Tommy and I had smaller rooms and our bathroom was out on the landing. While the bath water was hot, the house was cold, and I moved very quickly into the bed and searched with my feet for the hot water bottle. I thought of the Marines sleeping in the quonset huts as I listened to the wind hit the two windows. I think I was asleep by nine o’clock but then wide-awake a few hours later. I turned on the bedside lamp. Two a.m. and I had to get up. Mrs. Nicholson had pointed to the chamber pot next to the bed. “Women of our age,” she said, and didn’t finish the sentence. Our age, I thought. She’s got a good twenty years on me. I can still walk to the toilet. Freezing on the landing now and I was glad for my flannel nightgown and wool knitted slippers. Just as I put my hand on the doorknob, a cold draft swept over me as if a window had been opened.
At the end of the hall the window frame was slowly going up. No one else was awake. The window was moving on its own. A ghost? Poltergeist? One of the vanquished O’Kane chiefs returning? Crazy thoughts I know, but here I was shivering and feeling a certain urgency—Get in the toilet, shut the door, my rational mind said, but I couldn’t stop staring at the window. Then I saw one leg cross the windowsill, then another, and a whole man slid onto the landing. He saw me.
“Don’t scream,” he said. A Marine, and from the stripes on his uniform, an officer. I saw the shamrock patch. He wasn’t as tall as Duggan but another handsome fellow, and now he was grinning at me. “I’m George Ludke. Captain George Ludke,” he said. “You must be with Mrs. Roosevelt.”
“Yes,” I said. “My name is Nora Kelly.” And we actually shook hands. He turned and put down the window.
“There’s a very handy lattice that goes to this window,” he said. “Mrs. Nicholson doesn’t understand that an eleven p.m. curfew is too early for a Marine. She wants to make sure we’re all on time for Mass.”
“Mass?” I said. “Tomorrow’s not Sunday.”
“Mrs. Nicholson has a daily Mass said in her private chapel here in the house.”
“What?”
“Oh yes, the Nicholsons are Catholics. The chapel’s above the library. One of the monks bicycles over from the monastery every morning to say Mass at seven a.m.”
“I’d never have thought…,” I said. “I mean landowners in this country are Protestant or English or both.”
“Not the Nicholsons.”
Like the Lynches, I thought, remembering Granny Honora’s stories about their landlord in Galway who somehow had remained Catholic.
“But I thought a family called Skipton took this property.”
“That was a long time ago. Get Mrs. Nicholson to tell you the story. They gambled it away and the estate passed through many owners before the Nicholsons bought it.”
“Mr. Nicholson must have been a brilliant man to become a judge as a Catholic,” I said.
“The military has advised us not to talk about religion in Northern Ireland. Funny thing is most Marines are Catholics. You should see the Sunday services at St. Mary’s, the chapel up the road. Well good night,” he said. “I won’t delay you any longer.”
“Right,” I said and went into the toilet. Was ever anything predictable in Ireland?
I was already up and dressed when I heard the bugle sound for Reveille. It was still dark out but I followed the smell of coffee down the stairs to the dining room. I found Major Duggan and Captain Ludke having breakfast at a long table with two other men who stood up when I came in.
“This is Captain Donald Kennedy,” he said, “and Sergeant Major Carlton Kent. I understand you’ve met Captain Ludke.” He smiled.
“Good morning, ma’am,” the other two said.
“Please sit down,” I said.
“Help yourself,” Duggan said and pointed to the sideboard where there was a coffeepot, a large chafing dish full of eggs, and a platter with bacon and sausages. The whole service was silver. And there were china plates piled up at the end of the buffet.
“Mrs. Nicholson insists that we use her dishes. She said that since she’s our hostess, meals must be served properly.”
I piled up eggs and bacon on my plate and sat down next to him.
“Mrs. Roosevelt?” Duggan said.
“Still asleep, I think,” I said. “She could use a lie in. She’s been going pretty hard.”
“Oh there you are, Father,” Ludke said to the man who had just walked in. “I was afraid you might have been arrested crossing the border.”
“No, just got a late start. The guards know me,” he said. He smiled at me. “Are you traveling with Mrs. Roosevelt?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Mrs. Nicholson is chuffed about entertaining the First Lady,” he said. “I’m Father Matthew by the way.”
“Nora Kelly,” I said.
He took off his heavy black cloak and I saw he was wearing a monk’s robe. He reached into a slit in the habit and brought out a packet, which he set on the sideboard.
“You were running low on butter,” he said to Major Duggan.
Father Matthew sat down but didn’t take any breakfast. “You’re fasting,” I said, “and I’ve already eaten half my eggs. I guess I can’t go to Communion.”
“But you may. Bishop Farren has given a dispensation from fasting to all members of the American forces and those associated with them. So if you wish to receive, you can. The bishop is military chaplain for all of the North so his word goes.”
“Too bad we couldn’t get Mike and Jerry,” I said to Duggan. “I think they’d like to participate.”
“No problem,” Duggan said. “Sergeant Major, would you put in a call to the BOQ and say we need the air crew with Mrs. Roosevelt here by zero seven hundred.”
And that’s how we ended up all together at Mass in the Beech Hill House private chapel. It was a jewel of a place with stained glass windows, a carved wooden altar, and four pews. I wasn’t surprised that Tommy Thompson joined us but was astounded when Eleanor Roosevelt came in. And she knew when to stand and sit and kneel. Of course an Episcopal mass was pretty much the same as ours.
Father Matthew’s Latin had an Irish lilt. He was a good celebrant. He didn’t dawdle nor preach a long sermon. He simply welcomed us. “As today is the birthday of the Marine Corps, this Mass is being said for all Marines and I’m invoking both Columcille and the Druids. In Irish, Derry is Doire Columcille, ‘the oak grove of St. Columcille.’ He was the sixth century O’Neill prince who became a monk, bringing Christianity to Ireland and, through his followers, to most of Europe. But of course Druids had gathered in these oak groves for thousands of years.
Mike was next to me in the pew, and when it was time to go to Communion he stepped back and let me precede him. We knelt at the altar rail side by side. St. Columcille, I prayed, you’re the patron of Derry, take a good look at Mike here, and protect him.
That was our last peaceful moment. Finally I was acting as Mrs. Roosevelt’s official photographer, and every minute of her day was scheduled. Mike, Denis, and Jerry left in the car that was waiting for them. Mass was over at seven thirty and the sun was just rising as we left the house. Now I could see the rows of quonset huts that filled the grounds. Had to be at least one hundred. All the same. Corrugated steel shaped into a half circle; each one about twenty feet long.
“Since you’ll be meeting the Marines at the ball tonight we decided not to interrupt their training to have them assemble now,” Major Duggan said.
“Quite right,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
We could see that there was quite a bit of activity going on around the huts and in the fields beyond that. I would have liked to investigate, but a car had already pulled up for us.
“Well at least let me take a shot of you with the Marines who are staying here,” I said, and lined up Duggan, Ludke, Kennedy, and Kent with the First Lady under the Beech Hill House portico.
“Wait a minute,” Major Duggan said. He stepped inside and a minute later escorted Mrs. Nicholson out and placed her next to Eleanor Roosevelt. Two formidable wome
n, I thought as I looked through my lens. I wonder do the Nazis understand what they’re up against.
We spent the rest of the morning in the Naval hospital at a place called Creevagh. Our guide was a corpsman named Joseph Earhart Sardo, who told us he was a cousin of Amelia Earhart, who had landed in a field just beyond the hospital.
“So many coincidences seem to happen in Ireland,” Sardo said. “We have fellows here whose ships were torpedoed,” he went on. “They survived days in the water before they were rescued, and suffered from frostbite and hypothermia. The doctors here have devised new treatments that saved their feet and legs from amputation. Our medics have also made advances in taking care of shrapnel wounds. We get the flyers who’ve been shot down too.”
Mrs. Roosevelt took time with each of the men in the wards, bending over listening as they told their stories. In my photographs I focused on her face, trying to show how intensely she took in every word. “I was on a destroyer escort,” one sailor said. “Built in ninety days. Our decks were only a few inches thick. Don’t protect much against a torpedo.” Hard to hear from this sailor about how the torpedo ripped through the ship.
The hospital was preparing to handle many more battlefield causalities after the invasion of Europe began. “And to tell you the truth it can’t come soon enough,” Sardo said.
Next we toured the ship repair yard where Commander Logan guided us through acres and acres of activity. “This is a state-of-the-art facility,” he said. “We employ civilians as well as Navy technicians. More than a thousand in the workforce, both men and women. We’ve got plenty of Rosie the Riveters here. When a ship arrives after crossing the North Atlantic it can be pretty beat up, even if it hasn’t been attacked. The sea itself can cause a lot of damage.”
He took us to an area where what must have been a five-hundred-foot-long ship was in dry dock. More than thirty welders with shields over their faces were repairing large holes in the hull of the ship. Sparks spit from their tools.
“A hailstorm caused those,” Logan said. “They were lucky to have made it into port.”
I got a great picture of Eleanor Roosevelt in the midst of all this activity. When I asked if any of the workers would like to have their picture taken with the First Lady, a number stepped forward. Two of them lifted their visors. Women.
“Fantastic,” I said, and set the two up next to Eleanor Roosevelt. “Why don’t you put on a visor and hold a welding torch,” I said to Mrs. Roosevelt. Right away one of the women offered her visor to the First Lady. But she nodded no.
I remembered that Ed had once said funny hats have gotten many a politician in trouble. Especially Indian headdresses.
Commander Logan spoke to the group. “I’d like you to know that I had a letter from a ship’s captain who said that you turned around his vessel in less time than any Stateside repair yard could have. Why don’t you tell the First Lady where you’re from.”
The welders gathered around. Derry, said some, Tyrone, others chimed in, but there were a good few who answered Donegal, Cavan, Leitrim, and even Dublin. I photographed each of them with Mrs. Roosevelt and Logan. As we walked away, the commander said there was a lot of nonsense put out by the British suggesting that the IRA would try to put saboteurs in the repair yard.
“We’ve never had a bit of trouble,” he said.
“Major Duggan told us the same thing,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
“He should know. He deals with the Irish Army all the time. You’ll meet some of their officers at tonight’s ball,” he said as we walked back toward the car.
“But don’t you think the Irish Free State is making a mistake by remaining neutral?” Eleanor Roosevelt asked.
“I’m afraid that’s above my pay grade,” Logan said.
5
“Our ballroom has been closed off for years and years,” Mrs. Nicholson said. We were in her bedroom. Modest enough. Part of the old servants’ quarters. She’d turned over the grander spaces to the Marines. I was doing up the at least two dozen pearl buttons along the back of her lavender crepe dress and not making a great job of it. The material was very thin and I was afraid I’d rip it. “No dances since before the Great War,” she said, “when Ireland was one country and my son was still alive.”
I’d been surprised that Mrs. Nicholson had asked for my help in dressing.
“Arthritis,” she’d said, showing me her hands, the fingers bent, the knuckles enlarged, “and I can’t reach behind my back anymore, and of course I no longer have my maid.” Now Mrs. Nicholson was a good soul and a Catholic, so not your typical lady of the manor, and yet I felt a little uneasy as I carefully pushed each button through the hand-sewn hole.
My aunt Máire had been a maid in a big house similar to this one and had been raped by the landlord. I should be staying in one of the tenants’ cottages, I thought. Except Major James Duggan, one of us, an Irish-American in every inch of that six-foot-four frame was in charge here now. It was our house in a way. Still paying rent though, as I’d discovered.
“Couldn’t just take over the estate,” Duggan had told me. “Not the American way.”
“We had three hundred people at that last ball,” Mrs. Nicholson was telling me, “but Major Duggan said there’ll be twice as many there tonight. He’s gotten the boys to build an extension out the back through the French doors, a kind of marquee. A tent really but they’d figured some way to heat it.”
“They’re very handy these Marines,” I said.
“At our last ball,” Mrs. Nicholson said, “we had half of Donegal here. Hard to think of ourselves as separate from the rest of Ireland now.”
“Maybe not forever,” I said.
“We can hope,” she said.
I’d buttoned her up now and she moved over to a small vanity and sat down in front of the mirror. I was surprised to see her take a box of powder and a puff from her drawer and begin to pat it on her face. “I used to add rouge and just a touch of lipstick, but at my age it can look like you’re decorating a corpse. Thank you very much, Nora. Now you’d better go change yourself.”
“This is it, Mrs. Nicholson. I’m wearing this suit.” It was the same gray wool that had taken me through the entire trip, though I had rinsed out my white silk Chanel blouse, which, I thought, still looked good after twenty years.
“Oh, my dear, the men expect us to be festive. Of course the Wrens will be in uniform, but I think the rest of us must make an effort.”
“I didn’t bring any party clothes, Mrs. Nicholson, and you look good enough for both of us.” And she did. The lavender crepe fell to the floor in soft folds, and now she asked me to fasten a diamond necklace around her neck which, if the stones weren’t real, were very good imitations. She tried to brush her hair, but I took over and gave her a French roll instead of her usual bun. Still something of the girl who had danced in the days I’d heard Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz describe. Ireland before the First War, before anyone could imagine civilized European nations slaughtering each other until they’d extinguished a whole generation. Home Rule seemed inevitable and Ireland would be a nation once again, though still safely tied to Mother England, and all would be well. Except—well not an evening to think about except.
“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Nicholson. I’m sixty-three years old and everyone’s aunt and this suit will do.”
“No, my dear, you are wrong. I was not enamored of Queen Victoria, but she maintained her style to the very end. The judge and I went down to Dublin for her visit in 1900. Rather embarrassing really. She had invited herself. Most of the city officials, including the mayor, were Nationalists with no love for the crown but what could they do? And she stayed for three whole weeks ensconced in the viceroy’s lodge. They were desperate to keep her amused. I attended one of the many receptions. Funny enough we were there the day Maud Gonne stole the queen’s thunder. The British had arranged a big do for the children, but attendance had not been good. Then Maud Gonne and her Daughters of Erin sponsored the
ir own day out and thirty thousand children turned up. Plenty of sweets and games and music. The judge and I wished we’d brought the family down with us.”
I wanted to tell her that Maud and I had been good friends in Paris and in Ireland, too, but she was off in her own memories.
“My point is Queen Victoria never referred to her age or allowed anyone else to mention it. She was the monarch full stop. And though she dressed all in black, it was very expensive black with lots of lace and plenty of diamonds. She never did stop mourning her German prince, but then she herself was German. All those Hanovers on her father’s side, and her mother was a German princess, who, they say, never even learned English. There were some tales about how this Irish officer ran her mother’s household and, well, I did examine at the queen’s face to see if maybe she did look a bit Irish. Gossip can be cruel. The same kind of scandal attached to Victoria herself. There was a manservant called Brown on whom she became very dependent. My dear Nora, I’m going round and around to say that a woman’s age does not define her. You are as young now as you ever will be and you’re not going to the ball in that suit.”
She got up and walked across the hallway and opened a door. A blast of camphor hit us and I could see shrouded garments hanging from a rod.
“I appreciate your concern,” I said, “but…” Now how could I put this? “I’m not Cinderella. I worked with some of the greatest couturiers in Paris. If I wanted to dress up, I’d find a way and…” But she was holding a dress out toward me. Not the froufrou ball gown I’d feared, but a plain green sheath with full-length sleeves and a scooped neck. I had to reach out and touch it. The material caught the hall light.
“Irish poplin,” she said. Though green, there were shimmers of blue, red even on the surface. “It will suit you,” Mrs. Nicholson said. It did.
I realized I must have lost a few pounds on the trip because it fell down easily over my hips and I didn’t have to suck my stomach in. I twisted my hair up on top of my head and accepted a pair of earrings from Mrs. Nicholson. Emeralds or some facsimile. We looked at each other in the mirror and smiled. I felt as if we were poking the war in the eye. I thought of Mariann walking down the aisle in her kelly green suit. We were lighting a candle against the gloom.
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