Redemption - Leon Uris [130]
“Give me some time,” Atty pleaded. “I’ll go to Dunleer and stay with him. Dan, we owe him that much.”
“Seamus, you know him best,” Dan challenged, “will he ever come out of it? And you fucking better speak the fucking truth.”
“Aye, I’ll answer that, Dan,” I said. “Conor has shown us his iron will has an iron will. He has borne the unbearable. Yes, he will find a framework to live in. Yes, he will return to the Brotherhood. But Dan, he can’t do it in five minutes.”
“I’d keep him in Dunleer forever,” Dan said, “if I could. For the moment the Brits are looking in every monastery and church in the country. Sooner or later they will focus on other likely places. If they find him here it would be a disaster the Brotherhood might not overcome. The Brotherhood comes first…over any man…even Conor Larkin.”
“Maybe he never will come out of it, Dan,” Atty retorted, “but to exile him in his condition now might do to him what the Brits were unable to do. It would kill him.”
“Aye, it might well kill him,” I agreed.
“Give me some time, Dan, and I will work with you,” Atty begged.
“All right, Atty, I’ll give you time. It will take us a couple of months to work out a fail-proof escape. I will give you those sixty days.”
Atty took each of our hands and looked at us, fiercely. “I’ll not let him go down!” she swore.
The woman exhausted herself trying to bring him back. Her devotion tested her beyond the breaking point.
Conor would warn her that if she were wise she’d clear out. He saw nothing but death all around him. Well, one does not think of Atty Fitzpatrick crying herself to sleep night after night. Time began to grow short and Atty grew desperate.
At wit’s end, one day, she shrieked at him.
“Damn you! Don’t you think of anyone but yourself? What makes you think you’re the only one who has grieved for Shelley! She was the sister I never had. I adored her!”
Conor blinked in disbelief. He dared emerge from his winter’s cave.
“I let her down, Conor. I failed her! I was responsible for her guard in Belfast.”
“Surely you can’t take that on yourself,” Conor said. “She went into the danger with eyes opened. You were in Dublin. You’re not to blame.”
“I am to blame,” Atty cried, “and my sister is dead.”
She felt Conor’s hands on her arms and he shook her gently. “Why couldn’t I see it? Why haven’t I helped you, Atty…my own self-pity, that’s what!”
Atty tore loose from him. “I’m done in with pain and guilt, man!”
This time the embrace was too powerful for her to run from and she let his power and his compassion wash over her.
And so it was…so it was. The two of them, both traumatized by the brutal murder, made a discovery in each other’s arms.…
It was bound to be. Shelley MacLeod had left them a legacy to care for one another.
I know, for actual fact, that no sexual stirrings overtook them as they clung to each other night after night. Their hunger to overcome the tragedy was now a hunger for continuation of life itself.
Thanks to God for Atty Fitzpatrick. Conor returned to the living in bits and pieces in their bittersweet wilderness. There was no time left for them to discover their capacity to love again, for as he healed and found the will to take charge of himself, the time came for him to leave Ireland.
Lord Louis made a trip to London to see the German ambassador. Although the Germans were supplying weapons to both the Brotherhood and the Protestant Ulster Volunteers, they had reason to cooperate with us in the Larkin matter.
A few months later, Lord Louis and Conor Larkin made their way out of the barony to the nearby fishing village of Roundstone, where his yacht, Gráinne Uáile, was docked. They sailed from the small harbor past Slyne Head where a meeting at sea was kept with a small German freighter.
Two weeks later Conor crossed the Canadian border into the United States and made secret connection with Joe Devoy, the leader of the American Clan of the Gaels. Conor’s mission was to raise funds