“Most made excellent sense, but no one had the intelligence or the courage to combat the war fever and the patriotism and the desire for vengeance.”
“Dermot Michael Coyne,” she interrupted me, “stop leering at me like an eejit and get on with the work.”
“Sure, woman, I’m doing the best I can, but it isn’t that easy with someone like you in me classroom.”
She blushed, covered her face, with her hands and doubled over.
“Isn’t that a grand compliment altogether and meself an onchuck for not being flattered.”
She drew her green robe more closely together and held it at the collar, a frivolous precaution against my admiring eyes.
“By 1918,” I went on with some effort, “none of the three armies were capable of going on with the war. There were not enough young men to throw into one more big battle. Then the situation changed when Woodrow Wilson found an excuse to involve the United States in a war that at that point was none of our business. That meant millions of more young men to feed into the machine guns and the poison gas and the artillery shells. The Germans tried one more massive offensive, reached the Marne again, and were turned back again. They retreated and the retreat was almost a rout. The German people were rioting. The General Staff insisted on an armistice. The Kaiser abdicated, and the shooting stopped. Though the English and the French would never admit it, the United States had saved them, not for the last time.”
“How many million dead?”
“Fifteen anyway.”
“And the Kaiser was embarrassed anyway!”
“The German, Austrian, and Russian Empires were destroyed and the British Empire fatally weakened. The Communists took over Russia. And nothing had been settled, at all, at all. Except the establishment of an Irish Free State and some artificial nations like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and the reestablishment of some old countries like Poland and Lithuania.”
“And didn’t the Irish set about killing one another and then half a dozen years later, didn’t de Valera settle for what he could have had without the Civil War? Och, aren’t we humans terribly daft?”
“The French and to some extent the English wanted revenge. At Versailles, they imposed a harsh treaty on the Germans and Mr. Wilson, not in good health by then, was unable to stop them. He hoped that the League of Nations would prevent more war, as naïve a notion as you could imagine. The United States gained absolutely nothing from the war. The Germans sulked and their anger increased as their economy collapsed. A decade later Hitler came to power and Stalin was in control of Russia. The two most powerful countries in Europe were now led by madmen, brilliant madmen perhaps, but still off-the-wall insane.”
“All because the Germans had wanted to test their mobilization plan?”
“All because they wanted to demonstrate how brilliant was their military planning. Does that sound like another nation today?”
Nuala rose from her chair, leaned over me without any regard for the parting of her robe, and kissed me fervently.
“And all those poor kids who were killed had wives and maybe kids of their own. I don’t want you in any eejit war like, do you hear me now, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
“Woman, I do.”
Large paws scratched at both doors.
“’Tis themselves. Sure, I’d better be collecting the kids.”
I looked out the window. No sign of kids piling out of St. Josephat’s. But the doggies knew it was time to cross the street and collect them. Me wife dressed quickly, a ritual that I enjoyed as much as watching her undress. She opened the door to our bedroom, placed the green robe on a chair, and emerged with Maeve in tow.
“Would you see to himself, Dermot love?”
“I will.”
I watched the ritual as Nuala with the two huge white dogs on leashes, walking docilely at her sides, crossed Sheffield and waited for Nelliecoyne and Micky—no raincoat for the Galway woman on a soft day. Her light blue suit—the perfect color for turning heads on Michigan Avenue—was a beam of radiance in the schoolyard. A horde of kids rushed up to play with the hounds. Then, waiting for the approval of the crossing guards, dreadfully serious sixth-grade girls, my entourage crossed the streets. I collected my clone, who would have rather continued his nap but who laughed happily when he heard his siblings tramp into the house.
“One more thing, young man. I’ve known her for almost twelve years and slept with her for almost ten years, and I haven’t begun to figure her out. Maybe I should turn our conversation into a poem and send it to Poetry.”
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IRISH CRYSTAL: A NUALA ANNE MCGRAIL NOVEL
Copyright © 2006 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd.
Excerpt from Irish Linen copyright © 2007 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Patrick O’Connor
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429918060
First eBook Edition : December 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-765-34237-9
ISBN-10: 0-765-34237-5
First Edition: February 2006
First Mass Market Edition: February 2007
Irish Crystal Page 28