Run Before the Wind (9 page)

"It's the cocktail hour, you know."

"I'm cooking dinner in this cottage tonight," Annie replied firmly, "And I'm not cooking until everything is in its place."

We fell to work and, in an hour and a half, under Annie's close supervision, we had transformed the cottage into something resembling a home. There was a good-sized living room with a dining table at one end and a large fireplace at the other, two bedrooms, one large and one small, a kitchen, and a newly constructed bathroom. Annie had a talent for nest building I remembered, now, that Toscana had the same look about her, one of lived-in comfort.

What had been a bare collection of rooms was now cozy and inviting. By the time another two hours had passed, we had all showered and had a good dinner and some wine and were scattered before a cheerful fire. Shortly after that they shook me awake and sent me to my bed. Before sleep overtook me, I had a moment to reflect on where I was and what I was doing. My father's comment to my mother came back to me, about the model airplanes I had never finished. When reciting my list of manual skills to Mark, full knowing why he was asking me, I had neglected to tell him that I had never finished my shop projects in school, either, or the building of the small house on the farm. There was something in me that, once I learned about something, made me lose interest. I had no staying power, and I knew it. I resolved, with as much resolve as I could muster in my sleepy state, that I would finish this one; that I would make up for my lack of candor with an enthusiasm I would find somewhere. Somewhere.

Next morning, after a huge breakfast that included my favorite Irish foods, smoked bacon and soda bread, Annie set about doing still more to the cottage, while Mark and I paid a visit to Cork Harbour Boatyard.

We borrowed Lord Coolmore's Land Rover and motored down a bewildering series of country lanes until we came upon a creek running up from Cork Harbour. As we turned and drove up its banks the water receded until there was nothing but steep banks and a bottom left dry by the receding tide. Shortly, a very large tin shed appeared. There was a rudely shingled addition attached to one side and an old, stone quay running along the dried-out creek bed A little railway ran from the creek's edge into the large shed. Half a dozen yachts and boats, in varying stages of disrepair, perched on cradles scattered about the yard. We parked the Land Rover and entered the shed through a small, hinged door cut into a huge, hangar-type sliding door.

The scents of wood shavings and some sort of glue struck me, and a hammering from a nearly finished fishing boat that nearly filled the shed was temporarily deafening. A short, dumpy man detached himself from the crew of half a dozen working on the boat and shambled toward us.

"Captain Robinson," he said, sticking out the hand not holding a hammer.

"Been looking for you to turn up."

Mark took the hand.

"Good to see you, Pinbar." He turned to me.

"This is Willie Lee, who'll be working with us. Willie, this is Finbar O'Leary, the best boat builder in Britain and Ireland."

Finbar O'Leary blushed and seemed astonished at the same time.

I would learn that he had an astonished expression fixed upon his face at all times, in all moods.

"Mr. Lee," he said, "glad to have you aboard. I understand you're handy. We can use the help if we're to give Captain Robinson the boat he wants." He turned back to Mark.

"Got some news for you. The little yacht we were to build after this one.. .." he nodded over his shoulder at the fishing boat, "has been canceled. The owner opted for something in plastic." There was a touch of scorn in his voice at the mention of a glass-fiber boat.

"That means you're next; we should be laying your keel in ten days or so."

Mark's face spread in a huge smile.

"That's news indeed, Finbar. Will we have materials by then?"

"I came upon a nice load of good Honduras mahogany last week and took the liberty of placing an order. We won't be needing the teak decking for a while, and I've already the oak. I'll put a man to ripping the mahogany as soon as I can free one from this job.

We'll make a start on, let's see .. ." He screwed up his face in figuring and managed to look even more astonished.

"The first of September; how's that for you?"

Mark clapped him on the back, rocking the smaller man.

"That couldn't be better." Mark produced a notebook and they began to compile a list of other materials for the new yacht. I walked a few steps toward the incomplete fishing boat to have a closer look and then stopped in my tracks. A man who had been painting the hull had stopped and was staring at me. We stood for several seconds like that, then with no other sign of recognition, he turned his back and began to paint again. I glanced up to the deck high above the shed's floor and saw an identical man looking at me. He nodded amiably and turned back to his work. Connie Lydon may have told me that the O'Donnell twins, Denny and Donal, were boat builders but, if so, I had forgotten. I felt unaccountably disturbed to see them, like a boy who had unexpectedly come upon the schoolyard bully away from the schoolyard. This time it had been easy to distinguish Denny from his brother, merely by the hostility of his gaze. I rejoined Mark and Finbar.

We went into Finbar's office--the addition to the shed. The plans for Mark's yacht were pinned to a wall, and the two men went over them carefully. They agreed on a list of materials to order and Mark gave the boat builder a check to cover the initial order and open an account. We made our goodbyes, and as we turned to leave, I found Denny O'Donnell staring at me again.

"Something between you and that fellow?" Mark asked as we made our way back to the Land Rover.

"Not really," I said.

"He had an interest in a girl I used to go out with here."

"You afraid of him?"

I felt my ears go red.

"We've never even spoken."

He started the vehicle.

"I remember that about the Irish in Belfast, that staring, on the streets when we were patrolling. A fellow looked at you like that, and you knew he was what you were patrolling for, although most times you had no hard evidence to know it." He cocked his head to one side and looked at me again, sharply.

"You afraid of him, Willie?"

"He .. . makes me uncomfortable," I said.

"I don't know why."

"Well, I've never seen him before today, Willie, but I can tell you this about him: let him know that, and he'll make your life miserable, and he'll enjoy doing it. You know what I'd do in your position?"

"What?"

"I'd pick the right moment, when he was crowding me just a bit, and I'd hit him--hard."

I shrank from even the idea.

"That doesn't solve anything."

"Don't you believe it, mate," he snorted.

"Don't you believe it. Sooner or later you're going to have to fight him, you mark my words, and the sooner the better."

SHE SAT QUIETLY and watched the twins.

"He's the one, I know he is," Denny said, slapping his hand on the tabletop.

"Ah, come on, Denny," his brother said, "you don't know anything for sure. It's been a couple of years."

"I remember. I remember the name. I think I remember his picture in the paper, in a Dublin paper."

"So what if he is the one?" Donal asked, reasonably.

"What are you proposing to do about it?"

"I'd be for doing him, that's what."

"Oh, come on, mate," Donal said, forcing a chuckle.

"We're not set up for that. We've not the authorization. You couldn't do that without the authorization. You'd be in it from all sides then."

She smiled to herself. They remained forever in character, these two, the hothead and the peacemaker. Donal was too smart to seem to be backing away from a fight; he'd invoked procedure instead.

She liked that.

"Just a minute," she said. It was the first time she'd spoken.

"You've both a point. If he's the same one, something would need to be done; we couldn't just let it pass."

"Bloody right, we couldn't," Denny growled.

"But we don't know, do we?" she continued, ignoring him.

"We need to know for sure."

"If he is the one," Donal put in, "then do you think we might get the authority?"

"I think we might," she said.

"But before we even ask, we have to know for sure."

"So how do we find out?" Denny asked.

"Go to Dublin and paw through a great bloody lot of old newspapers?"

She shook her head.

"Leave it to me," she said, quietly, gazing out the window across Kinsale Harbour.

"I'll find out."

THE NEXT DAYS we lived as if preparing for a voyage, for that was what the building of the yacht seemed to us, busying ourselves doing things we would have no more time for once the yacht's keel was laid. Annie bought paint and wallpaper and set to decorating the cottage. I started--and finished--a large bookcase for the living room and a desk for the small bedroom, which Mark would use as an office when I was not sleeping there. Mark was buried in lists of materials and equipment and paid little attention to us, except at the end of the day, when, surprised, he would come upon our handiwork and offer compliments. We had done a good job, Annie and I, and we were proud of ourselves.

Annie seemed grateful for my company when Mark was so immersed in plans for the yacht. His concentration was such that all else was shut out, including her, and it was not hard to tell she didn't like it much. He ignored even the most cutting remarks from her and ploughed on with his work. She complained wordlessly to me with shrugs and scowls, and, happy for her attention, I lapped it up.

We scoured the classified pages of the Cork Examiner for transportation.

Mark found a serviceable Pord van, and I, after much searching, came upon a very neat Mini Cooper, a souped-up version of Britain's smallest four-passenger car. It sat right down on the ground and went around corners at a great rate of knots; it was perfect for the Irish back roads, and I loved driving it fast.

We were asked to the castle for dinner by Lord and Lady Coolmore, who insisted on being called Peter-Patrick and Joan. I had expected the place to be run down, as many large, Irish country houses are, but it was kept in perfect condition by a full-time carpenter painter and a domestic staff of three. We dined on fresh salmon and drank good wines. The Coolmores were comfortable with young people and had a knack for putting them at their ease, but I found myself grateful for my mother's strict adherence to table manners in my upbringing. She, having grown up among people like the Coolmores, had kept a more formal house than those of my contemporaries, so I was at home with good crystal and more than one fork.

Joan Coolmore and Annie disappeared after dinner and left Lord Coolmore, Mark and me to coffee and brandy. I declined the cigars, which Mark, to my surprise, accepted with relish. I had never seen him smoke, but I think the clubbiness of Peter-Patrick Coolmorc's study overcame him. The conversation turned to Mark's military career, and Mark discussed it easily, as he had with me and had not with Annie. Perhaps, I thought, now that he had the yacht as a new career, he found it less painful to talk about his lost one.

"Mark," Coolmore said in his lazy, upper-class drawl, then tilted his head back to the leather and blew smoke rings at the frescoed ceiling.

"Mark, I'm most interested to know about your experiences in the Royal Marines, but if I were you I should be a bit circumspect in discussing it hereabouts." I looked up in mild surprise. When someone like Coolmore said one should "... be a bit circumspect ..." about discussing something it meant that one should keep one's bloody mouth shut about it.

Mark sipped his brandy idly.

"You think my service might be a problem in Cork?"

"Well," Coolmore sighed, "we're a long way from Belfast, it's true, and most people here are against the violence there, but there is an element .. ." He trailed off.

"You mean the IRA is active in County Cork?" I plunged in, ignoring the subtleties.

"Oh, no, no, nothing like that," he came back quickly.

"It's just that there are those with .. ." he struggled for the word, "... sympathies," he said, finally.

"During the troubles of the twenties feeling ran very strong indeed; people were burned out, that sort of thing." He blew another perfect smoke ring.

"Still, there are .. romantics about."

"How did your family fare in the revolution?" I asked.

He shot me a glance.

"My family are Irish," he said.

"We came to Cork more than four hundred years ago, before Cromwell went to Ulster. We bought our land, paid for it, every acre. Then, during the famine my great-great grandfather sold off much of it to feed his tenants. During the troubles my father ran in guns in his yacht, like Erskine Childers. Fortunately, unlike Childers, he managed not to get shot."

I knew from our dinner-table conversation that Coolmore was Harrow and Cambridge and the RAP in the Battle of Britain. I had not yet begun to fathom the relationship between the British and the Irish, nor the complex position in the society of people like Coolmore and my grandfather, whose accent and manners and wartime loyalties placed them with the English aristocracy, but who considered themselves Irish. Coolmore changed the subject. Later, I would realize what he had been trying, in his offhand way, to tell us, and I would wonder why he tried.