Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

“I had to bring it over, Dermot. I’ve blessed it with holy water and exorcised all bad spirits. It takes him up to the executions. Herself will have to figure out where the final section is. Here’s the picture of the cemetery too.”

  “On a night like this?”

  He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Sure, you haven’t lived through our November storms, have you? This is just a mild breath of wind, isn’t it lads?”

  The two Gardaí laughed in agreement.

  “Would you all ever come in for a cup of tea?”

  Heaven help me if they did. But also heaven help me if I returned to our bedroom and confessed that I hadn’t asked.

  “’Tis too late. We’ll see you at church tomorrow evening?”

  “With the in-laws.”

  “Our orders are to stay outside in the car, sir.”

  I went back to the bedroom. My wife was sound asleep, the manuscript on the spread next to her. She looked so young, so frail, so desperately in need of protection. Gently I lifted the folder and placed it on the dresser. Then I turned off the light and as quietly as possible slipped into bed next to her.

  She did not stir. I settled back into my pillow and ventured in the land of Nod myself.

  Almost immediately, or so it seemed, my daughter, in the green Connemara T-shirt that had become her nightie was shaking me vigorously.

  “Wake up, Daddy, wake up! Something terrible has happened!”

  I had visions of the Atlantic Ocean claiming the nursery.

  “What?” I said, struggling to sit up.

  “Fiona has had her three puppies and they’re all fine, two girls, Dana and Deirdre, and a boy puppy, Dano, but they’ve made a terrible mess and Ma will be very upset!”

  I tried to adjust to that news.

  “They’re all snow white like she is!”

  Ma isn’t snow white … . Oh, but Fiona is!

  I struggled into my robe and permitted my daughter to lead me to the nursery. There, on the blanket that served as her bed, was Fiona, looking inordinately pleased with herself. She thumped her tail in greeting as the three small snowballs sucked nourishment greedily from her body.

  Nelliecoyne had not exaggerated. There was a terrible mess and a smell to match.

  None of this seemed to bother my son, who was jumping up and down in his crib and shouting something like “Dawgies!”

  I leaned over and petted the new mother.

  “Congratulations, Fiona!” I said.

  What else does one say to a wolfhound who has just produced three splendid and apparently healthy pups?

  She replied by licking my hand.

  Nuala would collapse. A terrible mess in the house and her ma and da coming at noon.

  “Aren’t they pretty, Daddy!”

  “Yes, Nelliecoyne, they are very pretty!”

  “Can we keep them all?”

  “Wouldn’t that be selfish?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” She sighed.

  Another blast of wind shook our bungalow to its foundations.

  Then the foundations were shook again as my wife charged into the nursery.

  “Dermot Michael! What’s wrong? … Oh, how wonderful!”

  She knelt on the floor next to Fiona and cradled the dog’s massive head in her lap and spoke to her in Irish. Fiona responded by licking her face. Nuala hummed something that might have been the Connemara Cradle Song.

  “They’re all right, dear,” Nuala assured the dog, “just let me have a look at them!”

  Gently she removed the pups one by one from their feeding frenzy and inspected them.

  “Och, Dermot Michael, aren’t you thinking that the bitch population of the house has doubled!”

  “Certainly not!” I lied.

  The pups went back to work.

  “They’ll be grand, love,” she informed Fiona. “Three healthy puppies.”

  Each worth several thousand Irish pounds, I reflected.

  “Nelliecoyne,” Nuala instructed our daughter, “go back to bed, young woman, and your grandma and grandpa coming in the morning!”

  “Yes, Ma … Make Mick go to bed too.”

  “Isn’t he already asleep, dear?”

  Our son; easily bored with the show, had curled up in his crib.

  “Dermot Michael, back to bed with you too. I’ll clean up here.”

  “I’m sorry there will be a mess for your parents, Nuala.”

  “Aren’t we all three of us peasants and aren’t we used to animals giving birth? Go to bed now, I don’t want you to be irritable in the morning.”

  Me, irritable? Good old, calm, cool, even tempered Dermot Michael Coyne?

  YES!

  “Shut up!”

  I went back into the bedroom. Before I turned off the light, I glanced at Nuala’s easel. She was working on the beginnings of a sketch of a woman in the fashions of the late nineteenth century. Nora? Who else?

  I shivered at the thought that Nuala actually knew what Nora Joyce looked like. Only much later did it occur to me that perhaps she was only guessing.

  In the morning the pups were cuddled up in their mother’s protecting body, sleeping peacefully despite the wind and the rain still assaulting the house.

  “Aren’t they lovely, Dermot Michael?”

  “They are.”

  “Eat your oatmeal now. We have to go over to Renvyle House to see the Russians.”

  “It’s yucky,” Nelliecoyne protested.

  How had that obligation entered our schedule?

  “In this weather?”

  “Sure, we’ll go over in the van, won’t we?”

  I ate my oatmeal, which Nuala always prepares for my breakfast when she’s in charge.

  She called the veterinarian down in Cork, who had presided over the breeding, and gave him a detailed description of the pups and their condition.

  “Won’t he come up on Monday to check on them?”

  “Grand.”

  “Finish your oatmeal, Dermot Michael.”

  “It’s yucky.”

  She ignored me and turned her attention to dressing the small fry in several layers of sweaters and raincoats.

  The van rattled and shook in protest as we inched our way down the slippery road. The Gardai didn’t want to let us in until Peig appeared and waved us through.

  Nuala opened the window.

  “Three white puppies, Peig. Come over and see them when you’re off duty.”

  “Brilliant!”

  A fleet of eight black limousines, four of them with small tricolor flags on the hood, blocked the driveway of the hotel.

  “Gobshites!” Nuala exclaimed, breaking her own rule about language around her children.

  “Shitehawks!” Nelliecoyne agreed.

  Nuala was too busy buttoning up our children and getting them out of the car to comment.

  What was I supposed to say—Nelliecoyne, don’t imitate your mother’s language? Especially today with her ma and da around.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  I carried Nelliecoyne and Nuala carried the Mick into the hotel lobby. A crowd milled around, Irish diplomats, Gardaí in plain clothes, Russian diplomats and the Russian brass—six big, overweight men, three of them in military uniforms with big hats and chests laden with medals. Everyone was sipping clear liquid from water glasses. The Russians were complaining loudly in Russian while a woman translator strove to render their complaints in English.

  They were either very angry or feigning anger. Well, just let them try to invade Ireland! The English had tried that and it hadn’t worked. Besides, the friggin’ Yanks would protect us wouldn’t they?

  “Ours are drinking water, theirs are drinking vodka,” Declan McGinn, the Garda superintendent from Galway, whispered behind us.

  I had asked no questions about our visit to the hotel. I knew that Nuala was supposed to be a kind of psychic police dog, a human Fiona. Again the Gardaí were not exactly consulting a clairvoyant. Merely asking the opinion of one of the dark ones.
<
br />   “You’d be thinking that you wouldn’t be so far from wrong if you believed that those poor men were killed by their own?”

  “It might not be altogether a mistake to conclude that this solemn high visit is a bit of a show,” Declan agreed.

  Nuala built the pyramid of her fingers under her chin and stared intently at the crowd. The Mick squirmed in my arms. Nelliecoyne, for all I knew part of the psychic screening process that was going on, held her mother’s hand.

  “The thin little fella over there on the fringes with the big black mustache, who would he be?”

  “Second Secretary of the Embassy.”

  “He knows a lot more about what happened than he’s letting on.”

  “That wouldn’t be a great surprise to us, Nuala Anne. He’s certainly secret police, or a member of one of the factions of the secret police.”

  “Funny looking men,” Nelliecoyne observed. “Bad men.”

  “Not all of them, dear,” I said.

  She nodded solemnly. “Some are Irish.”

  “You can’t question him, I would imagine?”

  “Not himself. We can ask around and see who he might hire for a thing like this.”

  Nuala Anne removed her fingers from her chin. “Dermot Michael Coyne, we should bring these ruffians home.”

  Her assignment was complete. The Gardai had wanted reassurance that their hunches were valid. If you have a local witch around, why not consult her, especially in the West of Ireland, and most especially on the ocean edge of Connemara? Mind you, nothing would go into the reports about this consultation.

  I was tempted to make the sign of the cross, but restrained myself.

  “Your man over there,” Nuala murmured to Declan McGinn, “could also be involved in the other stuff too.”

  He grimaced.

  “We know that, Nuala.”

  Was a war under way between two Russian factions way out here on the western end of the West of Ireland? Perhaps. I wondered if the Russians, a people far more superstitious than the Irish, could not realize what they were getting into.

  As if to confirm that insight, the Russian Embassy Second Secretary began to cough and then, unnoticed by his colleagues, rushed off in the direction of the washrooms.

  “Time for us to leave,” Nuala announced.

  “Did you do that to him?” I asked her.

  “His own conscience did.”

  That was that.

  YOU DIDN’T ASK HER WHETHER SHE STIRRED UP HIS CONSCIENCE.

  “I don’t want to know.”

  At the bungalow, Fiona greeted us at the door, tail wagging happily.

  “You didn’t think we’d walk out on you and your family, did you dear?” Nuala said as she hugged the great beast. “They’re all right now, aren’t they?”

  They were indeed. We moved them to the laundry room, where they would be safe from potential rugrat depredation.

  Then the elder McGrails arrived. They stoutly maintained that the storm was nothing at all, at all. I should have been here for the one on Paddy’s Day.

  It was a good weekend for us. Nuala always relaxed when her parents were present. The kids adored them. Fiona and her pups had a new audience. Father Jack Lane, as Nuala had introduced him at the Saturday afternoon Mass, greeted her ma and da in Irish.

  “Any hints yet, Nuala?” he asked her.

  “Sure, don’t stop looking for it yourself, Father,” she admonished him. That night she had informed me, “Och, Dermot, you can’t expect me to relax with lovemaking with me ma and da in the house.”

  I had not suggested that we should. Much less did I suggest that they might very well be doing just that in their room down the corridor.

  However, in the middle of the night, the wind still screeching, she woke me with gentle fingers.

  “I love you, Dermot Michael.”

  “Do you now?”

  “I do.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  She demonstrated her intentions by rolling over on top of me. Under the circumstances, how could I resist?

  When we were falling back asleep, she whispered, “Please never stop loving me, Dermot love?”

  “Not a chance.” I sighed.

  “I’d die if you ever got tired of me.”

  “The day after the sun rises in the west.”

  Judging by the contentment around the breakfast table the next morning as we ate our oatmeal, everyone had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. The winds had died. The sun was breaking through the clouds. “Won’t it be a brilliant day altogether?” Annie McGrail demanded.

  “Yes, Ma,” Nuala, always the diffident and obedient daughter in the presence of her ma, agreed meekly.

  Fiona’s offspring were already beginning to play with one another. The poor fella was outnumbered by his sisters.

  Later, it was decided that the weather had cleared sufficiently that we could take a nice walk along the strand, the children in their stroller. Nelliecoyne enjoyed such expeditions, especially because she could give orders to everyone from her position as captain of the stroller.

  While we were dressing in warm clothes for the venture, I trapped herself in bra and panty and put my arms around her.

  “Wife, I love you in all your versions, but I especially delight in Nuala the meek and respectful daughter.”

  She rested her head on my shoulder, “Och, Dermot Michael, isn’t that who I really am?”

  “You won’t be wearing one of them sinful sweaters when your ma is around?”

  “I wouldn’t dare, Dermot.”

  I kissed her gently and let her put her clothes on. Naturally, she found a black sweater which revealed a bit of her belly.

  “Och, Nuala Anne,” her ma said when she saw the sweater while Nuala was putting on a thick jacket, “doesn’t that look cute on you. Zip that jacket up tight, or won’t you catch your death of cold?”

  “Death of cold.” her father added helpfully.

  “Yes, Ma,” she said docilely, and flashed a smile of triumph at me.

  Along the road by the strand, with our Gardi protects trailing us in an unmarked car, Nuala and her da drifted behind me and herself.

  “The child is much better now, isn’t she, Dermot Michael?”

  “She is,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  “In a few weeks time, won’t she be singing again?”

  “Is that important?”

  “It is to her, don’t you see?”

  “I think you have the right of it.”

  Long pause.

  “I ask myself often why she worries so much. I don’t think she caught it from us.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m sure she didn’t.”

  “Even as a tiny one, didn’t she have to be perfect altogether at everything?”

  “And,” I added, “isn’t she pretty good at almost everything?”

  “Ah, you’d be knowing about that, wouldn’t you Dermot Michael?”

  That was a sexual allusion if I ever heard one. I ignored it.

  “So she had to be perfect at pregnancy and giving birth, even though that’s not under her control, is it?”

  “God did not consult with her.”

  “And she didn’t understand that a good mother need not hover over her children every minute?”

  “A better mother if she doesn’t,” I agreed.

  “Sure, don’t you have the right of it, Dermot Michael? … Doesn’t she know all them things now in her head anyway?”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “I hope she does, Annie.”

  “You wait and see, lad. She’ll be herself again soon, if only you’re patient with her.”

  “I’ll be patient with her, Annie McGrail, till the end of the world if I have to.”

  “I wouldn’t think it would take that long.”

  After a big lunch of sandwiches and chocolate ice cream and a pint for all of us but Nuala and the kids, we drove down to Cleggan for a ferry ri
de out of Innishboffin six miles off the coast, half of it in the relatively sheltered Cleggan Bay. The Atlantic had recovered from its snit rather quickly and, according to Nuala, was as smooth as a meadow that’s just beginning to bloom.

  The accuracy of the metaphor escaped me. I was happy that I had swallowed a couple of Marazine tablets before we left the bungalow.

  Innishboffin is a pretty little place of well-scrubbed and whitewashed homes, swarming at this time of the year with artists and musicians and actors who had come across for the May Festival.

  “Aren’t your professional performers a strange-looking bunch?” Nuala Anne marveled. “Sure I’m glad I was never a singer or an actress or a storyteller.”

  “Or a liar?” her ma added.

  “A liar,” her da filled in his line.

  Nuala snorted and ignored them.

  “Don’t fall asleep on us, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she ordered. “And yourself taking them pills because you’re afraid of a little bit of ocean.”

  “Can I rest in Nelliecoyne’s place in the stroller?”

  They all thought that was very funny.

  Nuala lectured me about the island—St. Colman, defeated by the English at the Synod of Whitby, which outlawed the Irish celebration of Easter, had retreated here with Irish monks to keep the correct (i.e. the Irish) rites alive. St. Flannan, one of his successors, had discovered a famous holy well, the O‘Flahertys had taken over, and Grace O’Malley built a castle. Cromwell had used the island as his headquarters. Now at last it was peaceful and free.

  We visited Cromwell’s fort, the Doon Grania, the colchans (beehive huts) of Colman’s monastery, and the holy well. Nuala knelt by the well and prayed fervently. Then she blessed her whole family with the water and filled a bottle to bring home for Fiona and the small ones. The bottle was large enough so that some of Flannan’s water could be brought home to America against tornadoes and similar threats.

  Nelliecoyne had the time of her life, running around on her determined little legs to take in everything, even ducking into one of the beehive huts.

  “Can we bring one of these home to America with us, Daddy?”

  “I don’t think that the Irish government would like that, dear. They want to keep all these houses here in Ireland.”

  “That’s selfish,” she informed me.

  Nuala decreed that we would have to stop at Day’s Hotel for a cup of tea, “To wake poor Dermot up.”