Irish Above All

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Irish Above All Page 59

by Mary Pat Kelly


  He stopped. I supposed he thought I’d be sympathetic. Poor Mother Ireland. Her children fighting each other, but I was back in my small Paris apartment listening as Cyril Peterson told me how Peter had died. Remembering those long days and nights I’d spent sitting and staring out at the Place de Vosges from my window. Nothing special about me. Paris was full of widows. The Great War had cut down an entire generation of young men. But I was so angry. For God’s sake, it was one thing to be killed by an enemy, but to be murdered by a friend?

  I was trying to find words to express this jumble of thoughts as Peter watched me. His eyes were still that same dark blue. And his gaze. Never did look away.

  “Oh damn, damn, damn,” I said. “Cyril shouldn’t have lied. I would have come to Ireland. I could have nursed you.”

  “Just what he’d feared you’d do, Nora. Much better for you to go home. He told me that you had returned to Chicago for a family emergency. For the best, he’d said, and I’d agreed. You were a young woman who should marry and have a family which is what you did.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Cyril told me you married a Chicago politician and had children. I was glad for you. It was a life I couldn’t give you.”

  “But I didn’t marry anyone, Peter.”

  “But he said…”

  “Cyril said a lot of things. I never found another man I could love as I loved you. And I wasn’t willing to settle for less.”

  “But I thought women wanted children and a home, and … I’m sorry, Nora, so sorry.”

  “For God’s sake, Peter, nothing to pity in my life. I’ve had a great career as a photographer. Helped raise my nieces and nephews and even played a role in the world. Without me my cousin Ed might not be mayor of Chicago, or FDR president, or Harry Truman wouldn’t have been chosen.”

  Peter was shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry, Nora. I’ve been so long out of the world I can’t follow you. After I recovered enough to travel I was put on a fishing boat and landed in Italy. There had always been rumors among scholars that there were ancient Irish manuscripts in the Vatican Library and it was arranged for me to live in the Vatican and catalog the collection.”

  “And no one knew?”

  “I didn’t use my own name, Nora. I kept to myself. On the faculty of the Irish College there were divisions. I did make one friend. A young seminarian. He said he was from Kerry but his name was O’Flaherty. I told him his ancestors had to come from Galway. Surely you remember our lesson about the O’Flahertys, Nora? We Keeleys were the lords of Connemara until the O’Flahertys showed up in the fourteenth century. Don’t you remember? We read Ruairdhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s Ogygia—his history of Ireland.”

  “Oh right,” I said, but I wanted to shake Peter. How could he go on like this? With me sitting right in front of him? Peter kept talking about this seminarian whose father was from Galway, a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary until the War of Independence. He’d quit the police and got a job as the caretaker of a golf course in Kerry.

  “So of course my friend Hugh learned the game,” Peter said. “He was a natural. He used to take me with him to a golf club just outside of Rome. Got himself invited by some nobleman with relatives in the Vatican.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that in the midst of the nervous breakdown that made you hide yourself in the Vatican Library you played golf?” I said.

  “I did not but I did walk along with him and carry his golf bag. Good exercise. Hugh said I had to get some sunshine. He was a fellow who saw no shadows. Hugh was supposed to go to South Africa. An Irish bishop assigned there had sponsored him in the seminary and he looked forward to the climate, but the Vatican officials saw he would be more valuable as one of their diplomats. Some priests just have a knack for getting along with people.”

  “Dial O for O’Flaherty,” I said. “Like Bing Crosby in Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s.”

  Of course he had no idea what I was talking about. He’d probably never been to a movie. Hiding out in the Vatican, buried in books, joking with this Father O’Flaherty, safe and protected while the world went to hell. True, he’d been snatched out of his scholar’s life before. Peter had only just escaped execution by the Germans during World War I when he tried to stop them from burning that library in Belgium, then he’d battled the Black and Tans. I understood how devastating it was for Peter to kill that boy, but had he the right to step out of life as he had? Maybe Maud was right. What did he and I have in common anymore really? He was nearly seventy years old, not much older than I was in years, but I wasn’t ready to stop living. Did I really want to sit myself down in a rocking chair where I’d pray for a happy death with Peter?

  “And what about the war? Did Hitler and Mussolini let you go on studying and playing golf?”

  “According to the Lateran Treaty, Vatican City was its own state and the pope had declared it neutral and so we were safe enough,” he said.

  Peter must have seen the Nazis occupy Rome. Watched them send Italian Jews to concentration camps and murder Italians who resisted them, and yet he’d been happy to meditate in a garden or translate some ancient manuscript or.… Peter went on talking about this priest O’Flaherty.

  “I’m sorry, Peter, but I’m not interested,” I said.

  “But he was part of a group of Irish people who got together and—”

  “And what? Had parties? I know about the Italian woman, Peter.”

  “You do?”

  I stood up. I’d been seeking my lost love and instead found a man I didn’t recognize. I wished I’d found his grave instead. I could pray for a brave warrior who died for Ireland. But this fellow sipping tea and rattling on about Rome, he was not the Peter I remembered.

  I stood up. “I think you’re a selfish bastard,” I said. “Alright, you killed somebody. For God’s sake there are millions of soldiers who did the same thing and they went home to wives and children and got on with life.”

  “Life is short and art is long. My work in the Vatican Library was important.”

  “You snuck away to the neutral Vatican while the world fell apart. I’ll bet the pope never missed a meal and neither did you while millions starved.”

  I expected him to yell at me. To defend himself. Instead sipped his tea, looked up at me and said, “A lot of what you’re saying, Nonie, is true.”

  He rarely called me Nonie. He said it was my little name reserved for our special moments when we … Peter looked so defeated watching the fire die away. The least he could do was stir the embers before they went cold completely. It was me who picked up the poker.

  “Oh, Peter,” I said, my back turned toward him, poking at the fire. “I actually thought that if I found you alive we could go back to Paris and make up for lost time.”

  “That’s an American expression. Make up for lost time. Isn’t it? I don’t know if that’s possible. Did you know the American Army made the Irish College its headquarters? All changed.”

  “Changed utterly?” I said.

  He nodded and used the shillelagh to lever himself up. Turned me away from the fire, took my hand.

  “The great thing about America is you’re not burdened by the past. You start over. You do make up for lost time. While we Irish … All our stories begin fadó because a long time ago is never very far away. The world beyond this place is dark and dismal. The war was evil beyond reckoning, and yet somehow the Grianán endured and in this monastery the monks never stopped chanting the hours. The British tried to destroy us Irish, but it was places like this that saved our souls. I’ve been given refuge here. I’m not able for the outside world, Nora. The life we lived in Paris can only exist in our memories. Now I can only piece together bits of ancient manuscripts, watch the sunrise over the Grianán and see it go down again. I get a small pension that’s paid to Father Abbot so I’m not a burden.”

  “Okay, if not Paris, then Chicago. I have an apartment and a job…”

  �
��Chicago is no place for me, Nonie. I remember some lines from the poem you used to recite. ‘Laughing like a fighter who’s never lost a fight.’ I’ve accepted my loss. There’s a lot to be said for accepting what you can’t change.”

  “Accepting … I’ve never accepted anything in my life! I want to change what’s unacceptable.”

  “You’ll have to accept this, Nora. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  He’d been holding my hands but now he dropped them.

  I couldn’t believe it. He was rejecting me. He had reverted back to what he had probably always been meant to be: a hermit monk, living in a beehive hut in some beautiful place. One with nature and God. Dammit.

  “Come,” he said. “I have a lantern too. I’ll walk you down to the monastery. They have guest rooms. Best if you stayed the night. I think it’s going to snow.”

  “No thank you. I’ll find some way to get to Derry and I have my own lantern. If you could just light the candle for me.”

  “But the path down is hard to find in the dark. There are stony places.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “You must let me walk with you. I’m fine if we go slowly,” he said as he stuck a taper in the fire and lit the candles in both lanterns.

  So like a man, I thought. Giving orders until the very end. But what could I do? We were hardly Romeo and Juliet. An elderly man and woman who’d once loved each other and now were saying goodbye. Be sensible, Nora, I told myself. Some satisfaction in flouncing out but what profit if you broke your leg and died of exposure near a pagan monument? That would prove nothing to anyone.

  15

  When we stepped outside of the cottage, I could feel that the weather had changed. The wind was definitely not at my back but pushing against me, trying to knock me down. Both of us held on to Peter’s shillelagh as we hobbled down the hill. I felt like it was two in the morning, but it was barely eight o’clock when we came to the door of the monastery. Very proper and polite was Father Abbot as Peter explained that I was a friend from America and asked could I spend the night.

  I interrupted Peter. Surely Father Abbot knew someone in the town of Burt who ran a taxi service. I was willing to pay whatever to be taken to Derry. Father Abbot told me that in fact a fellow called Hugh O’Neill had a good car and was very accommodating, but no one in the whole area was going anywhere that night. There was to be a concert in the monks’ church and the whole village would attend. He said that if I wanted to stay, he’d be more than happy to offer me a place in the pilgrims’ wing.

  “I’m not a pilgrim,” I said, speaking loudly. They both stepped back. But I had no time to rise to the height of sensibility necessary to deal with these two. I wanted out before the concert started. I imagined lots of Gregorian pieces and a few hymns like “Oh Lord I Am Not Worthy.” Nothing I wanted to stay around to hear. “I’m sure sacred music is very nice, but…”

  The abbot held up his hand. He said to Peter, “Maybe you’d better explain about the singer. She’s your friend, after all.”

  “You see, Nora,” he said to me, “she’s someone I met in Rome and…”

  Had the Italian woman traveled all the way up here? No. I had my pride. I was leaving. I had a life in Chicago. My work. My family. I’d been living in the fantasy of Peter Keeley for too long. This was the reality. Time to get out. “No thank you,” I said.

  “But you’d really enjoy her singing,” Peter said. “Delia Murphy has done more to resurrect Ireland’s traditional ballads than all the scholars in the university.”

  “That’s because the scholars at the university had no use for the old songs,” the abbot said. He turned to me. “What we call the ‘come-all-ye’s’ had fallen out of favor. Too culchie for the Dublin intellectuals. The country people became ashamed to sing them, especially since they weren’t rebel songs or one of Moore’s melodies. Our parish priest preached a whole sermon against the dangers of tinker doggerel and it’s true there were some bawdy lines, but these songs were the party pieces for my mother’s generation and now here was Delia singing them on the radio. Making records. The music was suddenly valuable.”

  “Delia was in Rome because her husband was the Irish ambassador to the Vatican. I think I mentioned that…,” Peter started.

  “Yes, you did mention your friends who sat out the war with you,” I said. Now, I didn’t want to be rude. I only wanted to get away. But both men actually leaned away from me and turned toward the door.

  “Is it me this Yankee woman is talking about?” A woman speaking.

  How to describe that voice? Music critics would go on about the rugged simplicity, the directness of Delia Murphy. One even complained that he couldn’t categorize her as a soprano, alto, or contralto. In fact her voice was beyond definition and it was loud. So was her speaking voice. She came in out of the night bringing a smell of the cold air on her fur coat. Younger than I was but not by a lot. Fifties maybe. Short dark hair and what my sister Henrietta used to call gypsy eyes. Intense. I’d find out that though she’d learned her songs sitting at the fire in a travelers’ camp, she herself was the daughter of a prosperous Mayo farmer.

  She was a sturdily built woman, though it was hard to tell much under that fur coat, with a full face. No trace of wartime starvation there. I could well imagine her on the stage as she crossed the room and went right over to Peter Keeley and kissed him on each cheek and then once again.

  “Three times is the Italian way,” she said as she went for Father Abbot, who stretched out his hand for her to shake.

  “You’re very welcome, Mrs. Kiernan.”

  “Now as you well know, Father, I’m not Mrs. Kiernan when I perform. I’m Delia Murphy. I kept my own name and Tom was more than happy to have a bit of distance from a wife such as me. Though Murphy’s my father’s name. My mother was a Fanning from Tipperary, but Delia Fanning-Murphy is a bit of a mouthful. And, after all, my mother’s name was really her father’s but at least I never succumbed to becoming Madam Kiernan, the ambassador’s wife.”

  She turned to me. “And are you Mrs. Somebody?”

  “No. I’m Nora Kelly and my mother was a Kelly too.”

  “Wait. Are you that American Professor Keeley told me about?”

  “Now, Delia,” Peter started.

  “Ah now Peter, I know drink had been taken but you told me a very sweet love story and I had you down as something of an old stick but I was wrong there, wasn’t I? I thought you were refusing her royal highness because you were too shy, but you told me that you’d only ever loved one woman.”

  What was she talking about? Plenty of questions for her if I could ever jump into that stream of talk.

  She turned to the abbot.

  “Now I hope one of your monks has some class of musical instrument around here because the fellow that was supposed to come with me deserted entirely,” Delia said.

  “Father Martin plays the fiddle.”

  “Oh dear God. Not the fiddle. Those screechy high notes do me in.”

  Peter spoke up. “One of the lay brothers here is a powerful man on the accordion.”

  “Mmmm,” she said. “My father often said that the definition of a gentleman was one who could play the accordion and doesn’t.”

  I laughed. She was funny and though I had decided not to like her, I found myself drawn in by her. This is what she must do to her audiences, I thought.

  “They’ve got the church as full as if it was a fair day. You’d better get out there, Delia. They’re Donegal people and they’ll start stamping on the floor,” a voice said.

  Of course, it was Cyril Peterson. Why wouldn’t he be here? No shame at all. Nodding first at me and then at Peter.

  “Believe me if all those enduring young charms,” he said and then went on to sing the words, “That I gaze on so fondly today.”

  Delia turned on him. “It’s enough I had to listen to your blather all the way from Dublin, but please don’t sing.”

/>   Cyril turned to us. “And that’s the thanks I get for providing transport for the grand lady.”

  He’d ruined my life, Peter’s too, with his lies. Our love was gone beyond repair. Peter was right. You don’t make up for lost time in the real world. And here was Cyril acting as if nothing had happened at all. He took a tin whistle out of his pocket.

  “Surely you’ve got somebody can blow into this thing, Father,” Cyril said.

  “Well, actually I played one in my younger days,” the abbot said.

  “Take it, Father. I just need a note or two,” Delia said.

  “Come along Nora Kelly-Keeley. I’ve got front row seats for you and the professor,” Cyril said.

  Now I wanted to say, “Go to hell, Cyril,” but we were in a monastery and a procession of monks had just appeared.

  “Some of your countrymen have come for the concert, Nora,” Cyril said. “I arranged a Yank section in the first two rows on the left.”

  Cyril directed Peter and me to the last two places in the pew.

  “You know the Marines, I believe,” Cyril said. “Here’s Colonel Duggan, promoted since you met him and his aide Major Berndt. And this is an Army pal of mine who arranged for us to get the fine car that brought us up from Dublin, Captain Jones.” The soldier nodded at me. “And would you believe he and Major Berndt are both from Philadelphia. That’s a place I’d like to see. Imagine a city built around a place called Independence Hall.”

  Berndt, could he be related to the Marine I’d known at Belleau Wood, I wondered.

  Cyril pushed me into the pew. Now I wanted to take one of Cyril’s bony little arms and push him out into the night so I could yell at him. Not possible when Irish people are gathered together for a good singsong in a church of all places. No scenes allowed. And here were my Marine friends alive and well.

 

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