Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “The Irregulars were very active out here, I understand,” I said, hunting for folk tales about the Troubles.

  “Indeed they were,” Killian replied. “Unlike your men down below in Cork, they had fought against the Tans, too. Bloody times out here in those days.”

  “Revolutionary violence,” the abbot said with a sigh, “is less common among the really poor—your folks up in Galway and Mayo—than among those who have something to fight for and want more. The Kerry men were the most prosperous and the most bloody.”

  ‘They really killed Kevin O’Higgins, then?”

  The two men stopped to look at me in surprise.

  ‘That’s not what DeVere White says, is it?” Brother Killian said cautiously.

  “Another version,” I persisted, “says that it was not planned at all. A kind of accident, like the death of the Big Fella. Three Kerry men with guns happened to pass him in their car and seized the opportunity of the moment.”

  The abbot nodded. “That’s what we have always been told out here. The last of the four Whelan brothers.”

  Fiona had joined our threesome, panting heavily.

  “Too much running around, is it now?” I asked her.

  Then to the two monks, “The Whelan brothers?”

  ‘Tommy, the last one. Jimmy, Danny, Stevie, and Tommy. They were terrible, reckless and cruel men. They burned creameries and homes, ambushed Gardai and soldiers, robbed banks, shot their enemies in the back. They fought the English and fought the Free State, fought anyone they could find to fight, mostly because they loved the robbing and the burning and the killing. Respectable parents, too.”

  “Anarchy does that to people,” I said. “Or maybe more likely brings it out.”

  “If you believe the stories—and in Ireland stories improve with time—the Free Staters,” Brother Killian explained, “caught the Whelan gang after they had ambushed one of their columns and killed several of their men. At that time late in our Civil War, O’Higgins had persuaded the cabinet to give the army authorization to execute such men. So the Free Staters shot them all and left them for dead.”

  “The irony of it,” the abbot said as we arrived back at the door of the chapel, “is that they say Tommy was powerfully affected by O’Higgins’s forgiveness. He reformed completely. He became a member of the Dáil in Dev’s party and advocated the same tough policy against the IRA in the late nineteen-thirties. His grandson is a junior minister in the ruling party’s cabinet today.”

  Bingo!

  “Stay, Fiona,” I ordered as the three humans entered the chapel.

  She didn’t look happy about the command but curled up at the door and went promptly to sleep. So there, too!

  Nuala was ready to sing. The monks’ schola cantorum had assembled.

  ‘The first motet,” my wife announced, “is the final monastic hymn of the day during Lent. It’s called ‘Ave, Regina Coelorum,’ ‘Hail, Queen of Heaven.’ It anticipates the joy of Easter.”

  She sang the first line, and then the monks joined in. As before, her voice blended easily with theirs.

  “ ‘Ave, Regina coelorum,

  Ave, Domina Angelorum,

  Salve, radix, salve, porta,

  Ex qua mundo lux est orta.

  Gaude, Virgo gloriosa,

  Super omnes speciosa,

  Vale, o valde decora,

  Et pro nobis Christum exora.’ “

  (Hail, Queen of Heaven,

  Hail, Mistress of the Angels,

  Hail, root, hail, portal,

  From which the world’s light has risen.

  Rejoice, Virgin glorious,

  Above all others most beautiful,

  Farewell, O most gracious,

  And for us to Christ entreat.)

  “The next hymn,” Nuala explained with cool confidence, “is the ‘Easter Good Night’ song. Mary represents the mother love of God. She suggests that in the center of everything is love like that a mother feels for her newborn child. In this song she is told to rejoice because her son is not dead. Life is always stronger than death.”

  “ ‘Regina coeli laetare, alleluia!

  Quia quern meruisti portare, alleluia,

  Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia!

  Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!’ “

  (Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia!

  For he whom you were worthy to carry, alleluia,

  Has risen, as He said, alleluia!

  Pray for us to God, alleluia!)

  “If you live on the ocean like I did when I was a child and you learn to fear the terrible storms that batter your house and threaten the lives of your friends who are fishermen, you know what it’s like when you look out and see a star. It says that the storm is over. Those who are still out on the bay can follow it safely to shore. In this next hymn we hail Mary as the star of the stormy sea of our life.”

  Nuala was, I thought, not without some prejudice, getting better and better.

  “ ‘Ave, Maris Stella,

  Dei Mater alma,

  Atque semper Virgo,

  felix caeli porta.

  “ ‘Sumens illud ave

  Gabrielis ore,

  Funda nos in pace,

  Mutatis Evae nomen.

  “ ‘Solve vincia reis,

  Profer lumen caecis,

  Mala nostra pelle,

  Bona cuncta posce.’ “

  (Hail, Star of the Sea,

  Loving Mother of God,

  And Virgin immortal,

  blissful Heaven’s portal!

  Receiving that “Ave”

  From Gabriel’s mouth,

  Establish us in peace,

  Reversing “Eva’s” name.

  Break the chains of sinners,

  Bring light to the blind,

  Our evils do drive away,

  All good things do ask for.)

  “I don’t know about you,” I said to her as we drove back to Garrytown, “but I found that a very moving religious experience.”

  “It exhausted me altogether,” she sighed, curling up in a knot next to the already-sleeping Fiona.

  Since both my females were asleep, I turned my attention to sorting out the various mysteries that were rattling around inside my head—ruling out any consideration of the mystery of Nuala Anne.

  —30—

  I SAT down at the tiny desk in our Victorian master bedroom, laid out a sheet of Castlegarry stationery, opened my Bic pen (spurning the inkwell and the old-fashioned quill that accompanied it), and began to outline what we knew and what we didn’t know. When she woke up, she’d glance at my schema and nod politely. That was not the way she solved mysteries.

  She had thrown off her clothes and jumped into bed as soon as we entered our room. I had hung them up carefully. I donned my running clothes, found Fiona, who was wide awake again, and ran along the Shannon under the thick gray sky. I tried not to think of the mysteries. I’d clear my head with exercise and then approach them logically and rationally, with a fresh mind.

  The rain beat down upon us during the last quarterhour. Fiona loved it. So did I. Nothing like a run in the rain to clear your mind of all distractions.

  I returned a now thoroughly exhausted Fiona to her kennel and dashed into the house.

  Paddy MacGarry had been waiting for me. “Doing a little running in the rain, is it now?”

  ‘There’s nothing like it at all, at all.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, Dermot. The Anglican Archdeacon of Limerick usually has supper with us once a week. He’s a grand fellow and Vicar of the little chapel down below. He knows a lot of the history of this place. Father Mike comes along sometimes, but he has a meeting tonight.”

  “I’ll be happy to meet him.”

  “And, mind, the weather is supposed to clear off tonight. Tomorrow morning will be grand for golf.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Nuala had decreed that I could miss the practice at the university the next morning and “teach yo
ur man a little lesson on the links.”

  Nuala was still in deep sleep. An explosion in the next room would not wake her. So I took a shower, dressed for supper (dark blue sports coat, light blue slacks), and began to outline our mysteries.

  1) Who killed Kevin O’Higgins?

  Most likely a man named Tom Whelan who had seized the accidental opportunity to avenge the killing of his three brothers at the end of the Irish Civil War.

  2) How was that connected with the mystery out here at Castle Garry?

  In all likelihood the bloody Whelans were involved in the battles here in 1921 and 1922.

  3) Why didn’t Gene Keenan tell us more about O’Higgins’s death?

  Because he feared the public outcry if it were revealed that the grandfather of a cabinet minister had killed the founder of the Gardai.

  4) Who is trying to do harm to Nuala and myself?

  Either Father Placid and his cronies, who wanted to collect insurance money to cover their financial losses; or Maeve Doyle and her husband, who hate Nuala; or some fringe IRA crowd. I figured it would be Father Placid. Fear and greed were stronger than envy.

  5) What had happened here between Hugh Tudor and Augusta Downs?

  We do not know, not yet. Perhaps Father Mike MacNamee will be able to tell us.

  I looked over the list. It was far from persuasive. If the death of O’Higgins was so tenuously related to what had happened at Castle Garry, why was it linked to Nuala’s experience of the fire out here? Obviously her fey perceptions did not have to fit human logic, yet still the connection seemed thin.

  I could understand Keenan’s fear, but wasn’t it a little foolish to fear that a killing seventy years old could cause a parliamentary crisis? Maybe not in Ireland.

  Couldn’t the Father Placid crowd have found excuses to cancel the concert without kidnapping Nuala?

  What could General Tudor have done here that would have made him a disgrace in England?

  I rolled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket.

  Rain continued to beat against the window. Thunder rolled overhead; lightning crackled above the whitecaps on the Shannon. Should I try to wake my wife up?

  “Nuala Anne,” I said cautiously, “it’s 6:00.”

  She opened her eyes and glared. “Too early in the morning.”

  “In the afternoon. Drinks are at 6:30, supper at 7:00.”

  “Brigid, Patrick, and Columcille, man, why didn’t you wake me up!”

  She vaulted out of bed, covered herself with her robe, and dashed for the bathroom.

  “Because I feared for my life!” I shouted after her.

  I thought about her lovely naked body I had seen all too briefly while she ran for the bathroom. She had been drying me off after showers lately. Would not turnabout be fair play?

  When the shower stopped running, I went into the bathroom.

  “Dermot,” she said uneasily, “what do you want?”

  She was wet and delicious. I took the towel out of her hands.

  “Fair is fair,” I said.

  She gulped uneasily and turned her gaze away from me.

  “ ’Tis true,” she said.

  I dried her slowly and carefully. She accepted my ministrations passively, her head tilted back, a touch of a smile on her face.

  “I think I might hire you to do this often,” she said as she twisted to my touch.

  A firestorm was building up inside me. Now was the time. NOW!

  “We’ll be late for supper,” she said timidly.

  I lost my nerve. And my fire.

  “You’re right; we will.”

  ASSHOLE.

  “We’ll finish later,” I said uncertainly.

  “We will,” she said, also uncertainly.

  I SAID ASSHOLE.

  “I heard.”

  The Archdeacon of Limerick, a certain Clyde SmithRider, was a trim bald man in his late thirties with vast red eyebrows, a clerical dog collar, and a very sexy blond wife, Vicki. He talked a lot; she talked very little but watched him with total adoration.

  Nuala seemed to like the woman, so she had to be all right.

  We kept our mouths shut while the guests quizzed the archdeacon about the history of the castle.

  “The McGarrys’ propensity to die young,” he said in a clipped Oxford drawl, “is historic. The first Norman lord after routing the Gaelic Irish near Limerick died a year later, of natural causes. He wasn’t thirty. Three of them were killed at the siege of Limerick, leading an attempt at a Catholic counterattack. One died at the battle of Saratoga in America, leading a charge against General Gates. Another tried to lead a break out at Yorktown, despite Lord Cornwallis’s orders. Cornwallis knew the English were beaten. The McGarrys never accepted defeat. There is an old folk story that the Irish chief O’Brien O’Donohue put a curse on the first McGarry with his dying breath.”

  “Cornwallis fought here, too, did he not?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. …”

  “Coyne.”

  “Neither dark nor a foreigner, it would seem. … Yes, he fought here and in India, too. He was a sound man. If the various governments had listened to him, they would have had none of the troubles they later had both here and in America. The last two hundred years of Irish history would have been very different.”

  “I see … I’m not dark, but I am a foreigner.”

  “Hardly a foreigner, with Mayo antecedents and a Galway wife.”

  Clever guy.

  I knew about Lord Cornwallis and Ireland, but I wanted to learn whether the Archdeacon did. Alone of the English leaders of his time, Cornwallis recommended freedom for Ireland.

  A brief hint of a smile from my wife in her gold-andblack slip dress suggested that she knew I was looking for a fight and a half, as they would say in Ireland, and approved.

  Who the hell cared if we were late for dinner? I thought as I admired her breasts.

  “But would you say that Lord and Lady Downs were reckless?” I continued, tearing my eyes away from her.

  “Lord Downs was not a McGarry, so he shouldn’t have been a target of the alleged curse. He was a brave man, surely. Very brave, but hardly reckless. As for Lady Augusta, the facts around her death are shrouded in mystery. I think my good friend Father Mike knows a lot more than he’s saying on the subject But that’s Father Mike.”

  “Actually, me husband’s grandparents on his mother’s side were from Galway, too. Probably his ancestors were Viking pirates who washed up on the Connemara shores like a lot of other folk.”

  The Archdeacon smiled at her benignly. He and his wife must have been the only people in the country who had not seen Nuala perform on the telly.

  “Why would her death be shrouded in mystery?” I asked. “It was in the twentieth century, was it not?”

  He sighed, not like a real Irishman sighs, but still it was a valiant attempt. “It was different out here in those days. People were still able to hide their secrets.”

  “What about Major General Sir Hugh Tudor?”

  Smith-Rider frowned. “I can’t say I’ve heard his name, Mr. Coyne.”

  “Och, you can call him Dermot, Your Rivirence; everyone else does.”

  I decided that I would continue to stare at her breasts. She was my wife, was she not?

  A WIFE YOU LET DOWN JUST AN HOUR AGO.

  “Shut up. I’ll take care of that soon.”

  WHEN?

  “Soon.”

  “He was the General Commanding of the Auxiliaries and the Cadets during the War of Irish Independence. He apparently was involved in some of the fighting out here.”

  “The Black and Tans … strange, I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He was also the O.C. of the Ninth Scottish Division. Lord Downs was his Chief of Staff when he won the V.C. His father and his father-in-law were both deacons at Exeter.”

  “Really!”

  “A great friend of Churchill.”

  “Which is probably why he was General Commanding here. Churchill
thought that the Tans were a great idea. Did Tudor command in Palestine?”

  “He did and then he resigned, allegedly when the IRA killed his aide by mistake.”

  “In Palestine? Hardly likely!”

  “He died in exile and disgrace in Newfoundland.”

  “Why disgraced?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Fascinating. I’ll see what I can find out, if you’re interested.”

  “Very.”

  “I have some friends who are chaplains in the British Army. They may know. Stop by the vicarage tomorrow if you can.”

  “After golf,” Nuala advised.

  “After golf.”

  “You’d better be careful of your man,” Archdeacon Clyde warned me. “He has quite a reputation as a golfer.”

  “That will make it interesting.”

  “Just a friendly little game,” Paddy MacGarry said, rubbing his hands together.

  His wife frowned in disapproval.

  “Could I ask you a question you might think rude, Archdeacon?”

  “I’m sure it won’t be rude, Dermot.”

  “Do you think that the Catholics in this country have been astonishingly tolerant of the Church of Ireland?”

  “The Irish,” he said with a bright smile, “are the most tolerant people in the world. In most other countries we would have been packed up and shipped home, even if we didn’t have a home. … My family has been here for four generations. We’re Irish and nothing else. … They have no reason to be gracious to us, yet they always are. When we started repair work on our cathedral in Limerick—which was the Catholic cathedral before the Reformation—didn’t the local Catholic bishop weigh in with the first thousand-pound contribution? It’s astonishing. They don’t get nearly enough credit for it.”

  “The Irish rarely get credit,” I replied.

  Everyone around the table laughed, even my wife, whose eyes glowed with approval.

  If I had let her down, apparently she had forgiven me.

  We ran again with Fiona in the patchy moonlight. The rain had stopped, but the trees still dripped. Exhausted when we returned to our room, we collapsed into bed and into sleep almost instantly. No time, no thought of lovemaking.