Jack McNulty is a "temporary gentleman" - an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he's writing the story of his life: war and world travel as a soldier in World War II, an engineer, a UN observer. It's all brought him to this point and he cannot take one step further without examining all extraordinary events that he has witnessed. But the memory that weights heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan, and their tempestuous marriage. Mai was the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman whose happy life with Jack gradually eroded until she slipped from his grasp completely.