The bishop’s eyes crinkled benignly. ‘Ah, well, I’ve heard a lot of reference to this Secret Protocol. I’ve seen nothing in writing, but then if I had I suppose it wouldn’t be secret. Anyway, everyone knows about it. A promise by Dublin to cooperate with the implementing of selective internment for suspected IRA members for three years?’
‘It’s been rumoured,’ Sir Ralph confirmed.
‘And Dublin removing Articles Two and Three from its constitution, which lay claim to the Six Counties?’
Abe Powers nodded.
‘Then, if you will indulge an old man, allow me to remind you of something you may have overlooked. In 1921 the Irish
Government accepted the North’s right to self-determination in return for dominion status. Self-determination for the North was again accepted by Dublin in 1925 in exchange for British economic aid. In 1985 they did the same thing in order to get the Anglo-Irish Conference. Then last year they recognised Northern Ireland’s right to self-determination in exchange for negotiating rights for Republican paramilitaries and for an All Ireland Forum.’
Abe Powers frowned.
Bishop McLaverty took a sip of his whisky. ‘Only an Irishman would sell the same horse to the same man four times. And only an Englishman would buy it!’
The American senator stared and swallowed hard.
‘Oh, Dublin will accept British support in the EC for all the aid it can get. And it will go through the motions of trying to change its constitution. But that means a referendum and we all know the results of those depend on how you put the question. Not to mention where Dublin puts its propaganda effort. My humble prediction, gentlemen, is that it will never happen. Even if it does, the intent and will of all true Irishmen to be united as one will remain.’
‘And joint internment?’ Sir Ralph asked, guessing the reply he was going to get.
‘Dublin might feel obliged to appear to go along with that, but they won’t have their heart in it. And the Irish legal system can be fickle at the best of times. You’ve never yet had proper security cooperation with Eire and you never will. I’m afraid the men of violence may suffer a setback or two, but they’ll still be there. Stronger than ever. And your embryo nation, like the offspring of the Devil himself, will be strangled at birth with its own umbilical cord!’
Small specks of spittle had gathered around the old man’s mouth, and Abe Powers found himself staring at it with a kind of morbid fascination.
‘You see,’ McLaverty continued with a benign smile, ‘what you have created here at Trafalgar House is a type of monstrous hybrid that denies its natural parentage. It is a denial of everything Irishmen have fought for through the ages. To free itself from the shackles of British occupation. Is this really what the martyrs of Ireland — from the Easter Rising to Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers — all died for? A little offshore nonentity like the Isle of Man or the Caymans. Or those who have spent the best part of their adult life in the cages of the Kesh — ask them. You’ll have your answer. No, dear friends, you will not get peace.’
‘Does this mean a return to the bombing?’ Sir Ralph asked, scarcely bothering to keep the contempt from his voice.
‘Sure as a man of God, I’d know nothing about that. I have no influence in such matters.’
Abe Powers said: ‘You appear set solidly against everything that has so far been agreed here at Trafalgar House, Bishop, yet you have made no alternative proposals of your own.’
A gentle smile. ‘I have not been asked.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘Well, the answer has been staring successive British governments in the face for years, certainly since the latest troubles started. But it will take a British Prime Minister who is a man of immense vision and exceptional courage.’
‘Courage to do what?’ Powers asked.
‘To tear up his bogus alliance of convenience with the Orangemen of Ulster. To stand before the world stage at the United Nations and admit the historical wrongdoing that has been done to the freemen of Ireland by Britain. Not just to Catholics, but Protestants too. They have been shamelessly used to fuel your industrial revolution and to fight your wars. The courage to tear down the border and to invite UN troops to replace British soldiers on the streets while the new constitution and arrangements for All-Ireland elections are being made.’
‘That’s a non-starter and you know it,’ Sir Ralph snapped, his patience finally breaking.
Tray why?’ McLaverty asked. ‘It is the simplest, most honourable answer of all. Why is it, as that clergyman and writer Sydney Smith once said, that “the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots”. ‘
‘A lot has changed since the days of the Black and Tans,’ Sir Ralph growled.
‘Or the B-Specials?’ the old man countered quickly.
Abe Powers waved his hand in an attempt to referee. ‘But surely there’d be civil war — the Ulster Protestants would never stand for it.’
‘That view has been grossly exaggerated,’ the bishop replied reasonably. ‘Ask any Orangeman why he doesn’t want to be a part of Free Ireland and I guarantee he will cite contraception and the price of beer. He does not really know why, it’s just what his father’s told him and his father before him.’ He paused for another sip of his whisky. ‘Did you know that the first Irishman to lead the fight for freedom from Britain — the famous Wolfe Tone — was a Protestant? We have nothing against Protestants, there are thousands of them in Eire, living peacefully and prosperously with their neighbours. We, the Irish Irish, welcome the Protestant Irish with open arms. All this silly talk about Independent Ulster — well, it’s much ado about nothing.’ He looked directly at Powers. Sir Ralph had fallen into a hostile and truculent silence. ‘Persuade the British, Senator — and you can, because they’ve tried everything else — and you’ll go down as the greatest true Irishman in history. It could even mean the Nobel Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised. And I think you’ll find neither America nor the EC will stint in its generosity to a new United Ireland
The old man’s words faded towards the end and his eyelids flickered momentarily.
‘Are you all right?’ Powers asked.
The eyes opened again. ‘I’m not as young as I was and this is an excellent malt. It really is past my bedtime.’
Powers helped McLaverty to his feet, handed him his stick and showed him to the door.
‘We warned you it was a bad idea,’ Sir Ralph Maynard told the American as he left a few minutes later. ‘We’ve heard it all before.’
Then perhaps you should have listened, the senator thought I to himself.
He turned down the main light and stared out of the tall window. Under the full moon, the finger streams of the Avon were gleaming like quicksilver.
| It had been uncanny, listening to the voice of the old clergy man. As though his own grandmother had been talking to him through a medium.
He felt tears in his eyes. Sadness? No, he knew what it was. Shame. Shame that he had betrayed his own people. His own grandmother. Shame that he had bowed to British pressure and taken the line of least resistance.
But now cracks were starting to appear in the plans for an Independent Ulster and he wasn’t sure the consensus would hold together for much longer. And if it didn’t, as McLaverty had pointed out, there was only one thing left to try.
Could the British be persuaded to do it? God knows they’d Ś tried everything else in the past two years and it had all come to nothing. Perhaps they were just weary enough to go that extra mile. To think the unthinkable.
If he applied American pressure now? The President had little love for the Brits and his wife, Powers knew, was sympathetic to Irish aspirations for unity.