Leon Uris (25 page)

The big night had come and gone for Seamus O’Neill. His play,
The Night of the Pilgrim,
had not only made it to the Abbey Theatre but marked the return of Atty Fitzpatrick, in widowhood, to the stage.

The play was neither stop nor go, but it had some sparkling moments, including a stirring soliloquy near the final curtain, a speech from the dock, no less, that never failed to mist up every Irish eye that saw it.

Atty’s return from mourning for Des was no less moving. In this time Seamus had the opportunity of working with her on the script and seeing her at Brotherhood Council meetings.

Each Council gathering continued to report another successful run of guns into Ireland. Atty could not help but become intrigued by the skill and daring of the now mysterious Conor Larkin.

The Night of the Pilgrim
could be improved, and each free moment they had Seamus worked with Atty on her role. He tucked away the notes from a meeting and lit a long thin cigar.

“Up to the devil’s weed now, are you?”

“I thought a cigar would make me look a little longer,” he answered. “By the way, Conor Larkin is in Dublin. I invited him to see the play Thursday.”

“The mystery man himself,” she said, with unmistakable sudden interest.

“You’ll find him as large as his reputation.”

“Ah, Seamus, you’ve no objectivity whatsoever about your pal.”

“You’ll see for yourself. I took the liberty of inviting the three of us for a jar or two after the show.”

“Isn’t Dan a little fidgety about who meets who?”

“Oh, Dan…well, Dan thinks you and Conor might be working together on something soon.”

“Does he now? I still feel rather uncomfortable, you know.”

“You’ve been in mourning long enough, Atty.”

“What makes you think I’m ready to give it up?”

Atty was trying to intimidate. She was no more successful at it with this lad than Dan Sweeney was. “I’ve seen you battle your way out of your grief. I’ve heard you venerate Desmond so as to bring tears.”

“What are you meaning to say, Seamus?”

“Too much veneration. You’re a hell of an actress, Atty.”

She had worked too closely with the little bastard, she thought. Playwrights see through people. That’s why they’re playwrights. Ah, play it straight with Seamus, he’s too crafty for you. “Is Conor back with his woman in Belfast?”

“Uh-uh.”

Rachael raced in and Atty showed herself impatient with her daughter’s jabbering, as if she wanted to continue the other subject.

“There’s a custard in the icebox,” Atty bribed.

Rachael knew she had interrupted something and made herself vanish.

“Is he tough?” she asked.

“Extremely gentle.”

“What happened with this girl in Belfast?”

“Shankill girl. Not too hard to figure out, now, is it?”

“He loved her very much?”

“Sometime in your life you should be loved that powerfully.”

Atty felt her stomach flutter. Awakenings! Well, now! “Wasn’t there something between him and the Countess Hubble a long time back?”

Oh, Atty girl, why are you asking things like that of the poor wee man?

“Thursday, you say?”

“Thursday.”

“Well, I’ll try to remember my lines.”

“Aye, the lines are glorious,” Seamus teased, “so don’t feck them up.”

On Thursday, Atty Fitzpatrick transcended Seamus O’Neill’s lines, character, and play itself with a sudden surge of virtuosity that every actress prays will happen to her, never knowing when the moment of glory will strike or, indeed, if it ever will. The theatre was rapt as Seamus O’Neill, minor Irish playwright, sounded like Shakespeare on this night.

As Atty heard the knock on her dressing room door two words leapt out of her past—Jack Murphy.

“Aye, Jaysus, Atty girl,” Seamus said through tears, “you’ve gone and immortalized me. Oh God, you were great.”

The man behind was a tall man, above Seamus’s head. Seamus turned, “Me pal, Conor Larkin, meet Atty Fitzpatrick.”

Within a ha’penny of their introduction, without hesitation, Atty knew how her side of this relationship would go. Conor did not come as a stranger. His name in the Brotherhood Council had a mystique. His prowess on the playing field, as well as his great restoration in Hubble Manor, had been covered in the press.

He was the long-awaited return of Jack Murphy, and then some. So modest and compassionate in his manner, another woman might have fainted at this moment.

Atty was a respected widow emerging from her period of mourning and Conor had been without his Belfast girl a long time. Therefore, Seamus, bless his heart, suddenly
remembered he had a late-breaking news story to cover and said he would catch up with them later.

Two people, although always in a crowd, were desolately lonely and grievously hurt, instantly recognized a need to know each other. Sharing similar hells made them want to talk things out, things they had hidden from the world outside.

The next night the theatre was dark. Atty invited him to dinner at her home. Atty’s proletariat identification stopped at her doorstep. The house was an attached, flat front, three-and-a-half-story Georgian affair, the uniform of Dublin’s affluent. A wildly colored door with a fanned window atop and gleaming grass said, “I am a Dubliner.” It was a lovely home, filled with graces. Her son Theo and daughter Rachael were delightful and showed the maturity of character to cope with their mother’s fame and the movement.

What a great little bird, this Rachael, Conor thought. Her da must have worshiped her. Well, not so. Desmond Fitzpatrick probably would have worshiped her if she had been a rare law book. Conor watched with enchantment the way Rachael kept an eye on her mother. In quick time he realized that the girl was her mother’s big sister.

And there was young Theo, face screwed up, ready to stab an immortal word from pen to paper. Legal posturing at the desk in the drawing room…oh my, he’ll be a terror in the courtroom, Conor thought.

“What might you be pondering on so mightily?” Conor asked.

“Nothing,” Theo answered.

“Nothing is sure eating up a lot of your energy, lad.”

“As it should be,” Theo said. “Nothing requires absolute dedication, as my essay proves.”

“You wouldn’t be having me on, would you, Theo?”

Theo dropped his pen. “Mom is paying good money to have me educated by the Christian Brothers. However, they know nothing. Therefore, I have become an expert
on nothing, in nothing, about nothing, for nothing. As you see, the first page of the essay is blank. I start with nothing.”

“You’re glinking me.”

“If my essay is Antichrist enough, perhaps the Christian Brothers will kick me out of their school so I can get properly educated by the wee folk in the forest.”

Conor took the pages up. Indeed, the first one was blank. He read on.

“Nothing is my subject because it is the oldest thing in existence. Nothing was there before the universe was created and Nothing is greater than Nothing because Nothing is absolutely perfect.

“For a long time I have seriously thought of Nothing, read Nothing, and who will argue that I am perfectly qualified to discuss Nothing intelligently? I place high value on Nothing.

“Two gentlemen recently raced to get to the North Pole first but when they arrived, they found Nothing there. Likewise, Nothing is generally what prospectors find. Nothing is in the head of politicians.

“We must try to understand oft-misunderstood philosophers who actually do Nothing, think Nothing, and say Nothing, because he who does Nothing can do Nothing wrong. He who thinks of Nothing day and night plants no evil and Nothing offends no one.”

“I want you to defend me if I need a lawyer,” Conor said.

“On what charges?” Theo asked.

“Nothing,” Conor said.

“I’ll have you out in no time flat.”

“The soup’s not getting any warmer,” Rachael announced. As if on cue, Atty made her appearance. She swept in so elegantly attired, so cleavaged, and with such a divine scent trailing her, that Theo knew Conor was something other than Nothing.

Mom had been nervous all day. The children realized, with great hope, that the new chap had nudged her from
a year of hibernation. And after a second look, they thought Conor was a pretty fair specimen as well.

After dinner, which was a happy affair—good food, bright kids, and a family that was secure with itself—Theo and Rachael disappeared as if they knew Mom and the stranger had republican business. And, just maybe, some other business as well. Atty’s poker face was overwhelmed by her most daring gown.

“Come along,” Atty said, forgoing the formal salon of high debate, poetry, and wisdom. “There’s something cozier than this.”

She led Conor to the top floor and opened the door into the front room. It was a combination intimate parlor, library, and office, and had been the private retreat with her late husband. It was now a memory room filled with his writings, law books, photographs, and other vestiges of the life they had lived for the movement. For a time after Desmond’s death she scarcely left the room when she was home. Once she did, she had not reentered until this moment.

“Those are beautiful children you have,” Conor said.

“Aye,” she agreed. “I laid a lot of guilt on myself because I thought I had, well, not exactly neglected them, but brought them up too entirely on my own itinerary in life. I was given to wonder if their life had been dealt to them properly, in the right atmosphere. My most difficult decision was to join the Brotherhood.”

“They’re where they want to be, Atty. They hear the song you’ve sung them well. The other girl?”

“Emma hasn’t a republican bone in her body. London and her grandmother suit her fine. In a strange way, it has made her closer to us because she was odd man out here, and now when we visit, it’s very intense. She is going to be a lovely lady.”

“Like her mother,” Conor said, admiring the way Atty had handled this part of her life.

“I wanted you to meet the kids because if we do visit again, it shouldn’t be here. I don’t want them to know too
much about who is Brotherhood. God forbid they are ever questioned about it one day.”

“It will be my loss,” Conor said.

“And theirs. Are you up for a fire?”

“That would be grand,” he said.

Conor fixed the turf in the small grate below the marble mantel. He drifted back in time as the smell of it reached him. He was drawn to the books and stunned Atty as he dissected the innards of Keats and Shelley.

“Where’d you learn all that, now?” she asked.

“Self-taught candlelight scholar,” he said.

“Like Abraham Lincoln?”

“Well, the Lincoln family did come out of County Donegal.”

“Lincoln was Irish?”

“Don’t take my word for it, Atty. I learned that from a friend whose opinion I rarely question. Actually, Seamus O’Neill taught me to read and write.”

“Well, we’ve something in common. I love that fellow. Seems like he’s the only one I can really talk to anymore. But it doesn’t happen too often. Being on the Supreme Council, it’s not good to have him over too often. Des and I would talk here sometimes through the night, and we’d be absolutely astonished to see the daylight come up on us. You know?”

And they talked. It was not like she and Des had talked. Not even as with Seamus. She had only spoken to one person this way, very long ago: Jack Murphy. With Conor, it was more so. In the end she had to recognize Jack was a weak man looking for a safe harbor, out of the line of fire.

The more gently Conor Larkin spoke, the more powerful he seemed. Conor fawned over some of her books and she offered him to take what he wanted.

“Might not be a good idea,” he said. “They’ve your bookplates in them. Maxwell Swan’s goons search my flat every so often. I don’t think it wise to connect us.”

“Do you have a hard time shaking them?” she asked.

“No, not really. They’re very clumsy fellows. Last time
they were on my tail I went to the museum and studied every painting for fifteen minutes. They nearly croaked.”

The mantel clock tolled a late hour. Conor reckoned he’d better get back into Dublin to catch his morning train up to Belfast.

“The train makes a stop at Rathmines,” Atty said. “I’ll run you over in the morning. You can stay over in a spare room. Go on, put another brick on the fire.”

Their eager minds grasped the opportunity for fine conversation, lightened by fine cognac. Bright and lonely people had much to talk about and as they did they sized each other up.

What came through to Conor was that Atty Fitzpatrick was an extraordinarily strong human being, strong as her reputation, and she loved her own strength. Belief in herself would get her through anything. Yet she had bulwarks of protection within…to ward off suffering…to discourage pursuit…to press for what she wanted against all winds.

The study spoke to him. It spoke of Desmond Fitzpatrick’s peacockery, cocksureness, the courtroom matador. Oh, for sure, they made love in this room, he thought, but not to each other. They made love to Ireland.

With all her renown as a great beauty, Atty was ill at ease as a female, Conor thought. He sensed that Des needed her as a partner and she needed him, but not as man and woman…as compatriots.

Conor’s charm drew her in. She felt as though he were undressing her with his mesmerizing manner. Little tiny flicks of conversation told her that he knew she and Des used one another as crutches. And what of this big fellow before her poking up the turf?

Conor Larkin was frightening, that’s what. Here was a man, she knew from Seamus, who had waited his life for his love, and he possessed this Shelley girl. Only he could shine in his woman’s eyes. God, Atty thought, Conor’s grief over the loss of Shelley is as deep as my grief over the loss of a husband of sixteen years and three children.

Jack Murphy had owned her once, but only for a fleeting moment. She knew when she asked Jack to show her the hidden side of herself, he would soon be gone. That would not happen with Conor lad.

In a sudden flick, innocent and curious, Atty invited him to her bed. When the powerful blacksmith’s arms enfolded her, she had never felt the likes of it.