Leon Uris (29 page)
Authors: Redemption
Tags: #Europe, #Ireland, #Literary Collections, #Historical Fiction, #Fiction, #Romance, #Sagas, #Historical, #Australian & Oceanian, #New Zealand, #General, #New Zealand Fiction, #History
The arrangement Maxwell Swan had proposed to Molly O’Rafferty called for her to make a quick trip to Switzerland to a clinic that specialized in dealing with illegitimate children of the aristocracy.
Molly could have an abortion performed. Afterward she would receive “comfort” money in the form of three hundred quid a year for five years provided she was not heard from again. This was an enormous sum that would enable her to establish herself somewhere other than the British Isles.
If she insisted on having the child because of religious reasons, she would remain in seclusion at the clinic. A well-situated blind adoption would be arranged and she would surrender the child upon delivery.
The monies plus a steamer ticket to anywhere in the world would then be doled out.
Upon sight of her, Jeremy was overcome with guilt and sorrow and begged forgiveness for believing the ugly lies about her and his mates.
The girl, not yet seventeen, gave Jeremy short shrift. She simply would not enter into a conspiracy with Jeremy to marry in defiance and then stand up to Roger Hubble. The entire scene and way of life of the earldom disgusted her. She would not live under the roof of a man who offered her money to destroy his own grandchild.
She had dishonored her own family and her faith. She would make her departure from Ireland and have her child and raise it by teaching and by singing ballads and would not take a ha’penny from the Hubbles.
But what of Jeremy? He was thrown into confusion. Molly asked the unthinkable. To go off with her he would have to renounce his title and be thrown into a world of working men and women and this terrified him…utterly…completely.
If only Conor were there to give him counsel. If only Conor were there to shake him and impose courage. If only Conor…
Life in a cold water flat with a baby? What could he do? Really…all those things he was used to…Surely Jeremy had played games with his father, letting Roger know he would never measure up to responsibility because he liked life as it was. Life as he had known it could not be taken from him. He was born at the top of the ladder. No way that could be taken from him.
Molly was obstinate. She loathed his family, purely and simply. It was they who were the underclass and not herself.
Molly left Jeremy at the Liffey, a boy trying to be a man but not able to make it. He pumped himself up into believing he had done the proper thing. He was not put on earth to become part of a faceless mass of strugglers. He had a duty of generations, centuries standing, and this was more important!
Caroline and Sir Frederick held their collective breath as Jeremy went down to Dublin on his mission. They knew what had happened the instant he returned to Rathweed Hall, alone.
Jeremy was standing up, all right. He had made a decision and he had made himself believe his decision was based on honor.
“I think I’d like to speak to Mother, alone,” he said after he found them in the billiard room.
“I think not,” Caroline said. “Your grandfather has doted over you from the moment you were born.”
“This is an intimate family matter,” Jeremy retorted, swelling up his own sense of righteousness.
“No,” his mother snapped quickly.
“I have an enormous stake in you, Jeremy,” his grandfather said.
“Very well. I’ve come to a decision. I’m standing with Father.”
“What do you mean?” Sir Frederick said in a voice that Jeremy had never heard before.
Jeremy flushed. There was welling fear to suppress, a dryness to make wet inside his mouth, a trembling to bring under control.
“Molly was cynical and insulting to our family and…our way of life. She refused to live in Hubble Manor. She portrayed us rather harshly.”
“Well, bully for her,” Caroline said. “It seems that the only people involved in this beloved land with any sense of honor are the croppies.”
She looked to her father in a dare. Frederick wanted to jump in, in outrage, but he merely reddened. One false word and Caroline would be gone and his life would end in a disaster.
Mind the temper, he told himself, mind the temper. You’re sweating, Freddie. Don’t let another bloody stroke do you in, now.
“You let her go?” Caroline questioned.
“She refused, Mother. I had no choice.”
“That girl is carrying your child in her belly, conceived in love. Do you love her?”
“I do, Mother, but my duty is greater than my folly.”
“God! You sound like Christopher! You damned fool, Jeremy! What kind of a man are you! You should have taken her and gone anywhere…anywhere…”
“Caroline!” her father interceded.
“Shut up, Freddie. Jeremy, you should have taken her and fled. Can’t you see how magnificent she is?”
“Now, just a minute, Mother!” Jeremy cried. “Don’t you be so damned pious. You loved Conor Larkin! You loved him, did you not!”
The words, never to be spoken, were now uncaged into a room growing wild. After the fall…after the silence…Caroline looked to her father, wavering and ashen.
“I loved Conor Larkin,” she said.
Freddie turned and sagged.
“Why didn’t you up and run away with Conor? It’s not all that easy, is it, Mother?”
“I loved him,” she repeated, “but he was too decent to make love to me. He did not make me pregnant. So you see, there is a difference, my son.”
“Really, Mother? You didn’t go with him because you didn’t want to abdicate your throne and live on the run. That’s why. The same bloody reason you condemn me for.”
“That’s a reasonable point, Caroline,” her father said harshly.
“I would have gone with him, anywhere,” she said.
“But you didn’t!” Jeremy cried.
“Conor would not take me because he cared for things other than himself. He did not want the blood of innocent people on his hands, from the riots your father and grandfather would have created. They would have turned his province into a pyre.”
Suddenly Frederick Weed emitted a laugh, low at first, then rather hardy. “Well now, we’ve all said our little piece,” he said. “Your mother is probably right. Well, Jeremy?”
“Poor, dear pitiful little Jeremy!” Jeremy screamed. “Poor, weak stuttering Arthur! Despicable Jeremy! Shitty Jeremy!”
“Jeremy, go to Molly O’Rafferty!”
“I am going to Hubble Manor and I shall soon join the family regiment!”
“You are a despicable coward,” Caroline said very softly and firmly. “I am ashamed that you are my son. Now, get out of my sight.”
“Grandfather!”
“Pack your things and leave, Jeremy,” Frederick Weed said.
Frederick Weed led a pair of servants into Caroline’s quarters, one carrying a tray of food and the other holding a pair of candelabra.
“Caroline?”
“I’m over here, Freddie, I’m not sleeping.”
The food and soft light were arranged at a table. Caroline took off her lap robe and went from her chaise lounge.
“He’s gone,” her father said.
“I know.”
“Well now,” Freddie said, twirling his unlit cigar, “it’s been quite a day. I guess we’ve both been lying to ourselves about Jeremy all his life.”
“Isn’t that a fact,” she said. “I was so pleased when he made his entrance. Roger knew from the minute he was born that Jeremy belonged to you. Well, Jolly Roger has what he wants. Not one, but two young men in stud service.”
“And we,” he laughed, “are back to square one. To hell,” he said, “I’m lighting this damned cigar.”
“Freddie, you shouldn’t…. Here, give it to me.” Caroline went through the old ritual of softening it, biting off the end, and rolling the flame on, just so, and stuck it in his mouth.
“Caroline,” he said contemplatively, “the damned stroke brought me face to face with the myth of my invincibility. One starts summing up. I’m an entrepreneur, a product of my times. The era has called for hard men.
Along the way Ulster has become some kind of a mutation. It’s too late for me to change. I have to go out the way I know.”
“I realize that, but you don’t act like you’re history, Freddie.”
“We face the most serious challenge of my life in Roger. He is intrinsically evil. Roger has those two boys under this thumb. They are his Orange card just as Londonderry was once his Orange card. But I still have the ace in the hole. I still have you, Caroline.” He took his daughter’s hand and held it to his lips and unlikely tears fell down his cheeks.
“The worst mistake in my life was engineering you into marriage with Roger Hubble. I have loved you more than anyone in my life, Caroline, including your dear mother.”
“Freddie…”
“I should have known that a daughter like you was worth a half-dozen sons. It’s not too late. You can manage my operation, blindfolded.”
“Are you certain, Freddie?”
“Aye.”
“Then I’m your girl.”
“I intend to be around for some time. But since the stroke I have become obsessed with a fear of Roger taking over Weed Ship & Iron. His earldom is nonsense alongside of what I control. A great deal of prosperity comes from ventures I’ve brought him into. He’ll jump us the minute I go down.”
Candlelight enshadowed her hair, hanging below her shoulders as she wore it when she was a little girl. The chamber was scented and silk-walled with portraits of her by her Impressionist friends. Freddie sipped a nip of forbidden cognac.
“I have assembled a brilliant team of engineers, architects, scientists, foremen, and a work force second to none in Britain. My board of directors, save Roger, is totally clean. Your seat on the board until now has always been
used by me as a proxy. I want you to activate it and learn. The team is loyal to me and they will be loyal to you.”
“Roger is not going to disappear that easily, Freddie.”
“Now don’t interrupt me for a minute,” he said. “Roger and I have been involved in a lot of very black business. I have a record book on him six inches thick. Give him the boundaries of his earldom and not one inch more.”
“These records, Freddie. Won’t they implicate you as well?”
“I’m an old man, Caroline. My lawyers are clever enough to put on an artful dodge for the rest of my days. I’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. As for Roger, it’s death incarnate. He’ll never outlive the scandal.”
“A long time ago I cared for Maxwell Swan. I have grown to hate him.”
“Max sees the wisdom of taking early retirement. He was the trigger man on too many dirty jobs. Why are you staring at me like that, Caroline?”
She asked about the factory fire and he told her how Roger had been going into a cover-up as the building was burning. O’Garvey had indeed called off the investigation of the factory in exchange for Roger’s putting money into the Bogside. When the building went up, they feared O’Garvey would blow the whistle on them and Swan had him assassinated.
For ever so long they remained quiet.
“Don’t come in if you’ve not got the stomach for it,” her father said. “There are some other disturbing things. The first is the worst of it. Do you hate me?”
“Do you hate me because of Conor Larkin?”
“I tried to get him hanged, of course,” he answered. “In time the whole thing became rather amusing. Brilliant fellow, what? Pity he wasn’t working our side of the game. Well, let’s say I can certainly see the attraction. I can’t hate you.”
“And I love you, Freddie, and that’s always been the fact of it.”
* * *
Caroline lay on satin sheets and she felt sensuous to her own touch as well. She was astonished at her capacity to enter the forbidden rooms of Hubble Manor with such consummate ease…even with their dirty secrets and foul play. She told herself she could and would make a lot of things better, but for the moment she luxuriated in the amazing sensation of her ascension to power. It was awesome. She was Frederick Weed’s girl, the worth of six sons!
I’ve won! But what have I won? A dying father, the admission of a crumbled marriage that took half my life, the loss of my sons, the defection of an Andrew Ingram, a living death laid on Maxwell Swan, a hero of my childhood…and the means to destroy my husband.
The satin on her face felt so good. She wrapped her arms around it. Now, what would she give for him?
“Oh, Conor lad, where are you now?” she wept.
What was plain to see was plain to see; namely, that my own path of glory in this life required me to hitch my wagon to a shooting star, and the life of Conor Larkin was going to be something to write about. His spirit was in my early ramblings at the students’ center and from the debate stage at Queens College.
His passion for freedom was in my dispatches from the Boer War. He was the ghost crying for justice in my plays.
I have gathered copious notes of our childhood, of Ballyutogue life and our ventures in the high meadows, of the Larkins, of Mr. Andrew Ingram, and of Mr. Josiah Lambe and Conor’s gift of the forge.
Everything else was compiled when Conor returned from roving; his years in Derry and the great screen and Caroline Hubble and his fierce renown on the football pitch. The ghastly factory fire and Conor’s years at sea and the deep love he had for Rory. This love for Rory had a melancholy bent to it, as if Conor knew he would never have sons of his own and needed to leave Rory his legacy. Conor’s final thoughts to me before we went on the big raid were about Rory, a veiled hope that Rory would follow him to Ireland.
It appears that I will never get to write his story. I will
leave all my notes in the hands of Atty Fitzpatrick, who will no doubt succeed me by decades. She will find the author who will do the story justice.
Conor was hit by three bullets at Sixmilecross, two in his back and one through the thigh. He was held incommunicado for weeks and tortured by clever methods so he would bear no visible signs.
For example: A pint of castor oil was forced into him. He was made to stand against a wall, spread-eagle in his bare feet. Jagged glass was laid all around him on the floor, so that if he moved so much as a centimeter he would be sliced up. Standing thusly, he was hooded and loud sirens and whistles were blown into his ears between questionings.
Conor told me that of all his accomplishments in life, none was greater than to be able to shyte standing up.
What happened after Sixmilecross was in nobody’s plans. Serendipity of an unusual nature fell into the Brotherhood’s lap. In reality, Sixmilecross was another of those famous Irish fuckups, a glorious tale of defeat, so prevalent in our history, but one that grows in grandeur from pub to pub.
Conor Larkin’s audacity in using Sir Frederick Weed’s personal train to run guns for the Brotherhood struck a nerve in the Irish funny bone. With public prodding by Atty Fitzpatrick and editorials by myself leading the free press, the country was soon awash in protest for the Sixmilecross “heroes” to receive justice.
England held a shifting balance of power in Ireland after the turn of the century. The Gaelic revival had been fanned into republican hot spots around the land. A sudden hope for freedom erupted.
Only Ulster, loyal Ulster, was safely in hand for the Crown.
On the European continent the Balkans were commencing nasty little neighborhood wars and it was only a matter of time until a monumental conflict between the great alliances would break out. Perhaps a year or two. Five years at the most.
Such eventuality caused England to consider closely her Irish situation. Ireland’s unfortunate geographic position would be vital to England’s sea lanes during any such conflict.
Moreover, England would need tens of thousands, nae, hundreds of thousands of Irishmen to fill in the fine old brigades and form new ones and otherwise provide Irish fodder for the Crown.
The obvious enemy in the coming war would plainly be Germany. Germany was thus in a position to supply arms to an Irish freedom movement and otherwise do what was necessary to destabilize Ireland.
The first impulse of the Crown was to take Conor Larkin and the Sixmilecross prisoners directly to the gallows and hang them. In one day the Parliament had passed “Larkin legislation” legalizing his seizure and allowing for secret trial and execution without so much as a lawyer to defend him.
However, the size and fury of the nationwide protest shocked the British into rethinking their position. To hang Larkin now could well ignite further riots.
The British deemed it too dangerous to rock the Irish boat and concocted a deal. In exchange for a halt to the protests and three years of silence by the Brotherhood, the Sixmilecross prisoners would plead guilty and receive a “benevolent” short prison term and then freedom.
Although it was a blow to Brotherhood ambitions and against stated policy, the thought of Conor Larkin’s hanging or serving a life term was unbearable. The Council, including Atty, Long Dan Sweeney, and my good self all agreed to the deal.
I was the messenger to tell Conor to plead guilty.
I was taken to the Curragh military camp where he was being held secretly. Seven weeks had passed without anyone’s seeing him. Manacled, limping, left arm slinged, eyes in deep bruised sockets…I brought him up to date and then delivered his orders of capitulation. Oh Jesus, it was the most wrong I had ever been in my life.
Conor replied, “After three hundred years of rubbing our faces in the mud and three hundred years of talking in circles, we have to draw a line. After a famine used deliberately to murder the Irish race, we have to test our mettle as a people, here and now. We may not have what it takes. As for me, I am Conor Larkin. I am an Irishman and I’ve had enough.”
I was never so ashamed of myself. He had turned our childhood dreams into the terrible reality of taking Ireland upon his own two shoulders.
There was nothing of bravado in the way he told me his words. There were no cheering crowds. There was no hope of justice.
Yet he had now risen to the greatness I had always known was his, but feared for him to claim. I slunk away to Dublin.
The Parliament had legislated “Star Chamber” proceedings, straight out of the Spanish Inquisition.
By a miracle, Atty and I were privy to the first of the trials. The British did not know going in that Conor would not accept the deal, and we were there to assure they carried out the terms. Again, we were under the oath of silence as part of the bargain.
Conor Larkin, in chains, in a dungeon-turned-courtroom hidden in a military barracks in the Wicklow mountains, denounced England’s presence in Ireland as a perverse, greedy corruption of England’s own Common Law and God’s will.
He denounced England’s attempt to destroy the ancient Celtic culture and the Irish race.
He denounced the English contempt for the Irish
people that made them appear inferior in British eyes and thus allowed England to go out into the world and likewise cast browns and blacks as inferiors…grist for the colonial mill…to be saved and redeemed by a superior English society.
He denounced the proceedings as a total mockery of British justice.
He predicted that before the century was out, the colonizers would pack their kits and be drummed out of every colony in the world where they had imposed their bloody repression.
He did what he did, not knowing if he’d ever see trees again or walk a single step in free air, much less live to see another day.
The British were outraged. In the end they owned the courts, the military, the press, the industry, the banks, the schools, the land.
You see, he made his protest from a dark and lonely place, but he made the British blink.
In the face of his condemnation they did not take his life. Conor was remanded, instead, to thirty years in prison. For his hostile behavior, twenty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails was added to his sentence.
To us, British infallibility had been cracked ever so slightly. We were moved, inspired by one man who had had enough. A rebellion, some day faraway, had been born.
God and my beliefs had been going through a revolving turnstile all my life. I always knew he was there. Using my left-handed logic, I always tried to find a rationale for why he continued to abandon the Irish. The Irish, whose only crime was not being born English.
For the first time I questioned the wisdom, the compassion, the love from God and even the existence of God himself. Why does he demand that his finest sons have to suffer having the living shit kicked out of them?
So, let me tell you about the cat-o’-nine-tails. The whip is a braided leather tail three feet long. Not one tail—but nine of them—so each stroke is worth nine of the ordinary bull whip. In order to keep the ends of the tails from unraveling during a whipping, they are dipped in lead. An accomplished whipper can lay the nine tails across the victim’s back…just so…so that the lead tips curl under his armpit and shred his flesh like cabbage for coleslaw.
From later reports I heard that Conor refused a stretcher and walked back to his cell.
At the same moment that Conor received his lashes, part of Shelley’s body was found tied to a lamppost in the Shankill. Parts of her dismembered corpse were strewn about the alleyway…over fifty stab wounds…and at least that many hammer blows were struck.
On the wall behind her, written in her blood, the words, PAPIST WHORE.
The following months can only be imagined. Perhaps even Conor was unaware of what was happening. To my dismay I learned that one man cannot bear another man’s pain. I wanted so desperately to be able to take some of his agony as my own. No matter how dear and willing the friend, the sufferer must suffer alone.
I have spoken to Warder Hugh Dalton on four occasions. Dalton was the senior Catholic guard at Portlaoise Prison. He inherited the task of keeping R.C. prisoners under control.
In order to carry out his job, he had long learned to inure himself to the pain of his charges. That all changed the first time he met Conor Larkin, who sang during his whipping.
Hugh Dalton told me that the human system shuts down on learning of the death of a loved one on the outside. Otherwise, the pain would not be bearable.
Conor sat on the edge of his cot in his dungeon cell in a
torpid state, neither dead nor alive, giving off no signs of collapse or survival.
Hugh Dalton said that in this state the mind no longer makes conscious decisions. It is now that the inner truth of the man comes through. Either he has an unconscious will to live or an unconscious will to die. The body is comatose, the spirit decides.
For nearly four months Conor Larkin sat thus. Hugh Dalton suspected that Conor was going to survive simply because, by this time, those men who were bound to die were already dead.
In a sudden flash of sanity Conor spoke his first words. He cried for Dalton and told the warder to have him taken to the padded cell and chained so he would not destroy himself.
The dangerous moment had come with the lifting of the veil and the onrush of reality, of the vision of his beloved’s slain and mutilated body.
The following weeks he was in and out of madness. Awakening to what had happened…going crazy…being restrained until he fell limp.
Slowly, he realized he would neither will himself to death nor take his own life and he had to bear the torment. Beginning then and for years to come he never went to sleep without praying that God would bring him death during the night.
As he returned to life, Conor made things hell for the governor of Portlaoise and for Warder Hugh Dalton.
First, he refused to wear prison clothing on the basis that he was not a criminal but a political prisoner. The Governor had his bed and all furnishings removed from his cell and left him with only a blanket. He ripped out a hole in the center for his head and slept on a stone floor for the three winter months.
Shortly after he won that round, he declared a hunger strike for books and the ceasing of all humiliating behavior toward him. This one nearly did him in. He lost so
much flesh he was able to see through his own eyelids while they were shut. With fear of the consequences of Conor’s death, the British ordered the Governor to submit once more.
God’s meanings began to become apparent to me! Conor Larkin was not performing a role before an audience to promote and magnify his heroism. All that Conor Larkin ever was, was an extraordinary human, an Irishman, one Irishman who had had enough. God didn’t make Conor a hero or any other man a hero because they bluffed their way to heroism.
God compelled the true and unvarnished heroes to undergo superhuman feats of heroism because God had instilled in them part of His own soul and spirit.
Only through the example of a hero can ordinary common men like me even realize the power of the extraordinary man. Only through such heroes can common men like me be moved to aspire and emulate.
His anguish and his triumph arose from truths he came into the world with. He won his ordeal. In the end, Conor Larkin was able to endure more punishment than the British could inflict. He laid upon them a moral and spiritual defeat. His spirit triumphed over their armies.
It made all of us in the Brotherhood examine ourselves and understand the sacrifice and dedication needed if we were to have any chance to declare our freedom against an enemy of immense power. Would we find enough men and women to follow in his footsteps?
Could we, always weaker in arms, eventually triumph by sheer force of our righteousness? The nonrecognition of British institutions on Irish soil and acts of disobedience became a canon of faith for breaking the yoke of the colonizer.
Did we as a people have the stuff to pay the ultimate price?
* * *
First among those to be broken by Conor’s valor was Warder Hugh Dalton who never got over the abuse poured on the republican prisoners. Conor forced him to consider his thirty years of kissing British ass…and to what avail…a small pension coming up and a life to live out, full of disgust with himself.
Knowing of my childhood connection to Conor and my republican leanings in my newspaper column, Dalton brought an outrageous escape plan to me.
I took it to Long Dan Sweeney and Atty. They were convinced of Dalton’s desire for redemption.
Next, I went to Conor’s dear brother, Father Dary Larkin. Dary was a Bogside priest and close confidant of the enlightened Bishop Mooney.
Dary did not hesitate a ha’penny’s worth and threw his lot in with us. Did he have Mooney’s blessing? Not to ask.