Redemption - Leon Uris [29]
“Your face looks like the potato mush at the bottom of me ma’s crock, Conor. What’s the matter with you!”
“Nothin’.”
“Is your ma pregnant again?”
“Christ, no, praise Mary.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
“Ugh, forget it.”
“Ah shyte, Conor, you’re a blister, that’s wot!”
“If it is that evident then maybe I’d better confide in you, but this is even more sacred a secret than the confessional, understand? If you ever breathe a word about what I am about to tell you, I’ll really kill you.”
“When,” Seamus protested, “have I ever betrayed a confidence? Name me just one time!”
“Then hold up your right hand.”
Seamus did, proudly.
“Do you swear on your republican honor that this is our eternal secret?”
“Aye, I do. Have you killed somebody?”
“Christ, no. I’m in love with Caroline Hubble.”
“Caroline Hubble! You’ll not live to see another harvest harboring thoughts like that! This one time, you’d better go to confession.”
“That’s the last place I’d tell.”
“I mean, really in love with her?”
“Aye, deeply, fiercely, tenderly. I think about her all the time and these wonderful sensations just shoot through me. I think about her before I fall asleep and you know what happens down there.”
“Jaysus!”
“I’ll tell you something. I see her look at me, too. Now, maybe she’s not in love with me or anything but I know that she wants to tell me something. I know that!”
“You ain’t got nothing she’s looking for.”
“Yeah, it’s crazy-like,” Conor agreed. “I’ll just have to get over it.”
“And fast-like. Suppose the utterly worst thing happened. In a trance induced by the faeries, she was to fall in love with you, despite the vast difference in your ages. And suppose she took you into a secret room and you and her did it. I mean really did it and while you were doing it, the viscount walked in and caught youse! Oh boy! Protestants would be rioting all over the world! And they’d take her out to the Guildhall Square in Derry and march her up to the chopping block like Anne Boleyn and hoick off her head, or maybe they’d burn her at the stake like Joan of Arc…and as for you, croppy boy, they’d draw and quarter you with four horses and hang your head up on a pike and every Protestant would come for miles just to spit on it…and she’d haunt Hubble Manor walking around whooing with her head tucked under her arm and all the potatoes in the fields would rot again and there’d be another famine because of your foul lust!”
“All right, all right. I’ve forgotten about her!”
“You swear!”
“Aye, I swear. I’ve forgotten about her.”
Seamus sighed in relief at having waylaid his best friend on a certain path to self-destruction. “I don’t believe you,” he said at last.
11
Secret Files of Winston Churchill, Covering 1885
General Recollections Regarding Ireland
I recall my introduction to Ireland with utter clarity. I was twelve at the time and one is not apt to forget when he first learns he was almost born out of wedlock. I have often pondered if the lifelong strangeness and standoffishness that existed between my father and myself had anything to do with his adventures with my mother before their marriage. And, his adventures with other women after their marriage until his untimely death due to syphilis.
The trauma of learning of my “premature” arrival and my trip to Ireland came at the same time, near my twelfth birthday. Ireland was England’s quasi-bastard, and I had similar status in my own family.
Lord Randolph’s journey over the Irish Sea to Ulster fit into his relentless drive to become prime minister. My father had an issue of great urgency and popularity to be exploited; namely, he was out to stop the Irish Home Rule legislation that had been introduced into Commons by Charles Stewart Parnell and his new Irish Party.
I was to accompany him, and I suspect I was a good stage prop