Leon Uris (21 page)
Authors: Redemption
Tags: #Europe, #Ireland, #Literary Collections, #Historical Fiction, #Fiction, #Romance, #Sagas, #Historical, #Australian & Oceanian, #New Zealand, #General, #New Zealand Fiction, #History
Ah Rorylad,
The long way home is done.
Since we all must learn from each journey, I have made discoveries of the utmost importance. My thoughts are far from original, but the journey was new to me. To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.
In a manner of speaking Ireland is no different than any other place except a few more sorrows and a few less joys, but Ireland is
my
life,
my
joys and
my
sorrows.
Why is it so, Rory lad? What is the terrible beauty of one’s country? The fields are still wretched with rocks, its cities impoverished, its wards filled with cholera and tuberculosis, the justice from its overlords a folly…yet, my feet on Irish soil says my goodself and Ireland are one.
My dear cobber, Seamus O’Neill himself, was back from the Boer War to greet me. Himself is a noted journalist and remains an aspiring playwright and a dandy about Dublin.
I found myself now able to speak of the shirt factory fire without half destroying myself. Then came the most gripping of fears, my first trip back to Ballyutogue. One cannot divorce one’s self from one’s country, and his childhood is the soul of it. I walked through the old cottage and fields and forge in a highly emotional state, and I lingered for many hours at the family graves.
Dear Brigid has become the keeper of our ashes. Your aunt’s loveliness has flown. For years my ma wanted to coor her land with our next door neighbor’s, the O’Neills. Brigid seems likely to go into a loveless marriage with Seamus’s older brother, Colm, a blister of a man, and they’ll have acreage to brag over. He’s a twit with a smelly old dog at his feet, a smelly old pipe in his mouth, and the smell of booze from his innards. Although there is yet time for Brigid, I’m certain their bed will be barren.
Brother Dary now studies at the big seminary at Maynooth. He will be a people’s priest and be loved because he will reason and not oppress. I pray God there is room for him in the Church.
Dary and Seamus and I returned to our lives bittersweet. It has been four decades gone, but the famine still hovers over Ballyutogue.
Aye, the great hunger has made an eternal mark on our people, destroyed dreams, stripped us of our manhood, dispersed our seed. When I left Ireland I saw a broken people, shorn of the will to protest, subjugated, a down-spirited paddy.
But now Dublin bursts with the Gaelic revival. New political parties, parties truly representing Irish longings, have joined the cause.
The most terrifying of my fears are now laid to rest. I feared I would live out my time watching Ireland go from nowhere to nowhere, and the unwritten words as well.
See now, Rory, what I can’t tell you about was my chilling meeting with Long Dan Sweeney, who has returned to revive the Irish Republican Brotherhood, of which I am now a secret member.
Ah Rory, Long Dan is the revolution that is! His old face is like candle wax, his skin an unhealthy pallor and his face in crags and slits as too much life on the run will do to a man. Time and British justice have knocked him about to where he is a cynical eccentric.
I’m bursting to tell you what I can’t tell you. Two thousand guns are hidden in England and aye…your Uncle Conor has been charged with the mission of smuggling them into Ireland!
Your first dozen books are on the way. Fill yourself with them.
Remember kindly the two major points of my visit. Namely: when your opponent paws with his left jab, you come under him and belt him to the ribs with a right, then duck out of the way always circling right.
Secondly, be tender to the girls. Always make them feel like a queen, particularly after you’ve made love.
Your loving uncle,
Conor
If Atty was doing a play, the Wednesday matinee left her free for the evening. Wednesday became the designated family evening, early dinner at the Russell Hotel, a browse in the Trinity library, and a stroll to St. Stephen’s Green past the shop windows.
On this Wednesday, Atty was in rehearsal, tense rehearsal. This play was the Abbey Theatre’s most ambitious product to date, and as opening night grew near, everyone seemed on edge.
Rachael came in with Emma in tow, waved to their mother on the stage, and found seats. Rachael’s seat was near the lobby, where she could sink into her homework. Emma found her place in the third row so as not to miss a syllable.
There was quibbling on the stage. The director tenderly allowed, in carefully couched words, that Atty had been a bitch all day and the leading man concurred. She had been fumbling her lines and had been otherwise unpleasant. Undoubtedly, she was about to begin her period, was having her period, or just getting over her period.
She spruced up at the sight of her girls, gave her leading man a friendly elbow to the ribs, her manner of apologizing, and the director called places.
Again she muffed lines. The director took her aside.
“You’re not being very Atty-like,” he soothed. “What’s the matter, darlin’?”
“I don’t know,” Atty whispered. “’T was like I saw a banshee last night. Someone’s dead…I don’t know.”
“Want to quit for the day?”
“God, no. Give me five.”
“Sure.”
She took a chair and wiped a sudden flash of perspiration from her forehead and took a glass of water from a stage assistant. She was dry. The water felt good going down.
Come on, Atty, she prodded herself, you’re acting like an old whore.
She came to her feet, but her legs were unsteady. At that instant Theo burst into the theatre gasping and disheveled from a short hard run from the Four Courts.
“It’s Da!” he screamed running up to the stage. “It’s Da!”
Desmond Fitzpatrick had collapsed of a massive heart attack in the courtroom. By the time the family reached the hospital, he had been pronounced dead. Desmond was a few days short of his thirty-ninth birthday.
The rush of moods that tore through Atty Fitzpatrick solidified into a tight-lipped silence. Bare whispers to friends, bare words to her children. Never had she stood so tall as at the graveside with her children and five thousand stunned Irishmen about her.
Oratory wailed like ancient Gaelic pipes. A kind of sudden loss that shocks, yes, and frightens when a hero has fallen. A subdued wake of the stunned followed at 34 Garville Avenue. Atty remained all but wordless at the outpouring of sympathy.
When it was done, she locked herself in the library on the top floor seeing only Theo, Rachael, and Emma. A fortnight after Des was set down, she returned to the Abbey stage and carried off a performance that threw all Ireland into tears of admiration. She had taken the moment without bravado….
And then she collapsed and retired with the children to Lough Clara.
Had it all been worth it, Des? she begged.
And he answered what he had answered many times before: “We are innocent victims, you and I, of vast compulsions. Insatiable forces squander us. Aye, all men and women battle the forces that create evil, laziness, vanity, lust to conquer, greed to own, hurt others. And all men and women, save you and me, find an accommodation with our compulsions, come to control them, and try to live as normal people. With Des and Atty, it is consumption by a foul ferocity to either win or drop dead in the attempt. We know nothing else. Did we do the right thing by bringing innocent children into our maniacal kingdom?”
She sat with the elegance of a mourning queen before the fireplace and the magic came to her. Theo, Emma, and Rachael did not hunker back in fear. They rallied about, immediate and strong, showing the tough stuff and idealism of their raising. And Atty rallied to them.
Theo had already strolled a bit in his father’s shoes and showed the legal claws and brain of his father. He gestured like Des, lashed out with Des’s biting wit. He let Atty know that despite her own strength, there was still a man, albeit a young man, in their home. From the outset of Des’s death, she knew she would soon have a new soul partner.
Little Rachael was average in size but seemed little when her petite and willowy body stood alongside her statuesque mother. At the moment of grief, Rachael took her mother’s lap, not to be held but to comfort. They quickly became the best of friends—indeed, the girlfriend Atty had never known.
Of the three children, Emma presented a soft link. She never truly demonstrated the iron of the other four but played the game, allowing herself to fade in the background of this powerful family. Emma was dolls and girl things. Des’s death hit her the hardest, for her adoration of her father was paramount. Mom had always been
something beyond her comprehension. Emma dared not come too close for fear of deterring Atty from her resolute determinations. She was a child who always felt second to the movement, and not part of it.
Atty’s mother, Lady Charlotte Royce-Moore, had not had a little girl to dote over since Atty had discovered Dublin as a teenager. She traveled immediately to Lough Clara and served as a loving and calming force, although her Anglo mentality had to be overlooked.
Lady Charlotte had been desperately lonely since the death of her husband. Seeing the family alignment for herself, she suggested to Atty that grandmother and Emma do a tour of the continent with a view that Emma might consider schooling in London.
Reality? Emma was the odd man out. Would Emma benefit more with her grandmother than she would suffer from the loss of her brother and sister, and herself? Atty thought it a good idea because her daughter favored it as well.
Aye, Atty knew Charlotte would lavish on Emma what Atty could never give her. Most possibly the girl sorely longed for it herself. She could see Emma becoming a prim and proper young lady in a social scene that better fitted her.
As for herself and Theo and Rachael, they quickly regrouped. Atty plunged into her work, this time with a powerful and devoted family unit, all whistling the same tune.
Ballyutogue Station
Kowi Junction, Christchurch
South Island, New Zealand
Dear Uncle Conor,
Your tragic departure turned Ballyutogue Station into a graveyard of the living dead. For the first weeks nobody smiled, much less laughed. Then your postal cards began to arrive from various ports of call.
The Squire has had the worst of it, mumbling that he should have tried harder to make you stay but at the same time mumbling that nothing could have kept you. Like six times a day I hear him say under his breath, “Fuck Ireland.”
Da looks at me, though I’m just twelve, like I’m going to catch the next ship out of New Zealand. Without speaking, his eyes say to me, “You love your Uncle Conor better than me.”
How can I tell him that it is not possible for anyone to love anyone more than they love their parents? I love you more than I knew I could love and I can say so without shame because you told me how grand it is to tell someone you love them. However, I can’t love you more than my own father, even if he
was an ax murderer. Why can’t he realize that?
A fortnight back I was in Christchurch and Uncle Wally gave me the incredible box of books you sent. He slipped them to me the same way Mr. Ingram slipped them to you. The Squire won’t be fooled, but he won’t dare take them away from me. I never realized that you can get an actual feeling in the pit of your stomach by just opening the cover of a book. As you suggested, I began with
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn
. What a fellow that Mark Twain is! At first I struggled with the pages, but almost like magic, my eyes started getting words faster and faster and they held me like I was in a grip, clear till I fell asleep reading.
The really wondrous thing about Mr. Twain is that he knows so many things about me and what I’m thinking even though he’s never been near New Zealand. He was writing about my own family and particularly the Squire. He told me what you told me, that “if you see yourself in a book, you aren’t alone anymore.”
I followed your plan of battle on a fellow in school who has been the school bully. I seem to always have to defend the poor, like Robin Hood. Anyhow, he isn’t the school bully anymore. Three thumps to the ribs and he left his chin wide open. It was glorious.
I was contemplating commencing sexual activity after my next birthday inasmuch as I’m big for my age and several of the older girls at school know more than their parents think they know. However, having been cautioned by you, I’ve decided to delay things for a time. But, I have the itch all the time.
Love,
Rory
Nor could Rory write:
I try to read between the lines of your letter and wonder what heroic action you are into. Frankly, I’m thinking very heavily of the day I can be in Ireland and swear allegiance to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
My Dear Rory,
It fills my heart to know you are reading your ninth book.
Looking up old acquaintances, I was encouraged to try to make the Belfast Boilermaker rugby team. Thanks to that year I played in Australia, your old uncle still has the legs. I’m at the loose head prop position.
It means a fine job at Weed Ship &Iron, and a series of coincidences. Jeremy Hubble is working at his grandfather’s yard and is also trying to make the team. He moves very fast and has good nerve.
It appears that he is behind in his studies and will have trouble getting into Trinity College in Dublin. So, I’ve got me a viscount to tutor on the Midlands rugby tour. I’ve always cared for this lad and taking him under my wing makes me feel, sometimes, that I’ve got you with me.
Aye, I saw Caroline. She has aged lovely. There is no denying a love still exists between us and always will. But, our love, from both sides, had always been dream stuff, mystical, untouchable, breakable, dangerous.
I don’t know about herself, for women can linger forever in love flown.
She was ethereal, and so long as I was in her spell, I was never fit for a real, live woman. Rory, the moment I saw her I knew I was free for the first time in my life to seek, to fly, to hold without her hovering about me.
Ah, I guess I carried my childhood to extremes but
I don’t dream quite so much, anymore. Realism has settled in…utter realism for my life now demands it. And thank God, with it, I can love a real woman.
I know you’re reading right through this, Rory lad. All the coincidences were manufactured by me to get into Weed Ship & Iron and use Sir Frederick Weed’s private train, which takes his rugby team on the Midlands tour and might end up carrying Brotherhood guns into Ireland.
Realism! I am a bastard for using Caroline and Jeremy. Realism! I am of the Irish Republican Brotherhood so that decision became automatic. It came down to a simple logic that I can no longer love Caroline in that way and be a member of the Brotherhood.
A lot of the old dream here changed the day I took the Brotherhood oath. We’re playing a rough game now, but as Long Dan Sweeney said, “Nothing we do to gain our freedom can be as evil as those who have denied us our freedom.”
Dear Uncle Conor,
It is a good thing you explained to me that a natural and proper step into manhood is masturbation, because I do it quite often now. If you hadn’t told me I’d be swimming in guilt and confessing all the time, even though there is nothing to confess. I’m so glad because I got the worst lecture of my life from Father Gionelli about sin and self-abuse. Your advice to me on this matter is the same kind of advice I will give my own son.
As you said, history comes back to haunt. The Squire found my books. He just glared and glared and glared. After glaring, he took his mare up to his bloody hilltop and talked to whoever he talks to up there. Anyhow, Uncle Conor, when he came down from his bloody hilltop he never said a word to me for three weeks.
So you know what I do? I bring a book into the parlor at night and read to myself right in his face. But it doesn’t really help. Everyone gets real tense. Besides, I’d rather read in my room, anyhow.
As long as we’re talking about books, I think I am ready to go past Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, as adventurous as they are. Maybe I’m ready to have a go at Dickens.
I get so knotted up. If only the Squire and me could talk things through. I don’t read for the purpose of getting him mad. Anyhow, I store up the utter frustration and sometimes fight with kids I’m not even angry at. Mostly I go after big guys using my increasing left-handed skills. I guess I’ve got a bad reputation. It seems like only after I’ve had a fight can I calm down and then the station helps me to be quiet.
Someday, the Squire and I are going to really talk things over, calm-like. Other than that, life is fine, now, just fine.
Love,
Rory
How Rory longed to write what he could not.
Uncle Conor, I hurt to see you again. How I envy Lord Jeremy Hubble. Mind you, I hold him no jealous thoughts. I mean, what a life traveling with you as his tutor and rugby coach. In a manner of speaking, I’m glad you have a young fellow on your hands so you’ll never forget me.
And Jaysus, Uncle Conor, all those “coincidences” you write about. Sounds like you’re living a great adventure.