Redemption - Leon Uris [96]
His grandfather, Sir Frederick Weed, the team owner, traveled with us off and on, with much finer accommodations. So I let Jeremy spend the odd night with his grandda, and the little devil ends up consorting with prostitutes and thought he was in love with one of them.
After we sorted that out I put him under lock and key. However, there was a celebration to end all celebrations when we won the cup. Jeremy jumped ship on me, stuffing his bed with pillows and shinnying three stories down on the drain pipe. While I slept, the team ended up in a brothel when the losing squad, the Bradford Bulls, arrived on the scene. A rank nationalistic insult was made and a monumental piss-up followed.
Lord Jeremy and most of the Boilermakers were jailed and the press treated it as though it were the second passing of Queen Victoria.
Caroline, after initial fury, saw the humor in the situation, and Sir Frederick was rather proud that his grandson would be a hero on entering Trinity. However, Lord Roger didn’t see it that way. He slapped the boy in a rage, humiliating him beyond reason. My own da, Tomas, struck me once over the books, as you know. That happened a quarter of a century ago and I can still feel the blow.
So, me lad, it seems that fathers and sons have their go, no matter what the circumstances of their birth or wealth or station. Younger brother, Christopher, is a snotty little prick, the apple of his father’s eye.
Our relationship with our parents is the eternal devilment of the human race. There is no way that the new generation can really learn from the old. Each boy and girl must make his own unique and perplexing journey into a relationship that ends with its own unique solution. And oftentimes, we must spend the second half of our life getting over the first half.
Every time I see Jeremy Hubble I pretend also that I am with my nephew Rory a half-dozen years up the line, hoisting a few at the bar, keeping you from consorting with prostitutes, and scraping the mud and blood of the rugby pitch off ye.
So there we are, Rory lad. The Admiral’s Cup and Lord Jeremy were the joy of it. Shelley came over for holiday and when she leaves the gunrunning starts. She does not know of the scheme. And now, the quandary. I love this woman so desperately that believing there could be a life of peace with her away from Ireland is driving me near insane. Before there was Shelley there was never really a thought of life for me that didn’t end up with the Brotherhood.
Shelley MacLeod got one whiff of Conor’s wild notion to flee Ireland and in the instant of euphoria, she agreed. By daylight, her senses had returned. If they ran, the Conor Larkin she loved would be no more. He would turn into a shallow shell of himself and soon be overcome by self-hatred. She knew, in the light of day, the world was too small for them to hide in. Even their wonderment and their love could not come between an Irishman and his dream.
What was once love would grow rancid in a year or two of never mentioning Ireland. She would have to watch him die in pieces.
Conor refused to take her into the suffering and dead-end life needed of a rebel boy’s woman.
They returned to Belfast separately, in misery.
Letters and books to Rory became less frequent. Rory, who could all but feel Conor halfway around the world, was so keen that he figured out what had probably taken place.
36
1908
The gunrunning scheme moved along flawlessly, recording trip after trip to and from Belfast and Liverpool without a hitch. Something other than departed souls were being dug under in many a village graveyard.
Having set up the route, the English side of it no longer required Conor’s presence. Claiming age and injuries, he resigned from the Boilermaker team.
At first Sir Frederick would not hear