Leon Uris (16 page)

“And you always get what you want and you want this more than anything in the world…m’lady,” Conor said coyly. “The whole thing would take on a different scant. To beat the end of the century, I’d have to put on a large crew, up to a dozen men, another master to carry out my basic plan, and myself to finish it.”

“Oh, I see you’ve been thinking about it.”

“Of course I’ve thought of it. Enough to know it’s time I leave.”

“It’s time you stay. I’ve read your poetry, as you know, I know you have misgivings about some symbolism of the screen, and I’ve taken you away from Celtic Hall. Are you afraid of living in two worlds?”

“I know what I want to be when I grow up,” Conor retorted.

“Three years here would not exactly make you an old man. You’ve all that insurrection before you. Or, are you afraid? Did you spend your bundle on the repairs?”

“Lady Caroline…”

“This restoration will make you a man of renown. You know you’ll never get another chance to work on anything like this again. If you walk out now, you’ll regret it all your life. You probably know Tijou better than he knew himself. What would poor Mozart do if future musicians balked at playing his symphonies?”

“Will you shut up for a minute, woman!” Caroline did as she was told as he blushed at his outburst. “Listen to me very carefully…please,” he said.

“I am.”

“This is a very difficult thing to express, so bear with me now. Tijou must have fallen madly in love with Ireland.
Maybe it was a woman. The church records say he was quite, quite a boy with…well…the joy stick. Perhaps he executed this in a religious fever. See, he didn’t do this in Windsor Castle…or the Vatican…it was done in a remote place in a remote country. He didn’t care if the throngs came to pay homage. He didn’t care if it wasn’t seen again. This screen was between Tijou and God. He might not fancy me trampling on his grave.”

“I think Tijou would approve—no, adore it.”

“You’re not listening to my message precisely,” Conor blurted. “Let’s see now, how to express it. Most of your great religious works and this is a religious work, are from the viewpoint of God looking down, approving or disapproving. God is challenging man. But in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it was the viewpoint of man telling God of the glory of man. This screen is man looking up to God and saying how glorious man is. It is not God looking down in judgment.”

Oh, this magic lad, Caroline said to herself as Conor paced.

“But God is a clever fellow. He does not let man imitate him on the highest level unless he finds a Beethoven or a Michelangelo and allows them to play God.”

“How does God do that, Conor?”

“In a very few people who have ever graced this earth, God has instilled the Holy Ghost in them, some for a fleeting moment, some for a Shakespearean moment. Jean Tijou was transcendent when he did this screen, knowing moments of sublime passion as well as moments of total insanity. Who the hell knows what goes on inside such a man’s head?”

“Oh, Mr. Larkin, Conor lad, I’d give half my life to bear witness to such creativity as a silent partner.”

“Your man Cezanne was one of these transcendent masters, but could he copy Renoir without flying off in his own direction?”

“Having been a model for both of them, I’d say your
analogy is ingenuous. Of course, I was a bit more lithe in those days.”

Conor’s sincere presentation was broken by their laughter. She had him on the ropes.

“You once said that a third of a ruined Tijou is worth a thousand Conor Larkins. Unfortunately, along the way you have taught me you are not only too modest, but if you aren’t Tijou’s reincarnation, you possibly may have surpassed him.”

“Oh, come now…”

“You have to capture this moment, Conor. You must follow your dream because it’s not going to happen again.”

“You’re asking me to leap off the edge of the world into the unknown.”

“Aye, have you the guts, mon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out if it drives you mad. Ride a banshee’s broomstick, howl at the wind, break glass, sniff ether, fall drunk. I’ll pick you up. But for God’s sake, realize it’s your fate to do this work.”

That was it, then, the gauntlet to the face, the ultimate challenge. “I’ve a friend coming to Derry this weekend,” Conor said quite softly. “It is not to say that I agree with him on all matters, but I don’t remember so far back when I’ve disagreed.”

The referee’s whistle sounded the end of the game, blessedly. The pitch looked like a battlefield. Conor Larkin had exhausted himself pushing his mates to catch up and overtake a decidedly inferior team from Sligo.

Facedown, Conor could scarcely move, the mud was that thick. He felt several strong arms gripping him, under him, and pulling him to his knees. As he tried to wipe the blood from his nose and unglue his eyes, he went down in the mud again under the leaping bodies of his mates in a victory wallow. The crowd rushed from the swaying stands and sidelines and raised their mucky warriors onto their shoulders.

At Nick Blaney’s public house the Bogside doctor went about patching up the lads, dousing a poteen antiseptic on their wounds as beer was poured over their heads.

Bets changed hands. The losers from Sligo, were consoled in the spirit of brotherhood, which would reign at least until the first insult was followed by the first punch, in a matter of time.

Conor proudly showed off his pal, Seamus O’Neill, now a full-fledged reporter on the
Belfast Telegraph
, an establishment newspaper. Off duty, Seamus was banging out republican essays, poetry, and trying a hand at writing plays.

This was their first get-together since Tomas Larkin got
away. As Seamus suspected, his own da, Fergus, who had worked alongside Tomas since childhood, would soon be making his departure as well.

The pain of the game began to creep through the numbness. The level of celebration had fallen to singing Irish ballads. The lads were too tired for a punch-up. Conor and Seamus slipped away.

Seamus poured hot water into Conor’s tub in the forge as he scraped half the mud in the Bogside off him, groaning as he did, then limped up to his cozy flat over the forge and flopped on the settee while Seamus took up residence by the whiskey bottle.

“Hard fought, hard fought,” Seamus said.

“They were a bunch of foul brutes. They’ve got too many goddamned Orangemen on that team. Look here, would you ever, bite marks on my leg and I’ve got one on my arse as well.”

“You’d think it was the Dublin stadium at the all-Ireland finals.”

Conor shoved some pillows under his back and one beneath his arm to elevate it tenderly. “That bottle isn’t a Christmas present.”

Seamus passed it over.

“High and mighty journalist, are you, now?”

“I can’t write anything of a republican nature in the paper. For the time being it’s weddings and funerals and I cover the Catholic side of the constabulary beat.”

“So, how goes it with the birds? Found anyone short enough for yourself?”

“Being a journalist, even an apprentice, has its privileges. I’ve always got a big bird on my arm. I like them high enough so my eyes are tit level. I tell you, Conor, it’s like I’ve gone to heaven these days. For four years the O’Neills and Belfast took turns housing and feeding me, sometimes three to a bed. Fortunately, I was short enough to be able to lie down when I had a private closet, otherwise I’d have had to sleep standing up. Can
you imagine, my very own flat with an icebox and pump in me own kitchen with the outhouse just one step outside the door. Only problem is you’ve got to keep rotating the birds, particularly the Catholic ones. Soon as you take a new one in they start rearranging things and want to dress you like a dandy, parade you into church, and Jaysus, do they have families. Anyhow, I’m going trolling in Protestant waters. I’m getting sick of all the weeping and Hail Marys, confessing. And your good self?”

“Just drifting,” Conor said.

“Miss your daddy?”

Conor shook his head and tears welled in his eyes, and the two friends were quiet for ever so long.

“I went up to Ballyutogue. Never figured my da would travel the road much further without Tomas. Fergus doesn’t say so, but it’s in his voice. He’s lonely. Sixty years, side by side, they were. Ballyutogue has fallen into real sorrow.”

And they were quiet again. Seamus nodded to the first play he had written sitting on the stand.

“The dialogue is beautiful,” Conor said, “the characters work well as themselves and with each other.”

“So, what’s the fecking problem with it?” Seamus demanded.

“Christ, runt, I’m not a bloody critic.”

“What’s the fecking problem with it?” Seamus repeated. Conor groaned as he shifted positions. Seamus’s face lit up, like when they were in the booley house in the high meadow and Conor went into a dissertation. “Almost all plays and novels start out with a hell of an idea,” Conor began.

“Aye.”

“Say that the play is a journey you’re taking and Dublin is Act One. Act Two is the middle of the journey, in the middle of the Irish Sea. That’s always the problem.”

“What problem?”

“When you left Dublin you didn’t know whether you were heading to London, Paris, or Amsterdam, so you kept going in circles and you never reached your destination because you didn’t know what the destination was when you left Dublin. Seamus, you’ve got to know your curtain line…you’ve got to set down a line from Dublin to Paris and then the play becomes logical. You might get blown off course, but when you
know
it’s Paris, you’ll get there in the end.”

“Know your curtain line, know your curtain line, know your curtain line,” Seamus berated himself. “Of course.”

“Don’t take it to heart. You’d be surprised how many novels and plays sink in the middle. Even Shakespeare had problems with it, sometimes he just upped and killed everyone on stage.”

“I should have figured it out,” Seamus said.

“What you said in Act Two, before you sunk, do you really think there’s going to be a rising against the Brits in our lifetime?”

“Aye, I’m positive about it, Conor. It’s moving out of the courts and the Parliament into an unmistakable drift. The move is toward the gun.”

“The Irish people have been subjugated for too long,” Conor said. “They accept misery. There is a revival, but it’s very slow. An old generation must pass before a new one can spark anything.”

“Maybe we’re that generation,” Seamus said.

“Did Andrew Ingram see the play?”

Seamus shook his head. “You know, I wanted me mentor to see it close to perfect. When I felt I was writing myself into a hole, I thought you’d better look it over first. When I looked up, Andrew was gone. It was a blow.”

“Terrible blow,” Conor agreed, “something deep and haunting. Something strange, like O‘Garvey’s behavior these days. Somehow Kevin and Andrew are connected. I wish I knew what it was.”

“Maybe it’s best you don’t know. It will all be dumped
on your doorstep one day. Hey, I saw Crawford from the Belfast Boilermakers watching you today. Anything up?”

“He scouts the west every year about this time. I’ve got a standing offer for a tryout.”

“Frederick Weed’s rugby team,” Seamus grunted. “Wasn’t that the Countess of Foyle’s kid with the Bogside bench?”

“Aye, we’re the only team in Ireland with a viscount as a water boy.”

“You’re getting pretty incestuous with that crowd.”

“You know why I asked you to come today?” Conor said.

“Let me guess.”

“She’s asked me to complete the great screen. Tomas and I never got around to talking about it, but he smelled it and he sent me a message from the grave via Dary. Dary told me that I was flirting with five hundred years of oil and water that could not mix. I had been in Hubble Manor long enough to see a human face on the enemy. Tomas said, tell Conor boy, don’t let his own soul fall from grace in his own eyes.”

“You’ve been in love with her since you were twelve years old. Are you telling me you two are going to keep your hands off each other for three years?”

“You don’t want to hear me!” Conor retorted angrily.

“That’s why I came, to hear you. Three years on something like the great screen requires passion,” Seamus said, “like writing three plays.”

“You went to Queens for four years to come up with a profound thought like that?”

“So, go to the manor and torment yourself. And the more comfortable you get with them, the more you’ll be tormented.”

“You call that making sense?”

“Aye, I do. You’ll be tormented because you can never forget who you are and where you came from and what you intend to do with your life. Each day with them, you’ll grow further from us and that will bloody well torment you.”

“You don’t want to hear me,” Conor said.

“I’m hearing you very well.”

“See, this has got to do with the beginning of a reconciliation.”

“With Roger Hubble?”

“Seamus, goddamnit…it’s about…about…Jean Tijou didn’t create the screen as a prison. Half of me has to do with twisting metal. That half of me is pulling me to Hubble Manor. That hot piece of metal in my hand is what my life is about now.”

“As long as the other hand is on Caroline Hubble’s ass. Suppose the great screen was in Cork and there was no Caroline Hubble?”

“Shyte!”

“Can you really separate her from the screen?”

Conor groaned the groan of the man exposed. “Maybe the screen does express the way I feel about her. Maybe the only way I’ll ever express my feeling is through the screen. I do know that an energy, a spirit has entered me—a desire, if you will, that can only be satisfied when I have done the restoration. I can’t control what is driving me. Seamus.”

“Then I approve,” Seamus answered, “and I’ll tell you what I approve of. I approve of you walking on a tightrope for three years over a boiling caldron of lust.”

“Well now,” Conor whispered, “that will take a bit of doing, won’t it.”

“Aye. And if you don’t leave each other be, you can send up half of Ulster in flames.”

The restoration now took an entirely different orientation. It was removed from the exclusive domain of Conor Larkin and Caroline Hubble. Another iron master was imported from England and a full crew was trained, much to the delight of the maids.

Grand strategy was agreed upon as well as the day-to-day tactical approach. The screen would be done in sections, the rough work by the second master and crew and then attached by block and tackle. Conor alone would work on attaching the sections and then do the finishing work.

As the right molds were found after trial and error, the crew gained confidence under the masters, and the masters gained confidence in themselves. One discovery after another fell to them. The screen grew, almost immeasurably, but in perfect harmony with the original.

The center of the screen came close to being a Larkin creation because nothing had been left of the original. Conor had not only to create but also to conform and respect.

It became apparent that Tijou had a grand presentation in mind, and the discovery of it evolved and was as important as the Clanconcardy ore.

The nave, or length, of the Long Hall faced east and west. The southern side of the hall allowed sun in east in the
morning and to west at sundown through a row of clerestory windows at the very top.

The reconstructed Long Hall was lit by four gigantic chandeliers, one at each corner in perfect symmetry. Each held ten dozen candles. Conor had the chandeliers lowered by pulley and filled with tapers then raised back into place. He sat through several nights studying the light. Something was out of kilter.

During the day an enchanting, diffused, bluish light filled the hall through the natural light coming from the clerestory windows. At night, with the candles on, the room and the screen faded. Conor cursed Tijou, the destroyer of masters! The night light glowered. The dawn light that took its place came in like ghosts through a fog. The Long Hall transformed from the nighttime might of clanking men in armor into a daylight drape of silken gauze that flowed off the deep dark paneling and pushed one’s eyes toward the screen…always the screen. It was the transformation of coming from a night dungeon to a tantalizing cloud in the sky.

Conor prowled around fifty feet above the floor on those original beams that remained. Tijou’s logic slowly came to him as he found plugged-up bolt holes. Conor reckoned that these held a number of smaller chandeliers in a curved line and at staggered heights that imitated the natural light of day.

He had his forge make up some smaller candle holders and set them on the original beams. Again, he sat through the nights. Yes, the light was now becoming more subtle.

Like most perplexing problems, it was solved by a simple solution that had been staring one in the face all the time. When Conor had done the repairs on the original part, he left the black paint and gilt alone. He now ordered it all removed down to the raw iron, leaving the final touch up to his own hand.

What emerged was the gunmetal blue of the Clanconcardy ore, giving off not only a tactile thrill but a visual one as well. All wrought iron was covered with paint and
gilt for a striking, monarchlike appearance, and to prevent rust. The paint had obviously been put on long after Tijou’s death. Tijou wanted the screen natural with some brushed-in highlight colors.

Glory! Glory! Glory! Glory!

In keeping with their agreement, Caroline and Roger let Conor have his way when he slimmed down the crew and barred entrance to the Long Hall except to his men. This exclusion included everyone in the household, including Jeremy, and the Earl and Countess themselves.

Consumed by the fervor of his secret discovery, Conor ordered more of the simple stand-in chandeliers, a fifth the size of those originally in the Long Hall, to be struck at his forge.

For the next four months, Conor worked alone during the night. By day, the best men on his crew painstakingly sanded and removed the paint with toxins. Each new day Conor had the dozen small candle holders moved a few feet here and a few inches there.

Some of the smaller chandeliers were set behind the screen at the short end of the nave so light would be coming from both directions.

The old manor house had a thing or two to gossip about now, for a madman had locked himself away for nightly werewolf prowls and he only slept in fits and jerks during the day, beard growing wild and cheeks sinking under blackened eyes. Those few who saw him said that he was altogether detached.

Roger was in Belfast when Adam delivered a note to Caroline.

And a good thing. Artisans or no, Caroline was coming to the end of her patience.

When she opened the door, all the electric lights were out and the place was bathed in the light of fifteen hundred candles from a dozen mock chandeliers staggered curiously.

“Dear God,” Caroline whispered, “dear God.”

Conor was in a niche, staring dazed and perspiring.

“Are you here, Mr. Larkin?”

“Here…see it from here…”

That was it, then. His sweat and the perfume she now always dabbed on for their late meetings drifted together. She knew what went well on her skin, and he had told her without words he wanted his evening treat. Neither knew until this instant how his sweat made her scent even sweeter.

The Long Hall was swaying in a fluttering of waves…a ship sailing on a sea of cobalt light reflecting from the screen. An irresistible force compelled her to look at the screen, up and up…man to God.

“The rough chandeliers are only temporary…. I’ll make decent ones,” he mumbled. “See how it all climbs up….”

Being Irish and a tenor of Irish inclination, Conor pumped his lungs and opened everything in a burst.

“You’re singing the new Puccini!” she cried.

“Aye! Aye! Aye!”

Their duet, such as it was, was flamed in blue velvet, loud, uncaringly loud, sadly untrained for such a moment, but they could hear nothing, feel nothing, see nothing that did not create ecstasy. And then they stood and stared gasping for air. No sound now, but their gasps. Conor started weeping and she began weeping.

Arm’s length apart, they had to hold hands. She spun away, reeling from the urge that had swept through her to throw herself on him.

“I’m so bloody tired I can barely stand up,” he said, slumping into a chair.

“You are Jean Tijou’s peer, and more,” she said, and left the room as quickly as she could.