Of Irish Blood (52 page)

“I wouldn’t, Nora,” Margaret says. “Wilson mentioned Madame Simone. Probably best to stay away from her for a while. Don’t want to get her in trouble.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I say. “I guess I’m taking Maud’s letter to Normandy.”

“If it’s any consolation, Paul O’Toole’s headed for the Somme.”

20

SEPTEMBER 1916

“I’m so sorry, Maud,” I say to her. “John MacBride. I can’t find the words…” I stop.

She takes my arm, hurries me down the steps of the Deauville train station. Not the nearest station to Colleville but the biggest one. “Busy. You won’t be noticed,” Father Kevin said as he saw me off on the early train.

The other travelers steal looks at Maud. A good chance they’ve never seen a woman six feet tall before. Certainly not one dressed all in black, wearing a long veil. Maud’s wrapping herself in widowhood, head to toe, I think. I wonder, wasn’t she the slightest bit relieved? How I would rejoice if Tim McShane died! To have that shadowy fear removed. I remember that first Women’s Christmas, Iseult’s panic when she thought MacBride was at the door. Maud’s confidences to Margaret and me by the fire. But now MacBride is transformed, a martyr for Auld Ireland.

“Willie Yeats is outside. He hired a car and driver. A day out. We all need one,” she says.

“Wait,” I say. “I have your letter from John Quinn.”

“Thank you. Father Kevin sent me a cryptic telegram. ‘Nora coming for rest. Bringing spiritual reading.’”

“Here it is,” I say, and hand her the letter. I briefly tell Maud about young Keogh, Paul O’Toole, Henry Wilson, and my enforced leave from the hospital.

“Margaret Kirk got me an official-looking Red Cross document that allowed me to travel,” I say.

She’s not listening. Opening the envelope. Does she notice the flap has been re-glued? Father Kevin said to tell Maud we’d opened the letter but now does not seem the right moment. Maud takes the bank draft out of the envelope.

“John Quinn is such a good friend,” she says. “And he sent along my article. They printed it. Good.”

She reads the letter. Standing still, oblivious of the people around her.

“I don’t think John Quinn understands the nobility of their sacrifice,” Maud says.

She hands me the letter.

“Tell me what you think,” she says. I decide not to mention that I’ve already read it.

“Glad the censor couldn’t chew over this,” she says. “Kind of you to bring it. Good of John to say that Seán can be proud of his father now. He sacrificed himself for his country, atoned for all.”

An actor finally playing the right part in her life, I think. While Tim McShane … Poor Dolly. I wonder had she tried to throw him out. He turned on me when I ended our affair. Though “affair” seems a mild word for those years I’d lost. But I could have lost more, I could have lost my life. I had a lucky escape, no question. But the thought of him spending Dolly’s money. I wonder what Maud and Willie Yeats would think of me if I said to them … “I was the mistress of a violent gangster”?

Maud and I settle into the backseat of a big touring car. William Butler Yeats himself, I think, sitting in front with the driver like any other fellow. Older than I expected. Hair completely gray. Pale. A poet’s face no question. Sister Veronica would swoon. But he seems a little, well, brittle’s the word comes to me, but he’s nice enough as he says, “Welcome.”

“Maud tells me you are from Chicago,” Yeats says.

“I am.”

“I lectured there. Took a tour of the Stock Yards. The stench of the place. Thousands of hooked carcasses moving along on those mechanical belts. The apotheosis of a brutal world,” he says.

“I suppose,” I say. “But lots of jobs in the Stock Yards—and a strong union. Wouldn’t dare to lock out workers like they did in Dublin.”

“Are you a socialist, Miss Kelly?” Yeats asks.

“I’m a Democrat,” I say. Starting not to like this fellow.

“There is that lovely lake, Willie,” Maud says. “I remember when John and I…”

She stops, takes a handkerchief from her bag, and touches the corner of her eyes. A graceful gesture. No blubbering for Maud, no red eyes or runny nose. Takes a deep breath. I pat her hand.

“The British consulate has held up my request for permission to go to Ireland. Imagine. Barring me from my own country. Refusing to allow me to pay my respects to my husband’s remains.” Furious now. “His remains, such as they are. The British pitched the bodies of the men they executed into a mass grave then tossed lime over them. Barbarians. They know that every Irish family longs to have their loved one tucked away in a tidy grave in the churchyard among their ancestors. A place to visit and honor. They denied my husband the dignity they give the most murderous German soldier.”

She begins pounding on the seat.

“Maud, Maud,” says Yeats from the front seat. He turns around, and reaches across, holding out his hand to her. “Please, dearest.”

She stretches out her hand, grasps his. Lets go and falls back against the cushions. I touch her shoulder. She covers my hand with hers. An actress, I think. She can’t help it. No less sincere for being dramatic.

Yeats speaks to me. “I’ve convinced Maud to go on an outing to show you something of the countryside and the towns of Normandy, so full of history. Didn’t we decide that, Maud?”

“Good for you, too, Willie,” she says. “A day out from writing to replenish your creative energy. We will go to Honfleur, where the Impressionists went to paint. Charming. Then perhaps Bayeux. The tapestry.”

“Isn’t that splendid, Miss Kelly?” Yeats says.

“I’m Nora,” I say. “Wonderful. A famous tapestry? Is it the one with the unicorn?”

“No,” Yeats says. “You’ll see.”

Why hadn’t I paid more attention to Sister Veronica’s talks on French art?

“Honfleur,” Yeats tells the driver.

“Wait. No,” Maud says. “First Quillebeuf-sur-Seine. That’s where we’ll go. Look to our Irish history.”

“Quillebeuf?” says Yeats. He speaks to the driver and then turns back to us. “Robert says that’s quite a distance; four hours.”

“But that is where I’d like to go. It’s only ten in the morning,” Maud says to him, and then to me, “I want you to see the place Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell landed. The Flight of the Earls, Nora,” she says. “More than three hundred years ago.”

*   *   *

“Here we are,” Maud says as the car climbs up a hill into the old city of Quillebeuf.

“Can’t you just imagine the earls striding through the streets?” Maud says as she leads us past rows of black stone houses, their fronts patterned white pebbles.

“I thought they were headed for Spain,” I say.

“Blown off course,” Yeats says. “The channel’s treacherous anytime and terrible for a small boat in September.”

“Fortunate to find a harbor here at the mouth of the Seine,” Maud says.

“This is where the O’Cahan harpist played his lament.” Maud begins to hum.

“I know that song,” I say. “But I thought it was new. May Quinlivan taught me the words.” I begin to sing: “‘O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountainside.’”

“Oh that,” Maud says. “Some Englishmen put lyrics on the ancient melody.”

Dismissive. “Weren’t the countess and duchess I met at your house descendants of the Wild Geese? I think one was an O’Cahan,” I say.

“Many nobles left Ireland,” Yeats says. “All are referred to as Wild Geese.”

*   *   *

Nearly one o’clock when we finish our tour. Yeats wants what he calls a “proper lunch.” But Maud is determined to drive on to Bayeux. A great tribute to their spiritual marriage that Willie agrees to eat baguettes, stuffed with ham and camembert cheese in the car as we drive. Great for treats, Maud, and I see why children would have loved her. For all her height and beauty, she’s a child herself, delighted with our picnic on wheels.

When we do arrive at Bayeux it’s after six and the cathedral’s locked. But Maud says her friend, Mother Mathilde, is the superior of the nearby convent. Perhaps she will take us in to see the tapestry.

“Iseult, Seán, and I stayed in the convent during Easter,” Maud says to me. “The nuns hesitated to take in Seán because males aren’t allowed but I said with his long curls he could easily pass as a girl, and so they agreed. Thank God. I was sitting in the parlor with Mother Mathilde when a priest from the cathedral came to tell me about the Rising. A true Easter miracle, I’d thought. And then … the nuns were very good to me during those terrible weeks.”

She turns to Yeats. “I was never so grateful for my conversion,” Maud says, and then to me, “Willie’s not fond of the Catholic hierarchy but I could not remain in the Church of Ireland.”

“French Catholicism is so much more civilized. Pity the Irish couldn’t be more like them,” Yeats says.

“Lieutenant Cholet would disagree,” I say. Of course he has no idea what I’m talking about and doesn’t ask.

Yeats and I wait silently in the car while Maud goes to the door of the convent. The nuns will be at prayers or eating dinner, I think. The Mother Superior won’t just come walking out. But after a few moments, here she is with Maud. She’s a tall woman, wears a pleated headdress and gauzy habit. An Ursuline, I think.

We enter the darkened cathedral and follow Mother Superior’s lantern across the transept to a side chapel where the tapestry stretches along all four walls. No unicorns here. The narrow piece of linen cloth, as long as a football field, is covered with figures embroidered in colors vivid even in the lantern’s flickering light.

Mother Mathilde speaks English. Thank God. I could never follow the story in French, hard enough in English. Bishop Odo, she tells us, William’s half brother, commissioned this work from nuns in a convent in England.

“William?”

“The duke of Normandy who became king of England,” Yeats says.

“You mean William the Conqueror?” I ask. “1066?”

“Of course,” Maud says.

My mind wanders to the present war as the Mother Superior talks about the fight for the English throne portrayed by the tapestry. Should America come into the fight to save France and end the slaughter? As I stand in the massive cathedral, God’s House, and look at the tapestry, I think, Stay home, boys. We’ve gone beyond all this. Elections decide our leaders, not wars. Why get embroiled in all this history? Of course, we had our conflicts. Hadn’t my own father fought to save the Union? A tapestry telling the story of our Civil War would need a very long wall. So many dead. Maybe we’d learned the cost. Maybe. Maybe.

Nearly ten o’clock when we reach Colleville, but Maud says the day out has done her good. She seems almost cheerful as we drive up to her lovely house right on edge of the beach.

“I named it Les Mouettes,” she says. “The Seagulls.”

Iseult and Seán run out to meet us. Boys change so quickly. Seán had been a little fellow when I met him four years ago. Now his shoulders have broadened. He’s going to be tall like his mother. Iseult seems no older. Lovely but distracted, smoking a cigarette as she greets us. Barry Delaney is here, as well as their big dog, three cats, and two roosters. Maud’s garden ends at the English Channel. Too dark to see much but I can smell the salt and hear the surf rolling in.

“Come, come,” Barry says. “Josephine has the meal waiting.”

I follow Maud into the two-storied stone house.

“I must go to my room right after dinner,” Yeats says. “I’m close to finding a phrase to hang my poem on.”

Poem, I think. Yeats is writing a poem right now. Sister Veronica would be thrilled.

“I finished my poem, too,” Iseult says.

“Wonderful, darling,” Maud says. “You must read it to us. And Willie, I’ll expect a recital of your piece tomorrow.”

We have a late supper at a round table: Maud, Willie, the children, and Barry Delaney. Even Seán drinks the cider, which makes me a bit light-headed. I’m desperate for a good sleep but as soon as we finish eating, Barry takes me to a kind of porch on the side of the house filled with bookcases. She pulls out a scrapbook and opens it up.

“I’ve made a book of Seán’s life.”

Already? I think. He’s only twelve years old.

“See, here are two theater tickets for the performance that Madame was to attend the night he was born,” she tells me. “And here’s the copy of the telegram I sent to the Pope.”

I read the message: “The King of Ireland is born.”

“Very nice,” I say.

Maud finds us.

“Barry’s our chronicler and my lieutenant. I couldn’t do my work if I didn’t know she was here keeping the household together,” Maud says.

At that moment, the King of Ireland comes running through the room, chasing the dog, who is intent on catching the rooster. Seán shouts at the dog in French and English.

“Seán!” Maud says, but he’s away.

“I’m going up to bed,” I say.

“As soon as Iseult reads to us,” Maud says.

I’m given a place by the fire between Maud and Barry. Iseult’s poem describes the beach, “the sun-delighted strand,” where she’s “a sadly useless thing.” Not very cheerful. A prose piece, too, with cliffs, the fringe of foam on the wet sand, all connecting to hidden gods. Confusing.

“You’re being influenced by Willie and that Golden Dawn crowd,” Maud says to Iseult. “I find them all too English and conventional.”

“You don’t understand the deeper truths. Now that I’m studying Hindu and Sanskrit,” Iseult says, “I see beyond reality.”

“I’ve been seeing beyond reality my whole life,” Maud says.

“I believe in reincarnation,” Iseult says to me.

“That’s nice,” I say.

Then Barry reads her latest, a salute to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. “I write Catholic poetry,” she explains.

“And publishes in the best Church magazines,” Maud adds.

Hindu, reincarnation, and the Little Flower. Quite a mixture.

“It’s getting late, Barry,” Maud says. Thank God. “Nora is staying for a while. Plenty of time. Besides, I have something to show her.” Maud brings out copies of a French magazine,
La Illustrae
. “Pictures of Dublin after it had been shelled by English gunboats,” she says as she turns the pages of photographs.