Leon Uris (26 page)

Conor let her down, lovely. He still loved Shelley. He and Atty would have a long life together in the movement and she was not a woman he would take lightly.

Part of Atty was furious. Mainly, she was furious at her own shamelessness. She was also flabbergasted at his honesty, and she felt he spoke the truth about his respect for her. That was nice, very nice. Even at her moment of rejection, she had only good feelings toward him. She did not like seeing him hurt and even wanted him to find his Shelley girl again. Having never fostered such feelings before, Atty was rather pleased with herself. He told her he wouldn’t take her lightly, and she damned well knew she could not take him lightly.

He continued to hold her softly, and in their quiet she had a moment of strange revelation. They lived life on the brink, a life filled with odd twists and turns. They were thrown together as comrades in arms and they would work in close contact, sooner or later.

Someday, Atty thought, Conor Larkin was going to be a free man, and when that time came, she was going to have him.

“I’m going in to Dublin,” he said at last. “If I stay, I’ll not sleep all night. If you think I don’t want your breasts, you’re daft. Atty…if Ireland had a queen, Atty would be her name. You are far too great a woman to be trivialized.”

“Thank you, Conor,” she whispered, “thank you, luv. There’s a taxi rank just two blocks down. On your way before I rape you.”

The Lembeg drum put all other war drums to shame when it came to striking fear into the heart of the enemy, real or imagined. It rattled in the “marching season” as Protestant Ulster celebrated its annual rebirth. Beginning on the Fourth of July, a date to ennoble themselves with their American cousins, a month of parades and rallies recalled ancient victories over the papists in song and sermon. Multitudes of banners, partial to orange, fluffed and glorified King, Empire, the Reformation, and above all, Ulster’s patented, eternal, holy, indivisible
loyalty
to the British.

The Orange Lodgemen, beribboned, sporting derby hats and rolled black umbrellas, marched hither and yon, to and fro and round and round.

On the Twelfth of August the marchers converged on their sacred city of Londonderry where they marched once again atop Derry’s walls for a last hurrah in memory of a siege won in 1690.

They rained pennies down on the Catholic Bogside to re-humiliate the unfortunate losers and went to the town diamond for a final exaltation of their savior, Oliver Cromwell….

And lest we forget another battle, the Battle of the Boyne, of no less importance than Waterloo and Trafalgar, where their beloved William of Orange, on his alabaster steed, wounded in the right hand, took up a saber in his left hand to lead the charge. King James, the papist, cowering and quivering on a horse of another color, tucked tail and fled, thus liberating Ulster from Vatican venality forever! And ever!

Let us pray.

For the industrialists and other rulers of the province this was the time of year that their religious and political messengers were able to introduce new agendas as well as reiterate ancient fears.

Marched silly and harangued silly, the righteous were easily ignited into anti-Catholic mobs, after a bit of blood and arson.

Sir Frederick Weed’s agenda this year was union busting and, with a captive mob within his yard, had them frothed into burning down the copper shop where most
of the Catholics worked. It was, after all, an obsolete facility and well insured by Lloyd’s.

Conor Larkin got wind of the scene and was able to get the Catholics out of the yard. He returned to save Duffy O’Hurley, the driver of Weed’s Red Hand Express, and an essential man in the gunrunning scheme.

The mob caught Conor and nearly beat him to death. Only Robin MacLeod’s last-moment intervention saved his life.

Morgan MacLeod cared deeply for Conor Larkin and in the early days of Conor’s relationship with Shelley, he stood by them forthrightly.

Morgan was a man to be reckoned with: a leader of the Shankill tribe, a deacon in his church, foreman of Weed’s largest dry dock, and an Orange Lodge Grandmaster whose son had captained Ireland’s only Admiral’s Cup team.

No one in the Shankill cared when Shelley became the mistress of a married man. After all, this David Kimberly was upper English, a high midlevel career diplomat. Truth be known, Kimberly had been somewhat of a coup for a Shankill lass.

Conor Larkin was another matter. Although an R.C., he was under the patronage of Sir Frederick himself and also a member of the Belfast Boilermakers. Well, let’s say Larkin was one of the good ones.

Although Conor and Shelley represented a kind of tentative truce, Belfast, a final sludge hole of the Industrial Revolution, passed out its tender mercies grudgingly.

When Conor and Shelley broke up and returned from holiday in England separately, Morgan MacLeod could not help but sigh in relief and hope to God his daughter would fall in love with a good, decent, Protestant lad. But he saw his beloved Shelley grow wan and listless without Conor.

Conor quit the rugby club. Morgan’s information had it that the Larkin was like a dead man.

Morgan MacLeod feared that something would make the two of them rush back together, and he did not know if he could continue to hold a peace in place.

Morgan’s fears came to pass when Shelley returned to Conor after he was beaten in the riots and lived with him, openly nursing him back to health and at the same time defying the natural law of tribal Belfast.

In its tormented and violent history, the Belfast poor of Protestant stripe gave birth to a breed of clever churchmen whose arts were showmanship in Reformation frock and striking fear of the Vatican into their flocks. The cleverest among them often rocketed from tent preacher onto a glory road of wielding great power.

One of these was the Reverend Oliver Cromwell MacIvor, who had his own schools, seminary, churches, press, and a quasi-private armed brigade known as the Knights of Christ, with his women’s auxiliaries dubbed Angels of Christ.

The harlotry of Shelley MacLeod presented MacIvor with a golden issue, particularly to his Angels of Christ.

MacIvor had long needed a cunning victory over Morgan MacLeod, the only man in the Shankill strong enough to offer a challenge.

The Wednesday Angels meetings were soon venomized by MacIvor drawing visions, for his ladies, of papist flesh devouring them and their own dear, sweet, innocent daughters.

After she returned to Conor, Morgan had forbidden mention of Shelley within the home and had forbidden the family to see her. All Morgan had to do now was step up to the pulpit and denounce her. MacIvor would show mercy and the neighborhood would be purified of its stigma and become whole and Christian again.

Morgan MacLeod refused. How he loved his strange child, withdrawn as a girl, she of the sad green eyes. Determined, Shelley taught herself to speak without a trace of the confusing Belfast accent and carry herself
erect and display proper manners. He all but died when, at fifteen, Shelley fled Belfast and worked as a maid in a manor house in England to escape her real mother’s growing madness.

Day by day now, the MacLeod family tasted the fruits of hatred: garbage at their doorstep, Robin’s son beaten, ostracism at the pub and green grocer, litanies of hate from MacIvor’s pulpit.

As Conor healed, he and Shelley exchanged souls. Any risk, any danger, any hardship was better to bear together than continue with the unbearable life of living apart. They knew, going into it, it could mean an unwritten death warrant, but they also knew that the greatest tragedy would have been to pass each other by and never to have met.

Morgan’s grief became consummate. He knew when one of the family had seen Shelley behind his back, but he asked nothing, gave no word, no blessing, nothing. Yet, day after day he’d push open the door to her room and look in and sometimes sit on the stool before the mirror and stare at the photographs tucked in it.

By night he’d fumble through the Bible searching out the words that might render him some hope. After a time, he began to search out passages about death.

Seized by a fierce pain in his chest and unable to breathe, Morgan toppled from the scaffold at the Big Mabel dry dock, falling twenty feet to the pavement and breaking his back.

“Robin! It’s your dad! He’s fallen off the Big Mabel.”

The gunrunning scheme plodded on, a few hundred rifles at a time. It began to spring little warning leaks.

Duffy O’Hurley, the engineer of the Red Hand, was getting a bad, bad case of nerves. His drinking went to the hard stuff and now and again he dropped double-edged little thoughts at the bar. Conor put a watch on him, except for when Duffy was running the train.

As rifles were buried around the countryside, more and more people became involved. Each new man or woman with knowledge upped the risks.

The onloadings in England and offloadings in Irish waysides hit more and more unseen glitches…the odd constable straying by…wrong signals to complete a meeting…the sudden raid on a hiding place.

Long Dan Sweeney and Atty wanted to close down the operation and look for a new route to bring the weapons in. Unfortunately that called for leaving one thousand rifles in England. This thousand could mean the Brotherhood could quicken their recruiting of men and form units, perhaps two years earlier than previously planned.

Conor then came up with a wild scheme to doctor Sir Frederick’s train from engine to caboose and make one last run carrying a thousand rifles. The plan took things to the edge of the cliff, but Conor prevailed.

Putting brackets under every car, fixing false floors
and roofs, and cutting more space under the coal tender, the thousand rifles were loaded on at Liverpool and made the crossing to Ireland.

Then came the terror! Duffy O’Hurley was unable to take the train out by himself on a deadhead run. He was packing the guns all over Ireland, unable to dump them and slowly going mad.

At last the call came. Duffy was in Derry, at Hubble Manor and was making a deadhead to Belfast and Dublin. He could dump the rifles at a water stop halfway accross the province, a place called Sixmilecross.

Conor himself had come to within a hair of stopping the shipment in England, but once they got to Ireland, the Brotherhood had to get them unloaded. Until Duffy’s call Conor had a growing suspicion that only a miracle could deliver the guns, but he kept it to himself.

All the last night he lay awake holding Shelley, not thinking of Sixmilecross the next night, but trying to remember each time he had loved her and how the miracle of it always sent them to a new and different place.

It did not matter whether or not they had had enough time together, for a hundred years would not have been enough.

Shelley, Shelley, Shelley, don’t be foolish. I pray you don’t be foolish. I don’t want to come back from Sixmilecross if you aren’t alive. There are those in Belfast who hate our love so, your life would be taken if you stay.

It is unbearable enough to realize I may not hold you for five or ten years or maybe never again. But if you die…oh God…

Dawn, never come, dawn!

I cannot let myself believe, Shelley thought, I may never know him again. I must make a good show for him. Conor, my beloved, realize that I was born only for one thing…the moments I have had with you…and none of
the rest matters tuppence. How can I have asked more? How could anyone?

Don’t you understand, Conor Larkin, your girl is filled and she is not afraid.

The power of their dawn was known implicitly and need not be spoken. A few instructions; take the pistol, use it if your life is in danger, go to Dublin immediately, stay there.

No use saying the rest of it now, was there?

I
RISH
R
EPUBLICAN
B
ROTHERHOOD
G
UNRUNNING

O
PERATION
S
MASHED BY
A
MBUSH AT
S
IXMILECROSS
—

1 K
ILLED
, 4 W
OUNDED, 7 IN
C
USTODY
, 1,000 R
IFLES

R
ECOVERED FROM
P
RIVATE
T
RAIN OF
U
LSTER
I
NDUSTRIALIST
S
IR
F
REDERICK
W
EED
. R
INGLEADER

C
APTURED

DUBLIN, AUGUST
10,
REUTERS
—Acting on inside information, troops from the Londonderry Barracks rode aboard the Red Hand Express, the famous private train of Belfast shipbuilder and steel magnate, Sir Frederick Weed.

Destined for a rendezvous to unload smuggled rifles, the train was heading to the quiet lay-by of Sixmilecross, County Tyrone, in mid-Ulster.

Arriving at three minutes past midnight, they ambushed a waiting party of eight members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

The train was filled with sharpshooters from the 22nd West Anglicans. In addition, Ulster Militia and Constabulary forces had surrounded the entire area. Overwhelmed, there was only light resistance from the smugglers.

D. E. Dunkerlee, spokesman for His Majesty’s Press Office in Dublin Castle, issued the following statement:

“Additional arrests have been made in England
of members of the ring. Taken into custody were Owen O’Sullivan and his sons Brian and Barry, proprietors of the O’Sullivan Bell and Foundry Works in Merseyside, Liverpool.

“Also arrested was Mr. Dudley Callaghan, a Bradford mortician and operator of a funeral home on Wild Boar Road. Callaghan is known to have run a business in shipping home Irish bodies for burial.”

Details of the gunrunning operation were slow in coming out of Dublin Castle but by all appearances the rifles, standard British Army issued Enfields, originated in England and probably were smuggled aboard the Red Hand Express for trans-shipment to Belfast.

“This is obviously the work of a highly organized and highly skilled unit of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and, from all appearances, has been in effect for several months,” Dunkerlee concluded.

D
UBLIN
C
ASTLE
D
ENIES
G
UNRUNNERS
W
ERE
I
RISH

R
EPUBLICAN
B
ROTHERHOOD
—R
INGLEADER
, C
ONOR

L
ARKIN
, N
OTED
R
UGBY
H
ERO
N
AMED
—S
IR
F
REDERICK

W
EED
E
NRAGED

DUBLIN, AUGUST
11,
REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
—Dublin Castle today recanted yesterday’s release that the Sixmilecross Gang “was a highly organized and highly skilled unit of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.”

D. E. Dunkerlee, spokesman for His Majesty’s Press Office in Dublin Castle, briefed reporters at a hurriedly arranged press conference this morning. “Yesterday’s report of Irish Brotherhood involvement was premature. There is no evidence whatsoever of Brotherhood units of this nature, nor evidence of any organized IRB activity in Ireland. This was the work of a ring of common criminals.”

This reversal was in keeping with Dublin Castle’s refusal to admit the existence of the IRB, which it has steadfastly done over the past three years.

Conor Larkin, now identified as the leader of the operation, is being held incommunicado while other members of the gang have been remanded to Mountjoy Prison. (See adjoining box for background of Mr. Larkin and his long association with the Weed and Hubble families of Belfast and Londonderry.)

Making a brief statement before going into seclusion, Sir Frederick Weed appeared to be livid with rage. “Using my family and myself as innocent victims of Conor Larkin’s perfidy amounts to the most venal treachery I have ever known. We were his trusting patrons and this behavior boldly illustrates the despicable character of this breed. I shall live to see him hanged and his fellow conspirators, crushed.”

While humiliated by the failure of Sir Frederick’s own considerable intelligence-gathering sources, Irish humor over the incident at Sixmilecross has resulted in a large amount of laughter from the pubs, to the salons, to the editorial pages, to the man in the street. Larkin’s cheek and daring seems to have captured that odd quirk of irony in the Irish character.

D
UBLIN
C
ASTLE
A
DMITS
S
IXMILECROSS
G
ANG
W
ERE

M
EMBERS OF THE
I
RISH
R
EPUBLICAN
B
ROTHERHOOD

DUBLIN, AUGUST
12,
REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE, EUROPA PRESS
—Reversing themselves three times in three days, Dublin Castle today admitted existence of the IRB and held them directly responsible for the gunrunning scheme.

Sir Frederick Weed remains in seclusion.

Committees forming throughout the country
demanded justice for Conor Larkin and the Sixmilecross Gang.

D. E. Dunkerlee, spokesman for His Majesty’s Press Office, issued the following statement at 4 p.m.:

“Further investigation into the Sixmilecross incident has brought His Majesty’s government to conclude that the Irish Republican Brotherhood has been secretly active for several months, and possibly years, and is directly responsible for the gunrunning scheme aboard Sir Frederick Weed’s Red Hand Express.

“Experts from Scotland Yard and Army Intelligence have concluded that such an operation could not be possible without a fair-sized support system.

“The rifles have been traced to Dunby Depot in Cape Town, South Africa, and had apparently been shipped in 1901 for issue to troops in the Boer War. Experts are trying to determine if they had been returned to England after the conflict, uncrated.”

“Meanwhile the country remains agog with Sixmilecross fever. Informed sources state that the IRB is being sought out for enlistment by hundreds, if not thousands, of men throughout Ireland.

“By naming the IRB as the ‘nonexistent’ entity who carried out the gun smuggling, the British have become our greatest recruiter. We could not have gotten this kind of publicity on our own in ten years and we are grateful to Dublin Castle for its cooperation,” said one high-ranking Brotherhood official on the condition of anonymity.