Of Irish Blood (59 page)

“Hard work,” I say to the attendant. He turns and I think the ballet must have addled me. “Stefan,” I say. How could he be here? But he is.

“Quiet,” he says, but gestures to me to follow him down the staircase. We are somewhere below the stage.

“I am not Stefan anymore,” he says. “You must call me Nicolai. Nic.”

“What happened? Why are you here?”

“Later,” he says.

I go back in to the wings for the grand finale. The dolls and the toymaker dance together. Spectacular.

“Politics,” Stefan tells me. We are in my room. Christmas morning now. Instead of going to midnight Mass, I stayed at the theater as the stage was transformed into a feast. Tables of food, vodka, and the company eating and drinking and laughing.

“A Russian party is like no other,” Leon said to me. He saw me as a guest of Diaghilev and was not a bit surprised that I know “Nic.”

“Paris,” he said.

I saw Diaghilev point his cane at Massine and touch him on each shoulder.

“Léonide has created this ballet,” Nic said to me. “I think the toymaker is Diaghilev and so does he.”

“Serge probably wishes his dancers were machines,” Leon said.

The party finished at dawn.

And now in my room Stefan and I can finally talk.

“I chose the wrong revolutionary faction,” Stefan says. “The comrades started executing each other. I had to get out.”

“I somehow can’t picture you working with dancers,” I say.

“I presented myself as a masseur. Not bad at it now,” he says.

“But ballet is so, well, aristocratic,” I say.

“Diaghilev uses folktales. He’s discovered how to make money from the stories of our people,” Stefan says.

“Sounds familiar,” I say. “Have you been to the Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc?” I ask him.

“Better not,” he says. “They know Stefan, not Nicolai.”

“But you’ll certainly go to see Madame Simone,” I say.

“I won’t,” he says. “It’s better that I stay with my new life. I have enemies. And we shouldn’t meet again either.”

“But,” I start, but stop. What is with these revolutionaries? Thank God Irish rebels are united.

Diaghilev hates the photographs I bring him three days after Christmas.

“You have made my dancers look like plow horses finishing a furrow. Disgusting.” He tears up the prints.

Doesn’t want anyone to see the reality behind the illusion, I guess. But then Paris itself has become a stage set full of players. Some, like Stefan, turning into someone else because of politics, but others like the returning American veterans are remaking themselves here because they couldn’t stay down on the farm or in a factory or at a desk after they’d seen Paree. And I’m not sure if I’m an actor or merely an audience member. Missing Margaret and Maud. Longing for Peter.

MAY 16, 1920

So, Joan, you’re officially a saint at last. Canonized in Rome today. Congratulations, I say, as I move through the crowd on the place des Pyramids to put my lillies on the pile of flowers in front of the statue of the Maid that so inspired me that first day in Paris. Please bless Maud and Constance and me, I pray, and all women who stand up for themselves. And send some special sign to Sister Mary Agnes. She must be over the moon. Finally got the Pope to see sense. About time. Amen.

SEPTEMBER 1920

Floyd Gibbons is back and his wife with him. He’s written a best-selling book on the Battle of Belleau Wood and has a new job as a radio reporter. Very modern is Floyd. I try to get him to go to Ireland and do a program about the war for independence.

“Boring,” he says, “and dangerous. A bad combination.”

Instead Floyd, his wife, and I go to the Ritz. Olive Thomas, the Flapper herself, is in town with her husband Jimmy Pickford.

“An interview with a movie star always makes the front page,” Floyd says. “We’ll take them out. You’ll take their picture. Have some fun.”

“No thanks,” I say.

“Paris is a party,” his wife tells me. “Don’t be the only one not having a good time.”

“You’re a Kelly from Chicago,” Olive Thomas says to me when we meet. “I’m a Duffy from Pittsburgh.” Beautiful. White Irish skin. Blue eyes.

“Come out with us,” she says after the interview. “Let’s show the French how to have fun.”

And I try. I really do. Drinking champagne, dancing the Charleston with Floyd. And all I really want is to be sitting by the fire in a small cottage in the West of Ireland with Peter.

We say good night to Olive at three in the morning. Two days later she’s dead. Floyd’s story makes the front page in every city. An accidental overdose, he says. Little Olive Duffy from Pittsburgh gone at twenty-six.

Poor girl. Not such a party after all, I think.

23

FEBRUARY 1921

I’m working with Father Kevin in the library, typing up a storm as we try to finish his life’s work.

He’s not exactly on his death bed because Father Kevin won’t lie down, but we both know his heart is failing; his body too frail for his spirit. Over eighty now but in the library every day. He’s writing the conclusion of his book,
Saint Colmcille from Donegal to Iona and the World.

“Colmcille’s Christianity draws from the well of Celtic spirituality. The pun is intended, Nora,” he says. “His insights go beyond mere doctrinal definitions and supersede any denominational divisions.”

He writes, passes me the pages, and I type them. A machine-like rhythm. The new rector’s a Donegal man himself. Not a stick-in-the-mud like the previous fellow. We finish the very day Maud’s letter comes. She wants my help.

I’d given up trying to get permission from the British consulate to go to Ireland. But Maud has a scheme.

“America’s our only hope,” Maud writes me. “John Quinn’s part of a new organization, the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. Thousands and thousands of the most prominent men in America have joined and not only the Irish. Your President Harding’s endorsed the effort and Vice-President Coolidge, too. A delegation is coming over to investigate our ‘distress.’ A soft word for what’s happening here. All Quakers and not an Irish American in the group. John said it’s important not to give the British a chance to claim the committee’s report is biased so no rebels among them. But he’d agreed that they needed photographs. I suggested you. The British can’t keep you out if you’re part of an official delegation. Please come Nora. We need you.”

Need me?

Father Kevin doesn’t want me to go. “Dear God, Nora, these fellows would shoot you as soon as look at you and then apologize later.”

“But Peter,” I say, and he shakes his head.

“It’s been seven years and no word. He would have gotten a message to me. I’m afraid he’s dead, Nora.”

“But what if he’s alive. I have to try to find him.”

I wire Maud that I will come.

Father Kevin dies the next day. Peacefully. Asleep in his chair at the library, his head resting on the pages of his manuscript.

“We’ll get this published somehow,” the rector tells me, but I wonder.

Father Kevin’s body will be sent to Ireland and I will travel with him.

The letter of permission arrives. I can stay in Ireland two weeks, no longer.

So. I stand on the deck with my hand on Father Kevin’s coffin as dawn breaks and I first see the Irish coastline from the boat, a jagged line of rocks and inlets. But as we get closer the wide arms of the harbor open out to me. Ireland. My homeland.

Two silent priests meet the boat. I start to explain that I’m a friend of Father Kevin’s and would like to be at his funeral but the taller of the two shakes his head.

“He’s going back to Donegal to be buried in his home parish with his own people. Only an old aunt left and she’d not be fit for entertaining an American visitor.” And he walks away, taking Father Kevin back, I guess, from his life in Paris. In control. “You never broke his spirit,” I want to shout at the disappearing black back. That’s when Cyril comes hopping toward me. If ever a man looks like a bird. A robin, I’d say, with a small face and a smear of a red beard, it’s Cyril.

“Nora Kelly?” he says. “You must be the American. Follow me.”

He doesn’t even glance at the two British soldiers who lean against the wall of a shed on the pier watching the passengers disembark.

“The others are waiting at the hotel. Where’s your camera gear? I hope it’s not too heavy. I have a dicey back.”

I show him the small case. Grateful for Eddie Steichen and my Seneca.

“All in there?” he says. “Thank God for American ingenuity,”

I suppose it couldn’t but rain in Dublin the day I arrive. Cyril puts me into a taxi. “Here she is,” he says to the driver, and then to me, “One of ours. We can speak freely,” which Cyril does.

He’s taking me to the Gresham Hotel, he says, which is still standing somehow. “Here’s O’Connell Street, still full of rubble.” The rain soaks into piles of gray stones and mounds of bricks. I see holes gouged out of the rows of buildings.

“Those naval guns,” Cyril says. “Brought the ships right up the Liffey. Fired on us. On civilians. Women, children. And these are the same fellows who kept missing the Germans at Jutland kiss-my-foot-how-are-you. Managed to destroy buildings that didn’t move. Bullies. Can you believe a so-called civilized country could do this—blow apart a whole city with the Rising over and no threat to them at all? The second city of the empire they’re always calling Dublin. Well, look at it now. No concern about the innocent. Jesus, the Brits used to be content with killing us by inches, taking the land, raising the rents, starving us after the potato failed. But this? Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph! I didn’t think even they had it in them.”

Cyril’s a member of James Connolly’s Citizen Army, he tells me, but was refused a place in the post office fight during the Rising. He has the taxi stop in front of a large pillared building.

“This is it,” he says, “the General Post Office. See the nicks from the bullets? I wasn’t inside. Said I had no training. But how much practice do you need to have to fire a rifle out a window? About all the military planning there was. I think it was my name. Too English. Pearse didn’t want to call out ‘Cyril Peterson, front and center.’ My mam chose Cyril. A popular enough name on Sherriff Street. My mom loved anything English-sounding. Crazy about Queen Victoria. Called my sister Patricia, not after St. Patrick, but for Victoria’s granddaughter still. Connolly never asked Pearse to call him Séamus. Oh, Jesus, I can’t believe they’re all dead. Why execute them? Haven’t the Irish always had rebels? I know for a fact some in the British government wanted to let the whole Easter business die a natural death. You know women from the Liberties spat on Pearse and the others as they were led out to jail. The British soldiers had to protect them. No stomach for it, most of the Tommies hadn’t. Plenty of lads from Sherriff Street in the British army. A good few killed at the Front. So I ask you! Hands off and the whole thing’s over.”

The taxi crosses O’Connell Street and stops in front of the hotel. Cyril keeps talking.

“Total British overreaction, for which I say, thank God. Wouldn’t have the eyes of the world on us and you lads over here to help us, the exiles return. Sure, Nora, aren’t you only gone a little while. Sent away to Amerikay prosper. I’d say some Divine plan. Only way to make sense of it all. The Great Starvation scattered our people so they could find strength in other places and come back and fight with us.”

He sings:

“Some have come from the land beyond the wave;

Sworn to be brave, no more the ancient sire land,

will shelter the despot or the slave.”

“But we’re in it now,” Cyril says. “A real war for independence. Those unionists will be wishing they took Home Rule before this is all over. The Republic of Ireland has a great ring to it. Wouldn’t you say?”

He takes a breath. We get out of the taxi. A uniformed doorman reaches for my bag. Cyril waves him away.

“And now that you’re here, missus, you’ll be seeing some horrible scenes,” Cyril says as we walk in the hotel’s lobby. “Though not in here.”

Impressive, the Gresham. Gold with white plaster molding and chandeliers.

Tables scattered across the wide space. Plenty of people. I get an impression of tweed and silver teapots and racks of toast. Now, toast is something I’ve missed in Paris.

“Breakfast and a sleep,” Cyril says.

“Please,” I say.

“But first meet the committee.”

Five serious men sipping their tea, not unlike the silent priests who took Father Kevin away. I meet Mr. Jenson, the chairman, and nod to the others. Not much chat in any of them. Though Cyril fills in the gaps. I’m in Ireland, I think, really here. But Dublin doesn’t seem that different from any city, only sadder. Is this the place Granny Honora and my mother pined for their whole lives?

I sleep the rest of the day.

That night Cyril invites us to his mother’s house. The others are too tired from their crossing to go with us. But I’m delighted. The Petersons live in two rooms in a row house. The brick flats might have once been red, but layers of grime have turned them dark brown, Cyril’s mother brings me close to the small coal fire. Smiling.

“A cup of tea and these lovely Jacob’s biscuits. Cyril got a whole load for me. Enough for years, take plenty.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Have another.”

“No, really.”

“You will, of course.”

I didn’t want to take the poor woman’s cookies because that’s what they are, flat sugar cookies with no sugar. I look at Cyril. “Go ahead,” he says. “The fellows holding Jacob’s biscuit factory passed out a load of biscuits before they surrendered. Lasted all these years.” He turns to his mother. “Now, Mam,” he says. “Nora came all the way from America to help us out.”

“Very good of you, dear. And doesn’t Ireland need it! Though we’re better off than most. Cyril’s father made a good living as a docker. But the consumption took him young and then we were for it. But I got myself work helping at a stall on Moore Street selling odd bits of stuff. Got to be a fair hand at talking to the customers.”