“She was an incorrigible romantic,” I said.
“So are you.” Nuala was fighting back tears. “This is the last letter she ever received from him. He wrote it on August 8. It’s so sad.
“My own dearest Kitty,
“Yesterday I wrote you a note—I think the most hurried I have ever written to you—most hurried from every point of view and God knows today is not much better. At the time of writing yesterday I was on the point of setting out for a long journey and I did not get back until very late last night. I was in Maryleborough, the Curragh and so on. It was woefully cold and I was petrified when we arrived back at the Barracks. But I went to bed straight and am feeling very well this morning.
“We have had a hard few days here—the scenes at Mass yesterday for the nine soldiers killed in Kerry were really heartbreaking. The poor women weeping and almost shrieking (some of them) for their dead sons. Sisters and one wife were there too and a few small children. It makes one feel I tell you.
“There has been no letter from you. Perhaps you did not get back on Monday—even if a letter would come at such speed—which I’m afraid it wouldn’t. But you will write, won’t you?
“When are you coming up again? You said next week. And it’s next week now. It is, you know. And when are you coming?
“Kitty, don’t be cross with me for the way I go around. I can’t help it and if I were to do anything else it wouldn’t be me and I really couldn’t stand it. And somehow I feel the way I go on is better. And please, please do not worry.
“Fondest love,
“Michael”
Nuala and I sat in momentary silence.
“How she must have treasured that letter.”
Nuala nodded, dabbed at her eyes, and tried to sound like a composed TV commentator. “The last letter he received from her was written on the fifteenth of August, the day before Arthur Griffith’s funeral and a week before Michael’s own death. It’s beautiful.
“My own dear Michael,
“I had a great time with you last night in imagination. It was quite real while it lasted.
“First I’d been making heaps of jam all the evening and was ever so tired. Then about 11, when they had all gone, I had a nice hot bath and after it I felt so clean and fresh (and looked quite nice I think) and found myself wishing that we could only meet when I’d be after a bath and looking nice. A bit too idealistic and far-fetched perhaps.
“Then I went to my room. I was feeling a bit lonely but energetic, so I thought I’d have a bit of a dress rehearsal for you. I just pictured you there. First, I put on a pink and mauve silk pair of pyjamas and asked you how you liked them? Then next a pink pair—and then a nightie. I decided with you that the nightie was the nicest of all. Then I gave you a hug and felt you’d want to hug me etc. All the very loveliest thoughts were on my mind and then I felt cold and thought how daft I was and then I got into bed still thinking of you and wishing, wishing for heaps of things.
I can’t describe what a night I had, almost as good as if you were there. I had the whole top of the house to myself and I could run from mirror to mirror and from room to room.
“I’ll try to dream of you again tonight. It will be hard to better last night’s though.
“All my love,
“Kit
“Hugs and X.”
“Not a bad memory to carry with you into paradise, Nuala.”
“Is there a paradise, Dermot Michael?”
“Woman, there is.”
“Will we meet them there?” Tears were cascading down her cheeks.
“Kit and Mick? Why not?”
“Will they approve of what we’re doing now?”
“I sure hope so, Nuala Anne. I sure hope so.”
–– 31 ––
LIKE MA the day of the Oughterard massacre, I couldn’t sleep. The vivid images conjured up by her diary rushed around in my head. She was a sweet and gentle woman when I knew her—passionate, sure, and sometimes a little crazy. But the wild young girl with a knife in her hand . . . could that have been my Gramma Nell?
Yes, it could very well be her; the only one in Galway who realized that Daniel O’Kelly was a traitor, that could be Ma too.
“Ma doesn’t miss much, that’s for sure,” my own mother would say to be when I was a gosson. “And I don’t think she’s afraid of anything in the world except perhaps hurting Pa’s feelings.”
What effect did that wild and vivid story have on Nuala? If it is keeping me awake, what will it do to a sensitive girl who by now thinks she is Nell Pat Malone?
She might start carrying a knife too!
I laughed at that picture.
I told myself repeatedly that Nuala was a child, only a year and a half older than Kel when she died. Because she was so good-looking and so smart and so talented and, well, yes, so sensitive to my pain, it was easy to fool oneself into thinking she was at least twenty-five.
She had the right to time of her own in which to grow up, discover herself, develop her talents, create her own world.
Didn’t she?
A marriage now would be a terrible mistake for Nuala. It would foreclose the rich possibilities that lay open before her, even if she couldn’t see them clearly.
Having thus reassured myself, I dozed and then fell into a deeper but troubled sleep.
I was awakened by a knock at the door, soft and quiet. I lay there in bed, wondering if I had imagined it. No, there it was again.
I wasn’t quite sure what time it was or even where I was. I staggered out of bed and, still in my shorts, stumbled to the parlor and over to the door of the suite.
“Yes?” I said thickly, realizing now that I was in a hotel room, but not sure yet where or why.
“Angela.”
A woman’s voice. At this time of night. What time of night was it anyway? Did I know any woman named Angela?
Had I arranged an assignation with an Angela? How could I have worked up the courage to do that?
I opened the door a crack, recognized Angela Smythe, with a “y” and an “e,” and remembered in a burst of illumination where I was and who Angela was.
“May I come in, Dermot?” she said breathlessly.
How could I refuse?
I opened the door and let her in. I remembered that I was in my shorts and felt momentarily embarrassed.
“You look beautiful,” she said. “I don’t have long, Dermot.” She hugged me and continued to cling to me. “I’m leaving on a new assignment, the States actually. I had to see you.”
“Are you in trouble, Angela?” I held her close and felt her breasts firmly against my chest and her heart pounding wildly.
“Trouble? Oh, no. Not really. My colleagues here were unhappy with me, but they could hardly complain to the Foreign Office, given the nature of the case. They suggested I ask for a transfer.”
“Your name is not Angela Smythe?”
“Of course not. Don’t ask what it really is. Everything else I told you was the truth.”
“So?”
“I didn’t call you again and I canceled Angela at the embassy because I found that I could not keep my part of the agreement. Do you understand what I’m saying, Dermot?”
“I think so.”
I also understood that she wanted to make love with me.
“I beg you to be careful. My colleagues are harmless, perhaps even on your side now. They were as shocked as I was to learn about the Consort.”
“Consort?”
“Of St. George and St. Patrick. They’re the dangerous ones, or some of them. Be careful of them. And don’t ruin everything if you do find out the whole truth. There is so much at stake, Dermot. The agreement is only a first step, but it’s all we have.”
I was a tiny fraction of a millimeter away from taking her to bed. I was entitled to a little pleasure, wasn’t I? How could it hurt anyone? She wanted love, needed it probably. So did I.
So why didn’t I take advantage of a situation for which many men would long?
/> I’m not sure. Maybe the presence of the diary on the table behind me and Nuala’s insistence that Ma was lurking in the room stopped me.
Ma would not have approved. Definitely not.
“I appreciate the warning, Angela . . . and the integrity of your visit. I’ll keep in mind everything you said”—I gently disengaged from her—“and if you don’t mind, I’ll look you up in Washington when I go home, which will be soon.”
She got the message—and took it with style. “Yes, please do, Dermot. I’ll be in the trade section of the embassy. If you merely walk into the office, I’m sure you’ll be able to find me.”
“Good-bye, Angela.”
“Good-bye, Dermot.” She kissed me quickly. “Please be careful.”
Back in bed and now wide awake, I was filled with regret, not a sense of virtue.
I was what Ma would have called in an irate moment a “galoot.” I had done nothing with my life or my talents. I had failed Kel. I had messed up in school. I was a bumbler at the Exchange and had made my wealth by a stupid mistake. Now I was messing in a foolish and possibly dangerous quest and letting down a couple of women, who were even more beautiful than Kel.
Eejit!
Consort? What’s a consort? I asked myself. A queen’s husband?
More likely a fancy name for a consortium. Or maybe it was vice versa. St. George and St. Patrick? The patrons of the two British Isles. Well, that wasn’t fair to St. Andrew or St. David, who had been assigned Scotland and Wales respectively, was it now?
The patrons of England and Ireland. Did those two even talk to each other in heaven?
None of it made any sense. Nothing made any sense.
You’re a fool I told myself.
Finally I slept, only to be awakened at nine o’clock with a handwritten note from Lord Longwood-Jones inviting me and Nuala to lunch the next day at his town house.
What were those two handsome folk up to now?
–– 32 ––
“YOU OUGHT to be visiting your parents the weekend after next,” I said to Nuala. “And themselves dying to see you, aren’t they now?”
Her hair wet from swimming, she was working on the translation again. I was about to take my turn in the pool. We had disengaged, by implicit mutual consent or so it seemed to me, from swimming together.
“Would you be giving me the weekend off again?”
“I didn’t say that, did I now?”
She turned away from the Compaq to look at me. My heart—and other crucial parts of me—surged with affection for her. She looked so pretty and so vulnerable in her light blue sweater and dark blue shirt.
At that minute I wanted her more than I had “Angela” when that woman was in my arms, leaning against my naked chest.
“You did not,” she agreed. “What did you mean?”
“I meant that I want to meet your ma and da.”
“No!” she said promptly and vigorously. “I’ll not have that at all, at all.”
“You’re ashamed of me, are you now?”
“No!” She whirled around and began to pound furiously on the computer keys.
“You’re ashamed of them?”
“I won’t have you making fun of them.”
That reaction, I argued mentally, was proof of the immaturity that justified my refusal to respond to her protestations of love.
I strode across the room, captured her face in both my hands, and forced her to look at me. “It really is time for that nonsense to stop, Nuala Anne McGrail. Have I ever said or done anything that would lead you to believe I would make fun of your parents?”
A thunder cloud of rage sped across her face and then went on, out into the Irish Sea.
“And themselves having such a bitch of a daughter,” she said sadly.
“I thought we forbade self-hatred on this job.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “Sure, you don’t give the poor woman a chance, do you now?”
My hands seemed somehow to want to caress her. So I took them off her face. “We go to Galway next weekend.”
“Yes, boss.” She winked, struggling to hold back her tears. “And we’ll make a booking for you at a hotel in Salt Hill, except you’ll have to tell me how to make a hotel booking.”
I sat down for a moment on the couch next to the desk. “Call the concierge and ask her to do it. And also make a booking, two rooms both with bath, at the Imperial Hotel in Cork. We’ll leave Thursday morning and stay Thursday night in Cork. Then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Galway. I’m sure there’s no harm in you missing a day or two of class.”
“In Cork, is it?” Her hands paused above the keys. “We’ll be driving through Bealnablath?”
“We will.”
“What do you expect to find there? Mick Collins’s ghost?”
“I want to see it.”
“So it isn’t just a weekend off?”
“ ’Tis not.”
“In Galway, you’ll be wanting to see the places in the story?”
I stood up. Time for the swim. “And talk to your parents to see if there’s any memories of those days.”
She nodded agreement. “I want to know too.”
Would she be more obsessed by her imaginings of Ma’s presence out there in the site of the stories in the diary? I would have to keep a close eye on her.
It was, I quite agree in retrospect, a dumb resolution. No one kept a close eye on Nuala Anne, especially on her own turf.
“I especially want to climb Mamene.”
“You don’t think the gold is still up there, do you?” Her eyes were wide as she turned around to face me again.
“It might be. I can’t find any reports of it ever being found in the books about Roger Casement.”
“What will you do with it if you find it?”
“Twenty million pounds in bullion? Give it to Ireland. Who else does it belong to?”
“Grand.” She nodded her approval and smiled affectionately. “I shouldn’t have had to ask that, should I now?”
Get out of here, Coyne, before you do something that both of you will regret.
“And, Nuala, tell the concierge to book my usual car. . . . Do you have a driver’s license?”
“Meself? Sure, I’ve never driven a car in all me life.”
“You can work on the translation in the car.”
“It’ll be keeping me out of trouble.”
I went out to the public phone and checked in with George and told him about my plans to journey to the West of Ireland. I didn’t tell him it was Nuala’s plan.
“With herself?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The person who answers the phone. She’ll be with you on your pilgrimage to the West?”
“I want to meet her family. They may remember the old stories about Ma and Pa.”
“Indeed they might.”
“There’s nothing in it, George.”
“Send me her picture, will you?”
“I don’t have her picture.”
“Your camera broken?”
“No.”
“Surely you’ll take it with you to Carraroe?”
“I suppose so.”
“So send me a picture.”
“You’re worse than Mom.”
George chuckled. “We clergy have a vested interest in the continuation of the species . . . and in human love, which gives us a hint of God’s love.”
“Sure,” I said, and hung up.
George was a nice man and a good priest, but he should mind his own focking business.
Yet he was correct, I should have a photo of Nuala to keep with me for the rest of my life.
She had left the suite before I returned, as I had hoped she would. As usual there was a printout of the translation. This time another note was attached.
Two for the price of one this time, Dermot Michael. I don’t know whether you’ll like the second entry. I did.
N.
–– 33 ––
July 24, 19
21
We heard today that there is a truce between the British and the Irish government. The order to stand down from fighting hasn’t reached Galway yet, but everyone says it will in a day or two. The IRA is worn out from fighting. So are the British. Mick Collins has won his war. They say Collins and Dev, the Big Fella and the Long Fella, and Arthur Griffith are going to London to negotiate a treaty that will make Ireland free.
So we’ve won.
There is little rejoicing at our house here in Carraroe. We buried Tim yesterday. He was shot in a skirmish with the Tans, probably after they had agreed in Dublin on the truce.
Peace and freedom and victory don’t seem worth the loss of my only brother and himself just nineteen, the same age as Liam Tomas, who is beside himself with grief, the two of them being friends since they were both gossons.
Everyone is still weeping, especially Moire and herself due any day now, everyone but me. I can’t cry yet. I will soon, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but now I’m numb and cold and angry at God.
Why does He give us men like Tim and then take them away before they can even see their own children?
Why does He let the Brits rule our country for so long and themselves being Protestants at that? Why do our men have to die so that Ireland can be free?
It doesn’t seem fair.
It was always Liam Tomas that I worried about. I took it for granted that Tim would be all right, though I prayed for him too, God knows—but kind of as an afterthought.
I woke up this morning convinced that he was still alive and that it was a terrible dream. Then I heard Ma weeping softly and I knew that the nightmare was true and me dream was false.
Will my Liam be next? Da says that there’ll be skirmishes despite the truce and that not all the lads will accept any treaty the English might give us. Will the shooting continue? Will a stray bullet find Liam’s back too?
We still love one another; but we have such a hard time talking. He knows I don’t trust Daniel O’Kelly. He can’t understand why. He tells me that I’m the only person in County Galway who doesn’t worship the ground that his commandant or colonel or whatever he calls himself now walks on. And I tell him that if what he says is true, and I doubt it, then I’m the only one in Galway that’s not an eejit.
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