It didn’t occur to Sean McGuire, when he and Rafferty first crossed paths that the man would become a friend, much less an intricate part of his life. Rafferty, a large, affable, beefy-faced Irishman, tended bar in a small pub located on the main thoroughfare of the submarine base, HMS Dolphin. Rafferty’s smile, quick wit, and a capacity for empathy that a parish priest might covet, had over years prompted sailors to share whatever burdens they may have borne on any given day. A known and trusted civil servant, he’d over the years almost become part of the crew. He listened, commiserated, and sometimes advised. He had developed what everyone needed from time to time, a safe ear to bend.

McGuire had enlisted in the navy looking and hoping for a life with far more promise than the one he’d been born into. He didn’t believe in the adversarial outlook foisted on him by those who’d reared him. Nor did he believe that because he’d been born of an Irish womb, he would have to accept the second-class status he felt surrounded by. Worn-out tales of oppression and rebellion lost their sway to his own sense of oppression and rebellion. There was more to life, he figured, than seemingly endless, back-breaking hours of menial labor offset by a few pints in the pub while on the way home. And home to what? An unheated row house, a wife, and a swarm of snot-nosed kids who had somehow or other wormed their way into his life for no other reason than “this is the way it is”? I may have been denied any hope of an education, he thought at the time, but God didn’t deny me a working brain. Perhaps if I use it, I can be on my way to far better than what we have here.

He’d been born into a bitter-filled existence, and the navy presented what seemed like a way out. It had worked; I can smile at that stuff, he thought, remembering Uncle Wolfe’s advice when told of Sean’s decision to join.