Redemption - Leon Uris [66]
“Hard fought, hard fought,” Seamus said.
“They were a bunch of foul brutes. They’ve got too many goddamned Orangemen on that team. Look here, would you ever, bite marks on my leg and I’ve got one on my arse as well.”
“You’d think it was the Dublin stadium at the all-Ireland finals.”
Conor shoved some pillows under his back and one beneath his arm to elevate it tenderly. “That bottle isn’t a Christmas present.”
Seamus passed it over.
“High and mighty journalist, are you, now?”
“I can’t write anything of a republican nature in the paper. For the time being it’s weddings and funerals and I cover the Catholic side of the constabulary beat.”
“So, how goes it with the birds? Found anyone short enough for yourself?”
“Being a journalist, even an apprentice, has its privileges. I’ve always got a big bird on my arm. I like them high enough so my eyes are tit level. I tell you, Conor, it’s like I’ve gone to heaven these days. For four years the O’Neills and Belfast took turns housing and feeding me, sometimes three to a bed. Fortunately, I was short enough to be able to lie down when I had a private closet, otherwise I’d have had to sleep standing up. Can you imagine, my very own flat with an icebox and pump in me own kitchen with the outhouse just one step outside the door. Only problem is you’ve got to keep rotating the birds, particularly the Catholic ones. Soon as you take a new one in they start rearranging things and want to dress you like a dandy, parade you into church, and Jaysus, do they have families. Anyhow, I’m going trolling in Protestant waters. I’m getting sick of all the weeping and Hail Marys, confessing. And your good self?”
“Just drifting,” Conor said.
“Miss your daddy?”
Conor shook his head and tears welled in his eyes, and the two friends were quiet for ever so long.
“I went up to Ballyutogue. Never figured my da would travel the road much further without Tomas. Fergus doesn’t say so, but it’s in his voice. He’s lonely. Sixty years, side by side, they were. Ballyutogue has fallen into real sorrow.”
And they were quiet again. Seamus nodded to the first play he had written sitting on the stand.
“The dialogue is beautiful,” Conor said, “the characters work well as themselves and with each other.”
“So, what’s the fecking problem with it?” Seamus demanded.
“Christ, runt, I’m not a bloody critic.”
“What’s the fecking problem with it?” Seamus repeated. Conor groaned as he shifted positions. Seamus’s face lit up, like when they were in the booley house in the high meadow and Conor went into a dissertation. “Almost all plays and novels start out with a hell of an idea,” Conor began.
“Aye.”
“Say that the play is a journey you’re taking and Dublin is Act One. Act Two is the middle of the journey, in the middle of the Irish Sea. That’s always the problem.”
“What problem?”
“When you left Dublin you didn’t know whether you were heading to London, Paris, or Amsterdam, so you kept going in circles and you never reached your destination because you didn’t know what the destination was when you left Dublin. Seamus, you’ve got to know your curtain line…you’ve got to set down a line from Dublin to Paris and then the play becomes logical. You might get blown off course, but when you know it’s Paris, you’ll get there in the end.”
“Know your curtain line, know your curtain line, know your curtain line,” Seamus berated himself. “Of course.”
“Don’t take it to heart. You’d be surprised how many novels and plays sink in the middle. Even Shakespeare had problems with it, sometimes he just upped and killed everyone on stage.”
“I should have figured it out,” Seamus said.
“What you said in Act Two, before you sunk, do you really think there’s going to be a rising against the Brits in our lifetime?”
“Aye, I’m positive about it, Conor. It’s moving out of the courts and the Parliament into an unmistakable drift. The move is toward the gun.”
“The Irish people have been subjugated for too long,” Conor said. “They accept misery. There