Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Whatever I have said, written, or thought on the subject of Ireland I now reiterate: looking upon the connection with England to have been her bane, I have endeavored by every means in power to break that connection; I have labored in consequence to create a people in Ireland by raising three millions of countrymen to the rank of citizens.

  Having considered the resources of this country and satisfied she was too weak to assert her liberty by her own proper meal, sought assistance where I thought assistance was to be found, France, where without patron or rector, without art or intrigue I have had the honor to be a citizen and advanced to a superior rank in the armies of the Republic; I have in consequence faithfully discharged my duty as a soldier; I have had the confidence of the French government, approbation of my generals, and the esteem of my comrades.

  Such are my principles and such has been my conduct; if in a sequence of the measures in which I have been engaged mischievous times have been brought upon this country, I heartily lament but let it be remembered that it is now nearly four years since I have quitted Ireland and consequently I have been personally concerned in none of them; if I am rightly informed, very great atrocities have been committed on both sides, but that does not at all diminish my regret; for a fair and open war I was prepared. If that has degenerated into a system of assassination, mass murder, and plunder I do again most sincerely lament it, and those who know me personally will give me I am sure credit for that assertion.

  I will not detain you longer; in this world success is everything, I have attempted to follow the same line in which Washington succeeded and Kosciusko failed; I have attempted to establish the independence of my country; I have failed in the attempt, my life is in consequence forfeited, and I submit; the court will do its duty and I shall endeavor to do mine.

  It was a dignified and respectful legal argument, presented by a skillful lawyer who wanted more to explain his life than to save it. Bobby’s final statement four years later would be quite different.

  The court then did its duty and sentenced him to death for high treason by hanging and beheading. Lord Cornwallis crossed out the beheading, which to my mind didn’t make any difference. However, it was confidentially expected he would further commute the sentence.

  Then Joseph Philpot Curran intervened at the King’s Court Bench, on a day when a terrible thunderstorm rocked the city, with a plea for habeas corpus. Civil law, he argued, still applied in Ireland. Executions on the basis of military tribunal decisions were illegal. Lord Kilwarden, Tone’s neighbor and mentor in Kildare, instantly ordered a writ. Only when the writ was brought to Newgate did the prison officers reveal that Theobald Wolf Tone had slit his throat with a razor or a penknife and was hovering between life and death. Major Sandys, the provost marshal, reported that the prisoner had not seemed himself in the last days but gave some indications of incipient madness before he attempted to kill himself. He was lingering between life and death and could not be moved.

  “Good old Wolf,” a man in a Dublin pub said to me. “The Red Coats wanted to cut his throat and he beat them to it.”

  Such is the humor of Dublin’s fair city. However, if he had waited for a few more days, he might have had a new trial and a somewhat more lenient verdict.

  Or maybe he was deliberately murdered. A lot of people will tell you that some of his old enemies in the Dublin Corporation bribed the gaolers to make Wolf Tone’s death slow and painful just as Lord Edward’s had been. He was buried quietly in the rain in his native Bodestown. Pilgrims go there every year on his birthday. One of the final letters he wrote from Newgate was to Robert Emmet in Paris.

  His wife, Matilda, and his only surviving son, William, remained in Paris. The boy lived to fight in Napoleon’s army. After Wellington (Dublin-born but denying that he was Irish) finally disposed of “Boney” at Waterloo, the two migrated to America, where Matilda remarried (happily) and now defends and protects her husband’s memory

  (Wellington, hard old Tory that he was, was six years younger than Wolf Tone, probably knew him or knew of him from his time as Irish Secretary bitterly opposed Catholic emancipation until he became prime minister and made a deal with Danny O’Connell. Irish history has more than its share of ironies.)

  That Tone wrote a letter to Bobby, then only twenty-two years old, suggests that he knew Bobby was his successor.

  15

  “You two stay here,” George the Priest ordered the Cardinal and the little Archbishop. “There’s no point in risking the whole future of the Archdiocese of Chicago when there are younger clergy around.”

  “I’m going over there,” Cardinal Sean insisted. “I’m still the boss.”

  “No, you’re not,” my wife informed him. “It’s my party and I’m the boss. Stay here until we find out what happened.”

  “Hit be the big home down thar by the crick, uh, River. Fireboats and craft of the Yewnited States Coast Guard a-comin’ up the River. I better see if they a-needing my help.”

  “No, you’re not going to the fire either, Commander McCloud,” my wife ordered, “not with Johnpete on schedule. You’re on maternity leave. You’re staying here.”

  “Everyone better do what Nuala Anne says,” Peter Murphy agreed. “She’s the only one with her head screwed on right:”

  Dr. Mary Kate Murphy, the little Archbishop’s sister and Katiesue’s gramma, put her arm around my wife.

  “Nuala Anne is definitely in charge.”

  There was no doubt about that. In the chaos and confusion after the explosion, the howling of the hounds, the screaming of sirens, the rumble of fire trucks and ambulances, the growing orange blot a couple of blocks away, Nuala started giving orders. Ethne was to take the kids home, including Nelliecoyne, who definitely did not want to go. Damian was to corral the howling hounds and take them to his apartment for the night. The mutts didn’t want to go either. They knew that a terrible thing had happened and felt that they should be involved in doing something about it, though they weren’t sure what. But they obeyed me wife’s orders.

  “What should I do, Nuala Anne?” I asked only ironically.

  “Stay here and help me, of course. What else?”

  She directed guests on the best way to escape the neighborhood—North on Halsted to Belmont, then over to the Kennedy Expressway—instructed Peter Murphy to sit Cindasue down and Dr. Murphy to put Katiesue to bed. She put me in charge of the cleanup crew—what else do blond apes do? Then she sat down on a chair in the middle of the yard and played soothing music on her harp. Those of us who were still around settled down and relaxed.

  MAYBE THEY DO PLAY THOSE THINGS IN HEAVEN.

  Mike Casey returned from the fire scene.

  “It’s a real mess,” he said. “A car bomb most likely. Ruptured the gas line. The house is an inferno, so is the lumberyard next door and the yacht storage yard on the other side. Some homes across the river are on fire too. The fire people are doing a good job. One of the fireboats came up the River, though it ran aground. It’s soaking everything, as good as a rainstorm. The media are out on the river too and on the other side. Some of them are taking terrible chances. I don’t know how they get the fireboat off the river bottom.”

  “Victims?” I asked.

  I noticed that my wife had stopped her harp music.

  “No bodies yet. No one knows whether any of the Currans were in the house or whether there were any people in the lumberyard or the yacht storage. If there were any people in the house, there’d be nothing left of them.”

  I glanced at Nuala. She merely raised her shoulders slightly. She didn’t know either.

  We went home about midnight, meself carrying the friggin’ harp and herself with an arm around me.

  “Wasn’t it a grand party altogether?” she said.

  “Except for the end.”

  “Well, they’ll always remember the night the neighborhood blew up to celebrate Nuala Anne’s party, won’t they now? And won’t they see, sure, wasn’t it a friggin’ brilliant
way to end a party?”

  “With all those people killed?”

  “All what people?”

  “No one killed?”

  “No, Dermot Michael, not a single one.”

  “So the evil is still out there?”

  “’Tis, but it lost this one. Even poor little Nelliecoyne knows that.”

  “Why? How?”

  “Och, if I knew that, wouldn’t I tell you?”

  As soon as we were inside the house we looked in the children’s rooms. All four, counting Ethne, were sound asleep, the latter with Nelliecoyne curled up in her arms.

  We went up to our study (which is also my office, herself having a study of her own to which I am permitted only by invitation for purposes of lovemaking).

  All the TV channels were still playing the story of the explosion in “West Lincoln Park.” Typical of such hasty improvisations, they moved back and forth from live shots, interviews with bystanders, and shots taken previously. The big old fireboat sitting in the river and regurgitating its water became the centerpiece of reporting. Weekend anchorpersons, seemed surprised that Chicago had such things as fireboats and blissfully unaware of the real Chicago Fire. However, they did understand that they had a great story and a great picture.

  A photogenic African-American deputy fire commissioner, his yellow slicker covered with water, was answering stupid questions from a young reporter (male) who must have thought he was Peter Jennings.

  “Is it true, Commissioner, that the fireboat has run aground?”

  “I’d rather say it is temporarily stuck in the mud.”

  “Has the Fire Department any contingency plans available for refloating it?”

  “Bring some tugs up the river maybe.”

  “Wont it interfere with traffic on this side of the river?” He blinked at that one.

  “Most commercial traffic is on the South Branch of the River. On this branch almost all the traffic is boats going down to the Lake for the summer.”

  “I see. Which branch is this?”

  “The North Branch,” he said, no longer bothering to hide his astonishment.

  “And when will the fireboat run out of water?”

  “Only when the river runs dry. The boat pumps water from the river into the fire.”

  “I see.” Alas, he didn’t see at all.

  “Is the fire under control?”

  “We’ve struck the fires on the other side of the river, thanks be to God …”

  “What does it mean to strike a fire?”

  “It means that, while we are still pouring water and fire retardant on it, the fire is no longer a danger. The fires on this side, especially in the lumberyard, are not yet under control. It has stopped spreading, we hope.”

  The camera panned the blazing lumberyard, the ruins of the Curran house, still glowing like a hellish skeleton, and the shipyard beyond.

  Nuala gasped, “Isn’t it beautiful, Dermot Michael?”

  “I’d be more likely to say terrible … Think of all the beautiful things the Currans have lost and the gorgeous boats that will never run before the winds in Lake Michigan again.”

  “Och, aren’t they all insured?”

  “Do you have any estimates of the number of deaths, Commissioner?”

  A shot of the ranks of ambulances waiting, almost eagerly for burned bodies.

  He sighed softly.

  “So far we haven’t recovered any bodies. We will have to wait till the fire ends in the house to begin searching.”

  “They won’t find any at all, at all,” herself said, flouncing out of the room.

  “And you have yet to determine a cause of the fire?”

  “Not yet. That may take a while.”

  “So you don’t suspect arson?”

  “Any determination of that will have to be made by our arson investigators.”

  “Thank you, Commissioner.”

  “Aren’t you full of horseshite?” my wife, in briefs and bra, said as she turned off the anchorperson. Her hair hung loosely on her white shoulders, making her look, if not really lascivious, at least gloriously attractive.

  “Oh,” I said, entranced as I always am by such an apparition.

  “Wouldn’t it brilliant altogether if we make love?”

  “Its an offer that under the circumstances I can hardly refuse.”

  I’M GETTING OUT OF HERE.

  She sat on my lap and kissed me tenderly as she unbuttoned my shirt.

  “Shouldn’t we be celebrating that we’re still alive and still free Americans?”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I gasped.

  “And won’t I be riding you tonight, just for a change.”

  I discovered that all my clothes were gone. It would be an interlude of delicious, delectable torment. Then my ability to reflect disappeared. Altogether.

  We woke up at eight. No alarm in the study.

  “You are a fiendishly wicked woman,” I murmured.

  “Dermot, where are the children?”

  “Downstairs with Ethne.”

  “We’ve got to get them ready for school.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  We were on the couch, covered with throws.

  “’Tis not.”

  “’Tis.”

  “Then we gotta get them ready for Mass.”

  “We went to Mass yesterday.”

  “We did not!”

  “We did so …”

  “Dermot, I don’t have any clothes on!”

  “You’re a terrible woman altogether.”

  “Neither do you!”

  “’Tis true!”

  “Dermot Michael Coyne! Put on your own clothes and go get mine. We have to hurry downstairs.”

  “Yes, ma’m.”

  “And bring me shoes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I grabbed a clean sweatshirt, clean jeans, clean underwear, and a pair of loafers. She was sleeping again when I returned to the study.

  She woke up when I stumbled into the room, not altogether conscious myself. In a frantic burst of modesty, she dressed and rushed for the stairs.

  “What will Ethne be thinking?”

  “That we slept in after the excitement of yesterday.”

  I grabbed the lingerie she had left on my desk, shoved it into a drawer, and followed her down the stairs.

  “She’ll know we were screwing.”

  “Married people do that!”

  The breakfast nook was chaos. Unlike my wife, our nanny had given up on the thankless task of organizing the breakfast table. However, even I was a bit surprised when we bumbled into the nook, to see our younger daughter standing on a chair and screaming at the TV.

  “Katiesue ma on TV! Shunuff!”

  The mayor, huddling under a rain poncho was speaking to the camera, behind him, covered by a huge poncho but with her Coast Guard cap in evidence was Commander C. L. McCloud.

  “We’re very proud,” the mayor was saying, “of the way that Chicago and the federal government responded to this terrible fire. The Police Department, the Fire Department, and the United States Coast Guard responded rapidly and efficiently and brought the blaze under control before much greater harm was done to the adjacent shipyards and neighborhoods. We’re grateful for the help of this rain”—his impish grin appeared briefly as he looked up at the dismal gray clouds—“in extinguishing the flames. We are also grateful that there haven’t been any human casualties.”

  The camera panned the river, the fireboat, and two police boats as well as a small Coast Guard craft. The latter three had portable pumps on their decks. All four were somewhat languidly pouring water on the smoldering ruins.

  “I now want to turn the microphone over to my good friend and neighbor Commander C. L. McCloud of the United States Coast Guard.”

  The “C. L.” stands for Cindasue Lou, about as classic an Appalachian name as one can wish. She was the mayor’s neighbor because the Ryan-Murphy clan had a compound of a sort at Grand Beach.


  My wife brought me a chair to sit on, a cup of tea, and touched my arm lightly. Now she remembered last night and our love.

  I sighed. How clever of God.

  “Be quiet, Socra Marie dear. We all want to hear Ms. Murphy.”

  Someone lowered the mike for her. Peter Murphy stood right behind her.

  She started, as she always did in these public episodes of her life, in flawless bureaucratic English.

  “At 2100 hours last night, the Chicago Fire Department called the Port of Chicago to ask if it was possible to bring one of its fireboats up to the Webster Street Bridge. The duty officer informed the Fire Department that there were no records of a fireboat ever proceeding that far up the river but that there was some reason to believe that draft of the boat might not scrape against the bottom of the river at that point—which was mushy and unpredictable. In any case the Yewnited States Coast Guard in the circumstances would send one of its cutters along as an escort. In the event, the fireboat is temporarily stuck in the mud but the Coast Guard will offer all possible help to the city of Chicago in this matter. The Coast Guard cutter, as you can see, has been joined by Chicago Police boats. All have mounted temporary pumps in case more water is needed.”

  “Commander, how will you remove the fireboat from the mud?”

  “Maybe the rainstorm will add temporarily to the river level.”

  “Can you not draw in more water from Lake Michigan?”

  “Unfortunately in its present configuration the North Branch and the Main Branch of the River empty into the South Branch, then into the waters of the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Lake Michigan won’t help us, I’m afraid.”

  “But you can’t permit the river to be blocked while the yachting season begins.”

  “Worse comes to worst, we uns bring up a couple tugs and pull hit out.”

  Now, as the Coast Guard always planned, C.L. McCloud was about to return to her native language.

  “Given the problems with the boat running aground, was it wise to bring it up this far in the River?”

  “Happen hit not a-coming up hyar, mebbe the whole neighborhood a-going up in smoke.”