Dear Deceiver(4)

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.