No Enemy but Time [antikvár]

Chapter I The dawn was breaking as the cars rolled off the ferry at North Wall; there was a sullen, red-streaked sky, with banks of threatening clouds building up on the horizon. After the stale fug in the tiny cabin, she gulped down the clean sea air, the car window wide open. It was a hired Car. If they were watching for her, they wouldn't expect her to travel on the night boat from Liverpool, with a rough sea battering at the B & I ship, while the drunks and the seasick threw up in the smelly lounges. Even so, she had hidden herself in the claustrophobic cabin, afraid she might be recognized. She was difficult to disguise, being tall and strikingly blonde with a face that had appeared too often in newspapers and smart magazines. The charming wife of the youngest member of the Cabinet. Articles about her family life, the handsome Georgian house in Gloucestershire, Homes and Gardens, colour supplement, Vogue profile material. All the pre-packaged nonsense of a plastic person, she said once, but that only made her husband angry. 'If you hate it all so much, why don't you go back to the bogs?' was his retort. The bogs; that was how he dismissed Ireland. He'd said it once too often, and this time she'd taken him at his word. Slowly the line of cars inched towards the Customs sheds. She drove into the green section. She had nothing to declare. She was waved on by a sharp-eyed young officer, who boasted he could smell a smuggler from fifty yards away. She hadn't realized until she was bumping along the road away from the dock that she'd been shaking like an aspen leaf. There had been no time for a cup of coffee and she'd eaten nothing the night before, going straight to her cabin. She felt weak and her head ached. No cigarettes either: early-open cafés tempted her going through Dublin, but she resisted. The Irish are the most inquisitive race in the world. Every head would turn if a woman walked into one of those male preserves. She couldn't risk that. The roads were empty in the grey light, and she jumped traffic lights, making smart time. As she turned on to the dual carriageway that ended only a few miles beyond Naas, the rain spat against the windscreen. She fumbled, looking for the windscreen wipers in the