Ryan clenched down on his drifting thoughts as the Assistant Keeper rambled on, repeating the information he had passed to McBride before leaving him alone with the records. Names of old sailors? Would it mean anything to Walsingham, who'd get his report direct from Exton?
As soon as politeness allowed, Ryan left Trinity House and called in his findings. The duty officer assured him that Exton would make sense of a visit to Trinity House. Meanwhile, a requisition for the Trinity House records would be issued. Would Ryan like to hang about and help carry them to the van when it arrived?
Ryan put down the phone before his expletive could be topped, and stepped out of the telephone box into the warm lunchtime sunshine, feeling hungry.
The motor launch came close inshore, off Garrettstown Strand in Courtmacsharry Bay, but against the tide and they had to lower a raft to put McBride and Gilliatt ashore. There was a high wind that streamed water over the sides of the raft like a heavy, driving rain, and the sea was choppy and cantankerous. Two ratings rowed inshore, but McBride and Gilliatt still had to wade to the beach out of waist-deep water because the raft almost overturned and its crew could hardly hold it against the retreating tide. McBride felt his legs go from under him the moment his feet touched the bottom and then, as he spluttered and splashed about with his arms, Gilliatt's hand grip his collar and drag him upright. Gilliatt was laughing. The raft bobbed away from them, sudden moonlight from behind ragged cloud silhouetting it and the slim, graceful shape of the ML beyond it.
"Come on, McBride, you really are no bloody sailor!"
"Tressed man, sir," McBride answered in an adopted brogue, coughing out seawater in the wake of the remark. They hurried through the shallows onto the smooth wet sand. Turning, they could see the raft being hoisted aboard the ML, then the engines moved up from idle and the launch seemed to do no more than ease away from them in silent apology as it turned out to sea, heading back to England.
McBride jogged Gilliatt's arm. "Wistful?"
"What? Oh, sorry."
"Just rather be there than here, eh?"
"Working for Walsingham is what I can't take," Gilliatt replied with unexpected vehemence.
They walked on up the beach towards the dry sand above the tide-line, McBride systematically wringing his sleeves and trouser-legs and jacket as they went.
"My socks are drenched. I'm surprised you feel that strongly about him. Charlie's all right."
Gilliatt halted, and waited until McBride was looking at him. McBride stopped wringing the last moisture from a sleeve, and stilled his chattering teeth with an effort. "Just watch out for him, Michael. Don't let him put your head in too many lions" mouths, that's all."
"God, I'm cold." McBride attempted to avert the too-direct remark.
"Listen to me, Michael. I've met a lot of people like Charles Walsingham—"
"Are you going to lecture me, Uncle?" McBride sat down like a disgruntled child and pulled off his boots, then his socks. He twisted them in his hands and the water streamed onto the sand, darkening it like blood. McBride wondered why the image had invaded his mind. He looked up at Gilliatt standing over him.
"I'm just trying to warn you—"
"You'll give me a lecture on Drummond when you've met him, I suppose?" McBride's temper was completely under control, though he did resent Gilliatt's interference in his affairs.
"I might well do that." Gilliatt obviously thought what he had to impart was important. There was an evident attempt to remain calm and not to antagonize McBride or be antagonized by him. "My old school was full of people like him, wearing their charm like the grass they use to cover lion-traps—"
"I like that," McBride said mischievously.
"He does. Walsingham resents being in the navy at all, and is prepared only to use this war to advance his career in intelligence. You remember that I've worked in intelligence before. I met people like him, every week!"
"All right. I'll watch out for myself." McBride was abstractedly rubbing his feet warm again before putting on his socks. When he finished talking, his teeth went on chattering. "God, I'm cold. What's the time?"
"Ten minutes to two."
"Bloody early! No wonder Drummond isn't here with his little car and his rum ration." He held out his hand and Gilliatt pulled him to his feet. Then he sat down and began to take off his boots. The understanding between them was almost instinctive, one on watch while the other was off-guard, easily surprised. McBride hardly remarked it, except that a sense of Gilliatt's dependability lurked at the back of his mind. McBride scanned the empty beach in another gleam of moonlight, the wind almost visible as a stream of silver. Sand pattered against his trouser-legs and the ungloved hands at his sides. "This will be one of their beaches."
Gilliatt looked up from chafing his feet and calves. "What?"
"They'll land here." He stretched his arms out to encompass the wide stretch of flat beach.
"If they have as much trouble as we did, then everybody's safe. They can be picked up while they're drying their socks." Gilliatt looked up and down the beach. "I agree. Flat and open."
"How many beaches do you reckon?"
"Four or five. What do you think Walsingham wants, after we identify the most likely landing beaches?"
"God knows." McBride was slapping his arms against his sides. "He'll be lucky to persuade Dublin to repel boarders."
"He can't use British troops."
"He might. He would, but will Churchill?"
Gilliatt stood up. "I could do with some of Drummond's rum."
"Drummond's usually early himself. Come on, let's leg it up to the track and meet him. What's the time?"
"Five to."
"I wonder where he is? Flat tyre while we freeze to death!"
They climbed a bank up off the beach onto the narrow track that ran down to the strand from the Kinsale-Clonakilty road. McBride halted and listened, but there was no engine-noise. The wind seemed colder still as it ground and snarled through hedges and bent the few stunted trees.
"How far to your place?"
"We're not going to walk that, Peter my lad. Drummond's house is only a couple of miles from here."
He was certain that Gilliatt was going to reply. He even framed his lips in preparation for a smile in response to any witticism. But he did not hear any words because of the sudden explosion only yards from him. Gilliatt's figure was outlined in orange flame, a heavy black shape nothing more, then it was flung on its back into the ditch alongside the track and he, too, was lifted, clouted around the body by the pressure-wave from the grenade, and deposited in a muddy pool. He was aware of a trickle of stagnant water into his mouth, the trickle of something warmer down the side of his face which made his left eye blink furiously, and of being totally deaf and removed by that deafness from the scene around him, from himself and from any real sense of danger.
More than anything, however, he was aware that only Drummond knew where they were supposed to land that night. Only Drummond in the whole of the world outside the Admiralty.
The first of the dark shapes rose from the grass thirty yards from him, moving onto the track even as the last dirt flung up by the grenade was still pattering down on the back of his jacket. McBride felt the hard shape of his gun against his hip, and tried to move his arm down. The arm seemed frozen, then was shot through with excruciating pain so that he yelped, startling the approaching figure and making him more cautious. His arm wouldn't move.