Redemption - Leon Uris [108]
“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