Redemption. - Redemption. Part 8
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Redemption. Part 8

"Well?" she said, slipping alongside him at the bar twenty minutes later.

"You're not Joshua," Seamus said, "you aren't going to knock down the walls of Dublin Castle by blowing a trumpet."

Atty passed through several stages of fury. Well, she did ask him and the little bastard had the right to his opinion. What hurt was that he had hit the bull's-eye. Atty was going nowhere except as a big busted trumpet.

"Should I go out and buy a harp?"

"Keep Atty off the stage," Seamus said. "Bring on the stage the woman whom the playwright wrote. Otherwise, you're going to end up as a dog with one trick, shout your way through your roles. You don't trust the words."

"I'm trying to decide if I should spit on you or ask you to help me," she said.

"Theatre of this sort is new. I'm not a director. No one is yet in Ireland."

"I must act," she said as fiercely as she had ever spoken. "This is what I can do as a republican and I have never known an experience as tremendous, as exhilarating, as powerful as when I'm up there."

"Colonels and rugby players and women giving birth have the same experience. You've got to look inside you and ask God if you can play someone other than Atty."

"Can you give me a hand, sir?"

"How deep can you look into other people's joy and pain without becoming frightened and locking them out?"

"I'm going to find out, Seamus, and you're going to help me."

Seamus wrote a half-dozen short readings for her, each demanding her to probe a different emotion. She was often asked to play someone she feared or loathed...to be devious, bigoted, hateful, of loose values. The game was to turn herself believably into the anti-Atty.

To go along with her dynamic stature and commanding voice, Atty added nuances and dimensions and range and a command of subtle moments and movements. All of this, to do the utmost with her talent.

Seamus had done wonders and Atty was pleased. However, both of them realized that she had only so much capacity to give. She always had to retain the ability to become Atty again, in the blink of an eye.

She was a good actress, now easy, now humorous, now filled with confidence...but always in control. She adored what she was doing as life itself. She adored the adoration that went with it and the centerstage world she occupied.

Yet, there was a locked vault inside her that held all of her demons, and she feared to enter it onstage or offstage. Maybe she might never open the door to the vault. Only if she chanced it would she ever ascend to immortality on the stage. It was the only dare she ever shied from.

Jack Murphy's dad, Darby Murphy, kept things well in hand aided by Atty's constant visits. A competent solicitor in Galway kept the operation profitable. Lord Charles and Lady Royce-Moore felt confident enough to make their long desired move to London.

His lordship had no sooner sunk into that deep leather chair of London's Standard Club than he snoozed off and never awakened. At the very same tick of the clock, Darby Murphy died of a heart attack as well.

When the grief and turmoil of the double deaths had eased, Atty had to make decisions. Lough Clara would not be hers for three more years, and trying to modernize without displacing the tenants was a tricky bit of business. It would mean that she would have to spend more time away from Dublin.

She closed the manor house and moved into Darby Murphy's lovely cottage, set in a rare stand of oaks near the stables and horse training grounds. No harm. The entire Murphy family was gone from Lough Clara forever and the cottage was far more to her liking than the big House.

She made it cozy and delicious, using it as her "western" office, where she could read far into the nights, receive wayward republicans passing through, and keep the estate on firm ground, working things out to allow her to go to Dublin often.

Six months into her new routine the postman handed her a cable along with the daily mail. She tore the envelope open and saw the signature...Jack Murphy...and she felt entirely weak with a thundering flush of passion.

MY FAMILY HAS ELECTED ME TO SETTLE MY FATHER'S AFFAIRS STOP RETURNING TO IRELAND SOONEST STOP CAN WE MEET AT LOUGH CLARA FEBRUARY 24 STOP PLEASE CABLE AFFIRMATION STOP LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU STOP LOVE JACK MURPHY Everything she had managed so meticulously and determinedly to suppress could no longer be suppressed. She knew by the cable that nothing had changed in the way she felt about him. Damned, Atty, she challenged, you will not fling yourself at him.

Nonetheless Atty dotted the final "i" and crossed the final "t" to make things ready, to make things perfect. Jack would be twenty-eight now. How would he look? She almost hoped, but at the same time did not hope, sight of him would do nothing to arouse her.

She studied herself with no less intensity than the lovelorn men in her audience had studied her up on the stage. How can he turn me down?

Or was he desperately in love with someone? Dear Lord. Atty realized that a totally new sensation was overwhelming her. It was fear.

The stately queen of the Dublin stage bit her nails and became teary over nothing several times a day...each day one day closer. She was flighty at the meetings with her solicitor and estate manager. She yelled needlessly at an actor or director, followed by yards of apology.

The day came. Yes, the ship arrived at Galway. She managed to remain calm as he came down the gangplank, smiled, set down his suitcase, and gave her an old-fashioned Jack-and-Atty hug. Jack held her at arm's length. "Jaysus, lass, all you need is a truly fine poet for immortalization. Sure, you're the most glorious creature in Ireland."

"Oh Jesus, Jack, if you'd have been one day longer I'd have wet my knickers," she cried in relief.

The cottage had a feel of a new inhabitant, a conversion to a mode of seriousness and resolve. Atty's papers and practicalities had replaced doilies. Important thoughts and conversations emanated from it now, no longer a loafer's and children's romping place, but one for study and future rebellion. Nonetheless she had softened it for his visit with flowers and fireplace glow and the best of wines and whiskey. Although Atty made little formal effort, she was a gorgeous piece of work.

Jack Murphy had turned out well. He was not the irresistible handsome lad of memories, but slight and intense and very much in command. Atty's apprehension melted. When he returned to Canada he would be on his way to Toronto to become the book editor of the country's largest newspaper, and an occasional critic of music and art.

"Ah, Dublin is the place for the Journalist," Atty tweaked.

"It's far too fierce for me here," he replied.

"Really, Jack. Isn't there a mutated Orange crowd in Toronto, and don't the Brits and French go at it all the time?"

"Aye, but their warfare is fought with cannonballs of pudding. Irish politics is like the Islamic religion, an all-consuming way of life. In Dublin, the culture, the sports, the religion, the politics are one in the same. In Canada we have interests other than perpetual warfare."

As Jack talked on about his travels and his contentment in Canada, Atty finally realized what she had known all along but would never admit-that Jack had no desire for battle. Did that make him less of a man?

By the end of the evening all the main details of his father's estate had been cleared lip. Atty would have her solicitor prepare the necessary documents.

As evening fell on the lough and the fireplace smoldered alive with intoxicating turf aroma it became awkward time.

Atty commented that she didn't realize the Murphy library was so extensive. She told him to pull the books he wanted and she would ship them to Canada.

That would be lovely, just grand, he agreed. And what were Atty's plans for the estate? Hard to really say, she told him, for it wouldn't be hers legally for another three years. The horse-breeding operation had always done well and perhaps she'd focus on it. Would Jack be around long enough to look over a couple of applicants for the job?

"Do I know any of them?"

She rattled off a list of contenders. "None like Darby Murphy."

"Let me give it some thought," he suggested. "Well, my love, word has gotten all the way to Canada that a great star is rising on the Dublin stage."

"Truth, Jack? I am tall and rather full-bodied. I am profound in presenting my case, enunciating crisply, shouting in righteous protest, and all in all I make an ideal figure of Mother Ireland. One old priest who marveled at my cleavage looked directly down my front and told me I could have fed an entire village during the famine. Mother Ireland, yes; a great actress, hardly. But I love it up there. The Brits have the guns and we have the words, and now the stage to shout them from."

Jack caught sight of a guitar case on the bench under the bay window. He settled there and urged the instrument to give him a reasonable pitch. Atty watched, mesmerized.

His fingers did not stumble and his voice did not falter. He was well in practice. To whom did Jack sing his songs these days?

"Did you think of me often?" she asked with Atty-abruptness.

"Yes."

"How often?"

"Always."

"Did you ever feel that maybe you made a mistake about me?"

"All the time."

"But not enough to love me...love me...love me!"

"Maybe, but I'm wise enough about Jack Murphy to realize it would do me no good at all. I never let my thoughts of you get a foothold. You are where you ought to be and doing what you should be doing, Atty, in Dublin-town at the dawn of insurrection."

"Jack, you've always played it with me with too much constraint. Can't you let yourself go? You might even like it. Oh, Jack, I get so damned frustrated in Dublin. I need you as a partner. We could do so much together."

"What? Riding a tigress in constant prowl for the kill?"

"Do you indulge in much sex, Jack?"

"I think of it more in qualitative terms rather than numbers."

"Are you in love...with a Canadian woman, then?"

"Truth?"

"I don't know if I Want the truth. Well, are you?"

"Aye, I am."

"Desperately? Madly?"

"Deeply, committedly."

"Are you married?"

"No, but she is and she has two children."

"Oh, shyte, isn't that always the way? Is this person in Toronto?"

"Nearby."

"How sad for you."

"It's not sad at all. It's very joyous."

"How can it be joyous? Love, maybe...but joyous love under those conditions?"

"We make it joyous. We are more-grateful for the time together than we are mournful for the time apart."

"I suppose I see."

"No, you don't see, Atty. With you it's either possess him or send him packing. There are a million variations on the love theme, darlin'."

"Like subtleties that I don't have," she said, turning her back.

Jack gripped her softly and turned her around. She wished he had gripped her hard and spun her hard into him. Not Jack.

"Beloved little Atty," he began.

"I'm not so little."

"Beloved little Atty. Your great flirtation in life is your sporting for tragedy. As far as tragedy is concerned you've found the pot at the end of the rainbow here in Ireland, and it suits you fine. You don't have to look very far here...just down the road to the next village...into the Dublin Liberties with their open sewers. Death by cholera. Even your poor old dad finally found his plush chair and sat down and died in it. Tragedy is always at hand...open a letter and find it...or it may hit from the sky as lightning. Or you may be standing at the crossroads and some messenger will come up to you and tell you someone you love is desperately sick or that your house is burning down or that a ship has sunk in midocean. Tragedy, over which we have absolutely no control, is never far away. And it's the place you've chosen to live."

She put her hands over her ears. He brought them down.

"Now joy is another matter. We can create joy any time, any place. Joy comes from our inside, and it's ours if we've the will to find it. Tragedy is a human legacy. Joy is a human creation."

"Am I that grim?"

"Grim enough to have slammed a steel door and locked your joy in you so that it can't escape."

"I've never felt any joy like that," she whispered.

"I know."

"You'll be amused to know that I have had sex a number of times," she said suddenly.

"I'd be shocked if you hadn't," he replied.

"I mean, being in the theatre with all those mad actors and writers. They die for my body. Well, actually it was four times...five if you count having it twice with the same fellow. It wasn't all that grand, Jack. In fact it was lousy. But I like men, you know. There seems to be a sticking point."

"Could it be that you can't memorize lines of a new play, run a rents strike, write an editorial, and make love at the same time between meals or acts of a play?"

"I'd like it better if you shouted at me, Jack, rather than slice me up with your bloody delicate razor."

"Sorry, Atty. But-"

"But what!"

"Your magnificent breasts and all the rest can sorely inhibit a poor fellow who is doing it by the numbers on command, probably too petrified to perform decently."

"I hate your ugly fucking mouth, Jack!" she yelled.

"So, don't ask me about sex I didn't bring the subject up."

"Don't you even know how to curse! Get mad, Jack!"

"Atty, love, we both knew this conversation was going to come up. So let's finish it off and enjoy our few days together."

That was always the way that bloody Jack Murphy handled things, she thought. Unflustered! Thoughtful! Why doesn't he wilt like other men? No stutters, no awkward shifting of feet, no dropping of eyes. Just a dead-on answer and "If you don't like it, little girl, pack your butt out of here." Goddamn you, Jack Murphy.

She found herself slumped in old Darby's armchair feeling stripped. "Jack," she whispered, "I'm always so damned alone."