O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [138]
“But if we all agree, he should serve out this mission. Two years is not all that long to wait. He will be a great executive, and still a boy.”
“What about his tainted ancestry?” Ben asked.
“God willing, he’ll agree to a quiet conversion. There are lots of Presbyterians from Ulster with Irish names. O’Hara could well be a Protestant. It will be a hard sell in the banking community and among my peers, but a sane answer to all this. There are bound to be some Catholics breaking through into the hierarchy soon.”
Ben sat back and studied a master of conspiracy in his illuminating moment.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this right,” Ben said. “First you dangle a high position before his eyes with the delicious promise of a partnership. Then they separate for two years. You pray, in a Protestant manner, that Captain O’Hara gets so caught up with his mission and his life that he will recognize the futility of marriage. During his absence, you can work on Amanda, say she is abandoned, Zach is never coming back . . .
“Or!” Ben went on. “He comes back and they marry. And you’ve got what you want anyhow.”
“It’s all rather decent, isn’t it!” Horace protested.
“Suppose she is pregnant now?” Ben asked pointedly. “You going to put a bastard in the mix?”
“Ben, don’t get out of hand. That was very nasty.”
Time for a topper.
Horace sighed sadly.
“If Amanda is pregnant, we could arrange an elopement and marriage and have that documented so that when he ships out she can return to Inverness and possibly arrange an annulment. In that way the boy . . . the child, would be legitimate and even have his name changed to Kerr. Or, on the other hand, if Amanda insists, she can wait for O’Hara to return.”
Ben’s heart cried. But Horace was off and running to the music of his own voice.
“I have lost my great dream, anyhow, if Amanda doesn’t marry Glen Constable. There will be no merger, no monopoly of the Chesapeake. In order to expand and buy Constable’s option on the tidal basin, I’d have to make a public stock offering. That would mean bankers on my board of directors, stockholders screaming at me, government regulators crawling through my books . . .
“Of course I don’t have room to build another rowboat at Dutchman’s Hook and there is a nice flow of navy contracts for the next decade, but Jesus, the navy is going to build a battleship on the West Coast, without my bid, in order to save that voyage around Cape Horn. What the fuck do cowboys and miners know about forging fourteen-inch guns? Where will they get them done—at some Indian reservation?
“So, if worse comes to worst, O’Hara will return in a few years and become a director at Dutchman’s Hook, even though it portends a bitter struggle with my own class. I can only pray that Amanda has had her fill of him in Nebo. However, to cover all bets, I should present them with my offer, should I not? What?”
“Absolutely.”
“They won’t receive me in boogeyland.”
“That would be awkward.”
“Perhaps, well, you know, you do have a powerful influence on O’Hara,” Horace hinted.
“No way.”
Horace Kerr tottered. He wanted to ask Ben to write his own ticket, any ticket. The problem was that there are some sorts you simply can’t do business with.
“Why don’t you write your daughter a letter,” Ben said.
“Will you see that she gets it?”
When Major Boone became Uncle Ben, he knew he’d put his foot in it.
Did Horace Kerr realize he’d met his match in these two people?
“I’ll see to it.”
That damned tick overtook Horace’s left eye, again.
• 43 •
THE LETTER
A Week Later—Nebo
The day after Sunday church, they awakened to a mood that had drifted into Veda’s lodge. The fog outside somehow had found its way in and diffused throughout the room. Amanda was tight and Zach was tight, responding to each other’s affection with some stiffness. Nor could naughty whispers lighten them up.
Was it something the preacher had said at church, or was time on everyone’s mind? Their friends looked at them fairly hurting, like taking a step back and shaking their heads and lowering their eyes before those poor