Redemption - Leon Uris [125]
“Now don’t interrupt me for a minute,” he said. “Roger and I have been involved in a lot of very black business. I have a record book on him six inches thick. Give him the boundaries of his earldom and not one inch more.”
“These records, Freddie. Won’t they implicate you as well?”
“I’m an old man, Caroline. My lawyers are clever enough to put on an artful dodge for the rest of my days. I’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. As for Roger, it’s death incarnate. He’ll never outlive the scandal.”
“A long time ago I cared for Maxwell Swan. I have grown to hate him.”
“Max sees the wisdom of taking early retirement. He was the trigger man on too many dirty jobs. Why are you staring at me like that, Caroline?”
She asked about the factory fire and he told her how Roger had been going into a cover-up as the building was burning. O’Garvey had indeed called off the investigation of the factory in exchange for Roger’s putting money into the Bogside. When the building went up, they feared O’Garvey would blow the whistle on them and Swan had him assassinated.
For ever so long they remained quiet.
“Don’t come in if you’ve not got the stomach for it,” her father said. “There are some other disturbing things. The first is the worst of it. Do you hate me?”
“Do you hate me because of Conor Larkin?”
“I tried to get him hanged, of course,” he answered. “In time the whole thing became rather amusing. Brilliant fellow, what? Pity he wasn’t working our side of the game. Well, let’s say I can certainly see the attraction. I can’t hate you.”
“And I love you, Freddie, and that’s always been the fact of it.”
* * *
Caroline lay on satin sheets and she felt sensuous to her own touch as well. She was astonished at her capacity to enter the forbidden rooms of Hubble Manor with such consummate ease…even with their dirty secrets and foul play. She told herself she could and would make a lot of things better, but for the moment she luxuriated in the amazing sensation of her ascension to power. It was awesome. She was Frederick Weed’s girl, the worth of six sons!
I’ve won! But what have I won? A dying father, the admission of a crumbled marriage that took half my life, the loss of my sons, the defection of an Andrew Ingram, a living death laid on Maxwell Swan, a hero of my childhood…and the means to destroy my husband.
The satin on her face felt so good. She wrapped her arms around it. Now, what would she give for him?
“Oh, Conor lad, where are you now?” she wept.
Interlude
The Missing Years
By Seamus O’neill
I
What was plain to see was plain to see; namely, that my own path of glory in this life required me to hitch my wagon to a shooting star, and the life of Conor Larkin was going to be something to write about. His spirit was in my early ramblings at the students’ center and from the debate stage at Queens College.
His passion for freedom was in my dispatches from the Boer War. He was the ghost crying for justice in my plays.
I have gathered copious notes of our childhood, of Ballyutogue life and our ventures in the high meadows, of the Larkins, of Mr. Andrew Ingram, and of Mr. Josiah Lambe and Conor’s gift of the forge.
Everything else was compiled when Conor returned from roving; his years in Derry and the great screen and Caroline Hubble and his fierce renown on the football pitch. The ghastly factory fire and Conor’s years at sea and the deep love he had for Rory. This love for Rory had a melancholy bent to it, as if Conor knew he would never have sons of his own and needed to leave Rory his legacy. Conor’s final thoughts to me before we went on the big raid were about Rory, a veiled hope that Rory would follow him to Ireland.
It appears that I will never get to write his story. I will leave all my notes in the hands of Atty Fitzpatrick, who will no doubt succeed me by decades. She will find the author who will do the story justice.
Conor was hit by three bullets at Sixmilecross, two in his back and one through the thigh. He was held incommunicado for weeks and tortured by clever