Of Irish Blood (60 page)

“A great one for the repartee you were, Mam, and still are.”

“Ah, now I’ve lost my snap,” she says

“Indeed, you have not, Mam.” And he leans over and pats her shoulder. They have the same profile: small bent noses, sharp little chins. Mother bird and her baby.

Above their heads a small candle burns in front of a print of the Sacred Heart. It’s very like the shrine in Granny Honora’s bedroom.

“Mam’s a singer too, Nora,” Cyril is saying. “Give us a few belts, Mam.”

“I couldn’t Cyril. Throat’s all closed up and scratchy.”

“Here now, I have something for that.” He brings out a flask.

“Jesus Christ, Cyril, where did you get something like that? It’s pure silver,” she says.

“A donation, Mam, to the Cause from a fellow who won’t be needing it. Have some. It’s good
poitín
. I got it off a priest in the country so you know it’s pure.” He takes a sip and passes it to me. “Go on, Nora.” I tilt the flask back, feel a rush of heat, and start coughing.

“See, Mam? Clears the passages.”

Water comes out of my eyes. Now, I’ve drunk some whiskey in my time. McKenna’s served a Sunday afternoon ladies’ special, but this is beyond potent.

“Don’t,” I say as he hands the flask to his mother. Could this old lady survive even a sip?

“Thank you, son,” she says, and takes the flask with both hands, tips it back. After a long swallow she hands the flask back to Cyril. Not a bother on her.

“Very nice Cyril. Thank you.”

“Now your party piece, Mam.”

“One more wee sip,” she says, taking back the flask. “All right. I have it now.” And she begins to sing.

“‘Believe me if all these endearing young charms that I gaze on so fondly today…’”

A clear voice, without a croak or crack. She finishes the song and smiles at us.

In that small warm room I forget all about the sad Dublin ruins around me. “Your father’s favorite,” Cyril’s mother says. “And his charms never did fade. Young forever. Not a bad thing, I suppose. Not a bad thing at all.”

*   *   *

“You can’t judge Dublin on a dreary February day, Nora, with the British army patrolling the streets and the wind turning umbrellas inside out!” Maud says to me the next afternoon.

I’m following her to the town house she has just bought off St. Stephen’s Green, a park that might be lovely if I could see it through the veil of rain.

“Stephen’s Green?” I say. “Weren’t characters in Joyce’s book always walking back and forth across this space?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Joyce makes Dublin so ugly, so squalid. Those were exciting times, Nora. The men suffering in prison today were young university students full of ideas and nobility. James Joyce’s Dublin isn’t mine.”

A striking figure, Maud, dressed all in black with the black veil hanging from her hat that says, “I am a 1916 widow and let no one forget it.” The others on the committee refer to her as Madame MacBride and she has become that. She came to lunch at the Gresham and impressed the committee. Still could focus a man’s attention could Maud.

“You will see the destruction for yourselves,” she said.

“You realize we are impartial observers,” Mr. Jenson answered. “There must be not a repeat of the unfortunate demonstrations that happened when Edward Dunne and his group came to Ireland.”

“Not so unfortunate,” Maud said. “The Irish people welcomed their support.” She’d turned to me and said, “Nora can you spare me the afternoon, then dinner?”

Jenson was not pleased but Maud promised she’d host a dinner for all of them on their return.

“But Nora and I need time for a good visit,” she said, and led me out of the hotel.

Now she points at a cluster of buildings.

“That’s University College Dublin where Joyce and Frank Skeffington studied. Frank was shot dead by that criminal Bowen-Colthurst. Seán is supposed to be there now,” Maud says. “But the university’s mostly empty. Our young men in prison or on the run.”

“Come,” she says, and leads me down some steps into an oddly shaped church and then up to a bank of vigil lights. She puts a penny into the slot of the metal box attached to an ornate stand holding lines of small candles. Maud reaches under, brings out two candles, and shoves them onto the empty spikes. Practiced in this, I think. She lights one candle and hands me the taper. I light the other.

I’m back in St. Bridget’s with Granny Honora. We would light candles together—one for each of her children and their families. Me, only small, would say, “Let’s light one for every single one in the family.” Thinking of the blaze forty-plus candles would make. But she’d say, “No, God sees the lights and knows the prayers in our hearts.”

As the flame catches, I stare at the golden tabernacle. The prayer that comes to me is “Please.” Please let Peter Keeley be safe. Please protect all these Irish people. Let us do a good job. And I light three more candles.

Maud smiles at me. “So many to pray for,” Maud says. “Living and dead. I always think of Kevin Barry as I stand, where he heard Mass. A student at the university, Nora. Only eighteen. He was captured in a battle against an army patrol. Tortured. Then hanged. No real trial. A military court that didn’t even pretend to follow legal procedure. Thousands in front of Mountjoy Prison praying for him as he died. ‘Just a lad of eighteen summers,’ a song about him now. A hero. So inspiring.”

Better if he were still kneeling here, I think, alive and studying. But Maud clasps my hand. “It’s martyrs like him that will save us. More than fifty students joined the armed struggle after Kevin Barry’s death.” She makes a very dramatic sign of the cross.

Why are converts always so much more religious than Catholics themselves?

“Cardinal Newman himself was the founding rector of this college, you know, and Hopkins was here. Gerard Manley Hopkins, the poet. He hated Dublin, couldn’t bear the weather,” Maud says as we leave the church.

I feel a certain kinship with Hopkins as we make our way across the rainy square but then we enter her town house. Something of rue de l’Annonciation here.

We drink sherry from Waterford glasses in Maud’s drawing room. A wood fire burns in her marble hearth. The velvet drapes I remember from Paris keep out drafts and muffle the noise of rain hitting the windows. We eat thick pieces of brown bread with plenty of butter.

Maud tells me she’s been touring the country with Charlotte Despard, an English woman and suffragist, who’s living with her. When Mrs. Despard joins us, she does seem very English in her tweed skirt and jacket, though right away she tells me that her father was born in Roscommon. “Frenchpark,” she says. “My spiritual home. Spent happy days there as a child.” Another one. She asks where am I from.

“Chicago,” I say, “though Galway originally,” adding that now that I’m on my home ground.

Mrs. Despard’s incensed about the prisons she and Maud visited.

“Horrible conditions. Twenty-five men in one hut in the camp in the Curragh. No heat. They ship men off to English prisons to disguise the torture.”

“Or shove them into a lunatic asylum,” Maud says. “I’ve been trying to help Patrick Hart’s mother. He broke down completely in the Broadmoor asylum. So did that poor Barnett. They told him he’d betrayed a friend. A lie. But he went completely mad.”

She sighs. “Who wouldn’t be driven crazy sitting in a cell watching your friends led out to be hanged on the word of some drunken shell-shocked soldier.”

“Terrible,” Mrs. Despard says. “Now, Nora, you must realize the British are a decent people but they’re blinded by, well I have to say it, hatred of the Irish and a romantic notion about the British forces. Even my brother, John—”

“Sir John French,” Maud interrupts, “head of the army during the first two years of the war. Made a mess of it. And then came to Ireland.”

“None of the generals were much good,” Charlotte says. “Blood on all their hands. And no lessons learned. Johnny thinks all Sinn Féiners are murderers—put Ireland under martial law. Even wanted to drop bombs on the countryside. Convinced ordinary Irish people don’t want independence. It’s that awful Wilson. Always whispering into Johnny’s ear. More troops. Grind the rebels into the dust. Bomb them. Strafe them. Violence begetting violence. The British forces gone berserk. Johnny told them no man would be punished for shooting a rebel. License to kill.”

Maud gets up, pokes at the fire, refills my sherry glass. I feel as if we’re back in Paris during the war, which, it seems, will never end.

“Well, at least our committee can publicize the situation,” I say. “The American people are ready to help. There are groups in every state raising money. Millions of dollars already collected and President Harding’s honorary chairman.”

“Your president should speak to the prime minister. You Americans don’t realize how afraid the British are of losing your favor. The Sassenach hide their need so well, your lot doesn’t even know your own power,” Maud says. Declaiming.

“Do you have to shout, Maman? I heard you all the way upstairs.” Iseult. That same flower face, long wavy hair but changed, changed utterly. Pregnant. A solid swelling visible under her dressing gown.

“
Bonsoir,
Nora,” she says to me. I walk over and hug her. She smells of cigarettes.

“Good to see you,” I say. “And, well, congratulations.”

She nods and puts her hand on her stomach. “Thank you—I’m Mrs. Harry Francis Stuart now. But Francis, my husband, is off with Seán and the rest. Poor baby. A hard world to be born into,” she says.

“Not for long, Isuelt. We will defeat them and your child will grow up in a free Ireland!” Maud says.

Well, with one thing and another it’s quite late before I think of starting back to the hotel. We’d eaten a meal
à la Normandie
, prepared by Josephine Pillon, who followed the family to Dublin. Barry joined us too, of course, along with a representative number of animals: the dog Dagda, a few birds, and a monkey. The house on St. Stephen’s Green’s very much Maud’s space I think as we talked about Father Kevin.

Maud told stories of her first trip to Donegal, how Father Kevin had been her guide and with her when she handed over a diamond necklace given by one of her admirers to a tenant to pay his rent.

“After we left, some gombeen man offered to buy the necklace from the farmer for the exact amount of overdue rent. Poor man turned it over. The true value would have paid his rent for life.”

“Oh, Maud,” I finally say. “It’s nearly ten. I’d better go.”

“You’ll have to stay here, Nora,” Maud says.

“Thank you, but I need to get back,” I say. “The committee will be looking for me. We’re making an early start for Galway.”

Galway. Even saying the word brings back Granny Honora. I can hear my uncle Mike singing to her. “‘Tried and true I’ll fly to you, my own dear Galway Bay.’”

Barry speaks up. “But Nora, you can’t. The curfew.”

“No one’s allowed on the street after nine p.m. The army patrols arrest anyone out,” Maud says.

“But surely not me. An American? Part of an official delegation and…”

Charlote Despard, Barry, and Maud all talk at the same time and then stop.

“Listen, Nora,” Maud says, “you must not give the British any excuse to arrest you. You’re a target. I am, too. I was jailed. My son hunted. Your being an American and an official will not protect you. And they know, Nora. Don’t think they don’t,” Maud says.

“Know what?”

“Oh, Nora,” Barry says. “About your connection with Peter Keeley.”

“Peter. You have news? Why didn’t you tell me? Where is he?” I say to Maud.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Is he alive?” The question I don’t want to put into words.

“He was six months ago. The Tans raided his home place near Carna. Burned it to the ground but they didn’t find him. His brother’s family were turned out,” Maud says.

“Famine times are coming again,” Barry says. “More than a hundred thousand people burned out of their homes.”

“So where’s Peter?” I say.

“He could be hiding in the mountains or have gotten himself on a ship and away. Connemara people don’t talk,” Maud says. “A hard core inside of them, like their mountains.”

Barry looks at me.

“Those mountains were taller than the Alps once. Worn down until only the core is left. So ancient. Like the people.” Barry half closes her eyes.

Oh God, she’s going to recite one of her poems. I’ll never get any information.

“Cyril will know the right people to ask in Connemara,” Maud says, “But be careful.”

“Ná habair tada,”
Barry says.

“Ná habair tada,”
I repeat. “‘Whatever you say, say nothing.’”

The women nod.

A nation of conspirators and now I’m one. Can’t find out the most basic facts. Not even whether Peter’s alive or dead.

Barry finds a bed for me in an attic room and gives me one of her flannel nightgowns. Thank God. Freezing in this little room. I turn back the quilt and feel the sheet. Cold. Maud comes in carrying a hot water bottle.

“Here, this will help,” she says.

She puts it between the sheets.

Maud wears a heavy silk kimono, Oriental-looking with flowers and dragons on it. Her hair’s loose. A black shawl around her. She hands a blanket to me.

“Get into bed. Put this around you.”

I do as she says and there is a promise of heat under the covers.

“How do you think Iseult looks?” Maud says.

“Aside from the obvious?” I say. “She must be due soon.”

“In a month,” Maud says. “She’s much too thin. Her face is all pinched.”

I nod. “A hard pregnancy?”

“A brutal husband. He actually tortures her, deprives her of food. He burned her dresses as a punishment. And he’s a just a young fellow, not even twenty, but spoiled by an indulgent mother. They’re Northern Presbyterians. He became a Catholic to marry Iseult and calls himself a republican. But in his heart he’s a cruel English boarding-school boy. He struck her while they were here. He’s a lunatic. You know in those schools the older boys torture the younger ones, who turn around and torture the next younger. A horrible survival-of-the-fittest culture. I knew enough of them, let me tell you. Yet Iseult says she loves him. He refuses to support her. She won’t insist on a settlement. It’s the curse of the Gonnes.”