Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Och, are we Irish ready to define as Irish anyone who wants to be! Doesn’t me man even have an Irish passport so he doesn’t have to wait in line at immigration and his grandparents being from right here in Galway!”

  We chatted a bit more. Nuala seemed satisfied. I stood up.

  “We should be taking our leave,” I said, rising. “We have two little ones we must check on.”

  Suddenly Nuala looked grim, frightened, maybe unearthly. What was wrong?

  We went through the usual round of handshaking. Then Matt Howard glanced out the window.

  “Damnation! The plumbers have locked your van in, Dermot … . Ona, would you run out and move the Rolls for them?”

  “Da permits me to drive it about ten yards,” the young woman said to us as she bounded up and grabbed the key, “and I’m insured for that too.”

  She left the room. I watched her out the window running down the driveway and realized that in ten years I would have a teenager.

  There was a shattering sound behind me, a herd of zebra stampeding in one of those films about the Serengeti. Or Nuala on the run.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her bolt out the front door, kick off her shoes, and run after Ona. Their race seemed in slow motion. Frozen at the window and dreading I knew not what, I thought Nuala would never catch up with the girl, who herself was running towards the Rolls.

  Ona was short and not a practiced runner. Nuala was tall and a long-distance runner with incredibly solid legs. Yet she was too far behind. She gained on the child as I watched, but she’d never make it in time.

  Whatever in time meant.

  Key in hand, Ona was at the door of the car. Nuala at least ten feet away. Ona moved the key towards the door. Nuala leaped through space, pulled the girl way from the car, and wrestled her to the ground.

  In the distance the blue Garda car began to move.

  22

  PEIG SAYERS knelt on the driveway and peered gingerly under the Rolls.

  “Holy Mother of God!” she screamed. “There is a bomb there! Seamus call the Super and tell him to get the bomb squad out here! Now! … Stand back everyone! This car has a bomb!”

  I held Nuala in my arms and she held Ona in her arms.

  “I ruined me tights,” Nuala murmured, “and me knees.”

  Her nylons were indeed a torn and bloody mess.

  “And saved a wonderful young life!”

  “Nuala,” Ona sobbed, “you were so brave!”

  “Everyone move back,” Peig was taking charge. “Over to that mound of oak trees, at least a hundred and fifty yards from the house. Evacuate everyone in it immediately!”

  “I’ll take care of it immediately, ma’am,” Simon Tailor responded. “Don’t any of you go back for anything! You have your lives, and for the moment that’s enough!

  The droopy Oxford scholar had become a young commando second lieutenant in one of the old war movies.

  “He didn’t salute you,” I said to Peig, who was staring after the young Brit in astonishment.

  She glanced at me and grinned.

  “Me orders include you and your wife, Dermot Michael Coyne. Over to those trees now. You too, Seamus. We don’t want to start our car lest it ignite something … . You rang up the Super?”

  “He’s on his way, ma’am.”

  I noticed that it was raining, not hard yet, but steadily, a fine soft day as the Irish would have it.

  Ona stumbled into her mother’s arms. They clung to each other, sobbing.

  “How did she know, Dermot?” Matt asked me as we hiked rapidly towards the protecting line of trees, my wife still hanging on my arms.

  “She’s one of the dark ones,” I said. “She sensed danger. She herself probably couldn’t tell you why.”

  “The Rolls was evil,” my wife moaned. “It wanted Ona and I wasn’t going to let it have her.”

  “Thank God,” Matt said.

  “And the Blessed Mother.”

  “And”—I concluded the litany—“Patrick, Brigid, and Colm!”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Peig and Simon were hustling four servants and two plumbers out of the manor house. The latter tried to go to their own van. Peig pushed them towards safety. They looked like they wanted to argue. Simon snapped at them and they ran towards us.

  “I’ve never quite seen Simon act like that,” Matt said to me.

  “Commando officer,” I replied.

  “And a competent one.”

  “The car is going to blow up,” Nuala whispered to me. “It really is, Dermot Michael. We’ll have to rent a new van. All four of them will blow up.”

  “Four?”

  “The Garda car too.”

  “You saved us all, Nuala.”

  “God did. And the blessed mother. And Brigid, Patrick, and Colm.”

  She giggled.

  “And, Dermot, you have to learn to put Brigid first.”

  The servants and the plumbers arrived at our little circle.

  “Now, then,” Simon Tailor announced, “Constable Sayers has assured me that we will be perfectly safe out here, though it would be better if all moved behind the mound … . That’s all right … . The Garda are already on their way with the bomb squad and they’ll fix things in a jiffy.”

  “No they won’t,” Nuala said sadly. The rain turned from soft to hard, very hard. We were all soaked to the skin. No one dared to complain.

  “We’re right on top of the cemetery,” Nuala told me. “Isn’t Johnny Joyce buried right over there?”

  DON’T YOU WISH SOMETIMES THAT YOU WERE MARRIED TO A NORMAL WOMAN.

  “No!”

  It seemed like hours. The rain continued to pour. Daphne held her husband in one arm and her daughter in the other. They were weeping and she was not.

  “We still have each other,” she said. “That’s all that matters. We can rebuild the house, can’t we, Thomas?”

  “We can indeed. However, it’s still there, isn’t it now? The Garda will disarm the bomb, if there really is one, and everything will be all right.”

  “No it won’t,” Naula told me.

  “Ma’am,” Simon Tailor said to Peig, next to whom he had been standing, “do you think I might go back to the house and bring some rain garments for the women?”

  “Simon Tailor, you’re a fockin’ amadon,” Peig said affectionately. “Better that they stay wet than we have a casualty.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently.

  “Well?” I said to Nuala.

  “Haven’t they both seen their destiny and liked it?”

  Finally, when I was expecting Noah and family to float across the park in front of the manor, I heard the sirens of the Garda in the distance.

  “Peig,”—Nuala grabbed the constable—“we have to go down to the road and stop them or won’t they all be blown up … . Dermot Michael, you stay here.”

  The blond constable had more sense than to argue with one of the dark ones. She rushed towards the road, perhaps fifty yards away. Like Ona she was on the short side. So me wife made it to the road first and held out her arms.

  The Garda caravan ground to a halt. Declan McGinn tried to argue with Nuala and Peig and, as all Irishmen are fated to do, lost the argument.

  The Gardai poured out of their cars and vans and huddled behind a big van, which was perhaps the bomb squad’s.

  The bedraggled band behind the oak cover mound grew silent and tense. They knew something was about to happen. We waited anxious seconds.

  Then a great dirty orange ball emerged from the Rolls. It quickly spread to our van, the plumbers’ van and the Garda car. Three more orange globes ballooned into the air, then the sound and the blast waves hit us. People were screaming all around me. I felt like a furnace door had hit me, followed by the acrid stench of burning gasoline.

  The Howard family rocked into me. I steadied them.

  “Good God!” Matt screamed.

  “She saved our lives,” his wife said, quite calmly. “Fuck
the house.”

  “Right,” Ona agreed, “fock the house!”

  At that point some caring material spirit, Brigid the Blessed Mother, or a motherly God opened the floodgates of heaven. The torrent of water didn’t put out the fireball, but it damped it down and prevented its spread.

  “Matthew Howard, Lord Ballynahinch,” I said, “can I tell you that you have two wonderful women in your life.”

  “He knows it,” Daphne said, “but it’s good for him to hear it from someone else.”

  Speaking of wonderful women, where was mine?

  Wasn’t she already holding me in her arms, her face blackened, her clothes torn, soaking wet and incredibly beautiful.

  “Are you still alive, Dermot Michael?

  “Woman, I am!”

  “Thanks be to God!

  “Wasn’t it terrible beautiful altogether?”

  Come to think of it, I guess it was.

  We waited around till the fire brigade arrived and pumped water from the river all over the park and the driveway. The second Rolls and the Bentley were badly scarred but had not ignited. The Mercedes was untouched. The windows had been blown out of the front of the house and the side wall and part of the front singed by fire. But it stood.

  “Well, Tom,” Matt Howard said to Tomas O’Regan, “I think we’ll be moving over to the Station House in Clifden. You can begin reconstruction as soon as the Garda permit. I will not be driven out of Ireland like my ancestors were.”

  “I imagine Mr. Blair will want to send some security people over, sir,” Declan McGinn said respectfully. “I’m sure they’ll be most welcome.”

  “Good, good! … Nuala Anne, we all owe our lives to you! I promise you that we’ll never forget it.”

  “Thank God and the Blessed Mother and Patrick and Brigid and Colm.”

  “Brigid, Patrick, and Colm,” I corrected her.

  “And all the poor souls buried beneath our feet,” Nuala went on, “who were praying for us too.”

  “Constable Sayers,” Simon Tailor began nervously, “would I be wrong to assume that you are a descendant of the famed Blasket Island woman?”

  “You’d not be wrong,” she said, a mischievous grin on her pretty face, “though I’m not as immoral a woman as she pretended to be.”

  He blushed and stammered.

  “I’m sure not … I was, uh, wondering if I might buy you a drink at O’Donnell’s tomorrow night?”

  “You want to chat me up, do you now?”

  “Er, well, not exactly. I’d rather like, however, to chat with you.”

  “Well, what do you think, Nuala Anne?” Peig said, still mischievous.

  “To use your own words, Peig Sayers, if you don’t accept the man’s invitation, you’re a fockin’ amadon.”

  We lingered around the ridge of oak trees as our fellow survivors departed. Nuala sunk to her knees in the mud, made a fearsome sign of the cross, and began to pray fervently, if silently. What could I do but join her?

  To whom was she praying? The souls of the departed for many centuries who were buried beneath the ground of Ballynahinch Manor?

  The Gardaí drove us back to our bungalow. The two young constables, both male, promised that they would keep close watch on us.

  “You wouldn’t want to be too close to us, would you now?” my wife told them. “We seem to collect explosions.”

  Ethne, her face stained with tears, was waiting for us at the open door.

  “Glory be to God! ’Tis yourselves and still alive. When I heard that awful explosion, I thought it would mean the destruction of you altogether … . Come on in out of the rain! I’ll make a pot of tea for you!”

  “Very strong tea,” Nuala requested as we entered the warmth of our home. “Did the explosion wake up the small ones?”

  “Didn’t they sleep right through it, the little lambs! And aren’t they still sound asleep!”

  We crept into the nursery. Sure enough, our little redhead and our even smaller blond were both sound asleep. So too were Fiona’s puppies. Their mother flapped her tail against the floor when we entered and then went back to sleep.

  “Before we take our shower, Dermot Michael,” my wife instructed me in our bedroom, “you have one thing to do.”

  “And that is?”

  “Call your good friend Eugene Keenan in Dublin and tell him he should get himself out here first thing in the morning.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now!”

  “You figured it all out?”

  “Sure, isn’t it as plain as the nose on your face? I just need some details … and to put some ointment on me poor knees … .”

  She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the shower and longed for its healing waters.

  After considerable bureaucratic resistance in Dublin, I was finally put through, as they say, to the Deputy Commissioner.

  “Gene Keenan,” he said with his usual brisk courtesy.

  “Dermot Michael Coyne!”

  “Good heavens, man! What are you and that wild wife of yours doing to this poor island! Blowing up our manor houses, threatening the lives of our gentry, driving me poor colleagues mad with worry! … The two of you are all right, aren’t you?”

  “Herself banged up her knees tackling Ona Howard and saving the lives of all of us. Otherwise we’re enjoying the weather.”

  “Are you now? Well, I’m glad to hear it … . I suppose she just knew there was a bomb in the car?”

  “To quote her very words, the car was evil and it wanted Ona and she wasn’t going to let it have her.”

  “You can imagine me shivering, Dermot.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  “Has she solved the mystery yet?” he asked, somewhat more casually than I thought was appropriate.

  “She’s being very mysterious about it … . However, she wants me to give you a message. She expects to see you out here tomorrow morning.”

  “Does she now?”

  “Doesn’t she now?”

  “Well, you can tell her that I’ve already made me plans and I’ll be taking me midmorning tea with you.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Oh, one more thing, Dermot. We arrested a Russian cabin attendant at Shannon, one of their professional goons, and charged him with the murder of the three men at Renvyle House. They’ll want him back over there and, between you and me, I don’t think we’ll let them have him.”

  I headed for the shower.

  “Make it all go away, Dermot Michael Coyne,” my wife begged me as I joined her under the hot water.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Later, after watching the news on the telly—news that fascinated Nelliecoyne because she recognized her friend Peig at the scene of the explosion but not her parents lurking in the background—eating supper, and putting the kids to bed, Nuala and I sat in the parlor—rather in violation of her strict rules about “them”—and prepared to finish reading the second section of Edward Fitzpatrick’s memoir of Ireland in 1883.

  “What do you think about them two this afternoon?” I asked.

  “Yanks say those two … . Which two?”

  “O’Cuiv and Quinn?”

  “Oh, them two … Probably trying to beat MacManus at one of his shady games by being even shadier. All of them are perpetual conspirators, though MacManus has the edge because he’s in the government. Now give over, Dermot Michael, while we read the rest of the story.”

  23

  Letterfrack, County Galway, May 11, 1883

  Marty Dempsey was waiting for me in the pub of the Letterfrack Inn.

  “The woman sends her best,” he began, nodding in the direction of his home in Dublin.”Doesn’t she say she’s after hoping you’re happier now than you were at Christmas?”

  “My best back to her, Martin … . She’s a wonderful woman.”

  “Aye”—he sighed—“aren’t some of us luckier than we deserve?”

  “So what’s happening out here?”

/>   “The valley is bestirring itself, something unusual for this part of Ireland. Secret societies, yes. Silent pressure, yes. Demands for public penance, that’s a different matter altogether.”

  “Who’s stirring the pot?”

  “The new priest out here, Father Corbett. He’s a fierce and admirable young man. He preaches every Sunday about informers and perjurers. Tom Casey and Anthony Philbin don’t come to Mass anymore. Everyone knows, of course, whom he means.”

  “There’re four innocent men still in jail.”

  “Right you are … And one innocent man in the quicklime beneath the Galway jail.”

  “Another martyr for poor old Ireland.”

  He looked at me to see if I was being ironic. He saw that I was and smiled thinly.

  “And isn’t that man’s widow stirring up the trouble too.”

  “Nora Joyce!”

  “Aye, your Irish princess is acting like one. She goes up and down the valley with that poor little babe in her arms and that fey urchin who trails after her demanding justice. As you know, that’s a dangerous thing to do. The peasants have their own way of punishing informers. They don’t like such direct campaigns.”

  “And most of the brutes who murdered the Joyces are still at large?”

  “They are, boyo. In theory, mind you, they could still be indicted for those murders, though the Crown isn’t likely to admit they made a mistake. If they killed Nora Joyce the authorities might be open to a new murder charge, but that isn’t probable, if you take me meaning.”

  “And Nora?”

  “They say she doesn’t care whether she lives or dies. It’s amazing to me that she survived the winter. That pretty child who follows her around, her niece they say, is supposed to be one of the dark ones. They say she warns Nora when there’s danger. They’re all afraid of the poor dirty little thing.”

  “Fey or not and dirty face or not, she’s a grand spirit.”

  “Aye,” Marty said with a sigh.

  “So what happens tomorrow?”

  “So doesn’t his gracious lordship John Joseph Kane, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduff and apostolic administrator of Kilfenora, come up here to say the Mass at half eleven.”

  “Is that usual?”