The White Tower

by Dorothy Johnston

  . . .

  ‘You’ve been burning the candle at both ends,’ I said to Brook when I finally got him on the phone.

  Brook laughed. Laughter took him under the arms with a lover’s gentleness and lifted him clean off the ground.

  ‘What about the friendship society?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a fundraising outfit.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Howley’s on an ASIO file. Couple of connections. That game gets a mention too.’

  ‘There’s an ASIO report on Castle of Heroes?’

  There was a silence, then Brook said, ‘Boss agrees it’s worth asking a few questions. Bit delicate between me and Bill, but we’ll sort it out. An officer in London’s checking up on Fallon.’

  Why wasn’t that done before? I felt like asking, but instead I said, ‘I could try asking him a few questions myself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I go to Ireland.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Moira Howley wants me to.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s unnecessary. It might even be dangerous. What can you hope to learn, turning up like a bad penny from the antipodes?’

  ‘I think I can manage Sorley Fallon. A Mel Gibson clone can’t be all bad.’

  I said goodbye and put the phone down thinking that the decision, after all, had been easy. All I had needed was the pressure of resistance. On the other hand, I’d pissed Brook off again.

  We need to meet, I wrote to Fallon. Name a date. I’ll be there.

  I was thinking that if I could convince this Irishman of few words, then convincing Ivan that I had to go shouldn’t be impossible.

  What do you look like? Fallon’s emails had not got any longer.

  ‘The cheek,’ I said to Ivan.

  Ivan sucked the ends of his moustache. He was replacing a printer cartridge and getting ink all over himself. He’d forgotten the box of tissues. In a minute I’d have to go and fetch it from the kitchen.

  ‘You could send him Julia Roberts or Pammy,’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s a crap idea.’

  Ivan had already told me Fallon would be eighty-one, completely bald, and that he’d knock me out with his potato breath.

  ‘Well it was you who came up with Brave Heart,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like to tell you at the time that Scotland and Ireland are separate countries.’

  ‘If you weren’t covered in ink I’d throw something valuable at you.’

  Ivan looked around, miming astonishment that there could be such an item within reach.

  . . .

  When I opened my mail a few days later, there were two attachments from Fallon. One was the Pamela Anderson I’d asked him to consider, pulled from one of the many thousand images of her that breathed around the net. The other was a photo of myself. I recognised it from The Australian a year or so ago, a case I’d been involved in that had got more than local publicity—me standing outside the Supreme Court looking as though I’d just been stung by a bee.

  ‘Look at that,’ I said to Ivan, who chuckled as though nothing about Fallon could surprise him.

  The mixture of unyielding, authoritarian commander and playful, if laconic conjurer enticed me, as I suppose Fallon expected it would. At the same time, I felt as though a stranger had pulled a knife on me while I wasn’t looking, and was holding it at a point just beneath my breasts. I swallowed hard, reminding myself that I’d begun this correspondence, I sought a face-to-face meeting with him.

  Eleven

  I sat in a Woking pub called the Three Fiddlers and willed myself to relax.

  Woking was not London. ‘Not actually in London,’ was what Sgartha had written in his last email, when we’d arranged a time and place to meet.

  It seemed part of London to me. During the train journey down I hadn’t noticed any rural gaps. Not knowing what to expect, or how long it would take to get around by public transport, I’d booked into a hotel not far from Heathrow, and since the plane was six hours late and I’d arrived in the middle of the night, I’d been glad of this.

  The hotel gave the impression of being crammed with flowered, overstuffed upholstery. My bedroom, up two flights of stairs, had a sloping, wide-beamed ceiling and two small leaded windows. I’d spent most of what remained of the night staring out through them, listening to the traffic, too keyed up to sleep, telling myself that I’d done it, I was there.

  Sgartha had arranged to meet me for lunch at a pub close to where he worked, at a Formula One racing car factory. All of his suggestions I’d fallen in with gladly, afraid at every step that he would change his mind. Aside from my worry about this, I was riding the wave of promise and excitement that comes from having made an unlikely decision and acted on it.

  I glanced up at the clock above the bar. Sgartha was already fifteen minutes late. Did I have the right place? Surely there couldn’t be more than one Three Fiddlers in St John’s Road, but maybe I should ask.

  A soccer match on TV ended in a draw and the men who’d been watching it turned away with groans of disappointment.

  A young woman walked up to me and said, ‘Hello Sandra. My name is Bridget Connell.’

  I sat there concrete-faced while she apologised for being late, then laughed, all good humour and Irish grace. She had a soft, clear laugh and short dark hair, thick and rough cut, so that it stuck up at the top of her head. She was expensively dressed in a silk shirt and designer trousers, with a well-cut woollen jacket. Beside her I felt frumpy, ­colonial.

  We ordered at the bar, then sat facing one another. Bridget was drinking beer. I chose a cider. My hand shook as I clamped it round the glass.

  ‘If you knew your Irish legends at all,’ Bridget said, resting her chin in one hand, leaning forward, ‘you’d have known Sgartha was a woman.’

  I raised my glass. ‘To the first of many lessons.’

  Bridget grinned, while my list of questions skipped pointlessly around inside my head.

  Our food arrived and she set to work on a plate of steak and chips.

  I’d asked about the Castle scene, the body at the bottom of the cliff, during our exchange of emails. I’d brought a hard copy with me. I pulled it out and asked again, ‘Did Niall send you this?’

  Her eyes only grazed it, but the shake of her head was precise.

  ‘Did he send it to any of the other players?’ I’d asked this before as well, but I wanted to see her expression when she answered me.

  ‘No. They would have said.’

  ‘What about Fallon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was it like being a Hero in the Castle?’

  ‘It was an action MUD. We took that pretty seriously. It wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Players would join, stay for a few games as Brits, then get sick of it and leave. But those of us who didn’t leave, who won our Hero’s shields, well now, we each made a commitment.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Fallon used to make us feel special, those of us who’d won our shields. Every now and again we’d review the levels a soldier had to pass in order to become a Hero. There was debate, you know, over how difficult to make them.’

  Bridget paused and chewed a large mouthful with obvious ­enjoyment.

  ‘What exactly did Fallon accuse Ferdia of doing?’

  ‘Stealing the source code.’

  ‘How did he react to that?’

  ‘He denied it. Ferd was always very good on detail. Which bits of our army were where and what they should do next. It could get complicated. His reports were always accurate. You couldn’t fault him. He was almost too perfect. Not that we—not that I minded. I thought he was wonderful.’

  ‘Had Heroes been punished before? Banned, is that the right word?’

  ‘Once,’ Bridget said. ‘But that was different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘So far as I know—it was before my time—it was for a breach of security befo
re a major battle.’

  ‘Who breached security?’

  ‘A character called Caffa. People talked about it because it had become a kind of symbol of what a Hero shouldn’t do. Once a player is accepted in the Castle, given responsibility, he mustn’t form allegiances outside it.’

  ‘And this Caffa—how was he punished, if he was a he?’

  Bridget smiled again, and pushed her plate aside. She’d polished off her meal in record time.

  ‘He was banned. He had to leave the game.’

  ‘Fallon went one step more with Ferdia? Banning didn’t satisfy him?’

  ‘There was a consensus to ban Caffa, I believe. A Castle conference. A decision was reached. With Ferdia it was Fallon’s personal ­decision.’

  ‘Why do you think Fallon made those accusations?’

  ‘Either something had happened between them and that was his way of retaliating—’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or somebody did mess with the source code.’

  ‘So the accusations could have been true?’

  ‘It would’ve been totally out of character for Ferd to do that. Totally.’

  Bridget finished her beer and stared at my food. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  I nibbled small holes in my sandwich while she ordered coffee and a slice of pie.

  ‘You quit the MUD,’ I said.

  ‘That didn’t help much, did it?’ Bridget looked wan suddenly, and sad. Yet a smile seemed to be waiting in the wings of her mouth, ready to move up, lighten the pale clear skin around her eyes. I found myself liking her. I liked the way she’d tricked me into believing Sgartha was a man.

  ‘How many other Heroes were played by women?’ I asked, watching her dig her spoon into a thick wad of apples and whipped cream.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know now, would I?’

  We laughed. Bridget said, ‘It would be a bit strange if I was the only one.’

  I was beginning to feel dizzy from lack of sleep. I took another ragged bite of sandwich and looked up to see her watching me, her head on one side, contemplating my confusion.

  ‘And you never met Niall Howley, you never saw each other face to face?’

  Bridget shook her head. ‘I met Fallon once, in London.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A few years ago.’

  ‘Is Fallon’—I said his name carefully, holding it out between us, as Bridget had been doing—‘a member of any political party, or ­organisation?’

  ‘Which organisation would that be?’

  ‘Any one.’

  If Bridget thought my question was out of place for an old friend of Niall’s, then she gave no sign. ‘Fallon doesn’t like political parties. He told me that once. They all become corrupt.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That’s why I came over here—to put a bit of water between myself and all of that.’

  ‘But you and Niall corresponded, I mean as yourselves?’

  Bridget nodded. ‘Email and on the phone. And I sent him postcards once or twice. He had a lovely voice.’

  It gave me a small shock to realise that I’d never heard it. ‘Was it common for players to become friends offline?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  I waited, hoping Bridget would elaborate. Instead, she asked me if I’d like to see around the factory where she worked. Surprised and pleased, I thanked her and said yes. I paid for the food and she told me the drive would take about ten minutes.

  ‘Was there any way Niall could have returned to the Castle after he’d been executed?’ I asked as we walked out to the car park.

  Bridget busied herself unlocking her car.

  ‘I mean not return as Ferdia, but another character?’

  She didn’t answer until she’d exited the car park. I was impressed by the way she drove, leaning over the floor gear shift and changing gears fast.

  ‘Ferd could have started at the bottom again with another password. Provided Fallon didn’t figure out where he was coming from.’

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it, for someone to have impersonated Niall’s character, Ferdia that is, without Fallon knowing?’

  ‘That couldn’t happen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Fallon kept close tabs on all of us.’

  ‘Are you scared of him?’

  Bridget didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on the road, and I was aware of her discomfort. She turned into another car park, with fresh white lines and licence numbers painted on the asphalt.

  ‘Did you think about the Castle when you weren’t playing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. Many times. I had dreams.’

  ‘Nightmares?’

  ‘A few. In my dreams, the roles were sometimes mixed up. I wasn’t a Hero, or if I was, I was a different one. A couple of times I played—’

  She paused and I prompted her quietly. ‘Who?’

  ‘God.’

  Bridget took me through a large reception area, all tinted glass, soft beige leather and well-watered shrubbery. One wall was entirely taken up with shelves on which stood rows of gold and silver cups. My eye lighted on a couple from Australia.

  She nodded to the receptionist, who looked back at her with a peculiar expression. I filled in a visitor’s book and was given a small pass, while Bridget pulled a laminated pass out of the pocket of her jacket and pinned it on. I followed her up some steps, then through reinforced steel doors, while she explained that for security reasons we wouldn’t be going into the part of the building where this year’s model was being assembled. She smiled with what I was coming to recognise as pleasure in knowing things other people didn’t.

  ‘A man’s world,’ I commented, wondering if I should feel flattered at Bridget’s assumption that I’d know what I was looking at.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered with another smile. ‘And no.’

  She didn’t elaborate, and I was too full of questions I still wanted to ask about Niall to pursue the topic of her work.

  While she showed me how they tested the car bodies for durability, and invited me to hop inside last year’s Grand Prix model, she explained that she was an aeronautical engineer by training.

  ‘I never thought I’d get this job, you know. You could have blown me over with a puff of wind.’

  ‘Have you got family in Ireland?’

  ‘My parents are in Derry. And one of my brothers, and my youngest sister. I go back fairly often. More often than I’d like to actually.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  Bridget frowned. I could see her thinking she’d already answered that.

  ‘I got sick of it. And I was lucky. I went to university. I had a good job. But my brother, the one who lives at home, he had a nervous breakdown some years back, and he hasn’t really had much in the way of work since. I’m trying to talk my youngest sister into coming over here. She can live with me while she finds a job in London. Her chances will be better here. And she’ll feel better about herself. I did.’

  ‘Niall was interested in Ireland,’ I said, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to improvise a bit. ‘He didn’t like the way his father wanted to deny their ancestry. Pretend it didn’t matter.’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ Bridget said, leading the way into yet another showroom through a well-sealed door. ‘Maybe the best thing to do is to forget about it. In here—this is my baby.’

  On the other side of the door was a large room, with what looked like a huge white half plane, half racing car sitting in the middle. It was much larger than a racing car, and a lot of the size was wings, designed, Bridget told me as we walked around it, to keep it on, not off, the ground.

  The car was to have been the factory’s attempt to break the land speed record, and the reason they’d hired Bridget in the first place. But bad luck had struck the project. After initial sponsorship, which had enabled her to design and build the model, the sponsors had withdrawn. It would cost several million pounds to build the actual car and trial it, and until they found that m
oney, the project was on hold and Bridget was stuck with the Formula One.

  She stroked the side of her great-winged, grounded bird. Both looked, for one peculiar moment, as though they were about to take off, Bridget with her upstanding hair and Irish luminescence. It seemed that they were land bound, if at all, by strings too light and thin for the human eye. And so it seemed too, just for the briefest time, that this extraordinary woman might indeed take flight with the thing she called her baby.

  She seemed too unlikely, fey, irreverent to be its designer. Yet in her imaginative life she’d been, still was for all I knew, an island warrior, and everything from a British foot soldier to an Irish Hero.

  She turned to me and asked, ‘Why did you come all this way?’

  ‘To find out what you thought of Niall and why he killed himself.’

  Bridget patted the bird car as though to reassure herself. ‘He was the kind of guy who never gave up. Stubborn as all get out really. Honest.’

  ‘But he liked acting, playing roles.’

  ‘Not half so much as me.’

  ‘You mean for him it was a means to an end?’

  ‘That’s right. Oh he loved the Castle. And his buddies. He used to say he loved the feel of it. Knowing it was always there.’

  ‘The challenge?’

  ‘Yeah. That was like the role play, something he had to keep up, live up to, in order to keep being part of it, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think I do. Did Niall ever talk to you about his family?’

  ‘You mean his real one? In Australia? A bit. I got the impression he didn’t get on with his dad. He felt sorry for his mother, but he found both of them overbearing. He did say that he hated being an only child.’

  ‘You don’t have that problem?’

  ‘My folks are cool, and in any case I live a long way from them. You know,’ she said, looking me up and down, then nodding as though she’d come to a decision, ‘Niall wrote to me just before he died.’

  ‘What about?

  ‘The hospital where he worked. He was in some sort of trouble. He didn’t spell it out. Something to do with the guy he worked for.’

  ‘Dr Fenshaw?’

  ‘Yeah. Niall obviously thought the world of this guy, but he’d done something that upset him.’