“Are you taking the piss here, Jimmy?” Declan said.
“I yam takin’ the piss here, Declan. That I yam.”
“I’m glad to see you lads are safe as well,” Declan muttered. “We’re off now.” He telegraphed Betsy a look and she stood. “If the streets are clear, it’s time we get you back to your kip.”
Betsy made a show of cradling her arm and grimacing. She handed the towel to Jimmy. “Would you return this to the bartender, please? It’s too crowded to risk doing it myself.” Then she turned and started for the door, still cradling her arm. “Declan, could you walk on this side, as sort of a buffer?”
As the door swung closed behind them, he said. “Bloody buggers. They think I turned yellow. Can’t blame them. I’d be thinking the same of any one of them.”
“Well, I know better,” Betsy said, watching the cloud that had descended over his face. “And they should too.”
He perked up a bit. “Ah, to hell with that lot. Let’s get you back to your kip now. You do look a sight.”
Betsy was startled into taking inventory. Her dress was torn at the waist and the shoulder and there was dirt—a shoe print!—on the skirt.
When they pulled up to the B and B, the front door flew open as if on springs.
“Thanks be to Jaysus!” Mrs. Murtaugh cried from the doorway. “I was that sure you were lying in a pool of blood, the life draining out of you. And all my fault. It wasn’t until I turned on the box that I remembered that today of all days was the march on the embassy. I thought I’d sent you to your death! I want to hear everything that happened. Don’t you be leaving out a thing now.”
“Oh, God,” Betsy whispered as Declan helped her out of the car, “I need you to save me again. I’m going to tell her we have dinner plans. I don’t expect you to stay with me. You can let me off at some restaurant. Just don’t leave me here.”
“You’ve been hurt!” Mrs. Murtaugh looked her up and down, taking in the torn dress. “Did one of those brutes try to ravish you?” She shot Declan a look that suggested she suspected him despite his chauffeuring his victim to her door.
“I’m all right.” Betsy wondered if it were the protesters or the gardai who were Mrs. M’s brutes. “Well, mostly all right. Something hit my arm, but it’s not broken. And I scraped a knee. It could have been so much worse. It would have been, but Declan here rescued me, got me completely away from Merrion Street. And really that’s the whole story. I didn’t see what happened. You probably know more about it—certainly more than I do—from the television.”
“I guess I do at that. They said there were upwards of fifteen thousand protesters and only five hundred gardai. Two hundred injured were taken to hospital and most of those were gardai.”
“Fifteen thousand,” Betsy marveled. She thought about the marches she’d been on in Milwaukee, the ones she had thought of as large, and shook her head. And then she remembered the hundred thousand mourners at the funeral of Bobby Sands.
“Come in, lass. Come in. I’ll put a kettle on.”
“Thanks, but I’m just here to change my dress.”
“Now, I’ll not have you running off without a proper meal, not after all you’ve been through.” Her eyes narrowed as she turned to Declan. “I can put another sausage in the pan.”
“Thanks for the kind offer, Missus, but we’ll be shoving off. We’re due to meet up with some lads. Hurry on now,” he said to Betsy. “We don’t want to be late.”
Betsy whisked past Mrs. Murtaugh and up the stairs. In her room, she surveyed her limited options. Gingerly, she slipped into the nearly clean, clingy yellow dress that revealed a slice of cleavage. Back when her sister Gina, then a nursing mother of twins, had admired Betsy’s “perky breasts,” Betsy had said, “My consolation prize for being childless?” She wrapped her perky cleavage under a cardigan buttoned firmly against Mrs. Murtaugh’s appraising eyes.
“You’ll be needing a good night’s rest,” Mrs. Murtaugh cautioned as Betsy descended the stairs, “after all the excitement. What with your leaving tomorrow morning and all and all.”
“Oh, I can sleep on the plane,” Betsy called back over her shoulder. “Don’t wait up.”
When Declan’s car door closed, she said, “Thanks. You can drop me off wherever. I just couldn’t face being the main dish at her table tonight.” She hoped he wouldn’t take her up on that option. She wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the evening with him, but she wouldn’t say that. She would barely admit it to herself.
“Sure I won’t be dropping you off on your last night in Ireland. What would the Chinese say?”
Betsy grinned.
“You must be famished. Me belly thinks me throat’s been cut. We’ll be stopping at Dunnes to get what we need for a picnic supper. Then a quick stop to grab a blanket.”
At the grocery store Declan filled their basket. “My plan is to stuff you with regrets so you’ll leave Ireland planning your return. We’ll start with a brick of smoked cheddar and a small wedge of this Kerry blue.” They moved from aisle to aisle. “Some potato rolls to carry the Kerry. A nice loaf of spotted dog.” They stopped in front of a glass cabinet. “Have you tasted our smoked salmon yet? Ah, it’s only deadly. Some Guinness? No? Hard cider for the lady then. And a pint of tayberries. Grand that you’re here in July. It’s only in July that you get tayberries. And one banana.”
“An Irish banana?”
“The banana is medicinal. You’ll see.”
“Let me pay for this, Declan. Dinner is the least I owe you.”
“That’s not how it works, see. I’m responsible for you, remember? That includes feeding you.”
“All right then. I’m putting myself in your hands.” She could feel the flush rising from her chest to her cheeks.
“I’ll be taking me duties seriously. Including bestowing on you your rightful name. I don’t see you as a Betsy.”
“One of your countrymen said Elizabeth suits me.” Betsy thought about telling Declan about Brian John David Samuel Beattie from the borough of Lisburn in the North, but she’d gleaned enough to know that it wasn’t only geography that separated her Irishmen.
“Lizzie,” he said. “From the first, I’ve thought of you as Lizzie.”
He pulled up to the curb outside a two-story row house with a sunflower-yellow door.
“Is this where you live?”
“‘Tis where my mother lives and ‘tis where I grew up, but I’m only here for a wee while. Circumstances,” he shrugged, leaving her to wonder what those circumstances might be. “I’m between flats.”
“Should I meet your mother?”
He shook his head. “When I was a laddie, she used to say I was her ‘child of grace made of butter.’ Now . . .” he laughed.
He disappeared inside the yellow door. Betsy watched as the curtain on the downstairs front window was drawn to one side and a woman with a halo of white hair peered out, framed in the glass.
Betsy snuggled back in the seat and closed her eyes, reliving the improbable events of the afternoon.
“Would you be asleep now?” came a voice startlingly close to her ear.
Betsy’s eyes snapped open to find the face of the white-haired woman bent down to hers. “Oh! No. No, I wasn’t sleeping.”
“You don’t sound like you hail from these parts.”
“I’m from the States,” she said, sitting up.
“Well, look at you! The States now, is it? And how long have you known our Declan?”
“We only met today. He actually saved me from getting trampled on Merrion Street.”
“Did he now?” The woman looked appraisingly at Betsy. “Are you one of them they call an ‘outside agitator’?”
Betsy laughed. “Not me. More an innocent bystander.”
“Are you planning a long stay here in Dublin?”
�
�I’m sorry to say that I am going home tomorrow.” Betsy thought her interrogator relaxed noticeably, perhaps relieved at not having to perform any hostess duties.
“Ah, well. I wish you safe travels.” She gave a little wave and disappeared into the house as noiselessly as she had come.
Betsy didn’t quite believe in her. There was something of the fairies about their exchange. But then everything since she had left Mrs. Murtaugh’s house in the early afternoon had been unreal or at least unimaginable. Why should this chimerical figure be otherwise? She shut her eyes again, resolving to stay within the dream.
The sound of the car door closing jolted her out of sleep. “Where are we going?” She blinked, sitting up. “Oh,” she shook herself, trying to get her bearings. “For our picnic, I mean.”
“Not too far from here. Your visit to Dublin wouldn’t be complete now without going there.”
“I’m not even going to try to guess.”
They rode in amiable silence for several minutes, then Declan pulled over and parked. He grabbed the bag of groceries and the rolled-up blanket. “Follow me,” he said, “walk this way,” as he did a little jig down the sidewalk. Betsy laughed and he stopped on the corner and waited for her to catch up. “Have you tumbled yet?”
“Well, I would have if I tried to walk that way.”
He turned to see her smirk dissolve.
“Oh! Thank you, Declan!” She stood gaping at the red brick corner building with its plaque stating the years of Oscar’s Wilde’s residence.
“These were called townhouses because they were the houses in town of the landed gentry. On their country estates they lived in sprawling residences; in town verticality was the thing. The rich did their living in their upper stories, far above the street noise and the street smells. Think cobblestones and horses’ hooves and open windows and horses’ shite.”
“Merrion Square,” Betsy sighed. “I’m sure Mrs. Murtaugh would approve.”
“Not really square, you’ll notice. A rectangle. They built them with a park in the middle so they’d have plenty of light pouring in. No buildings obstructing their view.”
She surveyed the townhouses. “I’m finally seeing the celebrated doors of Dublin—they look enameled—and what do you call those arched windows above the doors?”
“Fanlights.”
“Of course. Because they’re shaped like fans.”
“Clap your eyes on these,” he tapped his shoe on a metal disk in the sidewalk the size of a large dinner plate. Then he walked to the next one.
Betsy’s eyes swept down the pavement. “It looks like there’s one in front of every unit.”
“Coal holes. Where the deliveries would be dropped for each house.”
They crossed the street and strolled along a wrought iron fence until they came to a gated entrance.
“What a gorgeous park,” Betsy said once inside, turning her head to take in the perimeter of trees and the expanse of lawn studded with beds of flowers. “It’s so lush.”
“It is that.”
“What’s it called?”
“Archbishop Ryan Park.”
“Seriously?”
“The park had always been private. That’s why there’s a fence all round. You could only get in with a key. The keys were rented out to the residents, the ones with nicker enough to live on the Square. This would be the park where your man Wilde would stroll.” He unfurled the blanket on the grass. “Then the Catholic Church bought it—I dunno—maybe fifty years ago. The plan was to build a cathedral, but that never happened. So the Church went along renting out keys for the next several decades. Then about ten years ago, Sinn Féin started agitating to make it a public park. When the protests didn’t change anything, Sinn Féin hit on a lethal plan. They distributed keys to all comers. The Archdiocese changed the locks and distributed new keys to the renters and the whole enterprise started all over again. And again. Costing the Church a continuous outlay of keys and time and money and aggravation. So Archbishop Ryan gave up and turned the park over to the city and got his name on a plaque.”
“Well, I’m grateful to the archbishop.” Her glance took in the few blankets that were scattered on the grass. “I’m surprised it isn’t more crowded. This is by far the nicest evening since I’ve been here.”
“A grand stretch,” he agreed, “but most will be steering clear of these parts tonight, not wanting to be anywhere near the British Embassy, for fear the fighting will start again.”
“Oh. Right.”
He pulled the banana from the paper sack, peeled it, and offered her half. She shook her head. The fading light kindled sparks of gold and red in her hair.
“You need to be taking off your jersey.”
Betsy was puzzled but did as directed, undoing the buttons with one hand and slipping the sweater off both shoulders with her good arm. Declan finished the banana and then raised his gaze. His eyes danced over her pale skin and yellow dress. “You’re lovely,” he said with an intake of breath. “All butter and cream.” Then he blushed as though he just realized he’d given voice to his thoughts.
Not, noted Betsy, That’s a nice dress. Or even You look lovely. But as if he were commenting on her essence as much as her appearance. Despite the chill air and her bare arms, a warmth suffused her.
Declan moved to her side and examined the injured arm. Then he placed the banana peel over the area where discoloration had begun to appear. “The only souvenir of my visit to Ireland,” Betsy sighed.
He pulled a roll of surgical tape from one of his jacket pockets and began gently wrapping, creating a cast of peel and tape around her upper arm. “Am I hurting you?”
“No. You’re baffling me. And I mean that in both senses of the word.”
“Ah. Seldom do I meet such a well-spoken lass as yourself. Usually the ones I meet who speak well are speaking the lines of someone else.”
“What is it you’re doing?”
“This is me mum’s remedy for bad bruises. Don’t ask me how it works. Just trust that it will.”
It struck Betsy that this cure was just the kind of medicine she might have expected that ghostly apparition to practice.
“There,” he admired his handiwork, “that should hold till you get home.” He helped her get the sweater on. “Toss me that yoke over there, will you? That,” he pointed to a bottle opener. “When I picked up the blanket, I remembered to take that and the tape,” he congratulated himself. He popped the cap on the cider bottle. “And these.” With a flourish he pulled out two juice glasses and a knife from his magical jacket pocket.
“What did you mean before: ‘They are speaking the lines of someone else’?”
“Actresses. I work at The Abbey.”
“An abbey?”
“The Abbey. Not a monastery. The national theater.”
“Oh! Are you an actor?”
“Not hardly. Lighting technician. I install, rig, operate, repair. Whatever‘s needed.”
“Wait. Then how can you be here? Theaters are never dark on Saturdays. Is it because it’s summer? Off-season?”
“Two shows today. One at three o’clock and”—he turned her wrist and glanced at her watch—“the other has already started. But I took the day off. Had other things to do,” he said sardonically.
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I told you I work in a theater, not a monastery. It’s my job, not a religious vocation. Though my mother had hopes I’d go into the priesthood. High hopes, I guess you could say,” he said, looking heavenward.
“My father wanted me to become a nun!”
“Did he now? And I thought you were a Prod.”
“Me?” she squawked. “Me, a Protestant? I’ll have you know I was one of the very few chosen to help clean the sacristy in our church every week when I was in eighth grade. And our family always said
the rosary together after dinner during Lent. On our knees. Everyone I knew as a kid was Catholic. I mean everyone. I went to Catholic schools from kindergarten through university.” She told him she had grown up in a city of neighborhoods referred to not by their geography but by the name of the parish in which they were located and how some of her classmates called the students who attended the city schools Publics, as though that were another religious denomination. “After all, we were Catholics and going to Catholic schools and as they were going to public schools. . .” She shrugged.
“Well, I can’t claim your academic credentials, but I still serve on the altar at the occasional Mass, I don’t eat meat of Fridays, and I never miss Mass on Sundays—I don’t go in for the Saturday substitute.”
Betsy was uncomfortably aware that he was speaking in the present tense, while she had talked only of the past. “Wow. That’s pretty hardcore. I guess you didn’t approve of the Vatican II changes.”
“I guess you did.”
“I did at the time. Now it all seems mostly irrelevant. I stopped going to church a few years ago.”
“Did you now?”
“I think it came from studying anthropology. The whole ‘One True Church’ thing suddenly seemed so . . . antiquated. And”—she drew her shoulders up apologetically—“narrow-minded.”
Declan looked at her noncommittally. He leaned over to cut hunks of cheese and bread and slivers of salmon and lay them out on paper napkins that came out of the pocket. “Didn’t manage to bring any plates.”
“Why, oh, why don’t they serve this in the pubs?” Betsy said when she’d cleared her mouth.
Declan took off his jacket and folded it into a pillow and lay on his back, examining the darkening sky.
“You know, no one back home is going to believe any of this,” she stretched out her arms to include him, their picnic, the park, the Merrion Street demonstration.
“Ah, sure, you’ll be a celebrity. You’ll dine out on your Dublin adventure.” They both fell silent, perhaps both trying and failing to imagine her back home. As he sat up to fill her glass, Betsy reported that she would start her new job—“a children’s librarian with a useless arm”—two days after her return to Milwaukee.
The Opposite of Chance Page 17