The story of Jonny Kincaid begins with his arrival for his first day at prep school, driven by his father, Lt/Col James Kincaid, in his Brirish racing green Rover 16, in the autumn of 1952. Of the other boys in the school three feature significantly in Jonny's story. O'Brien, his cohort on the rugger field. Zsigray, whose father, Jonny later discovers, came to England before the outbreak of the Second Wordl war as part of a delegation to try and get his country on to the Allied side. With the failure of that mission Zsigray's father returned to Hungary to fight in that war and was killed on the Russian Front. And finally, and most importantly, Crowfield. A large, powerfully built boy of soft fetaures, for whom everything goes effortlessly right. Crowfield is everything Jonny is not, and vice versa. Crowfield is made Head Boy of the prep shool, Jonny doesn't reach prefect status.
James Kincaid, born into the English Officer Class, has married the Anglo Irish Kathleen O'Duinne, whose brother Brendan has bought a run-down fishing lodge in the west of County Mayo, where Jonny, with his parents and his sister, Dids (Deirdre) spend three weeks every year in the summer holidays. Brendan O'Duinne, educated in England and an Oxford law graduate, has abandoned his English connections, including a wife and two children, and embraced the Irish cause. These visits, and what he overhears of his uncle's reasons for his Irish loyalties, in discussions with James, make a considerable impression on the adolescent Jonny.
As the result of a close and affectionate relationship with his mother and sister Jony's relations with the opposite sex, whom he encounters in the highly active social life at the Royal Military Academy, Sandurst, go much more smoothly than they would for a boy with a less balanced background. Three young women enter his life. Lucy, whom he looks likely to marry, but is based in Paris, and in whose social circle Jonny re-encounters Crowfield, who is now a fast rising figure in the financial world. Csinszka, an Hungarian refugee training to be an opera singer, and Sally Patterson, his first fascination, whom he meets a Scottish dancing classes in Ireland.
With this background of relationships he leaves Sandhurst and is commisioned into his father's Line regiment, which is almost immediately posted to Aden, where British forces are engaged in the Aden Emergency. From the outset his qualities are appreciated by his senior officers, as a result of which he is detailed, with his platoon, to act as back-up to an intelligence operation in the Aden hinterland. During this operation his unit is witness to three consecutive rape attacks, at the third of which they discover the perpetrators. Jonny rifle butts the rapist and accidentally kills him, which act sparks an international intelligence backlash of an extremity that moves Jonny's adjutant to send him back to England, both for his own safety and that of his platoon.
Back in England he is confronted with the truth of his situation when an attempt is made to make him the victim of a hit-and-run driving accident. He then decides to escape to Ireland, convincing Sally Patterson to go with him, where his plan is to get his Uncle Brendan to introduce him into the IRA.
