Read Online Flight From Honour by Gavin Lyall - Free Book Online Page A

was all the flat was equipped to do anyway – and sat down with an evening paper to read about the peace conference between Turkey and Bulgaria that had just begun in Constantinople. So that, he reflected, was probably the War Season over for the year. Nobody wanted another winter campaign, while the memory of last year was still strong. But come next summer, in 1914, when the roads had dried out for artillery and supply wagons, and the sun brought delusions of immortality and everybody knew that
this
time it would be quick and almost bloodless . . .
    O’Gilroy came in, took one look at his expression and said: “Jayzus, ye’ve been reading the newspapers again.” He reached for the decanters on a side table. “Whyn’t ye try dying of drink? – might even be slower.”
    Sipping his sherry, Ranklin gloomily agreed that solitary newspaper reading was indeed a destructive vice. You needed someone with O’Gilroy’s buoyant cynicism to put things in perspective. “So, how did our new boys do at shadowing?”
    “An omnibus’d do it more invisible. But mebbe I got something into their heads. They get the idea of it quick enough – keeping a pocket of change for buses and cabs, and paying for yer tea when ye get it so yer away fast, stuff like that, but are they thinking ahead on what a man might be doing next? The devil they are, and them close up when they should be far back and t’other way besides.”
    “We all have to learn,” Ranklin said complacently, remembering that a year ago he wouldn’t have known what O’Gilroy was talking about.
    O’Gilroy gave him a look sharp enough to puncture even a Gunner’s condescension, but said only: “Other ways, though, they’re sharp fellers – for officers.”
    “Well, if they volunteered for the Bureau, they’re hardly likely to be average regimental types.” And certainly not above-average, he added silently. Intelligence work was reckoned, correctly, to be a promotional dead end.
    O’Gilroy looked at him curiously, but asked: “And where’ll we be eating? I hear there’s some good places around London.”
    There were indeed, and in happier times he’d have enjoyed taking O’Gilroy out to rediscover some old haunts, particularly if the Bureau would foot the bill. But London’s big Irish population made any unnecessary venture out of doors an extra risk for O’Gilroy – the key word being unnecessary. Ranklin drew a clear distinction between risk in the line of duty, like that shadowing exercise, and risk just in finding a meal.
    He sighed; why the devil couldn’t they be posted back to Paris, where there was no problem and they were perhaps a day closer to any European trouble that might brew up? And where you could actually make money on your subsistence allowance because the pettifogging accountants didn’t know how cheaply you could eat well in the little bistros, even in the tourist season. Then he stopped, a bit ashamed of his own thoughts.
    “We can eat downstairs,” he said gruffly, “or have something sent up. We’d better not be far from the office. The Commander might telephone or cable just to see if anybody’s minding the shop.”
    O’Gilroy, who knew perfectly well the true reason, shrugged. “Things go on like this, whyn’t we buy a cooking book?” But that was a joke: the idea of men knowing how to cook (except badly, over a camp-fire) was as alien to Irish back streets as it was to English drawing-rooms. “All right, have ’em send it up – but ye don’t read newspapers over yer food. Ye can tell me something about Italian affairs instead.”
    This surprised Ranklin as much as it pleased him. O’Gilroy’s usual question about a new country – after asking about the food and drink – was whether it was friendly or (potentially) enemy, disregarding subtler shadings. Ranklin had tried to develop his interest in Europe by pinning up a large map – which also hid several square feet of wallpaper – and chattering about