Redemption - Leon Uris [211]
…Kindness, was it, now? He had long-range plans for me. Uncle Ned passed away just after my fifteenth birthday and Sir Stanford invited me to move into the mansion…and I realized what he had been planning all those years.
…I was like a prisoner, kept on the grounds until he was sure I wouldn’t run away. He came to my bed night after night making me do all the pansy things. Threatening my life if I made trouble, he also promised me I’d go far in the banking business if I became his nancy boy. I pretended to be going along with it until I could run for freedom.
My chance came just as the war was about to begin. I got this Chinaman to make false documents and I stowed away. I thank God every night for Rory and Johnny. How can I ever tell them what Sir Stanford and I did? I would become lower than shit in their eyes.
I know Rory fixed me up with Shaara and I know Shaara really makes believe also. I am going to become rich after the war. I’ll give all my friends here a great deal of money so life will be easier for them. I know I won’t see Shaara again but if I do I’ll see that she gets a great deal of money, as well.
Leilah’s heavy lips fell down to Jeremy’s neck and she kissed him and he groaned and she whispered to go away and to the bedroom. Although the kisses were pleasing, she knew his mind was in a place far away….
My secret, which only Rory knows, was my cowardice and my terror of poverty. My secret of secrets which I cannot share with even Rory is that I should like to kill my father.
Before I did I would make him recite every pain he has imposed on his peasants and his workers and make him beg for mercy for every foul deed he has ever done in his life. After I shot him, I’d burn Hubble Manor down, except for the Long Hall and the Great Screen.
Then I would renounce my title. I’d give away the lands of the earldom to those who deserved it, those who had toiled on it. Like other Irish Protestant patriots, like Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and Charles Stewart Parnell, I would become a republican. What I mean is…I want to be an Irish Irishman.
Jaysus, Rory thought, the party has turned grim. Or has it? Is it not better to tell truths to yourself in the presence of friends, even though it is done in silence? Look at them. Each is in his own milky way.
I knew from the moment I wrote my first letters to my sisters and Tommy that I had always been their master and made them live somewhere beneath me. I’ve been a real prick to my brother Tommy. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault he was anointed by the Squire as the favorite son. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault he wasn’t the brightest kid in South Island. I’ve gone out of my way to make certain he felt like a dunce when I might have helped him and taken care of him, as a decent brother should.
I see now, as I read the letters of my brothers and sisters and even my mom, I should have been a far better brother to them.
I was too damned busy establishing my prowess.
My da did me wrong, but even so there were a thousand times he fished around for a smile or a kind word from me and all I did was twist the knife or get his kind attention by wrecking something, by showing how tough I was. Maybe, if I had tried, he might have started trying, and things would have become lighter between us.
Secret? I’m scared of going to Ireland with the name of Larkin. What can any man do with the shadow of Conor Larkin hovering over him? But I’m going, and I’ll do what is expected of a Larkin. That is the only way I can earn my passage back to New Zealand.
Secret? I’ll hate myself if my prayer really comes true. I’ll hate myself for the rest of my life, but the TRUTH is, I hope that Dr. Calvin Norman gets killed in the war…
“Hey!” Modi called through the creamy mist. “Everyone is so passionately sad. What have I here? A room full of Russians? I have