Redemption - Leon Uris [102]
Dary, impassioned, told his beloved brother that he boiled just as much over the injustices of Ireland and intended to do something about it in his own way.
And Conor snarled, “Someday, Dary, you’ll walk through Bogside with me and understand.”
“Someday, God willing,” Dary answered, “I’ll be a Bogside priest.”
Clickety-clack…clickety-clack…clickety-clack…
Outside the train, the sun failed. It was always in a battle in Ireland and generally lost. Mists and shadows and dew framed the landscape like spider webs. The Great Northern engine shifted into a slowing mode, squealing and hissing, then inched into a lay-by and stood.
Beyond the lay-by was a village church and a graveyard. Brigid became transfixed by the tombstones. There was nothing there to compare with the Larkin plot in St. Columba’s in Ballyutogue, always fresh with flowers and crowned with magnificent, highly polished stones she had bought with money sent from Liam and Conor. Why, everyone said that Brigid kept the finest family plot in Donegal… .
For years Brigid and Finola invoked a ghastly emptiness on the cottage as each went to their separate corners, as if each had taken monastic vows of silence. Later, Rinty Doyle became the hired hand and slept in the byre and made himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Brigid’s heart pounded with a sudden rush from a westbound train, terrifying her with its abrupt appearance. Faces in the passing window blurred…then, quickly as it had arrived, passed…again revealing the village graveyard.
The Great Northern inched out of the lay-by, the tombstones seemed to remain reflected on the window.
Of the Larkin sons, only Dary was in Ireland and able to come up from Maynooth Seminary for his mother’s funeral.
The cairn was over her mother’s grave and the last prayer intoned and the last wail of the pipe faded. Brigid stood before the cottage door for an eternity before she opened it, ever so slowly. It was hers now. The farm was hers. After all the manipulation and hells and wars. It was hers now, every lace spread, every gleaming pot, every featherbed, creepie, jug, harness, and even the recollections.
Her eyes played over the room. The seat closest to the fire would be her own, and all the pans would be scrubbed to a shine they never owned before. The benches and crane in the fireplace and the churn and weaver’s light-holders were her own. Tomorrow, she’d walk through the fields counting up all that was hers.
Brigid made from room to room, touching, fondling her possessions, patting down the quilts, brushing away specks of gathering dust, nipping off lint.
She came to her parents’ bedroom and stood at the foot of the birth bed of herself and her brothers, edged onto the side of it, lay back, and buried herself in the softness of the great comforter and closed her eyes as tears filled them.
“Oh Myles,” she whispered, “if only you’d have waited… .”
“Dublin, next stop Dublin, Aimens Street Station. Wake up, miss.”
“What!”
“We’ve arrived in Dublin, darlin’. We’ll be at the station in a blink.”
38
The mighty chapel of St. Patrick’s in Maynooth was a hymn to Roman Catholic grandeur, crafted by thousands of hands over a half-century. The Stahluhut organ vibrated the grounds announcing the parade of young men in blinding white robes as five hundred voices of the choir crescendoed the omnipotence of the Almighty. The bishop enthroned called for the deacon to summon forth the candidates.
Brigid wrung her already soppy handkerchief, ill at ease so far from Ballyutogue, feeling insignificant in the majesty of the surroundings, yet filled with a sense of euphoria she had never known, not even with Myles McCracken. She had traveled far for this walk in God’s splendor, and vengeance against her mother had not even entered her head on this day.
Seamus O’Neill, though a republican journalist and secret member of the Brotherhood, was not cynical. The O’Neill family had not suffered the wrath of the Church as had the Larkin men.
Seamus had an off-view of the Church, but