Redemption - Leon Uris [168]
“Major Chris,” he corrected.
“My goodness! Congratulations! When did all this come about?”
“Yesterday, Mother. I’m up at the manor with Father and Hester. Mum, sorry, but Hester and I won’t be able to come to London this weekend as we planned. Darned sorry.”
“Oh, how disappointing. Hester did so want to see the Drury Lane production and she was chomping to do some shopping.”
“Well you see, Mum, Hester might just dash over by herself, maybe visit with you for a week or so, if you can see clear. She’s rather disconsolate about the latest miscarriage and you’ve been her biggest comfort.”
“Poor darling. Please have her phone me later. I left my diary at the house. And you will join us later?”
“No, Mother.”
No matter how one tries to prepare for the news, no matter how marginal the relationship might be, no matter the inevitability…when the message comes through that your son is going to war, the numbness and dryness of mouth and wetness of forehead and hand bursts in from its hidden pores. Although they were on a secure line, there were no more questions that could be asked and no more answers that could be told.
“Will you be seeing much of your brother in the coming days?”
“Yes.”
The shock wave hit her again.
“He’s got a couple of pips, First Lieutenant now. I must say, Mother, he’s been starting to show some good stuff lately.”
“Ask him to call me, Chris…please ask him to call me.”
“Of course.”
“God bless, Chris.”
“Cheerio, Mum.”
The earldom was immense and everyone had developed a sense of where everyone else might be, in case of business. Chris knew Jeremy’s most likely watering holes, and on this night was certain he’d find his brother at the Dooley McCloskey public house at the crossroads in the upper village of Ballyutogue.
Dooley and the old-timers were gone, but the new faces were quite similar to those of the Protestant boys who slipped up to escape their wives. However, no one from the Protestant town came to the Heather since the Lettershambo raid, with tonight’s exception of Lord Jeremy.
Lord Jeremy had been a Gaelic footballer down in the Bogside and a longtime intimate of Conor Larkin. It could be said with some certainty that Lord Jeremy was probably the only Viscount Coleraine in the earldom’s history who was actually welcome there.
Life between the brothers was a little less acid these days. Their long childhood of yapping and snapping was followed by years of separation due to education and indifference and due to values and who was loyal to whom.
Then came the terrible events with Molly O’Rafferty. Jeremy had surrendered the girl under the concerted assault of his father, his brother, and Maxwell Swan. It was Chris’s voice that wounded him the most. It was sharp, biting, injuring his mind, slicing up his insides. Jeremy realized that he’d never escape his father, for Chris would take up when his father signed off.
In those morose months when Jeremy was first sent into the Coleraines, he tried to drink Ireland dry, a venture unsuccessful by many men with far greater capacities. In those days Chris offered him neither pity nor comfort, but used his superior situation to consolidate his own position.
Later, when the officers of Camp Bushy resigned, Jeremy went through certain motions that he was going to defy them all and refuse to join the mutiny.
On this occasion it was Jeremy and Chris alone, and Chris caved in and sent Jeremy blabbering back to his bottle with no more than a whimper. Who was who in the real hierarchy was established.
Jeremy haunted the pubs of Dublin around the Liffey like a Dickensian ghost listening for the sweet drift of ballad from the angel’s voice of his Molly.
Self-pity was honed to an art and became a wise fool’s manner of justifying his weak spine.
Then things took a change. Not a sudden eruption of throwing off of shackles, but a dawning of realization. The day Lettershambo Castle was taken down and Conor Larkin went to his death, Jeremy began to come out of his fog.
Memory began