Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  Up to now the people had been silent, listening. What a story! But now they laughed.

  “It took us ten days and we made it all the way to St. Peter’s Square. Five pretty raggedy-looking fellows, but Rome was full of refugees from all over. Even the Nazis couldn’t keep track of all of them. We’d been told by the priest in that village that if we could make it into Vatican City we’d be granted sanctuary, except the Swiss Guard were not about to let us in. Later we found out that anyone discovered aiding a POW would be executed on the spot. The Guards were taking no chances. But then I saw this tall man, well over six feet, wearing a cassock and one of those round hats. He was standing on the steps just behind the Swiss Guard. ‘No worries, Captain,’ he said to the guard. These are my guests. I’ve been waiting for them.’ And that was Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty.”

  O’Flaherty, I thought, wasn’t that the priest Peter had been going on about?

  “Now the story isn’t well known,” Captain Jones continued. “Father Hugh never bragged about what he had done, but he put together a network of Irish priests, Italian women, and a widow from Malta to form a kind of underground railroad that hid escaped prisoners and downed pilots as well as Jewish children and their families. He stashed them in seminaries, convents, and Vatican buildings. My boss, General Clark, thinks his group saved at least ten thousand lives. And of course Father Hugh and the rest knew that if they were caught it would mean their own deaths. Two of the people Father Hugh depended on are right up here with me. Probably horrified at what I am about to do. I have two Medals of Freedom, the highest civilian honor the United States awards civilians, to present to Delia Murphy and Peter Keeley.”

  Here came Cyril carrying two velvet boxes. I tugged on Peter’s hand but he was looking down at his shoes.

  “Delia and her husband,” Captain Jones went on, “represented Ireland at the Vatican. Now as you know, both Ireland and the Vatican were neutral, so what Hugh and the others were doing not only endangered their own lives but put their country at risk. The Nazis were looking for any excuse to invade both Ireland and the Vatican. We know now Hitler planned to kidnap the pope and take over the treasures of the Vatican. Plus Operation Green was a German Army plan to land troops in Ireland.”

  He turned to Peter and Delia. “Quite a decision for you to make. Perhaps you can explain, Delia.”

  “I did wrestle with my conscience and prayed for guidance about what I could do to help Father Hugh. But a voice inside said that God intends that we extend charity to all humanity in war as well as peace. There were big posters all over Rome saying anyone who helped Allied prisoners of war would be shot. When Italy surrendered, the Italian prison camps had let their prisoners go, so there were lots of these fellows roaming around. I don’t know if the Nazis would have shot an Irish minister’s wife, but everyone in our group knew that helping even one Allied soldier meant the firing squad and some of us did die. But I had a car and we had food. I don’t think my husband ever told the Irish government what I was up to. He turned a blind eye even when I stole thirty pairs of German army boots from the factory next door to us.”

  The audience laughed. Delia turned to Peter Keeley.

  “You had to make the same decision, Peter. Didn’t your boss at the Vatican Library forbid you to get involved with us?”

  Now I was staring up at Peter. He’d been saving Allied soldiers, helping Jewish families?

  “Like you, Delia, I thought we answered to a higher authority. After all, isn’t the greatest of these charity and we had a splendid leader. I often thought of the words on Galway City’s gates ‘From the fury of the O’Flahertys, O Lord deliver us,’” Peter said.

  Now the audience was leaning forward in their seats. A bonus. First the concert and then this drama unfolding right in front of them. Peter hadn’t been locked in a room but defying the Nazis.

  Delia went on, talking directly to Peter now.

  “And of course you and that Italian princess were so good at forging papers, lucky the Nazis never questioned why Vatican employees went from two hundred to four thousand.” She looked at Captain Jones. “But really our activities were supposed to be secret. I promised my husband.”

  “Well this is a very private moment,” he said. “Delia Murphy, Peter Keeley, present yourselves to be decorated.”

  * * *

  So … I did not get into Colonel Duggan’s car with Marty Berndt, Captain Jones, and Cyril to drive to Beech Hill. Not because Peter Keeley had begged me not to leave. No. No one drove anywhere because while we were in church, snow fell all over Donegal, and the narrow lanes that led to Burt, difficult when clear, became impassable. Not a problem for most of the audience, who were well used to walking to their homes no matter what the weather but, as Father Abbot said, it was not a night for motorcars. Delia was stranded too. She had intended to stay in a hotel in Letterkenny. After the medal ceremony Father Abbot had called out, “All pilgrims to the refectory.” And now here we were. Delia, the two Marines and Captain Jones, Cyril, Peter Keeley, and me, sitting on two long wooden benches pulled up to a rough-hewn table. Cold in that room and it was only natural that I would move close to Peter and put a corner of my coat over his knees.

  Captain Jones had pinned the medal on the front of Peter’s old tweed jacket. I had cried at that moment and I had to admit that one or two of those tears came from the shame I felt at underestimating Peter. Which I had tried to say to him as we followed Father Abbot through the passageway from the church to the refectory.

  “You were a hero,” I’d said to Peter. “You could have been executed.”

  “Don’t make too much of what I did. Most of it was behind the scenes,” Peter had said.

  But Delia heard him and turned back from her place, leading the procession with Father Abbot.

  “Make him tell you the truth, Nora Críonna. No one better at blarneying the Nazis than he was. Fearless. We had an RAF flyer who’d been hiding in a seminary who had acute appendicitis. His appendix had to be removed or he’d die. Peter got me to pick the fellow up in the embassy car and we drove through Rome, the Irish tricolor flying. At every German checkpoint Peter convinced the soldiers that we had a sick priest in the back seat. Did the same thing at the hospital. It was full of wounded Nazis, and Peter put the pilot on a gurney and wheeled him right up to the operating room, limping all the way. He’d arranged to have a sympathetic surgeon operate on him. Then it was back in the car and to the Vatican. The professor knew how to seem kind of doddery, which helped. Got the Nazis to feel sorry for us.”

  “You became a good actor then,” I said to Peter as we walked into the refectory. “Nothing doddery about you. A Knight of the Red Branch, one of the Fianna.”

  “Whisht,” he said to me as he sat on the bench and then slid along the smooth wood, leaving room for me.

  Thank you, God, for not letting me shoot off my mouth about those who hid away from danger. And now I wanted details. Peter wouldn’t tell me much. But Delia began to reminisce about the Jewish children they’d taken to Catholic orphanages while their parents hid in convent basements. Still she was worried about accepting the medal.

  “At least you’re not the Brits,” she said to Captain Jones. “They wanted to make me a Dame of the Empire, which would not have sat well with my revolutionary husband or me either. Of course, the Americans called me a dame, too. One day in June the Germans started leaving Rome, running away. Nazi soldiers headed north where they did manage to hold out for a few months. Suddenly it was very quiet in the city. I went out with my children and this jeep pulled up. ‘There’s a dame looks like she knows something,’ I heard. The jeep was full of American soldiers trying to find the Tiber River.”

  Both sides of the table laughed. “But my husband would be appalled if what he called ‘my adventures’ were too well known. There were other members of the Department of Foreign Affairs who were very angry at me for risking our neutrality.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Delia,” Father Abbot sa
id. “It’s as a singer this audience will remember you. And a grand one, too.”

  “Thank you,” Delia said. “I had a good partner in the professor. I never thought I’d meet his Nora and are you two really married?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No,” said Peter.

  “Yes and no,” Delia said. “My husband Tom might say that about our marriage, and all those brides you’re transporting to America, Colonel, are they of the yes and no variety?”

  “Our couples are all certified,” Colonel Duggan said. “The men had to jump through plenty of hoops to get permission to marry and send their wives home.”

  “Do you remember Donald Kennedy, Nora?”

  “I do.”

  “He married a lovely girl from a prominent family in Dublin,” Colonel Duggan said.

  “What about Ralph, the jitterbugging Romeo?” I asked.

  “Interesting story about Ralph. He’d lied about his age to enlist. The most popular Marine in Derry was only sixteen.”

  We all laughed.

  “We have visas for everyone, even have a few extras in case of a last-minute romance. You see, Professor, you’re not the only one who can expedite paperwork,” he said.

  “Funny you should say that, Colonel,” Delia said.

  “I’m Jim, ma’am.”

  “And I’m Delia, though I did like the Italians calling me Excellencia. They made titles sound fantastic. Like the principessa, the one who was working with you, Peter,” she said. “Remember we thought you’d have to wed that woman to properly protect her. Make her an Irish citizen as well as a Vatican resident.”

  Everyone at the table was listening now.

  “Peter was the only non-clerical bachelor,” Delia said. “You’d think he would have jumped to make a match with a young, beautiful, rich, and noble widow. But not our Peter. Dragged his feet. Faithful to Nora Críonna, I guess. Father Hugh figured out a way to make the princess a member of the Swiss Guard, and Switzerland was even more neutral than Ireland.”

  “We don’t have any princesses among our brides,” Duggan said.

  “Spoken like a man who doesn’t know Derry women,” Father Abbot said, and it was while everyone was laughing at this remark that I felt Cyril’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Would you mind stepping out for a word?” he said to me. And then to Peter, “Shove down a bit, Professor, and give this Kelly woman room to swing her legs out. Knees creak a bit, do they, Nora?”

  “Cyril, Cyril,” I said, but I did manage to get up from the bench. What did he have up his sleeve now, I wondered as I let him pull me toward the alcove at the entrance to the refectory with two tall windows.

  “Put it right out of your mind,” he said to me.

  “What?”

  “I saw your face when that Marine was talking about visas and a ship leaving for the States. You’re planning to kidnap the poor professor,” he said.

  “I am not,” I started.

  “You are,” he said. “Already thinking of how you can parade him as a hero around Chicago. You’ll do what the Nazis couldn’t. Destroy him entirely.”

  “You’re the one ruined his life and mine with your lies. Well, it’s not too late. He’s alive.”

  “I am,” Peter said. He joined us now at the windows. We could see snow blowing across the landscape with the Grianán fort covered too.

  “And as the rain and the snow come down from Heaven, and return no more,” Peter said. “But soak the earth and water it, and make it to spring forth giving seed to the sower and bread to the hungry. Isaiah.” Peter smiled at us as he finished the quotation.

  “See. See,” Cyril said to me. “How would that kind of nattering go over with the gangsters in Chicago? They’d put him down as mental.”

  “But maybe I can move here. Find a place for us,” I said.

  “Impossible, Nora. The people in the village wherever you settled would be polite enough to you at first and then what? Would you set yourself up in some big house as the lady of the manor? With the professor as a kind of pet? Or maybe you’d find a little cottage and keep house for him. Not the one he’s living in now. That belongs to the monks, and he lives there on their charity. No room for you. You’d have to find your own place and get used to no central heating, no running water, no inside toilet, if you were going to prove that you were one of the people. And how much money do you have? I guess that you haven’t been very crionna about finances. Sucking on the public tit haven’t you been? Just like the mayor.”

  Peter was looking out the window. Cyril grabbed his arm.

  “I think you would have too much self-respect to join her on the dole, Professor,” Cyril said.

  “I’ve earned my salary. I’m a photographer.” But Cyril was shaking Peter’s arm.

  “Send her on her way, Professor. This Kelly woman will bring you nothing but trouble.”

  “Why did you turn on me, Cyril?” I said. “We were friends. Comrades-in-arms really. You were the one schooled me in Irish politics. Didn’t we three stand together against the Black and Tans? Why is it so important to you that Peter and I be kept apart?”

  “I told you. Peter Keeley is a wanted man. The family of the boy he killed would still prosecute him if they ever found him. He’s fragile, Nora. For all that he rose to the occasion in Rome, he’s a wreck really.”

  “So you’ve been telling me, Cyril.” Peter turned away from the window, lifted Cyril’s hand from his shoulder. “The first months when I was recovering from my wounds I saw that boy’s eyes every time I closed mine. But, Cyril, I have recovered. Time and the war … and now I wonder why you still want to divide Nora and me. I can forgive you for your lies then. But now, why now?”

  Peter turned to me and smiled. The way he said “now.” Could he be actually considering spending the years we had left together? Did he want to be with me? If that was true I could overcome any obstacle. Live here, in Paris, in Chicago. We would find the money. If, if …

  “Peter,” I began, but he was looking at Cyril.

  “Let Cyril answer,” Peter said.

  “Oh for God’s sake. Do you want to be arrested for murder?” Cyril said.

  “But it was self-defense,” I said. “In the heat of battle. No court would convict. If you’d told me the truth, Cyril, I could have helped. Gotten a lawyer…”

  “Which I’d say Cyril knew very well,” Peter said. “And I wonder. So much of what happened that day I can’t remember. Always relied on you, Cyril. I grabbed for his gun but … Wait a minute. Cyril, was it you killed Jimmy McCarthy?”

  Cyril was shaking his head, but his face … red, his eyes squinched together.

  “I saved your feckin’ life, didn’t I? And what do I get for it? Only accusations. So twenty years ago I acted as a soldier should. Took out the enemy. But the McCarthys would have raised an awful row, come after me. I had things to do. A position to fulfill. And all you wanted to do was lock yourself away with papers. It didn’t matter about you.”

  “I didn’t kill Jimmy McCarthy? It wasn’t me? You did!”

  “You botched it,” Cyril said. “Soft. For all your revolutionary blather.”

  “My God, Cyril,” I said. “Who are you?”

  Because this man wasn’t the quick-witted fixer, the cheerful bird hopping through danger and destruction yet somehow catching his worm that I thought I knew. He was furious. Puffed up beyond his height, his voice low, slashing out his words.

  “You, you amateurs. We had a country to build. I grew up in a flat where the boy downstairs died of a rat bite. So I’m not going to waste my time listening to your whingeing. I performed a service. Don’t expect me to pin a medal on you. You Yanks will make a dog’s dinner of it, just as the Brits did and every other imperial power going back to the Romans. Hell, to the Persians. Your little love affair matters less than a fiddler’s fart.”

  He turned and walked back to the refectory. I stood with Peter at the windows. The snow had stopped and a full moon rose above us.<
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  “I need time to take this in. For all these years I thought I was a murderer,” he said. “I have to get out of here. Let’s go up there now.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “To the Grianán. I have to think.”

  I thought I’d never see a brighter moon than the one that rose up above the shores of the lake in Wisconsin that night of the Ojibwe ceremony, but we now stepped out into a landscape saturated with light. Not one moon shadow but dozens. Every rock that marked the path was outlined in silver and cast its own image on the snow.

  Peter placed his stick in the drifts and swung himself forward. Reminded me of FDR.

  “And the moon on the breast of the new fallen snow gave a luster of midday to the objects below,” Peter said.

  “You remember that.” I’d quoted “The Night Before Christmas” to him the first time we’d walked together on the streets of Paris during a similar snowstorm.

  “You told me it was an Irish poet called Moore wrote it. I made a copy of the words.”

  “Oh, Peter,” I said. “We can’t lose each other again. It’s terrible you had to live with guilt but…”

  He started up the path toward the fort. Anchoring his shillelagh before every step. Not that much snow really. Nothing like a Chicago storm with a foot or two on the ground. Only a few inches blew across the path. Halfway up Peter stopped. He pointed down at the church. Pools of color were appearing on the snow. The stained glass windows were lit from within.