Redemption - Leon Uris [329]
The British Cabinet floundered. If they could only convince Casement to say his real purpose in returning to Ireland was to stop the Rising, then they’d have an out to reducing the death sentence to a prison term without losing face. He wouldn’t hear of it. Casement’s compassion for humanity was what emerged from that courtroom, above the charges, above the sentence itself. The smears of his homosexuality were lost in the man’s eloquence.
Casement smashed his glasses in his cell, cut his wrist, and tried to rub in a poison powder he had hidden in his jacket. He was found, rushed to the hospital, and saved for another day.
Sir Roger Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison on August 3, 1916.
In Ireland there was a nationwide introspection and facing up to centuries of denial. In truth, as a people, they had not shown the stuff of free men. The moment had come in their history to redeem themselves as a people.
An answer had to be forthcoming quickly to the death of the Easter Rising martyrs.
88
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Squire Liam Larkin stepped outside the Prince of Wales Hotel facing the lush, semitropic, splendiferous greenery of Albert Park over the way.
Jaysus, he thought, the fecking heat here could fecking melt fecking rocks. To a man acclimatized by the all-pervading dampness of Ireland and even greater wetness of the South Island, Brisbane held the furnaces of hell. It was easy to envision exiled convicts busting rock in this place.
He made to the taxi rank and showed the driver a slip of paper.
“Eh, let’s see here now, 32 Kangaroo Lane…32 Kangaroo Lane.” He scratched his jaw. “Aha, the new estate of houses near the Royal Australian Army Rehabilitation Center.”
Liam chose to sit in the front, not particularly comfortable in the back seat of an automobile.
“Where you from, cobber?” the driver asked.
“New Zealand. South Islander.”
“How’ as the war treated you?”
“Son in Gallipoli. He got out with some wounds.”
“My lad is in the trenches in France,” the driver said.
“I’ll pray for him.”
Over Victoria Bridge, the taxi made toward the sea and the budding Gold Coast.
All Anzac conversation these days got around to wondering how they ever got caught up in such a war. When it had first begun, the enthusiasm was for King, Empire, and all that was bombastic. Gallipoli had tarnished all visions of glory. The long haul was agonizing.
A large sign designated the hospital. It was a hot and sunny day. One could smell the ocean close by. A huge lawn was filled with patients mostly in pajamas or robes, many in wheelchairs, being tended by nurses and orderlies, others on crutches with missing limbs.
“These are the worst cases,” the taxi driver said, “the ones they couldn’t recycle back to combat in France.”
Liam asked the driver to slow down, as though he were expecting to find Rory among them. All those lads like that…hard go…terrible.
They turned off into a cozy street of palm trees and wooden two-story homes where many of the staff were housed.
“Here we are, cobber, 32 Kangaroo Lane. Would you like me to wait for you?”
Liam pondered. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, there’s a taxi rank at the main entrance to the hospital. The number is 2-2-2-2.”
“I think I can remember that.”
“Good luck to you, Kiwi.”
The taxi drove off. Liam felt parched and sweaty and a little shaky. He knocked on the door. No reply. He spotted an outside garden spigot, drank, and splashed his face. A porch swing in the shade lured him and he eased into it and set it into motion, soon picking up the