Redemption - Leon Uris [88]
“The madder they become, the calmer you become…you’ve got a target now because his ribs are getting red…move right…under the jab…unleash, move out…fearsome, utterly fearsome.”
“Don’t I ever get to throw my left hand, Uncle Conor?”
“In due course, lad, in due course.”
* * *
They spoke of wrought iron and Shakespeare.
They spoke of a kind of sound Rory did not know…music played by great orchestras of eighty or ninety men and of operas sung by women with voices of nightingales.
They spoke of the wonders of the new century, of electric power and moving film and another magic kind of film that could see into a person’s body.
They spoke of great boxers and of artists and men who painted the ceilings of cathedrals.
And places with magic names…Damascus…Calgary…Ponte Vecchio…and Montenegro…
But never a mention of Ireland or the book Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. Rory hungered to know the thoughts behind Conor’s silence. The yellow and brown and black Bogsides all over the world, wretched creations of the colonizers.
What he spoke of and what he did not speak of was everything denied this lad from the South Island of New Zealand. The catalogue of Rory’s longings grew so obviously that Conor knew he had better leave.
30
One night Conor announced to Liam and Millie that he would be going down to Christchurch and perhaps up to Wellington to inquire about a berth on a ship. There was always a need for blacksmiths afloat, so something suitable was bound to come along in short order.
After a sigh of relief, Liam suddenly was jolted by the other side of the coin. He remembered twelve years ago in Ballyutogue when he had broken the news of his own emigration to Conor. Conor had gone into a panic. Liam’s darkest memory of all was the family’s ugly scene over Conor’s futile attempt to keep Liam in Ireland.
From his initial reaction of deliverance, Liam was seized with fear. Conor had filled Rory’s head with taunting notions of the world beyond. Rory had made his mark on Ballyutogue Station. Rory had to keep the continuity.
Manipulation. Aye, that’s the name of the game. Practiced by the family, the tribe, and the order of nations since man came down from the trees and moved into the caves.
Few practiced it with more precision than our dear Irish compatriots. You see, there is so infinitely little to manipulate, five acres of land, a ha’penny more on the price of flax, the fear of sex…. Manipulation at the family level was no less an Irish art than their poetry.
There was much more for Squire Liam at stake: Ireland against New Zealand—keeping his needed son, Rory, in the country to ensure continuity and a new generation of manipulators.
After all, Liam reasoned, he was not his father, Tomas, trying to lock Conor to his land. Could Conor, who had never been taken by a need for wealth or power, suddenly become smitten by the idea that the two brothers could build their holdings into something even larger than an earldom?
Perhaps the promise of peace could hold Conor? He had known poor little of it. A return to Ireland would only guarantee a life of battle.
Peace, plenty, family.
There was the magnificent parcel of land. If Conor took the new farm and built toward Ballyutogue Station, when the two merged it would be the largest spread on the South Island.
Yet, even as Liam offered the proposition, he could see that Conor had to go. His brother was inquiring after a ship. Liam railed against an Ireland that had brought them nothing but misery. He pleaded the case for New Zealand’s greater offer of freedom and dignity.
“Funny,” Conor answered, “how everyone loves the Irish once they leave Ireland.”
A letter had been sent to Liam in care of Conor from Seamus O’Neill in the event Conor showed up in New Zealand. When Liam handed it over, he learned there could be no keeping his brother.
The letter spoke of Irish stirrings, a heightened revival, and more…the probable renewal of the Irish Republican Brotherhood with the return of the old Fenian Long Dan Sweeney.
“What’s it gotten us but the raw end of a whip,” Liam