Redemption - Leon Uris [61]
He accepted that Brigid would either remain a spinster or marry some wizened specimen with some acreage. Her only love, Myles McCracken, had flown Ballyutogue. Myles worked for Conor in his forge and was taken with a factory girl, Maud Tully.
Tomas accepted that Mother Church always wins in the end. He had made a fierce piss-up at his father Kilty’s wake on learning that his da had taken absolution.
On further consideration, he slowly came around to giving God the benefit of the doubt. Father Lynch, a blister of a man, had grown theologically acceptable. Maybe he owed absolution to his wife? Maybe he owed it to his neighbors? If he left them believing he had seen the light, it would give them something to cling to after he was gone.
So Tomas took absolution, as fate dictated.
What Tomas Larkin would not accept was that his beloved Conor would not return. Mr. Lambe came to retirement age at his forge and could no longer start up a new apprentice. The old man traveled to Derry to try to convince Conor to take the forge but returned empty-handed and broken-hearted.
Still, Tomas would not accept that fate. Only after a young blacksmith arrived from Scotland and bought the forge, did Tomas yield.
For month after month he woke up with a lump knowing now Conor was not coming back. It wasn’t until he finally accepted that fate, that the terrible wrong he had done Liam seeped into his mind and grew until it began to possess him. He wrote to Liam to come back home and take the Larkin farm.
Tomas had been feeling poorly of late. He knew without consulting the doctor what was wrong with him. It was the diabetes. He had seen too much of it. He now counted the days until he heard from Liam.
The return letter finally arrived, written for Liam by a priest. Liam was already along his way to becoming a squire some day and was not returning to Ireland. The moment Tomas received the news, he quit fighting his illness and collapsed in the field. Shortly thereafter, Tomas Larkin was on his deathbed.
The power of their love prevailed over stubborn pride as Conor came to his father’s bedside. Tomas had gone blind but in the darkness of the room was able to pretend he could still see.
At his end of the line, Tomas was able to reflect, with a measure of good humor, on his foolish mistakes. For the most part, he was relatively at peace because his three sons were faring well. Poor dear Brigid had made her own bed by not going to Derry with Myles.
As for the end of the Larkin name on the land, Tomas was most concerned for fear his neighbors would have to endure with the last of the chieftains gone. His lordship was testing new steam machines in his field that could do the work of twenty to fifty men. Those machines, Tomas reckoned, would probably end up doing what the British and the famine together were unable to do, drive them off their land.
When Conor left his father’s side for a spell, Tomas drank a fatal bottle of poteen he had hidden beneath his pillow and soon fell into a coma.
For sixteen days and nights the family held a death watch while kneelers outside the cottage spoke prayers so thick with fright they were too heavy to ride the wind.
On the seventeenth day, the giant fell.
The death of his father was soon followed by the departure of Andrew Ingram. Conor’s prolonged grief was worsened by a strange new brittle and angry behavior from Kevin O’Garvey. The time he spent in Celtic Hall also fell into lethargy.
What lifted Conor now was pouring his energy into the great screen. Each time he thought deeply of it and each time he touched it, his sorrows seemed to fade for the moment.
Conor worked in something of a trance in the weeks following Tomas’s death, becoming more and more involved in the mystery of Jean Tijou. Conor’s dreams did not know day from night…
“Why have I been called to heaven?” he asked.
“Well, look at these gates, Conor lad. I’ve been meaning to repair them for five thousand years.”
“Why me, St. Peter?