Leon Uris (8 page)

Secret Files of Winston Churchill, Covering 1885

I recall my introduction to Ireland with utter clarity. I was twelve at the time and one is not apt to forget when he first learns he was almost born out of wedlock. I have often pondered if the lifelong strangeness and standoffishness that existed between my father and myself had anything to do with his adventures with my mother before their marriage. And, his adventures with other women after their marriage until his untimely death due to syphilis.

The trauma of learning of my “premature” arrival and my trip to Ireland came at the same time, near my twelfth birthday. Ireland was England’s quasi-bastard, and I had similar status in my own family.

Lord Randolph’s journey over the Irish Sea to Ulster fit into his relentless drive to become prime minister. My father had an issue of great urgency and popularity to be exploited; namely, he was out to stop the Irish Home Rule legislation that had been introduced into Commons by Charles Stewart Parnell and his new Irish Party.

I was to accompany him, and I suspect I was a good stage prop because the Ulster Protestant family unit was
considered a blessing, in contrast to the popular platitude that “the Catholic family unit was a curse.”

If my father could generate enough support in Ulster to turn back the Irish Home Rule Bill, he calculated it might bring about the downfall of the Gladstone government. This would put him in line for a high-ranking cabinet ministry in the new government as well as making him the leader in Commons. Thus he would be first in line to become the next prime minister.

The Orange Order, a fanatical Protestant fraternal lodge, and my father’s ally, the Unionist Party of Ulster, were there to greet us at Larne with a banner and band. We were to traverse Ulster in the private train of their leading industrialist, Sir Frederick Weed, a bluff bully of a chap but rather likable.

Onward we clickety-clacked over our loyal province…Portadown…Armagh…Dungannon…speaking to ever growing throngs of men wearing bowler hats and orange sashes, generally in a state of frenzy. It was at Lurgan that Lord Randolph pressed their nerve with the battle cry, “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.”

Our finale was a great hall in a stately home outside Londonderry belonging to the Earl of Foyle and his son Roger Hubble, the Viscount Coleraine. Londonderry was the sacred city of the Protestants, a sort of Rome, Mecca, and Jerusalem rolled into one.

On this occasion at Hubble Manor my father went beyond himself. “You gallant comrades in Western Ulster stand on the forwardmost rampart of our great imperial adventure and you must not falter. I dare you to hold these walls as your ancestors held them three centuries ago. There are two Irelands in spirit, in religion, and in reality. The Ireland which is loyal to the Crown must remain in the Empire.” And then it came…Rudyard Kipling’s latest…“Sail on, oh ship of state, sail on, oh Union great…Shall Ulster from Britain sever? By the God who made us, never!”

I shall remember this speech for gentler things. Roger
Hubble was also the son-in-law of Sir Frederick Weed, having recently married his daughter, Caroline. Even at my young age, standing in short trousers and school cap, I felt my first understanding of male passion. I had never seen so exquisite a woman.

For myself, at the age of twelve, I was privy, for the first time, to the private dialogue and strategies of men of great influence. Hearing my father’s words and watching their effect upon the crowd…playing with cadence and key phrases was a lesson long remembered.

This was my introduction to the private and public use of power.

Although I loved my father, we spent little time together. This trip to Ulster, where he played his famous “Orange card” was to be our longest visit. He was a strange and erratic aristocrat, driven to seek power. Most of the other times we shared as father and son were strange, yes bizarre, little tours through the fleshpots of London where he seemed to receive deviant thrills watching freak shows, many of weird sexual content.

On our overnight trip from Belfast back to England he felt a strong desire to come to my cabin and explain to me the meaning of Ireland in the life of England. I was playing with my box of toy soldiers, which always accompanied me, setting up a tactical exercise while Lord Randolph was in his usual posture of finishing up his whiskey.

“The English people has made its mark on mankind as a great people. Through exploration, conquest, the plantation of loyal subjects in our colonies, trade and spreading our cultural benefits and legal superiority have made us the greatest nation in mankind’s history.”

There was nothing there to disagree with at the age of twelve.

“England is an island,” he continued, “and in order to maintain our greatness we are dependent on our seafaring power, both commercially and militarily. Our sea lanes are our blood lines.”

He asked me if I understood, and when put the way he stated it, it was quite clear to me.

“Ireland is a mass of destitute rocks. Its only importance is vis-à-vis England. Well then, we cannot allow a smaller or lesser people to threaten our position in the world.

“Winston,” he said, turning blunt, “the Irish are a backward people with no right to deny England its destiny. It is England’s right and England’s duty to protect England’s vital interests and thus, we must govern Ireland to protect ourselves.”

He went on to say that the planting of a population loyal to the Crown in Ulster protected the Crown’s interests.

Never failing to arouse himself on the subject, even after some fifty speeches over the Province of Ulster, he came to his feet.

“What we are dealing with is the fact that the Irish are hostile people who have rejected all overtures to unite with us, as have the Scots and Welsh. Ireland’s only purpose for self-government is to bring disaster on us, and we cannot permit that to happen.”

The rough sea sent my father back to his couch, emptying his bottle and mumbling a comment about Countess Caroline Hubble’s bosom.

I returned to my toy soldiers, sharing my father’s thoughts.

A lesser girl than Atty would have taken Jack Murphy’s emigration as a personal rebuff. Atty refused to be humiliated. She came to her decisions only after great consideration and pondering. Once she made them, they remained fast. Her emotions, shaped by her own truths, were set in concrete.

Atty made two life decisions by the age of sixteen. She hated the injustice of the British rule and she loved Jack Murphy. Both decisions were logical to her and both inseparable.

Jack’s departure was soothed somewhat by kindly letters from rare and exotic surrounding places…Tampico…Bora Bora…Christchurch…Monrovia…Montevideo.

“I do love you, Atty,” Jack Murphy wrote, “but not in the mating way. Even if I had the right to love you with physical passion in mind, it still might not be possible. Too many things we came into the world with have frayed our tapestry from the beginning. We might as well have been born, you in India and me in Argentina, there are so many differences between us.

“To be utterly honest, there is you, Atty, who is the real difference. You are so soft and beautiful to look upon, yet so hard and frightening to know. You are bitter, Atty, determined to throw your life into changing an unchangeable
world. The odds you have placed on reaching your goals are insurmountable. While I adore your courage and determination, I don’t adore my own that much. I know I could never be a proper partner for you in such a venture. I seek much less from life. You are too strong for me, Atty, and I dare say you are too strong for almost any man, for he must be willing to subvert himself to your insatiable drive.

“Only myself sees that inner rage in you now, but soon all of Ireland will know about it. Nae, all the world. Do I make any sense to you at all? Now I close as I opened this letter. I love you, but not in that way.”

Was Jack Murphy too weak for her or simply too wise? He knew her truths and said he could not match them. It was an elegant rebuff. He called himself a quitter. Nonetheless, Atty felt anger with her pain. Why couldn’t Jack hold up? Or was it all just his way of saying he didn’t really love her?

After her seventeenth birthday, Atty announced to her parents that she was not returning to London for further schooling but was off to Dublin instead.

“Is this an advisement or a consultation?” her father asked.

“I’ve made my decision, Father. Seek whatever justifications you need.”

There was no call going into all that trash about disinheriting her, Charles Royce-Moore wisely concluded. It was a small miracle he was able to keep her close for seventeen years. “I suppose,” he said, “that you are intent on joining this Gaelic mutiny going on in Dublin.”

“I’m not all that certain.”

“Well, since Parnell,” he said, trying to manage not to make a mock spit, “the clans have been gathering to run the Anglo rascals out with a new birth of ancient Celtic tribalism. Gaelic sports, Gaelic literature, and all those bloody newspaper articles—how in the name of the Almighty did this one little place sprout so many writers? They’re like mushrooms growing wild near a moldy swamp.”

“Perhaps it is because you have made Ireland a moldy swamp,” she answered.

“Can we negotiate?” her father said candidly.

“One does not negotiate with the English without getting buggered,” she replied, only half joking.

“I’ve watched you wander among the lepers for years,” he said. “I’ve had my moments of great consternation. More than once I’ve asked myself, what the hell are we doing here? Well, I was born here. My estate is out there. Things have been done a certain way for centuries and despite a pang of conscience now and then, I have always known I could not change things.”

“That’s a very pleasant line of justification for picking the Irish carcass clean in a most hideous way. Your class—”

“Our class, Atty.”

“Your class,” she continued, “has reduced these people to the most destitute in Western civilization. Their larder is empty,” she said.

“That’s a fact. The time of the estates is coming to an end. Although it is all beyond my reach, there must be a supplanting of new ideas, the kind that you are up to. Look here, my velvet collar has turned shiny. I’m not going to keep up the pretense, and I know you won’t, either. This is a shabby place, growing shabbier.”

“I will say, Father, that you have been better than some.”

“I shall not turn against my class, Atty. The radical goings-on in Dublin are beyond me, yet I see a time coming when we will completely fade from the landscape. I suggest there will be very few Irish tears shed for us when we leave. Now, do you want to listen to my proposition or not?”

Atty loved her father almost as much as she despised his class. Is it more evil to be aware of his evil and not do anything about it? Most of his goodfellows accepted the fortunate circumstances of their inheritances without a ha’penny of guilt. Sneering down on the inferior croppy Irish justified the exploitation. At least her father did not do that.

“Here is my proposal. As you know by your study of the estate books, I have transferred a decent sum to London to see out your mother’s and my days. I am quite provincial myself and am actually very fond of Ireland. Yet, I cannot bear the thought of doing my declining years in a townhouse in Dublin. Dublin is seedy. A few stone facades scarcely cover a shantytown soggy with all those pubs and their bad poets. I am going to retire to the comfort of London. You have my major sins on the table—my class loyalty, my inability to change the world.

“The estate is in rather decent order,” he continued. “Murphy and my land agents have done an admirable job in the framework in which they’ve been allowed to operate. We have tried not to inflict too much more pain on our tenants. I have set aside a tidy little trust for you to conclude your education, which you now reject. So, go to Dublin and use this money to keep yourself. All I ask is that you indulge your mother now and then and let her give a few parties a year so you can examine and guillotine her newest collection of eligible suitors.”

“No, Daddy, you want more. Now what is it?”

“Atty, for seventeen you are a monster. All right, then. By the time you reach your twenty-first birthday, the barony will be yours whether I survive or not. You have to promise me that you’ll keep things in balance with Murphy. Once Mother and I die, you can do with it what you will.”

“Why the wait, Father?”

“I want to live in London as a retired member of the gentry and not as some sort of traitor.”

Atty’s answer would be quick—in five years she would be able to make of Lough Clara what she had dreamed of doing since she was a child.

“Meanwhile, join the bloody rising,” he finished.

“I agree, Father. Lough Clara will still bear the family crest until you and Mother die. I hope that won’t be for a long time. But understand what I’m doing in Dublin.”

“Oh hell, we all know that. You see, Atty, I have known all along what I am and cannot be otherwise or even pretend to be otherwise. The potato famine turned me into a lump instead of a crusader. I was happy when I was called off to do my naval duty and did not want to return to Lough Clara. But I did, and I did nothing new or stunning, only what was expected of me. I am an Englishman and all that implies, good and bad. I’ll stand aside for you. Let me have my dignity.”

Tender kisses from Atty had been hard to come by. He treasured this one.

“And now, willful, wonderful, wise, angry Atty, allow me to offer you one piece of advice.”

“Of course, Father.”

“Forget about Jack Murphy.”

“I can’t and I won’t.”

“You’re far too strong for him. Forgive me for saying this, Atty, but you’re far too strong for any man I’ve met. But Jack Murphy will not be ground under and unless you can reach an accommodation with him, as you just have with me, then you
will
grind him under.”

“And if he doesn’t come back? No one else will have me?”

“No one else can hold you, Atty. Unless…and I find this highly unlikely…you fall in love so desperately that you completely lose yourself.”

“What do you believe?”

“I told you. Find an accommodation with Jack or someone, a way you can live together without great passion or great desire to destroy each other. You see, my girl, the man who can make my Atty lose herself does not exist. Be British in this instance. Make an accommodation.”