Redemption - Leon Uris [111]
The harlotry of Shelley MacLeod presented MacIvor with a golden issue, particularly to his Angels of Christ.
MacIvor had long needed a cunning victory over Morgan MacLeod, the only man in the Shankill strong enough to offer a challenge.
The Wednesday Angels meetings were soon venomized by MacIvor drawing visions, for his ladies, of papist flesh devouring them and their own dear, sweet, innocent daughters.
After she returned to Conor, Morgan had forbidden mention of Shelley within the home and had forbidden the family to see her. All Morgan had to do now was step up to the pulpit and denounce her. MacIvor would show mercy and the neighborhood would be purified of its stigma and become whole and Christian again.
Morgan MacLeod refused. How he loved his strange child, withdrawn as a girl, she of the sad green eyes. Determined, Shelley taught herself to speak without a trace of the confusing Belfast accent and carry herself erect and display proper manners. He all but died when, at fifteen, Shelley fled Belfast and worked as a maid in a manor house in England to escape her real mother’s growing madness.
Day by day now, the MacLeod family tasted the fruits of hatred: garbage at their doorstep, Robin’s son beaten, ostracism at the pub and green grocer, litanies of hate from MacIvor’s pulpit.
As Conor healed, he and Shelley exchanged souls. Any risk, any danger, any hardship was better to bear together than continue with the unbearable life of living apart. They knew, going into it, it could mean an unwritten death warrant, but they also knew that the greatest tragedy would have been to pass each other by and never to have met.
Morgan’s grief became consummate. He knew when one of the family had seen Shelley behind his back, but he asked nothing, gave no word, no blessing, nothing. Yet, day after day he’d push open the door to her room and look in and sometimes sit on the stool before the mirror and stare at the photographs tucked in it.
By night he’d fumble through the Bible searching out the words that might render him some hope. After a time, he began to search out passages about death.
Seized by a fierce pain in his chest and unable to breathe, Morgan toppled from the scaffold at the Big Mabel dry dock, falling twenty feet to the pavement and breaking his back.
“Robin! It’s your dad! He’s fallen off the Big Mabel.”
41
The gunrunning scheme plodded on, a few hundred rifles at a time. It began to spring little warning leaks.
Duffy O’Hurley, the engineer of the Red Hand, was getting a bad, bad case of nerves. His drinking went to the hard stuff and now and again he dropped double-edged little thoughts at the bar. Conor put a watch on him, except for when Duffy was running the train.
As rifles were buried around the countryside, more and more people became involved. Each new man or woman with knowledge upped the risks.
The onloadings in England and offloadings in Irish waysides hit more and more unseen glitches…the odd constable straying by…wrong signals to complete a meeting…the sudden raid on a hiding place.
Long Dan Sweeney and Atty wanted to close down the operation and look for a new route to bring the weapons in. Unfortunately that called for leaving one thousand rifles in England. This thousand could mean the Brotherhood could quicken their recruiting of men and form units, perhaps two years earlier than previously planned.
Conor then came up with a wild scheme to doctor Sir Frederick’s train from engine to caboose and make one last run carrying a thousand rifles. The plan took things to the edge of the cliff, but Conor prevailed.
Putting brackets under every car, fixing false floors and roofs, and cutting more space under the coal tender, the thousand rifles were loaded on at Liverpool and made the crossing to Ireland.
Then came the terror! Duffy O’Hurley was unable to take the train out by himself on a deadhead run. He was packing the guns all over Ireland, unable to dump them and slowly going mad.
At last the call came. Duffy was in Derry, at