Redemption - Leon Uris [131]
III
1909
’Twas a beautiful spring day in County Galway. In actual fact, it was raining cannonballs and razor blades, but it was the day that Conor Larkin slipped back into Ireland. His mission in America had been a grand success, separating Irish-Americans who had made it big from substantial mounts of money by his charm and persuasion.
Lord Louis’s Barony of Dunleer had become a small training base as well as the best place to hide men on the run in Ireland. Atty was stuck in a play in Dublin for several weeks and Dan Sweeney had been laid low by illness, so I was first to see him.
I held my breath, fearing the kind of Conor Larkin that might have emerged. My fears were for naught. He was in command of his work and in control of the past miseries. Life as a fugitive, moving by darkness from hiding place to hiding place across Canada and America, had exacted a price, and the “collector” had taken his toll. But thanks to God, he had not turned cynical.
“What about Atty? Are you aching to see her?” I said.
His brow furrowed in thought, showing his aging, but he spoke with a slightly different voice, one that had picked up keen wisdom through time and suffering.
“I’ve had a lot to wonder about.”
“You’re not ambivalent, are you, Conor?”
“I am about both of us. Nothing was promised when I left and we have not been in contact with each other for a long time now.”
“She’s never had eyes for anyone but you, if that’s your concern.”
“I have to tell you, Seamus, I would wake up from a hundred nightmares drenched with sweat until I trained myself to control my own dreams. I clutched up a hundred times when I saw a slim strawberry blonde in the streets and she’d turn and her face would not be Shelley’s.”
“Atty will understand, but she will be devastated if you reject her again.”
“I know that Shelley is dead and Atty is alive. I know, also, that Atty is the strongest person I’ve ever met. She saw me groveling in weakness, totally dependent on her to survive the night. I don’t know what is left of me as a man for this woman. I don’t know if I have the capacity to love, even a different kind of love. She’s too valuable for me to keep dragging her down.”
I heard him now. Shelley had an ethereal beauty. Atty was a fair-sized woman, but everything was in a perfect state and her beauty was a kind that belonged to nobility.
Atty did not have the lithe wispiness of Shelley but made up for it with bottomless inner strength.
Shelley wore her emotions close to the surface. Atty was dark with her real feelings…
Leaving a ponderous question. Can a man emerge from an ultimate tragedy with one love and find another love to walk the rest of the way with?
I did not leave Dunleer dejected. There was an unbreakable thread between them that had held them together for many years and through terrible ordeals. They’d either find it on sight of one another or shortly thereafter, for I felt they could not be in the same country and live their lives apart. Was I wrong?
At first I thought so. Their initial meetings were uneasy, in the midst of Brotherhood business. She came to me, at last, containing what I felt was a sense of desperation.
“Conor must have a final exorcism of guilt,” I told her. “Shelley has left the two of you a legacy—each other. You’d better take what is rightfully yours, Atty, or walk away and mean it.”
Atty Fitzpatrick, a glorious figure of a horsewoman, rode from the manor house to Conor’s hidden den along Lough Ballynahinch, then into a natural draw at Lough Fadda. At sight of her his heart thumped and a marvelous glow rushed through him and drove him to silliness and he jumped into the icy lake naked and challenged her to follow.
Atty took the dare and threw off her clothing. On seeing that woman bare and coming toward him in the lake, Conor felt that wonderful stirring again, only slightly modified by the freezing water. He carried her from the lake and wrapped her tightly in a blanket and dried her.
The sky closed