Betrayal by J. Robert Janes Read Free Book Online Page A

her mother’s likely, and two bulky knitted cardigans, the outer being unbuttoned always, the inner, the newer, being buttoned and of a deeper green!
    The carpet slippers were for around the house because they ‘eased,’ spelled aized her feet, her bunions, spelled boonians and the sagging woollen socks were ‘of the army,’ and, ‘for the warmth of a morn.’
    â€˜Oh damn that woman, damn her anyway!’ swore Mary under her breath as she stopped in the foyer to check the morning’s mail.
    There was nothing from Dublin, thank fortune, but there was a letter from Canada, from home. Opened by the censors and then resealed. Posted a good four months ago and come all the way across the Atlantic by convoy to England under threat of German U-boats and then by packet across the Irish Sea.
    Nothing stopped the Royal Mail, not even a war.
    It was a letter from Frank Thomas’s mother, but she’d leave it for a moment, and climbing the stairs, went along to the bedroom Erich had used, to stand in its doorway feeling lost and alone.
    Erich had needed to have his appendix out early in March. Things had gone well but he’d been run-down and after some weeks in the castle’s infirmary, still hadn’t been right: a fever that doggedly came and went. A low-grade thing that would suddenly flare up for no apparent reason.
    Puzzled by it, Hamish had gone to the colonel, and Erich had been brought to the house. He’d spent a fortnight here—over a week in bed and then a few days around the place, but had Hamish seen it coming? He had had to go out on a call. She’d gone downstairs with him, hadn’t been sleeping well and had heard him get up. It had been late—nearly 2.00 a.m. She’d asked if he’d like her to come with him but he had only shaken his head in that way he always did, and had told her to go back to bed, Mrs. Haney and the others never sleeping in the house. Erich … Erich had caught her all but in darkness on the upstairs landing. Her back had hit the wall as he’d kissed her and she’d tried to pull away.
    â€˜Don’t lie about it. You wanted him,’ she said. Even now she could still feel how her nightgown had slipped from her shoulders as it had fallen to the floor.
    But to understand how it could happen in the castle—in a prisoner of war camp—one had to understand the workings of the place. The British and the Anglo-Irish of the British Army were always about, but there were no armed guards within those parts of the castle that had been assigned to the prisoners—just guards without their guns. At any moment one or more of them could come into the library and often did—everything was always more or less in a state of flux and she was always accompanied in any case, and always there would be at least one of them standing at the door.
    Being officers, the prisoners weren’t locked into rooms or anything like that. They were fully responsible for their own well-being and had duty rosters organized, even their own cooks. They organized their own recreation and had the run of the central courtyard—acres for soccer, which they played nearly every day after their calisthenics.
    There were lectures, too, on history, on bridge building or making wine, even on things like fishing and tying flies for salmon or trout—oh, they had them on any number of subjects and were a very diverse group. They built beautiful model ships, played cards, wrote letters home, received Red Cross parcels and had somehow managed to acquire two Ping-Pong tables.
    Music was a favourite, of course, but mostly a choral group for which she was always trying to find new scores. They had a piano the Catholics in Armagh had sent along with two accordions, a gramophone and stacks of records. Hence the ‘parties’ now and then when things were going well and they were especially behaving themselves, which was exactly what Colonel