Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The crowd of them became quiet instandy, and Nuala sang the hymn, which was allegedly written by Thomas Aquinas. I had heard it often on Holy Thursday, but it had never been quite so solemn, so reverent, so moving.

  Ah, the woman knew her stuff.

  My Nuala Anne, I thought lovingly, remembering our romps before and after supper. The “latter ride,” as the Irish called it, was especially spectacular. I seemed to float between earth and sky, between clay and Heaven. She said it was grand altogether. I wondered whether it was.

  As she sang I imagined her clothes dropping away. I ordered my fantasy to be still.

  YOU’RE BESOTTED WITH HER, the Adversary told me.

  “I’m not denying it.”

  My life had concentrated itself for many months on making love to my wife. Nothing else really mattered.

  AND HERSELF NOT ENJOYING IT, the Adversary continued.

  “She said she did.”

  He snorted at me, as if I were a fool to believe her.

  Fascinated by the painting of Lady Hazel Lavery on the cover of Sinead McCoole’s book, I began to read about the early years of her life in Chicago. It was soap opera but tragic soap opera. She was the elder daughter of a vice president of Armour Meat-packing, a close friend of Philip Armour himself. Her first home was at 514 North Avenue. While she was still young her family moved to Astor Street in the heart of the Gold Coast. She was tutored at home and at a couple of “finishing” schools, one in New York. Her father died suddenly when she was seventeen, leaving a modest inheritance, which her mother squandered. Philip Armour contributed to the support of the family. At nineteen, already a much-admired member of the Gold Coast elite, Hazel made her debut. She was a modestly talented artist, and her early exhibitions won praise from the art critic of the Chicago Tribune. She spent several summers in France with her mother and sister. At an artists’ colony in Brittany she met and fell in love with John Lavery, a widowed Irish painter twice her age with a daughter her own age. Lavery loved her in return. Her mother opposed the relationship and forced her into a marriage to Ned Trudeau, a suitor from her finishing school days in New York. Dr. Trudeau died within six months of the marriage, leaving her pregnant with her only child. At twenty-four the former Hazel Martyn was a beautiful and talented widow with a daughter and a mother who bitterly opposed a marriage to John Lavery until her own death five years later. She was engaged to a man who disappeared just before the wedding. Only when her mother was dead did Hazel, at the age of twenty-nine, marry John Lavery, who had been her first love. Shortly after Hazel and John were married, her sister Dorothy died from anorexia (as we would call it). Before she was thirty, Hazel had lost her parents, her first husband, and her sister. She bade farewell to Chicago with obvious relief and never returned.

  In London, the wife of a now famous and successful painter, the young Chicago socialite became the dazzling center of one of London’s most famous salons. While flirtations were expected in that culture and love affairs frequent, it is hard to tell whether Hazel was unfaithful during her early years in London. Ms. McCoole seemed to think not. When the Irish revolutionaries came to London to negotiate a peace treaty and some kind of independent Ireland, Hazel (whose father’s family was from Galway) became deeply involved in the process. Her salon was a center and a refuge for the Irish delegates and also a locale for informal meetings among some of the members of both delegations. Her husband said that she came alive with enthusiasm for the Irish cause. Both sides later claimed that she was instrumental in the development of the treaty. At the time, she was forty years old and still radiantly lovely. She claimed to be thirty-three, virtually the same age as the young Irish delegates Michael Collins and later Kevin O’Higgins.

  She’d come a long way from North Avenue. Though she seemed both flighty and flaky, her personal achievement was, in its own way, impressive.

  I felt sorry for her.

  Nuala was singing songs in Irish up on the stage of the Point. I had no idea what they were about, but I noted once again that she was her most beautiful when singing in her first language.

  I turned to DeVere White’s account of the death of Kevin O’Higgins. The story began with a dinner the night before his death:

  When the visitors arrived the conversation turned to other topics: he remonstrated with one of his colleagues who suggested that the Party should refuse to form a government when the Dail reassembled but should leave the task to a coalition of the opposing parties. To do this, so long as they were the largest Party, was a breach of faith with the electorate, O’Higgins contended. Then he left his friends and went up to bed. He came back to the room after some time, half undressed, looking, he explained, for the toy gramophone which he promised to leave beside Maeve’s [O’Higgins’s daughter’s] bed and which he had hidden in the piano to protect himself from Hogan [his aide-decamp]. Before going out of the room, he turned to McGilligan and said, in the mock Irish way in which he habitually talked when at home: “It is when I am undressing that I do be thinking over things and I have been turning over in my mind what we were discussing tonight You know enough about natural history to understand how the coral insects make their beautiful little islands. I do be thinking that the part some of us may have to play is to leave our bones like the coral insects behind us for others to build upon.”

  After his friends left, he went downstairs to look in his shelves for a book containing a poem, “The Song of Defeat,” by Stephen Gwynn. It was a favorite of his, and when he could not find the book he refused to go to bed until he had searched the house and discovered it eventually in the guest room. Then he sat on his bed and read it aloud before going to sleep; read of:

  the women of Eire keening

  For Brian slain at his tent—

  and on through those heroic verses which tell of Ireland in the ancient, kingly days—

  of a land, where to fail is more than to triumph, and victory less than defeat.

  In the morning, he was up before breakfast to have his usual swim at Blackrock. It was one of those fine summer days when it seems that nature is entirely genial, that life must be pleasant, and that evil, if it exists, has been shamed into hiding below the ground.

  Before breakfast O’Higgins played with the children and inspected all the toys which Maeve laid out for him. Hogan had obtained possession of the gramophone again and was making a nuisance of himself. Everyone felt happy and O’Higgins had completely cast off the mood in which he had gone to bed. Hogan always drew out the best from him and their conversation was very lively this morning, the first they had spent together since O’Higgins had gone to Geneva. There is no diversion so pleasant as the verbal dueling of two friends who have wit and who are mentally in tune with one another. Wit is a dangerous weapon for any man to carry about in the world, it sometimes goes off at inappropriate moments, its mere presence is assumed by the timid to carry a threat to themselves. It can only be produced with safety when the combatants are well matched and trust one another.

  A meal seldom passed without a discussion of politics, and when they had laughed enough, O’Higgins put out his idea that there should be some form of honor which the State could award to those who served her without any public recognition. “There are so manyfine fellows,” he said, “who do such fine things so quietly.”

  The household had gone to church earlier in the morning, and O’Higgins went off by himself to twelve o’clock Mass at Booterstown. At the corner, where Gross Avenue meets Booterstown Avenue, there was a seat, and Mrs. O’Higgins, on her way home from an earlier Mass, noticed, without attaching any significance to the fact, that men were sitting there. When O’Higgins left Dunamase to go to the church he did not bother to call his personal guard, who had accompanied him on the swimming excursion earlier in the morning. His wife was in the hall arranging flowers;he kissed her, and went to see his daughter, Maeve, who was playing with her toys. The child had first to be kissed, then the dolls in turn, and finally Una, the baby of the family, asl
eep in her pram. A policeman stood on duty at the side gate of the garden through which O’Higgins passed. A few minutes later a burst of revolver fire was heard coming from the road. Hogan, who was waiting for a friend to take him to play golf, ran from the house, revolver in hand, in the direction of the shooting.

  Dunamase is only a few hundred yards from the corner where Booterstown Avenue joins Gross Avenue, and, as O’Higgins approached the turn in the road, a boy on a bicycle gave a signal to a motor-car which was parked on the side of the road. A man came out and fired at point-blank range. O’Higgins turned and tried to run for cover to the gate of Sans Souci, a house on the other side of the road. His attacker followed, firing as he ran; O’Higgins had only strength enough to cross the road. On the other side he fell upon the path, whereupon two other men rushed out from behind the car and fired at him as he lay upon the ground. One stood across the body, pouring the contents of his revolver into it. The murder party then drove away, and the first person to arrive on the scene was an old colleague, Eoin MacNeill.

  O’Higgins was alive, but in dreadful agony. One bullet had entered the head behind the ear. Six were in his body. But he had not lost consciousness, and when MacNeill bent over him, he murmured: “I forgive my murderers,” and then, after a pause while he collected strength to speak, he said: “Tell my wife I love her eternally.” The discipline with which he had habitually controlled his mind did not leave him now, and lying weltering in his blood on the dusty road in the torrid midday sun, he dictated a will. A priest came and administered the Last Sacraments, a doctor was summoned and attended him there on the side of the road until an ambulance arrived.

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said to his wife when they carried him into his house and laid him on an improvised bed on the dining room floor. “I did my best.”

  He lay pale but fully conscious, speaking slowly and clearly. That he was going to die he was quite certain, but he was gay in the face of death. Of himself, or his pain, he never spoke, but he asked for each of his family in turn, and sent messages to those who were away. Again and again he affirmed that he forgave his murderers. To his wife he said: “You must have no bitterness in your heart for them.” Then remembering the problem with which the Government would be faced, he exclaimed: “My colleagues! My poor colleagues!” His friend, Surgeon Barniville, who had been summoned from a distance, arrived early, and noticing his pain, lay down to support him with his arm. “Barney hasn’t had his lunch,” said O’Higgins, looking up at his wife: to each of those who tended him he had a word of thanks and apology for the trouble he was giving. A doctor offered brandy. He refused it. “Every man ought to drink his quota,” he said; “I have drunk mine in my day.” His strength must have been abnormal: he lived for five hours, his life oozing gradually away, his mind clear to the last, although, as he neared the end, he had to be told who they were that came to say good-bye. Sometimes he spoke of the affairs that had filled his last years, and, like other dying statesmen, sighed for the future of his country. Of De Valera, he said: “Tell my colleagues that they must beware of him in public life; he will play down to the weaknesses of the people.” He spoke of death. His wife said: “You will be with your father and Michael Collins and your little son.” He smiled and pictured himself sitting on a damp cloud with a harp, arguing about politics with “Mick.” A blood transfusion was given to him; he knew there was no prospect of life, but he agreed to have it. “I’ll fight, child,” he said. “They are so good to me, but they know I was always a bit of a diehard.” “Do you mind dying,Kevin?” his wife asked. Asmile came over hisface. “Mind dying? Why should I? My hourhas come. My job is done.” When his friend, Patrick Hogan, knelt beside him, he said: “I loved you, Hogan. Good-bye, Boss. We never hada row.” Hogan whispered: “You can die happy, Kevin.” The words had a magical effect, and from that moment he became quite tranquil, praying the simple prayers of childhood. Shortly before the end, he murmured: “God help the poor devils,” and then he prayed again. Since early in afternoon the room had been full of people. Some stood against the walls, others knelt in prayer. A crucifix had been placed in his right hand, from which a knuckle had been shot away, so that his wife had to keep her hand pressed against the cross to hold it there.

  There wassilence in the room, save for the whisper ofprayers and the quiet summer murmurings thatcame through the window from the garden. With undefeated fortitude he had looked up at his murderers that morning, as he lay on the side of the road; and his serenity did not desert him as the hours passed and his strength ebbed away; it lighted his face when, a few minutes before five o’clock, a doctor, taking his pulse, found that he was dead.

  Iclosed the book, tears smarting at my eyes, my hands clenched, my throat dry.

  Could Kevin O’Higgins and the tormented, as I thought of her, socialite from Chicago really have been lovers? It didn’t seem possible.

  On the stage, Nuala was singing:

  “O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today,

  Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May!

  O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today,

  Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May!”

  How incredibly Irish! How unbearably Irish! You die with a wisecrack, a smile, and forgiveness.

  Murdered on his way to Mass! How many great men had to die so that Ireland could become the Celtic Tiger and pass England in its standard of living. Generation after generation had to die. Those that the English did not kill the Irish killed themselves.

  “Mick” and O’Higgins arguing politics in Heaven—not a bad metaphor, at all, at all.

  Why was the ghost of Kevin O’Higgins haunting my Nuala? And who was the woman in the fire?

  Was it Lady Lavery? I hoped not. I wanted no part of THAT one, even if I did feel sorry for her. Besides, even if she were a Chicagoan, her family was probably Republican. Nor did I want to read about her love affair with O’Higgins.

  That afternoon we’d go out to Booterstown at herself’s insistence. I wouldn’t give her the DeVere White book or tell her what I’d read. We’d see if she could really reconstruct that terrible Sunday morning. Not for a moment did I doubt that she could and would.

  I shivered slightly. As George the Priest said, the fey dimension of her personality was part of the whole package.

  I looked up. The whole package was descending upon me, a happy grin on her face.

  “Isn’t it going to be grand, Dermot Michael? Aren’t these brilliant people? Won’t the audience love it?”

  ‘They will indeed.”

  “Did you see them eejits in the papers this morning?

  Won’t they help us get a crowd? Won’t people come to see if I’m as awful as they say I am?”

  So much for my wife’s sensitivity to twisted and envious media coverage. They spelled her name right, and that was enough.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to have lunch at Bewley’s on Grafton Street before we take the DART out to Booterstown?”

  She slipped into a white windbreaker with the logo of the Chicago Yacht Club on it.

  “It would … and supper?”

  “I thought maybe at the Shelbourne, if it’s all right with you, Dermot Michael?”

  “Won’t it be grand to turn nostalgic again and drink a bottle of wine. I like you, Nuala Anne, when you have a half-bottle of wine in you.”

  She blushed modestly.

  “Go ‘long with you, Dermot Michael Coyne!”

  Before we entered the bustling cafe on Grafton Street, we slipped into the Clarendon Street Carmelite Church, which is just across a narrow alley from Bewley’s. Nuala prayed with more than her usual fervor—and usually she is very intense at prayer.

  What is she praying for? I asked the Deity.

  Well, whatever it is, she’s my wife, so I second the motion.

  I had the impression that Herself (or Himself if you wish) replied that She was well aware that she was my wife and I was a very lucky fella and I should accept the whole package.

/>   —6—

  NUALA BECAME silent and solemn on the short ride on the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART for short) from the Landsdowne station to Booterstown. We went through the suburban towns that huddle up against the Irish Sea—Sandymount the most famous, the one from which your man with the dirty mind walked into eternity. The Booterstown station, roughly even with the new campus of University College a mile or so inland, is right above the strand (beach to Americans). One has to walk across Rock Road to get into the town proper. The sun had won its daily battle with the Irish mist. Indeed, the clouds had retreated so far out on the Irish Sea that they were out of sight. They’d be back.

  Nuala doffed her Chicago Yacht Club jacket and tied it around her waist.

  Behind us in the bright, cloudless sky loomed the electricity works and beyond them Houth Head at the top of Dublin Bay (as in Houth Head and Environs [HCE] in the last novel by your man with the dirty mind). In front of us were the piers of Dun Laoghaire and farther south the other end of the bay, Bray Head.

  “When the sun is out and the sky is clear,” I said, “couldn’t this be Naples?”

  She was startled out of her reverie.

  “Water’s a bit too cold.” She took my hand in hers and clung to it. “We’d better walk down to Blackrock Strand. That’s where he went swimming the day he died.”

  Me surprised?

  I was indeed, though I half-knew (as she would say) that it was coming.

  Lunch at Bewley’s had been great fun. Crowded, busy, chaotic, it’s the best people-watching place in Dublin. The best people to watch are kids and their parents. Ireland is the greatest place in the world to be a kid. The Irish not only love their kids; they love to play with them. Three small rug rats had accosted Nuala Anne and demanded that she tell them a story, PLEASE! She told them a story about a little leprechaun that didn’t like to play tricks on people and how hard he had to work to persuade kids to trust him. He finally succeeded because of the efforts of a bossy little tyke named Nessa who sounded like a younger version of herself.