Leon Uris (27 page)

Atty recognized Shelley MacLeod the instant she stepped from the train onto the platform. Shelley seemed neither cowed nor lost as she held her hand above her forehead to shade out the sunlight. Standing as she was, Shelley seemed nearly translucent, ethereal. It was plain for Atty to see why Conor loved her so profoundly.

Atty was frustrated with a natural wont to dislike her, but it seemed impossible to dislike her. Shelley wore a purple satin ribbon around her neck to identify herself as she continued to look about.

“Hello, Shelley, I’m Atty Fitzpatrick.”

“Thanks for coming, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”

“Please call me Atty.”

“Is there any news?”

“No, except that Conor is alive. How about yourself, how are you holding up?”

“I’m all right, I’m fine. You’re certain he got through?”

“That much we know for sure.”

They stood silently, staring at one another curiously, not knowing exactly how to continue the conversation…then, as naturally and gently as you please, they came together with both of them trembling. As Shelley felt Atty’s arms come about her, she let go a bit in jerky sighs and sniffles.

“Sorry,” Shelley murmured.

“It’s a wonder we’re not both insane with fear. God, you’re a good strong girl, Shelley. I’m glad you’re here in Dublin with us. We’ll see to you.” And at that, Atty broke and both of them hung on to each other and sobbed.

This was how Seamus O’Neill came upon them. “I see the two of you have met,” he said.

“You must be Seamus,” Shelley said.

“I’m easy to miss, especially if you’re not looking for me.”

“Any news?” Atty asked.

Seamus shook his head. “Do you have any more luggage?”

“No, Conor told me to leave everything.”

“Aye,” he said. “Well, he is alive and that’s a start. We’ve got everyone working on information, but the Brits have clamped a lid. They’re trying to get their story straight. They’re very confused.”

“I can see that from the newspapers.”

They made down the platform. “I wanted you to stay with me,” Atty said, “but we decided it would be best, for the time being, if we put you in a hideaway with a guard.”

“Just a precaution,” Seamus added quickly. “We don’t believe the British will be watching you, and as soon as things settle down, you’ll be able to move about freely with no problem. The main thing ye must know is that you’re among friends and you’ll be completely safe in Dublin.”

Shelley held herself together until she was safely ensconced in a tidy little flat just a few blocks from Atty’s house. Only then did she allow herself the luxury of fainting.

In the weeks that followed, it was apparent that the Castle was not interested in Shelley MacLeod. Virtually no one in Dublin was aware of her role in Conor Larkin’s life, and she posed no threat to the British.

Nonetheless, the Brotherhood continued to keep a
watch on her to make certain that no fanatic from Belfast would come down and attempt harm. She was free to move about Dublin as she pleased.

Shelley stepped right into the dash and vigor of Dublin life. She had been superior in her position, working for Belfast’s only upper-crust couturier, and was able to obtain placement in a fine Dublin salon.

Her life revolved around Atty Fitzpatrick, young Theobald, and Rachael, the most loving of children who seemed to sense the meaning of who was who and what was what without being told in so many words. Rachael watched her mother continue to soften toward Shelley, which was against her mother’s basic nature. Rachael needed no band to blare out that Conor Larkin held great sway over both of them.

As Atty Fitzpatrick came to love Shelley MacLeod against her conscious will, she wondered why. Atty came to realize that Shelley had opened a door within her that had been bolted shut. Atty Fitzpatrick had never thought herself capable of selflessness, not even with her children. Rachael and Theo were there because they fit into her scheme. Emma was given up because she did not.

Atty questioned her flare of passion for Conor Larkin. She had not thrown herself on anyone except Jack Murphy, so long ago, and that was for a limited venture, and only to check out her curiosity.

Her desire for Conor continued strongly after his kind rebuff, and she knew she loved him even though he would command whatever. Without rancor, Atty realized that Shelley MacLeod was the right woman for him…not her…but Shelley. Atty as Atty was incapable of what Shelley as Shelley was.

This became a transcending experience, the knowing that she could love greatly and accept the possibility that it would be unrequited. This love she would carry quietly, for Conor Larkin made her pleased with herself just in the realization.

Once it became settled in Atty’s mind, then loving Shelley as her own sister followed easily. It seemed the stuff of bad plays, Atty believed at first…an awful cliché—of two sisters mad for the same fellow.

To make matters even more serene and velvety was Shelley’s realization of how deeply Atty Fitzpatrick loved her man. She felt great empathy for Atty, as well as great respect for Atty’s dignity.

What an utterly mad triangle, Atty thought! I love them both and want them for each other! I must be coming unhinged! As she discovered the impossibility of disliking Shelley MacLeod, Atty sensed she had come to a new capability of loving. If, indeed, she was able to love so unselfishly, then there might be a love for her sometime, someplace.

Once married to Des, Atty believed that a Jack Murphy intensity of love would elude her for all of her life, until she set eyes on Conor Larkin. “I can love now, without reservation,” and this gave her a new and lovely path she must explore someday.

There was no getting around Rachael with child’s talk and, having no sister of her own, Shelley and the girl filled each other with laughter and hugs.

Poor Theo was burdened by being sixteen. Naturally, he had secretly fallen desperately and eternally in love with Shelley. All he could do was suck in his frustration and continually demonstrate how charming and witty he was.

“I have a new thesis,” Theo opened one evening. “God, we all agree, transcends all creatures, plants, livestock, and inanimate objects. God may choose to be whatever the hell God wishes to be—a mountain, a shark, ten trees, a lighter-than-air balloon. God, God forbid, may even be a priest. The only thing God cannot do is transform himself into a female. God only knows why, but God must be a man and certainly a man of our color. But, let us say, for the sake of argument God decided to be a trout, a male trout, naturally, and in his own infinite way let the clergy and the masses alike know that henceforth he will not be
known as God, but as Trout. This would make a ponderous difference in our lives.”

Rachael, attuned to such gobbledygook, looked up from the desk and her homework. “We could never eat Trout again,” she said.

“Goes much deeper than that, Rachael. Take the British anthem, ‘Trout save our noble king, Trout save our noble king, Trout save the king.’”

“For Trout’s sake, Theo, you’re being ridiculous,” Shelley said.

“‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Trout,’” Theo bellowed.

“What Trout has joined, let no man put asunder.”

“Trout damned you, Rachael Fitzpatrick. Trout knows I try to be a kind and loving brother, but in the name of Trout I find it trying.”

“Trout Almighty, Theo, Trout is on my side.”

“No, Trout is on the Protestant side.”

“Beware the wrath of Trout, you two,” Shelley said, being drawn in against her will.

“This matter is in Trout’s hands…rather fins…”

Atty came from the kitchen and announced dinner.

“What are we having, Mom?” Rachael asked.

“God. Do you want yours off the bone or on the bone?”

As the days wearied on with no word of Conor, the two became extremely close and extremely dependent. Shelley freed Atty to pursue her calling and her calling now was speaking out at mass meetings on behalf of the Sixmilecross men.

When their days were done, they would retire to the library and light a turf fire and talk the hours away with words that took root in a fierce attachment.

“Free Conor Larkin! Free Conor Larkin!”

A small but boisterous clump of students marched with torchlights and placards, passing beneath the window of Lord Jeremy Hubble’s flat on Merrion Square. Ad hoc groups of young people from Trinity College and central Dublin were merging for a rally at St. Stephen’s Green.

It was unusual for Trinity College students to be involved, for the school had been the stronghold of the Anglo gentry from the time of Queen Elizabeth. It remained a gentrified Protestant institution. Sixmilecross had occasioned more than a hundred young people and a half-dozen teachers to a new and public awareness that they were Irish, if not precisely republicans.

Jeremy allowed the thick velvet drape to fall over the window, dulling the street noise.

“You’d think they’d be hanging him as a traitor,” Jeremy mumbled, “instead of treating him like a national hero. No doubt that Fitzpatrick woman will be bellowing her lungs out at the Green. Beastly mouth, she has.”

Molly O’Rafferty remained sadly silent, as she had tried to do since Sixmilecross. Jeremy swayed this way, then that way. He tossed in his sleep, awakened sweating. He cursed Conor Larkin for betraying him and making him a dupe. And he still loved Conor, confusingly.

“Latin has its way of turning the old mind about,” Molly said. “Back to your studies and on with them.”

Jeremy returned to his desk and once again questioned the value of Latin.

“Just think, when you’ve conquered Caesar, you get a go at Cicero.”

“I’d rather dine on a pail of maggots.”

Thank God, Molly was determined to tutor him. Thank God for Molly for everything. Jeremy’s snarling dimmed as she soothed him with the chords of her guitar.

Jeremy glanced back at her and fell in love with her once again, as he always did every time he glanced at her or touched her or held her.

It had been that way from the very first eye contact. He and his mates went to the Lord Sarsfield, a student pub on the river Liffey quay, where Molly sang folk ballads on Saturday nights. The voice that reached him was more pure than the tinkle of any crystal or silver bell in Hubble Manor.

That was it, then, now, and forever, Jeremy lad. Molly O’Rafferty barely past sixteen, newly out of convent school, and an apprentice teacher.

The marchers outside had passed for the moment and Jeremy was lulled into his Latin. He went at it diligently. When she saw him tire, Molly set down her guitar and hovered behind him checking his work and at the same time keeping enough distance to duck her skirts out of the way of his constant reaching back for her.

Mal Palmer burst in! One knock and in! Mal discombobulated the atmosphere of serenity once again.

“Oh, if Napoleon had the breastworks of that Atty Fitzpatrick, he’d have won at Waterloo.”

“For God’s sake, Mal,” Jeremy snapped.

“I just wanted to hear what the Fenian avengers had to say.” Mal touched the Sixmilecross button on his jacket. “Oh, oh,” he said slipping it quickly into a pocket.

There was no use insulting or dressing Mal down. He was uninsultable, undressdownable, and had little sensitivity to Jeremy’s situation. Somehow, he remained a pal. He was a good rugby player and terribly humorous at times…otherwise useless.

“Well, it
is
Saturday night. Are we off to the Lord Sarsfield to hear our Molly girl’s angel voice?”

“You take Molly over,” Jeremy said, “I’ll catch up with you.”

“I was saving a surprise for you, Jeremy,” Molly said. “Nell McCaffery is singing in my place tonight.”

“Pity, what,” Mal said. “I hope old Nell knows some frog songs to harmonize with her voice. Jeremy, this pains me, old chap, but can I ding you for a fiver? Damned allowance hasn’t arrived.”

“You shouldn’t gamble, Mal, you’re no good at it,” Jeremy said.

“Well, I am pressed for a fiver so on with your sermon.”

Jeremy gave him the money and Mal said he loved them both and was off to scour the square for other mates for additional fivers.

“Poor Mal,” Molly said, “what an ugly game he and his father play. Mal deliberately runs up gambling debts and Daddy pays them in a rage. This proves to Mal that his daddy truly loves him, although his daddy truly despises him.”

“Trinity College is the bottom of the toilet bowl for all us good Anglo chaps who have disappointed our fathers by failing to get into Oxford.”

“That’s enough Latin, Mal, and rallies for one evening,” Molly said closing his books.

“You didn’t tell me you weren’t singing at the pub tonight.”

“I wanted to surprise you before himself burst in. I’m planning to give you a private performance tonight, m’lord. Jeremy, I can stay the night and all day tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s bully! How did you manage it?”

“I told my folks I had a singing engagement at the girls’ school in Dun Laoghaire and that I’ll be staying over with a friend.”

He was out of his chair in a blink and seized her. “No profanity till after dinner,” she managed between kisses and his fumbling with her buttons. “Or we’ll starve…once we start up…and everything like that…you know…”

“Oh Molly, Molly, Molly.”

They stood huffing in each other’s faces, eyes drifting off to dream stuff… .

“…you hungry?”

“…not really.”

“…me, either.”

“…the translations?”

“…tomorrow… .”

Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Outside, a bloody drum! A blurred message from marchers whooping it up, “Free Conor Larkin! Free Conor Larkin!”

Jeremy went into a quiver of clenched fists and clenched teeth, nearly shutting off his own breath. “I love Conor so!” he blurted without meaning to do so. “Molly, we must have done something terrible to make a man like Conor turn on us. It was that bloody factory fire!”

Molly turned away in frustration. Everyone had warned that her affair with the Viscount Coleraine was doomed from the start. Every year gentrified college lads fell desperately in love with nice sorts like her, away from their parents’ eyes. And one day their college was done and they were gone.

But did not she and Jeremy have something grander? Somewhere, somehow, someday the diverse peoples of
Ireland would have to start getting along with one another. The cases in point would have to be strong, like her and Jeremy. If two people could love each other so and not make it, then the country could never make it.

Jeremy now roiled against Conor and the Brotherhood. Molly closed her eyes and moved from his view. She wanted to shout at him, “You’d better learn about the potato famine, Jeremy, and before that the penal laws, and before that, death by Oliver Cromwell!”

Why must two decent people find out that their love always has to be a defiance of history? It was not that Jeremy wasn’t one of the lads. He’d done the Irishtowns of the Midlands. His hero was a Catholic rebel. Yet, when one is raised in Hubble Manor, no matter how liberal the countess was, privilege was divined into him so that below a certain line of compassion, Jeremy was unable to understand suffering, humiliation, and slavery.

Jeremy was like the “decent” slave owners of Alabama and the Caribbean. He could only delve so deeply into black men and women before his “natural” order of superiority took over. His love of Conor was the exception. His love of Molly, yet to be resolved.

Jeremy merrily rolled along thinking everyone a fine fellow. This worried his father and grandfather enormously as they worked him into a ceremonial role in life. For the Weed and Hubble Ulster scheme to work, the Catholics and Protestants needed to be pitted against one another.

Molly O’Rafferty awakened frightened many mornings, knowing that Ireland’s tragic past had breezed by Jeremy. If he deeply felt the injustice, he’d have to do something about it, and he didn’t have the mustard to buck his father.

His mother never went over the first floor of the factory because she didn’t want to know the misery above. Jeremy’s dilemma about Conor was of the same cloth. He didn’t really want to know why Conor was Brotherhood.

Molly, sweet Molly, what had she gotten herself into? She loved this boy as only a bedrock virgin could love after giving him her treasure.

“You’ll have to make your way to Conor Larkin. You know the people to let you into his prison. You’re going to have to make peace with him, and perhaps Conor will enlighten you about the treacherous waters you and I are in.”

“Mother will stand up for us.”

“There’s more to it than that, Jeremy.”

“I’ll not let anything happen between us.”

“We’re in Ireland, Jeremy, and you’re an Ulsterman with a golden set of credentials which excludes me. If we are to come through this together, you’re going to have to start making some strong decisions.”

As she embraced her lad, Molly knew that this was not the time to bring up the possibility of her pregnancy.