Redemption - Leon Uris [67]
“Maybe we’re that generation,” Seamus said.
“Did Andrew Ingram see the play?”
Seamus shook his head. “You know, I wanted me mentor to see it close to perfect. When I felt I was writing myself into a hole, I thought you’d better look it over first. When I looked up, Andrew was gone. It was a blow.”
“Terrible blow,” Conor agreed, “something deep and haunting. Something strange, like O‘Garvey’s behavior these days. Somehow Kevin and Andrew are connected. I wish I knew what it was.”
“Maybe it’s best you don’t know. It will all be dumped on your doorstep one day. Hey, I saw Crawford from the Belfast Boilermakers watching you today. Anything up?”
“He scouts the west every year about this time. I’ve got a standing offer for a tryout.”
“Frederick Weed’s rugby team,” Seamus grunted. “Wasn’t that the Countess of Foyle’s kid with the Bogside bench?”
“Aye, we’re the only team in Ireland with a viscount as a water boy.”
“You’re getting pretty incestuous with that crowd.”
“You know why I asked you to come today?” Conor said.
“Let me guess.”
“She’s asked me to complete the great screen. Tomas and I never got around to talking about it, but he smelled it and he sent me a message from the grave via Dary. Dary told me that I was flirting with five hundred years of oil and water that could not mix. I had been in Hubble Manor long enough to see a human face on the enemy. Tomas said, tell Conor boy, don’t let his own soul fall from grace in his own eyes.”
“You’ve been in love with her since you were twelve years old. Are you telling me you two are going to keep your hands off each other for three years?”
“You don’t want to hear me!” Conor retorted angrily.
“That’s why I came, to hear you. Three years on something like the great screen requires passion,” Seamus said, “like writing three plays.”
“You went to Queens for four years to come up with a profound thought like that?”
“So, go to the manor and torment yourself. And the more comfortable you get with them, the more you’ll be tormented.”
“You call that making sense?”
“Aye, I do. You’ll be tormented because you can never forget who you are and where you came from and what you intend to do with your life. Each day with them, you’ll grow further from us and that will bloody well torment you.”
“You don’t want to hear me,” Conor said.
“I’m hearing you very well.”
“See, this has got to do with the beginning of a reconciliation.”
“With Roger Hubble?”
“Seamus, goddamnit…it’s about…about…Jean Tijou didn’t create the screen as a prison. Half of me has to do with twisting metal. That half of me is pulling me to Hubble Manor. That hot piece of metal in my hand is what my life is about now.”
“As long as the other hand is on Caroline Hubble’s ass. Suppose the great screen was in Cork and there was no Caroline Hubble?”
“Shyte!”
“Can you really separate her from the screen?”
Conor groaned the groan of the man exposed. “Maybe the screen does express the way I feel about her. Maybe the only way I’ll ever express my feeling is through the screen. I do know that an energy, a spirit has entered me—a desire, if you will, that can only be satisfied when I have done the restoration. I can’t control what is driving me. Seamus.”
“Then I approve,” Seamus answered, “and I’ll tell you what I approve of. I approve of you walking on a tightrope for three years over a boiling caldron of lust.”
“Well now,” Conor whispered, “that will take a bit of doing, won’t it.”
“Aye. And if you don’t leave each other be, you can send up half of Ulster in flames.”
24
1899
The restoration now took an entirely different orientation. It was removed from the exclusive domain of Conor Larkin and Caroline Hubble. Another iron master was imported from England and a full crew was trained, much to the delight of the maids.
Grand strategy was agreed upon as well as the day-to-day tactical approach. The screen would be done in sections, the rough work by the second master and crew and then attached by block