She clenched her teeth, sniffed loudly once, then began to clear the tea things. If she ever apportioned blame — rather than standing beside her marriage staring dumbly at it as if into a new, unnerving bomb-crater — then she blamed Michael and not herself. She had remained still, it was he who had travelled in another, and unexpected, direction.
His parents" former cottage in the hamlet of Leap had crumbled by the side of the road. Nettles thrust through the remains of floorboards, infested empty windows, filled the open doorway, while heavy trees leaned towards the decaying, and partly missing, roof. It was impossible to enter the house without difficulty, and pointless to try. Nothing remained. Tinkers had used it as a staging-post for a while, but periodic storms and its habitual emptiness had made it uninhabitable. McBride was sorry he had suggested that Claire Drummond show him the place. There was nothing of his father there, except a sense that he might never have lived there, lived at all.
Their first awkward embrace in the front seat of the small MG — hood down on a day of fine, cool sunshine — had, however, more than compensated for the empty cottage that had lost its power to evoke even qualified melancholy. Claire Drummond had responded to his kiss lightly, but without reluctance, even perhaps with promise. McBride was enlivened, sensed himself at the beginning of something. Claire was desirable, and pliable in spite of her self-assurance.
After she had driven up into the hills behind Leap, they sat in the car looking down over the Skibbereen-Clonakilty road winding below them and towards Glandore Harbour, its sound dotted with the low humps of tiny islets. They shared cold chicken and a bottle of Moselle from the hamper she had packed, and McBride began to luxuriate in her proximity, the small airy space that enclosed them, and in the prospect of an affair with the woman. There were only the briefest moments where a sense of his lack of direction, his Pavlovian response to outside and immediate stimuli, disturbed his equanimity; they occurred only in the silences between their words.
"What will you do now?" she asked him, finishing her wine and smoking a cigarette. "What's the next step?"
It was as if she had awoken him to a less than perfect state of affairs.
"Go back to London, I suppose. Begin working on Admiralty records, and try to dig up some harder facts concerning Emerald Necklace. That guy Walsingham, if I can get to him—"
She was surprised at his diffidence. "You're still interested in it, then?"
He looked at her carefully. She seemed to be appraising him.
"I suppose I am. Look, it's like a light I can see in the distance, mm?" She nodded, prepared to follow the analogy. "It gets brighter and then it fades, and I seem to get closer then seem to be further away?" Again she nodded. "Well, I guess that's this book of mine. I can see it on the best-seller lists, I can feel the money— yet I wonder whether there's anything real out there, you know?"
"Do you want to write the book?"
"Maybe I should never have gotten out my doctoral thesis — should have started fresh on something else."
"But this is leading you to this Emerald Necklace thing, isn't it? That's new."
"You sound like my agent—" He grinned. "Sorry. Your interest is appreciated." He sighed, leaned back in his seat and stared at the clouds moving above him. "Yes — yes, your interest is appreciated. And maybe my interest ought to get off its butt and do some sniffing around!"
Claire Drummond seemed relieved, pleased. "Perhaps it should. For your sake."
"I guess my father — distracted me?" He nodded, agreeing his supposition. "Mm. Gilliatt and the old man may have been involved, but they're both as dead as that cottage down there—" He nodded in the direction of Leap. "I never knew him, and maybe I have to get used to never knowing him." He grinned disarmingly. "I have a big book to write. London calls—" He let a theatrical regret enter his features. Claire Drummond smiled.
"I'll come with you," she announced.
McBride and Drummond had explored the coastline between the western shore of Glandore Harbour down to Toe Head. The search had taken most of the day, especially because they had to wind north then south again around the inlet of Castle Haven. They were looking for some sign of the landing of a German agent, to give them a more precise area of search when they moved inland. Drummond had received a report of a landing the previous night which was no more than a sighting of lights on a stretch of beach between Horse Island and Scullane Point — and lights four miles further up the coast. Either or both of them could have been a little smuggling, even an IRA attempt to land guns and explosives, but Drummond could not afford to ignore any such report.
Drummond watched McBride from behind the wheel of his car as the Irishman walked along the beach below him towards Scullane Point. The tide was out and he would be able to round the headland to Toe Head Bay without leaving the beach. When he had done so, they would call it a day, and go back to the unrewarding task of pub-watching and shop-to-shop enquiries for strangers, for increased orders of food and supplies.
Drummond jogged in his seat with the slow, careful movement of the car along the narrow cliff-top track, his patience almost as exhausted as his physique. He was cold, and uncomfortable, and frustrated. He could scent, with certainty, a German preparation for something hitherto outside his range of experience and expertise. Yet still McBride had found nothing.
McBride was waving, yelling — was McBride waving? He tugged on the handbrake, leaned out of the window. They were past the few straggling cottages on the cliffs, almost at the point. Yes, McBride was waving—
Drummond got out of the car, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled down at McBride. The wind from the sea seemed to throw his words about like gulls, but McBride was nodding furiously, beckoning him down. He'd found something.
Drummond began running back along the cliff until he reached the nearest path down to the beach. He scrambled down it, his shoes scuffing, almost slipping on the loose gravel and rock. The cliffs were low, but he was out of breath and almost dizzy by the time he reached the soft sand. McBride was waiting for him right under the cliffs overhang, sitting on a large rock smoking a cigarette. He seemed, after his frantic semaphore, relaxed and unconcerned. Drummond approached him as if he suspected a joke, and he its object.
"Well?"
McBride gestured over his shoulder. "Behind me there, weighted down in a rock-pool. One very obviously German raft." McBride was studying Drummond as if he expected an immediate explanation. Drummond scrambled over the rocks. Just as McBride had described it, a grey inflatable raft — now deflated — lay at the bottom of the shallow pool, weighted down almost carelessly with a few heavy rocks so that it would not drift back out to sea with the next high tide. It seemed undamaged. Drummond scrambled back to McBride, and sat down, lighting his own Player's cigarette.
"Well?" he said again.
"You know, I'm thinking that we were meant to find that thing there."
"What?"
"It's never been so easy before. As if they wanted to tip us off they're here. Now, why would they want to do that? If we hadn't found it, someone who would have told us about it or might have done — we'd have come here anyway." McBride looked about him almost with a sense of threat. He continued in a murmur, clarifying something for himself. "There's a man in Castletownshend would help them, and there are more than a few in Skibbereen. He might have been met here — now, why didn't they take the raft if they met him?"
"It's really worrying you, isn't it?" Drummond's features were sharpened by cold rather than concentration.
"It is. They're landing more agents than before, and taking less care — at least on this occasion. Downright sloppy, if you ask me."