Trinity: A Novel of Ireland

  As he entered, the tone was unusually subdued, with obvious curiosity over the bald man with the military bearing waiting in Kevin's personal booth. Everyone pressed forward at the bar in order to get a glimpse in the back-bar mirror.

  Swan indicated that a confidential discussion might be better held elsewhere and in a moment they drove off, coming to a halt at nearby Southwark Park, then, taking to foot, strolled along the park's edge in the damp and fogging night air. They came to a stop at a park bench and sat.

  "We appear to be out of earshot of our mutual informers," Kevin said.

  Swan rested both hands on the knob of his cane and looked blandly out to the mounting, eternal fog. "We have to remind ourselves from time to time that Lord Roger is one of your constituents and has the same right to petition you and express his view as anyone else."

  "That's a fact," Kevin answered, "but I usually don't meet my constituents on park benches."

  Swan smiled steelily and touched the cane to his hat in a salute. "Obviously, we are concerned with the Select Committee's pending visit to Ulster." He proceeded to build an articulate case. Industrial Ulster had invested heavily and wagered everything on the linen power loom. With America fully recovered from the Civil War, cotton was again in direct competition with linen. Linen was a squirrelly market at best, and anything that endangered it undermined Ulster itself. An investigation of the Witherspoon & McNab Shirt Factory, now the largest in the United Kingdom, could set up a fatal shock effect over the entire linen industry. "We think it is in Ulster's interest if the Select Committee keep out of Belfast and Londonderry and away from linen."

  "You're talking hogwash, Swan. You're afraid of exposure of your very filthy operations, nothing more."

  Swan had suspected O'Garvey's intransigence in the argument. "Let me make a few practical points," he said, changing course. "Point number one," he said, still looking off into space, "Witherspoon & McNab employs, over a thousand Catholic women. It is the largest single employer in Londonderry. Along with the other shirt factories, it is the backbone of the economy."

  "Point number one is correct," Kevin said.

  "Point two," Swan continued. "That factory is Lord Roger's largest single profit maker. We are in a headlong race to make our gamble in power looms pay off. Any investigation and subsequent legislation that would bring profits down to a marginal operation would lead us to close down. The economy of Londonderry would collapse and a depression would follow."

  Kevin O'Garvey shook his head in disbelief and laughed. "Sure I don't believe what I'm hearing. You know we investigated six factories in Bradford-Leeds and all six factory owners told us the same damned thing. Either let them bleed the workers or they'll shut down. Take your blackmail elsewhere, man. So long as there's a ha' penny in it, you'll operate."

  "Suppose I can show you figures to prove we can't stand heavy capital expenditures and stay in business."

  "Then close down. You've no call to operate on the premise you've a right to take it out of your employees' guts. Conditions in Bradford-Leeds are filthy enough but they don't start to compare to those slimy, tubercular, deafening, rheumatic linen mills, and what really terrifies me is the Witherspoon & McNab building. It's no more or less than a seven-story unlighted bomb. You've no right to make your shirts monogrammed in human, blood, no right at all."

  Maxwell Swan remained utterly impassive. "Well now," he said, "we've both stated our points of view. Let's examine some practical aspects."

  Kevin knew he was dealing with an icy number who hadn't begun to shoot his ammunition. Swan's surgery in breaking up union organizing threats had been hangman efficient. As he studied Swan he throbbed to bring his own anger under control.

  Now then," Swan went on, "the Select Committee comes to Londonderry and conducts its investigation. A scathing report is issued with recommendations for corrective legislation. What do you suspect we are going to be doing in the interim?"

  "Threaten to close down until that bluff is called, then threaten the workers against testifying."

  "Yes, more or less. We'll fight you every inch of the way. Any new bills you manage to get through Commons will come after one, two, three years of arduous and bitter battle. In such situations it will come through as a watered down compromise and in the end it will be the kind of law we can easily circumvent. In other words, count on us to go the limit to protect our properties."

  "Oh, Lord," Kevin said, "the dirty scheme Hubble and Weed have laid out for Derry. Everything on two distinct levels. The top level supplies enough good jobs to hold a loyal population in your sacred city. The bottom level is a manipulation of human beings as so many head of cattle. Instead of putting new industry into a place where thousands are jobless, you deliberately keep it impoverished and leave us scrambling like famished dogs so we literally beg to slave in your death traps for pennies."

  "That's a way of looking at it, rather extreme, O'Garvey. There is an order of things, a system long established. The inheritors of that system aren't just going to chuck it all away. Do you really believe Bogside won't be Bogside fifty years from now? Do you really believe that a few piddly little laws are really going to change things?"

  "That's what you people said about the Land League," Kevin retorted. "I've not spent my life in vain because we've bloody well changed the system on the land and we'll change it in your dirty factories as well."

  "In your lifetime?" Swan asked.

  "That doesn't matter."

  Swan flipped his cigar on the walkway and poked it out with the tip of his cane. "Suppose you had an opportunity to change things in Bogside right now?"

  Kevin tensed.

  "Shall I go on?"

  "I'm not on the make if that's what you're fishing around for."

  "Good Lord, I wouldn't be foolish enough to try to bribe you."

  "And why not? Your people have tried to bribe every man in the Irish Party and not without some notable success."

  Swan managed a smile. "Shall I go on?" he repeated.

  "Yes, but I very well might get up and leave."

  "You, Frank Carney and Father Patrick McShane formed a Bogside Association a few years back in an attempt to finance small business and things of that nature. It fell flat."

  "Because you fought us out of fear of Catholic competition."

  "Whatever. Suppose the association were refinanced and a private accord made so that several new enterprises could be sponsored in the Catholic community. Further, suppose you could buy, say, fifty apprenticeships a year and it was guaranteed to you the apprenticeships were available. What kind of effect would it have in Bogside? What is your most desperate need? Pride? Dignity? Male labor?"

  Kevin O'Garvey was stunned. He had expected almost anything to keep the committee out of Londonderry but not this. Bogside, the mother of desperation where men wallowed without hope and nothing ever really was done to dent the poverty or create self-esteem. What Maxwell Swan had diabolically concocted was a crumb of hope. Yet how urgently was that crumb needed?

  What was the alternative? Kevin knew that he would be in for years of trench warfare in which he would pit himself and his diluted party against an all-powerful system operating in their own halls of justice. If he did take up the battle for industrial reform the outcome was beyond his lifetime.

  Was it a bribe or was it not a bribe to take money in order to give hope where no hope lived? What was the price? He knew that abominations like Witherspoon & McNab would go on regardless. His fight in the Land League was an ancient one that had kept Ireland in a blood bath for centuries. How dearly they had paid for the successes. The war for industrial reform would be even more bitter. Indeed, could one man do much more than give a ray of hope to his desperate people?

  Swan had all the answers, all right. After clearing the Bogside Association debts there would be money coming under the table for several years to support small businesses and buy apprenticeships. Why in the name of God couldn't this support come from simple human ne
ed? Why in the name of God did the price tag keep women and children in sweatshop labor? Why? Because that was where the profits were. Why? Because that was the Derry scheme, the Ulster scheme, and any hint of assistance to Catholics was not permitted. It had to be kept secret at all costs.

  Kevin O'Garvey agonized for three weeks, alternately torn by visions of the putridity of the mills and the bedlam aspects of the shirt factory. These visions struggled with visions of despair in the eyes of his Bogsiders, tormented eyes that tore at his soul every day of his own life. Whose voice wailed louder? Hope . . . now! Hope now! HOPE NOW!

  The House of Commons Select Committee on Industrial Relations traveled to Ulster on the recommendation of Kevin O'Garvey of the Irish Party. They visited neither Belfast nor Londonderry but the mill town of Ballyomalley, an advanced experimental town established by Quaker interests. There they found the best working and living conditions in the province and Ballyomalley was eventually cited as a shining example of Ulster's progressiveness.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An oasis in the forlorn morass of Bogside was Celtic Hall, the activities emanating from it and the nearby recreation grounds. The Gaelic Athletic Association, reviving the old Celtic sports and, with them, a touch of national pride, spread over Ireland beyond expectations. Bogside, in particular, had been a place of poor little Irish vainglory. Hurling and Gaelic football drew packed crowds on the dusty playing grounds each Sunday after mass.

  Several years after the GAA, an urban and sophisticated counterpart, the Gaelic League, came into being, spearheading a renaissance of the ancient language and culture.

  The organizations were legal but everyone knew the GAA and the Gaelic League fronted borderline republican activities in the climate of discontent. Their glorification of Irish history and Irish dissenters ran counter to the centuries-old British attempt to Anglicize the colony. These scents of Irish nationalism were considered dangerous by the Crown as a spawning ground for future Fenian agitators and their activities and more vocal members were kept under scrutiny.

  Small wonder that Conor's frequent appearance at the League's sparse library was greeted at first with suspicion. A brawny stranger like himself could well be a member of one of the special squads in the Constabulary or Dublin Castle assigned to infiltrate their ranks. One had to be constantly wary of informers, the lepers of Irish life.

  Conor had exhausted every possibility for a job and wanted to move on. Teresa O'Garvey sensed it and communicated with her husband in London and he, in turn, wrote Conor reminding him of his promise to remain till he returned from Commons. While he waited, Conor drifted to those places where idle men congregated to make idle talk. They were men like himself, now down to the last ha' penny so that even the small comfort of a brew was a luxury.

  After his daily trip to the Gaelic League library he'd hang around the playing fields watching practice. The regularity of his presence brought about the usual protective inquiries and it was only then discovered he lived with Kevin O'Garvey. Once safe credentials were established he was accepted with nods of recognition.

  *

  "Hey, you, big fellow."

  "Me?" Conor asked.

  "Aye, we're short a man for practice. Would you be after standing in as mid-fielder

  "Afraid I don't know very much about the game."

  "Have you played it before?"

  "A few times only."

  "You'll do for practice."

  Conor had played some soccer football, which the Scots introduced to Ulster, and a few games of Gaelic as well. He was strong enough for sure and a hard runner. A pivotal part of the Gaelic game required brute strength within a pack of men where one had to leap higher, grab the ball and be able to hold onto it with surety. It is said the game was old as Patrick and the patron saint may well have had Conor in mind as a mid-fielder. Like most farm lads, he could leap stone walls like a deer as soon as he was able to walk, and with blacksmith's hands for grip and overall might of body, his raw material at six foot and two inches and two hundred and fifteen pounds was formidable.

  No sooner had Conor stepped out on the field than a blue-shirted regular sprinted up field directly at him with the ball. The forward stopped, threw out a cunning hip and leg fake, then tried to dance past. Conor was twisted off balance by the maneuver but managed to grab ahold of his blue shirt, snatch him off his feet and bounce him to the ground thumpingly in a most effective, if unscientific, tackle. The runner went one way and the ball went the other as he crawled around on hands and knees gasping for air. He staggered to his feet, and walked up to Conor shaking his fist

  "You stupid bastard!" he screamed. "It's only practice!"

  "I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong?"

  "You like to killed me, that's what, you dumb shit." The man reeled off, still shaky, then stopped and returned. "Hey, I'm sorry, man," he said, holding out his hand. "Just a bit stunned, you know. The name's Pat, Pat McShane."

  "I'm Conor Larkin. Didn't mean to be so hard."

  "Not at all. I'll buy you a brew at Nick Blaney's after practice."

  Cooey Quinn, coach and manager of the Bogsiders, observed the Larkin lad keenly as he seemed to pick up the game by the minute. Cooey had been in the GAA from the beginning, one of Derry's greatest Gaelic footballers a bandy-legged speedster. After quitting as a player he had built the Bogsiders into a regional power. His years in the sport did little to line his pockets, for it was an amateur sport played for pride with overtones of nationalism. He made for Conor the instant practice was called.

  "Hello, big fellow, I'm Cooey Quinn."

  "Sure I've heard of you," Conor said, introducing himself.

  "How much have you played?"

  "Three or four games at most. We mainly played association football up on Inishowen with the Protestant teams."

  "You in Derry for a while?"

  "Aye."

  "I think you'd make a hell of a mid-fielder. If you come out for practice I'll see to it personal that you get some coaching on the finer points."

  "That's grand of you but I'm hunting for a job."

  "You'll not find one here, so you might as well get some training." Cooey studied Conor's size hungrily, then edged close and spoke in confidence. "Frankly, there's a bob or two to be made on the side."

  "How?"

  "Some of the swells around put down wagers on us and if we win . . . well, you know . . ."

  "That's sure not the way I figured on earning a living," Conor replied.

  "Unless you got something better to do, why not give it ago?"

  Conor shrugged. "Why not?"

  "Good, come on over to Nick Blaney's and meet the lads."

  The establishment of Nick Blaney was Bogside's finest, all done up proper with tile floors and highly polished mahogany and a mirrored back bar lettered with a show of local chauvinism, CARNEY'S DERRYALE, a pretender to the throne of Guinness. Nick was of the sporting crowd, a boxer who had once been number three middleweight in the entire United Kingdom. Except for getting caught cold by a lucky punch, Nick explained constantly, he'd have gotten a shot at the championship. There were a lot of regulars at Blaney's, men with jobs and small businesses. The athletes were their alter egos and they were always willing to fill up a player's glass.

  "Look at the size of you," Mick McGrath said, looking every inch the star of the Bogsiders, oaken built and sure of himself. He stuck out a strong hand of greeting. "How much do you weigh, Larkin?"

  "I don't know for sure. I think maybe over fifteen stone."

  "By Jaysus, that's just what we need," Mick said.

  "I can vouch for the fact he hits like a runaway beer wagon," Pat McShane said from the fringe of the gathering. Conor looked over to him. He turned crimson. Pat McShane wore a Roman collar.

  "Mary save me," Conor mumbled, "I've gone and busted up a priest."

  With introductions done, Conor got over to Father McShane, still chagrined. The priest rather enjoyed his embarrassment and broke into a smile reve
aling a pair of missing teeth that indicated someone had gotten to him long before Conor.

  "I don't understand this, Father," Conor said.

  "I've studied all the holy Scriptures and nowhere could I find a single word forbidding a priest to play Gaelic football."

  "But Bishop Nugent. Doesn’t he get furious?"

  "Only when Bogside loses."

  Never having met such a priest, Conor continued to stare puzzled but Pat McShane had seen them come from the country before. The father was cut out of another mold than the indifferent and middling fodder that filled the seminaries. He had come from new wealth in the south and was schooled at Cambridge for two years before his decision to enter the Church.

  In the next days the comradeship between them became instantaneous, for the two were both strangers of sorts to the world of Bogside. They quickly found that there were poetry and literature to bind them. If Bogside priests were of another breed than the dogmatics Conor had known, Father Pat was different, even among them. On the secret, he was the guiding light of the Gaelic League and when Conor was invited to a meeting it spelled his happiest day in Derry.

  *

  Lookouts were posted at every approach to the abandoned stable on Lone Moor Road. Only when an all clear was given did small groups of twos and threes filter in. They were young, poor and shabby and to Conor's surprise nearly half were girls from the mills and shirt factories. Once in the stable, they made up the ladder to the loft where heavy burlap shut the light to the outside. The dimness inside made one barely visible. They spoke in low, controlled tones, yet there was an air of excitement and defiance.

  Conor had come with Mick McGrath and Cooey Quinn and was greeted with silent handshakes and nods of the head as he was introduced around.

  Maud Tully, a snip of a lass with great brown eyes, called for attention. "Gather in close," she said, "so's I don't have to talk so loud." The thirty-odd who packed the loft formed a sitting circle around her. "Father Pat just sent word he was called to the bedside of a critically sick parishioner."