by Declan Burke
The children hadn’t burned to death in the church that night. Even so, Delphi was built on their blood.
They’d been bleeding Shay Govern for the best part of five decades. Letting him believe, all those years, that he’d played his part in a massacre of innocents.
‘A transfusion might be a less crude way of putting it,’ Carol said. ‘You can see how the island thrives. And Shay gets to salve his conscience in a very practical way.’
‘Except he’s not really guilty of anything.’
‘He made his choice, Tom, when he stepped on to the island with a gun in his hands.’
‘I’d imagine, if you were to tell him the truth, he’d argue it was more important that he killed Richter. Christ only knows how it’d have gone if he hadn’t.’
She accepted that, and further acknowledged that even if Shay Govern had refused to join Richter’s raiding party – if he had ever been in a position to refuse – his place would have been filled by another man. A man more loyal to his leader, or the cause, or both.
Sebastian had found himself in an impossible position. Shay Govern had cut the Gordian knot, giving Morag time to spirit the children away and saving who knew how many more lives in the process.
By any measure, a hero.
That he had guilt thrust upon him was perverse, disgusting.
‘My mother was of more or less the same opinion,’ Carol said. ‘And, being a woman, she tended to blame herself. She was after all the one Richter came looking for, the one Sebastian killed to protect. Nonsense, of course.’
‘Is it?’
‘I believe so, and I tried my very best to persuade her. Unfortunately, my mother was very much her own woman, in this as in everything else. She suffered with it her entire life, believing that Rory McGinty’s death was on her head, as was Sebastian’s, shall we say, withdrawal from the world. Was her conscience clear when she allowed Shay Govern to believe he was complicit in an atrocity? No. Was it necessary? Yes.’
‘And necessary explains everything, does it?’
‘I would fault her, Tom, if she did it for her own benefit. But what she did was done on behalf of the community. For the sake of Delphi. Once he was on the hook she could have taken Shay Govern for millions, but she only ever asked for what was necessary. She had a phrase she was forced to use more than once in the committee. “What needs and no more.” Shay had what Inish needed. She never desired any more.’
It was Shay Govern, ironically, who needed more.
‘I think he might have fallen for you,’ I said, and for the first and only time she had the good grace to appear discomfited.
He had arrived on the island the previous July, unannounced. Just another American tourist, albeit slightly unusual in that he travelled alone. A little on the frail side to be hiking the hills. When he began straying off the established trails and poking into odd corners, they’d had him watched. One afternoon, as he was prowling the fringes of the bird sanctuary, they’d slipped into his hotel room and opened the safe.
‘He was calling himself Charlie McGettigan. His passport and travel documents, of course, said otherwise.’
‘Who knows?’ I said.
‘Who knows what?’
‘About your mother blackmailing Shay Govern all these years.’
‘The committee. One or two others.’
‘The committee?’
‘The cooperative’s board.’
‘And how do you get elected to this board?’
‘By invitation, but the decision must be unanimous. The board acts as one.’
‘Is that right? And did it suffer a collective heart attack when it realized Shay Govern was sniffing around?’
Not far off. It was decided that one of the committee would bump into Shay Govern in the hotel lobby and make a fuss, having recognized him as the famous Irish-American philanthrop-ist. An invitation to dinner with Lady Carol McConnell was quickly issued.
‘Naturally we believed he had uncovered the truth. It was something of a relief to realize that this was not the point of his endeavours.’
It seemed that Govern, recently widowed and brooding on his life’s work and legacy, had come to the decision that he needed to make his expiation a more public affair.
‘Not that he ever mentioned the massacre directly,’ she said. ‘It was all in the context of his philanthropy, the foundations funded and the endowments bestowed. He wasn’t boasting, you understand. He was simply talking about the generalized nature of his giving. And what he wanted, the reason he had come to Delphi, was a more specific, what he called intimate, connection. Delphi, as far as he could tell from his explorations, was a close-knit and thriving community. If he had grown up in such a place as a boy, he might never have had to leave.
‘I told him I was very pleased he’d had to leave. He was a little startled by that, until I explained that Delphi only thrived as a result of his largesse. The consequence of the endowments that had begun with Sebastian Devereaux were visible everywhere he went on the island.
‘I brought him out here to see the graves. Gave him to understand, without being so coarse as to be explicit about it, that Sebastian and Morag had taken their secrets to wherever it is they have gone.’
Gave him to understand …
‘A lesser man,’ she said, ‘believing us ignorant of the truth, would have left it at that and gone away. Shall I tell you what Shay Govern did?’
‘I’m guessing he told you everything.’
She nodded. ‘It was almost as if the bench were a confessional. He sat where you are sitting now and spoke for an hour. I was very impressed, Tom. He is an unusually honourable man.’
But not impressed enough to repay his honesty with the truth. Instead she, or they, had allowed him to continue believing that he was guilty, at least in part, of a horrific act. A sin of omission that silently offered him the opportunity of purging his conscience in perpetuity.
‘While you,’ I said, ‘get to absolve yourself of that nasty old taint of blackmail.’
She considered that while she fussed with her pipe, and then informed me that I was as impractical as I was sentimental. She had, prior to her dinner engagement with Shay Govern, been quite prepared to inform him that if he attempted to disentangle himself from the various endowments and grants that helped fund Delphi, she would be forced to go public with his disgrace. Naturally, she would have delayed destroying his name and reputation until after his death, so that he would be in no position to defend himself, or sue.
‘A dirty business,’ she said. ‘So you can imagine how relieved I was when he made a clean breast and pronounced himself willing to maintain the old arrangements.’
‘Did it never occur to you to tell him the truth?’
She had wavered, yes, during his long and painful confession. But her personal sympathies were irrelevant. She had the entire island, and its generations to come, to put before her own feelings.
‘The first time he stepped on to this island,’ she said, ‘he came masked and armed. Everything else flows from that.’
She’d had decades to build it up in her mind. Maybe she even believed he’d been some kind of dark angel invading Eden with a burning sword held aloft.
‘And please,’ she said, ‘spare me the part where he was only obeying orders. That kite no longer flies.’
The gold mine was Shay Govern’s idea.
‘There was some talk, initially, of his changing his will,’ she said. ‘Shay was quite fond of the notion of buying out the estate, and becoming Lord McConnell.’
Too tricky, apparently. It ran the risk of his children, all of whom were non-executive directors, and their lawyers, asking difficult questions about why their father was suddenly so intrigued by Lady Carol McConnell of Delphi Island.
‘Unfortunately, I am no one’s conception of a pneumatic blonde,’ she smiled. ‘Had I been so blessed, they very likely wouldn’t have questioned it at all. Blocked it, yes. But certainly there would have been no need
to investigate any further.’
His investment in Delphi, they decided, needed to be a commercial venture. The old copper mine, of course, had played out long since. Carol, wanting Shay to believe that it was all his own work, told him she had conducted her own research, and discovered that gold was often found in close proximity to copper. Given his expertise, and the latest developments in technology, might it be worth their while to prospect for gold?
‘In a way it was almost comical,’ she said, although there was no humour in her eyes or her tone. ‘He seized on it like a child.’
It was the symmetry, she believed, that appealed. That preliminary explorations for a subterranean seam would accidentally discover the German submarine and its lost hoard of Nazi gold, at a stroke uncovering a source of income for Delphi and in the process hauling to the surface the very reason Shay Govern had first come to the island, masked and armed, all those years before.
The secret exposed for all to see. Shay Govern’s conscience bleached clean. And good luck to anyone who tried to figure out where the submarine had come from, or why it had gone down.
The historical record would be picked over, of course. Certain connections made. ‘But unless someone conducts an unusually productive séance with Klaus Rheingold, their efforts are likely to achieve very little.’
‘You’re not tempted to keep it all?’ I said.
‘Keep it?’
‘The gold mine. You could declare a new seam and then smelt the gold bars.’
‘Much too complicated, Tom. And really not very practical. It would require too big an operation, too many outsiders.’
Better instead to simplify matters. Announce the discovery, hand it over to the State and be content with the salvage reward.
What needs and no more.
‘Which brings us to Tom Noone,’ she said, after giving me a few moments to pull the threads together.
‘What about me?’
‘You do appreciate, I’m sure, that I am not telling you all this for the sake of my health.’
I hadn’t snuck on to the island in the early hours with a Schmeisser in my hands. But I’d come masked and armed all the same, operating under false pretences and carrying with me the information, courtesy of Gerard Smyth, that could blow the cosy existence of Delphi sky high.
‘All of which puts us,’ she said, ‘in a rather awkward position at a very delicate time.’
‘That’s the thing about the truth, though, isn’t it? It’s rarely delicate or awkward. It’s all a bit blunt and straightforward.’
‘Well, perhaps it is,’ she said, amused. She could fully understand, she said, why I might want to tell Shay Govern the truth. ‘The moral obligation and so forth.’ That I might feel Shay Govern, having lived his entire life with the guilt, was entitled to know that he was a hero rather than a killer.
‘Or perhaps your obligation is to truth itself. That you have a duty to reveal it wherever it is found, regardless of whether the world is interested or not.’
It was her opinion, she said, conceding her bias, that when it came to the truth and a good story, the world has always tended to prefer a good story.
‘A human failing, perhaps. But the failing, one could argue, that made us human.’
This was the conclusion of a study that began with her mother’s novels, the thrillers published under Sebastian’s name, but had broadened out, as Morag encouraged her daughter to continue the family tradition, to include the books that lined Morag’s shelves. ‘She was partial to Christie, of course, but also Tey and Highsmith and McInnes. Not that she only read women. She did believe, though, that while men left behind bruises and scar tissue and corpses by the pile, women cut through to the living heart. She found Austen terrifying.’
It was her theory, and one Carol subscribed to, that great literature consisted almost entirely, in one guise or another, of the cautionary fable. ‘We find it in the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, or, if you are classically inclined, in Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. But my mother believed its roots go much deeper, all the way back beyond Cain and Abel to the ancient savannah and the tales told around fires at the mouths of caves. The tales language evolved to tell. Of the darkness lurking beyond the shadows, the shadows outside and the shadows in men’s hearts, and what must be done and said and believed in the tribe’s name if the darkness was to remain at spear’s length.’
‘Nice theory.’
‘It doesn’t ring true?’
‘We’ll debate it another day. Right now I’m more interested in what it has to do with Shay Govern.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Not really.’
‘You came here, Tom, with the stated intention of writing Sebastian Devereaux’s story. Shay wants his own story tied into it. I am offering you the opportunity of doing just that.’
‘To write the story or tell the truth?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that question, Tom.’
‘So, what – a story about how Sebastian saves the day and his unborn child from a Nazi atrocity and goes on to become a bestselling author by recycling his own heroism. Something like that?’
‘Something very like that, yes. Even allowing for my personal bias, it’s a fascinating story. And it will be written,’ she leaned forward to tap my wrist, ‘by the newly appointed director of the Delphi Writers’ Retreat.’
And there it was – the juicy carrot to go along with the stick.
‘A wonderful opportunity, Tom, wouldn’t you agree? Can you truly afford to turn it down? A handsomely remunerated permanent position in an idyllic setting that could not be more conducive to the creative process. And a beautiful place, if I may be so bold, for your charming daughter to visit for her holidays. I’ve seen pictures, of course. My apologies if you find it intrusive, but you’ll understand that we felt it appropriate to conduct some research into your background when Shay proposed you as the ghost-writer. She really is a most beautiful child.’
‘You’re not tempted?’ Carol said after waiting a minute or two for my reply.
‘Who wouldn’t be?’
‘But you have … qualms.’
‘With bribes? Not at all.’
‘So it’s the material you object to.’
‘Not the subject matter, no. It’s what you plan to do with it.’
‘Is it really so reprehensible,’ she said, ‘to want to tell a story that allows people to believe in the greater good rather than remind them of how cruel the world really is?’
‘In theory, no. If it’s fiction you’re writing. But if you’re presenting it as fact …’
‘Now you’re confusing facts with the truth.’
‘They do tend to collide every now and again.’
‘Yes, well, even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day. Be sensible, Tom. If you won’t think of yourself, think of Emily.’
‘Why, because she loves fairytales too?’
‘And why shouldn’t she, Tom? A child understands the fundamental truth of a happy ending.’
‘Even if it’s a lie?’
‘Because they are so exceedingly rare.’
‘Like unicorns, say.’
‘Perhaps dodos might be a more appropriate metaphor, but I take your point. Does Emily believe in unicorns?’
‘For now.’
‘And you will not be the one to disabuse her.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she’s innocent and that’s too precious to destroy when I don’t have to and you can wipe that smirk off your face because none of that has anything to do with rewriting your father’s story and pretending he was a great hero when he was just some guy who shot an old man because he didn’t know the answer to what he was being asked.’
‘I disagree, Tom. Did he forgive you?’
‘What?’
‘Your father,’ she said. ‘When he realized he was dying and that you had failed to clear his name. Did he forgive you
? Was he able to look you in the eye?’
‘My father has nothing to do with—’
‘Doesn’t he? Be honest with yourself, Tom. You, who are so fascinated with facts and truth.’
‘My father did the right thing and was punished for doing it. He was nothing like Sebastian.’
‘No? My father did the right thing too, and suffered a ruined life for his troubles. Were they really so different?’
‘My father was an honourable man, Lady McConnell, who was systematically destroyed by allegations and lies so that others might thrive. He died knowing that those who had trusted in him believed him a fool at best, and at worst a coward and a traitor. There was no happy ending for my father, Lady McConnell. Believe you me, heroes were every bit as rare as unicorns in the vicinity of that particular hospice facility.’
‘I believe you, Tom. But it’s not me you need to convince.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s posterity you need to persuade. The wider world. And yet here you sit, turning up your nose at the offer of a position that would allow you to write whatever your heart desires.’
‘You think I haven’t tried? There isn’t a sane publisher who’d touch that story with a barge pole.’
‘We’d publish it, Tom.’
‘Aye, and get yourself sued out of all your Nazi gold.’
‘Well, we wouldn’t necessarily have to present it as literal fact, would we? What I mean to say is, the facts are important, but they are utterly irrelevant if no one reads about them.’
‘You’re talking about a novel.’
‘Of course.’
‘So you want me to write a biography of your father’s fiction …’
‘… and a novel of your father’s facts. Yes. Do we have a deal?’
‘I’ll need some time to think it over,’ I said.
‘Certainly. Take all the time you need. You will excuse me, I hope, but I must return to the house. There are contracts to be signed, and Shay is due to return at any moment. In fact, he is very likely already here. Do join us when you are ready. I’m sure Shay is extremely anxious to hear your decision.’ She paused. ‘There is a contract waiting for your signature too, Tom.’
