Haidee's eyes were her weariest part; they ached from staring at the indistinguishable horizon and yet it mesmerized her. So much so that when a voice addressed her she all but jumped out of her skin.
'At last!' the voice said.
'Brown Waves', a little flushed, a little dog-eared, was standing behind her chair. He had been searching for them 'for hours', had feared they might still have been on the dock at Heysham, and wanted to make his apologies for what he termed his 'getaway'. 'Fact is, I saw someone on the platform I couldn't stand getting mixed up with.'
'In that crowd?' Irene queried incredulously. 'Fifteen hundred people and you saw someone you know?'
'Ah well, not such a coincidence. I thought he'd be on that train and I'd had my bellyful of him all last week in Sweden.'
'Sweden?' It rang a bell. Who, Haidee asked herself, had mentioned Sweden to her just lately ... of course ... Irene had when she'd pointed to the label on that dark grey slimline case. And clearly, by the looks of her companion, the same bell was ringing for her.
'Sweden?' Irene echoed. 'Go on.'
'A meaningful tone if I may say so,' 'Brown Waves' remarked. 'Do you know Rory Hart?'
'We hope so,' Irene quipped. 'Who is he?'
'Brown Waves's' despairing head shake was understandable. 'I could tell you, but I'd better not. Let's just say he's in the Irish Forestry Division and he was attending an international conference on Forest Yield which I, for my sins, was covering.'
'You work on a paper?' Haidee asked.
'Freelance, actually. This is for a series on Conservation. The name's Freeman, Paul Freeman, but you won't ever have heard of it, so don't mind saying so.' The neat little smile showed.
'Wait a minute!' Haidee was thinking frantically. 'I have. At least I've seen it. Articles, you said?' She frowned. It was coming back-newsprint, columns, 'Paul Freeman' at the bottom. What at the top? 'Glenglass!' she shouted triumphantly.
How could she, even momentarily, have forgotten? Twelve months ago it had been Battle of the Year. Paul Freeman had started it. He had paid a visit to Glenglass Forest in the northern half of Wicklow and thereafter in a leading newspaper had called the people of Ireland to witness 'the outrages' that had been perpetrated there-indiscriminate felling, the overwhelming preponderance of conifers towards broadleaves in afforestation and the slaughter of wildlife.
The Forestry Division had contented itself with one or two succinct and reasoned replies, but the general public had taken up the cause of Glenglass with enthusiasm. Fences had been damaged and there had even been an abortive attempt at firing a planting of Sitka spruce. Haidee's anxiety had been for the red squirrels said to be threatened with extermination. She remembered that Paul had written a delicate piece of irony on 'Squirrels or Telegraph Poles?' which had cost her a night's sleep. After that she had stopped reading the controversy. Her mother was her first care and week by week was failing. Emotional involvement that spelled tears and fury also spelled danger to the patient. Haidee had never known how the battle had ended.
'So far as I'm concerned it hasn't,' Paul said. 'And if you'd been in Sweden last week you'd have seen plenty of smoke.'
'You brought it up at the conference?'
'Let's say with one of the heads-a bonehead. My friend Hart. He's the Forester-in-Charge at Glenglass.'
'Is he about thirty, standard right hook model, short hair, short navy jacket, carrying a grey suitcase and walking with a limp?' Irene's usually sparkling face was deadpan.
'Come again,' Paul invited faintly.
'That's one thing he won't do,' Irene assured. 'He's in cabin number ten along the passage with five crushed toes and a broken leg!'
Paul, appraised of the situation, declared ghoulishly that a public service had been done and drinks were called for. 'You really are bitter about him,' Irene observed.
'So are a lot of people. Neither of you ever met the Whittakers, I suppose? They used to own Glenglass, and you should hear Antonia on Rory Hart. When he took over he went through the place like a little Hitler. Nothing that can't be turned into a telegraph pole has any chance of survival. Long-term, of course, but that's the manifesto, a clean bill of destruction. That's why I tried to start something a year ago. The national conscience needed stirring. Antonia Whittaker couldn't do much on her own.'
He had a few more words to say about Antonia. She had inherited Glenglass from her father and had struggled for years against death duties and rising costs to keep it. Even after the sale she had stayed on. The Forestry Division had rented her a flat in the mansion pending its conversion into a research unit and extension school. How wise this decision had been, Haidee questioned silently and Irene aloud.
'I'd have cut my losses and jumped the first plane to Bermuda!'
'It's a point of view,' Paul agreed. 'But Antonia's heart was in the place. She had no idea what was involved or who the axe-man was going to be. That was the final indignity.'
'How so?' Irene asked.
'The bold Rory's a local. Father kept the village shop and I've no doubt touched his forelock when the Whittaker limousine drew up outside it. Fifty years ago people did those things. Rory's day was slightly more emancipated, I'll admit, but he still did delivery boy for his father-to the tradesmen's entrance, of course. Which you'll agree makes the present circumstances all the more galling.'
'Sorry. Not agree. I don't,' Irene said sharply. 'If a lad can get on in the world more power to him. My own grandfather began with a stall in the market.'
It was given and taken in good part. 'You're quite right,' Paul conceded amiably. 'Let's go and have that drink.'
'Not for me, thanks,' Irene said promptly. 'I'm stopping here till I'm thrown out.'
'You'll come, won't you?' He looked at Haidee and when she rose guided her skilfully through the melee outside.
'Is the bar as bad as this?' she asked doubtfully.
'Worse! Would you rather brave the elements?'
'Much.'
'On your head be it, then,' he laughed, and took her out into the grey crepe morning. 'How does this grab you, outdoor girl?'
Not deliriously, she had to admit, but the closed-in feeling made conversation easy. Paul asked where she lived and she answered by asking if he could persuade the captain to bear to starboard and put her off on the Bull Wall. Paul, it seemed, had 'no permanent resting place but many one-night stands'. There was a basement flat in London where he grew nasturtiums in the area and a primitive cottage in Donegal to which he fled when he had been working all out. Dublin saw him these days 'for work purposes only'. As a city it had lost its character and its soul.
'But it's still good for eating. You'll have lunch with me, won't you?'
'If you want me to.' The invitation was a delightful surprise.
'Please. Very much,' Paul said warmly.
They had been steaming for so long through the grey curtain that Haidee had begun to feel it would go on for ever, but, around eleven o'clock, a pessimistic glance from the dining saloon where Paul had bought them a second breakfast revealed, with startling suddenness, the outline of Dun Laoghaire pier. Half an hour later they were in a taxi speeding towards Town.
Irene was duly dropped at her mother's house in Ballsbridge and Paul insisted on taking Haidee the whole way to Dollymount.
'It will cost the earth,' she remonstrated.
'Perhaps I feel like spending the earth!' he retorted.
By this, the taxi had woven its way through Seville Place and was in Fairview. All the way from Dun Laoghaire the fog had been lifting and now a magically clear atmosphere made its existence difficult to believe.
The crude red of the bandstand stood out against the limpid green of the park which not so long ago had been slobland. Here, on a Good Friday nine and a half centuries ago, Brian Bora had joined battle with the invading Danes and defeated them. Today green grass and golden privet stretched peacefully to the blue waters of Dublin Bay and as the taxi rounded the top of the inverted U bite into Clontarf the prospect widened. Three miles across the water on the south arm of the bay was the road up which they had travelled from Dun Laoghaire, and all along the skyline were the Dublin foothills and overlooking them the dark wooded Wicklows.
At home everything was in order. Last night's obstructed phone call had not mattered because the closing down of the airport had been widely publicized. In consequence, the friend who had been minding Brand was still there. Brand was there too, a golden-caped image on the windowsill.
He sounded at his mistress as she approached and the close-up was reassuring. His bib was a bit stringy, but the rest of his cream-streaked mane was magnificent. He had not pined.