Redemption - Leon Uris [197]
“We’re lucky to have him,” Johnny retorted.
“He treats us like we’re monkeys.”
“We are, according to him.”
“What’s going on, John? You on that raghead’s side?”
“Hey, Rory. Yurlob has had to work a hundred times harder to earn his respect and get his chevrons than we did. His dignity is his entire life…but don’t you know, he’s a man. He’s away from his own cobbers and he’s a little bit scared inside. Remember, he’s covering his fears. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Rory said, “I know. It’s only, I wish, maybe a smile. Maybe some trust?”
“That will come,” Johnny said. “Meanwhile, he’ll teach this battalion packing like they were loading fine porcelain on the backs of those animals.”
Rory had become more and more amazed by Johnny Tarbox and the way he sized up men. Christ, if men could only admit fear without being ashamed.
As the mule manual slugged to conclusion, a large shipment of equipment arrived, including saddles, blinds, shoes, ribbings, lines, canvas, leather, coronas, and a blacksmith shop.
This allowed a detailed training schedule to be laid out, including daily lectures by Yurlob Singh, Modi, and Rory. Everything was falling into place. They had a hardened battalion of nearly seven hundred men with animal experience, enough equipment to train with, and a manual.
They had everything now. Everything except mules.
65
Rory had been emotionally wracked since learning that Lieutenant Jeremy was the very same Jeremy Hubble, the Viscount Coleraine whom Conor had befriended as a child. Jeremy apparently held Conor in the same high esteem he did. He had worked alongside Conor on the great screen at Hubble Manor and learned and played Gaelic football as a member of the Bogside team.
But more than Jeremy, his mother was the fabled Countess Caroline, Conor’s childhood longing and later his patron and unfulfilled love.
After Conor left New Zealand his first letters to Rory told of a joyous reunion with Jeremy and Caroline and later of the tour of the English Midlands. He chaperoned, trained, and tutored Jeremy, and the Boilermakers had won the Admiral’s Cup.
Rory now reckoned that Jeremy must have lost personal contact with Conor after Sixmilecross. In all likelihood Jeremy and Conor never spoke or wrote to one another again.
Why, Rory wondered, couldn’t he just go to Jeremy straightforward and say, “Landers isn’t my real name. I am Rory Larkin and Conor was my uncle?”
This was Rory’s frustration. His secret about Conor being his uncle was so deep he could not even share it with Chester.
There was a final dark reason. Rory eventually had to find his way to Ireland. Once Jeremy knew that Rory was a “once removed” Irish republican with the Larkin name it stood to sour their relationship. Moreover, if the men of the battalion I learned, it would change his standing. Men whose trust he had gained would have an attitude of apprehension.
Maybe someday he and Jeremy might be close enough to share the secret and share Conor, but it hardly seemed likely. The bottom line of it all was to keep on playing Rory Landers.
Being Landers was not all that bad. He was with some lively cobbers and included Lieutenant Jeremy as a kind of friend. He wore an armful of British chevrons and was doing a job to his liking.
Then came the shock of Georgia’s letter and the earth beneath him opened up and he plunged into a bottomless hole and the earth swallowed him up.
He read the cruel words he already knew from memory, as though one more reading might change them on her pages.
My Dear Rory,
We know you are in Egypt. It is in all the newspapers. An Aussie journalist, Keith Murdock, has proclaimed himself as protector and defender of the Anzacs, feeling as all colonials do, that you are not getting a fair shake from the British. I’ve done a short tour of duty in Alexandria, as you know, and fairly well imagine what a day’s work must be like.
I’ve all your darlin’ letters and I only wished I was as gorgeous as you remember me. For the lonely soldier, any girl back home becomes a goddess over