Redemption - Leon Uris [54]
All those lofty flights of idealism he had flown with Conor Larkin and Seamus O’Neill…worthless. Ingram, beloved teacher, just another ha’penny hack politician, eased into the system. O’Garvey had cried that “They always find out where you are hurting most and carve their deal.” Yes, Bogside hurt the most and Roger Hubble knew how to protect the money machine that poured out of Witherspoon & McNab.
Andrew Ingram began to change. He pulled the blind on the window in his office that faced the factory. He could no longer hear the factory whistle without gritting his teeth and closing his eyes and finally clamping his hands over his ears.
He was a welcomed friend in Bogside. He had done more for Catholic students than three hundred years of Anglo ascendancy. He was coming close to establishing a college…to what avail…to what avail…to allow the most indecent part of the system to continue unabated.
Andrew Ingram no longer went into the Bogside.
He had been a progressive and enlightened schoolmaster who feared no preacherman nor Orange ignorance nor Anglo arrogance.
But a Kevin O’Garvey, a devoted politician, a maker of events trying to penetrate the blackness of a Bogside, had to risk much more. Like a military general, Kevin O’Garvey had to risk other people’s lives. Drawing Ingram in was a clever part of the tactic.
Andrew Ingram had always loathed his academic colleagues, who did their protesting from the safe bunker of a university. Ideas there were risk-free, till the moment when Kevin O’Garvey made him partner to a lie.
An educator counts his life by the achievements of a few golden scholars. Andrew’s were Seamus O’Neill and the ethereal Conor Larkin.
Had he made too much of Conor? He had failings. Wasn’t Conor drifting away from the agony of Bogside? A few less hours at Celtic Hall as a starter? Was Conor now a Lothario, a clever seducer of women, some of them unhappy or adventurous married women on the prowl?
When all was said and done, the plain and utter truth, God, was that Andrew Ingram was unable to face the moment to tell his prodigy that he had surrendered his idealism in a dirty bargain.
Enid, a power of a supporting mate, became frightened watching her husband do himself in. In the deep of another sleepness night, Andrew caved in and blurted it out.
“I knew the minute Kevin walked in I was knowingly going into a deal, becoming the keeper of a lie. I had betrayed Conor by not demanding to know, immediately. Funny, how an ideal so nobly spun in the sunlight of a high meadow can become a web of total entanglement in reality. And what will Conor do? Try to blow open the stench of the deal? Destroy Conor by keeping him from ever believing again that the men he loves the most will not dishonor him?”
My Dear Lady Caroline,
It is with utmost sorrow that I pen you this note. After tormented hours of soul searching and with the concurrence of my beloved Enid, I have come to the decision that I am going to resign my position. The announcement will come at the conclusion of the present term and enable us to get things in order concerning the possibility of a new college.
I have accepted the position of Headmaster at Kirkmoor, a small but excellent private school near Edinburgh.
I’m afraid the decision is irrevocable and, for the present time, a highly confidential matter.
Your devoted friend,
Andrew Ingram
20
“To hell!” Caroline cried, crumpling Andrew Ingram’s note. Where have I been? she asked herself. Such a decision didn’t happen between yesterday and today. Caroline was terribly close to the Ingrams, both in civic matters and socially. She chastised herself for not picking up on his duress.
Bloody hell! It was nigh on impossible to tell if Andrew was more somber or less somber behind that Scottish mask.
For Andrew Ingram, there was more than Conor to consider. There would be the heartbreak of Seamus O’Neill as well. A scandal whose bottom line read, “Hands off the shirt factory,” would destroy Kevin O’Garvey, too, and try as Andrew might, he could not bring himself