Redemption. - Redemption. Part 32
Library

Redemption. Part 32

Conor moved in slowly and kicked the door shut behind him leaving them both as giant figures dancing in the lamplight.

"You're glorious, Atty," he said, "and I'm going to love you with all of my soul."

I can vouch that their fears of the moment had melted by morning, when I made an unsaintly visit to their cottage. They came to the cottage door, arms about the other's waist, half-croaked from weariness and dazed by the wonderment of discovering one another. It was forever after. And this was the love that brought him peace for the first time in his life. Strange, that in the imminent danger of the Brotherhood they discovered a constant sense of bliss and serenity.

After that, when the two of them were together, their eyes always seemed to be tied to the other's. It became as right as anything could be between a man and a woman. They had arrived at a good place only after mutual grief and longing. But they had discovered their own fine high meadow and had great strength and compassion to draw upon. The unity of their life's work did not hang over them like a guillotine.

How's it all going to end, Atty girl? There was no normal life for them. He would never live another day as a free man. He would always be Ireland's most wanted fugitive. She knew in her innards that Conor would author his own demise before he turned into a musty wheezing number like Long Dan Sweeney, brain soaked with revolution and unaware of the gnarl of bare walls and sheetless cots and sunlessness. So long as Conor was walking through, she would walk with him.

They both confided in me that Shelley came to them individually, often at first, but always in such a manner as to bring a smile of sweet memory and never as a threat.

In the months and years that followed Conor's return, the Irish Republican Brotherhood took its first tottering steps, but it was developing two hearts and two heads.

In Dublin, the Supreme Council set the lofty philosophical canons, published the underground newspaper, arranged our scanty finances, and made a firm political alliance with the legal Sinn Fein Party led by Arthur Griffith. The Council was partly quite capable, greatly visionary, Irishly irresponsible, and always argumentative.

Conor Larkin became the big fellow outside of Dublin, refusing a seat on the Council that would compromise his growing independence. Constantly on the move, Conor trained a few hundred men and broke them into highly secret skilled units. Using former soldiers of the Boer War as instructors, his elite squads drilled in countryside sabotage. Scattered all around Ireland, Conor picked out a dozen tempting targets for each unit, and each unit learned what there was to learn about these targets and conducted dummy exercise after dummy exercise for the day they would become operational.

Conor ran the arms-smuggling operation, manufactured some small arms at Dunleer, and established a dummy company in Belfast under the guise of an Ulster sporting club. The "club," fronted by Protestant sympathizers of the Brotherhood, was actually allowed to import weapons by a quasi-legal route used by the Ulster Volunteers.

I think Conor's masterwork was the Brotherhood's espionage network. Our lads in the constabulary and in Dublin Castle kept us informed that there was fine intelligence on every move the British made.

The bedrock rule of Conor's elite squads was not of things particularly appreciated in the Irish psyche: discipline, patience, silence, physical readiness, and moderation.

The loyalty of Conor's men to him made the Supreme Council nervous. There was constant grumbling over Conor's secrecy and fears that he was forming a personal army.

Louis, Atty, Dan, and I knew that Conor had no aspirations for personal power and so long as Dan Sweeney supported Conor there was little the Council could do, but the old man was slowing down and wearing out. So, the brilliant minds on the Council came up with a highly suspect tactic. With Dan's approval, they voted for Conor to succeed Dan as chief of staff. This move would compel Conor to have Council approval on his plans.

Like the great Caesar himself, Conor rejected the throne with the terse message, "An underground army is not a democratic institution and that goes double for an Irish underground army. If you can't live with that, fire me."

Conor's answer was very clear indeed.

However, that grand old war that England was going to engage in on the European continent was about to erupt, and this brought on a whole new set of circumstances.

Should the Brotherhood declare Irish independence in the event of war? Should the Brotherhood's elite units become operational? Would the Irish public look kindly on the Brotherhood's attacking the Crown while tens of thousands of Irish lads served in the British Army?

The Irish Party under John Redmond caved in in the mother of Parliaments, pledging Irish loyalty in any coming war and taking the Home Rule Bill off the table till such a war ended. It was repugnant to even the most simple-minded Irishman, the last hurrah of a party that had begun with such promise under the late Charles Stewart Parnell.

The Sinn Fein Party-"Ourselves Alone"-swiftly moved into the political vacuum created by the vanishing Irish Party.

As for Ulster, they had made themselves immovable on all matters. In a blood-curdling crescendo, the Protestants took an oath of covenant, swearing to fight to the last drop to keep Ulster British.

Back to the matter of naming Conor Larkin as chief of staff designate. It was apparent even to me, Conor's most ardent supporter, that the Brotherhood could not go north and south at the same time. I understood Conor's ethereal moods and his drifting off into his own universe better than anyone. He had established himself as a loner from the time we were lads up in the heather above Ballyutogue.

Before the British ambush at Sixmilecross, Conor had acted largely on his own in setting up the gunrunning scheme on the Red Hand engine.

After the ambush, he defied Brotherhood orders to enter a guilty plea.

From the moment Conor returned to Ireland after his escape, I realize, he had thought his way through the ideological swamps and had come up with his own plan of what was possible. He must have realized that he could not accomplish what he had planned under the burden of being chief of staff. Indeed, were there deeper and more dire reasons why he refused the Brotherhood's command? Perhaps it was something very simple...that Conor had never given an order to have an informer kneecapped or executed. Part of him was still a poet, a gentle man. Did he lack the needed sense of "killer," and did he realize it?

I caught up with Conor at the hideaway over Sam Grady's Monument Works in Cork. I locked us in with a couple of bottles and a view down to the latest tombstones awaiting delivery from Sam's yard. He knew what I was up to and I knew he knew, so we slid into it gingerly.

"The organization can't keep going like it is."

"It can and it will," Conor said.

"I know your opinion of the Council but can you blame them for fearing a one-man rule?"

"So long as Dan Sweeney knows every move I make and approves it, the Council should be satisfied. The more they know about clandestine plans, the more vulnerable those plans become. We've a long and tormented history of informers, Seamus. It's the bane of Irish life."

"Then that's it?"

"What's it?"

"Everyone knows you are reluctant to give an execution order."

"That's part of it."

"Then we'll relieve you of the burden. All executions will have full Council approval in the future. You'll have nothing to do with giving the orders."

"That's a British kind of word game, Seamus. Informers must be put away if we are to exist."

"But you won't do it?"

"Aye, and I do not aspire to be chief of staff."

"But, Jaysus, you're running the show now."

"Then take my resignation back to the Council."

"Shit, man!"

"Control yourself, runt."

"Shit, Conor! Now you fucking listen to me. I'm Seamus O'Neill, the most loyal man you'll ever know. But you've had a wild hair up your ass driving you crazy since we were kids. Think I don't know you've dirty doubts? What are they, Conor? Why won't you take command of the Brotherhood?"

"Because I'm not a liar," he snapped suddenly. "I won't command men I'm lying to."

"Well now, it's becoming interesting," I said.

"You'd better start emptying the bottle, Seamus, because you won't want to be sober after you hear what I've got to say."

I respectfully did as he suggested. His face, always glowing with kindness, grew dark and hard-edged. In these moments his years of agony pushed through and I saw the rebel boy's cynicism.

"Let me ask you a question, Seamus. Would the Catholics of Ireland ever, of their own free will, declare themselves a part of England?"

"That's pretty stupid, Conor."

"Is it? Let me ask it again. Would Catholic Ireland freely declare itself loyal to the Crown?"

"Of course not," I said fearing what was coming.

"Then what makes you think that Protestant Ulster will ever openly and willingly declare themselves part of Ireland?"

"We know all that, Conor," I replied angrily.

"And do you know that the Ulsterman is incapable of rising above self-imposed ignorance fired by raw fear? Their minds have become vacuums and under the total manipulation of preachers who have shut out the light and air of ideas and beauty. Ulster has enslaved itself. The only ecstasy they are capable of is to demonize themselves into religious fanatics and sorely mistake their unlimited capacity for hatred as some form of joy."

"Tell me something I don't know!" I demanded.

"The Irish Republican Brotherhood," he said softly, "is fostering a delusion of a united Ireland."

Conor was speaking blasphemy! He was attacking the very cornerstone of republicanism. I tried to wave him off, to hear no more....

"What the hell does Ireland want with a million lunatics sworn to destroy us? They are the tragic orphans of this Irish calamity, His Majesty's Royal Ulster lepers," he continued, grabbing me by the arms and shaking me. "By God, Seamus O'Neill, we Irish are a civilized people. We cannot allow them to poison our wells with their hatred. I say, wall them off and let them bang their bloody Lembeg drums and sing their bloody Reformation hymns and fly their bloody Union Jacks...but keep them out of our lives or we will end up diseased like they are. I say, give them their filthy province, for if we don't we will have condemned the Irish people to eternal damnation."

"God!" I screamed, "Who else have you told this to!"

"Ah, Seamus lad, I've not seen you so pale. What's the matter? Truth is truth."

"And treason is treason!"

"So be it. The truth is that there is as much chance of bringing reason, much less love, to these people up north as there is of trying to draw gold out of the winds. The truth is that I would have to destroy my own truths, and myself, in order to become a Long Dan Sweeney."

We were as quiet as the tombstones in Sam Grady's yard. Ah shyte, it was vintage Conor Larkin I heard. Who in the Irish Republican Brotherhood had not lied to himself about the same question? We would go on for generation after generation without the courage to face the truth that Irish unity was a myth.

Who but Conor Larkin would have the courage to stand up and speak truth in the face of a hurricane of hypocrisy? Conor alone refused to play the game. That is why he had remained a loner.

I was totally captured by what the man had concluded in finding a path through the swamp. I've been his follower since I messed my first diaper. Would he confide in me now?

"Seeing as how you're unloading your mind," I said gingerly, "would you mind telling me how you see our recent future?"

He stared at me rather strangely. "Don't even question that I trust you entirely," he said, "but do you want to be burdened with some highly inflammable secrets, even if you don't agree with me?"

"That's up to you, Conor. You're the one with the burden. Maybe you need to hear yourself say out loud what you've been thinking."

"Maybe I do, runt. I'll give you the simple version," he said slowly. "We have brought the Brotherhood to a capability to execute well-planned raids."

"Bridges, police stations?" I asked.

"Bigger. Our first priority is to make a monumental strike, keenly planned, using a maximum of men-say two dozen volunteers on a target that will stop the momentum of the Ulster Volunteers, hit the British in the stomach like a mule's kick, and be of such magnitude they will never fully recover from it."

"Surely we've never had a success like that against the British in five hundred years. All we seem to end up with are glorious defeats."

"Victory," he said, and it was a lovely-sounding word. "A giant raid is the priority."

"Why, what's your thinking?"

"To make the Brotherhood believe in itself as fighters. To have gained the knowledge that the British are not invincible. To know two dozen Irishmen can inflict a grievous defeat on them. But mainly, the Irish people will realize they are being led by men of skill and valor and not a bunch of blowhard barroom republicans."

"That all sounds lovely," I said, playing the devil's advocate, "but where are you going to find twenty-five Irishmen who won't fuck up the detail?"

"We already have them, Seamus. It's merely a matter of making them believe they can do it."

"How?"

"We pick our finest and urge them gently to volunteer. Then we sequester them and inflict brutal training, infinite execution, willingness to sacrifice. We make them believe in each other. We make them believe in their leaders. We tease them about a target that will change the name of Irish history. You see, that's why I can't have the Council muck it up. The Council is well meaning and they're talented, but we've no discipline and less faith in ourselves."

"How are you going to keep this secret from them?"

"Dan Sweeney will approve the raid and the Council will accept his argument for absolute secrecy. If they don't trust Dan Sweeney, then we have no Brotherhood."

"And just when does this extraordinary event take place?"

"We go into training the minute the war starts on the European continent."

Jesus, Conor Larkin was dead serious. When the man thinks things out, he does it, indeed, indeed. I felt myself quivering and almost too dry to speak. "So, you remove a major target, then what? Do the British leave Ireland?"

"Are you going to continue to be hilarious or are you after listening?"

"I'm listening," I croaked.

"After the big raid we bend all our efforts to completing our infiltration of a home army and make it our nationwide tactical unit. This will give us three to four thousand men, maybe more, legally under arms."

"You're dreaming. The British will never allow us to have a home guard."

"At some time they're going to have to. The Ulster Militia is going to become so powerful they'll have to throw us a bone, and in a war they'll have to let us watch the coast and guard certain facilities."

"You're dreaming."

"I say there will be an Irish Home Army. A year or so into the war, at a time of the Brotherhood's choosing, we use the Home Army to stage a nationwide rising and declare Irish independence."

"Declare what?"

"Independence, man, independence!"

"So then the British leave Ireland?"

"The Brits will put the rising down ruthlessly. How dare the paddies jump us in the back when we're in the trenches in Europe! The very savagery of their reaction will further arouse the Irish people. I say, fuck them, Seamus, fuck them. Our freedom is not on their timetable, but ours. When they have squashed the rising, the Declaration of Independence will still stand."

A drink, that's the ticket. I started to get into the flow of what I was hearing. You see, that's what you have to like about Conor. He was speaking in terms of what could be done in reality.

"Now then," Conor continued, "they've put the rising down, but a lot of Irish people are pissed about it who didn't give a damn before the rising, and a lot of Irish soldiers in British uniform will start to thinking about a free Ireland. Then, we spring the trap."

"What trap? They've put us down," I said.

"The Sinn Fein trap," Conor said. "We get elections. The Irish Party gets its burial from the Irish people and Sinn Fein represents us...and..."

"And," I whispered, "Arthur Griffith forms a provisional government."