Redemption - Leon Uris [78]
Maudie wondered, was Conor Larkin destined to remain a dreamer, or hadn’t the woman showed up yet, or…was she there in Hubble Manor?
When the great screen was done and Conor eased back into Bogside life, it wasn’t quite the same. Maudie saw him spending less time at Celtic Hall, growing acrimonious with Kevin O’Garvey, and otherwise haunted and ill at ease with himself. Had Deny itself grown too small for him? What was left to do there?
Then came the blow that shocked them all. Kevin O’Garvey indefinitely postponed his Commission of Inquiry into the tinderbox Witherspoon & McNab shirt factory.
Maudie was eight months pregnant and planning to leave the shirt factory in a week or two. Myles had sped up his apprenticeship so quickly working on the great screen that Conor felt Myles was ready to take over his own blacksmith shop, and one was coming up for sale.
Late one evening in Celtic Hall, Maudie was tidying up Kevin’s office when Conor arrived and parked himself at Kevin’s desk.
“We have to talk, luv,” Conor said.
“Indeed, we do,” she said locking his door and pulling down the shade and taking a seat. “The answer to your question, before you ask it, is that I don’t know why Kevin is calling off the investigation of the shirt factory.”
“Then let’s try to think of a reason,” Conor said. “There are questions I should have asked months, nae, years ago, but I stuck my conscience in a dark corner and said, ’Stay there, conscience, things are going too well for me and I don’t want you hovering over me until I’m ready to come back and get you.’ But my fecking conscience didn’t listen. It refused to stay where I tried to hide it.”
“Glory be, it’s nice to know, Conor. I was wondering if you had become totally comfortable up at the manor.”
Conor ignored the barb and banged at the question he had avoided.
“How come I was able to rebuild so fast after I was burned out? How come his Lordship starts sending me more work than my shop can turn out?”
“Well, the story goes that her Ladyship had already spotted you as the man to rebuild her screen and to get you into the system.”
“That’s a fecking lie, Maudie. Where did Kevin O’Garvey get the money? And the money for a dozen Bogside enterprises? Who are the Americans supporting him? Why haven’t they even shown up quietly to see the results of their good works? ”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Kevin knows, and he’s going to tell me the minute he’s back from London. I should have fecking demanded to know from day one instead of allowing this conspiring behind my back.”
“Are you all that innocent, Conor boy?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, “in a way you are. There was blood and heartbreak on the land and Kevin ran the Land League, but you only saw it in terms of the Fenian Rising and the hanging tree and glories of the past. Yes, even the famine had its romantic aspects. And here in Bogside, Conor lad, let’s go into Celtic Hall and purge our pain with tales of Wolfe Tone and Emmet. You’re a bloody dreamer…you see us behind the veil of republican words to die by rather than to touch the pain with your own hands….
“And when you did get involved, you got a reprieve in Hubble and had something really heavenly, really ethereal, to keep republicanism tucked away in a fantasy corner.”
“Am I that naive?”
“Perhaps your greatest charm, Conor.”
“Unless you’ve twisted iron,” he cried, “you cannot understand what it means to a self-made anvil thumper like me to have a chance to create something of greater glory. I was consumed, Maudie, consumed.”
“And you wanted Caroline Hubble, plain and simple.”
As the wind oozed from him, Maudie’s eyes were on him, and not with a great deal of sympathy. No use trying to work around that girl.
“Aye, it was our work together. I didn’t make love to her….”
“But you loved her. And you used the grandeur of your commission to further your floating away from the real world.”
“Aye.”
“Welcome to Bogside, Conor. I don’t know what Kevin did and I don’t give a damn. Everything in Ireland is a deal. Our politicians have a monumental reputation for