Emerald Decision

'Please,' Gilliatt said.

Ashe left like an old man being taken to a hospital ward, disturbed as to what his forthcoming tests might reveal. March was erect, and did not look back as he vacated the high-ceilinged room, its tall windows spilling light across the carpet and over Walsingham's head and shoulders, so that he squinted. A mock seafaring look, Gilliatt observed.

Walsingham wandered over to the fireplace, and seemed to study the dwarfed gas fire that squatted in it. He leaned on the high, cream-painted mantelpiece almost in a deliberate pose of abstraction. Then he turned to Gilliatt.

'I believe you,' he said simply.

'Is it a question of belief?'

'It might be. No one here wants to believe it, of that you may be certain. To their Lordships, it would be the last straw. Tell me — how do you think the Germans would have swept the minefield?'

Gilliatt studied Walsingham across the room. There was something almost obsessive about him, a barely- restrained energy. Obscurely, Gilliatt didn't like him, aware at the same time that he might only be disliking a former self.

'Submarine, on the surface, probably.'

'Yes, I have other opinions that would confirm that. How would they land troops, then?'

'Ship?' Gilliatt realized he was being led to ponder the darkest unpleasantries; invited to contemplate disaster by the bland voice. 'No — submarine again. Their biggest U-boats could transport eighty to a hundred men — each.'

'How many troops could they land in one night?' Walsingham was almost crouching towards him by the fireplace, demanding an answer that confirmed his worst suspicions.

Gilliatt considered. 'Close to two thousand if they had the subs — and the weather.'

'And what about the present weather, Lieutenant Gilliatt?'

After a long silence, Gilliatt, appalled, said, 'I would — would consider the weather good enough, at present.'

'Exactly!' Walsingham's glance at the ceiling was almost theatrical, his face slightly flushed, his body alert with nerves. 'Exactly!' He studied Gilliatt for a moment, then nodded. 'Lieutenant Gilliatt, I am familiar with your record, and you can be of use to me. You'll consider yourself re-assigned, pending confirmation.'

Before Gilliatt could protest, Walsingham had gone, leaving Gilliatt to wander to the window and look morosely down at Horse Guards Parade and St James's Park. Walsingham's enthusiasm confirmed more dire prognostications than Ashe and March put together. He did not wish to become involved any closer with the fate of his country.

* * *

McBride bundled the IRA youth into the back of the Morris and climbed in after him. Drummond took the wheel, started the engine, and screeched off along the cliff-road looking for a junction with the track the German had taken inland.

'Come on, start explaining!' McBride snapped, his hand in the stuff of the youth's sweater, bunching it under his chin. 'Where is our friend heading?'

The youth shook his head. Carroty hair, freckles, pale skin. Scared stiff, but stubborn. He'd taken oaths, belonged—

'Ask him which way — again,' Drummond offered.

'Where are you from?' McBride asked, leaning against the youth. The leather of the bench-seat creaked. Drummond stopped the car, and turned in his seat.

'Which way?' he demanded.

'We are going to find out, you know,' McBride said with a smile, letting go of the sweater, taking out cigarettes. 'We'll all have a quiet smoke, and then we'll have a talk, mm?'

The youth took the cigarette, McBride lit it, the boy coughed, looked defiant, then dragged deeply. Suddenly, he appeared very vulnerable, and aware of the closeness of the car around him, the proximity of the two tall men much older — and wiser and more ruthless, no doubt — than he. He coughed again.

'English cigarettes, eh?' McBride said, his accent slightly broader than before. 'Like everything else, they're not for the Irish, eh, lad?'

'Why are you working for them, McBride?' the lad snapped back, nodding at Drummond. 'We know all about you, McBride—' He flinched as McBride's face hardened.

'Now, that's not the way to get out of here in one piece, lad. What's your name?'

A long hesitation, then: 'Dermot.'

Tearse, O' Connell, Yeats, Gonne, Casement — which is it?' The boy appeared puzzled, then realized he was being mocked. 'You've joined then, have you?' The boy nodded. 'So, Dermot, you've got a bloody great gun, and you're told to go and blow my head off — and you nearly did, mm? But it isn't quite the same as shooting pheasants or crows, is it?' The boy disliked the turn of the conversation. 'How old are you, Dermot?'

'Twenty—'

'Grow a moustache, Dermot. If you're over eighteen, I'm a Black-and-Tan. And just say I am and I'll push all your teeth down your throat, Dermot.'

The humour and the threats disturbed Dermot. Drummond turned away on cue, just as the boy began to look to him as a silent, and therefore rational, being.

'Piss off, you—' The flinch was just below the surface, the shudder one layer of skin too deep to show. But McBride knew Dermot was hanging onto his new identity in the IRA. The German probably meant nothing to him at that moment.

'That's a brave lad. They'll give you a martyr's funeral, no doubt of it. I'll tell them you were spitting defiance up to the last.' He paused, smiling, then: 'You little cunt, you tried to kill me! You're going to pay for that—' He opened the door, and pulled the boy bodily across the back seat and out of the car after him. Without hesitation, he dragged him to the cliff-edge, then held him at arms' length, teetering on the edge, body inclined so that if McBride released him he would be unable to regain his balance, would fall. 'You've tried to kill your last Irishman, Dermot — your last anything!' The wind plucked at Dermot's grey mackintosh, at his red hair, His face was shining with a ghostly paleness. His eyes kept moving from the beach below to McBride's pitiless face. 'You think it's like the Boy Scouts, do you, Dermot? It isn't lad, it isn't. You've joined the scum, the bombers and the assassins — the comedians of destruction! You're going over, Dermot. I'm going to save your soul, Dermot. Save you from yourself! There's time, Dermot — start saying your confession. Absolution follows!' He bellowed with laughter. Dermot screamed. McBride loosened his grip on the boy's arm, then jerked him backwards. Dermot collapsed on the grass in a faint. Vomit leaked thinly from the corner of his mouth. McBride turned him over so that he would not choke on it.

When Dermot regained consciousness, he found himself back in the car, a tartan rug wrapped round him.

Drummond pressed a flask of rum to his lips. He coughed as he swallowed, but the drink seemed to revive memories, and his eyes darted in his head. He was obviously looking for McBride.

'I've sent him for a walk, to calm down. But, you did try to kill us, Dermot. It did make him angry.'

'He's mad,' Dermot mumbled, swigging again at the rum. 'McBride is as mad as a hatter, mister!'

'Tell me — why you, Dermot?'

A long silence in which Drummond could almost hear the fragile raft of Dermot's recent oaths strain and break against the rocks of immediate experience.

Dermot told Drummond everything — which wasn't much. He'd been available, had a gun — once his father's, his grandfather's originally — and the German had needed help. He'd been ordered to give it. The German hadn't joined up with any other Germans, as far as he knew. Yes, the Skibbereen Battalion was giving help to the Germans — how many? Three or four since Dermot joined. Yes, they were still about—

Eventually, the little cargo of information had diminished to nothing. Drummond was certain of it. He said, 'Right-ho, Dermot, on your way.' The boy was nonplussed and did not move. Drummond opened the rear door for him, waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. 'Go, and sin no more,' he added, then: 'Dermot, you're free to go — go and tell them you got away from us, you told us nothing, what the devil you like — but