‘A double hanging being irresistible.’
They were doing a lot of agreeing, echoing each other’s thoughts. Joe paused. He knew he was about to shatter the appearance of concord.
‘But the second scenario I was putting before them — one English war hero gunning down another, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy at each other’s throat, the threat of famous names splashed across the front pages, a grieving widow to be paraded before the courts, two fine Navy sons and their careers dragged into the mire by the whole thing … Well, you can imagine how the blue pencil came out for that lot. And to top it all — we now discover that the royal family is about to attend the victim’s funeral … be photographed lavishing condolences on the man’s killers. It’s all too much for the public to be burdened with at this politically sensitive time. The National Character would be called into question, apparently. Englishness put in the pillory. Lloyd George himself has made his views clear.’
‘So a Welshman, in the interests of preserving the English reputation, is prepared to make a pair of Irish lads take the rap for the whole nasty business?’
He looked at her sharply, skewering her to her chair with a stare as focused as a thrown lance.
‘Sorry, sir. That must have sounded prissy.’
‘Prissy? I’d have said hectoring and indisciplined.’
Having delivered his shot, Joe lapsed into uneasy silence. He’d asked for this. Lily was doing no more than putting a sharp point on views he held himself. If he’d been sitting over there on the other side of the desk, he’d have been making much the same noises of protest. Throughout this business he’d encouraged her to speak her mind, invited her to share her thoughts with him as an equal. In his self-critical mood, Joe feared his motives were less honourable. He’d made use of the girl. He’d required her, in her bright independence of mind, to question, evaluate but ultimately endorse his actions. It was with a belated clarity that he saw again the relationship that had existed between himself and his mentor in India. Sir George, in his deviousness, his unshakeable belief in the rightness of the country he served, had been exasperating. His smoothly engineered solutions to moral problems had left Joe open mouthed and spluttering objections.
And yet, Joe remembered the verdict of an American girl he’d grown close to in a frontier fort: ‘Joe is more like Sir George than he would ever want to admit. Give him a few more years and you won’t be able to distinguish the one from the other …’ He’d snorted and denied it but, only months later, here he was, sitting on the powerful side of the desk, delivering a second-rate imitation of Sir George.
What the hell! At the most inconvenient of moments, the rebel in Joe rose up and yelled a challenge. The rebel was yelling now.