by Leon Uris
Aside from the larger cities, Bradford, Leeds, Hull and the cling of Liverpool suburbs, the rest were of fifty to a hundred thousand population in a tightly clustered textile belt spawned ugly with monotonously matched odors, colors and grime and all belching out the same debilitating waste as Belfast. Those barons of beef in Mick McGrath's fantasy were stringy, salty and overdone and the fancy digs turned out to be a series of creaky, dark, soot-stained rooms in the lesser railroad station hotels. Boredom and homesickness were the constant companions of postgame pain.
Game day!
Out they trotted in their green, orange and white uniforms with the flag of Ulster over their backs and the Red Hand of Ulster on their chests. The stands rumbled under the ovation. Playing fields of Batley, Halifax, Swinton and the rest were set in rare patches of green where dilapidated wooden stands held from ten to thirty thou sand exalted, swilled-to-the-gunnel fans in a state of semi-levitation. Bookmakers auctioned odds and little boys cried from the outside, "Hey, mister, boost me over the fence, please, mister, boost me over the fence."
GOD SAVE THE KING.
Mayhem commenced on the field as well as in the stands.
The professional game was wide open. A blur of rushing men, a meeting of bodies, a tangle of limbs, one remains stretched and still, then writhes as he slowly, slowly regains awareness, then writhes again as the awareness of pain stabs in, the ball floats high and drifts downward into a pack, two walls smash together in the sc rum a brutal tackle twists the neck of the running back in demi-decapitation but he staggers to his feet and wobbles back in, elbows and fists powder in close, a power runner sheds and drags tacklers who grimace in frustration.
The agony of Derek Crawford never varies except when the cap of the well blows off in his stomach. Doxie O'Brien is forever on the gallop up and down the touch lines shouting plays, cursing umpires, jeering back at the crowd.
Inventory takes place in high-ceilinged changing rooms under the stands where accumulated filth is a constant morbid gray. Splintery wooden benches sag and sway under the weight, and the smell of a generation of supercharged sweat has permeated forever. The fountain spouts cold-water showers and stamp-size towels amass soggy on the floor. Doxie O'Brien passes among them counting lost teeth, gashes requiring stitches, sprains, flattened noses, bruised ribs, gimpy knees, fearful-appearing discolorations.
"Good game, lads," Sir Frederick says, pounding into the morgue-like place.
A guinea or two guineas a man has been earned and another twelve bob per player after splitting up the pool from Sir Frederick's wager. Damned good team owner. None like him.
And ah! The comradery afterward. Having given their best to make one another into human wreckage, the opponents fall into one another's arms for the long night of drink. Drink to waylay the descending mantle of pain.
And ah! The girls! To swagger off with a dainty lady before rigor mortis sets in and cancels out the final performance of the day.
With the "Blacksmith," Conor Larkin, learning his craft in the front line and those two "gentlemen players" showing their national team caliber, the East Belfast Boilermakers regain some of their legendary esteem in Lancashire, running over Leigh, Oldham, Salford and Runcorn in a fortnight. On to Wigan for a pivotal game.
Wigan, one of the smallest towns in the Northern Rugby League, was nonetheless a perennial powerhouse. When cherry and white bashed green, orange and white, the result was standstill for nearly eighty minutes in one of the most bruising games in memory.
In the waning moments stamina told the tale. With the Wigan lads doing a regular day's work, one would think that the Boilermakers would be in better physical condition. However, the Boilermakers' long days of practice and heavy schedule were further burdened by long nights of indulgence and inordinate quantities of Guinness. Their edge was nullified. The Blacksmith alone had enough strength to score a try with his patented power plunge.
The flag of Ulster flew high over Lancashire. Yorkshire held its breath and quivered.
Argyle Dixon, an uncaged wild boar of a man at tight head prop, shared the "police" work with the Blacksmith in keeping thuggery out of the opponents' hearts. Roughing a Boilermaker back unnecessarily brought an instant reprisal. The message got out about the league that Argyle Dixon had a helper and to tread softly. By the time they reached Hull the team had pulled the win and loss record even with six games left. Derek Crawford was redeemed and Sir Frederick in ecstasy.
*
The Hubble party splintered after a few games. Lord Roger acquitted himself rapidly of family duty and departed. After a time Caroline plunged onto the London scene. While Roger was more or less content to remain in London, Caroline found herself continually on a northbound train to catch the Saturday play.
During this time Jeremy made a mighty attempt to walk in Larkin's footsteps. Conor treated his charge as an eaglet, brooking no serious straying from the nest. Conor roomed with Robin MacLeod but kept Jeremy within whistling distance. A bit of boozing was allowed the boy but he was kept strictly off the seamier side of the night prowling. This permitted Jeremy to place a foot on the bar rail and talk bawdy with the men but gingerly steered him from trouble. Between talk of women, drink and rugby, he was being given an illusion of tough manhood and he gloried in it.
Conor did a work of art on the boy, subtly applying doses of his own love of the written word and the heady thought. Jeremy worshipped Conor to such an extent that it was rationalized that if Conor truly loved something such as books, then books must be good. Time was a plentiful commodity and there were long talks over little beer and a guiding into plays and concerts. Jeremy was enticed by Conor's descriptions of the beauty and joy of Dublin, building an excitement over the boy's coming seasons at Trinity College. Lady Caroline marveled over the small but rich changes coming over her son. It was Jeremy Hubble's summer in the booley house.
Huddersfield fell to the thundering Boilermakers as did Brighouse, Derek's old team and always a satisfying victory.
*
Suddenly a cold damp dawn arose despite the late summer. It was that kind of morning when one could see one's piercing breath. The private train oozed over the brown gooey River Ayre and into the Leeds City Station without fanfare because of the small hour. The team filed out, bent-shouldered, half asleep, for the short walk over the square to the hotel.
Conor's eyes moistened in the cutting fog. He was numb, but not from cold. For ten weeks he had tried to divorce himself of thoughts of Bradford. Each time it invaded his mind, he counted the weeks as eight weeks off, seven, four and, after all, four was a month. Now it was down to a fortnight.
The next stop, Bradford.
Brendan Sean Barrett would be in Bradford. Barrett would tell him what had been done about Duffy O'Hurley. In how many pubs had he joked with the driver, always wondering as he did. How many times had he boarded the train and stared at the tender?
Something strange had been taking place within his own reaches. Exhilaration over the gun running scheme had begun to dim. He would not admit it to himself but he had reached that point where he secretly hoped the plan would be aborted. Maybe O'Hurley had rejected it when the approach was made? Maybe he would get to Bradford and Barrett would be on the run, unable to make contact. Maybe Barrett would just send him off. Everything would be solved then.
Everything solved? What did he want solved?
All those summers of dreaming of joining the battle, of patriots and liberation and all those tormented nights of walking the decks of wayward ships, would be coming to fruition in Bradford. The moment he shook hands with Brendan Sean Barrett was the moment of life's commitment, the first stir of the rising. Why was this slipping from his longings?
Leeds . . . then Bradford. It was no longer Mother Ireland that flooded Conor Larkin's mind. It was Shelley MacLeod.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It rained.
Conor came into the hotel room, shook off the wet and opened the adjoining door and peered in.
"Where's Jeremy?"
"With his grandfather," Robin said, looking up from his new James Grant novel, Letty Hyde's Lovers.
"He didn't tell me he was going out."
"You hover over that kid like he was a mental."
Conor flopped into an overstuffed chair sprung with age, swinging a leg over the chair arm and fiddling for his place in his own book.
"You'll have to keep a tight watch on Alfie Newton," Robin said of Conor's counterpart on the Leeds Loiners.
"Yeah, I know, I know."
"Bloody monster, that. He's the only man in the league Argyle can't handle by himself. Can't be stopped even with a judo arm tackle."
"Argyle gave me a lecture on him, Doxie gave me a lecture on him, Derek gave me a lecture on him. Everybody's been Alfie Newtoning me to death for a week." Conor popped up restlessly, studied himself in a small mirror over the basin. He ran his finger over the scar healing on his cheek.
"Don't let Alfie Newton see that," Robin said on cue.
Conor grunted and took a look out of the window as though some miracle might make it stop raining. Even the rain seemed black. It spattered oily like over the cobblestones below, blending into the listless shining wet rows of red brick and slate roofs. Everything outside moved about huddled and miserable. He settled and returned to his book but quickly picked up scents of Robin's edginess. Conor peered over the edge of the page. Robin wore a patented expression of guilt and he knew what his mate was building up to.
"I need you to cover for me tonight," Robin blurted.
"Sure. Her place or here?"
"Here. She's married."
"What time?"
"About half eight." Robin tossed his book to the stand. "You think I'm a bastard, don't you?"
"No," Conor replied.
Robin paced the confining room, caged. "You've got to know, man, I love Lucy and I don't fuck around at home but after ten weeks of this shit . . ."
"Shut up. This isn't a confessional booth."
"Look, I got to explain it to you. You're like family and I don't want you to have any wrong ideas about me."
"You've got nothing to explain," Conor said.
"It's getting to me."
"What?"
"Me being married and acting like this and seeing you behaving yourself, just waiting for Shelley. Playing it foursquare with her, right down the line. It makes me feel bad."
"Don't kick yourself. We've all got different requirements. I know you love your wife and kid."
"You're all right, Conor. Jeese. I like to shit when I heard I would be rooming with, you know, an R.C. and a single one at that. See, I've always teamed up with married lads and, with one covering for the other, a man can reason his way out of what he's doing. You know what I mean. Anyhow, that's what I like about you, you're all right."
"Not to worry, Robin."
Robin took up a post at the window. "Fucking rain."
"Yeah."
"The guys are getting edgy. I can smell it. Ten weeks out and the fucking rain. You can bet there'll be a couple fights before the week's out. Jeese, you're calm."
"Maybe," Conor said. You don't know the half of it, Robin, he thought.
"You think about Shelley much?"
"She's not hard to think about."
"Yeah," Robin said. "I guess that next to Lucy and Matt I think about her most. You're a lucky scut. Shelley's someone, she is." Robin stretched on the saggy bed, hands tucked behind his head, and treated himself to memory. "You'd never believe a beautiful woman would ever come from such a funny-looking kid." He lit a cigarette and blew a ring to the ceiling. "You know, I ran off and did time at sea myself."
"Shelley told me."
"Oh, it was desperate. When you're poor in Belfast, man, you're poor."
"Sure we've no monopoly on poverty," Conor said. "But growing up on a farm can help dim some of the ugliness of poverty. I learned that when I went to Derry. Back home we always had neighbors and centuries of helping each other. There's always something to grow, and if that goes bad there's always something to hunt. In the city it closes in on you in a different way, a feeling of total helplessness."
"That's it entirely," Robin said. "You can't eat the pavement." His eyes were speaking now in that ruggedly handsome face and a touch of light from the outside played up his strong features. "If a man doesn't have green fields, he invents them."
"And fields of dusty bluebells . . ."
"Of course, Shelley told you. Ah, she'd sing that song by the hour. When me and Shelley was old enough, maybe nine or ten, we'd take off, adventuring. We'd get on the tram at a crowded corner and slip past the fare collector pretending our parents had already been through and paid our way. At the end of the line in Malone we'd beg a ride on a horse cart out to the country. It was green out there, truly green. We'd yell for joy just at the sight of it. Our favorite place was Shaw's Bridge, a small stone crossing over the Lagan set in the widest and greenest field you'd ever hope to see. It was our place, Shelley's and mine, and our initials are still on the bridge rail."
He swung up to sitting. "Jeese, I'm spouting."
"I like to hear things about Shelley," Conor said.
Robin smiled. "Me and Shelley," he said, "well, we'd dive from the bridge into the river in our underwear. It was dangerous but in those days before the pollution the water was clean and fresh and deep. And pretty soon a barge would happen along. For a penny I would ride the lead donkey on shore and pull the barge and Shelley would steer the tiller, giving the bargeman a half hour to nap. They always had something to eat and if we stared at them hard enough they'd share it.
"On a good day we'd collect four or five pennies and begin the long trip home. The instant we reached the Shankill we'd race to the fruit merchant at the end of our street and show him our money and we'd be allowed to pick as many as fifteen or twenty pieces of bruised fruit from the damaged barrel and we'd off to a secret shed and fill ourselves till we was in pain. Queer, ain't it, how your most vivid recollections are of food?"
Robin's face contorted suddenly. "One day," he said, "Shelley like to drowned when we was jumping from Shaw's Bridge. Only by God's grace did I save her. I can still see her lying there on the bank, wet hair down her face, so still. She was in a fearful chill when we brought her around and we had to take her to the hospital. You know Morgan. He's as good as he is large but when he's angry few men would touch him with a pitchfork. When a doctor brought her home he grabbed me by the throat and gave me such a hiding I thought I'd never live to grow a beard. Shelley ever tell you why I ran to sea?"
"Aye."
"Why did you, Conor?"
He did not answer.
"Shagging Belfast," Robin said. "We were always Shankill people and shipyard workers. Morgan was there at Weed Ship & Iron on opening day and his father worked the smaller yards before that. When there was work, life could be tolerable except for those awful Sundays and all that holy blather. When there was no work the desperation became terrifying. The fear in men's eyes and the pain of having to face their families empty-handed warped their minds and turned them on their neighbors. We're so bloody desperate for our jobs, they're held at our throats like the point of a dagger. That's half of what's wrong between your people and mine."
Robin MacLeod remembered his mother as a woman with the severity of her religion etched as deeply in her soul as the lines of her face. She was never given to laughter, only screeching prayer.
"Oh, she had the face of a winter's night and a heart to match. If she wasn't cross, it wasn't day yet. During the hard times, she'd blame our dire straits as the Lord's punishment for the evil ways of me and Shelley.
"Morgan's immense pride would never submit to allowing Shelley or me to work in the mills. The quarrels got so fierce during a big layoff that I ran to sea and Shelley fled to England.
"Mercifully, my mother was relieved of earthly misery early, praying and singing hallelujah up to the last gasp. Morgan married dear Nell later, as saintly a woman as
ever graced the Shankill. He pleaded for the two of us to come back because he said if we weren't a family we were nothing. I guess a lot of Belfasters are like that. It's better to live in those little pillboxes than scatter around the world and die off."
Liam gone, me gone, Dary gone. Our seed is scattered … our strain grows weaker . . .
The door burst open to the enthusiastic entrance of Jeremy Hubble, who dripped into the middle of the room. Conor looked at his watch. It was a bit past seven.
"Dry yourself up and let's go have some scroggins," Conor said to the boy.
"The training table's not set for an hour," Jeremy said.
"I'm after some decent food tonight. And afterward! The Siege of Ladysmith, no less, adorns the stage of the local playhouse."
"Super! You coming, Robin?"
"I've got to go over plans for the Leeds game with Doxie and Derek."
Jeremy glanced from one to the other. "I wish you wouldn't always treat me like a kid," he said.
*
Victory over the Leeds Loiners was sweet nectar and mud done before twenty-six thousand soaked spectators. No sooner had play gotten under way than the fearsome Alfie Newton (and a human rhino he was) took dead aim at the cut on Conor's cheek from a blind side. Argyle Dixon trailed closely and got a warning off in time. Conor turned, lowered his head and caught the rampaging Alfie directly between the eyes with his own forehead, doing in a nose that had been done in many times before.
Alfie was able to come around during the time out for injury but was never quite himself thereafter. Argyle and Conor took turns in shadowing him like a second set of skin, giving him no room to breathe at all. Before half time, Alfie retired from his first game in ten years. The Boilermakers owned the scrums after that and the final score, East Belfast 24 and Leeds 3. It was the highlight of the season.
At game's end, Conor sat long and hard holding a wet cloth to his knotted forehead which had dealt the blow to Alfie Newton. It was not the pain of it that sickened him, it was the realization that time had run out. Bradford and Brendan Sean Barrett waited up the road.
