Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

I pointed out that this was literally untrue, but that made no difference.

  “We’ll buy it together,” I said soothingly.

  She then weighed all the pros and cons of where the house should be. The issue remained unresolved when we turned through Oranmore and caught sight of the bay. She made the driver stop the car, jumped out on the side of the road, and sang “Galway Bay” at the top of her voice.

  Fiona barked her approval.

  “Isn’t it grand, Dermot Michael? Isn’t it the most brilliant blue in all the world?”

  She hugged me fiercely. Therefore, it was inappropriate for me to respond that the blue at Amalfi was much more brilliant. What did I know anyway?

  Except when to keep my big mouth shut.

  We drove through the city, which seemed even more prosperous and busy than it had a year and a half before. It was filled with young people, many of them students at the National University of Ireland, Galway (as UCG was now called), but others tourists from all over Europe. The city had surely not been that prosperous since it was the port for trade with Spain back in the fifteenth century.

  “I wouldn’t want our house to be too far from this beautiful city,” I said.

  “Maybe up on Lough Corrib, close to the golf course.”

  She was still obsessed about beating me at golf. That, I swore to myself, she’d never do.

  We drove through the city, which its boosters call the Venice of Ireland because of the nine channels that the Corrib River creates as it dashes towards the bay. Then we turned left through the resort community of Salt Hill with its lovely old nineteenth-century hotels and its ugly new ones. We passed the golf course where, my wife informed me, she would beat me the next day.

  I laughed, much to her annoyance.

  “I will, Dermot Michael; I really will.”

  “How much of a handicap am I going to have to give you?”

  She snorted in disdain. Nuala Anne does not need handicaps.

  A few miles west of Salt Hill the scenery changed. On the left Galway Bay was still Galway Bay, but on the right we left behind the greenery and entered the stark, desolate, and unearthly beauty of Connemara or, more properly, Iar Conaught—West Connaught. (The name Connemara is reserved by the purists for the western half of the peninsula.) We were now in the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking region. My good wife had shed her exuberance. She was now quiet, pensive, serious. In recognition of this change, Fiona rested her huge head on Nuala’s knee.

  According to a book I’d read on the Irish rural landscape, Connemara had three distinct districts: the mountains—like the Twelve Bens, which loomed in the distance on our right as we drove along the bay—the bogs, and coastlines (on Galway Bay and the south and Lough Corrib on the north). Along the shores, dairy farming, some fishing, and kelp gathering on the strands were ways to stay alive. In the other regions potato farming had flourished on the sides of the mountains, far up where the English did not want the land until the famine. The two vast estates, the D’Arcys’, at the far end around the town of Clifden, and the Martyns’ (Hazel Lavery’s ancestors), had been wiped out by the famine, too, because there were no crops and no income even for the landlords. The D’Arcys and the Martyns had stolen the land from the O’Flahertys, who had owned it before Cromwell—and kept the poor burgers of Galway City in terror. Herself—Grace O’Malley—was the wife of an O’Tlaherty.

  Nuala’s family had survived the politics and the wars and the famines and the plagues for a thousand years and more in their little hut. Now they could get on Aer Lingus and fly to America for their daughter’s wedding. Somehow they had finally won.

  “Will we like the new house, Dermot Michael?” she asked softly.

  Well, at least she had spoken to me in English.

  “Woman, we will. Whatever it looks like, your ma and da live there, so naturally we’ll like it.”

  “The old place was so picturesque.”

  “And so uncomfortable!”

  “ ’Twas that indeed.”

  The ur-Nuala was now in the car with me, the protoNuala, the shy and quiet girl from Carraroe—shy and quiet and with a wicked Camogie stick in her hand.

  We passed through the town of Spiddle, the unofficial capital of the Gaeltacht, the place where the summer contests, from poetry to sailing, took place.

  “Was it here you crewed in the Galway hooker races?”

  “Ah, no. It was out beyond in Roundstone.”

  “And you lost?”

  “We did. We weren’t very good at it.”

  “Just like golf.”

  “I’m very good at golf. If I could hit it as far as you do, wouldn’t I be better?”

  “Woman, you would. But you can’t. And you won’t.”

  She laughed softly. In the Gaeltacht, Nuala Anne was quiet about everything. As I remembered, she even walked softly instead of bounding.

  Under the clear blue sky and the bright sunlight, the countryside was lovely, desolate but utterly distinctive, like the landscape of another world—or perhaps one on the far reaches of this world. The next parish, as the Irish like to say, is on Long Island. Yet we were only twenty minutes’ drive away from Galway City, twenty-five minutes from Galway Airport with flights to Dublin and Manchester and London. The occasional new bungalow or villa warned us that the modern world was not so far away.

  We took a right turn to the north and followed an inlet of the bay.

  “ ’Tis your ma’s homeland, Dermot Michael.”

  “ ’Tis.”

  Nuala had a special relationship with my grandmother, though she had never met her. Not in this world, anyway.1

  We drove through the small town of Costelloe, which is on the land bridge leading out to Carraroe.

  “This is where your man lived after he sank the boat,” my wife said as she pointed at a large building that bore the sign: “Costelloe Fishing Lodge.”

  “Which man and what boat?” I asked, knowing that the closer she was to home, the more obscure she would be.

  “Titantic, of course,” she said in a tone of voice that implied I was an absolute idiot for not knowing what boat. “J. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line and himself telling the captain to break the record crossing the Atlantic so they couldn’t turn fast enough to avoid the iceberg. They said all them ghosts haunted the eejit for the rest of his life. Poor man.”

  She shivered as if the ghosts might still lurk in the bogs and rocks that were all around us. We were only thirty miles from Galway and on another planet.

  “We’re almost home,” she said as we bumped carefully along the narrow road.

  “We are,” I agreed, figuring there was little point in arguing about whose home.

  Nuala grabbed my hand, seeking reassurance for her return home. I’m always glad to drive back to River Forest, but the town is not a religion with me.

  Carraroe (the Red-Colored Quarter in Irish) is a fist, shoved out into Galway Bay, for all practical purposes an island surrounded on all sides by the bay save for the narrow strip of land connecting it to the rest of Ireland. Moreover, it is dotted with lakes. The village is a network of roads and lanes—lined by whitewashed stone fences—with water on both sides. The cottages and bungalows were washed with pink and blue and white and green, bright spots of color against the rich blue of the sky and the sea.

  We passed the small industrial park where computer parts were made and where Annie worked part-time because, like her daughter, she didn’t trust the American stock markets.

  “Aren’t those statues grand altogether?” Nuala Anne said as we passed the Open Air Sculpture Park where the work in metal sculpture of Edward Delaney is exhibited.

  “Grand,” I agreed, though I thought they didn’t fit in with the setting, but once again this was hardly the time to argue.

  When the sun is shining, it might just be the prettiest place in the world. But most of the time, the sun doesn’t shine. Then it’s the next best thing to living under the sea.

&n
bsp; “If there really is global warming,” Nuala said pensively, “all this will be covered with water, won’t it, Dermot?”

  “Maybe not. Five thousand years ago it was two degrees Centigrade warmer and they farmed all year round in the west of Ireland.”

  “That was up beyond in Mayo, and themselves on the top of a big cliff. Ah, they’ll not see our kind again, will they?”

  “You’re talking like you’re an Aran Islander.”

  “A character in a John Millington Synge play,” she said with a soft laugh. “Ah, well, we live while we can. … Next turn, Dermot.”

  The new McGrail home was a pretty light blue, very much in keeping with the setting. A tour bus, doors open, stood expectantly.

  “Isn’t it grand, Dermot Michael? I knew it would be brilliant. … Now, mind, watch your language. We don’t want to shock me ma and me da.”

  “I’m not the one who talks like I’m from the north side of Dublin.”

  “The tourists are here. I should help with the tea. Do you mind, Dermot?”

  “Why would I mind?

  She dashed around to the back of the house, Fiona in hot pursuit. Just before she turned the corner, she remembered where she was and slowed to a graceful and deliberate walk, the hoyden turned Gaeltacht matron. Fiona, surprised at the change, skidded to a stop.

  I grinned and helped the driver bring our considerable luggage into the house. It was a small bungalow but three times larger than the old stone cottage. It contained a parlor, a dining area, a kitchen with cabinets and all the new equipment, and three small bedrooms. Even two “conveniences,” which was “excessive” by Irish standards, especially since you were only a few years away from outdoor privies. Still, it’s what the Germans wanted and you built a home these days with the thought that someday a German would buy it.

  The home was tastefully decorated, save for the old prints of the Sacred Heart and St. Teresa of Lisieux, which had been brought from the former house, family icons. A cabinet contained pictures of the children and grandchildren, including one of a radiant Nuala Anne on her wedding day, standing next to a clumsy lug who had no business messing up the photo. Next to the cabinet was a Camogie stick, club as I called it No way did I want that back on Southport Avenue.

  In the corner stood a television, a VCR, and a CD player, all gifts that I had managed to insinuate into the house with the argument that they were from myself and herself. That way herself need not worry about each gift I bought.

  I didn’t have to look to know that the disk was Nuala Anne Goes to Church and the VCR tape was of the RTE show from the Point.

  There was, needless to say, a Brigid cross made of reeds over the door.

  “You won’t be needing the car again today, sir?” the driver asked.

  “No, Sergeant,” I said, guessing at his rank. “We’re fine. We’ll use the McGrails’ car to go to church tomorrow and to the golf club.”

  “As long as you’re out here, all we have to do is keep an eye on the bridge up beyond.”

  “I think we’re pretty safe in this part of the world.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir. The west isn’t always as peaceful as it looks.”

  I knew the crime rates. It was as peaceful as it looked, indeed the most peaceful place in Europe. These days, anyway. Thanks to Kevin O’Higgins.

  I thanked the sergeant for his protection.

  “Not at all, sir. ’Tis an honor to take care of that one.”

  Not a mention of her oafish husband. Ah, well, we live while we can.

  I heard singing outside. German singing. I walked out the back door, just to make sure that no one was hassling my wife, not that I could do anything other than bring along her Camogie stick.

  The Germans were young and harmless. Mind you, they all stared at herself, in her faded jeans and white Chicago Yacht Club sweatshirt. I didn’t mind their staring, though I thought some of them did it a little longer than was necessary.

  Fiona pranced from table to table, accepting the enthusiastic admiration of our guests.

  “Ja, ja, nice doggy.”

  The McGrails had expanded their garden. Now it covered a patch of land between the bungalow and the cottage, the latter now with a new thatch roof (and conveniences inside, I knew, for the tourists). The dense garden, the new tables and chairs, and the lake beyond the cottage made a picturesque setting for tourists looking for quaint Irish scenes.

  Well, they were welcome to it.

  Annie came over and kissed me, and himself shook my hand.

  “Jesus and Mary be with this house and all who live in it,” I said in the only Irish I knew.

  They giggled at my accent and replied in English that they wished that Jesus and Mary and Patrick be with those who come into the house.

  I stole three scones from Annie’s tray, smeared them with heavy cream and raspberry jam, and poured meself a cup of tea.

  Myself.

  I did not permit them to pollute my tea with milk.

  The Germans tried to sing “Galway Bay” and made a mess of it.

  “Youse do it all wrong,” Nuala informed them, relinquishing for the moment her quiet Gaeltacht lass persona.

  “Ja, you sing it then!”

  “Well, I must might. … Dermot love, would you ever bring me harp?”

  The Germans noticed me for the first time.

  “Woman, I would.”

  So I brought the harp and so she taught them how to sing “Galway Bay” and the “Kerry Dance” and, God save us all, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

  And then she explained who Colm of Iona was and sang “Sail the Soul.”

  ‘The lass is a terrible show-off altogether,” I said to her father.

  “Sure, we could hire her here if she ever needs a job.”

  It was time for the Germans to leave, which they did with much handshaking.

  “Ja, ja,” a young woman said to me, “she sings very well. She should record, nein?”

  “She does,” I said, reaching into my shoulder bag and producing a disk.

  I gave a dozen or so away, which is why I had brought the bag out with me.

  The Germans were deeply impressed.

  As they damn well ought to have been.

  No way we were going out for supper. Annie was preparing a “good, solid Irish supper for you.”

  Nuala insisted, despite her mother’s protests, that she would stay in the house and help with dinner. I should take poor little darlin’ Fiona for a run on the road. I darted into our bedroom and donned shorts, a T-shirt, and running shoes. At the last minute I grabbed my shillelagh. It would do no harm to carry it.

  Fiona must have thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She rushed ahead of me down the road, barked at the cattle and the mild-mannered Galway ponies, wagged her tail at the elderly men and women, accepted petting from delighted children, jumped over fences, and chased away a couple of dubious sheepdogs who tried to block her romp.

  The local folk all nodded politely. They knew who I was, but, shy people that they were, they did not intrude on my privacy. I was too busy keeping up with the good-dog Fiona. She discovered a strand, the Coral Strand I would learn later, so called because of its color in sunlight, more shale then sand, vaulted a stone fence, and plunged into Galway Bay. The cold water didn’t bother her in the slightest.

  The sky was blue above us and it was still warm, but mists were forming out on the bay. The Aran Islands were barely visible, dark shapes in the lighter shapes of mists.

  Fiona galloped out of the water, rushed up to me, and shook the water off her fur, drenching me.

  “Bad dog,” I complained.

  To prove what she thought of my reproof, she shook herself again. Then she picked up a stick, brought it to me, and laid it expectantly at my feet. I ignored it. She barked, her feelings hurt. I picked up the stick and tossed it down the beach. She retrieved it, brought it back to me, and wresded with me for possession. We played the game several times. I finally tossed
it in the water. Unhesitatingly, she raced after it.

  Then suddenly she wheeled and rushed back onto the strand, barking furiously.

  I looked around to see what had roused her ire. A small blue car had stopped alongside the fence over which Fiona had vaulted. Two men, tough and unkempt characters in their late twenties, were picking their way towards us on the shale, one with his arm in a sling. He carried a knife, his companion a cosh,

  Our friends from the Pembroke Road bridge.

  “Nice to see you again,” I said, grabbing my shillelagh. “Maybe I can break a few skulls this time.”

  Fiona growled dangerously. I advanced towards the two men and waved my war club at them. They hesitated, glanced anxiously at the wolfhound, and then ran back to their car, jumped into it, and pulled away down the dirt road.

  This time I didn’t chase them.

  “Come on, girl,” I ordered my sidekick. “We have to get back to Nuala.”

  We sprinted down the road in the direction, I thought, of the McGrail bungalow. But the network of lanes, fences, and water confused me completely. Unfortunately, they confused the wolfhound, too. Fiona checked her mad dash, looked around in confusion, sniffed the air, and barked in protest.

  The two of us waited a few moments and then ran in the opposite direction. The mists drifted in from the Arans and towards us. We stopped again.

  “We’re lost, girl,” I told her, desperation in my voice. “We’ve got to find Nuala before they do.”

  She started to run again, right into the mist. I hoped she knew where we were going, because I certainly didn’t.

  A big car loomed up in front of us. I shouted; the wolfhound howled. The car, which had been moving slowly because of the mist, halted abruptly.

  It was a Benz. Our Benz.

  “Two of them are here on the island!” I shouted at our cop as he rolled down the window. “We’ve got to get back to the house before it’s too late.”

  I actually said that. And I’m supposed to be an accomplished novelist with a special gift for dialogue.

  The man threw open the door; we both bounded in, soaked to the skin and breathing heavily. He started the car and spoke into his transceiver at the same moment.

  “Blue car,” I gasped. “Must have got here before us.”