Trinity: A Novel of Ireland

  "Tomas, be reasonable," Finola implored. "It's in your power to be reasonable. If you want both of your sons here you can keep them. Be reasonable, Tomas . . ."

  "Reasonable! Who's unreasonable around here? The way you suffocate the air and hide the light from Dary."

  "Dary's nothing to do with this!" Conor cried.

  Tomas was up and shaking a fist at his wife.

  "He's fragile because you want him that way. Shut up, woman, or get out! This is between me and my sons!"

  She shrank into a corner sobbing. Tomas heaved a sigh and went to Liam and patted his shoulder. "You understand how it's got to be, lad. I'll grieve for you."

  Liam screamed and pounded on the table "For me you'll grieve! That's a lie, Daddy! You love Conor! That's why I'm going to the farthest place on earth . . . because you love Conor! Liar! Liar!" He tore up the ladder and flung himself into the loft and Conor started up after him.

  "Leave him be!" Tomas ordered.

  Conor halted, then inched down the ladder and came to his father. His eyes looked up as the sound of his brother's anguished sobs reached them. In the loft great gobs of salt tears ran into Liam's mouth and down his chin.

  Conor rose before his father. "I'll not have your fucking land!" he screamed.

  Tomas reached for him but he jerked away. "I did it for you, Conor," Tomas begged. "You'll stay, lad, you'll stay the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

  "And what about the devil Liam doesn't know!"

  "It's his burden. He knows it. Ah, Conor, boy, you're the Larkin. You're the Larkin who's tall in every man's eyes."

  "No, Daddy!" Conor rasped. "You've created a Conor who has never lived. I don't want to be that Conor! I'm me, goddammit, I'm me! I'm not Kilty or Tomas . . . I'm me and I've got to live!"

  "Oh, listen, boy, I've done everything for the love of you."

  Liam's sobs fell soft and weak now as his fingers clutched and released the hay. The two giants who cast their shadow over his life now spewed venom on each other.

  On the same night, Conor Larkin left the cottage, never looking back over the crossroad. He stopped for a moment before Mr. Lambe's shop, fighting for control of his tortured mind.

  "Conor!" wee Dary's voice called through the darkness. "Conor!"

  He turned away quickly and continued down the road.

  "Conor!" the voice pleaded again and again.

  He stopped and listened as the tiny feet ran hard at him and the boy's arms wrapped desperately around his knees. Conor lifted him as he had done a thousand times over and he buried him in his mighty arms, then set him down gently and shook his head to say he was unable to speak and Dary nodded that he understood and Conor went on his way.

  Dary entered the cottage. The look of him told Tomas and Finola everything.

  "You'd better ask Liam not to leave," Finola said.

  Tomas shook his head. "That would be so unfair to Liam," he said. "Liam knows he has to go. He's always known that. I can't ask him to stay because . . . when Conor comes back . . . everything must be ready . . . when Conor comes back. . ."

  END OF PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  Bogside

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Who's out there?" Kevin O'Garvey called from the second-story window.

  "Conor, Conor Larkin."

  In a moment Kevin opened the door of his fine new house on Creggan Road in Derry and held the lantern close. "Is that yourself? It's three in the morning, Conor Larkin, and you look the wrath of God."

  A bleary-eyed, bearded wreckage followed Kevin into the parlor where he slumped, hung his head, drooped his arms between his legs and stared misty to the rug. Teresa O'Garvey followed her husband in a moment, buttoning up her dressing gown. She took one look at Conor and said, "Bring him to the kitchen."

  The big stew pot was always at a simmer in the O'Garvey kitchen, for there was no telling who would come and when. She dished up a bowl and sliced him a half loaf of bread.

  "Throw that across your chest," she said.

  The heat of it burned deliciously all the way down. Conor coughed and slurped, trembling with hunger, and mumbled he'd not eaten in three, maybe four or five days. He'd been wandering aimlessly, sleeping in the fields. Three bowls later, the food took hold. Conor's story came out in bits and pieces at the kitchen table. Kevin eyed his wife in such a way as to tell her to leave them alone.

  "Merciful God," she said as she left the kitchen.

  Kevin paddled around getting tea together. "It had to happen," he said. "You've been brutalizing each other for years."

  "I kept telling myself that Daddy would have to see it clearly sooner or later. I kept telling myself he'd change his mind and sit us down and talk it over and ask Liam to stay. As I was walking through the country, I tried to go back a thousand times and plead with him, but it would be no damned use. I've gotten better responses off a wall. Kevin, would you talk to him?"

  O'Garvey took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes, then sugared his tea.

  "You've got to do it before Liam's ship leaves, would you?" Conor repeated.

  "I don't know," Kevin answered wisely. "Did you ever think things might be better for you away from Ballyutogue?"

  Conor nodded, half ashamed that those were his thoughts indeed.

  "It might solve things for Liam if he returned but it will never solve them for the Conor Larkin I know. It was never a matter of you leaving there, but only when."

  "That's the worst of it," Conor said, "I know you're right. I know I can't go back."

  "No, you can't. Liam's emigrating in a few days. Will you be following?"

  "I'll not be driven out of Ireland," Conor answered.

  "Look, you're done in, lad. Let's not think about it tonight. You know where the room is over the stable."

  "Aye."

  "I don't want you to rush. I'll be going to London for a session of Commons. Stay on and get your head cleared at least till I get back. Will you promise that?"

  Conor said he would and, as he did, exhaustion flooded him so that his walk to the stable was uneven. He took the lantern and started up the ladder and whispered, "Thanks."

  "For nothing," Kevin answered.

  "I've hurt my daddy. I've hurt him bad."

  From their bedroom window Teresa stood watching until the light from the stable quenched.

  "Poor lad," she said.

  Kevin paced at the foot of the bed. "I ought to be used to watching them go by now. What an abortion of a people we are, sending away boys and girls like him by the thousands every year, leaving behind the weak, giving away our wealth. How many more can we afford to lose?"

  "You're rambling, man," Teresa said. "The Larkins have always been too close to your heart."

  "Aye, but it's what it's all about, Teresa. Parnell . . ." He quit as he choked on memory of the name. "Parnell and I would talk about it for hours. It all comes home to roost when you think of losing one like Conor."

  "Perhaps we can keep him here somehow."

  "We've got to. There's only so much we can keep giving up. Conor may make it. He'll not go down easy."

  "Come to bed now."

  He tucked the blanket about him but continued to stare up to the ceiling. Teresa reached over and took the glasses from his face and set them on the marble-topped stand.

  "I wish Parnell were alive. There was always hope then . . ."

  *

  Liam left the Harbour Board Office. Conor waited at the corner. He picked up Liam's battered wicker suitcase and they walked along for a bit. "Papers all in order?"

  "Aye."

  "Let's have a look." Conor opened the large envelope with documents covered with stamps, seals and ribbons.

  "Would you ever!" Conor said.

  "Rabat, Tunis, Alexandria, Suez Canal, Aden, Bombay, Ceylon, Jakarta, Perth, Melbourne and Wellington."

  "Never heard of most of them," Liam said. "You have, haven't you, Conor?"

  "In a manner of speaking.
Seamus and I used to discuss them and we read a few books on the subject. Oh, they're exotic places and thinking you get to walk around in them and feel them and smell them and all. Man, you're in for a fantastic adventure."

  "What do you know about New Zealand?" Liam asked with quivering voice.

  "We never got much farther than Australia. However, I went to the library here. Actually, there wasn't too much on it. It seems to be a lovely land, from what I can tell. And the journey! You're a lucky one, Liam."

  They turned the corner to Prince's Quay, then stopped in their tracks at sight of a rusty old tramp steamer, S.S. Nova Scotia. Liam got sick to his stomach, clutched it, went into a sweat, closed his eyes and turned and faced the wall.

  His brother patted him but he was unfeeling of it Conor looked desperately for hope beyond hope that Tomas would suddenly appear down the quay and call for them.

  Oh, God, Daddy! Please!

  "I'm so scared," Liam croaked.

  "Only because it's new and unfamiliar. Ten minutes after you're under way, you'll be yourself again, and after two months aboard ship you'll be so ready to conquer New Zealand, there'll be no holding you back." He turned and spun into Conor's arms for the first time ever, shaking from head to toe as he did and sobbing incoherently. “Get ahold of yourself," Conor demanded. "You're not the first lad out of Ireland to walk up that plank."

  He shook him, hard, then gentle, hard, then gentle. Liam turned loose and stared at the ship, wavering. He licked his lips, drew in a wobbly breath and began his walk into exile . . . over the quay as though floating. He showed his papers and was waved through. Teresa and Kevin were there as they had been there for many years at the dockside of weary ships. She packed a basket as she had packed it for many years with salted and dried foods to augment the ship's food on the journey. Their parting words were as uncomfortable as they had always been.

  "I'm not mad at Daddy and I'm not mad at you," Liam said.

  "God look after you, Liam," Conor said.

  "And the same God look after you. I think I've come to know you may need him more than me," Liam said.

  *

  When Kevin left for Westminster, Conor began the search for a job.

  "Your name?"

  "Conor Larkin."

  "I'll put you on the waiting list."

  He went to the shipyard, the graving dock and the carriage makers, then walked the quays from Buncrana Road to the Letterkenny Road, the rail yard in Waterside over the bridge and stopped at every stable and shop with a forge.

  "Your name?"

  "Larkin."

  "Sorry, the job has been filled."

  "Look, I can see with my own two eyes your shop is short a man."

  "Sorry, the job's filled."

  Belief that his skill as a master would make itself apparent any place he found a job, Conor offered to start as an apprentice boy. He was advised that apprenticeships had to be purchased, the cost was high and, at any rate, none were available.

  Within a fortnight the Derry system revealed itself ugly. Caw & Train Graving Dock was the major employer of blacksmiths and ironworkers. Its factory automatically won every municipal corporation bid and most private jobs without competition. This was the established order of things. Smaller forges were handed out subcontracts so long as they did what they were told. All of the shops from Caw & Train down to its smallest satellite were Protestant owned and manned. The only Catholic blacksmiths were tiny affairs in Catholic neighborhoods verging on subsistence level and never receiving Caw & Train subcontracts. The single major Catholic employer, a brewery, with its farrier and teamster work, kept the Catholic shops from sinking.

  If a man's name was Catholic it automatically eliminated him from upper trade work. If the name wasn't obviously Catholic, a quick reference check of his church, school or Orange affiliation established his religion. Continuation of the Derry system was assured through the sale of apprenticeships which few Catholic families could afford and, if they could, the apprenticeship became unavailable.

  After exhausting every possibility in his own trade, Conor searched for other work. Derry had a large complex of mills and shirt factories but nearly all of that was female and child labor.

  The bottom line of the Derry system became unmistakably clear. The only work for Catholics was menial labor. Building trades had long waiting lists. Even those Catholic men with jobs had to have their entire families, wives and children, in the mills and factories to make existence.

  What was left was janitoring, dust men for garbage collection, sewer workers, servants, male nurses in workhouses and the insane asylum. Forty per cent of the Catholic men were unemployed. Fifty men pounced on every job opening. Odd jobs of a few days at the cattle pens on the dock and as navvies on the railroads did come open but Conor refused to compete against men who had families to feed.

  This was the Derry system of Roger Hubble's conception. Cheap female and child labor and a vast pool of unemployed so their product could compete with and undersell England. As long as Ulster remained in the Crown's realm and received beneficial trade concessions, it spelled a windfall for her industry. Even though the labor pool was depleted by emigration, Bishop Nugent and the dictates of his Church saw to it that Derry retained the highest birth rate in the British Isles and Europe. The stench of the Derry system quickly led to human stagnation in the Bogside, a succumbing to lethargy or the pain of emigration.

  With each new day ending like the last, Conor walked back to his room over the stable more and more slowly. He sought the solace of the library but was unable to concentrate and his frequent appearances there were met with hostile vibrations. The library was no place to harbor the idle and he was made to feel unwelcome.

  A storm at sea damaged two ships which limped into port in need of urgent repairs. For a fortnight Conor was able to work at Caw & Train for sixteen hours a shift and displayed a skill equal to all and superior to most of the regular smiths. There were rumblings about the papist in an all-Protestant stronghold but the size of him discouraged personal harassment and, besides, they reckoned, the job was temporary.

  Inside the yard, Conor saw the final vileness of the Derry scheme. It was obvious that work was plentiful and blacksmiths were in demand, but work was kept solely for loyalists in payment for their loyalty and his employment came to an abrupt halt when half a dozen blacksmiths arrived on loan from the Weed Works in Belfast.

  Conor's revulsion brought him close to the breaking point only two months after his arrival. A mixed reaction of relief and apprehension greeted Josiah Lambe on his sudden appearance in Derry.

  Josiah Lambe was a simplistic man who had worked with and for Catholics. As a youth he divorced the populist notion that Ulster need be a battleground for the Reformation. Although his Presbyterian devoutness was reasonable his true religion was blacksmithing. He never wore an Orange sash.

  By the time he was ready to wind down his labors it was rumored that Conor Larkin would come into the forge. This was bearable to the Protestants of Ballyutogue, for the Larkins, even as adversaries, had a certain eminence. There would be no objection from the single lassies about Conor's presence.

  Josiah had meditated hard on the problem of Conor's sudden departure. He had hoped to retire with sufficient income from the shop to see out his remaining years, yet with Conor out of the picture he could not bring himself to sell to a stranger. Josiah traveled to Derry, found Conor, and got directly to the point, offering him the shop. He allowed as Conor could work off payment in a reasonable time and still earn a grand living. The deal was uncomplicated, for the old blacksmith was an uncomplicated man.

  After the shattering experience of Derry, visions of the peaceful little forge below the crossroad among lifelong friends had crept heavily into Conor's thoughts. Yet even as he aired his confusion, he was held by an invisible grip that would not allow him to return.

  "Why don't you seek some outside advice from someone you trust?" old Lambe suggested. "Kevin is still in
London. He wakes up every morning and goes to sleep every night with other people's problems. He doesn't need mine as well."

  "I'm not suggesting O'Garvey, fine man that he is. He'll not be objectively inclined and even more so in your case."

  "You're not telling me to go see a priest, are you?"

  "Oh, nae, lad. A priest would be even worse. Conor, you've a bonny old friend in Derry who's a little hurt you've not seen fit to call on him."

  Conor looked away guiltily.

  "Well, are you afraid to speak to Andrew Ingram?"

  "I've been tempted so many times. Back home the Larkins meant something, but here I'm just another jobless, faceless Bogside downer."

  "You'd never be that in Andrew Ingram's eyes any more than you would be to me. Don't you think he doesn't know why you haven't called on him? Aren't you a bit ashamed?"

  "Aye, I am."

  "He said to me, "Conor has to place more value on our friendship."

  "You're right, Josiah, I am afraid. Afraid of being told the truth."

  *

  Enid Ingram hustled her children from Andrew's study, closing the door behind her. "They're great wanes," Conor said. "Seamus has written me about them many times."

  "Just as Seamus has told them about you. You are a minor deity around here, you know."

  "The lad is doing fine at Queen's," Conor said.

  Mr. Ingram smiled and passed it off. "I think we all knew Seamus would cut a tidy niche for himself."

  Conor's eyes became filled with pleading. "And me?"

  Andrew Ingram stuffed his pipe with that certain deliberateness showing a touch of sorrow as he did, and it seemed to outline telltale graying about his temples and the first deep lines of aging. He studied the brawny young man opposite him strangely, knowing so much about him.

  "Certain of us are meant for certain things," he began. "I thank God I discovered at an early age and was able to make peace about myself within the narrow framework allowed to me. There's a book kept on all of us from the moment we're born. If only we could open it and really learn what's in store. The problem is it takes most of us most of our lives to understand what we should have known from the beginning."