Leon Uris (17 page)

Strange, high-strung days and restless nights followed the completion of the great screen for Conor in the Bogside and her ladyship at the manor. It would seem natural enough to be tossed around after a sudden halt to an intense routine of three years’ running.

Caroline, always a pleasant person and mistress, became snappish. She wisely announced to Roger that she was exhausted and shouted herself to a few weeks with her father, who was roistering about in Monte Carlo.

Conor’s return to the republican movement at Celtic Hall and a waiting assortment of ladies found both causes lacking. In the mellow light of his flat he scanned his books for words of comfort, but he knew the cause of his ailment. He was drained, done in, not only from his accomplishment but from the restraint he had exercised for a thousand and one days of seeing Caroline’s skin and the flow of her lines and her hair and the scent of her and her voice, which had mastered an art with him of speaking in double meanings.

At his forge he banged out on the anvil mistakes he wouldn’t allow an apprentice boy to make. On the football pitch he was no longer a terror. His concentration was shredded.

After a second month Conor received a hand-delivered note requesting him to make an appointment to come to the manor and look over the screen. Some touching up, of a minor nature, seemed in order.

The doors of the Long Hall were opened. They entered into a place that now owned a luxurious aura belonging to mighty creations. The lacework of iron burst softly, striking them silent.

“Did I really do that?” he said at last.

“Surely you must miss it terribly.”

“Like an amputation. I have gained serious respect for the writer who works three years on a novel.”

“I should have realized what a loss this would be. Consider that you have visitation rights whenever you wish.”

“I didn’t count on being so exhausted. There are bums pushing me all over the football field.”

Conor went over the touch-up work. “Bloody dampness in Ulster,” he mumbled, “but it should last a few centuries….”

“Barring insurrection,” she said.

“I’m going to train a couple of your people to keep its sheen, and especially how to rub out any rust spots. I’ll also put it on a regular inspection schedule. The weight is going to make shifts, what with the moisture, bolts, and all the interwoven faces, the parts. They all have to learn to live together.”

“I’m having the same problem,” Caroline said. “That is, the routine here has changed so drastically.”

“Mine as well.”

“Conor, Sir Frederick repeated the offer he made to you, through me. He is absolutely convinced he should be your patron. He likes the idea of being a Medici. He has some commissions in mind and God knows Belfast could use your sort of work. He is also laying hulls for super transatlantic passenger ships and thinks you could do wonders for the grand rooms.”

“Long time ago, when I left Ballyutogue, I had thoughts of becoming a rover for a while. Somehow now it has become difficult for me to see beyond Derry.”

“There’s another reason,” she said.

“Now what would that be?”

“As you know he owns the Boilermakers. He’s had scouts at your games. They all think you’d make a great player.”

Conor smiled and shrugged. There they go, taking you over, he thought. Some guilt about having neglected his people in Bogside had rushed in. In fact, he had seen Dary and blurted out that he felt very ashamed of himself.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking, ‘I’m not your house paddy.’”

“Where’s Jeremy lad?” Conor turned the conversation. “He wasn’t at practice last week. I thought I’d bring the news myself. He’s made the Bogside junior team.”

“You’re joshing?”

“He’s fast, very fast, and he loves crashing into people.”

“That will shake the old house down to the timbers.” She laughed. “Jeremy is in Kinsale with his father and Christopher doing a spot of sailing and shark fishing.”

“Lucky lad.”

“He detests both sports, but you know, the old father and son, stiff-upper-lip stuff. He really misses you, Conor. Your hand on his shoulder is one of the most powerful things that has happened to him.”

“We’ll remain good friends. He’s a very open chap.”

“Unlike Christopher and Lord Hubble. Jeremy will never run Weed Ship & Iron. Christopher is tailor-made for that job. Jeremy will be a ceremonial earl under tight supervision, he’s too friendly, too plain, you know. Roger always thought that I had Jeremy to make my father happy,” Caroline said sharply.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’ve become my dear friend and I don’t want my son to lose you.”

“We could end up hurting each other, you know.”

“Well, that’s the risk we’ve got to start taking if we’re ever going to get things turned around in this crazy province. You have his respect and affection. If the two of you can’t be friends, who can?”

With all the republican teachings that had crowded his
years, Conor rarely heard of, and believed less, that the ascendancy would ever make an accommodation. Yet he had with Caroline and Jeremy. Was this another door to open…or was it a way to be eased into their system? Surely Caroline meant well, but would it stand with Roger Hubble and his class?

“There was another reason I asked you here today,” Caroline went on. “I’ve a small job I want you to look into. We’ve a lodge up in the Urris hills, about an hour’s horseback ride.”

“Oh, I know that place, from afar. When I was a lad pasturing the sheep in the summer in the high meadows, my pal Seamus and I could see the lodge.”

“I need some guards on the windows and a sturdier gate and fence. Are you up for a ride?”

Conor galloped behind her playing out the boyhood dream. She rode well, at first. Not up to the top ladies of her class, but decently. The looseness of her blouse and streaming hair and riding astride instead of sidesaddle began to add up to a presence. As they pored through woods and over the stream, she opened up.

The wild side of Caroline burst out! This was the hidden Caroline breaking the restraints. Conor refused to listen to his own warning bells. The call of the siren enveloped him as he opened the reins on his mount.

The lodge was small but perfected, with the elegance of an earldom stamped all over it. Once inside, Conor realized this was Caroline’s private domain. The stuffed animal heads were gone in a transition from a man’s place for killing deer to a sensual affair.

Caroline knew she was a small matter as artists went, but here she could get rid of her frustration. Her paintings followed bad lines but burst forth with unmistakable erotica. A tidy but well-chosen library spoke of gods making love and men and women imitating the gods in all
sorts of ways. The room was softened by silk and the floor was laid with beckoning fur.

Conor became a bit nervous as his eyes played over the room. There had never been whispers of any kind about Caroline engaging in nefarious trysts or infidelity. This place was wild. Conor was not the only one who knew how to play with light and shadows. Certainly she had brought her husband here, and it suddenly disturbed him.

“Now, would you be wanting these windows barred to keep poachers out of here or to lock them in?”

“I have forbidden hunting within sight and sound of this lodge. As for the salmon, I don’t care if the poachers steal the streams dry. I want to be left alone here and be as totally made as you were three months ago. Yes, Roger comes here and sometimes we find lightning for an instant, but I always leave, wanting. Any questions?”

“I was very proud of myself the day I left Hubble Manor,” Conor said. “I thought I had come through this free. I had practiced the restraint of a saint. But I climb the steps to my loft, turn down the lamp each night, and grip the bars of my headboard and shake. I’m still a prisoner as I have been since I was twelve. This past two months have been worse than the twelve years put together. And these last three years I must have been soothed by the mere sight of you.”

“Well, croppy boy, you need wait no longer.”

They fit into each other’s arms as though their bodies had been molded in a master’s workshop, to perfection, and he held her like a precious bird, not to crush her and not to let her go. They rocked gently and rocked and sighed and sighed more deeply and held a bit tighter.

“Tuesdays,” she said, “you always worked late. I knew you would be alone at night and I would wait all day with my heart in my mouth till your crew left, then I’d slip out on the balcony and watch you wash up and put your shirt back on.”

“I knew you were watching,” he said.

“I knew you knew, and you took your time.”

All of the fierceness came out in the most gentle kisses
and exploration. Their hunger was vast and had to be fed slowly. Conor’s arms were the steel and the velvet of the screen, power and tenderness. He was not the self-adoring Roman or self-flagellating Parisian. Conor Larkin was all new.

He was mysterious Ireland, so wanting and so needful of compassion. But this laid did not smother it in drink. He let it go in the sweet misty words of his poetry, the poems she had never seen.

They slipped into an easy melting and molding and tasted and teased.

Come, on croppy lad, I’ve a few things of my own to show you…and I’m going to…

She backed off.

Come and get it, she thought…slowly…to the brink…

She turned away, walked till the fireplace halted her, faced him and took her blouse apart, laying her breasts open for him to gaze upon. They were still gorgeous, almost like those of a young lass.

Now, take them, Conor, no gift will ever be so glorious…just reach…just take them now…they are pleading for your touch, Conor.

“We’ve been on fire from the moment you first stepped into my forge. I’m clear faint with passion, Caroline. We shouldn’t have willed this to happen.”

“I don’t want to hear any bloody Catholic guilt now!” She took his hands and placed them on her. His thumbs and forefingers whispered over her nipples and they burst out…and he slipped down and tasted them as though they were the most precious of breasts, like from a perfect statue.

An exquisite nip shot sensation through her, which she felt in her teeth and down to her thighs. Now, it was her hand, curious and skilled, finding him and they tugged each other’s hair and bit each other’s knuckles….

“Oh you’re something, lad,” she gasped, “I mean, you’re something.” He was trying to break loose softly, get back
from her. “No, no, no, no…” Her fingernails played down his back, striking him defenseless. She split his shirt open and her mouth licked the beautiful muscles of his neck and shoulders.

Conor sank to his knees….

Caroline loosened her grasp and hovered above him. “All right, Conor boy, go if you can. You’ve your princess now…feel me…I’m wet all over…. I’m bursting inside over and over and over just from the sight and the touch of you.”

Conor doubled over and shook. “What do you want from me, God!” he screamed.

Caroline fell to her knees before him, took his hands away from his eyes. He reached out softly and tried to close her blouse.

“You’re afraid!”

“I have little to lose, Caroline, but I’m afraid of the havoc we’ll wreak. If we cross this line we’re on a one-way path to hell. If it were you and me alone, I’d cross it. This could end up killing hundreds of people we don’t even know. What about your sons? Your father?”

“I don’t care what happens!”

“All we can be is in each other’s spirits, Caroline. See, the pity of us is that we are utterly star-crossed.”

“The most intense experiences of my life have been the births of my sons. I have had that intensity for you, just looking at you for three years. We’re not the first man and woman who have risked. To hell with what happens. I want you, man!”

“And you get everything you want!”

Caroline came to her feet. “Do I? Do I now? Do you believe my father’s arrangement with Roger and fourteen years of fidelity is what I wanted? Do you think that being the clay queen of the west is what I want? Oh yes, they let me play with my drapes and banquets and concerts to keep their dirty alliance alive, and I carry disgust deep in me for doing their bidding. Once, Conor…now…now…”

“You’re selfish, Caroline. It’s a lie that will never go away.”

“Conor.”

“Don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

The lust had been scarred, tempered, and confusion and futility had set in. Conor made to the couch and slumped down, and she went to her knees and rested her head on his lap. He stroked her hair sweetly.

“This is more my fault than yours,” he said. “I wanted you to fall madly in love with me for all the wrong reasons. To inflict the most heinous pain on Roger Hubble and all his breed. But you see, Caroline, I failed because I have fallen desperately in love with you. Look up at me.”

She managed to.

“Funny part of it,” she whispered, “all I would have to do is throw a tantrum, only to establish I could get what I wanted, not that I particularly wanted it. You are the only man I’ve ever really wanted.”

“Thank God fantasy is perfection. Fantasy is pure. Reality between you and me spells disaster.”

As Conor stood and snapped his toolbox closed, she stood as well, unsnapped her skirt and made herself naked, then sank into a deep rug covered with silk pillows, beckoning him with her body. He looked upon her, this once, so it would be with him all his life, then he knelt beside her once more.

“It’s wrong,” he said firmly and covered her with a lap robe.

Caroline’s hand grabbed his arm.

“Conor,” she implored.

Firmly, surely, Conor released her grip.

“Get out, croppy boy!” she cried slapping his face and burying herself in the pillows.

He backed away and reached for the door.

“Conor!” she cried. “Don’t go!”

Caroline heard the door shut softly and looked up. He had left.

“Conor,” her voice screamed after him, “come back! Do you hear me! Conor! Damn you! Come back!”

In full pregnancy Atty Fitzpatrick was as close to depicting “Mother Ireland” as a mortal could be. Carrying children in her womb and bearing them proved much simpler than juggling them on her hip at rallies, or rocking the cradle with the left hand while holding a script to read in the right.

Their first child, Theobald, was followed in eighteen months by Rachael. They were the “royal” republican family.

Ireland would never be at a loss of an issue to contend so long as a British soldier remained on her soil. The caseload for Desmond was full, but legal fees for republican causes were scarce to nonexistent. However, Des seemed oblivious of the necessity to collect them. It was up to Atty’s acting and inherited income to keep the family larder full.

In those days he worked desperately to keep the Irish Party from going under after the crucifixion of Charles Stewart Parnell by political enemies, aided full-out by the Irish bishops. Parnell had the temerity to live with and have children by his beloved, Kitty O’She a, who was unable to divorce her perfidious husband.

He continued to struggle for an Irish Home Rule bill that would liberate the country, even partly. Des was one of the forces behind the Irish Party’s boycott of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

*  *  *

The Irish affront to the old queen, who still slept under the painting of her late husband and had his clothing laid out thirty-five years after his death, should have sounded a sobering note in England. The message was apparent. England’s first colony was neither integrated nor pacified after more than three centuries of occupation, hundreds of subversion laws, forced acts of union with the home island, a famine, and harsh measures reserved solely for the Irish.

Far from Ireland another, greater warning shot was fired, in the Transvaal of South Africa. Cecil Rhodes was the epitome of imperial man. In a bald-faced snatch at the Transvaal’s gold fields, he tried to incorporate two territories inhabited by Dutch Boers into a now-accepted “union” with Great Britain. It was resisted by Boer arms.

The British woke up to the realization that they had not engaged a modern army in nearly a century, since Napoleon, and were compelled to call in units from all over the empire until they had amassed a half-million men.

Although the Boer field army was a fraction of the size of the British force, their hit-and-run and ambush tactics compelled Lord Kitchener to subdue them in a most brutal manner, applying scorched earth tactics. He ordered massive numbers of Boers, mostly women and children, into what he termed “concentration camps,” where conditions were so deplorable that tens of thousands died of hunger and disease.

In Ireland, the plight of the Boers brought on vivid memories of the potato famine. In Dublin, Atty Fitzpatrick headed the country’s anti-British Transvaal Committee.

Although fine old Irish imperial brigades fought for the Crown, there were the usual bond of Irish volunteers on the other side.

Atty’s journalist pal Seamus O’Neill went to the Transvaal, writing for a world press association of Irish weeklies and magazines. He gained great note when he
exposed the horrors of the Bloomfontein concentration camp.

Then Atty got unexpected news when another pregnancy announced itself. She would be one hip short to juggle her family on. Theo and Rachael carried placards as soon as they were able to walk, and their first words were not of Ma and Dad, but of Irish martyrs. It had worked well enough until Emma made her appearance.

Three wanes notwithstanding, it was not time for Atty to slow down because the Gaelic revival was in full bloom, having the new cause of the Boers to espouse.
Words
, the most dynamic, penetrating, sarcastic, and damning of all Irish weapons, rained from her stages, leapt from her occasional columns and from the speakers’ stands in torch-lit rallies.

As the British added the Transvaal to their empire, returning Irishmen reignited Ireland’s own struggle with the British.

A journalist named Arthur Griffith formed a new and aggressive political party called Sinn Fein, meaning “Ourselves Alone,” a first political step in disclaiming the inept Irish Party. They made their rallying cry, “HOME RULE!”

Desmond Fitzpatrick and the legal battle had been the first prong of the Irish assault. Arthur Griffith and the Sinn Fein Party became the second prong.

The third prong, armed insurrection, arrived in the form of Long Dan Sweeney being slipped back into the country. He was a minor folk hero, a relic of the disastrous Fenian risings and resident of a half-dozen British prisons, where he underwent every sort of humiliation.

Sweeney had worked the world wherever a handful of Irishmen of fighting persuasion would gather. He kept the fires of rebellion fanned, dim though they were. He was the bare bones of the eternal revolutionary, created of acid. He was sloganless and loveless. He had been denounced by the church but a crucifix always hung above the cot where he rested for the night.

With the courts already in battle with the British, the political WORD and the rebel’s GUN had come back to Ireland in the form of Arthur Griffith and Long Dan Sweeney.

Into this scene Seamus O’Neill made his reentry with a fine reputation from the Boer War. He was immediately employed by the
Dublin Journal
, a large daily paper tilting toward the republican point of view but most interested in handicapping the horses.

Seamus took a flat at the edge of the Liberties with the Guinness Brewery on one side and the governing Dublin Castle on the other. He was an immediate and welcome addition to the revival, and Des and Atty Fitzpatrick picked up on the earlier contact they had established with him through the Transvaal Committee.

Sure, Seamus O’Neill out of Ballyutogue, a rare Catholic educated on scholarship at Queens College, a war journalist hero and a swordsman with words, was soon a real Dublin dandy.

In addition to covering his beat for the
Journal
he poured out essays for Irish-American papers and periodicals and served notice to Atty Fitzpatrick that a play was in the writing.

Seamus O’Neill, man about town at the pubs, the track, and the theatre, lived another life. As soon as he was able he made contact with Long Dan Sweeney and became a secret member of the illegal Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Desmond came into the dining room for a quick hello to the family, then retreated up to the library with his plate. This was par for the course at the Fitzpatricks’. Atty gave the children an extra half-hour, then sent them up to have a good-night tussle with Des, then joined him, thankful the theatre was dark tonight.

It was not always quite so hectic. Both parents made the effort to give their children companionship and comfort. They had set up a program of reading and discussing events to create a closeness.

By the age of twelve Theobald was already doing apprentice clerking for his father, able to pick his way through the law library.

Rachael played through her childhood using her sister, Emma, as her live doll and found rich hours in her mother’s theatrical wardrobe. She showed little inclination for much other than being a little girl who enjoyed being a little girl.

They were well behaved and moved in a crowd of adults with ease in the salons of discussion, debates, and poetry readings.

Supreme times were the family trips to Lough Clara, and one was always on the schedule up ahead. Horseback riding with Mom and fishing with Daddy and getting to know each other again about the fire.

When Des came in pressed as he did this night, the children always feared a sudden cancellation of the journey to Lough Clara. Theo went up to the library and stoked the turf for them. Things seemed iffy these days. Theo could tell by the radiation of tension, the quickening of their speech, and the short duration of their toleration that something was amiss.

When Rachael led the children in, their parents gave them perfunctory kisses as Des gobbled down the contents of his plate and punctuated it with a strong shot of whiskey.

“Are we calling off next week’s trip to Lough Clara?” Theo asked at the door.

“It’s still on with me,” Des said to his son’s relief.

“We’ll go,” Atty assured.

When the door shut, they slowed obvious tension with another clout from the bottle.

“Will your trial spill over into our holiday time?”

“Oh, the mood around the Four Courts seems to be conciliatory these days. The second reading of the Home
Rule Bill is ready for Commons. They always get polite. I suspect a deal might be in the making.” Des took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was done in.

“You really need the time in Lough Clara,” she said. “If the trial goes long we’ll just pull the children out of school and bring a tutor with us.”

“That might be a little difficult for Emma,” Des said. “She’s just getting her teeth into school.”

“It’s never been a problem in the past,” Atty answered. “Theo and Rachael are the smartest kids in Dublin.”

Des looked at the bundle of briefs confronting him.

Atty looked grim.

“What’s up?” he asked directly.

“I saw Seamus O’Neill today,” she said.

“How’s his play coming?”

“It wasn’t about the play.”

“So is it you, not me, reneging on Lough Clara?”

“Damn you, Des, let me work up to it in my own way.” His undivided attention had been attained.

“Des, would it be dreadful if you took the kids with a nanny and tutor? Maybe I can join you for a long weekend.”

“I don’t like it and the children won’t like it.”

“Obviously, I don’t like it, either. There is something here in Dublin that has to have a decision.”

“Aye?”

“Seamus O’Neill has become the personal liaison of Arthur Griffith on some supersensitive Sinn Fein matters.”

“Isn’t Arthur speaking to his friends anymore?”

“On certain particular matters, he feels that a liaison would be a better procedure.”

Des smelled it immediately. “The Irish Republican Brotherhood, perchance?”

“Yes, the IRB.”

“So it’s true that Long Dan Sweeney is back in Ireland?”

“Yes. Obviously Arthur and Sinn Fein cannot be openly involved with an illegal organization, but he must have day-to-day contact with them.”

Des understood full well.

“Sinn Fein and the Brotherhood must coordinate basic policy very quietly. Seamus O’Neill is on the Brotherhood’s Supreme Council. He will be the go-between between Arthur and Dan Sweeney.”

Des knew where Atty was taking this and he was leery. As the Brotherhood went into business, the inner circle had to be tight…reliable…ultra-careful or they would be squashed by the British before they got their feet wet.

“The Brotherhood feels it learned a lot from the Boer tactics and that a new kind of urban warfare can be devised so that a few dozen well-placed men can force the Brits to tie up hundreds, if not thousands of troops.”

“Shyte, Atty, that’s republican barroom bravado.”

“Dan Sweeney says that a city has too many vulnerable sites unless they’re heavily guarded…docks, government buildings, electric stations, bridges…and mostly, his squads have a hundred and one homes to ditch their weapons and hide in.”

“How much of the population will support this?”

“Enough.”

“Well, if anyone can bring it off, Sweeney is the man.”

“I believe so, too,” Atty said. “With the momentum the revival is building up in the courts, through Sinn Fein, by well-trained lads coming out of the Boer War, the Brotherhood can advance its own timetable.”

“Now, you’re off. Where are the IRB going to find weapons? Where will men be trained?”

“Lord Louis,” she said, referring to an eccentric aristocrat of republican leanings, “has opened part of his barony for training. As you know, it’s so deeply hidden in the bens of Connemara that the wind has trouble finding its way in and out.”

“Well, I’ll be damned, I thought Louis de Lacy was no more than a salon dilettante.”

“Des, there are two thousand misplaced Boer War rifles
ditched in a coal mine near Bradford. Sweeney is formulating a plan to get them to Ireland.”

“Mother of God. Are you joshing me, Atty?”

“Two thousand rifles from the Boer War, picked clean.”

“Care to tell me what Messrs. Sweeney, O’Neill, and Griffith have in mind for my child bride?”

“Both Arthur and Long Dan want me to join the Brotherhood as a member of the Supreme Council.”

“Well, now, this calls for a drink.”

Des’s mind hummed. Ultimately there would have to be warfare against the British. Long Dan Sweeney was certainly the man to put the Brotherhood back on its feet. Arthur Griffith had to coordinate closely but never allow the legal Sinn Fein to be caught in bed with the illegal Brotherhood. Seamus O’Neill was the perfect liaison….

And then came the painful part of his logic. Atty Fitzpatrick on the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood was no less than a stroke of genius.

“What do you want me to say?” Des asked with unusual weakness. “What I’ve been doing in the legal field and with legislation and what all the orators and writers have been doing has been child’s play, fun and games. No one really gets hurt. Ah, but the Brotherhood. The time has come, dear Ireland, to start spilling a bit of blood. What shall I say? My wife’s role in all the rhetoric ends with a curtain call at the Mechanics’ Theatre? It’s been a blast, lads, but not with my wife, you don’t. What arguments would you like to hear from me, Atty? We’ve shyte on our kids enough without having Mom swing from the gallows. Please, give me an argument to present.”

“Christ, Des, you are trying to make me feel treacherous.”

“When is enough, enough? Haven’t we given enough to the movement without this?”

“Then say no.”

“I’d rather give you plain unadulterated family reasons to back off.”

“I never took you for a paper tiger, Des.”

“Stop that. Trouble with us Irish is that we are too damned intoxicated by the way we’ve hit this century running. But this will be no Boer War. Those British bastards have owned us for seven centuries, and it won’t be the first time we’ve tried to settle it with a fight. Every time we’ve staged a rising it’s ended up in a disaster. What makes you think this will be any different? This country is infested with fanatical Englishmen and even more infested with lily-livered paddies who will continue to do the dirty bidding for the Brits at the drop of a quid and a government job.”