Leon Uris (69 page)

“Lieutenant Landers, you’re most welcome!”

“Thank you, Countess Hubble.”

“Please call me Caroline,” she said, signaling the butler. “Take the Lieutenant’s bags up to Jeremy’s apartment.”

They stared at each other curiously, then came together for a shyish peck on the cheek.

“Jeremy was right,” Rory said, “you must be the most beautiful woman in Ireland.”

“Twenty years removed, at least,” she said. His voice, strange, a recollection flashed through her.

“Something wrong, ma’am?”

“What?”

“You’re staring at me,” Rory said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. You hit me with a startling family resemblance to someone. Even the voice.”

“Everyone says that. I guess I’ve got a very common face.”

“And I’d say that with your blarney, you’re a once-removed Irishman.”

“I’ve not a drop of Irish blood, I’m afraid. A New Zealand mongrel.”

“Now, what are you staring at?” she asked.

“I’ve never seen a place like this.”

“I’ll give you the tour later.” She took his arm, guiding
him past the entry. “We’ve a rare day of sunshine. Why don’t we get acquainted in the garden.”

The garden, fountain, and view to the museum was likewise stunning, quite beyond belief that Jeremy, or for that matter, any human being could live in such a place.

Caroline ordered refreshments. Rory remained enchanted with everything, and herself as well. She was dressed in lavender and was lightly scented, but the darkness beneath her eyes told him that she had gotten herself up for the occasion. Caroline’s hair was half-gray now but she still cut a figure that would have tempted any man a generation younger.

“How long can I have you?” she asked.

“As long as you can stand me,” he answered. “I do plan a trip in the south and west to call on the relatives of some lads from our battalion.”

The maid came with a tray, followed by the butler with an ice bucket.

“How did you know I wanted a beer?”

“Every New Zealander wants beer. You’re much younger than I envisioned.”

“Well, the one thing a place like Gallipoli does, is offer rapid advancement.”

“I’m terribly sorry I was unable to visit you at the hospital in London. My father has had several strokes and the last one, when the bad news came, was rather severe. Are you going to end up in London?”

“Probably, sooner or later.”

“My gentleman, Gorman Galloway, well, he’s not exactly my gentleman. He’s my guy. Gorman is producing a play in London. Sorry he isn’t here to meet you, but he’s the man to do up London with…if you like actresses.”

Rory laughed. She was splendid. “I read most of Jeremy’s letters and he read mine. Gorman Galloway is a very funny fellow. I look forward to meeting him.”

“He’s been the rock. He’s kept things together for us. How are you coming along, Rory?”

Rory explained his medical condition; rest, then reap
praisal. Probably more surgery on his hand and wrist up to the elbow. The eyes? Well, one could live with it.

Rory played with the beer glass, set it down. “How goes it with you, Lady Caroline?”

“Lousy, thank you. As you can see by the surroundings, at least I get to suffer in comfort. I’ve reached that point where I put ha’pennies in the little fortune machines on the boardwalk of the amusement park. There has to be a reason one just does not die with her sons. I’m on a day-to-day basis to try to find that reason. I can’t tell you how I’ve been looking forward to your visit.”

“How much do you really want to know?” Rory asked.

“You’re very wise and very sensitive for your age, Rory. I want to know everything.”

“Some of it is going to be very painful.”

“Of course it will be, but at least I’m sharing with them. I know we’ll have occasion to laugh. I think it will be most comforting.”

“I’m looking for a tad of comfort, myself,” Rory said. “Right off, Jeremy…well, I’ll never have another friend like him.”

“Here I am pitying myself so much I didn’t stop to realize how much you’ve suffered.”

“It’s been a bitch, lady,” Rory said.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

“Jeremy transformed himself into a most splendid human being. I wish you’d seen the character and competence of this man. He handled the news of his baby’s death like a champion.”

“Molly died in childbirth, at the same time. I thought it was too much to hit him with both deaths at the same time. I was going to wait until, at least, he got off Gallipoli.”

“We’d figured that might be the case with Molly. He had one determination. He was going to come out of it as a man even if he had lost her.”

“You don’t know how wonderful that makes me feel. He was a wreck when he left Ireland.”

“Lovely man…we were all crazy about him.”

“And Christopher?”

Rory scratched his head. “Old Major Chris.”

“Somewhat of a horse’s ass, I take it,” Caroline said.

“In Egypt, till he got news of his wife, he was a shyte of major proportions. What can I say? But he turned into very much of a human being. Chris was funny with all his Brit crap. He found out something the hard way about the loyalty and love men can give each other.”

“Chris? Jeremy told me he had changed to an all-right fellow, but…”

“What about that wife of his?”

“She’s living a middling life in Canada. I can’t fault her for leaving, but she’s not worth the bother.”

“I’m going to tell you something you might not believe, but it’s true. Chris also realized why she left him, and he never once wished her ill.”

“Are you telling me the truth, Rory?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s hard to believe,” she said softly.

“I know. But seeing both those lads grow into fine men was a revelation to me, and the experience of them has been important to my own life. It told me I could also rise above my own sorrows.”

“And I can as well?” she asked.

“You’re going to find the reasons that will make the rest of your way worth the while.”

Sir Frederick Weed was wheeled out to the veranda a short distance away. His chair was set so he could look down the slope of the hills and see the stacks of Weed Ship & Iron. His nurse took up a magazine beside him.

“My father is nearly totally paralyzed. He cannot speak, but he hears and comprehends everything. His mind is as keen as it ever was. We’ve worked out a language by blinking his eyes and some small movement of a couple of fingers. Come, let’s meet him. He’ll enjoy your rowdy stories, if you have any.”

“I’m afraid I do.”

They made to the veranda, where she greeted her father with a kiss and set his lap robe straight, then took a chair in front of him.

“Freddie, this is Rory Landers. You know him from Chris and Jeremy’s letters.”

Rory could detect a smile through Weed’s watery eyes.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, sir,” Rory said.

“Rory is going to visit for a while. He’s going to tell us all about his year with the boys.”

Weed blinked.

“He said that you’re most welcome.”

When Caroline and Rory had retired from the veranda, she turned and watched her father for ever so long. “He just sits there, day after day, looking down at the empire he created. He is trying to will his grandsons back to life and himself to the man he once was. He refuses to accept that those things are gone. He fights to no avail, wondering why his willpower can’t remake the past.”

“Is there anything I can do or say to help him?”

“Yes.”

“What is that?”

“It will have to wait, but there is something we both need to know. Now, how about letting you have a stretch and a cleanup before dinner.”

She took him up the great winding stairs in the foyer and down a hall with walls filled with paintings and indentations holding statuary. She opened the door to Jeremy’s apartment.

“Are you sure you want me to stay in there?”

“Jeremy would be livid if I put you up anywhere else. And Rory, this is not going to end up a sad experience.”

“I know that.”

As he entered the room, Caroline took his arm and turned him around to her. “Are we going to be able to get their bodies back?”

Rory shook his head.

“Why?”

“Please don’t.”

“I must know. I have to put it to rest.”

“There are…thousands of unidentifiable skeletons…thousands and thousands, ours and the Turks. They’re all bleached white and lie in piles…everywhere…. Is that what you wanted to know earlier, for your father and yourself?”

“No,” she said. “It is something quite different.”

There was joy in Rathweed Hall in the next days as Rory recounted the boisterous scene in Cairo. It was right to tell these two. They could now have Chris and Jeremy’s happy days to be part of the memory. You could fair feel the old man laughing inside him.

But what was it they really wanted to know? It seemed that would have to come later, when fuller trust had been built.

Rory was sketchy about his own past. He did speak of Georgia and his hope he would find her, but nothing was said of Calvin Norman. For the most part he stuck to his Landers story, that he was a lad at odds with his father.

Caroline was much taken by Rory, but she was nobody’s fool. Running the vast operations as she did, and being raised and living in an atmosphere of constant conspiracy, she got the scent of Rory’s hiding something. What it probably was, in her mind, was a childhood pain of some sort he didn’t care to be open about. It was something, though. Whatever it was, Caroline decided to let the days pile up without probing.

On the other hand, Caroline had intimated from the beginning that there was something about Gallipoli she and her father needed to know.

At the end of a week, Rory told Caroline he was going to make his little round of the country. He promised to return to Rathweed Hall, of a certainty.

She gave him a set of keys to her townhouse on Merrion Square in Dublin. “Bachelor officers’ quarters can be a bit stuffy and confining. Now, I want you to take these keys and feel it is your home, like you and my lads were cousins. Come and go as you want, Rory. And have yourself a party or two, girls welcome.”

Rory blushed. Imagine his mom ever saying anything like that to him. “You’re like my Georgia,” he said. He went up to pack after promising to phone her regularly, and to return.

As he threw the last of his gear in his bag, Caroline came to his parlor. “Can we have an up-front talk before you leave?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, up-front.”

Oh hell. What did she already know? What did she suspect?

“I’ll tell you what’s on my mind,” she said before he could chart a course. “You have alluded to the fact that you may be here in Ireland for some time. I know, firsthand, how General Brodhead feels about you. We went through the same experience with Chris. Are you going on his staff?”

“Jesus Christ, Caroline. I didn’t want to bring the General into too much of the conversation this week because I didn’t know if it was the right or wrong thing to do. Yes, he’s asked me to join his staff and part of my wandering about now is to think it over. You’d certainly be the first to know if I did.”

Caroline stared at him without comment.

“All right,” he said, “he and your late husband were cronies, I gather?”

“Yes, very much so, identical twins—one in a factory owner’s cutaway and the other in military uniform.”

“Knowing from Jeremy of your unhappy marriage, I didn’t feel right in bringing up anything of that nature.”

“That’s very good of you, Rory. But what has Llewelyn Brodhead to do with Roger Hubble?”

“He’s got the hots for you.”

Rory was fairly shocked that Caroline didn’t so much as blink an eye.

“I was once very beautiful…”

“You still are.”

“Cut it out. Anyhow, I’ve had lads in heat sniffing around me all my life, Rory. Even though Llewelyn was close to my husband and always proper, I have long ago picked up on his ardor. He has a shipwreck of a wife and, beyond Ireland, a penchant for whores.”

“Brodhead? Whores? Do you know that or are you just saying it?”

“Weed Ship & Iron is into so goddamned many bedrooms, I’ve lost count. Espionage, industrial and otherwise, was a way of life. We once had a retired Brigadier running our intelligence service—fortunately he is deceased—who had the goods on everyone in the British Isles, and particularly Ulster.”

Rory held up his hands. “I’ll never try to lie to you again, Caroline. I should have told you I may be going to work for him. I’m sorry about that. It was just a bad call on my part. The rest of it. He’s hot for you. He told me to slip in the good word for him. I figured you already had that all figured out. The rest of it is your business.”

“Thank you, Rory,” she said, then dropped the other shoe: “We’re almost finished. My father and I want you to tell us about Brodhead at Gallipoli.”

“What about him?”

“We analyzed his testimony and reports to the commission. He lied to cover his ass, and don’t tell me you were only a lieutenant.”

“No, I won’t tell you that. He’s my general.”

“Good old boys club?”

“Whatever I say, good, bad or otherwise isn’t going to bring Jeremy and Major Chris back to life.”

“You don’t know us, Rory. We are ancient Gaels, ourselves. We are as we are, and we must know. You don’t
have to tell us much. Just confirm what we already believe.”

“Why?”

“Don’t let my surroundings here fool you. I know what’s going on in this country and I believe Jeremy was intending to make a declaration to become a republican. He always had the soul of a republican, and he had a mentor who opened his eyes to terrible realities. As far as I’m concerned, Llewelyn Brodhead is harmless. He may not be so harmless as far as Ireland is concerned. As for what happened at Gallipoli…my father and I are haunted…I told you—we are ancient Gaels.”

Rory felt a rage from her he’d never seen in a woman before. There was no use trying to quarrel with her, with the strange look in her eyes. Lord, what to do? The open wounds of these two people might only be closed by vengeance. And what of himself? Rory thought. Would not his own vengeance be the end of his search in Ireland?