Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I pointed Dotty back towards the house and ran in to bring them along. When I was a wee lass, I used to borrow them (without telling Ma or Da) to watch the ships out on Galway Bay.

  I reckoned that I had a couple of hours to follow the commandant if I wanted to be home before me parents returned about midnight, even later if the wake was an interesting one.

  Dotty and I slipped along, real quietlike, maybe two hundred yards behind him, far enough back so that he wouldn’t notice us and close enough so that I could follow him every five minutes or so with my binoculars.

  He went up towards Maam Cross and then turned off to the left on a side road. It was getting darker so I was beginning to worry about Ma and Da coming home before me. But in the dark he couldn’t see so far behind him and I was able to come closer, and all the time me crazy imagination thinking that the rock fences and the bare mountains and the harsh bogs of Connemara are laying in wait to trap me. I’m afraid of the dark, you see, when I’m alone.

  He looked back a couple of times, to see if he was being followed. I was scared to death twice that he saw me, but he just turned around and kept on walking.

  It shows you what fools men are. If I were General Mick Collins, I would have had someone follow Daniel O’Kelly. I would have suspected that he was the kind of man who would steal a million pounds in gold and also the kind who would want to go up and look at it after he had sworn he didn’t have it.

  Like a little boy gloats over the marbles he’s stolen from his friends.

  Well, doesn’t he turn up a cattle path on the side of the mountain of Mamene? I hid behind an oak tree and watched him in the moonlight, a tiny figure even in me binoculars as he walked up the mountain.

  I knew that there was an old shrine at the top called the Little Cell of Patrick, a cave cut out of the side of the mountain where ’tis said St. Patrick himself spent a night and himself sleeping on the hard rock.

  The young priest told me once that it had been a pagan shrine even before St. Patrick and that before the famine they’d have great patterns up there on festival days, with the singing and the dancing and the telling of songs and terrible gang fights with clubs and the drinking of poteen. “Seven tents of poteen,” he said, rolling his pretty brown eyes. “It was once even more important a shine than Cro-Patrick up in the Archdiocese of Tuam. Someday,” he goes on, “when Ireland is free, we’ll rebuild the shrine and have pilgrimages again.”

  [Translator’s note: By “pattern” she means the patronal feast of a saint. The shrine has recently been restored by me cousin, who is a Jesuit and teaches at Maynooth, and they have pilgrimages again. No poteen or gang fights. Not yet anyway.]

  “Without the poteen,” I says.

  The young priest laughs. “The very words I was about to say, Nell Pat Malone.”

  So shivering now with fun of following your man, I watch him go into a little crevice, just below the ruins of the shrine, and come out again.

  That’s where the money is, says I. Up there behind the shrine of poor old St. Patrick. I’ll come back here someday and make sure I can remember the right crevice.

  I don’t think I’d ever go near the gold itself. All that money scares me. People would do terrible things to one another for a million English pounds.

  “Come on, Dotty,” I says to herself. “You and I shouldn’t be here at all, at all.”

  We got home only a few minutes before Da and Ma. I was pretty certain that after a wake Da would not check on Dotty. I hugged her, she nuzzled me, and I came into the house to write all this down.

  I’m afraid to sleep because I know I’ll see Daniel O’Kelly coming after me with that terrible gun in his hand and a dirty smile on his ugly face.

  — NUALA’S VOICE —

  Oh, Nell Pat!

  Nothing like that has happened to me in all my life. It was scary and wonderful and I loved every second of it. I wish I knew more about men and sex. Some of the onchucks in my classes claim they do, but I think they’re as ignorant as I am.

  Was it just a pleasant little romp in the swimming pool, or did it mean something? Or was it both? He didn’t talk about it afterward so maybe it really wasn’t a kind of offer of love.

  I don’t know what goes on in his head. He’s such a complicated man—good and sweet and kind, but unpredictable and sometimes so dumb. My crush on him is driving me half mad. Maybe I should quit working for him and go home to Galway.

  I know you don’t like that idea, but I’m afraid. Not of him but of meself.

  He’s such an eejit. He has no idea what to do about this quest of his. The answers are as plain as they can be and he doesn’t see them. I’ll have to take charge, not that I haven’t done it already.

  I’m not going to hide it either. I won’t flaunt it in his face, poor dear man. But I’m not going to pretend that I’m someone I’m not either. If he wants a dumb and docile woman, he’s come to the wrong person.

  Not that there’s much sign he wants me or anyone else. Mostly it’s all business. Except sometimes it isn’t.

  But, Nell Pat, I love him so much.

  –– 28 ––

  “ASTONISHING!”

  “Me or the whirlpool or your gram?”

  “All three.” I patted her bare shoulders. “And I will refuse to choose among them. But I meant her.”

  “Can’t you see that slip of a girl riding her pony down the back country road in the moonlight? Wasn’t my heart in my mouth for her and myself knowing she lived a long life in Chicago?”

  “And threatening that amadon with a poker! I didn’t doubt it for a moment. That was Ma!”

  “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking she left those diaries hoping you would have them translated. Wouldn’t she be wanting someone to know about the gold?”

  We were in the whirlpool on Monday afternoon. I had not seen Nuala through the weekend. She seemed relaxed and at ease with me.

  Which assumption shows how little I understand women of the species—hell, the species itself, male or female.

  In any case, she sat next to me in the spa, our bare shoulders only a couple of inches apart, and did not seem shy or anxious. We might have been brother and sister or a couple long married, but not lovers or two people about to begin a love affair.

  That was fine with me, I told myself.

  “Could be, Nuala. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. She was a great one for tricks and games. This might all be a game. . . . Do you still think you hear her?”

  She stirred the water in the spa with her foot, as I have said, a very substantial foot.

  “You’ll know I’m daft.”

  “We’re both daft.”

  “Aren’t we now? You’ve noticed that in the first translation I used good English? I said ‘meself’ and not ‘meself’ and eliminated most of the mannerisms that make us an alien people by your standards?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Stop talking like me. . . . Anyway, I couldn’t do that after the first day. I had to translate it so that it sounded like she would have sounded if she was speaking in English. I, uh, well, I felt she wouldn’t let me do it any other way. It’s like she’s inside of me or I’m inside of her.”

  “You know her personality and character pretty well by now, like a novelist who creates a character has to let the character speak on his own.”

  She nodded. “That’s probably it. Maybe because I am an actress sometimes or, as you think, all the time, maybe I can imagine that I’m her and play the role of Nell Pat Malone. Yet, oh, Dermot, it’s so scary afterward! When I’m translating away it doesn’t seem strange at all. Then I turn off the computer and I look around, half expecting to see her standing behind me and her red hair blazing and the smile on her face approving what I’ve done. I think I see her walking down the streets or kneeling behind me in church and I dream about her at night. Sure, don’t I tell meself that it’s me stupid West of Ireland imagination? But”—she shook her head as if to clear the images a
way—“doesn’t she just laugh at me?”

  “She would. Are you so scared that you want to stop for a few days?”

  “Oh”—she clutched my arm—“glory be to God, Dermot. I wouldn’t dare do that, would I now? Wouldn’t she be furious at me altogether if I did that?”

  “Let’s do our swim before you scare me to death.”

  The swim was strictly exercise, no more playful clowning around by about-to-be lovers.

  Fine, I reassured myself. Maybe later when I have cleared up this mess, I’ll be able to think about the possibilities between me and Nuala. She is awfully young and we really do come from very different cultures.

  That’s what I told myself repeatedly. I don’t think that even then I fully believed it. But I believed it enough to keep my hands off her.

  Back in my suite, Nuala continued her work and I returned to my collection of books about the Irish Civil War—and to thoughts about what I ought to do next.

  Nuala answered my questions before I asked her about them.

  “You wouldn’t mind me making a small suggestion?”

  “Of course not . . . so long as it’s small, which I doubt.”

  “Maybe”—she took a deep breath—“we should drive out to Galway and visit Carraroe? Maybe by way of Cork and the vale where Michael Collins was killed? We could visit the sites of the incidents that Nell Pat was describing in her story. We might even climb up to Mamene and search for the gold. A million pounds of bullion would be worth twenty million now.”

  “Who does it belong to, Nuala?”

  “By rights I suppose it belongs to the people of Ireland. Couldn’t you educate a lot of kids with it? Or take a lot of men off the dole?”

  “It’s an interesting idea,” I said judiciously. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of it before she did?

  I might also meet Nuala’s family. No, that wasn’t true. I would have no choice but to meet them. Perhaps they would remember stories about the Galway Brigade they heard growing up. Or maybe they would know someone who was alive in those days and could fill in a few of the details about what had happened during the Troubles.

  What if the gold was there?

  I’d worry about that when it happened.

  Nuala assumed that she would come with me.

  Why should she come? I didn’t need her to explore the mountain where the gold might be hidden, did I?

  Would there be any danger?

  The other side would keep an eye on me if I went to Cork and Galway. They might not like it. I had no right to expose Nuala to any danger. It wasn’t her fight. She had, however, identified so closely with Ma that she would not want to be left behind in Dublin.

  I would have to tell her the whole story. She would have to know about the potential danger. She was sufficiently crazy to want to imitate Nell Pat Malone and risk the danger.

  I couldn’t let her risk being hurt, could I?

  “ ’Tis none of my business.” She did not turn around from the Compaq.

  “What’s none of your business, Nuala Anne?”

  “Well”—the housewife-at-the-fish-market tone crept into her voice—“I have no right to be asking, do I now, but would you be publishing this story when we’re finished with it?”

  “I’ll have to see how it goes. If it’s all as fascinating as the first few entries, it might well interest readers. Certainly my family, the nieces and nephews especially, would like it.”

  “What would you be calling it?”

  I thought about that. “We might call it simply Nell Pat.”

  “Faith, wouldn’t she be liking that?”

  “Translated by Nuala Anne McGrail and edited by Dermot Michael Coyne.”

  “You’d never do that!”

  She was delighted at the prospect of her name on the cover of a book. She’s really only a kid, I reminded myself, a shy child. You must not hurt her.

  “I would so!”

  The phone rang. Before I could reach for the one by my chair, she had picked up the extension on the desk.

  “Mr. Coyne’s office. . . . Ah, ’tis yourself, is it now, your reverence? Sure, he’s not doing anything at all. Your man is not a good worker, and yourself knowing that already without me telling you. He just lolly-gags around all day in the whirlpool, which is a terrible sinful contraption if you ask me and I know you didn’t. . . . You want to talk to him? Well, I’ll see if he can be disturbed, you know what he’s like. . . . ’Tis your brother the priest, Mr. Coyne!”

  “Stop harassing my help,” I said to George.

  “She’s too good for you, Punk,” my priestly brother informed me. “Without even meeting her, I can tell that.”

  “She’s a fine woman,” I agreed. “The only trouble is that she lies a little. You can hang up now, Nuala.”

  She tossed her long hair, still wet from the pool, in disdain, but hung up very gently.

  “Everyone well at home, George?”

  “They all want to meet herself, but other than that they’re fine. Why don’t you wander out to do some shopping or something and give me a ring?”

  “I think I could do that. Size forty sweater, is it now?”

  “Great,” he said. “I have some good news. At least I think it’s good news.”

  I excused myself to Nuala, who merely nodded her head, and left the room.

  “You impressed Patrick,” George began our transatlantic conversation. “His group wants to support you.”

  “Why?”

  “Punk, you’re smart enough to know one of the answers to that question.”

  “Don’t tell me the government is concerned about Irish-American voters?”

  “You damn well better believe they are. Moreover, and I quote Tony, no, I don’t quote him. I translate his bureaucratic evasions into standard English. They don’t like amateur groups floating around on the fringes of the intelligence communities of allied nations. No telling what harm might be done by shadow-world types who have access to our data.”

  “And?”

  “And I guess in the games they play with one another, they wouldn’t mind a ‘gotcha’ with their counterparts.”

  I thought about it. Probably they were telling George the truth, but not the whole truth.

  “What is their price for this support?”

  “No strings attached as far as I can tell. They simply say they’ll keep an eye on you to see that nothing goes wrong.”

  “Goes wrong?”

  “That you don’t get hurt.”

  “I’m not going to get hurt.”

  “They propose to see that you don’t.”

  “And if I don’t want their protection?”

  “I understand that you will receive it anyhow.”

  “So why did they want you to call me?”

  “So you would know that they’d be around. I am merely to inform you and report back to Tony that I have. He assures me, personally, that they are not playing tricks this time.”

  “What’s your guess, George? You know more about this stuff than I do.”

  “My guess is that there is someone in the British government that they want very badly to embarrass right out of power, and they see this as a chance to do it.”

  “Charming.”

  “We need intelligence operations in this sad old world of ours. We may not need the kind we have. But this caper sounds pretty straight.”

  “And I’ll be protected by them whether I want to be or not?”

  “That seems to be the size of it. You and your group, which I would assume means the young lady.”

  “I don’t think I want the feds stumbling around her.”

  “Punk, I’ll be candid: The choice is to get the hell out of Ireland, with or without her. Given your tastes, I assume she is gorgeous—”

  “She’s as ugly as sin. . . . I told you I’m not bringing her home.”

  “Suit yourself.” He sounded unimpressed by my denials. “Oh, yes, I was also told b
y Tony to say that Patrick might be in touch with you again.”

  “Great, just great.”

  Nevertheless, I felt better after the call. I didn’t trust our feds all that much, but I trusted them more than Chief Superintendent Conlon.

  So maybe it was safe to ride out to Cork and Galway.

  As I walked through the gloom of a light rain and a thick mist, appropriate for the opening scene of a horror film, I reflected on the points of which I could be sure.

  1. There was a fortune of gold in the mountains of Connemara.

  2. A shadowy, extragovernmental group had been plotting, perhaps for decades, to reunite England and Ireland. For some reason the CIA, as I presumed, wanted that group busted up.

  3. The death of Michael Collins was probably connected with either my first point or my second point or both.

  4. The reason my grandparents had fled, perhaps suddenly and most likely under the threat of death, was connected with one or all of the three previous factors.

  However, no one knew that I had Ma’s diaries, which might hold the key to a door where I might find an explanation of how everything fit together. Finally, they did not know that I knew where the gold was—or at least where it had been in 1920.

  I wandered through the streets for a long time, permitting these ideas and the images and pictures behind them to ferment in my imagination. I had the feeling that perhaps I knew more than I realized I knew and that suddenly I would know what I didn’t know and understand it all.

  But the pattern, whatever it was, continued to lurk just beneath the threshold of my consciousness. Once or twice I thought I saw it, like a ship at the Dublin docks wrapped in the mists, and then it disappeared.

  I gave it up and walked rapidly back to Jury’s and Nuala’s most recent translation.

  As I did a foghorn wailed mournfully, lamenting, I thought.

  I can hardly believe that this actually happened. I know it for both the living and the dead.

  If there was a difference.

  Nuala’s cover note again said nothing about love.

  I was a little disappointed.

  What a woman!