“Poor dear thing, she must have been terribly unhappy.”
“Yet she never showed it.”
“Kept it all locked up inside?”
The car had slipped down FitzWilliam Street and was approaching Merrion Square.
“Never a hint.”
She sighed loudly. “Well, I’ll never do that. . . . I’m glad you let me read these.” She returned the two stories to me.
“I didn’t have much choice, now did I?”
“Brigid, Patrick, and Columcille, Dermot, we’re almost there!”
“ ’Tis true.”
“Kiss me just once before the play begins?”
“Gladly.”
I embraced and kissed her, solidly and effectively. She clung to me, her heart pounding.
“I won’t disgrace you, Dermot Michael. Truly I won’t.”
“There’s always the possibility, milady, that I might disgrace you.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” She continued to cling to me. It was a most pleasant experience. She smelled and tasted delicious.
“We’re here now, sir,” Arthur informed us.
“Thank you, Arthur.” I moved to open the door of the Rolls.
A firm white hand restrained me. “Let him open it, you eejit. Don’t you know anything at all, at all?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t want to hurt the poor man’s feelings, do you now?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Or embarrass me”—she chuckled—“and meself being such a grand lady.”
“No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”
Arthur opened the door and tipped his hat to Her Ladyship and I conducted her out of the car.
“Thank you, Arthur.”
“You’re quite welcome, ma’am. I’ll be waiting for you when you are ready to return.”
We walked up the door stoop. Nuala grabbed my hand again.
“All the world’s a stage,” she said.
“And all the people players,” I added, lifting the door knocker.
“Wish me luck, Michael Dermot Coyne.”
“A long life of it, Mary Nuala Anne McGrail.”
The door opened and bathed the two of us in a rectangle of light. Curtain going up.
–– 15 ––
“MARTIN LONGWOOD-JONES.” A brisk, silverhaired man, perhaps five feet eight inches tall, shook my hand vigorously. “You’re most welcome to our little house, Mr. Coyne and Miss . . .”
“Nuala McGrail, Martin.”
I was not about to call anyone Lord, except the real article, and She wasn’t around. Longwood-Jones was quick, intense, slim—perhaps an athlete when he was young and still in excellent trim. His brown eyes, however, seemed sad, as if he had seen much suffering an learned much wisdom from it; a younger Hulme Cronyn, perhaps.
“We are delighted that you are able to join us, Miss McGrail.”
She absorbed the Anglo-Irishman in her smile. “Sure, I wouldn’t want to miss seeing the inside of the most famous Georgian house in Dublin, would I, milord?”
The little witch had deliberately reverted to her Carraroe diction. Longwood-Jones was charmed.
Who would not have been?
His Lordship was friendly and affable, hardly, it seemed, the kind of man who would be part of a plot to drive me away from my quest. However, his invitation to dinner came soon after Superintendent Conlon had warned me off. Coincidence? Maybe.
I was too fascinated by Nuala’s advent into elite Anglo-Irish society to think much about the quest and the threats against it.
When we walked into the Georgian parlor, authentic in every detail and, for my bungalow-belt tastes, overstuffed, overdraped, overcrowded, and overdone, every eye in the room turned to my Hibemic Diana.
Small wonder.
She played it perfectly, quiet and reserved at first, though always smiling, her diction Dublin again with just a trace of the reels of the West, her regal self-confidence untouched, her blue eyes twinkling with amusement.
My lovely date stole the show. Naturally.
In fact, she performed so superbly that I was displeased with her. Nuala was a great actress, so impressive that I wondered if one could ever believe her. She shifted into the role of the aristocratic young woman with ease that hinted that she could deceive almost anyone at almost any time.
Was Nuala able to distinguish reality, I wondered, from the various stages on which she performed?
Martin Longwood-Jones was about fifty; his wife, Lady Elizabeth, the only other woman in the room with an off-the-shoulder dress, was about ten years younger, a slightly plump and tasty dish, quite aware of her fullblown sex appeal but not at all threatened by my Nuala.
The American attaché, John McGlynn, was thin, nervous, and bald, an Irish American in his middle thirties, from Boston to judge by his accent, an anxious bureaucrat. His wife, Norine, Bostonian too, seemed faded and worn and perhaps out of place.
The minister of culture of the republic of Ireland, Brendan Keane, was a genial, smooth-talking, black Irish politician, like a ward heeler from Chicago with a university education and refinement. Was there a hint, I wondered, of shiftiness in his eyes, or was I reading into them images of slick and seedy Chicago Irish politicians of “the good old days”?
His wife, Fionna, was much younger, only a few years older than me, slim and hard-faced with darting eyes. She did not like Nuala at all.
I should say at all, at all.
So Nuala set out to win her over by asking about her children and listening with rapt attention to minute descriptions of their behavior.
Clever little bitch, she succeeded. By the time we left, she and Fionna Keane were as thick as thieves.
Need I say that not a single obscene, scatological, or blasphemous word passed her lips?
Her initial strategy was to listen and observe, shrewd blue eyes taking in everything without appearing too. She said little and always with a warm smile and a twist of wit. She continued to dominate the parlor as we sipped discreetly at our sherry.
Well, the others were discreet. So distracted was I by Nuala that I drank two glasses rather quickly and noticed what I had done only when my head started to spin.
“Now what do you do, Miss McGrail?” the minister asked politely during the lull in the conversation.
“A little bit of acting and singing, Mr. Minister.”
“Really?” Longwood-Jones was intrigued. “With the Irish harp?”
“When I can find one, milord.”
“What would it require to persuade you to sing for us after supper?”
Nuala glanced at me, an elaborate pretense that she had to go through the formality of asking me, though what I said really wouldn’t matter at all. “Ah, it would be a great effort to persuade me, milord, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be worth it. But you wouldn’t have to ask a second time!”
“Good! That’s settled then! Incidentally, did you see the performance of Playboy at Trinity? I was in London regrettably and missed it, but I’m told the Pegeen was superb.”
Perfectly straight face on herself. “I was able to see a little bit of it, milord.”
“And the Pegeen?”
Not a side glance from her to me. “It was a privilege to watch her, milord, wasn’t it, Dermot?”
“It was all of that.”
We were then conducted into the dining room. Lighted by scores of candles, reflected on shimmering china and silver, the room, small by modern standards, was, I assumed, a perfect recreation of a Georgian dining room. With liveried servants, a violinist playing near the table, an array of different sizes and shapes of Waterford goblets, two attractive women with naked shoulders and partially bared breasts, the room invited me into a world of two centuries ago, a world of Handel, elaborate manners, relaxed amusements, and chairs that were not designed for the body of a defensive end.
My head was still whirling from the sherry. Nuala was across the table from me, Lady Elizabeth next to me. I was drunk from alcohol and erotic beauty
and fantasy. For me it almost was Dublin in the time of Grattan and the Ascendancy, that highwater mark of Anglo-Irish Protestant rule before the revolution of 1798 (the Year of the French) and the forced merger of the Irish parliament with its English counterpart.
The Longwood-Joneses did not refer to the historical accuracy of their recreation. That would have been tasteless; and, whatever else they might be, they were paragons of taste.
“Your young woman is lovely,” Lady Elizabeth whispered to me. “And so sweet!”
“She has a mind of her own, that one.”
“Would you have it any other way?” She smiled up at me.
“Certainly not! But I wouldn’t have Irish blood in me if I didn’t complain about it.”
She laughed. “I think the Anglo-Irish males have the same disease. Actually, it’s rather attractive in them.”
Lady Elizabeth and her husband had as much right to be considered Irish as I did, and maybe more. They were citizens of the republic and active in its civic affairs, even if they did have a town house in London too.
Yet somewhere in the back of my head there lingered the thought that when their ancestors were building Trinity College, the Custom House, the Four Courts, the Parliament Building (now the Bank of Ireland), and the Georgian mansions, mine were barely surviving in the thatched huts of the West.
After we were seated for supper, the minister returned to the subject of Nuala. “You’re not Dublin born, are you, Ms. McGrail? There’s the melody of the West in your voice?”
“ ’Tis the melody of your own district, Mr. Minister.”
“Clifden?” He frowned as he tried to place her.
“Carraroe.”
“Irish speaker?” He seemed surprised.
She spoke a few words of Irish. It sounded like she was singing a song or saying a poem.
Keane replied in kind.
“A walking museum piece, Mr. Minister.” She said it without the bitterness with which she had spoken the same phrase to me. The light irony in her voice, however, was, if anything, more powerful.
“Well worth preserving, I’d say.” John McGlynn tried to enter the conversation.
“Ah, ’tis a difficult task.” Nuala’s eyes danced mischievously. “We’re a different people altogether, a throwback to prehistoric times, the last Stone Age race, as a British poet laureate once called us. We look like some of the rest of the Irish and speak a variety of English that’s remotely like yours. Many of us even have the same names as you do. But we’re different—almost like aliens from another planet.”
The imp had stolen my early gambit to her in O’Neill’s and put it to her own use—with only a quick shift of an eye towards me, and that mischievous.
“All the more reason to preserve the Irish-speaking culture, my dear.”
“There’s more of us here, Mr. Minister, in Dublin than in the Gaeltacht. Probably more of us in Boston than in Carraroe.”
“We are making progress against the unemployment rate.” The minister frowned, not pleased with this deft reference to Ireland’s social and economic problems. “I hope you’re not planning to join those in Boston.”
“Ah, they wouldn’t have me in the States.” She shrugged her marvelous shoulders and laughed. “This one”—she nodded in my direction, acknowledging my existence—“says they already have enough shanty Irish in America.”
I never said that, absolutely never. The bitch was a menace. So that’s what Dr. Frankenstein felt like.
And Henry Higgins.
The conversation turned to the Irish economy. I watched as Nuala studied the various knives and forks that surrounded her plate. She was careful to use only the instrument that she saw in Lady Elizabeth’s fingers. I myself concentrated on Lady Elizabeth, though my interest was, for which God forgive me, focused on her cleavage, and that as a distraction (I told myself) from Nuala.
Martin Longwood-Jones was a lucky man. I suspected from the quick glances between the two of them that he knew he was.
Her Ladyship, I was certain, had noticed my attention and rather enjoyed it. Certainly she did not hesitate to turn often in my direction to give me a full view of herself, which from my height was full indeed.
I had downed two glasses of the white wine, so I was disposed to enjoy the view.
Nuala didn’t know yet I was a short hitter, so I presumed that she wasn’t counting my drinks.
An erroneous presumption, as it turned out.
“What do you think of Mr. Coyne’s short stories, Ms. McGrail?” Martin Longwood-Jones drew her back into the conversation. “Do you agree with my judgment that there is a strong West of Ireland element in his imagery?”
She sighed. “Ah, milord, isn’t your man a bit young and a bit inexperienced to have matured yet as a writer? And perhaps just a bit too casual?” Her eyes were dancing with devilment. “I should have thought that we would withhold our judgments until he produces a larger body of work.”
“I’m working on a third story,” I said, flustered and blushing.
Lady Elizabeth laughed at me, tolerantly amused at an appealing little boy. “Surely, my dear, you can make a tentative judgment about the two stories that have already been published.”
“Well . . .” Nuala drew out her response as if she were pondering it carefully. “Doesn’t the poor dear man reveal great promise as a writer? The story about the ordination was wonderful. Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain would have been proud to have written it. The story about the suicide, grim sad tale that it is, might be more Slavic than Irish, though I’m sure, milord, that we’d both agree that it’s very well written.”
All right, the woman was a fraud and an imp and part banshee to boot, but she was right about my stories. So how could I stay angry at her for long?
“I quite agree, milord.” John McGlynn propelled himself into the conversation. “The mix of Irish and American cultural themes in both stories is most skillful. Our young friend here is not the first Irish-American writer to have attempted this blend, but he does it as well as anyone.”
“Tell me more,” I murmured.
They all ignored me. The Grand Duchess Fionnaula, white-wine glass in her hand, was still holding court.
“The third story”—she waved an elegant hand—“is the most interesting of all. I think we’ll all agree that the women of Dublin are an excellent subject for fictional treatment. Our author is not the first one to write about late-adolescent fixation on the breasts of Dublin women, but there is enough gentle self-ridicule in the story for us to realize that his narrator is a comic figure struggling towards a maturity he will certainly attain. Some day.”
There was no third story, neither published nor written. Not yet.
General laughter.
“I think, if you don’t mind, Martin, I’ll go home now.”
“I can hardly wait till the story is published.” Lady Elizabeth smiled benignly at me.
“He sounds like a male chauvinist,” the minister’s wife snapped.
“Ah, no, Fionna,” Nuala corrected her. “The poor dear man—I mean the narrator, not the author, about whom the less said the better—the poor dear man couldn’t be less of a chauvinist. That’s what makes the story so poignant. And so hopeful.”
“I haven’t finished it yet.”
I was not going to spoil her performance by saying that my date was guessing and that she hadn’t read a single word of the story.
Guessing very accurately.
“So, Dermot,” Brendan Keane said, taking charge of the conversation as the plates from the fish course were removed to be replaced by the meat course—and the white wine by the claret. “You are staying with us in Dublin to absorb some of the culture of your ancestors?”
“Unlike my narrator, Mr. Minister”—I tried to recapture some of my dignity—“I have not come to Dublin to ogle Dublin women—”
“Not only that,” Nuala agreed piously.
More general laughter. A man married to her would be subj
ect to a lifetime of general laughter whenever he ventured forth into public conversation with her by his side.
“. . . as I was about to say, as pleasant a pastime as that might be. But it would be hard to be specific about what I am doing. Drifting, listening, thinking, absorbing, collecting impressions and images, sights and sounds, lights and shadows. This is one of the most fascinating periods in the whole history of Irish culture. The old ways are dying, but what is being born, with a third of your young people receiving some kind of tertiary education, is no less Irish for all the change. Men like Friel, Sheridan, Roddy Doyle, Heaney, Jordan, Bono, to say nothing of the young poets, storytellers, and dramatists through whom one must fight one’s way on the street . . .”
I was babbling, of course, but Nuala seemed impressed.
“How very interesting,” Martin murmured. “Many authors work the way you do.”
“It’s not”—I was making it up as I went along—“goal-oriented work. You don’t know when you’re starting and when it’s time to stop. Eventually you just stop. And then, hopefully begin to write.”
“Your parents were born here?” Brendan Keane asked casually, a little too casually for my liking.
Well, we were going to arrive at that subject eventually.
“No, sir. On my father’s side the Coynes, Mayo folk, God help us, came over at the time of the Little Famine, 1875. My mother’s parents, my grandparents, left in 1923.”
“At the end of the Civil War—ours, that is, not yours?”
“I’m not sure that there was a connection between their departure and the end of the Troubles, Mr. Minister. My grandfather, William Ready, was involved with the Galway Brigade of the Irregulars, but I know nothing more about that.”
There was a moment of silence. Everyone seemed to be listening closely.
“Before the treaty?” Keane was watching me very closely.
“After the treaty, sir. Not long after because he then married my grandmother and migrated to America, never to return.”
“Really?” Lord Longwood-Jones seemed surprised.
“He fought with a man named Daniel Kelly, or Daniel O’Kelly, if you wish.”
“I don’t quite remember the name.”
Irish Gold Page 14