Redemption. - Redemption. Part 17
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Redemption. Part 17

"I don't like it and the children won't like it."

"Obviously, I don't like it, either. There is something here in Dublin that has to have a decision."

"Aye?"

"Seamus O'Neill has become the personal liaison of Arthur Griffith on some supersensitive Sinn Fein matters."

"Isn't Arthur speaking to his friends anymore?"

"On certain particular matters, he feels that a liaison would be a better procedure."

Des smelled it immediately. "The Irish Republican Brotherhood, perchance?"

"Yes, the IRB."

"So it's true that Long Dan Sweeney is back in Ireland?"

"Yes. Obviously Arthur and Sinn Fein cannot be openly involved with an illegal organization, but he must have day-to-day contact with them."

Des understood full well.

"Sinn Fein and the Brotherhood must coordinate basic policy very quietly. Seamus O'Neill is on the Brotherhood's Supreme Council. He will be the go-between between Arthur and Dan Sweeney."

Des knew where Atty was taking this and he was leery. As the Brotherhood went into business, the inner circle had to be tight...reliable...ultra-careful or they would be squashed by the British before they got their feet wet.

"The Brotherhood feels it learned a lot from the Boer tactics and that a new kind of urban warfare can be devised so that a few dozen well-placed men can force the Brits to tie up hundreds, if not thousands of troops."

"Shyte, Atty, that's republican barroom bravado."

"Dan Sweeney says that a city has too many vulnerable sites unless they're heavily guarded...docks, government buildings, electric stations, bridges...and mostly, his squads have a hundred and one homes to ditch their weapons and hide in."

"How much of the population will support this?"

"Enough."

"Well, if anyone can bring it off, Sweeney is the man."

"I believe so, too," Atty said. "With the momentum the revival is building up in the courts, through Sinn Fein, by well-trained lads coming out of the Boer War, the Brotherhood can advance its own timetable."

"Now, you're off. Where are the IRB going to find weapons? Where will men be trained?"

"Lord Louis," she said, referring to an eccentric aristocrat of republican leanings, "has opened part of his barony for training. As you know, it's so deeply hidden in the bens of Connemara that the wind has trouble finding its way in and out."

"Well, I'll be damned, I thought Louis de Lacy was no more than a salon dilettante."

"Des, there are two thousand misplaced Boer War rifles ditched in a coal mine near Bradford. Sweeney is formulating a plan to get them to Ireland."

"Mother of God. Are you joshing me, Atty?"

"Two thousand rifles from the Boer War, picked clean."

"Care to tell me what Messrs. Sweeney, O'Neill, and Griffith have in mind for my child bride?"

"Both Arthur and Long Dan want me to join the Brotherhood as a member of the Supreme Council."

"Well, now, this calls for a drink."

Des's mind hummed. Ultimately there would have to be warfare against the British. Long Dan Sweeney was certainly the man to put the Brotherhood back on its feet. Arthur Griffith had to coordinate closely but never allow the legal Sinn Fein to be caught in bed with the illegal Brotherhood. Seamus O'Neill was the perfect liaison....

And then came the painful part of his logic. Atty Fitzpatrick on the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood was no less than a stroke of genius.

"What do you want me to say?" Des asked with unusual weakness. "What I've been doing in the legal field and with legislation and what all the orators and writers have been doing has been child's play, fun and games. No one really gets hurt. Ah, but the Brotherhood. The time has come, dear Ireland, to start spilling a bit of blood. What shall I say? My wife's role in all the rhetoric ends with a curtain call at the Mechanics' Theatre? It's been a blast, lads, but not with my wife, you don't. What arguments would you like to hear from me, Atty? We've shyte on our kids enough without having Mom swing from the gallows. Please, give me an argument to present."

"Christ, Des, you are trying to make me feel treacherous."

"When is enough, enough? Haven't we given enough to the movement without this?"

"Then say no."

"I'd rather give you plain unadulterated family reasons to back off."

"I never took you for a paper tiger, Des."

"Stop that. Trouble with us Irish is that we are too damned intoxicated by the way we've hit this century running. But this will be no Boer War. Those British bastards have owned us for seven centuries, and it won't be the first time we've tried to settle it with a fight. Every time we've staged a rising it's ended up in a disaster. What makes you think this will be any different? This country is infested with fanatical Englishmen and even more infested with lily-livered paddies who will continue to do the dirty bidding for the Brits at the drop of a quid and a government job."

"Thanks, Des, thanks awfully. I really needed to be primed up on this. I'd all but forgotten."

"Atty," he croaked, "have mercy. Up till now, with all our shenanigans we have been able to live without fear in our daily lives. As of the minute you put your hand on the gun and Bible, fear is in. Fear for Theo, for Emma, for Rachael. Fear of who is looking at our house from over the road. Fear of who is stalking us."

"Then say no, Des."

"No to what? Exit the Fitzpatricks, finest fair weather soldiers Erin ever had. Soon as we tried to stuff a few pistols in Atty's brassiere, they cut and run...live in London or some such, don't they?"

"Stop beating up on yourself. Both of us were heading for this from the day we were born."

"Stop...think.... It boils down to one thing and one thing alone-is it worth our three children?"

"Shall we wake them up and ask them?"

"Well, why bother to ask me? Your mind is made up."

Atty burst into tears, a strange sight and sound. Des let her alone and paced. "The Irish Republican Brotherhood," he moaned. "Well, won't I be a busy old scut working out legal defenses for that crowd." He stopped and held the thick velvet drapes whose feline texture somehow managed to soothe him during his storms. "Two thousand rifles in a Bradford colliery pit. Good God, it's come to this, has it? And the illusions I've lured myself into, prancing about in the old courtroom, spitting out hemlock-laced words at those wigged clowns. One could almost talk himself into the feeling we'd be able to run the Brits out of Ireland without bloodshed."

Atty stopped her crying abruptly. "Well?"

"If I were Long Dan Sweeney, I'd sure as hell want you on the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and that's for a fact, now."

"Will you give me your blessings?"

"Of course," he said quietly. "But I have new doubts and new fear."

"So do I. Des, I'll tell you what I believe. If the children were to learn in later life that I turned down the Brotherhood out of concern for them, they'd never forgive me. We have raised them to stand for something."

"Aye," Des said, "so it is." Des then plunged darkly into his stack of briefs and Atty excused herself.

She lay awake torturously counting off the minutes, listening to Des mumble aloud in the adjoining room, scratching away on his legal pad. She wanted so strongly for him to sidle up next to her, put his arms about her, pet her a bit, and tell her everything was going to be grand. God, she wanted to be held!

That was not Des and Atty. He worked into exhaustion, filled to the brim with whiskey, and dropped into bed with a thud. Atty reached for him, but he was already turned away from her, and, in a moment, was dead asleep.

27.

When Conor Larkin first came down to Deny from his village of Ballyutogue, he took a fancy to Maud Tully. Maudie was a Bogside lass of generations' standing, determined to escape the "life sentence" at the shirt factory that had consumed her family and friends.

She became an early daughter of the Gaelic revival, learning the ancient language and spending hours she could scarcely spare in the uplifting environs of Celtic Hall.

The hall was long the office of Kevin O'Garvey as head of the Land League, people's solicitor, Member of Parliament, and political healer to an endless line of impoverished petitioners. With all his titles, Kevin O'Garvey never knew the surplus of a pound sterling. If he had tuppence in his jacket, he always found someone who needed it more than himself.

After factory hours and a quick meal, Maudie worked for Kevin as an unpaid assistant, secretary, or whatever help she could render to him.

Maudie, like the rest of Bogside, was enamored with Conor Larkin's arrival, as he became a saint without wings. A great lad on the football pitch, he lectured to turnaway crowds and lifted the hopes of the wanes of Bogside.

Conor and Maudie became truly fond of each other, but he was just putting his toe in the water and she was well launched on the mission to escape Bogside. Setting romantic fervor aside, they remained as "brother and sister."

It was an entirely different circumstance when Maudie laid eyes on the handsome Myles McCracken, who had the voice of a songbird, and gentle and honorable ways. Myles had followed Conor from the village of Ballyutogue and gone to work in Conor's forge as an apprentice. Maudie figured that with Myles she could follow her dreams out of Deny. Love, marriage, and pregnancy, not necessarily in that order, befell the devoted couple.

To pinch every penny so they might buy a forge in a few years, she contined to work at the shirt factory, and to save rent they moved into an already overcrowded wee house and slept on bedrolls in an alcove in the kitchen.

Brigid Larkin arrived to claim Myles too late.

Myles was a good lunker, but it was Maud, with her smarts born of Bogside, and her compassion that drove her to work for Kevin. She was there for Conor when he needed it most.

Maudie helped Conor work his way through the death of Tomas Larkin. She was there for him when the sudden departure of his boyhood hero, Andrew Ingram, left him puzzled and pained.

She was there when, in a fury of defiance, Conor's wee forge entered a bid against Caw & Train Graving for an array of ironwork around the country. Caw & Train belonged to the Earl of Foyle, and Conor Larkin was burned out.

Aye, the burnout. That was the moment of challenge and decision. Now, a strange thing happened. Conor's forge was rebuilt instantly with "secret funds from America" and, stranger still, subcontract work began to fall his way from Caw & Train.

Maudie counted the minutes until Conor would demand to know some of the smoky things happening behind him...but Conor never made the demand.

Instead, he was swept up with the restoration of the great screen in Hubble Manor, and a changed Conor Larkin began to emerge.

Although he still showed up on the football field and drank at Nick Blaney's with the lads and had a viscount as a water boy for the team, there was a definite drifting away from the hot spot of history, ideals, and ideas that emanated from Celtic Hall.

He complained from time to time that he was so consumed with the great screen that his mind was limp to everything else. Yet he wooed and won a number of ladies, all without the power or ability to win him.

Maudie wondered, was Conor Larkin destined to remain a dreamer, or hadn't the woman showed up yet, or...was she there in Hubble Manor?

When the great screen was done and Conor eased back into Bogside life, it wasn't quite the same. Maudie saw him spending less time at Celtic Hall, growing acrimonious with Kevin O'Garvey, and otherwise haunted and ill at ease with himself. Had Deny itself grown too small for him? What was left to do there?

Then came the blow that shocked them all. Kevin O'Garvey indefinitely postponed his Commission of Inquiry into the tinderbox Witherspoon & McNab shirt factory.

Maudie was eight months pregnant and planning to leave the shirt factory in a week or two. Myles had sped up his apprenticeship so quickly working on the great screen that Conor felt Myles was ready to take over his own blacksmith shop, and one was coming up for sale.

Late one evening in Celtic Hall, Maudie was tidying up Kevin's office when Conor arrived and parked himself at Kevin's desk.

"We have to talk, luv," Conor said.

"Indeed, we do," she said locking his door and pulling down the shade and taking a seat. "The answer to your question, before you ask it, is that I don't know why Kevin is calling off the investigation of the shirt factory."

"Then let's try to think of a reason," Conor said. "There are questions I should have asked months, nae, years ago, but I stuck my conscience in a dark corner and said, 'Stay there, conscience, things are going too well for me and I don't want you hovering over me until I'm ready to come back and get you.' But my fecking conscience didn't listen. It refused to stay where I tried to hide it."

"Glory be, it's nice to know, Conor. I was wondering if you had become totally comfortable up at the manor."

Conor ignored the barb and banged at the question he had avoided.

"How come I was able to rebuild so fast after I was burned out? How come his Lordship starts sending me more work than my shop can turn out?"

"Well, the story goes that her Ladyship had already spotted you as the man to rebuild her screen and to get you into the system."

"That's a fecking lie, Maudie. Where did Kevin O'Garvey get the money? And the money for a dozen Bogside enterprises? Who are the Americans supporting him? Why haven't they even shown up quietly to see the results of their good works? "

"I don't know."

"Well, Kevin knows, and he's going to tell me the minute he's back from London. I should have fecking demanded to know from day one instead of allowing this conspiring behind my back."

"Are you all that innocent, Conor boy?"

"Maybe."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, "in a way you are. There was blood and heartbreak on the land and Kevin ran the Land League, but you only saw it in terms of the Fenian Rising and the hanging tree and glories of the past. Yes, even the famine had its romantic aspects. And here in Bogside, Conor lad, let's go into Celtic Hall and purge our pain with tales of Wolfe Tone and Emmet. You're a bloody dreamer...you see us behind the veil of republican words to die by rather than to touch the pain with your own hands....

"And when you did get involved, you got a reprieve in Hubble and had something really heavenly, really ethereal, to keep republicanism tucked away in a fantasy corner."

"Am I that naive?"

"Perhaps your greatest charm, Conor."

"Unless you've twisted iron," he cried, "you cannot understand what it means to a self-made anvil thumper like me to have a chance to create something of greater glory. I was consumed, Maudie, consumed."

"And you wanted Caroline Hubble, plain and simple."

As the wind oozed from him, Maudie's eyes were on him, and not with a great deal of sympathy. No use trying to work around that girl.