trembling slightly.
“My people are Republicans,” he said. “We’ve always believed in a united Ireland. My dad was an activist, so was his dad, and his.”
“What kind of activists?”
“Well my great-grandda came to Dublin with Michael Collins from Cork in 1916. He died in the fighting at the post office; the English gunned him down. My great-uncle was wounded, but he got away. He was with the group that retreated to Bolands Bakery. I t’ink about it every time I go to Dublin…they never had a chance against the English artillery…but Jaysus, the lads were brave on that day…”
Ben nodded, said nothing. “My whole family is Sinn Fein,” said Paul. “It just means in Gaelic, ‘Ourselves Alone.’ We want Ireland to be one country, with no English here at all…that’s why there’s the IRA…that’s our military wing.”
“I know,” said Ben. “Are you a member?”
Paul was silent. Shook his head, then said, “Let’s just say I’m sympathetic.”
He gulped some more Guinness. “I don’t think you’d understand, Mr. Arnold,” he said. “We’re from different sides of the tracks. You belong to the rich ruling class. I belong to an organization struggling to break free from a cruel and wicked oppressor.”
“You think the English are cruel and wicked?”
“We’ve nothing to thank them for. They raped and pillaged this country for centuries. And by whose right? The right of their bloody guns, that was their only right. But you’ll find that England’s first colony is destined to be her last. And it may be our guns that finally put an end to it.”
“When did you first get interested?”
“I t’ink I must have been about thirteen. There was a little party at my granddad’s house down in Schull on the Cork coast, and some English people were invited back from the pub. I remember they were all singing songs, each person taking turns…and when it came time for the Englishmen to sing, they did ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.’
“At that moment my grandfather went berserk. I was standing right next to him, and he smashed the flat of his hand down on the table, and shouted, ‘I’LL NOT HAVE THAT SONG SUNG IN THIS HOUSE…I’LL NOT HAVE IT! DAMN YOU…DAMN YOU TO HELL!’
“Well, the party broke up right then. Everybody left, but the next day I asked my dad what had upset Grandpa so much. And he told me that song was an English marching song, and the Black and Tans used to sing it.”
