And doesn’t me da say that it’s a miracle that the Galway Brigade is able to keep the British army on the run and themselves only twenty men with twelve rifles?
No one in Connemara will betray them and the Black and Tans killing and raping and burning houses and hanging people whenever they feel like it!
Liam Tomas’s smart too and works hard and me da says he’ll make a big success out of his life if he gets only half a chance and there’s some peace in this country. And he likes children and sings so wonderfully in church and says the rosary every day.
And Ma says that I shouldn’t make a fool out of myself. But I lit a candle after Mass this morning with the penny I got for making butter for the Widow O’Malley and I prayed to the Mother of Jesus that She make Liam love me.
If it be your Son’s holy will, I added, like the nuns say we should add whenever you pray a prayer of petition.
But then I said to Herself, sure, I’ll make him a better wife than anyone else in the world so why wouldn’t it be your Son’s holy will and Yourself being only fifteen or sixteen when you were betrothed to Saint Joseph, as the young priest was telling us.
Anyway I think my prayer was heard because he smiled when he saw me and himself so tired from fighting in the terrible war that’s going on all around us to make Ireland a free nation, brave and proud alongside all the other free nations in the world.
The only world I know is here in Carraroe, though I go to Galway sometimes with me da when he goes to market. I’m real shy in Galway because it’s such a big strange place and so many strange people and myself as bold as brass here in Carraroe with the bay on one side and the lough on the other and the stone fences along the curving roads and the town looking so lovely when the sun is out on the freshly whitewashed cottages. Me granda, who had been everywhere, said it’s one of the most beautiful places in all the world, but I couldn’t tell about that because it’s the only place I know.
Didn’t Ma give me his tea to bring out to him and himself standing guard down the road, so wide awake and brave with his Lee-Enfield over his shoulder? She knows I’m sweet on him and she doesn’t seem to mind.
It was a warm spring night without any moon and the sky like a great crystal globe hanging above us and not a sound in the fields or the bogs but only the surf whispering secrets away to the ocean strand.
“There’s only one road into Carraroe,” the big amadon Daniel O’Kelly says to Liam Tomas, “and the enemy won’t dare come down it on a dark night. Liam, do you think you can stay awake and keep guard on it just in case?”
I could have killed him for being so rude and the other men all laughing.
“I can, sir,” Liam says, all proud and brave.
“Well, then, look to it, man.” And he takes another swig out of his jar.
I don’t like Daniel O’Kelly, God forgive me for it.
So an hour or so later, Ma gives me the tea to bring out to him.
“Here’s your tea, Liam Tomas,” I says, shy like and my heart beating something fierce.
“Ah, Nell Pat,” he says, touching my hair, “haven’t you the most lovely red hair in the whole of Connemara?”
I thought I’d die with delight. But of course I wouldn’t dare let on. So I says real snippy, “Much time you should be having for red hair and yourself supposed to be fighting for the freedom of Ireland.”
“ ’Tis for the red-haired colleens and the right to admire them as free men that we’re all fighting, Nell Pat.”
“ ’Tis terrible dangerous, is it now, Liam Tomas?” I said, melting all over inside for the love of him.
“The truth of it is”—he scratched his great blond head—“the truth of it is that it’s mostly dull with lots of waiting and lots of hard work and lots of walking in the rain at night. Then when the fight is about to begin you’re terrible scared for a half hour or so and then the shooting begins and, before you know it, it’s all over. And some of your lads are dead and a lot of their lads. You’re glad you’re still alive and you mourn your own lads and you feel sorry for their lads.”
“But they’re Brits or Irish traitors,” says I, thinking to meself that I wouldn’t mind killing all the enemies of our poor island.
“But they’re not all bad fellows, Nell Pat, and they have wives and sweethearts and mothers whose hearts will be broken. Sure”—and didn’t I see tears in his eyes?—“I hated them at first. Then I realized they were as scared as I was before the shooting started and as lonesome for those that loved them. Then I couldn’t hate them any more. God knows”—he sighed—“we have to keep fighting, but I’m thinking that I’ll be glad when it’s all over and we don’t have to kill lads that are just like us, just like your brother Tim and just like me.”
I wanted to cry too, but I didn’t want him to think I was a silly little girl and himself being so candid with me.
“You and Tim are not going to die, are you, Liam Tomas?” I said.
“Please God we don’t.” He sighed again, and himself so tired he could hardly talk. “But ’tis all in the hands of God, isn’t it? Tim says you go to Mass every day to pray for us. You won’t stop, will you now?”
“Never,” says I. “Not till old Ireland is free.”
“This time we’ll win.” He looked very somber and proud. “We’ll finish what they started in ’98 and ’48 and ’67. We have old John Bull on the run at last and before we’re finished he be run right out of Ireland for once and for all.”
Wasn’t my heart on fire with pride and love when he says that?
“I wish I was a man and I could fight with you,” I says, real fierce.
“Ah, no, Nell Pat Malone,” says he, with his big hand on my head. “Someone must keep the faith alive for the next generation. All men are good for is winning wars. ’Tis the women that win the peace.”
I could have died I was so happy. “We will win, won’t we, Liam?”
“We will finally win, Nell.” His hand kind of slipped around my neck. “If I die tomorrow night, I’ll die happy knowing that my nieces and nephews if not my own children will live in a free Ireland.”
And wasn’t I thinking that I’d be glad to be the mother of a child of his even if he did die tomorrow night?
The nuns would say that thought was a great terrible sin. I don’t care. There’s a war all around us. Young people should love one another and have children. Doesn’t me own Ma say that about Tim and Moire and themselves getting married so young?
I’m sure God wouldn’t mind if I had a child for Liam Tomas.
Naturally I didn’t say that to him. What I did say was “Why do you think we’re going to win this time?”
“ ’Tis our leaders, Nell. Has ever any country in the world had so many great leaders at one time—Old Arthur Griffith and himself not even a Catholic. And Dev, the Long Fella, and Kevin O’Higgins and Cathal Brugha and Rory O’Connor and sure, you know our own commandant, Daniel O’Kelly.”
“Aye,” says I, and myself not liking Daniel O’Kelly all that much, though my brother Tim adores him.
He’s a big tall man, almost as tall as me Liam, but slim and, well, almost dainty like a girl with a long thin face and a quick smile and a big head of wavy black hair and sharp blue eyes that sear at your soul. I don’t think he’s handsome at all, at all, but I’m probably the only girl in Connemara who doesn’t think so. He’s a great one with all the lads, laughing and joking and telling stories and singing songs and making the humorous comment and drinking all the night long and playing football with them and himself the best there is at the game. They say he’d be all-Ireland if it wasn’t for the war.
I think I’d never buy a horse or cow from him because you’d be taken in by his talk and never look at the animal. Me da says that the O’Kelly family has been dirt poor for hundreds of years and that they’ve always had great ambitions to be wealthy but were behind the door when industry and luck was passed out. You can’t blame him for enjoying being commandant, says me da, ’tis the firs
t respect anyone has shown an O’Kelly since long before the famine.
“And then there’s the greatest of them all,” says me Liam, “the Big Fella.”
“The Big Fella?”
“Mick Collins. Like the young priest says, isn’t he a man sent by God to free poor old Ireland? Isn’t he a better man, and himself a daily communicant too like yourself, than all the other heroes of Ireland put together?”
“Have you met him, Liam?” I asked, filled with awe for this Mick Collins.
“I have not. Sure, doesn’t he have better things to do in Dublin that to wander out here to the far West of Ireland? Still, our commandant says that he wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days Mick doesn’t appear out of nowhere—that’s the way he does it, you know—to see how we do it out here in Galway. He doesn’t miss a trick, that one.”
“Sure, I’d die of fright if I ever met your Mick Collins.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Nell Pat.” And his hand still on the back of my neck. “No, you wouldn’t. Don’t those who have met him say that he’s unassuming and like someone you might have met at Mass last Sunday or played hurley with last Friday?”
“What a grand man he must be!”
“The man sent by God to free Ireland.”
Well, then that old flannel mouth Daniel O’Kelly calls from the house that he wants the brigade for a staff meeting. Brigade indeed and them only a dozen kids not much older than myself.
They left early this morning, long before sunrise. No one said where they were going but they looked so wonderful grim and brave that I wanted to sing “A Nation Once Again” as they marched out.
I think Liam Tomas waved at me. Well, at least he waved at someone.
I’ve said so many rosaries for them today that I’ve lost track of the number. Holy Mother of God, take care of him for me.
–– 21 ––
NUALA WAS weeping, head buried in her hands. I was close to tears too.
“Isn’t she a brave and glorious woman, Dermot? No wonder you loved her so much.”
“She was all of that,” I agreed, a small choke in my voice. “The passion never died, Nuala, not till the last day of her life. Mom told me that Ma said that Pa was in the room with her when she was dying, ‘To take me home with him at last,’ she said, ‘and himself young and strong like he was that spring night in Galway when he first touched my hair.’ ”
“Do you believe that, Dermot?” She dabbed at her tearstained face.
“I believe that your friend Father George is right when he says that no love is ever lost in the mind and heart of God.”
She nodded slowly. “Do you think you’ll ever see them again?”
That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, when push comes to shove?
“I do, Nuala Anne McGrail. I do. I don’t know how it happens and I can’t prove it, but I do believe it.”
“I don’t quite yet,” she said solemnly, “but I don’t not believe it either. I tell myself after reading this woman, almost hearing her voice in my ear, that the person she is can never die.”
“You’d better go home now, Nuala. I don’t want the provost of Trinity college, or whatever you call your dean, blaming me for interfering with the studies of one of his prize students. Don’t take the book along, because you’ll work on it.”
Reluctantly she closed it and laid it at a neat right angle to the Compaq. “You’re beginning to know me too well. . . . I did peek ahead a little. She does meet the Big Fella.”
“Mick Collins.”
“Himself. And he tells her that there is some kind of secret British plot to steal their victory.”
“Wow! Nuala, maybe you shouldn’t talk to anyone about this until we’re finished.”
“Wasn’t I thinking the same thing meself?” she said, buttoning up the thin trench coat that completed her professional ensemble. “ ’Tis between you and me and herself.”
“Right.”
“Uh, Dermot, could I be asking you something?”
“Wouldn’t you ask it anyway if I said no?”
“Those pictures you have in your wallet of themselves. Would you ever let me look at them here on the table while I’m translating for you?”
“Certainly.”
“You’re thinking I’m a sentimental fool?”
“If you are, there are two of us in this room. Now go home with you, woman.”
“You can call your brother from the room now.”
She closed the door softly. I thought of something else.
“Nuala!”
She stopped halfway down the corridor. “And yourself just after chasing me out!”
“I’ll ask the manager about you using the pool. It’s up to you whether you choose to.”
“Sure, where could I put on my swim suit?”
“There isn’t a bathroom adjoining your office?”
“There is.”
“And a terry robe there too?”
“There is.”
“Even slippers?”
“Even slippers.”
“Well?”
“I’ll think about it.”
The elevator opened its door and she ducked into it.
A secret English plot to steal victory from the Irish? Surely Lloyd George and Winston Churchill did their best to mess up the treaty. They were old pros at the political process. O’Higgins and Collins were novices compared to them. Griffith was older but in poor health. Dev, as they called Eamon De Valera, the Long Fella, was one of the great political operators of the twentieth century, but he had yet to learn how to blend stubbornness with flexibility. It’s a wonder that the Irish delegation came away with anything, much less “dominion status,” which, as Collins foretold (and as Dev did not believe), would be the path to freedom. Those who denounced the treaty thought it was a betrayal. Collins and those who signed it and won its ratification from a dubious Dáil thought it was a compromise from which they would eventually win all they could expect—Ulster not being theirs for the taking, no matter what happened.
Collins was right. In the end he and O’Higgins won, even if they paid for their victory with their lives. They had outsmarted Lloyd George and Churchill.
So what was the secret that Mick Collins had told Ma seventy years ago?
Churchill was no lover of the Irish. During the Second World War he repeatedly accused De Valera and Ireland of cooperating with the Germans while he knew damn well that Irish intelligence was cooperating with his own intelligence services.
These thoughts were racing through my head as I waited patiently for George at the Telefon Eireann booth on Pembroke Road near the family planning clinic.
“George? Dermot.”
“That is some young woman you have answering your phone, Punk.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If you don’t bring her home you’ll have to answer to me as well as Mom.”
“We’ll see.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty . . . almost.”
“She sounded like she was thirty-five, so poised and sophisticated.”
“That’s the mask she wears when she translates for me.”
“She’s a lot like Ma, isn’t she?”
“Crazier—and judging by what we’re finding in her diary, Ma was pretty crazy at that age.”
“I can believe it.”
“Do you have something for me?”
“Do I ever. Tony talked to some of his friends and they were very interested in your interests. They want to help.”
“Huh?”
“They really do want to help—offer support, they say.”
“Why would his part of the government want to help me?”
“Beats me, and I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw the whole town of Langley, Virginia. I trust Tony, however. And what they propose seems safe.”
“Okay. What do they want?”
“A man named Patrick, not Pat, not Paddy, but Patrick, will call you tomorrow or the nex
t day. He will say that Anthony, not Tony, sent him. He will propose a meeting place to you, ‘a safe place’ was Tony’s exact words. He will meet you there and talk. You will listen, maybe argue with him, but don’t ask any questions. After the talk you can draw your own conclusions. He may initiate later contact. They, uh, promise protection, as best they can provide it for you and your associates, should you have any.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re not supposed to get it, Punk, but it sounds very, very interesting. Keep me posted. Every day. Remember.”
“I sure will.”
“And, oh yes, Patrick isn’t exactly part of the, uh, Company.”
“What is he then?”
“Don’t ask.”
Nuala showed up a half hour early the next day with her book bag over her shoulder as well as her notebook and dictionary. She was wearing a gray suit and a blue blouse.
“Gray is it today?”
“This exhausts my professional wardrobe. Do you like it?”
“One of your many admirable attributes, young woman, is that you have excellent taste.”
“Go ’long with you now. I can look at the fashion magazines like everyone else. And isn’t everyone saying that I have terrible taste in boys?”
“I don’t believe anyone has said that. And why the book bag? It doesn’t quite fit the image.”
“Sure, I wasn’t going to bring me swimming things in a suitcase, was I now?”
“That’s why you came a half hour early?”
“ ’Tis. I’ll do me exercise on me own time, not yours.”
“Fine with me.”
I thought about offering to join her and decided that I should wait a few days before trying that. Also I wanted to stay near a phone for Patrick’s call.
“I just put on me suit and the robe and the slippers and ride down on the elevator and walk across the lobby?”
“Just like you were some fockingrichyank tourist.”
“Which language we don’t use in this office, do we now?” She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” I shouted after her.
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