Redemption - Leon Uris [95]
Her name is Shelley. She is a Protestant lass from the Shankill district of Belfast, a place that has known hunger, cholera, and lingering destitution. Nowadays shipyard workers live here mostly in wee row houses.
Her brother is captain of the Boilermakers team and her father an old-timer at Weed Ship &Iron. Despite the difference of our persuasions, her family saw the happiness in Shelley’s eyes and they accepted me as their son and brother.
Waiting so long has its special rewards. How long have I looked into sterile eyes, into sterile hearts? How shallow the possibilities have been! Now I looked and saw something different, a partner rich to the voice, to the touch, to the sight…so rich I cannot fill myself enough of her riches nor can I believe such riches are mine.
My love of Shelley did not come easily. I had to face the fiercest test of my life in learning from her that she had been the mistress of a married man for three years. I felt a monster called jealousy spit out of me. This monster is beyond your capacity to reason with. It consumes you.
Well, lad, I’ve done a bit of roving and I set me down and explored myself. I had to discard the Irish peasant pride, to overcome the years of the Virgin being pounded into my brain. Shelley told me before we made love that she would not start with a lie, that I must know that when she spoke I was always hearing truth.
She was a poor girl who fought her way to a decent station in life against all odds. In the end, there was nothing to forgive or forget. Why shouldn’t two people have found love with each other to escape the misery of Belfast as she had done? So I grew up very fast, Rory, for the thought of losing her was so staggering I would not inflict it on myself and I am the most fortunate man alive.
We go through our nights intertwined. We are in sorrow when we part for the day and follow bliss when we sight one another after work. Happiness is always around us when we are in each other’s aura.
I know now that Ireland can only own part of me. How we will contend with it is our mystery.
We are keenly aware we may be doomed from the onset. Can I live with one foot in the Brotherhood and one in a pretense of living a normal life with her? Can we ever know peace from the Orange fanatics? For the first time I also question my unalterable march from childhood to a life in the patriot’s game. Can I hold two such loves?
In time I will have to go underground and live life on the run. Can I condemn her to desperate meetings in squalid hideaways with bedsprings poking through and bedbugs having a meal off our hides? Can task a woman to live in fear of every knock on the door?
Well, Rory lad, I’m off on the Midlands tour, but that’s not the half of it. I have earmarked Sir Frederick Weed’s private train and engine to smuggle guns back to Ireland. Once the tour is over and the first batch moves out of Bradford, the door to any life outside the Brotherhood is closed.
Meeting Shelley this late in the game has now put a serious sting into my commitment. The thought pounds at me that although I was unable to live outside Ireland before I met her, I think I can live anywhere in the world with her at my side. This taunts the life from me, day and night.
From the Midlands Tour
Dear Rory!
For the first time in Ireland’s long and tormented history, we have won the Admiral’s Cup. Aye, the Belfast Boilermakers cleaned out one hairy and foul bunch of ruggers after another and your old uncle did right well by you. All that’s left now is for us to come “down under” and clean out the All-Blacks. I hope you’re on the team when I come!
By Jaysus, in city after city they fell to us like shallow-rooted trees in a tropical hurricane.
Here’s a story to warm your heart. Robin MacLeod, Shelley’s brother and captain of the team, was my roommate and between us we kept a hold on Jeremy in an adjoining room. As you know I was boning