That must be where the colored soldiers we met in London were going, I thought. “Mrs. Roosevelt just might change her schedule to visit with them,” I said.
“Run across the border there, head west and Bob’s your uncle,” Seán said.
“And Major Duggan will go along with this?” I asked.
“He knows that the propaganda the Brits are putting out is ridiculous. They say the Irish are secretly supporting the Germans. That neutrality is cowardly. They claim that U-boats are being fueled along our west coast, as if we had those kinds of facilities or even petrol. Totally false. Roosevelt said the Irish were like a man who puts his head under the covers hoping the fight will be over. But that’s not it at all. We have to be neutral. There’s really no choice. How could we defend ourselves against the Nazis? The Brits would take over again. The chief thinks Eleanor Roosevelt will listen to him. She’s an intelligent woman. Reminds me of my mother. Though very different in style,” he said.
“Very different.” Oh dear God, Maud and Eleanor Roosevelt. Now that would be an encounter. One so ebullient—actress, muse of Yeats, his unrequited love; and Eleanor Roosevelt—earnest, respectable, mother of six, helpmate, social crusader. And yet Seán was right. Both women came from privileged backgrounds, but they’d thrown their hats into the ring of the suffering and dispossessed. Very different hats, of course.
“Mrs. Roosevelt might take a detour to meet the Negro troops at Carrickmore. Maybe. But I want something too, Seán. Do you remember Peter Keeley, the professor at the Irish College in Paris?”
“I do. He was kind to me when I was a boy, and I knew him when he fought with the Galway Brigade during the War of Independence. But, I thought he…” Seán stopped.
“I know,” I said. “He was killed by a student of his after Michael Collins was assassinated. The young man was from Cork, and his family was friendly with the Collinses. I understand that he came to find Peter at the IRA camp in the Connemara mountains and killed him.”
“I remember hearing something about that. But, Nora, so many unfortunate incidents during those times. We don’t speak of them anymore.”
“Ná habair tada?” I said, trying to put a good dose of bitterness into the words.
But Seán only nodded. “You’ve got it in one,” he said.
Seán looked down the table, then back at me. “Was the professor a special friend of yours?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m sorry for your troubles, but we’ve more immediate concerns.”
“I want to visit his grave. I’d say he was buried in Connemara, near Carna, his home place. I’ve been trying to find the place for twenty years. If I were to arrange for Eleanor Roosevelt to come to Galway, could you find a way for me to go to the graveyard? As I remember, Carna is not that far from Galway, and while she and de Valera are meeting, could you take me there?”
“Mmmm,” Seán said. “It’s far enough from the general’s house over bad roads, but the chief will have his plane. I suppose a short hop would be possible, but we’d have to have better information.”
“There’s a man who would know. Cyril Peterson.”
“Cyril? He’s a part of this?”
“He was with Peter when it happened. He came to Paris to tell me Peter was dead, but he didn’t seem to know where he’d been buried. I wrote to him and got one letter back but he basically told me to forget the past. Never heard from him again.”
“Cyril’s a hard man to keep track of.”
“But he was a de Valera man. Surely, you could find him. And then I’ll—”
“So you’re bargaining with me, Nora Kelly? I’ve heard that you’d become part of the Chicago political machine. Learned a bit of horse trading, have you? Let me see what I can do.”
“I’d have to convince the First Lady to change her schedule. We’re due to fly out at first light.”
“Not if there was a bit of mechanical trouble with your aircraft.”
“For God’s sake, Seán!”
“Oh, very minor, Nora. Easily fixed.”
In the end, Seán didn’t have to sabotage the plane. Ireland herself took a hand. The cloak of invisibility settled over Derry, just before dawn.
Father Matthew managed to get to Beech Hill, but said he’d hardly been able to see his hand in front of his face. As we went in to breakfast, he took me aside. Seán had a message for me. He’d found the information of my friend that I’d been looking for. Our trip was on.
6
“We’re socked in,” Mike told us the next morning. “The whole coast has such a low ceiling we can’t take off. It’s supposed to last for at least forty-eight hours.”
Commander Logan had come with Mike to deliver the news. We were all dressed and ready in the entrance hall of Beech Hill House.
“Two days. But that’s impossible,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “I must get back to Washington.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Commander Logan said.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose I can make myself useful here. I did have some ideas about how your hospital might be run more efficiently.” I saw Logan look over at Major Duggan.
“That’s very kind of you,” Logan said, “but Major Duggan has mentioned that you didn’t have a chance to meet any of the children here. Very bright kids. St. Columb’s College is a fine boys’ school and Thornhill School teaches the girls. Very high academic standards. The children of some of Derry’s finest families attend them.”
“Those that can pay,” I said.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Free education ends here at age twelve.”
“So only the well-to-do go on to high school?” Mrs. Roosevelt asked. She was shaking her head. “I’d like to meet the children that don’t have a chance for education.”
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Roosevelt,” Commander Logan began, but Major Duggan spoke up.
“George Ludke and Don Kennedy and some of the other Marines started a baseball team with kids from one of the elementary schools. Perhaps the First Lady could visit them.”
Eleanor Roosevelt nodded.
I looked over at Major Duggan. He winked at me. An hour at the school, then visit the Negro troops and over the border by lunchtime.
* * *
“These look like the tenements on the Lower East Side of New York,” Eleanor Roosevelt said to me as we drove past streets packed with terraced houses, one leaning against the other as if trying to hold each other up. Keeping their balance against the road’s steep pitch. A knot of women stood in front of one stoop watching the cars go by. One woman waved.
“Could we stop?” Eleanor Roosevelt asked.
Major Duggan was driving us with Mike sitting next to him. George Ludke and Don Kennedy had gone ahead.
“The children are expecting us,” Major Duggan said.
“I would like to get these women’s point of view,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “They’re the ones who know what a community needs.” He stopped the car.
“Let me get out and talk to them first, Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said.
These faces. We could have been in Bridgeport. Are there only so many varieties of Irish features scattered around the world? One woman looked exactly like Aunt Máire and another resembled Mame McCabe. Best to be very respectful, I thought, as I approached these women. Very easy to offend the neighbors. I introduced myself.
“I’m Nora Kelly,” I said. “From Chicago. It’s Mrs. Roosevelt here in the car.”
“We knew it,” one of the women said. “She’s traveled round the whole town and it’s about time she came to see the real people of Derry. I’m Annie Hume and you’re very welcome. Bring Mrs. Roosevelt in for a cup of tea.”
Impossible to say no to this group, and soon Eleanor Roosevelt, Tommy, Mike, the major, and I were sitting in front of a turf fire in Annie’s kitchen drinking tea from white mugs. Four children stood in the doorway. And Annie was pregnant.
“What a lovely family,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
&nbs
p; “Stair-steps,” Annie said. She pointed. “Harry is five, Paddy and Sally, the twins, are four, and Agnes is two. Johnny’s the oldest but he’s at school, thank God. He’s the one learned that baseball from your fellows.”
“Johnny hit a home run,” Harry said.
“Whatever that is,” Annie said.
The children resembled each other and again could have belonged to any family in Bridgeport. The boys had dark hair and brown eyes, the two girls were fair. They all wore sweaters that I could see had been darned and probably passed one to the next. None wore shoes. Annie must have seen me looking at their feet because she said, “No point in wasting shoe leather inside.”
“Every one of us has shoes,” Harry said. “Da bought them for us.”
“He works at the shipyard,” Annie said. “First time he’s had a job in his life. They don’t employ Catholic men in this town, Mrs. Roosevelt. And when the Yanks came to Derry we thought it would be the same. Only Protestants need apply. But thank God you Yanks hired anybody who could do the work. Even fellows from across the Free State border. I’ve always had a job. Catholic women could always get work in the shirt factory and when you’ve a big family the bosses let you take the shirts home.” She pointed to a pile. “I sew the collars by hand here. Get paid by the piece.”
“When do you find time to do it?” I asked her.
“At night,” she said, “after the children are in bed.”
“I hope you get the proper rest, Mrs. Hume,” Eleanor Roosevelt said as we got up to leave. “Very important in your condition. I enjoyed being in your home.”
Two of the women laughed.
“Not our homes, Mrs. Roosevelt,” one woman said. “These places belong to the landlord and he’s not too fussed about providing much. There’s one toilet out the back for all ten houses. A pump for water, and half the time that doesn’t work. The electricity is off more than it is on. Families with eight or nine children shoved into four rooms. Two up and two down.”
“Ah now, Bernie,” Annie said, “we’re doing alright. And, as they say, if you’re raised in your bare feet you’ll never get pneumonia in the snow.”
But the woman was riled up. “Do you know, Mrs. Roosevelt, that our landlord gets forty votes—one for every property he owns and my grown son has no vote at all. Now if the tricolor flew over this city as it should,” she said, “this would be a much different place.”
“I don’t know about that, Bernie,” Annie Hume said. “I don’t think they’re doing much better in the South and as my husband, Sam, said, you can’t eat a flag. It’s decent jobs, a roof over our heads. That’s what we need.” Annie walked us to the door, the children trailing behind her. Five children under seven, I thought, another one on the way and she’s sewing shirts at night and serving strangers tea.
“Mother Ireland,” I said to Mike as we walked to the car. I wondered if he realized that this was how our people had lived. If only I could show him Galway.
George Ludke and Don Kennedy were outside the school when we pulled up. A one-story brick building attached to the church.
“The primary schools are funded by the government but administered by the clergy both Catholic and Protestant,” I said. “So the children of each denomination attend separate schools.”
“But that’s wrong,” Eleanor Roosevelt started, but I stopped her.
“Not now,” I said, because the man approaching us had to be the headmaster.
“Mrs. Roosevelt,” said George, “I’d like you to meet Master Sheerin.” Not as old as I imagined a headmaster would be. Maybe thirty, thirty-five. He was tall, dark, smiling, a jolly primary school principal, I hoped. He looked a lot like Marguerite’s husband, Tom McGuire. Does every Irish person have an American echo? I wondered.
“The children are very excited to meet you,” Master Sheerin said. He took us into a classroom where the boys were on one side of the room and the girls on the other. Six students sat on each of the benches set behind long tables. There seemed to be about forty students. “In this class we have children aged six and seven. May I introduce their teacher, Miss O’Reilly.”
The young woman who stepped forward was the same girl who’d sung with the band at the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. Now here was someone kids could relate to. She turned to the children.
“Please stand to welcome Mrs. Roosevelt. You know she is the First Lady of the United States of America.” A shuffle of feet as the rows stood up. “We’ve been learning a song that I think would be very appropriate to greet you.” She began singing, “Oh beautiful for spacious skies,” and the children joined in. Never had the song “America” been sung more beautifully. Their voices were very pure and they harmonized on the last verse:
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.
Eleanor Roosevelt had to get out her handkerchief, and Tommy was sniffing back tears. “But that’s extraordinary,” Mrs. Roosevelt said.
“Derry people are great singers,” Miss O’Reilly said. “And they start early.”
In every country children like these had fathers who were fighting and dying in this war.
“This war,” I said to Master Sheerin. “And to think there are children just like this in Germany also.” He nodded.
“I tell my students that hating someone because they are different makes no sense. After all, difference is only an accident of birth. No one chooses where they are born. But the tribal instinct is strong in human beings.”
Eleanor Roosevelt and Tommy were going up and down the rows speaking to the children. Miss O’Reilly was telling them each one’s name.
George had one little boy stand up and led him up to Mrs. Roosevelt.
“This is Johnny Hume,” he said to her. “The star of our team.”
“The home run hitter?” I said. “We met your mother.” The little boy reached into his pocket and took out an American penny. He held it on his palm.
“George gave me this,” he said. “See those words. That’s Latin.”
Eleanor Roosevelt leaned down to the boy. “E pluribus unum. And do you know what those words mean?”
“George said it means ‘one from many,’ the motto of the United States. George said that in America people can be who they are and still get along. Doesn’t always happen that way in Derry.”
“Maybe that will change one day,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
“It will,” he said. “Has to.”
“Well said, young Mr. Hume,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. She opened her pocketbook. Oh good, I thought, maybe she’s going to give him a dollar bill. Explain the symbols on that. But it was her card that Eleanor Roosevelt handed him.
“When you grow up, young man, bring that to the White House and tell whoever is president that Mrs. Roosevelt sent you.”
It was me who put a pound note into the boy’s hand, after I’d taken photographs of Mrs. Roosevelt with the class. George and Don passed out Milky Way candy bars to each member of the class, and left a supply for Mr. Sheerin to give to the rest of the school.
The fog was still thick when we came out. Mike shook his head. “It’s not lifting,” he said.
“Now what?” Mrs. Roosevelt asked Major Duggan.
“Perhaps we can take a ride to the Army camp where the Negro soldiers are stationed,” I said.
“Fine,” Mrs. Roosevelt said. “Fine.” She turned to Major Duggan. “I enjoyed meeting those children. They were brighter than I expected. You seem to be doing a good job connecting with them.”
“Perhaps you would put in a good word for us at Marine headquarters. They’re questioning the amount of money we’re spending on candy. And with Christmas coming we’re planning a big party for the children,” he said.
“Make a note, Tommy,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. She didn’t seem to be as worried about a schedule. We headed east toward Omagh.
As we went further inland the fog broke up, and we saw actual sunshine on the hills, which Major Duggan told us were
the Sperrin Mountains.
“Not very tall mountains,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “But picturesque.”
“The good land is down here in the valley,” Duggan said.
“Protestant farmers, I suppose,” Tommy said.
“You’re aware of the history?” I said. “I’m surprised.”
“My mother’s family is from around here, and she used to say that even after two hundred years her people still remembered being pushed off the good land into the mountains,” Tommy said.
“The Duggans have similar stories,” the major said.
“And so do the Kellys,” I said.
“But all of you are Americans,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “I’ve never understood the Irish obsession with the past.”
“Thus speaks the woman who can trace her ancestors back to the year dot and tell you the rank of every one of them who fought in the Revolutionary War,” Tommy said. Eleanor Roosevelt laughed. She didn’t seem to mind when Tommy teased her. Maybe she had a sense of humor after all.
“A lot of good my heritage did me when my fellow Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Marian Anderson to sing in their hall,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
“You showed them, boss,” Tommy said.
“Yes I did,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “I put her right on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and she sang to an audience of fifty thousand, and if these Negro soldiers are not being treated properly, well…,” she said, and pulled the fur close around her neck.
* * *
No quonset huts in this camp. These fellows only got green Army tents. About twenty in two rows. On the ride over Major Duggan had wanted to stop at a pub to call the commanding officer to let him know we were coming, but Eleanor Roosevelt insisted we arrive unannounced. A kind of surprise inspection.
“I understand Southern officers have mistreated Negro troops and I want to make sure I see the situation with no advance warning,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
When we pulled into the camp a Negro sentry stopped us. Major Duggan rolled down the window. “Good afternoon, soldier,” he said. The man saluted.
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