Ulster started over the river in Protestant Waterside. Roger Hubble's most pressing political problem was either to finesse or crowbar the city into Ulster in any political settlement, and to do so he had to create utterly ridiculous boundaries.
That's how it was in the colonies. The majestic, jewel-walled city physically and by population in one country, the colonizer wanting it in another.
This was the strain of tug and haul that ran through every facet of life in Protestant Londonderry or Catholic Derry, which were one and the same.
Andrew Ingram welcomed Kevin O'Garvey into an office bending under the weight of loaded bookshelves. The two billowed up, Ingram with a blend in his pipe, a honeyed mixture whose aroma monogrammed his office, and O'Garvey with the Irish politician's trademark, a stout cigar.
Andrew knew right off that Kevin was on serious business. He gave himself away. When relaxed and jovial he turned his cigar slowly clockwise with his right hand. When it was serious stuff, Kevin's thumb reversed the direction. Kevin tried to form his thoughts carefully to his friendly adversary.
"Conor wants to up and leave Derry," Kevin blurted with a sudden absence of guile.
Andrew nodded his head and sighed. "What's it been, six months, seven months? He hasn't seen much of me since he's been here, fierce pride mostly. I offered him a room and whatever. It was natural that he stayed with you, of course. I'm still an oddity in his life; you are his godfather."
"You've a powerful sway over him, Andrew," Kevin said, slipping open a few buttons on his vest to allow his belly to rove a bit. O'Garvey dressed like a dandy, but of the tattered variety, frayed collar, all of it slightly ill-fitted and rumpled.
"The first time he ventured into my classroom after school in his smithy leathers, I never before or since witnessed such bottomless hunger for knowledge as when he stared at the books, unable to read. It was the hunger of five hundred years of Irish spiritual starvation determined to break free," Andrew remembered.
"When the blow-up came with Tomas, Conor wandered the countryside with a foggy mind and only came in to Derry when Liam's ship was due to sail," Kevin continued. "He pushed Liam up and cried,'You're not the first Irishman to walk up the plank,'and looked about aching for the sight of Tomas to come and save the situation. So he bedded down over my stable and then a kind of a queer experience happened. Bit by bit he inched into the Bogside and began to change life there, despite the indignity of only being able to work making barrel rings and shoeing nags at the brewery. He began teaching people Gaelic in Celtic Hall, and young wanes after Mass would run to the place to hear out ancient legends. He mesmerized everyone with the tales of our history and our martyrs, producing every speech from the dock by heart. His talks were often behind drawn shades in candlelit rooms, with guards outside. Then he took to the football field, and you know that part-the old men pitching pennies at the base of the wall compared him to Ducey Malone, the greatest Gaelic footballer in Derry's history." Kevin knocked his fist on the desk sending ashes down his shirt.
"You see, Andrew, he is a light. I go off to Parliament these days without fear that something horrible may happen in my absence...because Conor is here. You see, when Parnell was alive, this disturbed us the most, always having to give up our brightest and most vital young people. It's an Irish curse worse than whiskey. Every time I see a brilliant young man or woman I just start counting the days till they leave. Andrew, I've got to draw the line with Conor."
"You know as well as I," Ingram said, "if he tries to rove the world, he'll never get far from Ireland. He is sealed into a life in dubious battle, we both know that. Trouble is, Kevin, he is a master of a great craft. Where can he go in Ireland?"
"Andrew, I know a thing or two about my visits to England and you know it as well. When Conor was in Ballyutogue at the wee village forge, the Anglos in two or three counties around were already seeking him out to do gilded ironwork. In Derry, they'd be coming from half the country...."
"You're dreaming and you're desperate and I ache for you, Kevin, and I am pained for myself. But Conor cannot ever grow in stature in the Bogside without running head on to Roger Hubble's yard at Caw & Train."
Out came the bottle from the bottom drawer and two glasses were glugged half full and clinked, for Andrew knew that O'Garvey was close to saying what he had come to say.
"Can't lose him, Andrew," Kevin said, with the whiskey and sincerity bringing water to his eyes. "I'm so bloody fucking tired of the agony of Bogside. I'm done in, man. I can't bear to see the wanes playing in the gutters all covered with sores, and husbands beating up wives, and old people dying of the cold in winter because the Bishop's fuel fund is empty, and the drunks without jobs from birth to death warming their hands over the fire at the base of the wall, and the factory girls, most of all, dragging home too tired to laugh, much less make love." His voice lowered to a weary rasp. "You know, Andrew, Conor has ethereal qualities about him. A light shines about him sometimes, like he's the Holy Ghost, himself. You've a powerful sway over him, Andrew."
"And you want me to convince him to stay? Aren't we doing the same kind of manipulation that Tomas did?" Andrew asked.
"Fuck, no. They were a family filled with love until the rocks and debts and privation ground them down. What happens if a Conor Larkin is driven out of Ireland? I want to give him the place to follow his destiny and his dream." Kevin held up his hand as he brought himself under control and took another gulp with trembling hand. "Andrew, as you know, I'm a member of the Parliament and opportunities have shown up in the natural course of events... but I'm clean. I'll take and I'll deal, but only for Bogside. We've gone through a half-dozen schemes to try to get some enterprise started there, some male labor to create dignity. For one reason or another nothing has really ever come together. In the past several months I've been talking hard to a group of Irish-Americans who have scored big, some very fat cats. I've convinced them to set up a fund that can actually start changing things. We need everything, a decent livery stable, a girl's secretarial school, all kinds of stores, our own dairy. I can get together the money to put Conor into a first-class forge and foundry."
Andrew Ingram gnawed on his left forefinger, his thinking finger.
"I've got twenty enterprises in mind right off the bat, and more-the funds to buy fifty apprenticeships. I must have Conor lead off with a forge. If he can't make it, no one can."
"What is Roger Hubble going to say about all this?"
Kevin emptied the glass and leaned over the desk. "After all, Andrew, I also represent the Earl of Foyle in Parliament. We owe each other a lot of favors and, in actual fact, a word from you to Caroline Hubble wouldn't hurt a thing. What I mean is, I think I can work it out with Hubble to leave us alone."
"This American money..."
"It's in the bank in England."
"I want to see the names of your contributors," Andrew countered.
"I can't. I've gotten the money only on the condition of anonymity. Otherwise every member of the Irish Party will be after these fellows to do the same in every village in Ireland. I was able to convince them that Bogside was the most desperate situation in Ireland...and that's our pact."
"Is that it?" Andrew asked.
"No, there's something in it for you. I have the votes to pass a bill to open a new public college in your district."
Now it was Andrew Ingram's turn to lose his icy composure. A new college! Almighty! What a jewel in the Crown! "You're glinking yourself, Kevin. All Roger Hubble has to do is give a nod and the House of Lords will veto the bill."
"Not if you convince Lady Caroline to have her husband support it."
It came to pass that a fine new forge and foundry was opened in the Bogside by Conor Larkin. His quick success led to a number of new businesses taking root and that was followed by a flurry of apprenticeship purchases in a number of trades that were formerly unavailable to Catholics.
Conor had soon figured out that not only did Caw & Train have a monopoly on all ironwork in the region, but its municipal bids were corruptly inflated. With the daring that only the ignorant are blessed with, Conor entered a bid against the Earl's company. His forge was burned out shortly thereafter.
A new string of events came one after the other. Conor rebuilt and was actually subcontracted by Caw & Train to work on the restoration of Lettershambo Castle across the river.
Part of the Lettershambo reconstruction called for installation of a new central heating boiler. Sir Frederick Weed had sent a marine boiler from Belfast, which he used on his larger ships, and the engineers to set it up. Problem was the pipes were small because it needed to heat small spaces such as the ship's cabins, and these were done following meticulous blueprints.
The small pipes could not heat the great stone rooms of Lettershambo and the project staggered until Caw & Train came to Conor in desperation.
Conor knew the elements of whitesmithing, the use of thinner metals. No sooner had he opened his forge than he quickly filled a vacant market making pots, pans, and a variety of light tools for a hundred purposes.
Conor solved the problem at Lettershambo by making large pipes of thinner metals, more malleable to the quirks of the uneven walls, and lined them with asbestos. It threw out ten times more heat than the ship's small pipes.
Now on working terms with the establishment, Conor remained not only ignorant of the secret maneuverings that had taken place but unaware that he was deliberately being integrated into the Roger Hubble system in which Hubble controlled his competition.
19.
Conor Larkin had gained the fine measure of success that Kevin O'Garvey had prayed for. His line of wares from carpenter hammers to skillets were of such superior quality and design that the Protestant merchants of the region reluctantly trudged to the Bogside to place orders. Likewise a number of Protestant preachers came to the conclusion that the Lord did not take sides in matters of magnificent scrolled ironwork and small commissions came in for their churches. The forge survived its worst crisis, a burnout, when Conor bid against Caw & Train. After he rebuilt, Caw & Train called upon him for consultations and subcontracting so often he was accepted as somewhat of a left-handed member of the Protestant establishment.
Conor cared little for his own comforts, continuing to live in a small tidy flat over the forge, big enough to hold five or six mates to drink with, or bed down a willing lass, or spend his nights in luxurious reading. He saw to the needs of his family and particularly his brother Liam in New Zealand.
It was not as though Conor had not always loved the Ingrams, he simply would not and could not come to them until he felt he was on some kind of equal footing. The return to a close relationship was a glory.
Conor was Bogside. His second homes were in Celtic Hall and the football pitch. He also filled out a few dandy suits of clothing and ventured into the new cultural life of the city. Blessed with the kind of handsome and playful looks that made the ladies swarm to him, he always had a beauty on his arm, though he never became serious. He had created a perfect lady in his fruitful imagination, and until someone in real life could knock her off her pedestal and send himself crashingly into love...well, then, he was always kind and gentle. Unable to bear such a grand-looking and happy bachelor, Enid Ingram put an entry into the derby, a lovely young school teacher whom Conor cared for very much, but not totally enough.
As Conor thrived and grew in stature, Andrew Ingram found himself suddenly in a springtime of discontent after he had agreed with Kevin O'Garvey to help keep Conor in Derry.
Conor had no idea that there had been maneuverings behind his back to put him into business. At first, like all lies, it seemed small and unimportant. After all, the deception had worked. Conor was not driven out of Derry, and his success had paved the way for others to succeed.
After another springtime of discontent, a brief announcement in the newspaper opened Andrew Ingram's mind with a sense of horror.
The announcement read that the Select Committee of Parliament chaired by Kevin O'Garvey was compelled to postpone his long-vowed investigation of the Witherspoon & McNab shirt factory.
Following logic, Andrew began to wonder about this anonymous group of Americans financing the ventures in Bogside. Trying to pin a master politician like O'Garvey down was like trying to close one's fist on a handful of mercury.
Was Andrew reading too much into O'Garvey's postponement? He questioned Kevin. Kevin came back with an unsatisfactory explanation about a parliamentary maze and a double cross by a couple of members of his Select Committee.
Well, there is only one way to get to the bottom of it, Andrew thought. He must demand to know who the financiers are. That would end all doubt. Kevin had shared many secrets with him prior to this. Kevin would have to lay it on the table.
A meeting had been set, but the night before Andrew Ingram found himself wandering along the promenade of the River Foyle, flushed and dazed. The simple demand he was going to make was not so simple at all. Andrew had wondered about Roger Hubble's passive reaction to Bogside's new run of progress. Except for the burnout of the forge, Hubble had accepted it...almost as though he endorsed it.
This was in keeping with Roger Hubble's overall strategy. When a challenge arose, Hubble calculated how much energy was going to be needed to crush it, and if the challenge succeeded, how much it was going to change things. In most cases it was easier to allow a competitor to take hold, then take control of him. What better way than to control your own competition?
Larkin's forge would be a perfect example, would it not? After allowing Conor to struggle to establish himself, Caw & Train would quietly draw him in by throwing him a bone.
What Andrew Ingram was revealing to himself was so crushing that, for the first time, he did not confide in his wife until it was too late.
The truth that was emerging was that there were no Americans involved in this. The money had come from Roger Hubble! Dear God! What did Kevin O'Garvey give him in exchange?
The springtime of discontent sank into a gloomy autumn and winter and finally the news that the Select Committee had made a second postponement.
Kevin O'Garvey had called off the investigation of the Witherspoon & McNab factory in exchange for Hubble's financing of the new enterprises and apprenticeships.
Roger Hubble knew there might be a few successes, but in the end there would be one failure after another and Bogside would still be Bogside.
O'Garvey could no longer bear the destitution of Bogside and more failures of the croppies out on the land. He had tried to do something desperate to bring some light and hope to his people, but he had made a Faustian bargain!
But before you confront Kevin O'Garvey, you'd better think it over, man! Andrew told himself. Kevin had come to Andrew first and lured him into the scheme without his realization, using Conor Larkin as bait.
Once Andrew added his voice for Conor to remain in Derry, he was locked in, whether he knew it or not.
And now, what if he exposed the plot! This lie, the secret, the deceit would devastate Conor Larkin! Ingram, his mentor, and O'Garvey, his godfather and fighter for the people, had passed blessings by allowing child and female slave labor to continue at the shirt factory.
All those lofty flights of idealism he had flown with Conor Larkin and Seamus O'Neill...worthless. Ingram, beloved teacher, just another ha'penny hack politician, eased into the system. O'Garvey had cried that "They always find out where you are hurting most and carve their deal." Yes, Bogside hurt the most and Roger Hubble knew how to protect the money machine that poured out of Witherspoon & McNab.
Andrew Ingram began to change. He pulled the blind on the window in his office that faced the factory. He could no longer hear the factory whistle without gritting his teeth and closing his eyes and finally clamping his hands over his ears.
He was a welcomed friend in Bogside. He had done more for Catholic students than three hundred years of Anglo ascendancy. He was coming close to establishing a college...to what avail...to what avail...to allow the most indecent part of the system to continue unabated.
Andrew Ingram no longer went into the Bogside.
He had been a progressive and enlightened schoolmaster who feared no preacherman nor Orange ignorance nor Anglo arrogance.
But a Kevin O'Garvey, a devoted politician, a maker of events trying to penetrate the blackness of a Bogside, had to risk much more. Like a military general, Kevin O'Garvey had to risk other people's lives. Drawing Ingram in was a clever part of the tactic.
Andrew Ingram had always loathed his academic colleagues, who did their protesting from the safe bunker of a university. Ideas there were risk-free, till the moment when Kevin O'Garvey made him partner to a lie.
An educator counts his life by the achievements of a few golden scholars. Andrew's were Seamus O'Neill and the ethereal Conor Larkin.
Had he made too much of Conor? He had failings. Wasn't Conor drifting away from the agony of Bogside? A few less hours at Celtic Hall as a starter? Was Conor now a Lothario, a clever seducer of women, some of them unhappy or adventurous married women on the prowl?
When all was said and done, the plain and utter truth, God, was that Andrew Ingram was unable to face the moment to tell his prodigy that he had surrendered his idealism in a dirty bargain.
Enid, a power of a supporting mate, became frightened watching her husband do himself in. In the deep of another sleepness night, Andrew caved in and blurted it out.
"I knew the minute Kevin walked in I was knowingly going into a deal, becoming the keeper of a lie. I had betrayed Conor by not demanding to know, immediately. Funny, how an ideal so nobly spun in the sunlight of a high meadow can become a web of total entanglement in reality. And what will Conor do? Try to blow open the stench of the deal? Destroy Conor by keeping him from ever believing again that the men he loves the most will not dishonor him?"
My Dear Lady Caroline, It is with utmost sorrow that I pen you this note. After tormented hours of soul searching and with the concurrence of my beloved Enid, I have come to the decision that I am going to resign my position. The announcement will come at the conclusion of the present term and enable us to get things in order concerning the possibility of a new college.
I have accepted the position of Headmaster at Kirkmoor, a small but excellent private school near Edinburgh.
I'm afraid the decision is irrevocable and, for the present time, a highly confidential matter.
Your devoted friend, Andrew Ingram
20.
"To hell!" Caroline cried, crumpling Andrew Ingram's note. Where have I been? she asked herself. Such a decision didn't happen between yesterday and today. Caroline was terribly close to the Ingrams, both in civic matters and socially. She chastised herself for not picking up on his duress.
Bloody hell! It was nigh on impossible to tell if Andrew was more somber or less somber behind that Scottish mask.
For Andrew Ingram, there was more than Conor to consider. There would be the heartbreak of Seamus O'Neill as well. A scandal whose bottom line read, "Hands off the shirt factory," would destroy Kevin O'Garvey, too, and try as Andrew might, he could not bring himself to totally blame Kevin for doing what he did.
What of Caroline? She was aware that both her father and husband were scoundrels, but there was no way she could have known about the shirt factory. If she found out now, what would happen to her own marriage?
When Enid let Caroline into Andrew's study she could see the pallor of his face. Enid excused herself as Caroline took a chair uncomfortably, then did the obvious foolish thing of trying to bait him with candy. She unrolled a map of the district on his desk.
"Roger has all but agreed to donate three hundred acres of land here for the college. O'Garvey says the minute Roger announces he's in favor, he'll start the bill through Commons."
Ingram looked at the map. "Lovely situation on the Protestant side of the river, in Ulster, between Lettershambo, the largest arsenal in western Ireland and a military barracks two miles away."
"Let's get the damned thing built and worry about student riots later," she retorted.
"That will be for you and my successor to iron out."
"As the chairman of your board and as your friend, I have a right to know. Without you, Andrew, there are no woods or forests of learning in Londonderry, only an empty, rock-filled, windswept moor."
Andrew's eyes were misty. "I always held in disgust that my robed and hooded colleagues espoused the ideas of brave men, but from a position of no danger to them. That is why I left the campus. I have infused in a few extraordinary pupils the struggle required to have a grand ideal win out over evil. Yet, when I came to my own Rubicon, I slunk away."
"Just how vague do you intend to be, Andrew?"
"I knowingly let someone lead me into a game of deals and lies and compromise, pretending to myself that I had done the right thing and that I had let go of nothing sacred. Such mendacity has brought me to a conclusion that I have forgone five decades of idealism."
"I see a lovely man dreaming about being a perfect self in a perfect world who had to come face-to-face with the reality that he wasn't perfect."
"Caroline, I was party to a scheme. The price was to lie to myself by making myself believe there would be no price to pay. There is no such thing as a free lie. If I stay in Derry, those young people will turn acidly from idealists to cynics because I have betrayed them. Better that their beloved mentor simply disappear into the Scottish heather."