The Savage Day - Jack Higgins [32]
'Never that,' I said and held up my hands. 'All right, I surrender.'
'So when are you seeing him?' I told her and she frowned. 'Why the delay?'
'I don't know. He's got things to do. It's only a couple of hours, after all, and we can reach him quickly enough. The place he's taken is no more than ten miles from here. What about your end of things?'
'Oh, that's all taken care of. I've been doing some telephoning too.' She glanced at her watch. 'In fact, I'll have to get moving. I'm being picked up outside the schoolhouse in fifteen minutes by the local brigade commander. It was his people who were waiting for us on the beach last night. He wasn't too pleased.'
'I can imagine. Will you be seeing your uncle?'
'I'm not sure. I don't know where he is at the moment, though I think they'll have arranged for me to speak to him on the phone.'
I emptied my glass and Binnie picked it up without a word, went behind the bar and got me another.
Norah Murphy put a cigarette in her mouth. As I gave her a light, the match flaring in my cupped hands, I said, 'I'm surprised at you, smoking those things and you a doctor.'
She seemed puzzled, a slight frown on her face, then glanced at the cigarette and laughed, that distinctive harsh laugh of hers. 'Oh, what the hell, Vaughan, we'll all be dead soon enough.'
In a sense, I had a moment of genuine insight there, saw deeper than I had seen before certainly, but we were on dangerous ground and I had to go carefully.
I said, 'What will you do when it's all over?'
'Over?' She stared at me blankly. 'What in the hell are you talking about?'
'But you're going to win, aren't you, you and your friends? You must believe that or there wouldn't be any point to any of it. I simply wondered what you would do when it was all over and everything was back to normal.'
She sat there staring at me, caught in some timeless moment like a fly in amber, unable to answer me for the simple and inescapable reason that there was only one answer.
I nodded slowly. 'You remind me of that uncle of mine.' Binnie put the pint of lager down on the table. 'What was it they called him again, Binnie? The Schoolmaster of Stradballa?'
'That's it, Major.'
I turned to Norah Murphy and said gently, but with considerable cruelty for all that, 'He never wanted it to end, either. It was his whole life, you see. Trenchcoats and Thompson guns, action by night, a wonderful, violent game. He enjoyed it, Norah, if that's the right word. It was the only way he wanted to live his life - just like you.'
She was white-faced, trembling, a kind of agony in her eyes, and she turned it all on me. 'I fight for a cause, Major. I'll die for it if necessary and proud to, like thousands before me.' She placed both hands flat on the table and leaned towards me. 'What did you ever believe in, Major Simon bloody Vaughan? What did you kill for?'
'You mean what was my excuse, don't you?' I nodded. 'Oh, yes, Doctor, we all need one of those.'
She sat back in the chair, still trembling and I said softly, 'You'll be late for the pick-up. Better get going.'
She took a deep breath as if to pull herself together and stood up. 'I want Binnie to go with you.'
'Don't you trust me?'
'Not particularly, and I'd like the address and telephone number of this place where your friend Meyer is staying. I'll phone you at four o'clock. Whatever happens, don't leave till you hear from me.' She turned to Binnie. 'I'm counting on you to see that he does as he's told, Binnie.'
He looked more troubled than I'd ever seen him, torn between the two of us, I suspect, for it had become more than obvious that the events of the previous night had considerably enlarged his respect for me. On the other hand, he loved Norah Murphy in his own pure way. She had been put into his charge by the Small Man, he would die, if necessary, to protect her. It was as simple, or as complicated, as that.
A great