Leon Uris (9 page)

Lord Randolph Churchill had come. The Long Hall of Hubble Manor was packed. Every member of the landed gentry and aristocracy west of Westport and north of Athlone had come. All men of the cloth who were the inheritors of the Reformation had come. Every loyalmost of the loyalmost, the Orange Grandmasters, had come. Beribboned veterans of the Queen’s loyal Ulster regiments had come. And their women.

Shivering from Charles Stewart Parnell’s smashing victory and fearing for their continuation in isolated Londonderry, they heard the archconservative of England play his Orange card. His voice, couched in words to reach beyond the wall and over the sea to Parliament, took dead aim at intimidation of the Liberal Party.

His young son Winston sopped it up for future reference. His father had splayed the unsuspecting foe, broken their ranks, left them reeling.

It was also the first successful adventure of the partnership of Western Ulster, defended by Roger Hubble and the Belfast establishment controlled by Sir Frederick Weed. Between them now, they had a lock on the province’s political direction. Their relationship was consummated by the marriage of Caroline Weed to Roger Hubble. Churchill at
Long Hall became one of the most consequential events in the history of Ulster. The moment was a culmination of two different men with two different careers suddenly and daringly merged.

Weed was the bully Scotsman, an entrepreneur in an age of British entrepreneurship. The self-made magnate whose mighty industrial plant was now laying the hulls for steel ships of up to ten thousand tons. The rail king with his Red Hand Express engine and personal train, the envy of every South American dictator and Indian maharajah. Steel from his mills spun the rails that eighty percent of Ireland’s trains ran on. He had accomplished it all, by God, with his great derring-do.

His bastion of Belfast, unfortunately, was the only place where the British had made substantial investments. It stood unique on an Irish landscape bereft of manufacturing. Manned with loyal Protestant workers, Belfast was the solitary enclave of enterprise.

Out on the land, the days of the great estates were ending. Since the potato famine, the gentry had been reduced to tattered curtains and mumbled their pledges to the Crown by rote.

Viscount Roger Hubble, the pending Earl of Foyle, proved an exception. He snatched the earldom from his bumbling father, pensioned him off with his mistress, and not only survived but created a new chapter to add to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution.

Roger Hubble was an ultimate master of creating a cradle-to-grave labor force, which was always in his debt. On the land, his tenant farmers cultivated the raw product he needed and he allowed them just enough acreage to farm food for a marginal existence. Hubble carefully nipped off the weaker farms, evicting the tenants, and converted the land into a growing cattle ranch, the prime export product to England.

He set the price for planting seeds and carried the peasant’s debt, which was paid off at the next harvest
with obscene interest. He then set the price of the flax that was harvested. Conversion of flax to linen was a slimy job, done mostly with labor provided by the younger children of the peasants, often to keep even with the family debts.

Evictions on the land assured a constant flow of desperate and jobless people into Londonderry and into their squalid neighborhood of Bogside. Thus, he always had a surplus of cheap labor. Unemployment of men ran around fifty percent, and those who worked had menial jobs.

The big profit-maker was his shirt factory, the largest in the British Isles, which used the linen produced by his peasants.

Roger Hubble’s control of everything from seed to finished product, power over the political machinery, and labor force represented all that was deemed glorious in colonization and imperialism.

The decent positions in the municipality, in the shipyard, in the schools as well as the mercantile were locked in for those who swore loyalty to the Crown. This was Ulsterism.

Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Party dented the system and opened their own salvo for Home Rule. Londonderry both historically and geographically belonged in County Donegal, which would have been outside Ulster’s boundaries. By shamefully gerrymandering the borders, Roger Hubble was able to shift Londonderry into Ulster.

In the beginning of the new political era, Sir Frederick Weed and the Belfast industrialists wanted to expend Londonderry as a liability. Roger Hubble, and later Randolph Churchill, threatened civil war if the sacred Protestant city was lost to the Catholics. The marriage of Roger and Caroline set the alliance in stone.

Caroline was an exciting lady with a recent past that included a marriage to a penniless gigolo, an Italian count. Her main purpose was to enrage her father, which she did. Many thousands of pounds sterling were spread around the Vatican, which ultimately came up with an annulment.

The heady lady smashed up a hotel suite filled with priceless antiques, bolted Rome, and took on Paris. Here she shared a garret with a struggling but extremely talented artist painting in the new Impressionistic style. When his garlic and gout and the climb to his attic no longer endeared him, she returned to Ulster, where she became the model of decorum, a queen of culture and charity, and awaited her fate, which appeared in the form of Roger Hubble.

They realized the power of their union. Titillated by whispers of Caroline’s past, Roger’s sexuality was unearthed and aroused to a point that he became an excellent lover. Roger adored her.

Caroline bore him two sons, one for the earldom and one for Weed Ship & Iron. Lord Jeremy, the elder and heir, seemed to be a throwback to Roger’s own father, the dawdling Arthur Hubble, a boy too frivolous to do the stern stuff necessary to run the hard course.

Fortunately, Christopher, the younger son, showed all the ice of his father. So be it. Jeremy would be the ceremonial earl while Christopher would be schooled to run the machinery.

Caroline! Caroline the magnificent! She turned Londonderry from a cultural blob to a cultural way station. Every touring Shakespearean company, every second-rate troupe of operatic Italians, every lecturer, poet, musician, orchestra who touched Ireland made the now mandatory trip to Londonderry. Most were brought there through her cultural foundation. Caroline was the
grande dame
of Western Ulster.

Life was complete for Roger Hubble, except for one grating habit of Caroline’s. She never stopped remodeling. Hubble Manor was a historic monstrosity with its dozens of fish and gun and knife rooms and ice houses and fowl rooms and stables and a Buckingham Palace-size kitchen, subkitchens, a poultry room, twenty linen closets, and workshops for the drapers, rug menders, upholsterers,
painters, glazers, gardeners, and a boathouse on the Lough Foyle, and butlers, maids, carriage drivers, and footmen, all two hundred of them in their hideous mint green uniforms with vile lemon piping.

Roger played the role of woeful wounded husband opening the bills, but Caroline’s seduction kept his sexual appetite always hungry enough for the marriage to work. Fortunately, when the bills came due, Caroline had an enormously wealthy daddy and funds of her own.

The
place for any
great
event…Caruso singing, a world collection of scholars, the Queen’s state visit…was always the Long Hall, which could house almost a thousand people at a seated dinner and more for a concert.

Having been repaired, remodeled, rebuilt, and added on with nonstop activity for a decade, Hubble Manor was transformed from a seedy weed-covered haunted house to a palace of legendary grandeur, the epitome of what the ultimate colonizer could do with his imperial appetite.

Another ultimate was Lord Hubble’s shirt factory. Conditions within were filthy, numbing cold by winter, darkness, suffocating heat by summer, a void of human facilities, and a page-long list of miseries that were direct leftovers from the blackest days of the Industrial Revolution.

With all the new liberalism in the air, Roger Hubble became uneasy that industrial and labor reform might find its way into Londonderry and, particularly, his shirt factory, which was the chief supporter of Lady Caroline’s excesses. To make matters worse, a Catholic peasants’ and workers’ rights solicitor had won the seat in Commons.

Having redone everything redoable, Caroline turned to the final great project, restoration of the great screen in the Long Hall. It was forty feet wide and forty feet high, forming a majestic entrance gate. It might have well been a copy of the gates of heaven, inspired by the Almighty.

Tradition had it that the screen was the work of Jean Tijou, a great French ironmaster who had been brought
to England centuries earlier during the reign of William and Mary. Much of its history, as well as its twisted agony, remained hidden by legend.

Obviously, Lady Hubble searched out the foremost living ironmaster, one Joaquim Schmidt, the German. For two years Schmidt worked on what had become an enigma. As a good German would, Herr Schmidt believed things would happen if he commanded and hollered. His shouting dimmed to a disoriented mumble and he departed.

Then Caroline brought in the Italian, Tustini. At first he made some progress but he became torn emotionally between the screen and a number of the upstairs and downstairs maids. Ulster weather sent him into long depressions, followed by too much
vino
, and he sobbed all the way to Cork to catch his ship back to Italy.

Her failure gnawed at her every time an event was held in the Long Hall, as the great screen remained limp and disoriented.

Lady Atty Brooke Royce-Moore, the Baroness of Lough Clara, burst on the scene of the Gaelic revival as though she and Dublin had been waiting for one another for a century.

Her first act, which endeared her to the native Dubliners, was to dehyphenate and degentrify her name and titles to a simple Miss Atty Moore.

Atty’s generous per annum allowance enabled her to purchase a four-story Georgian row house at 34 Garville Avenue in the suburb of Rathgar. It was neither an aristocrat’s home nor a poor man’s dwelling. A spacious drawing room hosted most of those who identified with and spearheaded the Gaelic revival. Spicy conversation rang from writers, journalists, pamphleteers, leafleteers, republicans, actors, playwrights, and new-breed politicians.

Atty’s basic identification was with Arthur Griffith, whose newspaper the
United Irishman
was a growing force. Griffith had also formed a new political party, Sinn Fein, whose translation meant “Ourselves Alone.” Sinn Fein was born to replace the Irish Party, whose spirit had died with the death of Parnell. Once a determined force, the Irish Party members became lackeys in the British Parliament, incapable of pushing the Home Rule agenda.

Atty kept quiet about her age. She was seventeen when she arrived in Dublin like a Celtic myth riding out of the
west. Her physical stature, keen mind, and willful personality revealed a persona beyond her years. She was more than at home in this moment of Gaelic revival. She spoke the ancient language to perfection and soon discovered the speaker’s platform at street corner rallies where she decried the evils of imperialism.

All of it was euphoric, the ringing cries for liberty by the pamphleteers, the circle of intellectuals, the old games of the Gaels on the sports fields, the spawning ground of awakening.

Shortly after her arrival, three of her closest friends, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and William Butler Yeats declared the beginnings of an Irish National Theatre.

Well, that was a marriage in heaven waiting to happen for Atty Moore. A permanent home was found in the rebuilt Mechanics’ Theatre on Abbey Street. Atty followed her physical stature and commanding presence onto the stage. In the beginning her presence was so powerful, all she had to do was walk on and stare at the audience to chill them.

She was a star, but there was a problem. Atty’s enthusiasm and her ability as an actress were not quite on the same page. With a blunderbuss cry from the dock or dying of TB from linen mill dust, she could overact to move any Irishman to tears.

Because her acceptance of a script assured a playwright
a production, she was heavily courted by aspirants. One playwright who caught her fancy was a young journalist out of Donegal.

Atty sensed from the onset that, despite her power, Seamus O’Neill did not seem quite as awed as those in her court.

Seamus had written two ten-minute readings, the kind of lyrical prose that any actress would want as a part of her repertoire. She sensed that he was not happy that she merely took his writing for herself, when in fact she had been expecting Seamus to swoon over the honor.

They went to work, one-on-one, and he rolled his eyes to the heavens once too often. Down flung the script and off stomped the actress. Seamus picked up his pages and repaired to an always handy pub.

“Well?” she said, slipping alongside him at the bar twenty minutes later.

“You’re not Joshua,” Seamus said, “you aren’t going to knock down the walls of Dublin Castle by blowing a trumpet.”

Atty passed through several stages of fury. Well, she did ask him and the little bastard had the right to his opinion. What hurt was that he had hit the bull’s-eye. Atty was going nowhere except as a big busted trumpet.

“Should I go out and buy a harp?”

“Keep Atty off the stage,” Seamus said. “Bring on the stage the woman whom the playwright wrote. Otherwise, you’re going to end up as a dog with one trick, shout your way through your roles. You don’t trust the words.”

“I’m trying to decide if I should spit on you or ask you to help me,” she said.

“Theatre of this sort is new. I’m not a director. No one is yet in Ireland.”

“I must act,” she said as fiercely as she had ever spoken. “This is what I can do as a republican and I have never known an experience as tremendous, as exhilarating, as powerful as when I’m up there.”

“Colonels and rugby players and women giving birth have the same experience. You’ve got to look inside you and ask God if you can play someone other than Atty.”

“Can you give me a hand, sir?”

“How deep can you look into other people’s joy and pain without becoming frightened and locking them out?”

“I’m going to find out, Seamus, and you’re going to help me.”

Seamus wrote a half-dozen short readings for her, each demanding her to probe a different emotion. She was often asked to play someone she feared or loathed…to be devious, bigoted, hateful, of loose values. The game was to turn herself believably into the anti-Atty.

To go along with her dynamic stature and commanding voice, Atty added nuances and dimensions and range and a command of subtle moments and movements. All of this, to do the utmost with her talent.

Seamus had done wonders and Atty was pleased. However, both of them realized that she had only so much capacity to give. She always had to retain the ability to become Atty again, in the blink of an eye.

She was a good actress, now easy, now humorous, now filled with confidence…but always in control. She adored what she was doing as life itself. She adored the adoration that went with it and the centerstage world she occupied.

Yet, there was a locked vault inside her that held all of her demons, and she feared to enter it onstage or offstage. Maybe she might never open the door to the vault. Only if she chanced it would she ever ascend to immortality on the stage. It was the only dare she ever shied from.

Jack Murphy’s dad, Darby Murphy, kept things well in hand aided by Atty’s constant visits. A competent solicitor in Galway kept the operation profitable. Lord Charles and Lady Royce-Moore felt confident enough to make their long desired move to London.

His lordship had no sooner sunk into that deep leather chair of London’s Standard Club than he snoozed off and never awakened. At the very same tick of the clock, Darby Murphy died of a heart attack as well.

When the grief and turmoil of the double deaths had eased, Atty had to make decisions. Lough Clara would not be hers for three more years, and trying to modernize without displacing the tenants was a tricky bit of business. It would mean that she would have to spend more time away from Dublin.

She closed the manor house and moved into Darby Murphy’s lovely cottage, set in a rare stand of oaks near the stables and horse training grounds. No harm. The entire Murphy family was gone from Lough Clara forever and the cottage was far more to her liking than the big House.

She made it cozy and delicious, using it as her “western” office, where she could read far into the nights, receive wayward republicans passing through, and keep the estate on firm ground, working things out to allow her to go to Dublin often.

Six months into her new routine the postman handed her a cable along with the daily mail. She tore the envelope open and saw the signature…Jack Murphy…and she felt entirely weak with a thundering flush of passion.

Everything she had managed so meticulously and determinedly to suppress could no longer be suppressed. She knew by the cable that nothing had changed in the way she felt about him. Damned, Atty, she challenged, you will not fling yourself at him.

Nonetheless Atty dotted the final “i” and crossed the final “t” to make things ready, to make things perfect. Jack would be twenty-eight now. How would he look? She almost hoped, but at the same time did not hope, sight of him would do nothing to arouse her.

She studied herself with no less intensity than the lovelorn men in her audience had studied her up on the stage. How can he turn me down?

Or was he desperately in love with someone? Dear Lord. Atty realized that a totally new sensation was overwhelming her. It was fear.

The stately queen of the Dublin stage bit her nails and became teary over nothing several times a day…each day one day closer. She was flighty at the meetings with her solicitor and estate manager. She yelled needlessly at an actor or director, followed by yards of apology.

The day came. Yes, the ship arrived at Galway. She managed to remain calm as he came down the gangplank, smiled, set down his suitcase, and gave her an old-fashioned Jack-and-Atty hug. Jack held her at arm’s length. “Jaysus, lass, all you need is a truly fine poet for immortalization. Sure, you’re the most glorious creature in Ireland.”

“Oh Jesus, Jack, if you’d have been one day longer I’d have wet my knickers,” she cried in relief.

The cottage had a feel of a new inhabitant, a conversion to a mode of seriousness and resolve. Atty’s papers and practicalities had replaced doilies. Important thoughts and conversations emanated from it now, no longer a loafer’s and children’s romping place, but one for study and future rebellion. Nonetheless she had softened it for his visit with flowers and fireplace glow and the best of wines and whiskey. Although Atty made little formal effort, she was a gorgeous piece of work.

Jack Murphy had turned out well. He was not the irresistible handsome lad of memories, but slight and intense and very much in command. Atty’s apprehension melted. When he returned to Canada he would be on his way to
Toronto to become the book editor of the country’s largest newspaper, and an occasional critic of music and art.

“Ah, Dublin is the place for the Journalist,” Atty tweaked.

“It’s far too fierce for me here,” he replied.

“Really, Jack. Isn’t there a mutated Orange crowd in Toronto, and don’t the Brits and French go at it all the time?”

“Aye, but their warfare is fought with cannonballs of pudding. Irish politics is like the Islamic religion, an all-consuming way of life. In Dublin, the culture, the sports, the religion, the politics are one in the same. In Canada we have interests other than perpetual warfare.”

As Jack talked on about his travels and his contentment in Canada, Atty finally realized what she had known all along but would never admit—that Jack had no desire for battle. Did that make him less of a man?

By the end of the evening all the main details of his father’s estate had been cleared lip. Atty would have her solicitor prepare the necessary documents.

As evening fell on the lough and the fireplace smoldered alive with intoxicating turf aroma it became awkward time.

Atty commented that she didn’t realize the Murphy library was so extensive. She told him to pull the books he wanted and she would ship them to Canada.

That would be lovely, just grand, he agreed. And what were Atty’s plans for the estate? Hard to really say, she told him, for it wouldn’t be hers legally for another three years. The horse-breeding operation had always done well and perhaps she’d focus on it. Would Jack be around long enough to look over a couple of applicants for the job?

“Do I know any of them?”

She rattled off a list of contenders. “None like Darby Murphy.”

“Let me give it some thought,” he suggested. “Well, my love, word has gotten all the way to Canada that a great star is rising on the Dublin stage.”

“Truth, Jack? I am tall and rather full-bodied. I am profound in presenting my case, enunciating crisply, shouting
in righteous protest, and all in all I make an ideal figure of Mother Ireland. One old priest who marveled at my cleavage looked directly down my front and told me I could have fed an entire village during the famine. Mother Ireland, yes; a great actress, hardly. But I love it up there. The Brits have the guns and we have the words, and now the stage to shout them from.”

Jack caught sight of a guitar case on the bench under the bay window. He settled there and urged the instrument to give him a reasonable pitch. Atty watched, mesmerized.

His fingers did not stumble and his voice did not falter. He was well in practice. To whom did Jack sing his songs these days?

“Did you think of me often?” she asked with Atty-abruptness.

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Always.”

“Did you ever feel that maybe you made a mistake about me?”

“All the time.”

“But not enough to love me…love me…
love me!”

“Maybe, but I’m wise enough about Jack Murphy to realize it would do me no good at all. I never let my thoughts of you get a foothold. You are where you ought to be and doing what you should be doing, Atty, in Dublin-town at the dawn of insurrection.”

“Jack, you’ve always played it with me with too much constraint. Can’t you let yourself go? You might even like it. Oh, Jack, I get so damned frustrated in Dublin. I need you as a partner. We could do so much together.”

“What? Riding a tigress in constant prowl for the kill?”

“Do you indulge in much sex, Jack?”

“I think of it more in qualitative terms rather than numbers.”

“Are you in love…with a Canadian woman, then?”

“Truth?”

“I don’t know if I Want the truth. Well, are you?”

“Aye, I am.”

“Desperately? Madly?”

“Deeply, committedly.”

“Are you married?”