Redemption - Leon Uris [60]
Roger knew full well of whom she spoke but played the act of stuttering memory. He had been O’Garvey’s pet enterprise in Bogside and was quite good but had to be burned out after he entered a bid against Caw & Train. Later he was assimilated into the overall system and actually did some splendid work at Lettershambo.
“Hmmm,” Roger said at last. “Oh yes, Larkin. The family has been here about a century, always mixed up in some sort of disobedience. His grandfather was imprisoned.”
“Would that cancel him out?”
“Not really. We’ve managed to stay in business because we’ve learned we have to live and deal with these people. Actually, it’s always a good show for the Catholics to have one of their people do this and that. Mind you, they can be frightful liars and clever with the language.”
“Why don’t you look over his credentials and this report he’s prepared and give me your assessment,” she said, sliding a folder over to him.
“Certainly, darling. Problem as I see it from the onset is that a restoration will take several years. You know how feckless they are. He’d probably sell his mother to get that commission and eventually leave things in a worse mess than we have now.”
“Larkin doesn’t want to do a restoration.”
“Really?”
“No, just remove our so-called masters’ work and do a bit of cleaning up.”
“Maybe just a clever way of getting his foot in the door, don’t you think, Caroline?”
“By the time he finishes that work, we’ll have a damned good idea if he’s the real thing or not.”
“Good thinking, dear. I’ll get on this directly.”
“The folder here makes a lot of references to the screen. I’ve left everything on the refectory table in the Long Hall. You’ll find the translations from St. Columba’s, his own drawings, historical references, the whole kit and caboodle.”
Roger had been tweaked. Well, the report was probably full of holes. He’d better find them. God knows how much she wanted the restoration, but another disappointment would go down hard.
Morning found Roger Hubble red-eyed from reading through the night. In a sense, he thought, completion of the screen would amount to a symbolic end to Caroline’s monstrous spending on the manor. The place now matched some of the greatest stately homes and castles in England. Indeed, the great screen would be a suitable, if outlandish, gesture of their imperial existence.
“There you are, Roger,” Caroline said, leading a tray-bearing servant.
“Fascinating,” Roger said. “This part really intrigued me.” He lay flat several sheets of drawings of some tiny detail work on the screen and the same work on other projects in England. “Well, I suppose it’s all right for Tijou to steal from Tijou.”
“Particularly if he is the only one who could execute it.”
“And Larkin thinks he can copy them?”
“We won’t get to that for months, until after he removes the counterfeit sections.”
“This is also very interesting,” Roger said showing the drawings of the masterworks before Tijou’s time. They were of heavy-handed metal-pounders in comparison. It did show that Tijou lifted the entire craft.
“Shall we let him have a go at it?” she asked.
“Yes, but first a couple of precautions. I’d like to have a separate set of translations by our own people to make certain these Gaelic church records are authentic. Also, I’ll have Swan run a security check on him, you know, anarchist activities. One thing does trouble me. Must he have this Clanconcardy ore?” He nodded to a plate of scrapings.
“Hmmm, like butter… or silk…”
Caroline smiled inwardly. Or, she thought, a woman’s skin. She looked and saw no mangled mess but a fully restored screen soaring and swirling and interlocking in a grandeur unmatched. She saw a great velvet curtain the size of a mainsail on the largest ship afloat. The curtain was raised by a handful of servants on a pair of winches. It rose! And there was the great screen in all its splendor!
She and her father often wanted a number of things more than anything.
22
1897
Tomas Larkin accepted the fates, one after the other.
He accepted that