“I don’t think I want you climbing any higher,” I said to them.
Then—quite deliberately and with utter confidence and serenity—I threw myself at them in a movement which our coach at Fenwick had urged even the defensive players to practice—an illegal and immoral action called the cutback block.
I heard a scream in the distance as I floated through the air towards them. Herself, no doubt.
Then I hit them at knee level. Not bad for someone who had not done a cutback for nine years.
They tumbled down the stairs, crashing and bumping and tumbling as they were supposed to do. Their screams of surprise and pain blended with Nuala’s cries of rage.
Since I had known what I would do, I grabbed a rail halfway down, spun to my feet, observed the tangled mess of screaming men at the bottom, and jumped on them. No chances taken this time, and no mercy shown.
In the slowest of slow motions, I stamped on fingers, kicked knives away, broke noses, kicked groins, and broke another arm or two. I was aware that a wailing she-demon had joined in and was bashing heads with a lawn chair.
Banshee-like wail.
Then a courteous womanly voice said to me, “It’s all right, Mr. Coyne. We have our guns on them.”
Who was this woman?
Joannie, naturally, and with Bert right next to her. Reliable was reliable this time.
I desisted from my berserking, came out of my trance, and said, quite calmly, “It was good of you to come, Joannie, Bert.”
Nuala rearranged her dress, which did not seem to have been damaged, and clung to my arm. Half of the squad cars from Area Six arrived from all directions. The local priest emerged from the rectory, holy oils in hand. Cops swarmed over the injured perpetrators. Commander Culhane appeared in an unmarked car.
“Do you work twenty-four hours a day, John?”
“Dear God, Dermot, you guys made a mess of them!”
“Never mess with Grace O’Malley,” I replied. “Or her champion.”
Then the letdown hit me. My muscles turned to water. My breathing came in gasps. My bladder threatened to flush. My body shook. I would have fallen on my face, save for Nuala’s grip on my arm.
However, one might just as well bluff it out.
“That was not a half-bad cutback block, was it, Nuala, dear?”
Herself was crying and laughing and crying at the same time.
I wanted to kick the wounded and battered Billy Hernon in the face. However, the berserking was over, wasn’t it?
John insisted that the cops take me to St. Joseph’s Hospital. The ER folks pronounced me undamaged, save for scrapes and bruises. I bussed my love good night, told her I would see her at Grand Beach on the weekend, and drove home under my own power.
The next morning every inch of my organism ached. I was too old for berserking, much too old.
Then I thought of Nuala’s delicate skin and cool breasts and delicate nipples and decided that I was not too old at all, at all. There were certain things which I had to do. I must get out of bed and do them.
Mom drove up to Grand Beach to prepare for the weekend on Thursday. Nuala Anne, to whom Arthur had granted an extra day off, went along. I pleaded the obligation to my softball league and the need to get the stiffness out of my muscles and the likelihood of some beer taken as reasons for traveling on Friday morning.
I arrived with the sunrise. Mom’s Buick was not in the driveway. Likely the two of them had gone to the store at the break of day.
Thinking about a nice nap, I walked up the stairs. As I ambled along the corridor on the second floor, I noted that the door to what had become “Nuala’s room” was open.
Herself was inside, brushing her hair in front of a vanity mirror and wearing the most revealing white lace lingerie. Irish lace, I thought as I admired her.
She became aware of the presence of someone.
“Dermot!” she yelled. “You’re violating me privacy.”
She hugged herself protectively
“Woman, I am not. Wasn’t the door open?”
I took the brush out of her hand and drew her into my arms and kissed her.
“Are you trying to seduce me Dermot?” she asked uncertainly not altogether sure whether she should resist me.
“Woman, I am not, and with me mom coming back any moment now.”
“Oh,” she said and relaxed into my arms. “What are you doing, then?”
“I’m admiring and caressing you. Do you object to that?”
“No.”
My fingers traced designs just as they had the other night, though now their ministrations were able to extend to her belly.
“That’s nice, Dermot. You’re so delicate with me.”
And then, in sudden awareness, she protested, “I don’t have anything on at all, at all.”
I held her at arm’s length and drank her in.
“You do too, woman. Irish lace.”
“The lace is French … .”
“And what is inside is Irish.”
“Do you intend to admire me all morning?”
“Would you object?”
“No. But I would like to beat you at tennis if you ever find time for it.”
I slipped a finger beneath a thick lace bra strap and drew my designs down to a breast. Then the other one. I eased the straps gently off her shoulders and lowered the cups of the bra.
“Dermot,” she sighed deeply, as I caressed her breasts with my tongue.
Then we heard Mom’s Buick and disengaged from one another. We both giggled. I restored her bra to proper order and helped her on with her robe. Then I scooted down the corridor to my own room. She quietly closed the door to hers.
I beat her 7—5, 7—4 at tennis. She was furious.
“You were practicing for the last two months,” she accused me.
“Woman, I was.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not—that’s all!”
Then she laughed and kissed me and said, “You played powerful well, Dermot Michael. But I’ll beat you the next time.”
“That will be as may be.”
As we walked back from the tennis court, she said, “I suppose you know that herself is painting me?”
“I did not. Catherine Curran?”
“The very same.”
“How’s it going?”
“’Tis strange standing naked, uh, nude with someone else looking at you all evening long. I suppose I should get used to it, if I’m going to marry someone.”
“In five or ten years?”
“Right. Then after a while it becomes liberating, and you don’t mind it at all, at all. You even kind of like it.”
“Really? What’s the painting like?”
“Well”—she drew a deep breath—“if you ask me, it’s too candid altogether. It embarrasses me a little. She says she’s only celebrating me youthful vigor and strength.”
“Bodybuilder?”
“No, silly,” she said tapping my arm. “Nothing like that at all, at all.”
“When do I get to see it?”
“Forty years from now, when all your passions have died.”
“I hear they last a lot longer.”
“I hope so.”
I was drafted for kitchen duty on most of Friday. Nuala’s door was firmly closed. We skied and sailed on much of Saturday, and herself proved a skillful crew.
I figured that this would be the right day.
That evening the family celebrated Tessa’s newly announced pregnancy with congratulations and champagne. Calculating back from the due date, I figured that Tessa had been no more than one week pregnant when herself had told me the “secret.” She nodded at me and then stuck her nose in the air when the advent of the new Coyne was officially announced. I was not about to bet that it would be a girl.
I suggested to Nuala that we take a walk along the beach. She looked up from her mystery novel. “Don’t you ever get tired, Dermot M
ichael Coyne, and ourselves perishing with the heat all day?”
“Nope.”
“All right!” She put a marker in the book; no turned-down pages for this child. “If I have to, I have to.”
She in her bikini and I in my trunks, we walked a couple of miles in the light of the full moon, kissed each other frequently in the process, and then sat on the sand in front of my family’s house, quietly happy in each other’s presence.
Now.
“I suppose me family is telling you that you will surely get a ring by Christmas.”
“I know nothing about that, at all, at all!”
She stuck her nose up in the air as she does when she’s mortally offended.
“And they’re guessing that we might marry sometime next spring or summer.”
“That will be as may be. I frankly couldn’t care less.”
“All I’m trying to say is that there will be no ring for you at Christmas, at all, at all.”
“That is of no interest to me.”
“Christmas is too long to wait.”
She snorted, not taking me meaning.
I took the little box out of the pocket of my swim trunks.
“I did, however, find this on the beach.”
She frowned suspiciously. “What’s in that box thing?”
I flipped it open.
She recoiled from the sight of it. “Praise be to all the saints in heaven, Dermot Michael, that’s the biggest jewel in all the world!”
“Do you want to hold it?” I took the ring, the diamond on which was big enough, if not exactly the Hope Diamond.
She drew back farther from me.
“Wouldn’t I drop it in the sand?”
“Would you want to try it on your finger, just for a moment?”
“Only for a moment,” she said and held out a trembling ring finger.
I held her finger steady and slipped the ring on it.
Herself turned the ring around and around, admiring it in the moonlight.
“’Tis brilliant, Dermot, look at the way it glitters in the moonlight.”
“As brilliant as the blue in your eyes.”
“Go ’long with ya!”
“Are you going to give it back to me now?”
“Not in a million years.”
She hid her hand behind her back. I pretended to fight her for it.
Then we fell into each other’s arms and talked about love and such matters.
“Here or in Ireland, Nuala?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather it be here and bring me ma and da over. My sisters and brothers who live in Seattle and Long Island and San Diego and Philadelphia could come, then.”
She’d done some thinking about the matter, hadn’t she? Women do.
“Christmas?”
“It would be terrible hard to find a time for a Mass, then.”
“Is Thanksgiving too soon?”
“It would be crowded then, too.”
She removed her left arm from my embrace and admired her engagement ring in the moonlight.
“When?”
“You’ll say I’m a schemer and a conniver and a plotter.”
“I’ve told you that I like you that way. It took me awhile to realize you were just like Ma.”
“Well,” she said and hesitated.
“Well, what?”
“Didn’t I talk to the little bishop at the cathedral and your man being there anyway, and didn’t he say that there was an open time on the second Friday in October at five o’clock in the evening, and didn’t I ask him to pencil in our names!”
She was indeed like Nell Pat.
I scooped her up in my arms.
“What are you doing, you big oaf?”
“I’m going to show the rest of me family the ring I found on the beach with a woman in it.”
What happened to the Good Friday letter to Letitia Walsh, lace maker, from A. Lincoln? Can’t you look at it in the lobby of the National Archives in Washington? Doesn’t the inscription say that it was donated by a certain person to the United States of America in gratitude for its generosity to Irish immigrants?
ALSO BY ANDREW M. GREELEY FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
Nuala Anne McGrail Novels
Irish Gold
Irish Lace
Irish Whiskey
Irish Mist
Irish Eyes
Irish Love
Irish Stew!
Irish Cream
Irish Crystal
Irish Linen
Irish Tiger
Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries
The Bishop and the Missing L Train
The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
The Bishop in the West Wing
The Bishop Goes to The University
The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood
The Bishop at the Lake
The O’Malleys in the Twentieth Century
A Midwinter’s Tale
Younger Than Springtime
A Christmas Wedding
September Song
Second Spring
Golden Years
The Senator and the Priest
All About Women
Angel Fire
Angel Light
Contract with an Angel
Faithful Attraction
The Final Planet
Furthermore!: Memories of a Parish Priest
God Game
Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and
His Relationships with Women
The Magic Cup
Star Bright!
Summer at the Lake
The Priestly Sins
White Smoke
Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)
The Book of Love: A Treasury Inspired by the Greatest of Virtues
(editor with Mary Durkin)
Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy (editor)
Praise for Irish Gold by ANDREW M. GREELEY
“May be Andrew M. Greeley’s best effort yet.”
—Baltimore Sun
“A real Irish stew, with a ghost or two tossed in for good measure.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Piquant characters who are engulfed in delightful Irish mystery. Recommended.”
—Library Journal
“A marvelous tale of love, war, passion, politics, and intrigue—and since the setting is Ireland, a good dose of tragedy.”
—Gannett Suburban Newspapers
“A mystery as modern as the … peace talks between England and Ireland, and as old as the Troubles of the 1920s.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“A tale of young love and faith, as modern as U2 … yet those who have followed his works in the past will find the same storytelling mastery and the same understanding of the heart.”
—Chicago Tribune
NOTE
THE CAMP Douglas documents which Dermot cites in his reports to herself are drawn from historical records, except the memoir written by Letitia Walsh. The arguments she uses about the conspiracy theory, however, are those of contemporary authors, most notably George Levy’s excellent 1994 book To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862—1865.3 I rely especially on Chapter 14, “The Camp Douglas Conspiracy of 1864.” Readers of this story who wish to learn more about Camp Douglas should read To Die in Chicago (Evanston Publishing Company, Evanston, Illinois 60201). Another very useful book is Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War, by Frank L. Klement (Louisiana State University Press, 1984). Professor Klement was the first “revisionist” historian to argue conclusively that all of the “conspiracies” were frauds and that all the “treason trials” were violations of the elementary human rights of innocent men, whose only crime was to oppose the war.
Letitia’s character and her family life flow from my own imagination, based on a line I read about the “high-spirited and beautiful young women who we
re lace-makers” who fiercely defended their father before the Cincinnati military tribunal. Alas, I can’t remember where I read the line.
The letter from A. Lincoln is fictional. However, he did not believe in the Camp Douglas conspiracy and would doubtless have pardoned the alleged conspirators if he had survived the attack at Ford’s Theater. Needless to say, I accept Nuala Anne’s balanced judgment about the conspiracy.
(Will Nuala and Dermot really marry one another on the second Friday of October? That would be telling, now, wouldn’t it? But, God willing, they’ll be back again in a story to be called Irish Whiskey.)
Grand Beach—A. Greeley—Priest
September 19, 1995
Notes
1 Presumably, this was the astronomical tower of the University of Chicago.
2 “Black” does not mean African-American. It is used in the same sense that the Irish also used the adjective to describe certain kinds of Protestants. It could perhaps be taken to mean “fanatical.”
3 The only full book written about Camp Douglas since 1865.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IRISH LACE
Copyright © 1996 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Cover photo by Don Banks
eISBN 9781429993326
Irish Lace Page 31