Trinity: A Novel of Ireland

by Leon Uris

  *

  Father Pat entered the forge just as the delivery wagon was made ready to leave, with Conor up on the driver's bench. The priest was pleased to see him shaved, cleanly dressed and reasonably clear-eyed. He got up alongside as Conor released the brakes and they rode off without conversation up into the walled city where the delivery was made. The father nodded to a direction of privacy and the horse was hitched along the Grand Parade where the two continued on foot to the wall. From here the Bogside below didn't appear all that bad. There was a certain odd beauty in the rows of perfectly matched slate rooftops rising and falling in symmetry and the chimney pots all sending up thin streams of peat smoke. The smell of that was always grand. They found a nook where they would not be annoyed.

  Father Pat as well as Andrew Ingram had given up haranguing Conor over his months-long depressed hinge, knowing that the man would start to come up when he could sink no further. Obviously, that return had started.

  “It's beginning to show touches of life again down there," Father Pat said, "and so are you."

  "I'm going to live because I don't want to die," Conor said, "but that place is dead. It was dead before Black Friday and before Kevin O'Garvey disappeared. It will never get its face out of the muck, now. It's Myles that I'm worried over. I can't seem to do anything with him, Father Pat."

  "It's time you cut him loose, Conor, or he'll start to drag you down."

  "I can't bring myself to it, I just can't."

  "Myles McCracken was born a loser," the priest said. "Twice in his life he's dared to love and each time it's ended up in a disaster. He'll never give his heart again. He'd be too terrified."

  "But to get up and live, Father Pat . . . he's got to do that."

  "Some men can overcome tragedy, even attain greatness because of it. Most men can't and the Bogside is full of those."

  "I know what you're saying because it's been going through my mind as well . . . what's to become of him?"

  "He's too scared to go back and even more scared to go forward. So he'll stay put. The Bogside will swallow him up and in time he'll become a harmless old drunk who keeps himself in a state of alcoholic bliss as a shield against his nightmare."

  Conor knew the pronouncement was cruel but correct, the words he had tried not to say, himself. So that was it. The weak remain and wither as they always did in Ireland.

  "I'm leaving, Conor," Father Pat said suddenly.

  Conor jolted, closed his eyes and made no effort to hold back his tears. The sickness of the past months crawled all over him again. He faced his friend bleeding of heart.

  "It appears that Father Eveny, Father Keenan, Father Mallory and myself have overextended our ration of sin," he said, trying to be casual.

  "Jesus, Father! Not this on top of everything else!" Conor exploded.

  "Aye, man, it's so. You don't make any deals with God in this business."

  "God my ass. God's not sending you away. It's that bastard of a Bishop!"

  "I'd rather not indulge in a Jesuit dialogue with you over who is doing what and why. I'm transferred, I'm going, it's that simple."

  "Where! When!"

  "I'm to be jugged for a few weeks of meditation at the seminary to cleanse and rededicate myself. I'll be able to see Dary. Then, what the devil, I've always wanted to get out of Bogside."

  "Where, Father?"

  The gaslights rose on cue, breaking into the imminent darkness. Father Pat shrugged boyishly but was unable to ward off Conor's persistence.

  "Oh, there's a grand old priest by the name of Father Clare who is no longer able to cover his parish. The parish is too poor for him to have made enough to retire and, as you know, our order makes no provisions to take care of older priests."

  "I said where!"

  "To the farthest reaches of Bishop Donoghue's domain. Everything north of Carrigart on the Rosguill Peninsula."

  "No, dammit! I'll not see you a curate whistling litanies to the wind in half-empty churches of dying Celtic mystics."

  "I'm sorry, Conor, but they're entitled to a priest, too." He gripped Conor's arms. "It's either there or emigrate to America, and I'll not be driven out of Ireland any more than you. Besides," he laughed, "that's just what America needs, one more Irish priest."

  Conor quelled his revulsion and Father Pat released him, then went into a long hesitation of his own.

  "I need to confess," the priest whispered.

  "I don't understand you."

  "I said I need to confess. Will you hear me, Conor?"

  Father Pat walked a few feet along the wall, far enough to see the gutted shell of Witherspoon & McNab. Then the light gave out. "Frank Carney and myself joined in a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence. About the time you came into Derry, the Bogside Association was dead broke, virtually defunct. Then it suddenly came into great funds through Kevin O'Garvey. Your own shop was financed by it. Frank and I never asked where the money came from because we really didn't want to know. We always suspected Kevin took soiled money from Lord Hubble in exchange for an agreement not to investigate that factory."

  "Oh, my God! I don't want to hear any more of this!"

  "You're going to have to, boy."

  "Nae, Kevin wouldn't do a thing like that, nae, dammit, no, no, no, no!" Then he stopped. He started to ask did he? Did he really? And he pleaded with his eyes to not have to be made to believe it.

  "No real proof," Father Pat said. "Only a guess. He confided in me not once but a hundred times his hatred of the factory and finally once that he was going to investigate it. Suddenly he didn't. But all of us in Bogside have made our deals with the Devil. Frank did before the commission of inquiry over the fire. It takes no genius to figure out who got to him and why he testified the way he did. I've made deals. So did Kevin."

  "No!"

  "Only to be able to see some poor soul smile once in his life. You can't damn a man for that, Conor. I've been so dragged down by despair I've thought of leaving the priesthood. I've even thought of taking my own life. Well, Kevin O'Garvey did it for others. And never forget he did it for you."

  "Aye," Conor whispered, knowing. "I'd be hard put not to do the same for him."

  "So you see, we're only men. The Hubbles and the British own us so completely they are not only responsible for our sorrows but they dole out our little bits of joy. That's what Kevin bought, a moment of joy for a few people. They even have the power to ration and control our hopes."

  Conor's face tightened with a sudden notion. "Do you think they killed him?"

  "No, not really. Bogside killed him. Perhaps he heard of the fire, perhaps not. Either way, he'd not have lived long after it."

  "Christ, I'm sick, Father Pat. My soul is drained. I'm sick," Conor moaned.

  "That's a luxury you cannot afford any longer. They'll be leaning on you down there, more and more."

  "Nae," Conor groaned, "nae." Outlined by lamplight, he cast a shadow and his hands shoved into his pockets as he scanned the sky sightlessly, then moved to his friend. "I am not their Father Pat. I am not their Frank Carney. I cannot bargain with my enemies. Nor can I walk among those lost souls and do my praying in silence. I cannot turn my other cheek. I cannot do what I cannot do or be what I cannot be. I must find my way, Father. I'm leaving too."

  "Where will you go, Conor?"

  "There's talk of the Brotherhood organizing again in Belfast and Dublin."

  "You know I won't give my blessing to that."

  "I'm not asking for it."

  "I suppose it's impossible to convince you that it's the wrong way."

  "Take a look down there, Father. Can you tell me your way or Kevin's way has been any better? In one fleeting moment Kevin looked at me and said, "In the end we're going to have to have a rising, there's no other way." It's the twentieth century, Father. Some light has got to shine on this land. We cannot walk in the darkness any longer."

  *

  Conor climbed down the ladder from his room and shook his head at Father Pat. My
les was up there, unconscious, in a terrible state.

  "I'll try to do something with him tomorrow," Conor said. "He'll have to go to the hospital if he doesn't stop." He walked around the shop looking at this work and that and turned down the lantern in his office, all filled with plans and drawings. "Funny, I just made the last payment on my loan. I own the fucking place now."

  The two men moved about with bowed heads and hands jammed into pockets along the ways of misery of Bligh Lane, into Stanley's Walk barely hearing the trails of "Evening to you, Father Pat, evening, Conor." Conor waited outside while the priest made his last call, then they doubled back to Nick Blaney's. As they approached they heard a voice singing. There had been no song in Bogside for so very long. It was not the sweet voice of a Myles McCracken, but it was song, nonetheless.

  "Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are callin'

  From glen to glen, and round the mountainside."

  Their entry usually brought a hale burst of welcomes but the sour mood of the pair was being worn on their sleeves and everyone parted quietly to make room for them at the far end of the bar.

  "But come ye back, when summer's in the meadow,

  Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow . . ."

  Three shots of paddy each met swift ends braced with chasers of Derryale. Both Conor and Father Pat pointed to their respective glasses.

  "Then I'll be here, in sunshine or in shadow.

  Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so."

  Blaney's wept to a man, it was that lovely.

  "Are you Conor Larkin, himself?" a dandy asked.

  "Aye."

  "Sammy Meehan talking to you from Cleveland in O-Hi-O. I'm visiting the old sod of my father and his father before him. Could I be shaking your hand and buying you and the good father a drink?" The man backed off, frightened at the sight of tears streaming down Conor's cheeks. Conor reached out with his mighty hands, seized Sammy Meehan under his arms and lifted him to sitting on the bar as though he were weightless.

  "I'm after giving our Yank friend a little song of insurrection!" Conor cried. His voice was off key and cracked in the hush of the room.

  "Oh, then tell me, Sean O'Farrell, where the gathering is to be?

  In the old spot by the river, right well known to you and me;

  One more word for signal token, whistle up the marchin' tune,

  With your pike upon your shoulder, BY THE RISIN' OF THE MOON."

  Conor gulped another paddy down. "Am I to sing alone!" he cried, smashing his glass against the wall.

  The silence remained awkward and frightened as Nick set up a new shot glass and filled it. Father Pat nodded to the fluter and the accordionist, placed his hand on Conor's shoulder and added his wanting voice.

  "Out from many a mud wall cabin, eyes were watching through that night,

  Many a manly heart was throbbing for the blessed warning light,

  Murmurs passed along the valleys, like the banshee's lonely croon,

  And a thousand blades were flashing AT THE RISIN’ OF THE MOON."

  One by one, the voices joined in, beaten, proud, hopeless, defiant.

  "Well they fought for poor old Ireland, and full bitter was their fate,

  Oh, what glorious pride and sorrow, fills a name of ninety-eight!

  Yet, thank God e'en still are beating hearts in manhood's burning noon.

  Who would follow in their footsteps , AT THE RISIN' OF THE MOON!"

  END OF PART FOUR

  PART FIVE

  Dusty Bluebells

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was born short and never grew much taller, neither carrying the day nor losing the game at Queen's College. Numerous O'Neills were scattered about Belfast, enough to furnish me a bed and keep me in scroggins. Queen's College carried its usual token number of Catholics but I did find the liberal sanctuaries one might expect of a campus. As a mirror of the restlessness of the society and often its soothsayer, I came to know that one day Queen's would be a wellspring of republican aspirations.

  I think the motto of the Hubble family best described the political atmosphere that prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century. It was embedded in stained glass over the family crest in the library at Hubble Manor and, translated from the Latin, read, one more charge for the glory of the crown. The old lady Victoria in Buckingham Palace was pressing eighty with her name already stamped on the era as the zenith of imperial adventure. A return to power of her Conservative ministers happened just in time for the celebration of her diamond jubilee as monarch.

  For the Irish the jubilee was repugnant. All the banalities of empire were magnified by the event, a reminder that we were a subject people, the first to be colonized and reduced to servitude citizenship. Throughout this great celebration many Irish served faint notice that the old bitterness had not diminished and that our long republican hibernation was soon to come to an end.

  Spearheaded by the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League, nationalistic spirits were on the rise and the Celtic revival at full gallop. Dr. Douglas Hyde, founder of the League, like Emmet, Wolfe Tone and Parnell, was an ascendancy Protestant but no less a Celtophile and republican.

  Victoria's diamond jubilee was marred in its London celebration by a boycott of the Irish Party and in Ireland by an outbreak of riots and the kind of rhetoric that left no doubt but that another chapter in the "Irish question" was in the writing.

  For thirty-five years the old Queen mourned the loss of her husband, continuing to sleep beneath a photograph of him in his coffin and each morning had the servants lay out his clothing. Ireland was not entirely unlike Albert's corpse. Any republican recovery we had made from the famine and aborted Fenian rising was demolished by the death of Parnell, but as the Empire now girded for "One more charge for the glory of the Crown," we were arising from the dead and contemplating "ONE MORE CHARGE FOR IRELAND."

  *

  No great rush of job offers greeted me upon graduation after the turn of the century. I joined that small handful of educated Catholics who were not entirely accepted by the Anglos and was looked upon with raised brows by my own people because of my liberal Protestant schooling. Body and soul were kept intact as a journalist for a small and obviously impoverished Catholic Belfast newspaper and some odds and ends in private tutoring. I also wrote a little — some poetry, some plays, some essays. Neither the British nor the Irish quaked under the might of my pen but I satisfied my Celtic appetites.

  *

  The vainglory that trumpeted in during the jubilee had saturated imperial-minded arrogants into a state of euphoria. Britannic appetite to acquire was bottomless and the opiate of conquest deafened her to those whiffs of discontent and subversion cropping up among all her subject peoples.

  Headiness of the jubilee spilled over into yet another imperial thrust, but one destined to become an epic turning point in history. Predicated on old greed, a bumbling and costly adventure opened the first cracks in Britain's boundless domain. Cecil Rhodes, the epitome of Empire man, was not content merely to control the cornucopia of diamonds, gold and other riches pouring out of the Cape Colony and other South African holdings. He lusted for the Transvaal and engineered a crude, raw display of power by annexation of the neighbor state into one large British "union."

  The Transvaal had been colonized mostly by Boers, a tough breed of Dutch origin. When war was imposed on them, they shocked the British by guerrilla-oriented tactics of swift movement and ambush. With their traditional massiveness and archaic maneuvering, plus the Boers' unexpected furiousness and finesse, was inflicted a series of ignoble defeats on the British forces.

  The War Office awoke to the startling fact that in their march to empire the British had not engaged a modern, white, well-armed force for decades. They reacted by pouring upward of a half million troops into the fray from units throughout the Empire. Ireland chipped in with the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Ulster Rifles, the Inniskillings and the Hubble home regiment, the Coleraine R
ifles. We were once again playing out an ancient fate of proving our fighting ability in uniforms other than Irish and on battlefields far from home in a war of someone else's making.

  Wherever the British fought, some sort of Irish token force would generally show up to fight on the other side. The Boer War proved no exception. A few soldiers of fortune, mostly Irish-Americans, a few Fenian relics and a few new republicans seeking direction, formed an Irish Brigade to fight alongside the Boers. Although they never numbered more than a few hundred, their presence was telling in propaganda value. In Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and New York there was such a stirring of Irish conscience as had not been stirred since the famine. In Dublin, a Transvaal Committee opened in the heart of the city and was manned by the new republicans and fed on the growing fires of the Celtic revival.

  Enter my good self.

  I operated a small but boisterous branch of the Transvaal Committee in Belfast with a fever in my pen. In mid-1901 I was contacted by a syndicate of Irish American newspapers to go to South Africa as their correspondent.

  By the time I arrived in the Transvaal most of the heavy fighting was done. British massiveness had simply worn down the Boer capacity for tenacity and valor. They continued to resist in small sporadic operations but these were splintered and without the earlier impact.

  Yet something else was taking place when I arrived, something shocking and repugnant, and this was turning the British annexation into a pyrrhic victory. A hundred thousand or more Boers, men, women and children, were rounded up and put into what the British referred to as "concentration camps." Another thirty thousand Boer soldiers were in prisoner-of-war camps. Their lands were confiscated, their homes and fields burned to the ground.

  As the British Parliament imposed another patented "Act of Union" (as they had a century before on the Irish), thousands of Boers perished behind barbed wire. The death toll ran to thirty thousand in their concentration camps with over twenty thousand of these being children.