Redemption - Leon Uris [69]
Roger was in Belfast when Adam delivered a note to Caroline.
Dear Lord and Lady Hubble,
I appreciate your putting up with my nonsense. The screen will be ready tonight after dark for proper presentation.
Conor Larkin
And a good thing. Artisans or no, Caroline was coming to the end of her patience.
When she opened the door, all the electric lights were out and the place was bathed in the light of fifteen hundred candles from a dozen mock chandeliers staggered curiously.
“Dear God,” Caroline whispered, “dear God.”
Conor was in a niche, staring dazed and perspiring.
“Are you here, Mr. Larkin?”
“Here…see it from here…”
That was it, then. His sweat and the perfume she now always dabbed on for their late meetings drifted together. She knew what went well on her skin, and he had told her without words he wanted his evening treat. Neither knew until this instant how his sweat made her scent even sweeter.
The Long Hall was swaying in a fluttering of waves…a ship sailing on a sea of cobalt light reflecting from the screen. An irresistible force compelled her to look at the screen, up and up…man to God.
“The rough chandeliers are only temporary…. I’ll make decent ones,” he mumbled. “See how it all climbs up….”
Being Irish and a tenor of Irish inclination, Conor pumped his lungs and opened everything in a burst.
“You’re singing the new Puccini!” she cried.
“Aye! Aye! Aye!”
Their duet, such as it was, was flamed in blue velvet, loud, uncaringly loud, sadly untrained for such a moment, but they could hear nothing, feel nothing, see nothing that did not create ecstasy. And then they stood and stared gasping for air. No sound now, but their gasps. Conor started weeping and she began weeping.
Arm’s length apart, they had to hold hands. She spun away, reeling from the urge that had swept through her to throw herself on him.
“I’m so bloody tired I can barely stand up,” he said, slumping into a chair.
“You are Jean Tijou’s peer, and more,” she said, and left the room as quickly as she could.
25
Strange, high-strung days and restless nights followed the completion of the great screen for Conor in the Bogside and her ladyship at the manor. It would seem natural enough to be tossed around after a sudden halt to an intense routine of three years’ running.
Caroline, always a pleasant person and mistress, became snappish. She wisely announced to Roger that she was exhausted and shouted herself to a few weeks with her father, who was roistering about in Monte Carlo.
Conor’s return to the republican movement at Celtic Hall and a waiting assortment of ladies found both causes lacking. In the mellow light of his flat he scanned his books for words of comfort, but he knew the cause of his ailment. He was drained, done in, not only from his accomplishment but from the restraint he had exercised for a thousand and one days of seeing Caroline’s skin and the flow of her lines and her hair and the scent of her and her voice, which had mastered an art with him of speaking in double meanings.
At his forge he banged out on the anvil mistakes he wouldn’t allow an apprentice boy to make. On the football pitch he was no longer a terror. His concentration was shredded.
After a second month Conor received a hand-delivered note requesting him to make an appointment to come to the manor and look over the screen. Some touching up, of a minor nature, seemed in order.
The doors of the Long Hall were opened. They entered into a place that now owned a luxurious aura belonging to mighty creations. The lacework of iron burst softly, striking them silent.
“Did I really do that?” he said at last.
“Surely you must miss it terribly.”
“Like an amputation. I have gained serious respect for the writer who works three years on a novel.”
“I should have realized what a loss this would be. Consider that you have visitation rights whenever you wish.”
“I didn’t count on being so exhausted. There are bums pushing me all over the football field.”
Conor went over the touch-up work. “Bloody dampness