A Great Beauty

by A. O'Connor

  Th next morning Michael dressed in his full military uniform to attend the funeral of his friend and colleague Arthur Griffith. As he followed the coffin through the packed streets if Dublin, he was laden down with sadness over the loss of Arthur and Harry and the other casualties of the war. As he looked at the sea of faces he was passing he knew the people were now chiefly relying on him to steer the country back to normalcy.

  And, as he gave a speech at the graveside, giving the impression of being a tower of strength, little did the people know he was being torn in two as he thought of Kitty and Hazel.

  That evening Michael went to the Royal Marine Hotel again for dinner with the Laverys. After the incident there from two nights previously, Hazel asked for dinner to be served in a private function room where a gramophone was brought in by the hotel staff and music played.

  “It’s best not to take any chances,” Hazel said as they sat at the beautifully laid table.

  “I imagine after being stared at all day at the funeral, you appreciate the privacy, Michael,” said John. “You can at least eat your dinner in peace without your fellow diners looking at you.”

  “This is perfect,” said Michael gratefully.

  John studied Michael and Hazel intently over dinner. The lingering looks, the casual touching of each other’s hands. It came so naturally to them, neither were aware they were doing it.

  “I wonder would you mind terribly if I retired to bed early?” he asked after they had finished the main course of roast duckling.

  “But pudding hasn’t been served yet,” said Hazel.

  “I think I’ve had my fill,” he said, standing up. “Goodnight, Michael.”

  “Goodnight, Sir John.”

  Hazel waited until he was gone from the room before asking, “How did it go with Kitty yesterday?”

  “She’s not good,” he shook his head. “She knows about us, or strongly suspects to the point that she can’t ignore it.”

  “About us?” Hazel asked.

  “That we are in love,” Michael said.

  As horrified as Hazel was to hear Kitty knew this, she was equally as excited to hear Michael say it.

  “She thinks I no longer love her – that I’ve lost interest in her,” he said.

  “I see,” she said. “And have you – lost interest in her?”

  “I don’t know. I still care about her deeply, I know that. But so much has changed in my life and I don’t know if we have what we used to have in common anymore. Do you understand that?”

  “Of course! You are now a world leader, Kitty still a simple country girl,” said Hazel.

  “She was never quite that, Hazel! She used to cut quite a dash on the Irish social scene, she orders clothes from Paris and has travelled in Europe. She’s quite sophisticated, in her own way.”

  “In her own way, but not in your way anymore, Michael.”

  “She has sacrificed everything for me – everything! Her engagement to Lionel, her relationship with Harry – a future she could have had with Harry. She’s heading towards thirty – I can’t leave her now.”

  “But you can’t marry somebody just because they are heading towards thirty! Out of duty! I’ve done that once myself with my first marriage– and it’s a cold and awful place it brings you to, I can tell you!”

  “What should I do, Hazel?”

  “I can’t advise you what to do, Michael. Not on this one. This is for you and your heart.”

  “But what about us? Where does this leave us? Could you ever – ever – leave John and build a life with me?”

  “Leave John?” She whispered the words as if the thought had never crossed her mind before.

  “Well – isn’t that what you want?” he demanded.

  Hazel stared in Michael’s face, the face that she had fallen in love with. But his words panicked her – leave John.

  “I – I love you, Michael, but everything’s moving so fast!” she said.

  “If two people are meant to be together, then there’s no point in fighting it,” said Michael.

  The music on the gramophone played on into the night. Hazel and Michael danced slowly as the music played. As she held him tightly, Hazel never wanted to let him go – but the seriousness of the situation was beginning to hit her. John was asleep upstairs, Kitty waiting a few short miles away, and yet when she looked up into Michael’s eyes, nothing else seemed to matter except being with him.

  It was three in the morning when Hazel gently opened the door of the hotel suite and slipped in. She was surprised to see the chandelier was fully lit and John was still up, sitting at the window, with a bottle of whiskey beside him.

  “John – I thought you would be long asleep by now,” she said, walking over to him.

  “I decided to stay awake for you,” he said.

  “You’ll be a grouch in the morning! You know how you need your sleep –” She stopped short as she saw a stack of letters on the table beside him, her letters from Michael.

  “What are they doing there?” she asked.

  “I hope you don’t mind – I was curious, so took them from your bag to read.”

  “I do mind! How dare you read through my private letters, John Lavery!” she said as she scooped them up in her hands.

  “Well, I didn’t think they were that private as you have shown them to Shane Leslie and Eddie Marsh and Winston –” said John.

  “Only parts of the letters! Parts to do with politics – the rest is –”

  “Personal,” John finished the sentence for her. “Very personal indeed, Hazel.”

  “Michael and I have a personal relationship – what of it? He relies heavily on me!”

  John sighed loudly. “Let’s face facts, Hazel – he is clearly in love with you. I can clearly see that from how he is with you and, if I had any doubts, those doubts are cast aside having read those letters.”

  She looked at John, unsure how to react. She quickly tucked the letters away in her bag.

  “How Michael feels about you is not of too much concern to me – although I’m somewhat surprised that a man with as hard an image as he has resorts to such sentimental hogwash in his letterwriting to woo a woman! After all, Michael is just the latest in a long line of men who have been in love with my wife.”

  “Well, then! What of it?” she said light-heartedly. “He may join the queue, such as it is!”

  “The difference being that this time, as opposed to the flirtations with the Shanes and the Charlies, you are also in love with him!”

  Her mouth opened as she frantically searched for something to say.

  He watched her stand there like a statue.

  “Hazel?”

  She didn’t know what to say or how to react. But hearing him say the words, looking at him, she knew there was no point in denying the truth.

  “It’s true,” she said. “I can’t deny it … I am in love with Michael … completely, utterly, absolutely in love with him.”

  “Oh, Hazel,” he sighed as he shook his head and stroked his forehead.

  She kept her voice matter-of-fact as she continued, her eyes free of any emotion. “I can’t explain it and I don’t think I even want to try and understand it – but when I am not with him, he is all I think of … when I am with him, nothing else matters … when I look at him it is like looking at myself, we are that close.” She looked down at the floor.

  “It’s an infatuation, Hazel. A spell which must be broken.”

  “I don’t want it broken,” she whispered.

  “Hazel, you need to start thinking straight. You’ve let this get out of hand – if you let it continue it will destroy you.”

  “I don’t care … I don’t care about anything but to be with him.”

  “Hazel, apart from the obvious lunacy of the situation – what kind of a future could you ever have together? Where could you go – where could you live? It would be the biggest scandal since – ever! You’d be rejected by society – he’d be ejected from his positi
on of power in Ireland. You would both be pariahs!”

  “Society!” she mocked. “Would I miss it? Endless lunches and dinners and parties, discussing tennis and fashion and other people’s children! Can’t you see how pointless it makes me feel? Can’t you see the only thing that gives me meaning – gives my life meaning – is when I am with Michael, immersed in real life – his life!” Her voice cracked in desperation.

  “But if this came out about you and him, his life in Irish affairs would be over. It would be ten times worse than what happened to Charles Stewart Parnell. And what of his fiancée – this girl Kitty?”

  “She knows. Michael told me this evening that she knows.”

  “Hazel – you are standing on a cliff edge. It is not too late to turn back, because that fall off the cliff is a very long way down. Stop letting the mirror deceive you. You need to face reality. You are a twice-married woman in your forties – a mother with a daughter about to reach adulthood. He is a decade younger than you – how long do you think this relationship would last in the real world? Where will you be in ten years’ time when your looks are gone, and he is most probably without children and blaming you for robbing him of his chance at a family? You will have no position in society. And you may mock that position, but you have never been without it. It is very cold out there – just think of your sister Dorothy and what awaited her.”

  “Oh, John,” she started to cry, “I never thought you could say anything so cruel.”

  “And I never thought, despite everything, that you would ever think of leaving me.”

  He stood up and left the suite.

  Trying to stifle her sobs, she went to the bed and collapsed on it.

  CHAPTER 75

  Kitty looked at the photograph of Michael on the front of the newspaper, taken the previous day at Arthur Griffith’s funeral. As she studied the photograph her heart felt a pang of sympathy for him, but she was filled with terrible sorrow. Just a short time ago she had been so happy – happy at finally being with the man she had been searching for all her life. She thought back through the years and all the suitors that had pursued her. She had played them all like a fiddle as she partied throughout the midlands and Dublin, even getting engaged to poor Lionel on the way. But none of them, not even her dear lovely Harry, had captured her heart like Michael had. Sometimes through those years she feared she would end up on her own because she was being too choosy. She didn’t know what being in love was like, but she knew she would know when she felt it. And she did with Mick. How ironic that the love of her life, after such a long search, now seemed to be in love with another.

  She went for long walks on the beach. She prayed in the church, she prayed in her hotel room. She waited to hear from Michael.

  Then he sent a telegram saying that he would be calling to her on Friday. She couldn’t wait to see him but was terrified of what the visit would bring.

  Michael sat in his quarters at the barracks in Portobello, staring at the map of Ireland on his desk. There were lots of markers on the map, identifying enemy positions. But he couldn’t concentrate. All he could think about was Hazel and Kitty.

  Emmet, now his Chief of Staff, walked into the room.

  “We’ve had another victory in Galway. An enemy unit wiped out and we’ve taken back control of the area,” said Emmet.

  “Are there many dead?”

  “None on our side, four on the other.”

  Michael put his head in his hands. “Four! Four sons, four brothers, four husbands, four fathers, four friends … perhaps our friends, men who were our friends and comrades!”

  “Michael – are you alright?”

  “We need to keep the pressure on the other side to negotiate – before this whole country falls apart at the seams,” he said, staring at the map. “I’m going to travel to Cork on Sunday. I want to do a tour of duty there.”

  “Cork! But, sure, that is still very much enemy territory, Mick!”

  “It’s my home county and they are my people. And I want to see my people … I need to see my family there,” said Michael, his voice quiet and slow.

  “I strongly suggest delaying that visit until we have secured the territory. It’s not safe, Mick!”

  “Make the plans, Emmet. We’ll be travelling down on Sunday.”

  Hazel had never seen John in a mood like this before. He usually was so blasé, rarely getting disturbed or anxious about anything. She had given him enough reason to be disturbed and anxious over the years. His words had stung her to the core the other night. And yet she knew he was just trying to jolt her into reality and save their marriage. The problem was she was besotted with Michael.

  She was on the telephone in the hotel reception to her good friend Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett, the Countess of Fingall, commonly known as Daisy. They were both invited to attend a dinner party that night at Sir Horace Plunkett’s estate in Foxrock. Horace was a cousin of Elizabeth’s husband and he and Elizabeth had a close friendship.

  “George Bernard Shaw is coming too,” said Elizabeth.

  “Oh, good,” said Hazel.

  “He would very much like to meet Michael Collins. As would Horace, of course – they would have many issues to discuss.” Horace was an agricultural reformer and pioneer of agricultural cooperatives – he saw this as the way forward to relieve Ireland of poverty and dissension. “Any chance you can bring him along?”

  “Well, yes, I was hoping to meet him today, so I’ll ask him to come along tonight,” Hazel said, looking across the hotel lobby into the dining room where she could see John eating his breakfast.

  “Excellent! We can’t wait to meet him. Well, he’ll probably be the next president now that Arthur Griffith has passed away.”

  “Yes, probably,” said Hazel.

  When the call was over, she picked up the telephone again and asked to be put through to Michael at his headquarters in Portobello.

  “Good morning,” she whispered. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Not really, I had a lot of dreams – bad ones. I’m travelling to Cork tomorrow.”

  “Cork! But you can’t, Michael. There are too many rebels there – you will be too much at risk!”

  “Sure, there were two assassination attempts on my life here in Dublin during the week, Hazel. I’m as safe there as anywhere.”

  “I sincerely doubt that!” she insisted.

  “Besides, I want to go home and see my people and try to reach out to the rebels there to stop the fighting … I need to see you today before I go.”

  “Well, that’s why I was telephoning you. We’ve been invited to Sir Horace Plunkett’s tonight. George Bernard Shaw will be there. Excellent opportunity for you to meet them all. They could be very helpful to you in the future.”

  “I was hoping to meet you on your own,” he said.

  “Well, I couldn’t let my friends down, Michael. It won’t be a long night – we can talk after.”

  “I’ll call for you at six.”

  “Perfect! I’ll see you then.”

  She joined John in the dining room.

  “I was just speaking to Daisy. We’re invited to Sir Horace Plunkett’s estate tonight – Michael has been invited too.”

  “Michael!”

  “They are all desperate to meet him,” she said with a shrug.

  “I won’t be going, Hazel. You can take him on your own.”

  “But that’s just childish!”

  “What? That I won’t accompany my wife and her lover to dinner and pretend nothing is the matter? Hazel, you have been involved with the British aristocracy for far too long and adopted their ways! But may I remind you that I am not, regardless of my knighthood, a real member of aristocracy. I am a self-made man from Belfast. And you are from the Mid-west of America, again a place that would have very different social mores from those of the British aristocracy!”

  “Well, please yourself then and don’t come!” she retorted.

  “Your trouble, Hazel, is that you want to hav
e your cake and eat it! You want Michael, you want to remain married to me and you want keep your position in society! I’m sorry, but that’s not on! I will not be one of those husbands who looks away while his wife carries on with another man. I’ve looked away for years as you flirted shamelessly through the upper echelons of London society. I will not now look away while you sleep with a farm boy from West Cork! You’re going to have to choose and choose soon! Follow your heart or follow your head, but I won’t share you and I won’t be made a fool of!” He threw his handkerchief on the table and marched out.

  CHAPTER 76

  There was a knock on the bedroom door. Kitty checked her appearance in the mirror before going to open it.

  Michael was standing there. He looked very tired and not his usual exuberant self.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course,” she said, holding the door open for him.

  He walked in and she closed the door. He stood staring at her before she went to him and held him close.

  “I’m sorry for everything, Kitty. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Oh, sure I never meant to hurt anybody either – it’s what happens though in love and war.”

  She gently pushed him away and went to sit on the couch in front of the window.

  “Have you decided what you are going to do?” she asked then.

  “Yes, I’m going to Cork on Sunday.”

  “Cork! What are you going there for?”

  “First, I need to be seen there to show we are in control of the whole country.”

  “But you’re not, are you? According to the newspapers anyway.”

  “There’s still fighting going on. That’s the second reason I’m going, to try and stop it. And I want to go home, Kitty. I want to see my family and friends at home. I need to see them.”

  “Well, I can understand that, if it’s safe for you to go … but what I meant by my question about what you’re going to do was: have you decided what you are going to do about us – you and me – and Hazel Lavery?”