Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The young priest who presided over the seven-thirty Eucharist was of the same age and style as Prester George. He preached an incisive and academic homily, to which I did not much listen since, to tell the truth, I was looking around the darkened church for a young woman who might be Nuala—even if I had her word for it that she didn’t believe in God.

  I saw long black hair on a blue jacket ahead of me and to the left, a combination that appeared thousands of times a day in Dublin. I told myself that I was falling in love with a girl I hardly knew and acting like a lovesick teenager.

  An accurate diagnosis, as far as that goes. Unfortunately for me, it was much later that I came to realize that the diagnosis didn’t go far enough.

  On the way back from Communion, however, I managed to sneak a quick look at the white face above the jacket. The young woman’s eyes were devoutly averted, but if it wasn’t Nuala Anne McGrail, it was someone sufficiently like her that I wanted to meet the strange woman anyway.

  I should have been praying after receiving the Sacrament. However, my mind was more on Nuala than on God. She was taller than I had thought. Five eight and a half or five nine. Statuesque. She did not slump, however, to hide her height. Rather she carried herself with elegant, almost regal, grace as she walked back from the altar, a countess in jeans and cloth jacket.

  A countess in jeans with a lithe, willowy body, long black hair, pale white skin, and a smooth jaw that ended in a pert and determined chin.

  I fear that my imagination went farther in its entertainments. As George had said when I asked him about ogling young women in church, “It’s the way the species has been designed, punk. Their beauty reflects God’s beauty so I imagine She doesn’t mind.”

  If God was as attractive as Nuala, I thought to myself, trying to break away from my desires, She must be wonderfully alluring.

  I waited outside the church, the early morning sun making Dublin town seem like a set for a musical, while the putative Nuala remained in intense prayer. At the Johnson Court entrance I saw a log encased in glass. It was not, however, as I first suspected, a relic of the True Cross but only evidence of rotting timbers to encourage contributions to the fund to repair the church.

  “Sure, if it isn’t Pegeen Mike herself,” I observed as she walked out in the bright sunlight, her book bag slung over her back.

  Squinting for a moment to adjust her eyes, she recognized me and began to babble.

  “Ah, sure, weren’t you an eejit for wasting time on our terrible play? And an amadon for spending your money on those roses? And didn’t I make a terrible mess of it that night?”

  I put my hand over her mouth to stifle the babble. “Listen to me, Nuala Anne McGrail from Carraroe in the County Galway. You were sensational. Wasn’t the Irish Times itself saying you were a very talented young woman? I’ll have no more of your Irish self-deprecation, which as you know yourself is only half serious. Is that clear?”

  She didn’t struggle to escape the grip of my hand. Rather, eyes wide, she nodded her head.

  “If I said you were terrible and that the play was awful, I’d be lucky if I escaped with my life, now wouldn’t I?”

  I felt her mouth move in a grin. Her eyes danced in amusement. She nodded vigorously.

  “Now, the first thing you’re going to do when I let you talk is thank me for the roses. Understand?”

  She nodded again.

  “All right.”

  “Thank you very much for the beautiful roses, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she said dutifully. “If I wasn’t such an eejit, I would have thanked you for them first. Everyone said that me fockingrichyank”—she grinned mischievously—“must be sweet.”

  “And you said?”

  “I just stuck my nose up in the air and said that, sure, he wasn’t the worst of them.”

  “Very proper.” I took her arm. “Now let me buy you breakfast.”

  She yanked it away from me. “I’ll buy me own breakfast, if you don’t mind.”

  The imp had instantly become a fury. I wasn’t going to fight it. “Well, then, will you join me for breakfast?”

  She pondered that invitation suspiciously. “Where?”

  “You name it.”

  “Bewley’s?” She gestured at the café a few steps across Johnson Court.

  “Why not? Do you have your bike?”

  She gestured at the sign in the small front yard of St. Teresa’s forbidding bicycles. “Don’t the priests forbid us to leave them here?”

  “You sound like an anticlerical.”

  “I am not,” she insisted. “I just don’t like priests.”

  I recaptured her arm and walked into the café. Bewley’s is a wonderful tea shop where you can buy some of the best scones and drink some of the best tea and coffee in Ireland. It’s not a place where you can buy nutritious meals like we Americans pursue, but the Irish are not much into nutrition, probably because they cannot afford to be. It’s also a great place to watch parents and kids play. Ireland is the greatest country in the world to be a kid, because it’s a culture steeped in play and the presence of kids gives adults a chance to act like kids again.

  “And yourself telling me that you don’t believe in God?”

  “I never said I believed in Him, did I?” She frowned grimly.

  “But you go to Mass every day, don’t you now?”

  “What if I do?”

  “If you don’t believe in God, why go to Mass every day?”

  “Haven’t me mother and I been going to Mass every day since as far back as I can remember?”

  “Your mother isn’t around to check up on you now, fair Nuala.”

  “God is.” She bowed her head stubbornly, not willing to give me an inch.

  “But didn’t you tell me that you don’t believe in God?”

  “What if I’m wrong?”

  “Huh?”

  She stopped and turned towards me, her face assuming an expression of feral shrewdness that I would see many more times in the weeks that were to come, the face of an impoverished housewife bargaining over the price of a pound of bacon or a half pound of butter.

  “If there is no God, sure, it doesn’t do any harm at all to go to Mass, does it now? And doesn’t it get me out of me bed every morning? And if there is a God, well, He knows that I’m at least maintaining diplomatic relations with Him, doesn’t He?”

  “Her.”

  “Huh?”

  “My brother George, who is a priest, says that God is as much womanly as manly.”

  “More. I mean if She exists, if you take my meaning.”

  “Why don’t you go to Mass in the college chapel?”

  I was sure I knew the answer. Nuala was hiding her piety from her friends, just as she tried to hide it from me by her anticlerical outburst.

  “Why would I be wanting to pray in a Prod church?” she snapped, eyes glowing triumphantly as she fended off my question.

  “I give up, Nuala! Let’s go in and have breakfast.”

  “Mind you.” She would not yield me the last word. “There’s nothing really wrong with being a Prod if that’s what you are.”

  It was hot in Bewley’s, and dense with cigarette smoke as always. The lights behind the yellow stained-glass windows, however, made the place seem cheerful. We both took off jackets, mine the blue and gold of Marquette U. Nuala was wearing with her jeans a dark blue sweater that had seen better days at least a decade ago—a hand-me-down from an older sister. It did considerably more justice to her wonderful breasts than the Dublin Millennium sweatshirt had.

  We purchased our tea and scones and my orange juice from the buffet and paid a sad-faced young Asian woman in native dress over her Bewley’s uniform. I watched Nuala dole out her coins with the care of a poor person who doesn’t have enough coins to risk making a mistake.

  “Good morning, Shirley,” Nuala said to the Asian. “ ’Tis a wonderful morning, isn’t it now?”

  “Ah, it is, Nuala.” The woman smiled brightly. “You have a good
day now.”

  “As best I can with this big amadon in tow.” She nodded in my direction. The Asian girl giggled.

  “Do you know everyone in this part of Dublin?”

  “She’s in one of my classes, poor thing.”

  We found ourselves a table in an alcove in the front corner of the basement floor, protected on three sides by walls with rose-colored covering.

  “You should drink orange juice in the morning, young woman,” I told her firmly. “It’s good for you.”

  “Is it now?”

  “ ’Tis, especially since you have better teeth than any Irish person I’ve ever met. You should take care of them.”

  “Should I now?”

  “You should.”

  She looked like she was about to sail off into another argument and then thought better of it. “Maybe I will.”

  “Can I get you some now?”

  “Didn’t I say I’d buy me own breakfast?”

  “A glass of orange juice isn’t breakfast.”

  She pondered that and then laughed. “Ah, sure, what a terrible witch I’m being. Make it a large glass, if you don’t mind.”

  I smiled happily as I went back to the buffet. I also bought another large pot of tea and a plateful of scones.

  “What are you doing with the extra scones?” she demanded suspiciously.

  “I like them, woman, if you don’t mind. And if you try to take a single one of them away from me, won’t I be chopping off your hand?”

  She laughed again. And impudently grabbed for one of my scones.

  I grabbed the hand and kissed it.

  I told you I was a romantic.

  She blushed furiously. “You’re a desperate man, Dermot Michael Coyne. A desperate man altogether. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll eat me pilfered scone.”

  “You might want to run the risk of pilfering another. But drink your orange juice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  While she gulped down the juice with considerable enthusiasm, I studied her carefully. Nuala’s clothes were not much above the poverty level, but her face, once more devoid of makeup, was freshly scrubbed, and her sweater and jeans were clean. Moreover, there was a slight aroma of inexpensive scent about her. Nuala’s mother had brought her up right.

  “I’m glad you have not acquired the terrible Irish habit of smoking all the time, Nuala.”

  “Och, isn’t it a terrible habit altogether and so much better things to do with your money? Still, you can’t blame them.” She glanced around the room. “There’s little enough in most of their lives.”

  “Tell me about your life, Nuala.”

  “What’s there to tell?” She put down the empty juice glass and deftly pulled the entire plate of scones to her side of the small table. “And if you want more scones, won’t you have to be going back to the buffet and buying some for yourself?”

  I filled her teacup. The kid was hungry. Dear God, how poor she must really be.

  “Tell me about your family and Carraroe.”

  “Not much to tell. We have a couple of acres of poor farmland, a few cows, and a small tea shop at which some of the tour buses stop. There were seven of us, all married but me, and I’m never going to marry, not at all, at all. A brother and a sister live in London, and a brother in San Francisco and another in Boston, a brother in Montreal and a sister in Christ Church, that’s in New Zealand.”

  “And where are you going to live when you graduate from university?”

  “In Carraroe,” she said stubbornly. “I won’t leave me poor parents alone. I’m sure I can get a job in Galway city.”

  How many jobs were there for accountants anywhere in Ireland? I wondered.

  “Your brothers and sisters come back often, don’t they?”

  “Too often altogether, if you ask me.” She layered clotted cream and raspberry jam on yet another scone. “And themselves showing off their rich Yank ways and staying at the fancy hotels in Salt Hill with their spoiled brats.”

  She seemed on the verge of tears.

  “You don’t like them much?”

  “I love them all something terrible.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Haven’t I said so? That’s why I’m never going to marry. You have children and you break your heart and sometimes your back too raising them and educating them and then they go away and leave you alone.”

  She was frowning again, a bitter and angry frown.

  “Are your parents angry at your brothers and sisters for leaving?”

  “They are not!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t they terrible proud that all of the eejits are doing so well? And don’t they miss them just the same? All the West of Ireland exports is people and sweaters.”

  “Handsome and gifted people.”

  “Isn’t that the truth now?”

  “Some of them looking quite lovely in sweaters.”

  She blushed again and turned away her eyes. “Go ’long with you.”

  “You’re really planning not to emigrate?”

  “Ah.” She grinned wickedly. “I was saying that, wasn’t I? But can you really believe me? Weren’t you saying yourself that I’m a pretty good actress? Might I not be pretending? How do you know that I’m not looking for some fockingrichyank to seduce so I can escape this soggy and impoverished island?”

  She leaned back in her chair, still grinning. How would I handle that scenario?

  “I think, Nuala Anne McGrail,” I said, slowly and cautiously, “that if you set out to seduce someone, you’d probably accomplish it pretty effectively.”

  Her grin faded. “You think so, do you?”

  “I do, woman.”

  Her grin returned, a little less cocksure this time. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we now?”

  “I’d be delighted to.”

  “Of course, you’ve been engaged once already, haven’t you?”

  I gulped down a large swallow of tea. “How did you know that?”

  “Was she the one who died, or was it someone else?”

  “It was someone else . . . and how do you know about either of them?”

  “I just know, Dermot. I don’t know how I know.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m by way of being a wee bit of a witch.”

  That’s why she would turn out to be a first-rate detective. She “just knew” things. I don’t know whether it was the shrewdness of Europe’s last Stone Age people by which they put together as quickly as a computer isolated facts that others noticed but did not really see or whether she was really one of the faerie folk. Or some combination.

  “Are you now?”

  “Haven’t I said that I am? . . . Does it scare you?”

  I thought about it. “Just makes you more fascinating.”

  “Do you want to tell me about your engagement?”

  That was direct enough, astonishingly direct for an Irish person.

  Yes, I did want to talk about it. Womanly sympathy, you can’t beat it, Pa always used to say.

  “It’s a crazy story, Nul. Probably a comedy. I met this girl, Christina, in a bar on Rush Street—that’s our big singles’ bar district—the summer after I gave up on college. She was Irish on her father’s side and Italian on her mother’s side. There’s nothing wrong with that in Chicago anymore. One of my brothers and one of my sisters are married to Italians. It seems to be a good combination. Anyway, we hit it off well and began to date regularly. I hadn’t dated much since . . . since I graduated from high school.”

  I wasn’t about to tell my West of Ireland witch that Tina took me home to her apartment the night we met and that we made love, she with considerably more skill and experience than I.

  “She was two years older than me and had an excellent job in the finance department of the First Chicago, that’s a bank—”

  “Shouldn’t a man be careful of them accountant women?”

  We both laughed. I felt like I was on a psychiatrist’s couch.

  We didn’t move in with one another
, but we sustained a torrid sexual relationship. The best part of it was that I forgot about Kel. Or thought I did.

  “Her family liked me and my family liked her, except Ma and George the priest, both of whom had some doubts that she’d value my, uh, dreamy side.”

  “If she didn’t, wasn’t she a terrible fool?”

  Dear God, this lovely child is already defending me.

  Tina was small and slender, not exactly voluptuous but, to put it mildly, extremely sexy. We were both infatuated; we talked about sports and business and of course about sex, but not about much else.

  “The following Christmas we were engaged with the wedding set for June. Her mother and her Italian grandmother took over the arrangements, which was fine with my family since we’d pretty much had it with weddings.”

  I was, if the truth be told, swept along on a tide of loneliness and lust, not convinced that George was wrong but unwilling to admit the possibility that the issue was worth considering.

  “I finally met her Italian grandfather, the padrino, the head of the clan. They have no monopoly on such people, we Micks have them too. But this guy, a frail, apparently kindly old man, who had built up the family electronics industry from scratch, had more power than most of our patriarchs have.”

  “Not more than our matriarchs,” she said quietly.

  I didn’t like the bastard but I didn’t see that he made much difference. Not till he asked what I did for a living.

  “He found out that I worked at the Merc and hit the ceiling. I was nothing more than a gambler. An Irish gambler. He would not have a granddaughter of his marrying an Irish gambler, and probably a crooked and drunken one.”

  The explosion took Tina and her family by surprise, but they didn’t disagree. “He really has your best interests at heart,” she said to me mildly after that first eruption of the padrino’s volcano.

  “It didn’t seem credible that in the 1980s a grandfather could veto a marriage. A couple days later her father, who was the executive vice-president of the family firm and the man who really ran it because her uncle, the padrino’s son, was a lovely guy but with no sense for business, called me to offer me a job at the company. Vice-president at $80,000 a year with no particular responsibilities described.”