Leon Uris (19 page)

Conor Larkin slid shut the door of the wheelhouse behind him and set down a cup of tea for Bojo at the helm. He sipped on his own as Bojo gave him the headings for his watch.

The S.S.
Famagusta
moved flat out at twelve knots on a smooth tabletop of windless water and a big show taking place up in the sky.

“Christchurch tomorrow,” Bojo said. “You got a brother there?”

“Aye, he has a station somewhere in the middle of the island up in the hills.”

“A real spread?”

“Couple thousand acres, maybe more.”

“That’s a station, good enough. Setting down for a spell?”

“For a spell.”

“How long you been roving, Larkin?”

“I’ve been out of Ireland for about five years.”

“Well, I’m going to miss you as much as one can miss a paddy. How long’s it been since you came aboard in Australia?”

“Year ago.”

“That long already. Yeah, I’ll miss you.”

Conor took the wheel and adjusted his eyes. It was a
night of nights out there. Bojo slurped at his tea. “Five years. That’s a piece of time, all right. Woman?”

“Isn’t there always a woman?”

Bojo gurgled a laugh and gave his mouth a swipe from the back of his hand. He’d forgotten. Yeah, there was a woman, or two. “This New Zealand is beautiful country. If I ever quit the sea, I’d give it my utmost consideration.”

Flecks of gray had shown up on Conor’s temples, starting when he crossed the line past thirty.

Bojo was glad he was off watch. “Hate it up here at nights,” he said, making his departure. They all hated the night watch, Conor thought. During the daylight there was always someone moving about, someone to chat up.

There were those bad days and nights when you battled the wheel or were rocked silly up in the crow’s nest and all you could think about was finishing your watch and getting a shot of rum in your belly.

Sailors hated the calm nights like tonight. It was with but a sliver of moon and the heavens filled with stars and mischief that the watch became painful. They had time to ponder all they had left behind, all they would never find, all that useless wandering. They would hurt for that one woman—abandoned, dead, waiting, unfaithful. They would wish for something beneath their feet that didn’t roll, something long and green with a covering of spring flowers. All that was gone. All that they would never see again. All that they would never know haunted them on night watch on a calm sea.

Conor loved it at the helm on these nights. These were nights for himself and Caroline. Newport, new girl. Some of the lassies were lovely creatures. After a time, they would look into his eyes and become frightened. He saw through them and they could never look in too deep. They became frightened of losing him because he demanded a power of love they did not possess. Some loved him well, but they could not come between him and that ever-tilted sword charging at some unknown foe, nor could they
come between him and a love he had touched once long ago.

So Conor found a new ship. He saw the swill holes; black, brown, yellow, and white, living through motions of life in the humility of colonization.

He saw Bogsides of Irish scattered about the world.

For the better part of a year Conor took to Australia. It was a grand place, indeed. There was a girl and a moment he thought he might end his journey from nowhere to nowhere. He became a foreman in a steel mill and played a spot of professional rugby.

But the damned turf fires of Ballyutogue reached his nostrils from ten thousand miles gone and the beauty of the voices singing from Dooley McCloskey’s public house, and he smelled the fresh high meadows above the heather and the fog and wind blasting in from Lough Foyle…and Bogside!

Think about it, Conor lad. That’s when you wanted to stand the night watch. In that manner you wouldn’t have to come startled out of a nightmare of the fire.

Why did Conor leave Australia, then? He wasn’t certain. The lass was fetching and dear. She came to learn that Ireland whispered to him, reached out for him. He was helpless. He fell into a black spell after his mother departed…and he went back to the sea again.

After a time the visions of the fire and of Myles hanging from a rafter and of Maud on the pavement came under control. After a time he could go three or even five nights…then a week and a month without the nightmare. It never went away, fully.

Even Caroline became more vague. Sooner or later her spirit came onto the scene as he grew serious with another woman. The vision he kept was one of perfection. Then she dimmed, as Dary told him she would.

At long last he was on a ship heading toward New Zealand and Squire Liam Larkin and a family of Larkins he did not know. Conor was happy now that it was
Christchurch ahead. Five years of roving had purged what needed to be purged. His mind was clear. He laughed again. He told himself he was open-minded about New Zealand. Perhaps, he even believed it.

God willing, he might find the peace and love his brother Liam had found.

Tomorrow…

When Eye-tallions or Jews or Greeks came down the gangplank to waiting families, there was always a lot of hugging and screaming and weeping. Russians slam one another and wail. Brits give formal little pecks, grins, and sturdy handshakes.

No matter how long the time, how far the journey, an Irish Squire and his roving brother are apt to be plaintive and stiff, as though an explosive greeting were not natural.

Family members didn’t touch each other much in the old country. The Larkins were known to be far more affectionate than most…until the chill set in.

Conor and Liam stood for a long moment or two or three, as though they had to let their lives pass by until they rendered rugged handshakes.

To hell, Conor thought, to hell!

He embraced Liam like no man had embraced him since they had won the Donegal football championship. With the air out of him and a wide grin replacing his somberness, the Squire introduced his family: Mildred, Spring, Madge, Tommy, and Rory.

Each in turn got a thunderous hug and kiss and they walked off chattering like Eye-tallions or Jews.

The awkwardness between the brothers passed in a moment. Four kids wanted to see a rough-up, hear sea chanteys, gape as he spun his yarns, for Conor was the uncle of uncles.

There were the sorrows that Liam and his brother had to work through: the death of their parents, Myles’s suicide, the fire, the spinsterhood of their sister, Brigit.

They spoke of happy times. There were more of these than Liam had remembered. To look at the girls during the wracking season, gathering up seaweed, the bottoms of their skirts tucked in at the waist baring their limbs and the wet of the sea causing their blouses to cling to their breasts, and times at the fairs trying to outwit the tinkers, and Kilty’s wake. Oh, so very many things that were both joyous and essential to one’s very being.

Yet Liam clung to some consternation. In fact, he owed Conor his stature of Squire, for Conor had paid his passage and got him into land. Yet, the monster of youth brought back fears of living under the awesome shadow of Conor.

Mildred watched this carefully, leading her husband along the path brightly. This was Liam’s land. He had made the battle here and won it. Conor would never steal his kids or make himself larger than their daddy. His tension eased as he felt certain that Conor was no longer a threat.

In actual fact, as Mildred pointed out to her husband in the sanctity of their bed, Liam no longer needed Conor but Conor needed Liam now, sorely.

The same kind of lightness swept over Ballyutogue Station as had taken hold in the manor house. Of Hubble Manor…well, then…the restoration was a memorable time, but nothing was said of Caroline or the intrigue of Kevin O’Garvey and Andrew Ingram.

From initial apprehension, his throne intact, Liam’s tack now drifted toward keeping his brother in New Zealand. As the weeks passed, the idea evolved. Conor was so in place here that the opposite idea took hold—what would it be like when Conor left? What a void! What an utter void! See now, that aura of beauty that always surrounded Conor was theirs and everyone in the family felt it.

Loving Conor, Liam concluded, was not a danger. Liam
was keen now and saw through his brother’s melancholy and mystery, a man who could give off sunshine but keep his darkness in himself.

Three hundred acres of the most magnificent, lush, deep soiled bottom land in the southern Alps came on the market and Liam and Mildred made quiet inquiries and placed a holding deposit, and waited for the right moment to offer it. As for a forge, Liam told his wife, they’d come from all over the country to him.

The ladies of the stations and villages clear down to Christchurch began to circle the campfire with Mildred Larkin brokering the plotters.

Now that he had made peace with himself, Liam had to admit to things he knew of his brother. Conor was a different breed, who had always aspired differently from other people. Wealth and stature meant nothing to him. Conor had always been after something Liam could not see or touch or describe.

This soured the milk a little. Was not Rory a lot like his brother? Yes, he and Conor were at peace for the moment, but what power did he hold over Rory? A wariness set in.

Conor and Rory teamed off naturally. Conor had worked with horses all his life, but none of the class that populated this station. Although but eleven years of age, Rory rode his stallion, RumRunner, with the skill of a man who had been in the saddle three times as long.

Liam fell into the ancient game. Rory adored his uncle and Liam feared his son would be itchy to follow if Conor left. Rory had never taken to anyone as he had to his uncle….

And Liam pondered. How much of Ireland would Conor fill Rory’s head with? Had Conor dinned his son with Irish martyrs and speeches from the dock?

Liam was convinced that Conor’s departure would guarantee Rory’s departure, in time. Liam had to have Rory, or Ballyutogue Station might vanish. Liam concocted a new plan—he would encourage the deepening
relationship between uncle and nephew. If Conor came to love Rory and also understood Rory’s value to the station, then Conor might remain.

Jaysus, Liam thought. He and Conor and Rory together could build an estate the likes of which had never been seen on the South Island. He’d end up with more land than the Earl of Foyle! On the other hand, the Squire’s unspoken partners might not give a damn!

“Rest your head, Liam,” Mildred warned. “Your father made plans. My father made plans. We didn’t listen very much, luv.”

“What will I do now, Millie?”

They flirted with answers…all kinds of answers except the right one—to show Rory they loved him.

With Rory riding alongside, Conor lost much of his melancholy and felt for a moment he was at the forge, twisting iron and all joyous inside. How wonderful to ride the perimeters of his brother’s acres mustering the lambs and the beef.

When there was a fence to mend or an hour to spend, Rory and Conor drifted toward the shade and became pals in the utmost sense of the word. Conor was quizzed and was wondrously happy to open the boy’s mind.

Conor had a rover’s eye view of the entire world, a world unknown to Rory. When his uncle ventured beyond the horizon his words pulsated in the lad’s daydreams…

…of a ship around the Horn…

…of a cattle raid…

…of the scents and danger of the waterfronts…

…of the rugby pitch…

…and a lot of man talk about the girls.

In the beginning Uncle Conor always had a couple of books tucked away in his saddlebag, but Rory’s incessant questions made the reading break impossible. Besides, Conor preferred conversation with his nephew.

There was a second, quiet reason Conor put the books away. Rory’s curiosity about what lay in the pages had apparently invoked a dour reaction from Liam. It came from nothing that was said, but certainly sensed. Liam didn’t like Conor’s books any more than their daddy had.

An old family theme was being played with a new player. Books had been slipped to Conor as a boy from a sympathetic Protestant schoolteacher and from his closest boyhood pal, Seamus O’Neill. Liam sorely recalled an almost nightly replay of Conor slipping books into the cottage and whisking them out of sight before Tomas arrived.

“Why are you reading all them books,” Liam would taunt, miffed. “You’re only going to be a blacksmith. Besides, Dary is the one who needs to read if he’s going to be a priest.”

Finola would quickly and automatically add, “Get those books out of sight of your daddy, Conor. You know how he feels about your nose being stuck in the pages all night.”

Damned right, Conor knew! It led to the fiercest explosion of his boyhood. To punish Conor and wean him away from the forge and back to the land, Tomas exiled him to the booley house in the high meadows to shepherd the flock for the summer. Conor and his pal Seamus hid a summer’s worth of reading in the bottom of a sack of provisions and Tomas discovered them. In the rage that followed, Conor dared his father by swearing he would run away if the books were taken from him. Tomas caved in.

It was all a puzzle to Liam, an illiterate. What mysteries stoked Conor’s insatiable drive? Liam came to learn that the pages held ideas, and Tomas feared ideas because pursuit of them would take his beloved Conor out of Ballyutogue.

All during his voyage to New Zealand, Liam longed for the knowledge in Conor’s books to ease his fears of tomorrow. As if Conor had always known something he did not know.

When Mildred took Liam in hand and taught him to read, it was a wonderment only second to the wonderment of Mildred herself. He conquered government forms and
learned of animal diseases and occasioned himself of a roaring sea story or the cunning of the sleuths.

For the soul, one needed only one book, the Bible. One needed no further input on the human condition. After all, he was comfortable on his farm and cared little of the fecked-up world outside and all its misery.

When Conor arrived in New Zealand, Liam enacted something he had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times. He opened a book and read to his brother and Conor shed tears of happiness.