There would be a great deal of trouble if I had anything to say about it.
His Lordship complained to us about how difficult it was to understand the condition of his holdings. His agent, Tim Allen, was taciturn and not much of a help.
My parishioners feared Allen as a cruel man who stole from everyone, including the late Lord Skeffington. He also spent several nights a month at the house of a widow at the far end of the parish, a woman known only as Widow Cudahy.
“The old Canon would read her from the altar,” Branigan had told me. “The people admired him for it, even though it didn’t do any good.”
I promptly resolved that I would not denounce her.
“So we’re both trying to get the lay of the land, are we not, Father?”
“You, I am sure, milord, with a lot more tactical experience than I.”
He chuckled again.
“Perhaps.”
At dinner he asked about the Holy Well.
“Did you ride by it on the way over, Padre?” he asked me.”
“I did.”
“What did you think of it?”
He refilled my glass of claret. Even though it was first-rate, I drank only a sip. I noted that he limited himself to a single glass. He was not the kind of English landlord who would drink himself into a stupor every night to escape the boredom and the deathlike smell of the sea.
“Very old, pre-Christian certainly. With a veneer of Christianity laid over it. I will denounce it as superstition, but I’m sure that will not stop devotion there, some of which is doubtless authentic.”
“But hardly pleasing to God,” Dr. Landry insisted pompously.
Mrs. Landry twittered away about the evil of Irish superstition.
“I know a bit about superstition, ma’am,” Lord Skeffington interjected. “This one strikes me as rather harmless and charming in its own way. After all, water is one of God’s primary gifts to us.”
“Out here,” I added, “it seems to be just about the only gift that is left.”
“Quite so,” Mary Margaret Skeffington agreed tersely.
Her husband’s eyes twinkled. Obviously she could do or say no wrong, not even if she sounded like a Fenian.
After the women had withdrawn, port had been poured, and cigars offered (which I declined), Lord Robert turned to the business of the school.
“Since you two are the important members of my board, I hope we can reach a quick agreement about finding a new schoolmaster.”
“I think not, milord,” I spoke out immediately. “I will reserve to myself the right to nominate a schoolmaster for your consideration. The people in this townland are Catholics. They speak both Irish and English. It is only fair that they be taught by someone who is Catholic and who speaks both languages.”
Dr. Landry sputtered.
“Your late cousin did not agree, milord. It would be a terrible mistake to depart from his custom. It would encourage the Fenians in this area of Ireland. The old Canon never objected. Donegal was too close to Belfast for there to be many Fenians.”
“How many children are there in the school, Dr. Landry?”
No holds barred, no quarter given.
“Fifteen, I believe.”
“No, sir,” I replied. “Only ten, six of them Protestant, four from one Catholic family. Originally there were more than thirty. The Catholics withdrew their children gradually when they discovered that the school was in fact an agent for proselytizing activity. The old Canon did not have to urge them to do so. They may be superstitious savages, milord, or maybe that’s all they can be under the circumstances. Yet they are Catholic and will remain so. I will oppose the school with all the power at my command, but my opposition will merely stiffen a few hesitant backbones. My people want education for their children, but not at the cost of attacks on their faith.”
A grim mask seemed to spread over Lord Skeffington’s face and his eyes hardened. He’d been a colonel, a regimental commander. I was seeing his look before battle.
“You make your point effectively, Father,” he said softly.
“Milord,” Landry continued to sputter, “you cannot permit the school to become a place where the children of my flock will be subject to attacks on her faith. You are, after all, sir, a servant of the Crown.”
“And of the Queen Empress,” Skeffington said lightly.
“There will be no attacks on anyone’s faith,” I said. “I will guarantee that any nominee of mine will respect every faith under heaven. Any complaints on this subject should be brought promptly to my attention and, if necessary, I will recommend to His Lordship that he dismiss the schoolmaster.”
“I cannot accept a guarantee of that sort,” Dr. Landry announced. “I will not accept the word of a papist cleric.”
I almost responded. Then I realized that the best strategy would be for me to be quiet.
“Well, gentlemen, your positions are both clear. I will take the matter under advisement and inform you of my decision about a schoolmaster when it is convenient for me to do so.”
It was a typical statement of an English lord. Or a colonel in the Indian Army.
Just the same I had won.
The conversation turned to the weather and the prospect for the spring crops. Then we “joined the ladies,” to the obvious relief of Lady Mary Margaret, who seemed to have been quite overcome by Mrs. Landry’s twittering about the ignorance of the “mere Irish.”
Shortly thereafter the Landrys took their leave.
“I’m delighted, milord,” said Dr. Landry, “that you see things my way on the school.”
I wondered if we’d been in the same room.
I was about to leave too, but Lord Skeffington put a strong hand on my shoulder.
“Stay a moment, Father Richard.”
We walked back into the parlor of the house. The wind had picked up. Drafts danced around the room. The fire rose and fell in response to teasing wind.
“Mary Margaret, would you bring a drop of poteen for the good father and me?”
“Only a drop, Father. You’re going to have to ride back in the storm that’s brewing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed.
“It is said,” His Lordship said with a sigh as he opened his cravat, “that the poteen from this part of Donegal is the best in all of Ireland.”
“Really?”
“Mary Margaret is quite right. Only a sip. I wouldn’t want the pope or the Cardinal blaming me for the death of a new parish priest here. You know that there are stills all over your parish?”
“I did not.”
No reason anyone would tell me that.
“Poor devils stay alive on the income. Farms aren’t worth much in many places hereabout. Too poor to own many head of cattle. They’re very clever about hiding it. The customs men are after them constantly, but the local constables are in league with poteen men …” He puffed on his cigar. “Would you denounce my wife, Father Richard, if she should bathe in your Holy Well?”
“I don’t denounce people, milord. I merely denounce superstitious practices. In any case your wife isn’t Catholic, so I could hardly denounce her.”
“She’d keep some of her clothes on, I think. Unlike the people my idiot countryman claims to have seen earlier in the century. She wants a child, as do I. We have not been successful so far and, as you might well imagine, it’s not for lack of effort. She has heard that the well has powers of fertility …”
“Water is the source of life, milord,” I said. “I’m sure that pond has been credited as a fertility cure since long before St. Patrick. There is some reason to be skeptical …”
He laughed.
“I know, I know. I’ll warn you beforehand if we ride over there. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Here’s your draught, Father.” Lady Skeffington appeared and presented me a tiny glass with a splash of clear liquid in the bottom. She gave her husband a somewhat larger ration.
“Bob needs it to get those two out
of his system. Otherwise, he won’t be able to sleep.”
I didn’t know whether she was serious or joking or offering a bit of a nuptial hint to her husband. He merely laughed.
“They’re terrible people, all right, but then we all have them, don’t we, Dick?”
So now I was “Dick.” I didn’t want to get too close to the Establishment.
“I could give you a long list of ours,” I agreed, and raised my glass to toast them.
“Slainte!”
He responded, “Your very good health, Dick.”
I indulged in a tiny sip of the poteen. My whole body caught fire. I put the glass down on the table next to me. Lord Skeffington downed his with a single toss.
“You don’t have to drink any more, Father,” Lady Mary Margaret assured me. “Bobby’s stomach was ruined out in India. He doesn’t even feel it as it goes down. It will catch up with him later.”
“I drink it only once a week, Dick.” He sighed. “It’s too easy an escape from our problems. In a quarter hour I’ll feel all’s forever right with the world.”
“Which it isn’t,” his wife added.
She enveloped him in a smile that made me think that a man whose wife smiled at him like that did not need poteen.
“Before that happens, Dick, let me ask you whether you have a schoolteacher in mind for our school.”
“I do, milord. He’s young and has been taught by the Jesuits in Dublin. He knows Latin, Greek, and Irish as well as English. And he writes poetry …”
“All you mere Irish do that …”
The poteen was already catching up with him.
“He’s from Galway and is eager to return to the West of Ireland.”
“He’s coming out here?”
“In July.”
“We’ll talk to him then.”
“Thank you, milord.”
“It’s the only fair thing,” Lady Mary Margaret said in approval.
The English are great people for fairness, given the unfair situations they create.
They escorted me to the door, His Lordship’s arm around his wife, though I doubt he needed her support yet.
They waved good-bye to me as I rode off into the wind and the stench of the sea. The moon had disappeared. It would rain before I returned to the parish house. The spring mood had already disappeared. Lightning scratched the western sky. More love messages from New York?
Mrs. O’Flynn would have a light on in her little hut so I could find the house. When she heard me put the horse in the stable, she would blow out the candle.
It had been a strange evening. Now two days later, I still don’t know what to think of it. I wonder how much the poteen explains the passivity of my people.
I will add drink to the evil of superstition, which I will denounce from the altar on Sunday.
5
WHEN I came to the part of the manuscript in which Ned described him and Nora returning to the hotel room in which they had consummated their marriage, I closed the manuscript folder and, carrying it in my hand, ambled down to the master bedroom. I arrived just in time to discover my wife emerging from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her body.
“Dermot Michael Coyne!” she protested. “Whatever are you doing here? You’re violating my privacy! You’re stealing my modesty.”
“A man has a right to watch his wife dress and undress,” I replied with mock innocence.
“So long as she doesn’t object!”
“You usually don’t object.”
I choose my times for such amusement only when I’m pretty sure she won’t object.
“You look at me like I’m one of your chocolate malted things that you gulp down for your pleasure!”
“With lots of whipped cream!”
“I’m just a thing for you to enjoy!”
She threw the towel at me.
“I’ll leave if you want,” I said.
The preliminary conversation was babble to cover the touch of sweet embarrassment, which mixed with her delight at my attention.
“Now that you’re here”—she sighed, a woman offended beyond all toleration—“you might as well stay … You drink in every woman you look at, Mr. Coyne.”
“I don’t!”
“You do so! Weren’t you ogling that bitch Clare Conley at the bistro and herself old enough to be my mother.”
“She’s not … Besides I only look at her with respect.”
“That’s the problem. You respect them all, so they really don’t mind you undressing them with your eyes! You’re a terrible man altogether … Here now, make yourself useful and hook me bra for me.”
“I leave some of their clothes on,” I protested.
Feigning clumsiness, I hooked her up. Then my arms crept around her and my fingers dug into the firm muscles of her belly.
“Didn’t you have enough of me last night, Dermot Michael Coyne?” She slumped against me.
“Woman, I did not!”
I rested my lips against hers.
She sighed, her West of Ireland sigh of a woman whose patience has been too long affronted.
“Didn’t I say that to meself the first night at O’Neill’s pub? Didn’t I say to meself that big lout is a cute one, but he’ll never get enough of me? If he once gets his hands on me, will he ever leave me alone?”
“If all the things you said to yourself that night were laid end to end, wouldn’t you have been saying them for a couple of months?”
I increased the pressure of my lips against hers. She sighed again.
“Would you ever please go sit on the couch and read Ned’s manuscript and let me get dressed, so I can deal with Mr. Pigface when he comes?”
“A reasonable request.”
She had never met the man. How did she know he was a pigface?
He would encounter my wife in beige—tight beige slacks, a form-fitting beige cashmere sweater, and a beige ribbon in her long hair.
“Dermot love?”
“Yes, Nuala Anne?”
“I’ll begin to practice singing again this afternoon. I’ll do it for fifteen minutes and cut my time in the exercise room from a half hour to fifteen minutes.”
“Woman, you will not! It will be a half hour for each!”
I glanced up to look at her face in the mirror. It was clouded up as though thunder and lightning were about to appear.
“Och, sure, Dermot Michael, don’t you have the right of it? Whatever would happen to me if you weren’t around to take care of me?”
We prepared very carefully for the coming of Mr. Pigface, aka John Patrick O’Sullivan. Nuala arrayed a row of alcohol bottles on the mantel, as though we were the kind that serve cocktails every evening at precisely five-thirty. She filled a bucket with ice, though her Irish prejudice was that only friggin’ Yanks ruined perfectly good booze with ice. She sternly warned Nelliecoyne that she and the other kids should stay in the playroom till Day’s father left.
Then we sat in the parlor and waited, I patiently, herself impatiently.
I couldn’t quite figure out why the setting or should I say scene for this encounter had to be contrived so carefully. I knew that if I asked, I would be informed that wasn’t it obvious altogether.
“It was a good show,” I murmured, referring to our interlude in the bedroom while she was dressing.
“What was a good show? … Och, Dermot, you’re being vulgar!” She blushed in pleased embarrassment
At precisely two o’clock I heard the noise of a car pulling up in front of our house.
“What’s he driving, Dermot Michael?”
“A powder blue BMW 750.”
“Custom paint job. Figures.”
I don’t know why it did, but I’m not the psychic in the family. Nor do I see auras.
I opened the door as soon as the bell rang, lest I be ordered to hurry up and answer it.
My first impression of John Patrick O’Sullivan was of his scent, a strong masculine aroma which suggested, that freshly powdere
d and burnished, he had just stepped out of the locker room after a successful round on the golf course. Let there be no doubt about it, he was a real man. If you didn’t believe it, just sniff. People walking on the street, a floor down below us, could probably smell him too. (Like many homes in our neighborhood the entrance is on the second floor, harking back to the days when the city was a swamp.)
Nuala buys my scent.
“The important thing,” she lectures me, “is that no one even notices, except perhaps whatever woman you’re sleeping with.”
“Jack O’Sullivan,” he said, thrusting out a genial hand and a genial Irish smile.
“Dermot Coyne,” I murmured diffidently as I successfully resisted his effort to crush my hand.
He then thrust his business card at me. It was pale green with a darker green border with hints of shamrock. It announced “O’Sullivan” in large green letters. Under that it informed the world that the business was “Specialty Electronics.”
“Either he or someone who has worked for him is a brilliant engineer,” Mike Casey the Cop had informed me. “He grew up in Englewood while the blacks were moving in. Father a cop. Family was poor. Didn’t have the proverbial pot to piss in. Went to Mount Carmel, then on to the Golden Dome on a football scholarship. Not quite good enough for the pros. Bought this tiny company in the northern suburbs with money from his Notre Dame admirers. Built it up from nothing. They’re so good at what they do and what they do is so important that the downturns in tech stocks have never hurt them. Bet you own some of his stock.”
“Feds after him?”
“They take a good hard look at everyone like him. Haven’t found a thing. He’s either honest or very smart.”
He certainly radiated bluff, open Celtic honesty in his navy blazer, light blue slacks with a jeweled stars and stripes in one lapel and a small, solid gold shamrock in the other. His French cuff links, gold on navy blue, carried a jersey number. He was a big guy, my height—six-four—and maybe twenty pounds heavier, most of it not fat. His slicked black hair, above an abbreviated forehead, was jet-black edged in silver, a dye job so professional you would hardly notice. However, nothing artificial could hide his red Irish face and pale blue eyes, which bored relentlessly into me despite his genial Irish smile.
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