He shook his head.
“Look, I know you didn’t want me along on this trip because you thought the press would criticize you. Well, they tried and you headed them off. Perfectly natural for your cousin to accompany you to the family home place,” I said.
“I was only trying to shut Manny Mandel up but as I said the words I realized that I really do want to go to Ireland. Don’t know why I’ve never gone before. It isn’t as if Margaret and I never traveled in Europe…”
“Don’t you think it’s because that when we were growing up Ireland was always this magic mythic place?” I said. “Not somewhere you could actually go. Granny told me once that she would see Ireland again after she died. You sing that yourself, Ed. ‘Galway Bay’ is one of your party pieces.”
And now I croaked out the last words:
And if there’s going to be a life hereafter,
And somehow I am sure there’s going to be,
I will ask my God to let me make my Heaven
In that dear land beyond the Irish Sea.
Ed couldn’t keep himself from smiling as I finished.
“Alright. Alright,” he said. “But I don’t want you mouthing off about perfidious Albion, Nonie. No headlines about you attacking the English. This is our chance to show Chicago as the city it really is. Not gangsters machine-gunning each other, or even the City of the Big Shoulders, but the place I built against all the odds. The parks, the museum, the universities, the skyscrapers, the lakefront. Our Chicago, Nonie, opening its arms to the world. If I can pull this off, I’ll still be mayor when we get the United Nations headquarters. But you have to keep quiet during the week while we’re in London. Then we’ll go to Ireland and I’ll stand on the shores of Galway Bay and sing every rebel song I know. Is that a deal?”
“It is, Ed,” I said.
I’d be polite to the Sassenach for the sake of Chicago and himself. But the English had a way of getting people to sell their souls and then not paying them. Still, I went along.
Not a peep out of me when the British rolled out the rituals they used to disguise reality on our arrival on Wednesday, November 21, 1945. We were met at the airport by troops from a Scottish regiment, complete with kilts and bagpipes. Manny went mad, posing Ed in the center of a cluster of pipers and all I could think of was the Battle of Culloden. The Scots had been betrayed and slaughtered and now they were happily serving in the army of the enemy. Did I say anything? I did not. But then British customs officers impounded Jimmy Cleary’s film, which meant to show the city in such glory that all fifty-two members of the panel would choose Chicago. We’d just checked into the Savoy Hotel when Ed called me to come to his room. Jimmy and the film were being held at the airport. He was on the phone.
“I’ll get on to the embassy,” Ed told Jimmy.
The American ambassador, John Gilbert Winant—he insisted that all three names be used—had been at the hotel when we arrived. The fellow was a Republican and a former New Hampshire governor. Tall and thin with those sharp cutout features that seem to be issued to WASPs. Easy for him to fit in with the British. So now Ed called the embassy. Could he please speak to the ambassador? While very polite, very calm, the woman who’d answered was not helpful. I was standing next to Ed, and he was holding the phone out so I could hear.
“Mr. Gilbert Winant is unavailable,” the woman said. An English accent.
Manny had already filled me in on the gossip. The American ambassador was having an affair with Winston Churchill’s daughter Sarah. Even though both were married to other people. “The British upper classes don’t consider a roll in the hay as anything serious,” Manny had said. “Though my sources tell me poor Johnny Winant’s head over heels. I doubt if Winston cares too much. They say he can’t stand Sarah’s husband, who’s an Austrian Jew and a performer in music halls. How’s that for sticking it to dear old Dad?”
Ed had no luck with the embassy receptionist even after he described our problem. It was impossible to get in touch with the ambassador. Besides, she said, the British Customs and Excise Authority was entitled to enforce their own laws and shouldn’t we have made proper arrangements before our arrival, etc. etc. Ed held the phone out as the lecture continued. Goodbye, he said, and slammed it down.
“Goddamn,” he said. “I hate bureaucrats.”
“Let’s call the Irish embassy,” I said. But when I asked for the number, the clerk at the Savoy desk told me there was no Irish embassy.
“Ireland is part of the Commonwealth,” the clerk told me. “I believe there is an Office of the High Commissioner.”
“Well give me that number,” I said. I dialed it and handed the phone to Ed.
“You talk to him, Nonie,” Ed said to me. “You’re the one claims to know all these Irish officials. Drop a few names.”
Well, of course the best name was the prime minister himself. But what could I say? I’m a friend of Mr. de Valera?
“Mr. Dulanty’s office,” the woman on the other end of the line said.
“Please,” I said. “I’m calling for Mayor Ed Kelly and—” She cut me off.
“What is the nature of his business?”
“Well,” I said, and tried to hand the phone to Ed. But he shook his head. I’d been bragging about all my Irish connections. Now I had to prove myself. “It’s something the mayor would like to talk to the commissioner himself about, and—”
“Impossible, madam.” Not an Irish accent. Another English woman.
Now what? “You see we’re here to make a presentation to the UN Committee on behalf of Chicago and—”
“Pardon me. You did say Chicago didn’t you?” Was I going to have to listen to this woman make some remark about Al Capone?
But she said, “One moment please.” A good three or four minutes before I heard another voice.
“So you’re from Chicago.” It was a man speaking now. Definitely Irish. “My father was with Dev in Chicago in 1919. And had great stories. Everybody in the office has heard me retelling them. I think they collected a hundred thousand dollars.”
“He probably met Mayor Kelly. He’s a member of the Irish Fellowship and they’re the ones got you all that money.”
“Put him on,” the man said. He explained to Ed he wasn’t the commissioner, which was just as well, as Mr. John Whelan Dulanty was very much a by-the-book kind of fellow who’d been born in England and had served in the British Civil Service until 1920 when he’d come over to the Irish side. We were talking to his aide. A fellow called Dáithí Ó Ceallaigh. “David Kelly in another life,” he said. “And so your kinsman.” He told us he wasn’t concerned about “the book” at all. He seemed to know what buttons to push with the British and a few hours later Jimmy Cleary and the movie were in Ed’s suite.
“Keep that Kelly fellow’s number,” Ed said to me. Jimmy told us he’d been within an inch of socking one of those fish-faced English bastards in the jaw.
I smiled and said, “No, Jimmy, they are our hosts. Turn the other cheek.”
NOVEMBER 22, 1945
Thanksgiving. We assembled with thousands of American troops in Westminster Abbey to hear Ambassador Winant read President Truman’s declaration. Harry wasn’t soft-pedaling what our American boys had done to win the war. I couldn’t resist a few glances at the Brits as President Truman’s words echoed through the Abbey. We had won the blessing of Providence, he said. “With the courage and blood of our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen.”
I thought Winant mumbled just a bit, but he ended strongly enough, evoking those “high principles of citizenship for which so many Americans have given their all.”
Remember that, you Brits. Our young men died for you.
Manny was everywhere snapping away. “Want a picture with the ambassador?” he asked me.
“No thanks,” I said. I spent my time photographing the troops, getting their names and hometowns. I’d send their pictures to their local papers.
The next day they paraded Ed through the House
of Commons making sure he bumped into Winston Churchill, which of course thrilled Manny Mandel, who must have taken twenty photographs. I took none. Back at the Savoy, I repeated to Ed what Churchill had said after World War I, that in the midst of the cataclysm that had swept the world, the dreary steeples of Tyrone and Fermanagh were still in place. “He’s saying the quarrel between the North and the South in Ireland would never be solved, though he was the one responsible in many ways. Whatever he did during World War II, he was no friend to the Irish. He was against Home Rule and for the Black and Tans.”
“Pipe down, Nonie,” Ed said. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to bring you along.”
We were in Ed’s room—his suite, rather—living room, dining room, and two bedrooms. Pushing out the boat for him but charging him full price. In fact a little extra. Dáithí had told Ed that there was an American tax added whenever a shopkeeper heard our accents.
But Ed wouldn’t be drawn into criticizing our hosts.
“The British have a lot of influence on the committee. I had lunch with the lord mayor of London and he said the government supports Chicago’s bid,” he said.
“Lord mayor,” I said. “And did he wear a red coat, ermine collar, three-cornered hat, and gold chain of office?”
“He did,” Ed said.
“But don’t you see that’s all part of the con. The Beefeaters at the Tower of London, so picturesque, but they’re guarding a place of execution where our people were imprisoned and beheaded.…”
“Easy, Nonie.” I had refused to go on the tour, but Ed and Joseph had come back full of stories about the wonders of London, especially the Crown Jewels.
And now I said, “And as far as all their crowns and scepters, where do you think all those gems came from? Stolen. Taken from Africa and India and all those other colonies they left in pieces. Divide and conquer. Muslim against Hindu. Jew against Arab.”
“Can it, Nonie,” he said. “The presentation is tomorrow. Try to behave until then.”
Then Jimmy Cleary stomped into the suite. “Goddamn it, Ed, they’ve screwed us again.”
He’d left the written presentation that was to accompany the film at a British lab that had promised to have fifty-five photostats ready by today. He’d just come from there where he’d been told they were awfully sorry, and now Jimmy slipped into the accent. “‘A bit of a cock-up and your job will not be ready until midweek.’ Jesus. Midweek. And the fellow actually smiled at me. Something’s going on here. First Customs try to keep the movie and now this. Do the Brits have any reason not to want Chicago to be the UN headquarters?”
“Any reason?” I started. “Every reason. They don’t like us, boys. Forget the banquets and wood paneling. They were number one and now we are. They’re furious.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What room is Manny Mandel in? The Tribune has a lab here. They can make the photostats for us. They’d have to work through the night but they could do it.”
“We’ll pay them double time,” Ed said.
I brought the papers to Manny and went with him to the lab and waited there while the fifty-five copies were made. We sat through the night drinking bad coffee and making small talk. Finally at about 2:00 a.m. Manny said to me, “I have nothing against you, Nora, but you’ve always been too ambitious for a woman. I’ve got enough to do competing against the other guys, but a dame!” I let him go on. We needed those photostats.
NOVEMBER 23, 1945
Chicago put on quite a show the next day. We were the only city with a movie, and ten times better than the other American contestants—Miami, Denver, and Richmond, Virginia. New York was our only real competition, and Ed made a great case for our city, pointing out how much more livable Chicago was. New York was a snarl of traffic and craziness. With so much going on there the UN wouldn’t be the focus it would be in Chicago. But that night Ed got a call from his new friend, Dáithí. He hung up the phone.
“Damn,” he said. “That was Dáithí.”
“What, Ed?”
“The fix is in. England made a deal with Russia for Vienna to be the headquarters. Anything to keep it away from us. Hell’s bells,” he said. “Is nothing ever on the square?”
“Time to go to Ireland,” I said.
12
NOVEMBER 24, 1945
Ed figured we could get away for two days. Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the delegates had scattered. Some were on the bus tour arranged by the British government—Stratford-upon-Avon, etc. Poor Shakespeare. Always trotted out to impress the visitors.
“We need to fly to Galway,” I told Dáithí Ó Ceallaigh.
“There’s no regular service between London and Galway but we did pick up a Lockheed Hudson during the war and I think I might be able to commandeer it,” he said.
“Picked up?” I asked.
“The American crew had to make a forced landing in Ireland. Remember we were neutral. Should have interned them but Dev made a deal. He returned the crew and kept the plane. Can you be ready to fly by first light?”
“Of course,” I said.
“No press,” Ed said, when I told him the arrangements. “We’re not making this trip public. I want two days with you and my son Joseph. We’ll tell the others I’ve come down with a terrible cold and I’ll be working in my room.”
Still dark when we left London for Croydon Airport the next morning. Dáithí picked us up at the hotel. He’d brought his wife, Antoinette, with him.
“Michael Collins kept a plane at this airport during the Treaty negotiations,” Antoinette told us. “Ready to take him home if the talks fell apart.”
I told her I had met Michael Collins.
“To think he was only thirty-two when he died,” she said. “The same age Dáithí and I are now.”
“Mmmm,” I said, and didn’t point out that Collins was probably assassinated on orders from their prime minister. Ná habair tada. Say nothing.
Just dawn when Ed, Joseph, and I boarded the small plane. A different pilot than the fellow who’d flown Mike and me. Dáithí had agreed to send a telegram to John and Maura O’Connor at Lough Inagh. John would meet us, though it would probably take him longer to drive the thirty miles from Connemara to Galway than for us to fly from London.
“There, Ed,” I said pointing down. “There she is. Eire. Named for a goddess, Joseph. Ireland is a woman no question.” And pleased with herself, shining in the morning light. The end of November and she was still green. We followed the fields west until they sloped down to a rocky shore where waves broke against ancient stones.
“There, Ed. See where the waters change colors, and the blue meets the gray, that’s Galway Bay flowing into the Atlantic. That’s where Granny Honora and Aunt Máire rowed out in a curragh to catch the ship that brought your father and mine to America.”
Ed pushed his forehead against the window. “My God,” he said. “I always took that for some kind of a tall tale. Not real. But now. It is real, isn’t it?”
“As real as you and me,” I said.
The pilot was from Cork and told us the airfield there was much superior to Galway Airport and it would take all his skill to land well on these inferior runways. But he set us down, no problem. John O’Connor was waiting for us in the same old car that John had used twenty-five years ago when I’d toured the west with the American Friends Service Committee, reporting on the atrocities of the Black and Tans. I had experienced their brutality firsthand.
Part of me wanted to launch into the whole story. Tell Ed and Joseph how close I’d come to being hanged as a spy. But I didn’t. This was the new Ireland. Free. And John was smiling.
“We even have a clear day for you,” John said. “And feel it, there’s warmth left in that sun. Maura is at the Lodge preparing a welcome dinner.”
John drove us through Galway City.
“Quite a nice city,” Ed said, approving the gray stone buildings, the active port, the wrought iron gate that led to the co
llege grounds. Ireland doing alright for herself.
“Where are the shops the Black and Tans burned out?” I asked John O’Connor.
“Rebuilt,” was all he said. No tale for Ed of those brutal convict soldiers and the reign of terror they’d unleashed during the 1920s. The Irish had won against all the odds. Independent now and soon to be a republic. The last ties to England severed. Let the past bury the past.
“Here’s the dream come true,” I said to Ed as we drove along the ring road. “All those AOH picnics where we’d shouted out ‘A nation once again.’ Fulfilled. Galway is an Irish city now.”
John parked the car. We followed him into the oldest part of the city to a stone gate that had once been part of the walls. He pointed out an inscription—“From the fury of the O’Flahertys, O Lord deliver us.”
“The merchants inside the city were always loyal to the English Crown and were afraid the Irish clans would overrun them and reclaim the city,” John said. “Funny enough it was the British who betrayed them, but by that time it was too late to ally themselves with the Irish.”
Ed nodded. Politics.
“Wasn’t Galway named for an ancient Irish princess?” I said to John.
“Gaillimh,” he said, “and she’s still here. Never left. Through all the centuries of oppression she held on. And now she’s victorious and I’ll show you why.”
He led us through narrow streets down to an open space bordering the water. He pointed at a stone arch. “That’s the Spanish Arch,” he said. “Galway traded with Spain and Portugal.”
“Oh I see,” Ed said. “Those kind of alliances must have helped the Irish resist the English.”
“Not as much as you think,” John said. “It wasn’t economics or politics or diplomacy that saved us. You’ll see what made us strong.”
The wind off the water had picked up. Cold now. Ed turned his collar up. Tied his cashmere scarf tightly. I was glad for the warmth of my green Donegal tweed.
“Put on your watch cap,” I said to Joseph. He hadn’t said much since we’d left the airport. Sitting between Ed and me in the back seat, taking it all in. Now he shook his head at me.
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