Redemption - Leon Uris [48]
Atty had not met a man like Des. The memory of Jack Murphy remained vivid, often at the most unusual times and places. Maybe, she pondered, Jack Murphy didn’t even really happen. As the passage of time defused reality, her memories became more misty. She realized that the simple experience with Jack would never be repeated. Life was nearly complete now, except for that one void, but it was overcome by the zeal of the mission. And God knows, Atty did adore Desmond Fitzpatrick.
17
As there were legendary people in Derry and Donegal and also legendary mythological people, the mothers of Ballyutogue and all up and down Inishowen Peninsula and surrounding counties as well had a saying for their sons. “When you are old enough to support a beard, may you be half the man as Kevin O’Garvey.”
During the famine, his da was caught stealing food and hanged, and the O’Garvey cottage tumbled. Kevin’s ma, with five young wanes including himself as the oldest, tried to get into the workhouse in Derry, even though the workhouse terrified them. After the fourth straight potato crop failure, there was no room even at the workhouse.
The entire family, save Kevin O’Garvey, died in the fields with their mouths green from eating grass, and he became an orphan. It was said, not totally in jest, that you could count all the orphans who survived the great hunger on both hands and toes and have three fingers and a toe left over.
As fortune had it, Kevin O’Garvey was twelve and the Earl of Foyle’s agents took him and a number of other orphan boys to a poor farm, integrated into the grand scheme of things.
The grand scheme, never spoken, was to turn the famine into a means of thinning out the Catholic population through emigration, disease, and hunger. Once a family was evicted, the cottage was destroyed by a team of eight horses dragging a huge tree trunk through it.
The boys on the poor farm were sent to clear rocks and prepare the old fields for cattle pasture. During the height of the famine, cattle and many crops poured out of Ireland from the large estates.
The boys on the poor farm were given ether to sniff so they could labor long hours in a state of euphoria. By age fourteen, Kevin O’Garvey was also familiar with the taste of poteen, and he was an accomplished thief and smuggler.
Toward the end of the famine, O’Garvey escaped to the misery of Bogside in Derry and became a crafty pickpocket, like a player in a Dickens novel.
He was in and out of the borstal a number of times and realized that his life would soon be over unless he educated himself out of trouble.
Mr. Henry, a keen Protestant solicitor and barrister, had to take his turn representing the young Catholic criminals and was impressed by Kevin’s knowledge of law and his sharpness of mind. On a flyer, Mr. Henry convinced the court to allow him to take O’Garvey as his apprentice.
It was a brilliant move on Mr. Henry’s part, because O’Garvey’s wizardry lessened his own work. On the other hand, Mr. Henry lived to regret his apprentice’s talent. Over time, Kevin O’Garvey became one of the few Catholic solicitors in the region and a festering splinter under the Crown’s fingernail.
Kevin O’Garvey became a tireless battler for Catholic rights both on the land and in the city. He became head of the Land League in that part of Ulster and was instrumental in slowing down the indiscriminate evictions and some of the outrageous practices against the croppies—one hundred percent interest on loans…impounding the livestock of a debtor…inflated seed prices for planting. Aye, the peasants were hostage to a catalogue of injustices refined over a half-dozen centuries.
In his work in the Land League, O’Garvey saved God knows how many farms. He caught the eye of Charles Stewart Parnell, who was at the head of a rising new