A groan of disappointment went up.
"He said he'd get here as soon as possible. In the meantime I'm suggesting we start a discussion about the subject for tonight, Theobald Wolfe Tone."
They looked disappointedly to one another. Conor had brought along his autobiography of Wolfe Tone when Father McShane told him about the lecture. He held his peace.
"Doesn't anyone know enough about Wolfe Tone to begin?" Maud said.
As she was again met with a rumble of dejection, Conor raised his hand tentatively.
"It seems we have a crack of luck," Maud said. "Our new brother, Conor Larkin, has volunteered. Why don't you come up here, Conor?"
He got up from the floor and moved through them over a buzz of curiosity. His bigness was all the more apparent in the closeness of the loft. Maud pointed to the box to sit on and as he did they gathered in tightly. In that magic instant, he saw them all as Conor and Seamus sitting brightly at the feet of Daddo, eager, hungry to learn.
"I hope you don't think I'm presumptuous," he began. "I could never give a talk the likes of a learned man such as Father Pat." He reached in his pocket and took out the small volume entitled, The Life and Adventures of Theobald Wolfe Tone written by himself and extracted from his journals. Edited by his son, William Theobald Wolfe Tone.
"To begin with," Conor started, "we've a history in our republican aspirations of a number of patriots who came from the Protestant ascendancy. It is a tradition from Robert Emmet, Napper Tandy, Henry Joy McCracken, Thomas Davis, Isaac Butt, as well as the very founder of this Gaelic League, Douglas Hyde. Two of these Protestants were as important to Catholic emancipation and Irish longing for freedom as the liberator, Daniel O'Connell, himself. I refer to Charles Stewart Parnell, whose, loss has never been recovered, and tonight I will speak to you of the father of all Irish republicans, Theobald Wolfe Tone."
The room had been struck to a hush.
"Wolfe Tone was born in Dublin on the twentieth of June in the year of seventeen and sixty-three," he continued with a voice not quite comfortable in its task. Yet Conor felt the instantaneous communication from those arrayed at his feet. From uneasiness he moved to a strange sensation of power, for their eyes and ears were riveted to him and he was quickly gaining their minds. Suddenly all of his years of listening to the tales of Daddo and his conversations with Andrew Ingram and all the books he had read in the fields and under the candle began to weave that unique Irish magic into his words and he drifted into touches of fantasy and spice and humor. Conor was in the sudden moment the shanachie and the story came from him as though he had been there himself.
By line, verse and chapter he traced the turbulent career of the first of the great patriots: the vow at Belfast to unite Ireland, the flight to America, the influence of the French Revolution, the intrigues in Paris to gain support, the storm at sea that destroyed the French fleet, the second futile invasion try in Lough Foyle, capture, condemnation, the death sentence . . . suicide.
The eyes of Conor's galvanized audience were misted and their cheeks wet, to a person.
Dead silence followed for a long time.
"Bravo!"
Everyone turned to see Father McShane, who had come up unnoticed and witnessed the last of the mesmerizing performance.
*
"One last round, gentlemen, if you please," Nick Blaney said.
Conor wanted to talk the night through with Father Pat but Cooey Quinn and Mick McGrath were slapping his back, introducing him around and blowing hot air like a tread bellows. "Aye, it was a night," Cooey repeated for the umpteenth time, "everyone is in high spirit. Now if youse can learn to play football the way youse got the gift of gab you'll be the unofficial mayor of Bogside, Conor Larkin."
"That is definitely so," Mick agreed.
"I hope not, it's a curse in my family," Conor said.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Nick Blaney pleaded.
From the mustiness of Derryale the four stepped out into the odors and sounds of poverty that lingered like an incurable rash. Father Pat stopped suddenly as though he were afraid to walk through it one more time. The stray drunk urinated at the base of the sacred walls, the vile sound of domestic rancor stung the air, bringing on a discordant cry of an infant who was more than likely hungry as well as frightened. They made babies in the dark, more babies for their numbers than any place in the kingdom. Babies to eat pork scraps and work the shirt factory, babies to pitch ha'pennies against the wall, babies to grow old and wait to die in bare monk like cubicles.
Father Pat gripped Conor's arm for an instant to steady himself. "If there was only something we could do," he whispered.
"I'm breaking out of here one day," Mick said.
Conor nodded.
"Sure," Cooey said, "that's what youse all say."
"Mind my words, I am."
"Going our way, Father?" Conor asked.
"I've got to check on my parishioner. I'm afraid he'll get away tonight."
Conor and Mick watched Cooey and Father Pat disappear down the muddy street of doll-size row houses as a choir of starving cats shrieked their discontent, then turned up their collars against the chill and made up Lecky Road. The wall of Derry hovered above them, bearing its omnipresent column and statue of the Reverend George Walker with finger pointed into the half-moon, the constant guardian who scorned the dregs down in
"Cooey thinks I'm going to rot here, he's crazy. Only trouble is there's just about nothing I can do."
"No skills at all, Mick?”
"I was a butcher's apprentice once, nothing much other than that. I waited four years for an opening in the building trades but it came to naught . . . but you mark my words, I'm not going down in this place."
Mick jerked his head to steal a glance over his shoulder.
"Shit, Conor," he whispered, "we've been followed from Blaney's."
Conor looked back. A pair of constables behind them slowed down, then inched up toward them.
"Somebody's put the finger on you already," Mick said.
"What for?"
"The talk you gave tonight. I bet they figure you're an agitator from Dublin. Now listen, we hit the end of the block, split up and run for it."
"Can't," Conor said. A second pair in plain clothes holding batons in their hands approached from their front so they were boxed in. Mick took off his belt from his trousers and wrapped it around his fist, leaving the big brass buckle dangling loose as a flail, and at the same time bent down and snatched up a stray paving stone. He nudged Conor and in unison they turned around and ran straight at the two pursuers, catching them off guard.
Conor blocked the baton with his forearm as Mick sent the buckle splaying into the policeman's face. He screamed, clutching the rip that ran from eye to mouth, and dropped to his knees. Mick put him down and away with the paving stone.
The second constable jumped Mick and caught him two, three times with his baton and he dropped and, as he stood above him, Conor slammed him between the eyes. Conor tried to extricate Mick from the tangle of bodies but before he was able the second pair reached them and he was pounded to the ground by hissing batons.
"Fenian bastards!"
As Mick struggled to his feet a boot slammed into his stomach, choking off his breath. He gagged and vomited. Conor reeled up, struggling back to ward off the rain of blows, half of which found his face and ribs. He sagged away but as they turned on the fallen Mick McGrath a rage welled up and he returned, driving his fist into an attacker's belly so hard it lifted the man off his feet. He pulled Mick to his feet. The lad's front was covered with blood and vomit. Conor held one arm about him and the other fist stuck out warningly at the remaining constable, who looked at his three semiconscious mates, started as if to attack, then turned and fled as Conor dropped Mick and squared off to face him.
Lights and shouts went up and in an instant the Bogside was alive with police whistles.
The Constabulary attempted to hush the matter as they did with all matters con
cerning Gaelic League suspects, but the hospitalization of three constables was the talk of Bogside. The assortment of broken noses, cracked ribs, stitches and missing teeth in the three-minute encounter was awesome. A face-saving story was leaked that the policemen had been jumped by a gang of a dozen ruffians.
So far as the authorities were concerned, the incident was officially closed, but it did not die among the Bogsiders, who knew what had really taken place.
CHAPTER FIVE
For several months after Kevin O'Garvey returned there was a flourish of new businesses financed with loans from a suddenly revitalized Bogside Association. A bakery, two pubs, a draying service, a rope making plant, a print shop and a cottage industries retail store were all launched with ceremonial fanfare.
In addition, a dozen new apprenticeships were strangely available at the shipyard, the fishery, and in the rail roundhouse. These were sold for the first time to Catholics and financed by the Bogside Association. A sliver of light had penetrated the gloom, and since as far back as one could remember, a few men walked about with an air of briskness.
Frank Carney, the flamboyant member of the association's three-man board, gloried in his role as benefactor. He was Berry's most successful Catholic, owner of the brewery and a wheel in municipal politics. He displayed his success visibly with brocaded vests, waxed grooming and gold wherever possible on watch and chain, cuff links, rings, teeth. Carney's self-esteem was bottomless, for he had come up the hard way through Bogside. Although many of his dealings were questionable, he maintained loyalty to his own and devotion to his Church.
Father Pat McShane, the youngest and second member of the board, merely blessed the new Bogside enterprises and sent them on their holy way, leaving the showmanship up to Carney.
The Bogside's most ardent champion had been Kevin O'Garvey, just as he had been the most tireless worker for the Land League. Yet Kevin seemed to get little joy from the burst of activity. Conor noticed right off that during his absence something had changed in Kevin's very essence, from outgoing to suddenly withdrawn. He and Father Pat talked about it and concluded that the years of turmoil were taking a toll and perhaps Kevin was aging, a thing they didn't want to believe. Conor was not so sure of the real cause, but he knew that his friend was not himself.
When Conor was summoned to the Bogside Association Board in Celtic Hall and told to work up a set of figures to finance a blacksmith shop, it was a crack of a miracle, for he had been prepared to move on. After his astonishment at the sudden turn of events abated he dived into the matter and found the abandoned stable on Lone Moor Road suitable and cheap to house a forge and reckoned he could save greatly by making most of his own tools.
Yet there was a problem. Conor wanted a loan several times higher than had been granted to the other new shops. There had long been need for a first-class forge in Bogside and he envisioned something more than just another smithy. He wanted not only a place capable of doing ordinary work and turning out a line of hardware, but also to go after his calling in the field of decorative wrought iron.
Father McShane and Kevin O'Garvey agreed after only minor balking and budget trimming. It was Frank Carney who blew through as the enthusiast He, had long been chief sponsor of the football and hurling teams and, after all, Conor Larkin was a rising sporting figure. The forge should become the Bogside Association's showpiece, he reckoned. Some deep breaths were held but the loan went through.
Business was reasonable from the start. Mick McGrath and two other lads from the team were given the first real jobs of their lives as apprentices. Conor was eager to get going on his hardware but was hampered because his men were novices and there was a complete shortage of skilled Catholic ironworkers. He reached across the River Foyle and hired a Protestant, Tippy Hay, as his foreman to run things and train the apprentices while he turned full time to develop product.
Tippy was an excellent craftsman, too old and slow to go full time for the Caw & Train Graving Dock where he had labored for thirty years. He was given enough work to keep alive in peak seasons but had otherwise come to lean times and had gone heavily to the bottle. The man proved so grateful for the second chance, he moderated his tippling enough to carry out a decent day's work and proved to be an excellent teacher.
Tippy was called back to Caw & Train on one of the periodic emergencies from a ship disaster and told Roy Bardwick, the dock director, to stuff it.
A few weeks later he was found unconscious in the street and was hospitalized. The first rumor had it that the devil's brew had finally gotten to him but physical evidence of a severe beating changed that story to say it was the work of an avenging gang of Catholic thugs. Tippy refused to name his assailants. It was not until several months later he blurted out in a drunken stupor that his old mates at Caw & Train and lodge brothers in the Orange Society had warned him to quit Larkin's shop. When he refused, an example of his disloyalty was required. Notice was posted that Conor Larkin would be tolerated only so long as he kept his proper place.
Unable to find a suitable replacement, Conor doubled his own workload to some eighteen hours a day and eventually put out a line of wares: claw hammers, files, knives, axes, adzes, augers, bits, reamers, hinges, nails, scissors, latches, bolts, doorknobs, weather vanes, wagon and tack hardware, shovels, tongs, cranes and what the women used in their kitchens. The quality was the best in Derry and the price lower, but Conor was unable to place his goods in the better retail stores outside the Bog side. He sold on the premises and, despite a tacit boycott, Protestants began to trickle in, for saving money was nonsectarian and an old Scottish trait.
"Try at Larkin's, you might find it there."
"Larkin will make anything up for you special and the price will be right."
Sheer excellence expanded his reputation so the trickle became a steady stream. There were growls of wariness over the same Conor Larkin who had been involved in a known Fenian activity and perhaps a scuffle with the Constabulary, yet his success grew moderately.
At the end of his first year, Mick McGrath and the other two apprentices had moved up several notches to take on responsibility for some of the less skilled aspects of the trade. Of the other two blacksmiths operating in the Bog side, one died and the second, old Clarence Feeny, sat down with Conor and figured he could make out better as the Larkin foreman than on his own. When he came in Conor inherited all of Frank Carney's brewery work, which encompassed the stable, teamster wagons and considerable barrel making. Clarence Feeny's son became one of two new apprentices and soon a dozen men were employed, including a salesman and a draying service.
With old Clarence there to move along the day-to-day work, Conor was free to pursue his longed-for goal in the wrought-iron field.
Frank Carney opened the way by commissioning a grille and gate for the private chapel he endowed in St. Eugene's Cathedral. The work proved so lovely that Bishop Nugent himself ordered a wrought-iron pulpit, the first in that part of Ireland. Following Bishop Nugent's lead, a series of commissions followed from churches as far east as Limavady and as far west as Ballyshannon. Conor didn't particularly like the church work, for he envisioned a lot of Father Lynches taking it out of the egg money of the parishioners, but there was no way he could turn it down.
Entering his second year, the forge had made a small but definite inroad. This was even more apparent as a number of the Bogside Association's other businesses had folded.
Life was tolerable in Derry if one were Conor Larkin. He entered a small, select, non-sectarian circle of intellectuals based around Andrew Ingram, Father Patrick McShane and the faculty at Magee College. A reasonably decent cultural life was imported under the sponsorship of the Countess of Foyle, Lady Caroline Hubble.
In the Bogside, Conor had become a well-known figure in the Gaelic League and on the GAA playing grounds. From crude technique, Cooey Quinn and Mick McGrath brought him up to a savagely effective player and the possessor of a never empty glass of Derryale at Nick Blaney's. With Conor La
rkin in the middle of the pack and the ball floating down toward him, his hands were iron sure and the power of his body was intimidating. Once an opposing runner was in his grasp he had to expect punishment. The sporting crowd bet on him heavily and a small but steady source of income came back to him along with the free drink.
Conor worried about this, too, as he had worried about his church commissions, but Pat McShane assured him that his presence among the derelicts as their alter ego was more than a fair bargain. In the mire, of Bogside, men gambled and drank to blur reality. They wagered with money. They wagered without money. Gambling was a way of life just as losing was a way of life and the loan shark was a way of life. Evasion of the rent and rate collector was a way of life as the old woman working was a way of life. Men lost their pride and languished in foggy dreams. Conor Larkin and Mick McGrath were heroes in a hero-starved landscape.
For the moment he seemed at peace and even cast his eye about for a permanent relationship. There was Maud Tully in the Gaelic League, who had the keenest mind of any female he had ever met, and Gillian Pea body, a Protestant schoolteacher with all the polish and charm of a high-bred lady. One or the other was his usual escort to the cultural affairs. There were others, all possibilities. For the moment, Conor Larkin had lulled himself to believe that he had beaten the Bogside and the Derry scheme.
*
Andrew Ingram's own success ran parallel to Conor's when he was appointed district superintendent of the national schools from Strabane to the south and as far east as Dungiven.
On opening night of a ten-day Shakespearean Festival, Enid Ingram greeted Conor at the door of their home on Academy Road with a look of despair. "I'm afraid you're stuck with an old married hen tonight," she said, "Andrew is clear up to here in paperwork."
"Ah, that's a pity. Well, they'll be repeating King Lear at the end of the festival."
"I hope he's finished by then. I sometimes wonder why he took the new appointment. By the by, when I heard you were coming by yourself, I gave Andrew's ticket to Gillian Peabody. I hope you don't mind."