Free The Secret Generations by John Gardner

suborning foreigners into betraying their own countries, and paying them to do so.’
    On another occasion, Haig maintained that, ‘The gathering of military intelligence has always been, and will always be, the role of the cavalry. If I want intelligence, I get it in the field, by fair and square methods; and if it’s obtained by an officer in disguise, then he is aware that, if discovered, he will be shot, like a gentleman.’
    Giles Railton suffered many moments of anguish, for his own logic told him that Europe was fast becoming a powder keg, and, sadly, he guessed the first explosions could easily detonate very near to home – in Ireland.
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    No born Railton had ever been blessed with the jet black hair, and eyes, that Bridget Kinread brought to the family when she married Malcolm. Both The General and Giles had approved her looks, clear skin, and sparkling personality. Neither of them had ever seen her in a mood that matched her hair, for Bridget ’s black moods came upon her like a violent summer storm – all crash and lightning.
    The blackness was upon her now, as she sat at her old bedroom window, watching the mist gather closer, sweeping in over the valley. She prayed that even at this late date, Malcolm might change his mind.
    But Malcolm had done it. One hundred and fifty acres and a Georgian house, bought and paid for. Glen Devil Farm. They were to move in within the month – and everybody knew it.
    It was always the same in the country of her birth. She often felt that Ireland was more of a village than a country, for all its national pride. Within a day, the ‘interested’ people would know that the Englishman, Malcolm Railton – himself who wed Bridget Kinread of Ballycullen House – had paid a fair sum for Glen Devil Farm.
    If only Malcolm could have bought in England. For all his education, the army, his upbringing, the man had no idea of what it would really be like; nor what strain it could eventually place on her. She had tried to tell him; but, like so many of his compatriots, he just failed to understand. No Englishman alive – or dead for that matter – had ever truly understood. If they could, then the bitter river of enmity which ran skin deep under so many Irish lives, would have dried up long ago.
    Many times, in her childhood, Bridget had sat in this very window, wondering at her own melancholy. It was wrong, she knew, very wrong, to think of her own people and her own country as she did. But it had been the same from the time she could first remember; and the feeling had grown with the events which shaped her life; for she had left Ballycullen House at eleven years of age, to be educated in England, living with her aunt near Virginia Water.
    Until she returned to Ireland as Malcolm ’s bride, Bridget had visited the country of her birth only for short holidays. Now she was back, a changed woman with new horizons, married late at thirty, into one of the great English families.
    In the event, her husband was infected by the wizardry of people and country. This was where he would farm. The blackness descended from the moment she realized what would happen.
    Ballycullen House was empty but for Michael Bergin, the stable hand; for both her mother and father had gone with Malcolm, into Wicklow Town. ‘We’ll live in better style than any of the Railtons in England,’ Malcolm said, as he kissed her before leaving. ‘Bridget, my dear, here in your Ireland we can afford to farm and live like lords. What’s more, there’s greater respect.’
    For the first time, she detected the innate snobbery of the family into which she had married. It was not so obvious in people like her father-in-law, Giles, with whom she had pleaded after The General ’s funeral.
    ‘ He’s set on farming, Papa Giles. Is there no way he could farm here, at Redhill? He’d be an asset.’
    Giles looked at her with cold eyes, shaking his head. ‘Bridget, my dear, there is no legal way, and,