Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Surely that. And well aware that he would rise no higher in government in the present scheme of things. That’s why he embraced so vigorously the notion of the Consort, a daft scheme, if I may say so. Surely as a united Europe progresses, there will be a partnership between these two islands—if we can first settle the Ulster mess. But I should hope that it will be the genius of the two countries to keep the arrangement informal. The chance for anything else ended when Home Rule was not granted in 1912.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You will have noticed that there have been certain discreet withdrawals from public life in both countries in the past several days, including poor Brendan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will take steps to see that his wife and children do not suffer.”

  “Very generous of you.”

  “You must understand, my dear Dermot”—he closed his eyes, like a man unspeakably weary of life—“that for most of the last seventy years the Consort has been, how shall I say it, more of a debating club or study group than an active organization. Only the head of it—my ancestors and myself—and the treasurer, in this case the unfortunate Mr. Keane, knew where the gold was stored. We were most reluctant to remove it. We could have been caught so easily. Moreover, it would have been difficult to explain if a rather large supply of gold was dumped on the Irish market whence it came.”

  “No way to launder it?”

  “Precisely. Moreover, my forefathers and I felt that the money was better kept for the day that it was actually needed. At times, especially during the war, it was used for charitable purposes.”

  “How did your grandfather find out about it?”

  “I very much fear that he was Winston’s link with O’Kelly. I cant prove that, of course, but I suspect it. He may have tricked O’Kelly into revealing what had happened to Casement’s gold. Or he may have had him followed, as I take it your grandmother did. Grandfather had the reputation of being a very sly and clever man, traits that, unfortunately or not, my father and I did not inherit.”

  “So you sustained this little group of people who believed in reunion down through the years?”

  “Yes. Precisely. I’m glad you used the word ‘reunion.’ I pride myself, Dermot, on the fact that I am an Irish patriot, whatever my grandfather or father might have been. I believe in a voluntary union of the free states, if you will permit me that term, of the British Isles. It is not necessary, as far as I’m concerned, that the federal parliament be in Westminster or that the union be presided over by the house of Windsor or any British monarch. In this era of new unions all over the world, it seems to me to be an ideal that is not at all in-compatible with Irish freedom.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Neither my father nor I”—he shook his head slowly as if trying to banish an image from his brain—“approve of what Winston did. He was not, I fear, a very moral man. Yet in his own way he believed in Irish independence.”

  “Come on, Martin.”

  “No, I really mean that. He was always a strong supporter of home rule and gave up the vision of a united Ireland most reluctantly. However, he believed that the Irish were incapable of governing themselves. The fighting between Protestant and Catholic in Ulster and between the Free State and the Irregulars in the South merely confirmed his prejudices. He feared Collins would prolong the strife and that with him out of the way, the various factions would deteriorate into such violence that the Irish people would demand the return of English rule. Then he would set up a new parliament which would, under his guidance, establish a constitution that would unite the two Irelands in a federal arrangement which London could guide and direct.”

  “So he had Collins killed to increase the violence in Ireland?”

  “My grandfather told my father that Winston was convinced that the chaos would come eventually, in six more months perhaps. If Collins was alive it would have, he thought, been more violent, more destructive of Irish life, and perhaps impossible for England to control, save at enormous costs.”

  “However, in fact, he prevented the end of the Civil War and caused the death of thousands more Irish.”

  “With good intentions. . . . I’m not trying to defend Winston, only to explain what went on in his mind.”

  “He must have been astonished that the Free State finally put down the Irregulars.”

  “Winston never admitted to anyone that he made a mistake about anything. But I don’t think he ever forgave Ireland for proving him wrong. . . . You must also realize that the Lloyd George government fell shortly thereafter. Bonar Law replaced Lloyd George, who never held a ministry again. A major reason for his defeat was that the more conservative of the Tories blamed him for the loss of Ireland. He and Winston had little more room to maneuver than did Collins and Griffith and Cosgrave.”

  I had heard enough about the troubles of Lloyd George and Churchill. “The Consort agreed with Churchill?”

  “Definitely not.” He colored slightly. “As I’ve tried to tell you, we are Irish patriots. We deplored the death of Michael Collins, who was our hero too. We believe that if he had lived, he would have seen the sense in our scheme for a federal union.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Certainly. He would have come to see the Consort as a logical successor to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.”

  Martin’s eyes glittered for a moment with the enthusiasm of true belief. Then the light went out. He was a little mad, I decided. But so were they all. So, I told myself as I grew more lightheaded, were all the Irish.

  “In the event our dream, which was possible perhaps in 1921, was no longer possible in 1923. Grandfather realized that it would be a long haul and that Winston was no longer part of the picture. So he assembled through the years a group of men and women who were quietly and discreetly committed to that goal without necessarily putting any time limit on it. My father and I continued the work. We did spend some of the money, removed one bar at a time, to facilitate quiet study and research on the subject.”

  “The revitalization of the shrine must have caused you concern?”

  “At first. Then Mr. Keane pointed out that the pilgrimages would facilitate the quiet removal of the gold to an even safer place.”

  “Where he would control all of it.”

  “Yes. Precisely. I made a terrible mistake in trusting him. Unforgivable, really. As I said, I am not as shrewd as my grandfather. Brendan is a man of great ability and charm. Unfortunately, he has not been able to resist his proclivities towards overreaching. As you seemed to have surmised, his political career was finished. He was a bit too cute, as we say here, even for an Irish politician, and our standards in this matter are not very high. He saw a hasty move towards union as a means for reestablishing his power. You know or at least surmise the rest.”

  “When do you think this reunion for which you hope will be possible?”

  “I joke with my wife that it will be U-Day plus twenty years—U-Day being the day when an Ulster solution is found that is acceptable to Catholics and to the republic. Until the problem of the six counties is removed, reunion is unthinkable. Mr. Keane failed to perceive this obvious truth.”

  “Greed made him blind.”

  “I fear that our best hope in this century died at Bealnablath.”

  “Really?”

  “If Collins had lived, I am convinced rapprochement between the two islands would have been achieved long since. He may have been a cold-blooded killer in time of war, my dear Dermot, but he was not a hater.”

  “I think it died in 1800 when the Act of Union ended even the fiction of an independent and united Ireland.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” He shook his head dejectedly. “I admit that the dream is utopian at the present moment. Pity.”

  “Pity the world is the place it is.”

  “Yes, really. I can only hope that my folly in trusting Brendan Keane has not made the dream even more distant.”

  Well, maybe it was not s
uch an impossible dream. Only the future would say.

  “I hope you realize, Dermot”—he sighed—“that I inherited the chairmanship of the Consortium. You can imagine, given my political orientation, how horrified I was when my father told me about it on his deathbed. I tried to limit it to nothing more than a discussion group. Unfortunately, I did not control how the money was spent. That was the task Brendan inherited. Liz repeatedly begged me to abandon it. That’s why we’re grateful, more grateful than I will ever be able to tell you, that you removed my name from the list before you turned it over to Bishop Hayes and the government.”

  We’d done that too, had we? What else had the woman done?

  “It was Nuala’s idea.”

  “Liz and I are most grateful to both of you.”

  Nope, she wasn’t going to receive credit for this act of graciousness either.

  “I’m glad it has all worked out.”

  “You have no idea how I have wrestled with my conscience over this foolish matter.”

  “That’s why you gave the list of names to the CIA?”

  He looked at me in astonishment. “How did you know that?”

  “I received a Xeroxed copy. I recognized your hand-writing and compared it with the luncheon invitation.”

  “Extraordinary,” he murmured. “You understand that I considered it a matter of honor to include my own name?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You won’t reveal that I was in league with the CIA?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Had herself recognized the handwriting too?

  Does the Pope live in the Vatican?

  “I shall be forever grateful for all that you have done for us.”

  “No big deal.”

  We had protected the peace initiative, we had protected Churchill, we had protected the LongwoodJonses. How clever of us!

  Ah, sure, Dermot, hadn’t you thought of all those things yourself? Wasn’t I only doing what you wanted me to do?

  Shite.

  I still did not understand a lot of things, especially the purpose of the phone call from his wife, the relationship between Angela Smythe and Longwood-Jones, and the origins and goals of Patrick.

  In real life, I guess, there are always loose ends that are never tidied up.

  Her Ladyship. I reflected sadly, was a very appealing loose end.

  To guess about the three of them, Her Ladyship might have liked to drag me into bed, but probably she would do so only if she could tell herself that the reason was to protect her husband. Angela didn’t know about the Consortium, but one of its members, possibly my friend Martin, had used her to try to influence me. Patrick was perhaps a relative of Collins combining business with family heritage as he snuffed out an operation about which his superiors were restless for reasons of their own.

  Ma’s relatives in America, if any? Maybe the rest of the diaries would reveal that.

  So, Sean Connery as 007, you had three beautiful women pursuing you, each perhaps for her own reasons—need for one, fear for another.

  For the third?

  Love?

  What was love?

  Would I recognize it if I bumped into it on the street?

  “Sure, Liam,” said the old fella on the bench by the Grand Canal. “You did for them, didn’t you? Wasn’t I saying you would?”

  “We did all of that.”

  “And they’ll be putting up a statue for them in Oughterard?”

  “They will.”

  “Glory be to God!”

  “You were the young teacher man with the camera, weren’t you?”

  That was one secret that Nuala had not figured out—well, not as far as I knew.

  “I was.” Tears formed in his eyes.

  “I thought you might want one of these pictures. You took it, after all.” I gave him a copy of the photograph of Ma and Pa on their wedding day. “Wasn’t she saying that you were the most honest man she ever knew?”

  A bit of an exaggeration but legitimate in Ireland.

  He held the picture against his chest and wept. “I never married, you see. I loved her all me life.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” I agreed with a sigh.

  As I stumbled back to Jury’s, dizzy and disoriented, for the final packing before my departure later in the day, I realized, in what I now see was my frightened folly, that there were three trivial secrets that I had tried to hide from Nuala: the shots at the car, the source of the list of the Consort, the identity of the old man on the bench.

  She had figured two of them out anyway. Maybe the third.

  She wasn’t the only one who tried to hide secrets. I dismissed that scruple as irrelevant.

  As we climbed out of the cab at Dublin Airport, I remarked, “I gave my copy of the wedding picture to the man on the bench at the Grand Canal. We have several more copies in Chicago.”

  “Ah, that was generous of you, Dermot, but sure, hadn’t he taken the picture and himself probably loving her all his life?”

  Out on strikes, Dermot Michael Coyne.

  We talked about the arrangements for translating the rest of the diary and its possible publication. The new Compaq I had purchased for the project was working fine. I told her that a major New York company had already sent George a contract for the book with a generous advance. I insisted that there was no great rush about finishing the translation, so long as we could send it to the publisher by late spring. She could surely sing at the Abbey Tavern.

  Head pounding and chest throbbing, I checked in and turned over most of my luggage to Aer Lingus. I would carry on only a hand bag and my Compaq. Nuala was carrying both of them because my ribs were still a little sore—not nearly as sore, I told myself, as the shoulders of certain other people.

  I wanted nothing more than to go to bed and sleep for a month.

  My headache began again, someone beating on my brain with huge drumsticks. The headaches would linger, the doctor had said, for a month or two.

  “I’ll carry these out to the plane for you, if you don’t mind, Dermot.”

  She was dressed again in her student uniform of jeans and jacket—and my blue and gold Marquette sweatshirt.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  She sighed loudly and took a deep breath. “Well, maybe I’ll be seeing you in Chicago, Dermot Michael.”

  “What?”

  “Well, wasn’t I winning the lottery for an American visa”—she wouldn’t look at me—“and hasn’t Arthur Andersen offered me a nice position in Chicago when I graduate?”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Ah . . . didn’t it happen right after I started to work for you?”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Wasn’t I afraid you’d be angry if I told you? And now that I have told you, are you angry at me?”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you, Nuala? I’ll meet you at the airport, I’ll take you home for a supper at my parents’ house, you’ll stay there till you find an apartment of your own, and you’ll make common cause with all the women in my family against me. Isn’t that what you’re up to?”

  “No, Dermot.” She was on the verge of tears. “I haven’t thought of that at all. . . . Well, not unless you wanted it.”

  The hell she hadn’t thought of it. The little schemer thought of everything. Including, no doubt, a couple of honeymoon nights at Ashford Castle.

  “There’s no truth in you, woman,” I shouted at her. “No truth at all.”

  “I’m sorry, Dermot, truly I am.”

  We were at the security checkpoint.

  “Give me those bags. There’s no need to walk out to the plane. . . . Now listen to me, Nuala, and listen carefully. We will finish this translation project because I am committed to it.”

  “Yes, Dermot.”

  “And as for seeing me in Chicago, you will only see me if I don’t see you first, is that clear?”

  The bags that I had pulled out of her hands hurt my ribs. No matter.
I would have to carry them in Chicago anyway.

  “Yes, Dermot. . . . I’m sorry, Dermot.”

  “You’re an incorrigible conniver and schemer!”

  I slammed the Compaq and the hand bag on the security machine belt and, headache pounding at my brain, strode through the barrier.

  “No worse than your gram!” she shouted after me. “And yourself loving her!”

  Just like Ma, she had the last word.

  On the plane I curled up in my seat and slept until Shannon, where they awakened me to clear American immigration. The agent told me that he had been on duty in Ireland for two months and that, even though it was a beautiful country when the sun was out, he was looking forward to returning home.

  “Tell me about it,” I agreed.

  I collapsed again in my first-class seat on the 747. Dear God, I feel terrible. What’s wrong with me? She had been right, naturally. Ma was a terrible schemer and an incorrigible conniver. When I had told her that once long ago, she had replied, her nose in the air, that that was the kind of woman Irish men, myself included, liked.

  I realized that the game was not over, that I would have at some point to admit I was wrong and that my fear of Nuala was irrelevant. She would not betray me as my first love had. I told myself that it would all work out if only my headaches would go away.

  I slept most of the way to Chicago, tormented by wild, drunken dreams though I had not touched a drop of the creature for several days. In the dreams three women kept changing, one into another—Ma, Kel, and Nuala.

  I don’t remember getting off at Kennedy or clearing customs or boarding the plane for Chicago. Mom and Dad met me at O’Hare. Dad took one look at me, bundled me in a car, and drove at high speed to the Loyola Medical Center.

  Viral double pneumonia, he said as they put the oxygen tent over me.

  “Why didn’t you see an Irish doctor?” he demanded. “They are the best diagnosticians in the world. It was damn foolishness to fly home as sick as you are.”

  “Unless someone,” George, the know-it-all priest, observed, “was running away from someone else.”

  “Focking gobshite,” I murmured as I lapsed into un-consciousness.

  I became rational again after two weeks. It was almost another month before I realized what a fool I’d been. My father warned me that I would be depressed from the pneumonia for a couple of months.