Irish Mist
Page 3
“Did we ever get married?”
“I think so.…”
“So do I.… That’s what the priest said.”
“Wasn’t it a bishop?”
“Wasn’t it now?”
A crowd of people had begun to gather—American tourists, Irish families waiting for relatives, airport employees, the Guards.
“Are you her manager, Mr. McGrail?”
That question was from a very young male journalist, from the West by his accent.
“He is NOT! I’m me own manager. I’m an accountant with a degree from TCD! I manage him … and let me tell you that’s a difficult task!”
“ ’Tis,” I said with a loud sigh.
She was turning the whole session with the shite hawks with one less finger than they should have into wild comedy.
“And what do you do, Mr. McGrail?” This from a gray-haired woman with a nasty sneer.
“Isn’t he a poet?” Nuala Anne exploded. “And a sennachie and himself five months on the best-seller list!”
“Four months,” I said modestly.
“Do you approve of your wife’s career, Mr. McGrail?”
A man with a tape recorder in his hand shoved a mike at me.
“Are you married?” I asked.
“I am.”
‘To an Irish woman?”
“Of course.”
“Then isn’t that a silly question?”
The onlookers laughed. Score one for poor Dermot Michael.
“And isn’t his name Coyne, ‘son of the dark foreigner,’ and himself a blonde?”
We were drifting into a Celtic wonderland. And I was the Mad Hatter.
“Are you a Yank or an Irish woman, Nuala Anne?”
“Isn’t it part of the Irish genius to say both and?”
The crowd applauded. My wife had won them over.
Another young woman spoke up, this one with red hair and a pleasant smile.
“Nuala Anne, do you believe you have an immortal soul inside your body?”
“I do not!”
“You don’t?”
“Certainly not! Isn’t the body inside the soul?”
“What do you mean?” the woman said with a frown.
“Isn’t me body limited to just one place? And can’t me soul reach out far beyond me body when I think or love or sing or talk to other people? Isn’t it me soul that’s communicating with them? Isn’t me body the base for me soul?”
Nuala Anne had donned her Celtic mystic persona. Soon we’d hear about the mountain behind the mountain.
“Are you glad to be home?” asked a young man with a friendly grin who had been scribbling away in a notebook, obviously not a hostile.
“Och, sure, ‘tis wonderful to be back in the land of Ireland and to feel under me the land beyond the land.”
All right, this time it was the land and not the mountain. Maybe I was the only one who didn’t get it. Many of the people in the growing crowd nodded in solemn agreement.
“Don’t you think it isn’t fair”—the woman with the blond ponytail again—“that you should be getting so much attention at the expense of other Irish women singers who are better than you are?”
There was a restless stirring among our audience. They didn’t like this question at all, at all.
“ ’Tis not me that’s out here asking questions, is it now?”
The woman did not give up. “Did it not ever occur to you when you began to sing that there were already too many Irish women singers?”
Nuala opened her harp case and began to finger the strings. “How could there ever be too much of anything Irish, except maybe just a little too much talk?”
Applause.
“What do you think of the singing of Maeve Doyle?”
I didn’t know who this Maeve Doyle was.
“Doesn’t she have a brilliant voice?”
“Do you think that you have a better voice?”
“I don’t like to make comparisons. Sure, hasn’t God given us all different talents? I’m sure she doesn’t like comparisons?”
“Wouldn’t it be better if Maeve was singing at this concert and yourself getting all the free publicity?”
Nuala hesitated, as well she might. It was a nasty and loaded question.
“I came because I was invited to sing here for charity,” she said simply.
“Doesn’t it occur to you that you are depriving Irish women singers of the publicity you will be getting?”
“Couldn’t they offer to sing at benefit concerts, too? Aren’t there more good causes in Ireland than there are singers?”
Before anyone could ask another question, she began to sing “O Sanctissima,” a hymn to the mother of Jesus from olden days. Most of the crowd joined in, including the journalist with the red hair, convent school no doubt.
Nuala sang the old hymn with gentle charm and deep devotion. Even I sang along, off key as always.
“ ‘O Sanctissima, O piissima,
O Dulcis Virgo Maria!
Mater amata, intemerata, ora pro nobis.
“ ‘To solatum et refugium
Virgo Mater Maria
Quid-quid optamus, per te sepramus
Ora pro nobis
“ ‘Tua gaudia et suspriria juvent nos, O Maria
In te speramus, ad te clamamus
Ora pro nobis.’ “
“Aren’t you great singers now?” she said, continuing to strum on her harp. “ ’Tis amazing, isn’t it, how we remember the Latin, even though we didn’t quite know what it meant? … I’ll tell you one thing. Your Yanks never get beyond the first stanza.…”
Laughter at the expense of the poor Yanks.
“But I don’t dast sing another one, because we don’t want to keep all them media folks waiting, do we?”
Loud cries of, “More!”
“Well, just one more. Sure if I sing more than that won’t Father Placid be mad at me for giving the whole concert away free?”
Everyone laughed except Father Placid Clarke, whose facial expression never changed through the press conference and the singing. I noted that he didn’t sing.
“Well, there’s one hymn that I think everyone in the English-speaking world can still sing, though the liturgical persons don’t really like it much. I’ll wager none of youse can sing the second and third stanza, like I can.”
Youse is not bad grammar but merely an attempt to translate an Irish second person plural into English, much like y’all. English really needs a second person plural.
So she sang the hymn with great gusto, though unlike most slow and lugubrious renditions of it in church, Nuala’s version was light and brisk:
“ ‘Holy God, we praise Thy name!
Lord of all, we bow before Thee!
All on earth Thy scepter claim,
All in Heaven above adore Thee.
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign!
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting is Thy reign!
“ ‘Hark, the loud celestial hymn
Angel choirs above are raising!
Cherubim and Seraphim,
In unceasing chorus praising,
Fill the heavens with sweet accord;
Holy, holy, holy Lord!
Fill the heavens with sweet accord;
Holy, holy, holy Lord!
“ ’Holy Father, Holy Son! Holy Spirit,
Three we name Thee,
While in essence only One,
Undivided God we ‘claim Thee,
And adoring bend the knee,
While we own the mystery.
And adoring bend the knee,
While we own the mystery.’ “
It seemed that everyone in the Dublin Airport joined in, just as if they were at Mass in their parish church. The TV cameras ground away. The news directors would certainly go with that as the lead in their coverage in the evening—“Nuala Anne gives an impromptu concert at Dublin Airport!”
Amid vigorous cheers, we worked our way through the crowd and towards the door.
“You can’t bring the cart to the parking lot,” the grim-faced priest warned us. “It’s only a short walk to my car.”
Not a word about the press conference or the songfest or the great free publicity my beloved had won for him. Nor did he offer to help us with our luggage. So I slung a couple of bags over my shoulders and lifted two heavy suitcases in my hands. Nuala took charge of two shoulder bags as well as her harp and guitar. We trailed after the priest, who did not slow down as he crossed the street and entered the parking lot.
“Dermot Michael,” my wife said anxiously, “I’m sorry I made fun of you. I really don’t manage you at all, at all. I really don’t, and meself having such a big mouth.”
See what I mean about being afraid of me?
“Woman, you do and I don’t mind. Besides, I like being your straight man.”
Mistake. Big mistake. I was the one with the big mouth.
“You’re not me straight man,” she said, close to tears.
ALL RIGHT, WISE GUY, the Adversary observed. LET’S SEE YOU GET OUT OF THAT ONE.
“I thought we creamed that bunch of nine-fingered shite hawks altogether. Good enough for them, says I.”
She laughed happily. “Didn’t we ever!”
We finally caught up with the priest, who was standing next to a small foreign car of dubious vintage and provenance. Well, I was in a foreign country, wasn’t I?
Nuala looked at our luggage.
“If we put all our bags in the car and get in ourselves, Father Placid, sure, there won’t be room for the half of us.”
Vintage Irish bull.
“It’s not my fault,” he said, “that you brought so many things. Typical American consumerism.”
Oh, oh, one of those—a Yank hater. There were very few of them in Ireland, and they were mostly clergy and academics.
“Typical American consumerists that we are, Father,” I said calmly, “we’ll take a taxi. Gome on, Nuala.”
‘The taxi fare,” he warned us, “will have to come out of the proceeds of the concert. It will take food out of the mouths of the suffering children of the world.”
“We’ll pay it ourselves,” I said, voice tight. Nuala was watching me anxiously.
“It would be better,” the priest insisted, “if you saved your money and gave it to the poor. But you Yanks are so rich you never think of the poor.”
“Look, Father,” I said, my voice now deadly calm. “I’ll take care of my wife the way I want to. I don’t need any hypocritical piety from you. As for giving money to the poor, perhaps we should have done that with the money we paid for our airplane tickets and not come at all.”
My excuse for this outburst is that I was on jet lag.
I’ll use the same excuse for one more totally unnecessary but very satisfying comment.
“Furthermore, you are a disgrace to the Irish tradition of generous hospitality. You should have had a limo here to greet Nuala Anne as a response to her generosity in coming over for your focking concert. Nor did you help us carry our luggage. Father Placid, you are a boor. Stay out of my way from now on!”
I turned on my heel and, despite my heavy load of luggage, strode briskly away.
“Och, Dermot love,” says herself, a touch of awe in her voice, as she struggled to keep up with me, “weren’t you grand! Didn’t the gobshite deserve to be told off!”
“He did.”
“And you’re picking up all me bad habits.”
“Such as?”
“Such as focking concert!”
We both laughed.
“Soon you’ll be swearing like a native.”
“I think we’re going to run into others like him while we’re here.”
“They like to blame America for all the hungry people in the world … but sure I won’t worry about them, not as long as I’m with you … and meself such a terrible wife.”
—3—
I ROLLED over in my bed and reached for Nuala.
She wasn’t there. Where was she?
As a matter of fact, where was I?
I groped for my memory. It was jet-lagged, too. Jet lag? Ah, yes, I was in Jury’s Hotel in Dublin. There was someone I had to phone. Who was it?
I remembered. George the Priest.
I dialed his number, got it wrong, told the young woman who answered that I didn’t want to buy anything from Merrill Lynch, thank you very much, and tried again.
“Father Coyne.”
“Yeah.”
“Little Bro … you sound like you have a hangover.”
“Jet lag … Who was the Irish politician who was shot on his way home from Mass?”
“When did this happen?”
“How should I know?” I said irritably.
“Ah, herself is seeing things again, is she now?”
“No comment.”
“Like I tell you, Little Bro, it’s part of the package. … Where in Ireland did this happen?”
“No information on that.”
“Hmm … are you sure it wasn’t going to Mass?”
“Maybe it was.”
‘Then it must have been Kevin O’Higgins.… He was the strongman who took over Ireland after Michael Collins was killed. Some folks say that if it were not for him, democracy would not have had a chance in Ireland because of anarchy out in the countryside. He was shot on the Booterstown road. Forgave his killers before he died. Daughter a Carmelite nun.”
Sure enough, herself was on to something again.
“O’Higgins? Is that a real Irish name?”
“As I remember, he was born Higgins and added the ‘O’ when he joined the Irish Volunteers.”
“Was he involved in a house catching fire?”
George the Priest paused. ‘There was a lot of killing and burning out in the country at that time, Little Bro. First the Black and Tans, the English mercenaries, then the Irregulars during the Irish Civil War. People settling local scores or just for the pure fun of it. O’Higgins put an end to it. He was pretty ruthless. Signed the death warrant for the good friend who had been the best man at his wedding.”
“Wow!”
“Yeah. And he got mixed up with Lady Lavery. That one was no better than she had to be. Born in Chicago.”
“The one who chased Michael Collins?”
“The very one. The Big Fella got away from her, but Kevin O’Higgins didn’t. The letters he wrote her were published only a couple of years ago.”
“Sounds interesting.”
And it also sounded like we shouldn’t get mixed up with it, not that there was much choice.
“Well, good hunting. Give my love to herself. She’ll be a big hit over there.”
“She gave a miniconcert at the airport.”
“What did she sing?”
“‘O Sanctissima’ and ‘Holy God, We Praise Thy Name.’ ”
“Figures.”
I hung up the phone, sank back into my bed, and wondered what time it was. I rummaged around my nightstand and discovered my watch. Ten o’clock. At night? Then I noticed the alarm on the opposite nightstand. It said that it was 4:00. In the morning?
I struggled out of my bed and peered out the window. The swimming pool area was dense with thick Irish mist. Yet there was enough light to suggest that somewhere the sun was still operating. I closed the drapes and crawled back to bed.
Damn Nuala.
Why?
Well, you have to understand that my bride has certain very unattractive characteristics. Like endless energy and boundless enthusiasm and total immunity to the negative effects of airplane travel. Here I was in our hotel room suffering like a lost soul and she was out cavorting around Dublin. It was not fair.
In the taxi we had first settled the matter of my telling Father Placid that I would take care of my wife the way I wanted.
“I don’t need me husband to take care of me, Dermot Michael Coyne!”
“
Well, I need my wife to take care of me,” I had replied.
She had pondered that and giggled. “Fair play to you, Dermot love.”
I then began to fade rapidly. She, on the other hand, picked up steam, just like it was really early morning—which it was. The Energizer wife. Since I was incapable of intelligent conversation, she turned to the taxi driver, who, like all of his ilk in Dublin, was gregarious and literate.
“The old city looks grand, doesn’t it now?” she began.
“It will till the mists come back,” I mumbled.
Neither of them paid any attention.
“Galway, is it now?”
“ ‘Tis,” she sighed.
“Here to sing at the Point?”
Did everyone in the focking city know her on sight?
“I am,” another sigh.
“We sold ninety thousand cars here in Dublin last year. Twice as many as four years ago. Pretty soon there’ll be so many cars in the streets that we won’t be able to drive them at all, at all.”
Not quite Irish bull. Maybe just a statement of fact.
A third sigh, the loudest yet,
I opened one eye and peered out the window. We were on an expressway, new cars on all sides. In the distance mists hovered over the Irish Sea. I closed my eye.
They discussed golf and the Yanks who came over for golfing vacations. So many Yanks that it was hard for the locals, like the driver, to get on their own courses. He and his twelve-year-old son had played two Yanks the other day. Beat them. They were grand men, they were, the both of them.
A taxi driver had his own country club? Ah, the country must be prosperous indeed.
Nuala Anne admitted to playing golf even though she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to beat your man (me). Wasn’t his handicap one and himself not working at it as hard as he should?
Actually, my handicap hovers between two and three. One is what Nuala thinks it ought to be if I practiced more.
The driver turned to the subject of Ireland’s prosperity.
Wasn’t Ireland being called the Celtic Tiger now because its growth rate was 10 percent a year, like the Asian Tigers before they collapsed? That wasn’t going to happen here. And wasn’t the Irish standard of living higher than them fellas over beyond across (Brits)? “And just think of how well we’d be doing if they hadn’t kept us down for seven hundred years? Maybe better even than you Yanks.”
Sighs from both of them.