Redemption. - Redemption. Part 31
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Redemption. Part 31

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.

Hugh Dalton was up for retirement as we set up the plan. Conor was instructed to start serving the Mass so that it would appear natural after a time. This gave Dalton the needed time to get his pension and leave for civilian life where he would be above suspicion.

On certain Sundays the prison was made a sort of open house for visiting relatives. Usually two or three dozen priests came from around the country as well.

Father Dary entered Portlaoise under an assumed name among twenty other priests. Father Kyle, a willing victim, was "attacked" in the sacristy by Conor, who pretended to be robbing him. The "victim" was bound, gagged, and locked in a closet where he would later be discovered.

After the noon Mass, all the priests assembled near the chapel and, as a group, passed through the main gate. Conor Larkin in the disguise of a priest in Father Kyle's clothing...and I'm certain the Lord will understand...walked out to freedom.

II.

Dunleer, the landed estate of the Baron Louis de Lacy, lay hauntingly in the lunarscape of Connemara in County Galway. His land stretched over thousands of acres, encompassing dozens of the hundreds of lakes that pocked the area. The barony drifted up to the Twelve Bens, small but respectable mountains of jagged naked stone hovering over a moorlike bog, and a fairy coast of hidden coves and strands and plunging fjords. Most of the mystic de Lacy domain was all but hidden to the eye. Once out of the foothills, a prolific archipelago peppered a water world from the bay out to the open sea.

The de Lacys were old Norman Catholic aristocracy of the legendary "Tribes of Galway" eccentricized by generations of Connemara wilderness. Dunleer demesne was part of the tragic heritage, the land to which Oliver Cromwell had condemned the Irish into exile and mass death.

The present Baron, affectionately called "Lord Louie," had recently closed out a distinguished career in the British Navy and consular service and had retreated to Dunleer to breed Connemara ponies and continue his mania as a Gaelic scholar.

Lord Louis was also an ardent republican and secretly a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a close confidant of Long Dan Sweeney and Atty Fitzpatrick. Dunleer figured in Brotherhood plans early on, a safe place for men in hiding and a place to store arms.

From the day Conor Larkin made his escape, he was spirited into Dunleer and hidden so deeply, so far back in a lakeside cottage, it would be impossible to find him.

Well now, we had the most hunted head with the greatest bounty on it in our keep. Dan wanted to get Conor out of the country and let a few years pass. Even I could see the rationale of having him leave Ireland, but I feared it, greatly. The man was in no state to take care of himself.

In prison he lived in a survival mode. In Dunleer Conor now had open spaces and time to think. The wound of Shelley's death would never fully heal, we all knew that. As the weeks passed he still was not able to function normally. He would show the four of us periods of clarity, but the longer he remained clear, the more her murder and his guilt were laid bare.

After a time he'd flare and plunge into a nether world. Conor had locked himself with higher walls than Portlaoise. He was a prisoner of himself. His escapes now were his distorted journeys into madness. He could only face his torment head-on for so long, then fall.

Dan's frustration had to be tempered by reality. Conor had to be taken out of the country. Only Atty held out now.

"We've got to lay it on the table, Atty," Dan argued to her. "Conor is never going to come out of this. He will never be reliable to the Brotherhood again and he is a danger to himself."

"Give me some time," Atty pleaded. "I'll go to Dunleer and stay with him. Dan, we owe him that much."

"Seamus, you know him best," Dan challenged, "will he ever come out of it? And you fucking better speak the fucking truth."

"Aye, I'll answer that, Dan," I said. "Conor has shown us his iron will has an iron will. He has borne the unbearable. Yes, he will find a framework to live in. Yes, he will return to the Brotherhood. But Dan, he can't do it in five minutes."

"I'd keep him in Dunleer forever," Dan said, "if I could. For the moment the Brits are looking in every monastery and church in the country. Sooner or later they will focus on other likely places. If they find him here it would be a disaster the Brotherhood might not overcome. The Brotherhood comes first...over any man...even Conor Larkin."

"Maybe he never will come out of it, Dan," Atty retorted, "but to exile him in his condition now might do to him what the Brits were unable to do. It would kill him."

"Aye, it might well kill him," I agreed.

"Give me some time, Dan, and I will work with you," Atty begged.

"All right, Atty, I'll give you time. It will take us a couple of months to work out a fail-proof escape. I will give you those sixty days."

Atty took each of our hands and looked at us, fiercely. "I'll not let him go down!" she swore.

The woman exhausted herself trying to bring him back. Her devotion tested her beyond the breaking point.

Conor would warn her that if she were wise she'd clear out. He saw nothing but death all around him. Well, one does not think of Atty Fitzpatrick crying herself to sleep night after night. Time began to grow short and Atty grew desperate.

At wit's end, one day, she shrieked at him.

"Damn you! Don't you think of anyone but yourself? What makes you think you're the only one who has grieved for Shelley! She was the sister I never had. I adored her!"

Conor blinked in disbelief. He dared emerge from his winter's cave.

"I let her down, Conor. I failed her! I was responsible for her guard in Belfast."

"Surely you can't take that on yourself," Conor said. "She went into the danger with eyes opened. You were in Dublin. You're not to blame."

"I am to blame," Atty cried, "and my sister is dead."

She felt Conor's hands on her arms and he shook her gently. "Why couldn't I see it? Why haven't I helped you, Atty...my own self-pity, that's what!"

Atty tore loose from him. "I'm done in with pain and guilt, man!"

This time the embrace was too powerful for her to run from and she let his power and his compassion wash over her.

And so it was...so it was. The two of them, both traumatized by the brutal murder, made a discovery in each other's arms....

It was bound to be. Shelley MacLeod had left them a legacy to care for one another.

I know, for actual fact, that no sexual stirrings overtook them as they clung to each other night after night. Their hunger to overcome the tragedy was now a hunger for continuation of life itself.

Thanks to God for Atty Fitzpatrick. Conor returned to the living in bits and pieces in their bittersweet wilderness. There was no time left for them to discover their capacity to love again, for as he healed and found the will to take charge of himself, the time came for him to leave Ireland.

Lord Louis made a trip to London to see the German ambassador. Although the Germans were supplying weapons to both the Brotherhood and the Protestant Ulster Volunteers, they had reason to cooperate with us in the Larkin matter.

A few months later, Lord Louis and Conor Larkin made their way out of the barony to the nearby fishing village of Roundstone, where his yacht, Grinne Uile, was docked. They sailed from the small harbor past Slyne Head where a meeting at sea was kept with a small German freighter.

Two weeks later Conor crossed the Canadian border into the United States and made secret connection with Joe Devoy, the leader of the American Clan of the Gaels. Conor's mission was to raise funds for arms and an underground newspaper, the two most vital components of future insurrection.

III.

1909.

'Twas a beautiful spring day in County Galway. In actual fact, it was raining cannonballs and razor blades, but it was the day that Conor Larkin slipped back into Ireland. His mission in America had been a grand success, separating Irish-Americans who had made it big from substantial mounts of money by his charm and persuasion.

Lord Louis's Barony of Dunleer had become a small training base as well as the best place to hide men on the run in Ireland. Atty was stuck in a play in Dublin for several weeks and Dan Sweeney had been laid low by illness, so I was first to see him.

I held my breath, fearing the kind of Conor Larkin that might have emerged. My fears were for naught. He was in command of his work and in control of the past miseries. Life as a fugitive, moving by darkness from hiding place to hiding place across Canada and America, had exacted a price, and the "collector" had taken his toll. But thanks to God, he had not turned cynical.

"What about Atty? Are you aching to see her?" I said.

His brow furrowed in thought, showing his aging, but he spoke with a slightly different voice, one that had picked up keen wisdom through time and suffering.

"I've had a lot to wonder about."

"You're not ambivalent, are you, Conor?"

"I am about both of us. Nothing was promised when I left and we have not been in contact with each other for a long time now."

"She's never had eyes for anyone but you, if that's your concern."

"I have to tell you, Seamus, I would wake up from a hundred nightmares drenched with sweat until I trained myself to control my own dreams. I clutched up a hundred times when I saw a slim strawberry blonde in the streets and she'd turn and her face would not be Shelley's."

"Atty will understand, but she will be devastated if you reject her again."

"I know that Shelley is dead and Atty is alive. I know, also, that Atty is the strongest person I've ever met. She saw me groveling in weakness, totally dependent on her to survive the night. I don't know what is left of me as a man for this woman. I don't know if I have the capacity to love, even a different kind of love. She's too valuable for me to keep dragging her down."

I heard him now. Shelley had an ethereal beauty. Atty was a fair-sized woman, but everything was in a perfect state and her beauty was a kind that belonged to nobility.

Atty did not have the lithe wispiness of Shelley but made up for it with bottomless inner strength.

Shelley wore her emotions close to the surface. Atty was dark with her real feelings...

Leaving a ponderous question. Can a man emerge from an ultimate tragedy with one love and find another love to walk the rest of the way with?

I did not leave Dunleer dejected. There was an unbreakable thread between them that had held them together for many years and through terrible ordeals. They'd either find it on sight of one another or shortly thereafter, for I felt they could not be in the same country and live their lives apart. Was I wrong?

At first I thought so. Their initial meetings were uneasy, in the midst of Brotherhood business. She came to me, at last, containing what I felt was a sense of desperation.

"Conor must have a final exorcism of guilt," I told her. "Shelley has left the two of you a legacy-each other. You'd better take what is rightfully yours, Atty, or walk away and mean it."

Atty Fitzpatrick, a glorious figure of a horsewoman, rode from the manor house to Conor's hidden den along Lough Ballynahinch, then into a natural draw at Lough Fadda. At sight of her his heart thumped and a marvelous glow rushed through him and drove him to silliness and he jumped into the icy lake naked and challenged her to follow.

Atty took the dare and threw off her clothing. On seeing that woman bare and coming toward him in the lake, Conor felt that wonderful stirring again, only slightly modified by the freezing water. He carried her from the lake and wrapped her tightly in a blanket and dried her.

The sky closed in, ugly, billowing down the bens and making the landscape all gray now. The cottage grew deadly silent with anxiety. As he knelt and pondered at the fire, Atty filed away the dinner dishes.

"Conor," she said calmly but with utter finality, "I'll wait no longer. My bedroom door will be open tonight. If you don't come to me, it will be closed forever."

Conor looked to the comfort of the bottle, but as the heavens burst apart he found himself wandering in the rain outside, screaming to the unkind gods and to Shelley to free him.

His soggy figure filled her door frame, the clothing lashed against his body, still fine of structure. Atty rose from her chair and stood beside the bed and took her blouse off and opened her breasts to his sight. Her skirt fell to the floor.

"I've waited so long," she managed to murmur.