Trinity Page 16

  Swan nodded and began his retreat. "Oh, by the way, your house guest is in my office pawing at the air."

  "Oh, Hubble. Jesus, forgot about him. Well, have him come in."

  He slumped behind his desk, studying 367's specifications for the thousandth time, searching desperately for a place to give her one more nudge. He didn't want to have to start from scratch this late. Roger Hubble entered and showed a mouthful of sympathetic teeth. I'll shit, Sir Frederick thought, if he says, "Blast the luck."

  "Sorry about the bad luck," Roger said, "blasted nuisance."

  "Yes," Sir Frederick rumbled, arising once more and pacing to quell the fires. Restraint had never been his forte and, although Swan had warned him not to come on too strongly at Hubble, two days of nothingness, plus the fate of Red Hand 367, had him down to nerve ends.

  Roger was perched in a deep window seat staring into the complex of the yard, when Weed stopped his touring and wheeled about abruptly. "Why in the hell are you refusing to sell me the Donegal Line and that dirty little L.C. & D.!"

  Roger greeted it calmly.

  "Do you mind very much if we talk about it?" Weed continued.

  "Well, I suppose we're going to talk about it whether I mind or not," Roger answered.

  Weed returned to his desk, separated his coattails sharply and found the proper file. "See here, Hubble, both lines are pitifully run down, the rolling stock is dilapidated. We've offered you three times what the whole bloody works is worth and, moreover, we're bailing you out of a nasty situation."

  "I thought I made it perfectly clear to the Brigadier, the lines are not for sale."

  "I suggest that is most unfortunate. Why, even on a partnership basis, I am prepared to sink in thousands to rehabilitate them. It seems to me, sir, you might consider the welfare of your own part of Ulster. This is for the good of the west, you know."

  Roger moved slowly out of the window seat to the desk, sat himself opposite Sir Frederick, stretched his legs and cast a most serious look of inquiry. His gray eyes sought and found Weed's, both men probing, neither flinching. "Really?" Roger said.

  "Most certainly, sir. Any school child can see that the west can only stand to benefit by a trans-Ulster line."

  "As you wish," Roger said.

  One of Sir Frederick's pudgy hands scratched the back of the other pudgy hand.

  "I have an inkling you are being cynical, Lord Roger. See here, are you questioning my motives?"

  "Of course I am," he answered, unfolding himself and returning to the window.

  The first hints of Maxwell Swan's assessment of Roger Hubble were starting to come through. Bloody cold number indeed, Weed thought. "Exactly what are you suggesting?"

  "That concern for the west of Ulster is absolutely the furthest thing from your mind. It's a lot of rubbish."

  Weed betrayed his shock but stifled his anger. "Please go on," he said.

  "Certainly," Roger answered. "Well, you see, one of the tragedies we have here in Ireland is that, outside of Belfast, Britain hasn't invested a shilling into industrializing. We've become a land of medieval fiefdoms about to decay. In our own small way, we in Londonderry are the natural commercial hub of the west. Our shaky little industry and port properly function as railhead, distribution center, et cetera, for the population clear down to Galway. What we will have to contend with in a trans Ulster railroad is a bald-faced attempt to pillage Londonderry, destroy its natural function, steal its assets and reduce it to a drone of Belfast."

  "See here, your cheek is matched only by your imagination," Sir Frederick said, attempting to blow himself up to indignation but quite defensive as one would be who was caught in the act.

  "Spare me that, Sir Frederick," Roger said. "You and I know that if a trans-Ulster becomes a reality your first step will be to undercut our sea freight rates. You'll make it cheaper for England to ship into Belfast and then you'll take it by rail to and from Londonderry. The first thing that will go under will be Londonderry's shipping lines because Belfast will be controlling all freight movement. Our port will become derelict and what little competition we offer in shipbuilding will vanish. Belfast will replace our natural function with Weed ships and Red Hand engines."

  The evening whistle interrupted, followed by the mass movement of workers. Tonight Sir Frederick did not take up his usual station before the window to receive the homage of his legions.

  "There's the reason for it all," Roger said, pointing to the passing workmen. "Belfast is the heart of Protestant Ireland, Londonderry is hinterland. In order to retain an ironclad position Belfast has to monopolize jobs and industry. You can't allow Londonderry or Catholic Ireland to siphon off any of the prosperity. It's all a Belfast plot to lock it up, rails, ports, factories. When you have destroyed competitive possibility by your boundless gluttony and reduced us to dependency, we'll have to exist on your crumbs. You do see my point of view, do you not, Sir Frederick?"

  What Frederick Weed saw was a direct confrontation with a man as ruthless as himself. "Your thesis is mad, utterly without merit," he said.

  "Perhaps," Roger agreed. "Let us say my suspicions are absolutely unfounded. Nonetheless it has crossed my mind. I can't take a chance later on that I made a wrong guess, can I?"

  "The problem with you people in the west is that you're a bit frenzied out there. You're apt to go into fantasies."

  "Oh, no doubt we're nervous in our isolation. But after the next election you good people here in Belfast won't be so ready to write Londonderry off."

  Writing the west off had long been part of the scheme. "I'm not sure I follow you," Weed said cautiously.

  "Parnell is going to beat the spots off us. We both know that. Good Lord, we may even lose the Commons seat within the earldom. When Parnell and the Pope's brass band go marching into Westminster he's going to tie it up into parliamentary knots."

  "Yes," Weed conceded, "he's a clever son of a bitch all right. I wish I had him working for me, I can tell you that."

  "So what are your plans, Sir Frederick?"

  "We're thinking beyond the election. Parnell’s victory, as nothing else, will bring every diverse Protestant element into unity out of the common fear of Home Rule. We've begun the Union Preservation Party. It's one answer."

  "And throw up a wall around Ulster?" Roger interrupted.

  "That's right. Cold reality is that the three southern provinces of Ireland are lost. By your own definition, they have decayed under a defunct land system. The south is topheavy with Catholics."

  Then the game," Roger said, "is to keep Parnell from getting Ulster, right?"

  "That's the game," Weed said softly. "We are making preparations to turn loose the preachers to brand R for Reformation on the forehead of every newborn. We'll lean on our pious Presbyterian brothers in Scotland for support. We'll twist the balls off Westminster."

  "How?" Roger asked. "How?"

  "By letting them know the Empire begins and ends here in Ulster. Lose Ulster, lose it all. We'll force a permanent union with England . . ."

  "Even if it means taking Ulster out of Ireland?" Roger pressed.

  "Is that what you want to hear, Lord Roger?"

  "I want to know how you intend to hold Ulster. We are still outnumbered by Catholics here, are we not?"

  Weed became uncomfortable. He knew full well what Roger Hubble was getting at.

  "Shall I tell you what you have in mind, Sir Frederick?"

  "Please do . . ."

  "You are ready to cut down the size of Ulster, are you not? You are planning for an Ulster where you won't be out bred and outnumbered by Catholics, and that means giving up the west."

  "I'm not so sure that we're ready to cede anything," Weed fenced.

  "But it's crossed your mind . . . letting go of the west, hasn't it?"

  "Of course it has. A small, isolated Protestant community might not be held in a sea of hostile natives. That is one of the reasons we are racing to establish Belfast's pre-eminence . . . before the fall.
We have to set boundaries of a workable Ulster, one we can hold."

  "And Londonderry is expendable?"

  "For a workable Ulster, it might well be."

  "Ah then, Sir Frederick," Roger said without missing a beat, "I suppose you are fully prepared to go before a convention of Orange Grand Masters and advise them that their holy city, Londonderry, has been written off by Sir Frederick himself . . . and for business reasons. What do you think they'll say about good old Sir Frederick then?"

  "What's your bloody point!" Weed snapped, unable to contain the rise of anger.

  "I suggest you can tell the Jew he can never go to Jersualem and the Moslem he can never go to Mecca, but God have mercy on you if you tell the Orangeman he cannot parade around Derry's walls."

  Frederick Weed paled before the man he had so sorely underestimated. He felt a rush of strange sensation that might have been fear. He knew by the eager, zealous fire in those gray eyes that Hubble would take him on in his own Orange bailiwicks.

  "Are you trying to blackmail us into keeping Londonderry?"

  "Of course I am," Roger purred. "You've locked in with England to save yourself and we're locking in with you for the same reason. You have your points to sell-bastion of the Empire, loyalty, industrial importance. We have our point also. We are the holy city of Londonderry, without which there can be no workable Ulster. You blackmail England into a union, we blackmail you."

  "You don't go in for any horse shit, do you, Hubble?" Weed said.

  Roger changed his dire mood to boyishness abruptly, shoved his hands in his pockets and bounced off his toes with a sigh. "It's all part of Ulster and Ulster being part of England. What we are doing is planning a future in which an Irish province is to be severed from Ireland. Whatever method, whatever pretext . . . threats against our motherland, religious rage, whatever."

  Roger asked if Sir Frederick minded if he helped himself to a cigar. The brand carried Weed's personal band but Roger knew it to be Villar y Villar, Barquinero Havanas or perhaps Exceptionales Rothschild. He clipped the ends, lit up and blew meditatingly.

  "We're all hung in this thing together, you know. Londonderry, Belfast, all together."

  Weed did not answer but he knew that Roger Hubble had joined that elitist group, now three in number, whom he could not intimidate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  An informal dinner was attended by two dozen of Sir Frederick's cronies, fellow industrialists and gentry in his "gentlemen's" lodge of the Orange Order. A like number of executives and engineers came from Weed Ship & Iron. Caroline, the lone female, played hostess.

  It was held in the Sunhouse, one of Rathweed Hall's celebrated outbuildings, a one-eighth scale-size replica of the great Crystal Palace that had housed the industrial exhibition in London three and a half decades earlier.

  The Sunhouse contained a small theater which allowed the late Livia and, later on, Caroline to hold private concerts, recitations, lectures and theatrical presentations, and himself to stage boxing and wrestling matches. It also served as an Orange Hall, the most pretentious in Ulster, for Sir Frederick's "gentlemen's" lodge.

  Texture of the conversation at Sir Frederick's table was a bitter grousing over the upcoming election, which had been reduced to a single question, the Irish question.

  The old dander was up in Ellery Chillingham, Marquess of Monaghan, and Thurlow Ives, the largest owner of power looms in Belfast. A toilet room cartoon was passed around depicting "Paddy," the Irish anarchist, an apelike creature, prodding Parnell into knifing noble Britannia, who in turn protected a fragile, weeping Hibernia. This set the acid tone . . . Gladstone Liberal sellout . . . papist agitators daring to run for Parliament . . . taxation on Belfast industry if Home Rule became a reality . . . should have kept Parnell in prison when they had him there . . . since when does one give one's natives the right to vote one more land act and our Irish properties would be done for . . . and all this under the direction of Rome … "If we can't control the Irish rabble in our home islands," Lord Monaghan wheezed, "how the devil can we expect to control them in India and elsewhere? I say the battle line is here and here we must hold."

  "Hear, hear," Thurlow responded, rapping glass with spoon. "Hear, hear."

  Sir Frederick strangely said little. Roger watched his behavior curiously.

  "Splendid chutney," Ives complimented Caroline, chewing his cud. "Do have your chef send Martha the recipe."

  "Just mango and Bengal Club from Harrod's," she replied.

  Weed sank deeper into thought as Lord Monaghan puffed up for a second go at Parnell.

  After dinner the party sojourned to the Sunhouse's main room, a convertible theater like affair under a high glass dome. A boxing ring had been erected with a proper number of tables about it to accommodate the guests. Tobacco smoke set up a sporting atmosphere during the serving of cognac. Entertainment would be supplied by a stable of Jamaican fighters en route to London, who would be opposed by the best of the local lads. Caroline took a seat between Roger and her father closest to the ring and lit up a small cigar. Roger contained his chagrin.

  The first fight was announced. A pair of lighter-weight pepper pots displayed great pugilistic skill, pecking away at each other without inflicting serious damage during the scheduled six rounds. In the second bout the Jamaican took a fearful thumping, spurting blood down on their table. He rallied gamely to cries of "Good lad" but had to be dragged bodily from the ring at the end of ten rounds. Roger was far more fascinated by Caroline's presence than by the fights. During the final event he became completely fixed on her. The last Jamaican was a powerful heavyweight of tawny color who entered the ring shining with perspiration which accented arms and body of muscled magnificence. His black eyes were deeply set behind tobacco-brown cheeks and peered deadly.

  Upon introduction, he bowed in each direction, then looked directly at Caroline, who looked directly at him. He bowed to her, expanding his chest and bending his lips up slightly. She watched with delicate eyes every nervous tapping together of his gloves, each deeply sucked breath, each bounce off the toes as the rules were explained. His opponent was a well-known Belfast war horse, a squat docker with a middling record and body full of tattoos.

  Black lay against white as they clinched and grunted and snorted behind the thuds of their punches. Caroline's eyes narrowed to a half-shut wild kind of trance as they wrestled over her, sweat mingling with sweat, each straining to hang on with a desperation to stave off annihilation. Her face twitched ever so slightly each time the black man was hit, when he grimaced, when blood spurted down his nostrils, when his eyes rolled white after a sharp clout. Her breath quickened and deepened as they squared off and slugged.

  It came to a sudden end when the Belfaster walked into a right hand that nearly decapitated him and he sank to the canvas, seemingly in slow motion. Applause, cries of "Well done" and "Bully" as the black man walked around the ring again, bowing, woozed, puffed, gnarled. His last bow was a contemptuous one for a mutual orgasmic instant in Caroline's direction. Roger Hubble was enthralled.

  "Nightcap?" Sir Frederick said, closing himself in his den with Roger.

  “Very good."

  "Lovely sport," Sir Frederick said. "I think the big nigger will do right well in London. Cheers."

  "Cheers."

  "Frankly, I liked it better under the old London rules, bare knuckles, fight to the finish. Queensberry has made a child's game of it."

  Yes, Roger thought, no doubt Caroline would have liked that better too. "I must say, Sir Frederick, you were a bit pensive earlier, I mean about the election."

  "Lord Monaghan is a damned fool. He and all the others continue to give it that stiff upper lip horse shit and divide our strength by putting up candidates in places where there is no possibility of winning. It's the same way he hangs onto his bloody land. His sort won't take an honest look at what's going on. Well, they'll all wake up the day after the election."

  Most of his life, Frederick Weed had talked dow
n to people. It was quite difficult to get around to squaring off with someone who was an unfearing equal. "Roger," he began slowly, "I've given a lot of thought to our conversation of yesterday. About the need to salvage Londonderry in the Ulster scheme. I'd like to come out and visit you, look things over, see if there are ways we can work together."

  "I'd be delighted," Roger answered.

  "I mean the Union Preservation Party is just getting off the ground. It might be well to include some new thinking about the west in the master plan."

  Roger nodded, acknowledging his victory modestly.

  "Suppose I invite myself up to Hubble Manor over Apprentice Boys Day. Do you have a real fire-breathing preacher out there? One to set a keynote to the future? I mean the kind who can turn a congregation into a whimpering mass?"

  "Oh, we've nothing of the Belfast tent variety. Solid Presbyterians, solid Anglicans."

  "I've a man for you, Oliver Cromwell Maclvor. He'll stir all the righteous juices. A real pious pulpit pounder. Why don't you arrange to have him preach at the Cathedral?"

  Roger smiled slightly. "The baptism of the west?"

  "Yes, something like that."

  "On one condition," Roger said.

  "And what is that?"

  "That you bring Caroline with you."

  "I think you'd better arrange that bit of business yourself," Sir Frederick said.

  *

  Rathweed Hall's museum ran directly off the main terrace, a square building with an open center court. Each corridor ran a hundred and thirty feet in length, covered with a glassed lancet archway to draw natural light. The flooring, different in each corridor, had been created by Doulton Ceramic in London, and at the end of each corridor was a stained glass window executed after old Bosch designs.

  Roger was impressed by Caroline's in-depth knowledge of the Weed art collection. Nearly everything about her was impressive; even that which he had found shocking was shockingly impressive. Roger was annoyed. How did one treat a female as clever as oneself? He had an awful feeling that Caroline never relinquished her upper hand, was always in control and damned well did what she pleased. The bastion seemed too ominous for storming.