Of Irish Blood (51 page)

“You care a lot about the French,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m proud to be doing something for such a brave people. I only hope our fellows will get over here soon.”

What do I say to that?

“Lucky I got this letter now because I’m not going back to Verdun,” Keogh says. “I am leaving the ambulance service. Transferring to an aviation unit in Macedonia.”

“Another flyboy,” Paul says. “Only the posh need apply.”

“You’re wrong there,” Keogh says. “A Negro fellow name of Bullard is joining with me.”

“Probably an African prince,” Paul says.

“Not at all,” Keogh says. “I met him here in the hospital. Told me he’s from Georgia. Stowed away on a ship from the states. Became a boxer in England and then joined the French Foreign Legion.”

“And they took him?” Paul says. He shakes his head.

“Well, good luck to you,” I say to Keogh. “And thank you for the letter. I will get it to Maud.”

Full dark as Paul and I cross the lawn toward my ward.

“Will every American ambulance driver be headed into the sky?” I say to Paul.

“Probably and me sure to end up on the Somme,” he says. Paul holds the door for me and we step into the ward. Quiet. Most of the men asleep. The long night beginning. I relieve Theresa Ryan and say good night to Paul, but he doesn’t leave. “Let me see that letter,” he says.

“What?”

“The letter to Maud Gonne. Give it to me,” Paul says.

“I will not and keep your voice down, you’re going to wake up the patients.”

“I mean it, Nora. I need that letter. Probably crammed with subversion,” Paul says. “Could be just what I need to stay right here in the hospital watching all you rebels.”

He makes a grab for the envelope. I stick the letter inside the top of my dress and run down the center aisle of the ward. He comes after me. Grabs my arm. I shake him off.

“Leave me alone or I’ll scream. I swear, Paul,” I say.

“You won’t,” he says. We’re at the end of the dimly lit ward. He pushes me against the wall. I can hear the patients’ labored breathing.

“Stop it. Do you want to wake these poor guys up?” I say. But he’s pulling at the top of my dress. I break away and run out the door. If I can get to the nurses’ dormitory, I think … but Paul steps in front of me.

The look on his face. No trace of the accommodating chap who serves napoleon slices and tea. Or the charming cynic playing both ends against the middle and assuring me that he was only a pretend informer. I can hear Lieutenant Cholet’s
“Soyez sage”
and Father Kevin, “Not the
amadán
he pretends to be.” I’m back in that room on State Street with Tim McShane’s hands around my throat. Dodging the German general in Strasbourg.

“Give him the letter.” It’s the Fairy Woman. “What do you care about Maud Gonne, the colonel’s daughter, with her villa in Normandy? Give it to him.”

“Shut up,” I say to her. Paul is tearing at the top of my dress, bent over me, straddling my legs. I bring up my knee and connect. Hard. Paul drops his hands, bends over.

“You bloody bitch,” he says. But I’m away running across the lawn into the nurses’ dormitory and right over to Margaret Kirk’s bed.

“Wake up! Wake up! Paul O’Toole’s gone mad,” I say. We go back to the ward, but Paul’s gone.

“Do you want to go home?” Margaret asks me. “I could get one of the ambulance fellows to drive you.”

“What if Paul’s waiting for me in the garden?” I say to her. “The last thing I want is a scene. I’ll take my shift,” I tell Margaret. “In the morning I’ll…” What? Report Paul? I’ll take Maud’s letter to Father Kevin first, ask him what he thinks I should do.

Margaret stays with me throughout the night. The patients are very quiet. The casualties from the Somme are the most serious we’ve seen. Most of the fellows in such pain the doctors fill them with morphine or give them opium. Poor, poor boys.

I arrive in time for Father Kevin’s morning Mass. Forgot it was the Feast of the Assumption. Where were you last night Blessed Mother, I think.

Warm inside the college so Father Kevin and I go into the courtyard.

“Terrible, terrible,” he says when I tell him about Maud’s letter and Paul’s attack.

“Dangerous to cross a gombeen-man,” Father Kevin says. I hand him the letter. He feels the envelope. “Something inside. Probably a bank draft. John Quinn very generous…” he says. “We better open it.”

“But it’s Maud’s letter,” I say.

“The only protection we have from what O’Toole will say is in this letter is the actual contents.”

“You’d give him the letter?”

“Not him,” Father Kevin says. “But if O’Toole starts any real trouble there are sympathetic French officials and even some decent men in the British army.”

“Arthur Capel?” I ask. I know he comes to see Father Kevin.

Father Kevin opens the letter, takes out a bank draft, shows it to me. It’s made out to Maud for five hundred francs.

“A kind man, John Quinn,” Father Kevin says. He takes out a folded newspaper clipping. It’s the article Maud has written for the New York
Sun
. Wonder if she’s seen it. She’ll like the headline, “Irish Joan of Arc Comes to Defense of Sinn Fein.”

“Now let’s see what Quinn has to say,” Father Kevin says. “He might know more about events in Ireland than we do. Can’t silence the American press.” I stand up to read over Father Kevin’s shoulder.

So. First of all John Quinn is not at all enthusiastic about what he calls “the outbreak.” He writes that it was a “sad, mad and tragic business foredoomed to failure.” But he blames the liberal party in Britain for the disaster. “Words cannot express my rage, contempt and loathing for Asquith. Redmond carried out his part of the bargain and was betrayed,” he writes.

“So Quinn supported Redmond?” I ask Father Kevin.

“That American sense of fair play at work,” Father Kevin says. “He thought because Redmond recruited soldiers for the British army the government would make good on its promise and grant Ireland Home Rule. Instead we got nothing. Now our young men are being slaughtered on the Somme, in Verdun, at Gallipoli. Redmond’s own brother was killed last month.”

Father Kevin and I look at each other. What is there for me to say?

Father Kevin picks up the letter again. Quinn writes that he’d worked to save Roger Casement and the leaders of the Uprising. He lists all the influential men he rounded up who had cabled the British asking for clemency. An impressive list. Quinn’s got clout no question. Flexing the muscles of his influence but failing. He doesn’t like it.

Quinn lays out the argument he presented to the British. Shooting the Irish leaders would cause as much public outrage against them as sinking the
Lusitania
did against the Germans. They hadn’t listened. Quinn writes, “It’s made it impossible for England to pose as the champion of small nations. It’s utterly unthinkable for the United States to go into this War on the side of England. Only France stands as the champion of liberal ideas now.”

“Hmmm,” Father Kevin says. “That’s the position those who want America to get into the war will take. ‘Fight for France.
Vive Lafayette.
’”

“But Woodrow Wilson doesn’t want war,” I say.

“Are you sure?” Father Kevin asks me.

I think of Helen Keller’s words. What difference do politicians really make, I wonder, if big-business people are determined to go to war? Quinn spends the next paragraph of the letter warning Maud against being seen as pro-German. He even complains because Victor Herbert chaired a memorial service for the Irish martyrs at Carnegie Hall. “His mother might be Irish,” Quinn wrote. “But he’s German to his backbone.”

“Victor Herbert?” I say. “
Naughty Marietta?
‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’? Never seemed political to me.”

Father Kevin has no idea what I’m talking about. He reads on in the letter:

“Quinn writes that too many Irish politicians think statesmanship means hating England,” Father Kevin says. “Quinn’s right about that.”

“He is? How can anyone not despise the English right now?”

“We can’t let hate take us over or Britain will win. We’ll have to make an accommodation with them eventually. Need to find men on each side who aren’t blinded by prejudice.”

“Good luck,” I say.

“But look here,” Father Kevin says, pointing at the letter. “Quinn says the British ambassador to the United States, Spring Rice, tried to help win clemency.”

“Some relation to Mary?” I ask.

“He is,” Father Kevin says. “Remember there is real feeling for Ireland among that class. After all, Maud and Constance were converted.”

“But they’re women, Father Kevin,” I say. “Men don’t give up their power so easily.” I’m thinking of the ugly British general Wilson.

The last part of the letter is surprising. Quinn confesses to feeling “wretched and powerless.” Not easy for a fellow used to being one of the boys in the know to admit that. Maybe that’s why he is so hard on the Irish Americans who encouraged these young men to rebel. “They weren’t risking their lives or the lives of their families,” Quinn writes.

“He has a point,” I say to Father Kevin. “Easy to be brave when you’re almost three thousand miles away.”

In the letter, Quinn asks Maud why Pearse and Connolly couldn’t have waited until the war was over.

“Why didn’t they?” I asked Father Kevin.

“The problem is that most of the volunteers did wait,” he says. “The order for the Rising was given, then countermanded and then given again.”

A cock-up, as Paul O’Toole would say.

I skim the rest of the letter. “He has nice things to say about MacBride,” I say to Father Kevin. I read out what Quinn wrote: “‘MacBride’s finish was a fine one. I understand MacBride refused a blindfold and said ‘I have looked into the barrels of guns too often to be afraid of them now. Fire away.’ Better to go this way then spending years living in the past, drinking and talking out his life. The fates gave him a fine redemptive end and your boy will bear an honored name.’”

So.

“Nothing really incriminating in this letter,” Father Kevin says to me. “But snippets could be taken out—made to seem treasonous.”

“But Quinn’s so against Germany,” I say. “He doesn’t even like Viennese operetta.”

“Still I’m afraid to post the letter,” Father Kevin says. “If only someone could deliver the letter and bank draft directly to Maud.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” I say. “Not the time to desert the hospital.”

“True enough,” Father Kevin says. “When Capel was here, he told me the British army estimates that it suffered sixty thousand casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. And two-thirds of them died. He said a million men could be killed or wounded with neither side making any real gain.”

“I can’t even imagine such numbers,” I say. “And Verdun’s taking the same kind of toll. The worst is that these battles go on and on. I don’t know, Father, I’m all for peace. But if America doesn’t come into this war, it may never end.”

I have to change my clothes. A fresh uniform, clean underwear, a wash will make me feel better, I think as I walk across the place des Vosges. Margaret Kirk waits outside the door of my flat. How nice of her. Worried about me, I think.

“I’m fine, Margaret,” I say when I reach her. “It takes more than a bastard like Paul O’Toole to do me in.” But she’s shaking her head.

“Let’s go in,” she says.

“A cup of tea, a glass of wine?” I say to her as we walk in. “It’s three o’clock now. All right to drink some wine. Sit down,” I say.

“Nora,” she says, still standing. “Better if you don’t come back to the hospital.”

“I’m all right really. I…”

“You don’t understand. Paul O’Toole got in to see Mrs. Vanderbilt this morning. He was very apologetic.”

“He admitted he attacked me? I’m surprised,” I say.

“That’s not what he told her,” Margaret says. “He explained how you two had a lovers’ quarrel last night. And he hoped none of the patients had been disturbed.”

“You’re joking, right?” I say. “Even Paul O’Toole wouldn’t have the nerve to tell such a lie. Mrs. Vanderbilt would never believe him.”

“Well,” Margaret says. “That’s just it. You know you still hear people talk about nurses being no better than they should be,” she says. “Well, I’m afraid that…”

“Margaret, for God’s sakes!”

“I know. I know. But there are even songs about the fast Red Cross girlies.”

“But Mrs. Vanderbilt knows me,” I say.

“That’s just it. She doesn’t, Nora. Couldn’t place you. And Paul had brought this ugly English general along. A ride-to-the-hounds Irish Protestant and he blarneyed away in a brogue about naive American women getting swept up into conspiracies.”

“What?”

“Yes, Maud Gonne led you astray.”

“So, I’m a spy as well as a whore?” I say.

“Nora, he made you sound like some kind of Bolshevik,” Margaret says.

“Henry Wilson,” I say. “He hates Irish natives.”

“Paul told Mrs. Vanderbilt about the socialist meetings you held and the tour you gave Helen Keller and Jane Addams. You know the Vanderbilts want America to get into the war. And Paul made it sound as if you were a defeatist, spreading enemy propaganda, trying to destroy the soldiers’ morale.”

“Oh, my God,” I say. “So I’m fired?”

“Mrs. Vanderbilt didn’t go that far. We were lucky. Her secretary, Louise, heard what was going on and found me and I got Dr. Gros to come to her office. And, well, you’re on leave.” She takes a breath. “For an indefinite period. And you have to go to the police station and renew your residence permit. I don’t think the French will deport you. But Wilson wasn’t pleased that you weren’t fired outright.”

“Damn. Damn. Damn,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Margaret.”

“What do you have to be sorry for? We both knew Paul O’Toole was a rat. We were foolish to try to tame a predator. Now, why don’t you open that bottle of wine?”

After we both sit down and are drinking the wine, she hands me an envelope. “Your vacation pay,” she says.

“Oh well,” I say. “I’ve been wanting to spend some time with Madame Simone. I’ll get her to make us some new uniforms.”