Leon Uris (28 page)

The house descended into a sadness, yet with a feeling that something majestic had come to them along with tragedy. A surge of wonderment and a sense of dignity as strong as their fears of death.

When only Shelley and Atty were left in the study they sat silently, held hands, and lowered the level of the whiskey bottle.

“I’m leaving for Belfast tomorrow,” Shelley said, breaking the silence.

“Please,” Atty said, “I need you, Shelley.”

“My father needs me more,” she said. “He’s called for me. He wants me. My place is beside him now. We have to make our peace with each other.”

“What’s happening?”

“Robin phoned. Morgan’s back is broken. He’s in excruciating pain…just keeps calling for me.”

“You’ll let us give you protection?”

“Aye, for certain. Robin will be with me a great deal of the time. He’s a very tough lad. Hey now, the MacLeods are not a weak family or strangers to each other.”

“Aren’t you frightened?”

“Of course I am,” Shelley said. “So was Conor. If our lives have any meaning at all, there are some things we can’t back away from. Who am I telling that to anyhow,
Atty Fitzpatrick? You told me how terrible your fears were in joining the Brotherhood, but it didn’t delay you for five minutes, did it?”

“Take the later afternoon train, Shelley. I need to spend the morning making some safe arrangements for you.”

“I plan to. I have to be up early and say good-bye to Rachael and Theo before they’re off to school.”

“Theo may die of a broken heart,” Atty said.

“Rachael is your power,” Shelley said.

“You see that, now? She’s been taking care of me for years. Seems like with this avocation of ours, we all come to a hard dead end. What should I do about those kids?”

“No different than you’re doing now. They’ll come to their own decisions. No matter how you try to lead them, they’ll do as they damned please.”

“Like you?”

“Aye. Robin followed his dad. I did as I pleased. Dublin’s a good old place. I like it here. I plan on coming back when I’ve gotten my dad through this.”

“Please come back,” Atty said, breaking again. She got up and rushed from the room.

Shelley took a last look about the grand old study, so warm to know and share with the only truly close friend she had had in her life. As she closed the door behind her she could hear faint sobs from Atty’s room. The door gave way. As she sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Atty’s hair, Atty made no attempt to stifle her tears, but accepted Shelley’s stroking in rhythm with them.

There were unspoken conversations between the two of them. Shelley did not think it fair to tempt Atty by telling her of the depth of her love for Conor or of their moments together. It would have been so unfair, for Atty loved him obviously and profoundly. There were times Shelley had shared little things with Seamus, but that was different.

Now came words unspoken so loudly, they did not have to be said but went from fiber of being to fiber of being.

“Slide over, old girl,” Shelley said, then lay alongside Atty, turned her over and held her in her arms as though she were a little child…. “If I don’t come back,” Shelley didn’t say, “I know you’ll take care of him and that makes me glad.”

Jeremy was always called to the opulent manor library to be dressed down by his father. In that vaunted room with thousands of leathered volumes glaring down, the great decisions of the earldom had been made.

It was here that Jeremy’s grandfather, Morris, the “Famine Earl,” signed more eviction notices than any landlord in Ireland. It was a fitting setting for Roger to unload his cynical, biting, understated scorn on his son.

The venue, this time, had deliberately been changed to Dublin, away from Caroline’s eyes and protection. The cast in Jeremy’s parlor had greatly enlarged to include Brigadier Maxwell Swan who always gave the lad the willies. His younger brother, Christopher, had come over from Oxford. One of Swan’s detectives, W. W. Herd, stood sallowly in the shadows.

Jeremy squirmed as Roger paced, lifted the report, and leafed through it for the twentieth time. “Now again,” Roger said, “we see that you are not to be trusted, Jeremy. You dismissed your manservant, Donaldson, whom I assigned personally to look after you in this cow pasture college.”

“Father, I dismissed Donaldson because I felt he was spying on me.”

“If, after your previous escapades with prostitutes, I did not keep an eye on your activities, I would not be a proper father, would I?”

Will he ever get to the point? Jeremy wondered.

“Well, answer up! Would I be a proper father?”

“No, sir, I mean, yes, sir, I see why I was under scrutiny.”

“But nevertheless you converted this flat into a brothel.”

“Hardly, Father.”

Roger scanned a page. “Did you or did you not hold frequent parties of mixed company during which voluminous amounts of whiskey were consumed?”

“Yes, sir, we had parties after the rugby games and for birthday occasions—”

“I’ll bet they loved their host, good old Jeremy. Why not, with half the whores in Dublin dancing between the sheets of your bedrooms.”

“Father, I did not have prostitutes. The ladies were…girl friends…true girl friends from ascendancy families for the most part…three of the lads were secretly married and—”

“And what?”

“Needed a place…F-F-F-Father.”

“Don’t stutter, Jeremy! For God’s sake, don’t stutter!”

Now came the blasts of icy air as Roger once more entailed the story of his own father, poor stuttering Arthur Hubble. Jeremy’s grandfather had watched as his own father, the Famine Earl, signed the eviction notices and became too weak to run the earldom properly. Funny…so said Roger…how we always skip a generation. Roger had the intestinal fortitude to take over from his faltering father and run the estate when hardly more than a young man. Jeremy was the recurring curse of the Hubble line. Jeremy was stuttering Arthur, and Arthur was stuttering Jeremy.

“Are these accounts correct or not?” Roger said, shoving the report under Jeremy’s nose. Jeremy saw a listing of dates and times that his mates had held trysts in the flat.

“I suppose so. I didn’t realize the maids were on your payroll to take a dirty linen count.”

Roger flung the report on the desk. “Cohabitation with
one Molly O’Rafferty, illiterate street urchin from the Dublin Liberties.”

“She is convent-educated, a novice schoolteacher, and a folk singer of public renown.”

“She sings in a bar, Jeremy. Is she or is she not a Roman Catholic?”

“Great God!” brother Christopher cried. “How could you bring this on the family? Everything we hold sacred has been profaned. Two hundred and fifty years of honorable service to the Crown has been besmirched.”

“Twelve generations of Earls of Foyle,” Roger picked up, “are now being imperiled by a trollop!”

Jeremy leapt to his feet. “I demand you show her respect!”

“Respect for what, indeed, Jeremy, respect for what!”

Jeremy fell back into his chair. His father and brother hovered over him. A step behind he saw the cruel crystal eyes of Swan gleaming hatred. W. W. Herd, in the shadows, snickered as a detective is wont to do when he has nailed his prey.

“I shall not give her up,” Jeremy croaked.

“The girl is pregnant,” Roger said hard on.

It was as Jeremy had suspected, but how did they know? “Molly?” he whimpered.

“Yes, Molly. Molly O’Rafferty, the Catholic folk singer.”

“How did you find this out, Father?”

There was a long silence.

“I don’t believe you,” Jeremy said, finding a bit of his ebbing anger.

“Her priest told us,” Herd replied.

“Her priest cannot tell you that!”

“Oh, come on, Jeremy, they’re all on the take. Besides, we’re not going to allow a few ridiculous Vatican rules to prevent the truth.”

Jeremy came to his feet. “I’m going to her,” he said.

“You will sit down and you will hear the rest of it.” Roger nodded for Herd to open the door. Two Belfast toughs
whom Jeremy recognized as members of Swan’s goon squad in the shipyard escorted his classmates Mal Palmer and Cliff Coleman into the study.

Jeremy was shocked into silence. He grew faint and pale, and his stomach began to seize up.

“Tell him what you told us, Mr. Palmer.”

“Sorry about this, Jeremy, but Molly has been passing it around ever since you took up with her,” Mal said.

“Liar!”

“Sorry, Jeremy…really sorry about this,” Mal said breathing shakily.

“Liar!”

The two thugs sealed Jeremy off and pushed him back.

“Continue, Mr. Palmer.”

“Molly and I did it a lot of times. Lot of times. I’d give her your schedule and when you were in class we’d slip up to your flat and…and did the shagging.”

“Mr. Coleman,” Swan said.

“Same here, Jeremy. At my place. Half the team’s fucked her.”

“You’ve been a laughingstock,” his brother reminded.

Cliff Coleman started to go into detail when Jeremy went for the wastebasket and vomited until his eyes and nose ran and he coughed up lines of mucus.

Roger and Christopher went at him with heightened rage and outrage as the classmates were whisked out. Jeremy went hysterical until he collapsed and was dragged to his bed and went on until he deflated to quivering moans.

“You’ll survive,” Roger said, “but I’ve had my fill of your childish, disastrous behavior. I’m taking you over now, Jeremy. Do you understand!”

“Yes…F-F-F-Father.”

“Christopher is returning to Oxford to finish his year. As for you, Donaldson has arrived to pack you up. You are out of Dublin, here and now. I see no further need to educate you. When Christopher’s term is over, the two of you
will do your service in the family regiment. Christopher will return to Oxford after he obtains proper rank. As for you, you will remain in the service until I see fit. Do we understand each other?”

“What do you want of me, Father!”

“Sons!”

“I’ll see to everything, Father,” Christopher said.

“I know you will, son, I know you will. You, Jeremy, will be in your brother’s care. I’m off to the manor to see your mother. In order to avoid a scandal we will make a suitable arrangement with Miss O’Rafferty. In fact, after what she has done to you, we think it quite generous. You are not to see her again. Is that clear, Jeremy?”

The boy writhed on his bed in agony.

“Is that clear, Jeremy?”

Frederick Weed was at his draftsman’s table on the far side of his office. It was good to see him there again. The Admiralty was pressing hard to develop underwater craft comparable to the German U-boats, and there was a lot of catching up to do.

His secretary entered. “The Red Hand has just passed through Portadown, Sir Frederick. She should be in the yard within the hour.”

“Go down and meet the train. Bring Lady Caroline to my office directly.”

“Very well, sir.”

Weed left the drafting table and went back to his desk. There was a lot of catching up to do with Caroline as well. Bad seeds had bloomed after the Sixmilecross ambush. The humiliation by the Irish Republican Brotherhood gunrunning on his private train would go with him to his grave.

Sir Frederick had suffered a minor stroke in the aftermath of the uproar. Considering his advanced age and hard style of life, his recovery was rather amazing.

What hurt him more than the hazing in the press and the laughter from the pubs was the ambivalent behavior of both Caroline and Jeremy.

They had been gladly used by this Larkin—whose Machiavellian deceit had constituted the lowest form of
treachery! He had used them! Instead of rallying to Weed, the two of them remained quiet. At times, Weed felt that Larkin had cast an evil spell over them. Oh, once or twice they referred to his treachery, but never very convincingly.

It came back to him once that Jeremy had tried to steal his way in to see Larkin in prison. Well, he bloody well put a stop to that! Caroline, her father suspected, may have been seriously emotionally involved with Larkin.

A strange family standoff ensued. Volumes of buried thoughts lay in volumes of unspoken words. Did indeed they forgive Larkin’s dastardly behavior? Sir Frederick balked at putting the question to them directly. For the first time in his life, he feared the answer.

So, he had a quiet little stroke and Caroline and Jeremy patched things over with him, but the great bombast and love between them was now missing. From the raucous laughter over Jeremy’s piss-up at the brothel in England it had been a polite and formal relationship with the family patriarch.

God in heaven, Freddie felt so alone. The two he held most dear, penning him proper notes these days. Horseshit!

Weed grunted to his feet, checked his pocket watch as the five o’clock whistle sounded. Soon his legions marched under his window toward the factory gate, doffing their caps as they passed.

Would that bloody train ever get in!

“Hello, Freddie, you’re looking well.”

“Hello, Caroline, I look like hell and so do you.”

“Should you be smoking and drinking?”

“All I get to do with this cognac is swirl it in an elegant manner and sniff it. As for the cigar, I only feel it.”

They were both shaken by his words. One of their life’s pleasures was Caroline biting off the end of his cigar and lighting it, just so.

“Jeremy?” she asked.

“He’s at Rathweed Hall in his apartment. He’s locked himself in. We’ve scarcely exchanged a dozen words. Yourself?”

“Things between Roger and myself are extremely rocky. There could well be a separation.”

“Oh dear.”

“Roger has finally succeeded in breaking the boy. God only knows what transpired in Dublin, but Roger has what he wants, an obedient little pissant for a son….”

Weed could not take the disdain in his daughter’s eyes. He lowered his own.

“You and I have spoken about Jeremy for hours. We know he has limited capabilities. How in the name of God could you have joined in this barbaric scheme?” she demanded.

“Caroline—”

“How in the name of God did you permit this to happen!”

Weed closed his eyes and held his hands up in a manner of pleading for her to stop and listen to him.

“I am not going to claim virginity in this matter,” he began, “but let’s put it in its proper context. You know how many ongoing enterprises Roger and I have together. It is not, I repeat,
not
unusual for him to ask for Brigadier Swan a dozen times a year to check this out, check that out. After Jeremy’s behavior in England and the estrangement I’ve felt from him since that…incident…when I was told he had taken up with a Catholic pub singer—and that’s what they told me, a Catholic pub singer—I said fine, keep an eye on him. I swear to you I had no idea of the depth of his involvement nor the true picture of this young lady. I fully thought that Jeremy was on another of his ridiculous escapades. I’m guilty. I lent Roger the brigadier and I didn’t follow through with an inquiry.”

Caroline hardly seemed mollified. “This is a very, very lovely young lady and she is carrying my grandchild. I am making a stand about this.”

“Marriage?”

“Absolutely.”

“I see.”

“You’d better see, Freddie, indeed you’d better see,” she said, coming from her chair and walking away, dabbing her eyes and bringing under control the chills trembling her.

“Well…I…uh…it should be no problem to have her converted to the Anglican church, quietly. But how will Jeremy stand up to Roger if you’re contemplating a separation?”

“I’ll go back to Hubble Manor with them. It may take a year, it may take longer, but Roger is going to give up his medieval, Reformation mentality. They will have this child in Hubble Manor before he pushes Christopher to the altar to stud an heir.”

“Aren’t we playing Roger’s game?”

“No, goddamnit, we’re playing Caroline’s game! My son is going to inherit the earldom and he is going to do something about the deplorable conditions out there.”

Sir Frederick Weed contained all the winces and groans. If he objected, he’d lose Caroline. She already had a foot out the door. What would then be left? Christopher? Christopher was only slightly less despicable than Roger, and the only reason for that was that he hadn’t lived long enough to pick up all of Roger’s slime.

Roger, Christopher, and Sir Frederick? It had come down to this. The two of them ready to move in and carve him up at the first sign of another stroke.

“Caroline,” he said shakily.

“Aye, Father.”

“We’ve a lot of making up to do, don’t we? I’m standing with you. That’s a start.”

“Do you know where Molly O’Rafferty is?” Caroline asked.

“Yes, she’s left her house, she’s living in…the Liberties…with friends.”

“Shall we go see Jeremy?” she asked.

“I think you’d better do that by yourself. And let him know how distressed I am.”

Caroline knocked, and knocked again, hard.

“Who is it?”

“It’s your mother.”

The door was unbolted and cracked open. Caroline entered Jeremy’s sitting room, shut down by graying darkness. The boy was haggard and bearded and pitifully ashamed.

“Uh…don’t really know where I was or what happened to my…head. But I woke up clear-minded at the end of the week and realized what had taken place. Donaldson had me packed and ready to move back to Hubble Manor. I…uh…escaped and it wasn’t hard to pick up Mal’s trail….”

“What did you find out?”

“What I should have known from the beginning. Mal was lying…he’d run up a gambling debt of over a hundred…his father said he wouldn’t pay it…he was desperate. Brigadier Swan gave him two hundred, and the same to Cliff Coleman. They were paid to lie to me about Molly…. I went to try to find her…she was gone…. I came here.”

“I don’t know how much you love Molly.”

“I do, Mother. I love her. I love her!”

“That helps, then. In any event, you have a responsibility to that girl. We know where she is, Jeremy.”

“Where, Mother, where!”

“She’s with friends in Dublin, but in her situation, she could leave the country at any time.”

“Tell me where she is!”

“Now you hold on, Jeremy, and you listen to me. First of all, in this matter, your grandfather is only guilty of ignorance.”

“But he sent Swan!”

“Freddie was unaware of the true nature of things.”

“He’s lying.”

“He doesn’t lie to me, Jeremy. He’s ready to stand with us. The question is, are you ready to do what needs being done?”

“Tell me, Mother.”

“You are to go to Molly and you are to beg her forgiveness. You are to ask her to make a quiet conversion and the two of you will marry. There is not a damned thing your father can do about it.” Caroline spoke on, extremely slowly and extremely deliberately.

“You are the Viscount Coleraine, the undisputed and undeniable heir to the Earldom of Foyle. Your father cannot disown you. He cannot disinherit you. You and Molly are to return to Hubble Manor. I shall be there with you.”

“Mother, I’m frightened.”

“You should be. But you have everything on your side, including myself and your grandfather.”

Belief and terror clashed inside him.

“Jeremy,” his mother said softly, “if you fail, you will lose Molly and you will lose me. What you will win is a life between your father and your brother in Hubble Manor. That’s your alternative.”

“I’ll do it, Mother,” Jeremy said stoutly.

“I’m not your coach exhorting you at halftime,” she pressed, “this is going to take balls.”

He sucked in a breath to assure himself. “You’ll see,” he said.