Irish Whiskey

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Won’t they perish with the thirst?”

  “Some of them have been known to lace their Cokes with the contents of an airline miniature.”

  “Aren’t they the clever ones?”

  Nuala knew all about American football and about Notre Dame. Weren’t the home games carried live on Irish TV from the NBC satellite channel? And wasn’t there a summary of the NFL games on RTE every Monday? She had obviously studied the Chicago sports pages for the previous week because she knew about the players and the problems and the relative strengths of the Fighting Black Baptists and the hated Longhorns. In fact, she knew more about these matters than I did.

  “You’re not reading the sports pages like you should, Dermot Michael and yourself with nothing important on your mind.”

  “I begin to read them and then I’m distracted by images of myself on top of a beautiful and totally naked woman.”

  “Are you now? Sure, why wouldn’t herself be on top of you?”

  “Fair play to you, Nuala Anne, but either way it would be distracting.”

  She hugged me. “I’m the lucky one because I never have such daydreams at all, at all.”

  She reveled in the festival atmosphere of Notre Dame on a brisk early-autumn afternoon with lazy clouds drifting aimlessly across the light blue sky—the excitement of the students, the pride of parents visiting their son or daughter, the nostalgia of the alumni marveling at how everyone else in the class had changed, the sound of the band practicing, the glow on the Golden Dome, the hint of autumn colors on the campus foliage, lovers of every age holding hands as they wandered about the campus.

  “Sure, isn’t it all grand, Dermot?”

  “Woman, tis.”

  “Almost as grand as the All Ireland finals in Croak Park.”

  That put me in my place.

  She reveled in the N.D. autumn rituals more than I did. I had never been happy at the school and didn’t much care whether the team lost or won. My classmates whom I encountered were mostly overweight and unmarried and considered my upcoming marriage, even to one as lovely as Nuala, to be a betrayal of the bachelor class.

  Still even someone as cynical as I am on the subject of the Golden Dome cannot remain immune to the excitement of a Saturday football afternoon on the outskirts of South Bend. It is, I suppose, a festival of life and a renewal of life. It matters terribly that the “Irish” win and it really doesn’t matter at all. At all.

  “Isn’t it a grand university altogether?” she asked me as we walked out of the Sacred Heart Chapel.

  “It’s lovely this time of the year, Nuala, but from November 1 to early May all the greenery vanishes, the snow falls, the wind blows, and you think winter will never end.”

  “But the education is good, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a fine undergraduate college,” I admitted, “and it’s on its way at long last to becoming a great university.”

  “But didn’t you leave it?”

  “Woman, I did not. They threw me out because I had this bad habit of failing me courses, mostly because I didn’t study.”

  “And why didn’t you study?”

  “I’d get interested in something else. Like in my European history class, I got interested in Napoleon and read twenty-five books on him. There were no questions about him on the final exam, so I earned meself an F.”

  “That means failure?”

  “It does.”

  She pondered my bad habit for a moment.

  “You were mourning for the girl, too, poor child that she was.”

  “Yeah … Still I guess I’m not the classroom type.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you educate yourself, which you certainly have!”

  I have been absolved and given a plenary indulgence besides.

  “That’s what I kept telling myself.”

  “And wasn’t it fair play to you, Dermot, when you told yourself that?”

  Then the bad penny appeared in the person of Father McAteer, my hall rector during my last semester. As a young priest, he had hung out with the Berrigan brothers for a while, and pictured himself a social radical. In fact he was an authoritarian and couldn’t help himself.

  “Well, Dermot,” he said brusquely, “I hardly expected you to appear for your class’s reunion.”

  His lean and ascetic face and his grizzled gray hair suggested hard-won wisdom. In fact, he was, not to put too fine an edge on things, an asshole. The Berrigan image required khaki slacks, a sweatshirt and a gray windbreaker. In fact, he was an incurable clericalist.

  I introduced Nuala to him as my fiancée.

  “You a St. Mary’s girl?” he asked.

  In his world “Smick Chicks” were less than human.

  “T.C.D.” she replied.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that hall.”

  “Trinity College, Dublin, Father,” I explained.

  “Well, I hope you at least graduated, unlike some people I know.”

  The familiar thunderhead began to gather on her forehead. Careful, Father, it’s Queen Maeve you’re offending.

  He turned to me, “Well, I hear you published a novel, Dermot.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “I haven’t read it and won’t. There is too much injustice in the world for me to waste my time on trash. From what intelligent critics here at the university say, I’m sure it will be very successful. You will be a novelist who is Catholic, Dermot. That’s more than any of us would have expected, though not much more. But you’ll never be a Catholic novelist. You’ll make a lot of money, but you’ll never be a Graham Greene.”

  Duck. She looks like a sweet young Catholic woman, but …

  “Wouldn’t you know that a gobshite of a priest would speak such nonsense? He’ll never be a James Joyce or a Seamus Heaney either, but why does he have to be? Isn’t it enough that he’s a Dermot Michael Coyne who went to your university? Shouldn’t you be proud of him for producing a novel when all his classmates are producing nothing more than beer bellies? If you weren’t such an asshole, Father, wouldn’t you be encouraging him instead of putting him down? Isn’t that what you priests do all the time? Don’t you try to destroy anyone who is a little different?”

  Father McAteer gulped once and then turned on his heel and strode away. He knew better than to try to match words with Grace O’Malley.

  “Did I embarrass you something awful, Dermot Michael?” she asked as the priest disappeared around the corner of the university book store.

  “Woman, you delighted me … I didn’t know you were such an anticlerical.”

  “He’s just like some of the priests back home … Back in my other home.”

  “Oh.”

  “But,” she said, cooling off, “aren’t there wonderful priests in America like his rivrence and the little bishop and your uncle and your man in crimson?”

  “Every profession has its assholes, Nuala Anne.”

  “Tis true, but some priests enjoy being assholes.”

  After our stroll through campus, we joined the tailgate party of the Grand Beach crowd. A man who had yet to meet Nuala asked her if she were truly Irish. She responded by singing a rowdy and probably bawdy (though indirectly so) song in Irish. That opened the floodgates of song. She sang all through the lunch, returning frequently to a tune that proclaimed “Whiskey, you’re the divil, drunk or sober!”

  During the game it turned out that she knew not only the “Victory March” in all its stanzas but even the “Alma Mater,” which almost no one knows.

  “Isn’t it grand, Dermot?” she said at least a thousand times.

  “Brilliant, Nuala,” I would reply.

  I asked her during the revelries at the tailgate party if there was a Golden Dome behind the Golden Dome.

  “Sure,” she said, a mischievous twinkle in her deep blue eyes. “Why wouldn’t there be?”

  “And angels on the edge?”

  “Who else, and this a university in honor of their queen?”


  She was having me on.

  Wasn’t she?

  Just as the tailgate party was winding down for a recess during the game, a TV reporter and camera-person appeared in our midst. I became aware of their presence when the reporter, a tiny young woman with a pinched face, shoved a mike into my face.

  “How are you able to enjoy the game, Dermot, with what’s hanging over you?”

  Our friends drew back sullenly. The dark, warning frown appeared again on Nuala’s face.

  “All that’s hanging over me,” I said easily, “is my wedding week after next and that prospect makes the game even more enjoyable.”

  “But you’re going to be indicted next week.”

  “That’s news to me.”

  “Haven’t you been subpoenaed by the Full Platter grand jury?”

  “I believe I have.”

  “Doesn’t that mean you’ll be indicted?”

  “I have no worries about any of those matters.”

  Lie, but, oh, so plausibly spoken.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be in jail for the first Notre Dame home game next year?”

  “Those who should worry about that are those who have conspired to bring false charges against me and those who report about these charges without due diligence.”

  Cheers from the tailgate party, even from Cindy, who had just arrived and who in more prudent moments might have thought I had gone too far.

  The reporter did not give up easily.

  “Isn’t it unfair, Dermot, to expect a woman to marry you with a jail term hanging over your head?”

  Then a woman’s voice began to sing,

  “Whiskey, you’re the divil, ye’re leading me astray;

  Over hills and mountains and to a brighter day;

  Ye’re sweeter, stronger, spunkier;

  Ye’re lovelier than tay;

  Oh, whiskey ye’re me darling; drunk or sober.

  “Oh, now brave boys were off to town;

  We’re off to Portugal and Spain;

  The drums are beatin’; banners’re flying;

  The divil will take you home one night.

  “Lord, fare thee well.

  With me titlle-de-idum dum-dah,

  Me tittle-de-idum dum-doo-lay;

  Me, right foot, toor-ah-laree,

  Oh, there’s whiskey in the jar.

  “Said the mother to me boldy;

  ‘Don’t take me daughter from me;

  For eff you do, I will torment you;

  And after death me ghost’ll haint you.’

  “‘Lord, fare thee well.

  With me tittle-de-idum-dum-dah,

  Me tittle-de-idum dum doo lay;

  Me, right foot toor-ah-laree,

  Oh, there’s whiskey in the jar!’

  “Whiskey, you’re the divil, ye’re leading me astray;

  Over hills and mountains and to a brighter day;

  Ye’re sweeter, stronger, spunkier;

  Ye’re lovelier than tay;

  Oh, whiskey ye’re me darling; drunk or sober.”

  “Can’t you make them stop singing during my interview?” the newsperson pleaded.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Enjoy the game,” I said to her and turned my back on her.

  She and her cameraman gave up and drifted away. The singers, proud of themselves, applauded their own efforts.

  Cindy rushed over and hugged me.

  “Great, Dermot! That will scare them tonight.”

  “Are they scared?”

  “Scared stiff, just like the media lawyers. I hear they’re really working over your good friend Jarry Kennedy to make sure he’s on the level with them.”

  Points for our side.

  “Jarry is such a sociopath that by now he probably thinks he is.”

  “Aren’t you proud of my bro?” Cindy asked the mistress of song.

  “Sure, isn’t he me darlin’ man?”

  “Did you put a curse on her, Nuala?” I asked as we struggled towards our seats in the stadium.

  “Och, I’d never do that, would I now, Dermot? … Sure, I might scare her a little bit by pretending. I’m pretty good at pretending.”

  Tell me about it.

  “She has to do her job,” I said piously.

  “I’m tired of hearing that,” Cindy snapped. “It’s a miserable job.”

  “Like taking shit from one latrine to another,” Nuala agreed.

  I found myself wishing during the game that Cindy wasn’t enjoying the legal battle quite as much as she was.

  The “Irish” routed the hated Longhorns and thus the timeless faith of the Church of Rome was preserved for another autumn week.

  Nuala lived every minute of the game just like she lived every minute of a “fillum.” She cheered, she shouted, she groaned, she protested decisions of the officials, she booed the hapless Longhorns, she demanded touchdowns and defense, she led the crowd around us (who were charmed by her energy) in singing both the fight song and the “Alma Mater.” Well, she sang the latter all by herself.

  “You are going to marry her, aren’t you, young man?” the woman next to me whispered in my ear.

  “In thirteen days,” I replied.

  “Lucky you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  My future bride was exhausted after the game.

  “Sure, wasn’t that a terrible workout?”

  “You certainly threw yourself into the game, Nuala.”

  “Well, don’t you have to? Otherwise, the team won’t win.”

  Of course.

  After the postgame tailgate party we drove back to Grand Beach to swim in the heated pool at my parents’ home, a recuperation which herself had insisted was essential.

  “Sure, Dermot, won’t we have to swim off all the drink taken during the game?”

  Her “drink taken” was exactly two beers, one more than I had consumed.

  Cindy and Joe were driving straight home to Oak Brook and their children. We would have the pool and the house to ourselves.

  “Now don’t you be getting any ideas, Dermot Michael Coyne.”

  “I’ll get plenty of ideas, but I won’t act on them.”

  “Sure,” she said, holding on to my arm, “aren’t you the good and kind man?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “All the time.”

  The pool is enclosed by a fence (lest we be sued for presenting to the public an attractive nuisance) so Nuala and I reveled in the fantasy that we were all alone in the world.

  We turned on the hot tub and jumped into the pool, which was still heated and would be till Columbus Day, which Prester George insisted was the true end of summer.

  After a vigorous swim we huddled in robes on the edge of the pool and finished the sandwiches Nuala had made for us, Irish sandwiches with thin slices of meat and crusts trimmed off.

  “Now for the hot tub and another swim,” she announced.

  “Woman, you’ll be the death of me!”

  “I doubt it!”

  She tossed aside the top of her bikini as we climbed into the hot tub.

  “Won’t I pretend that we’re on the French Riviera?” she informed me.

  “You’ve never been to the French Riviera,” I reminded her.

  “Haven’t I seen pictures?”

  “I have been there, Nuala Anne. No woman on the Riviera is as beautiful as you are.”

  “Go long wid ya, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she said as she snuggled close to me. “Sure, didn’t you swallow the stone at Blarney Castle?”

  She gripped my hair and pulled my face down to her breasts. The idea, I gathered, was that I should kiss them. So I did, at great and tender length. She sighed contentedly and often.

  “Didn’t I start imagining this the day after I met you at O’Neill’s pub?”

  “It took you that long?”

  “I never thought it would happen.”

  “And yourself thinking about it at Mass.”


  She pulled up my head so she could examine my face.

  “How did you know that?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s fey?”

  “I’m not fey?” she said, drawing my lips back to her breast, “I just know a few things now and then.”

  “Do you now?”

  “I do.”

  She released my head and buried her own against my chest.

  “Promise me that you’ll always do that to me, Dermot.”

  Now I knew one fantasy anyway.

  “All night?” I said.

  “You know I don’t mean that. I mean all our life together, even when I’m old and you’re tired of me.”

  “Is your da tired of your ma?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then why should I ever be tired of you?”

  “Me ma is a sweet and wonderful woman. I’m not.”

  “You are, too.”

  “She doesn’t have a big mouth like I do.”

  “I bet she does, too.”

  Nuala giggled.

  “Well sometimes … Isn’t it a terrible mystery, Dermot?”

  “Tis,” I agreed, not having any idea what I was agreeing to.

  “We think we’re in love with each other and always will be. Doesn’t everyone think that when they’re about to get married? And yet so many divorces in this country and now in Ireland, too, with divorce being legal.”

  “Almost half here.”

  “All of those couples,” she continued, “said ‘until death do us part’ and meant it.”

  “If you try to run away on me,” I warned her, “I’ll drag you back by your long black hair.”

  “Don’t let me ever run away, Dermot Michael. If I look like I’m going to do that, the reason will be that I’m frightened.”

  A strange conversation, I said to myself. What odd mood had taken possession of my adopted Golden Domer?

  As the sun slipped away in the west and coated us with a sheen of gold, I tried to respond.

  “It won’t happen, Nuala Anne.”

  “I know that, Dermot Michael. It’s just like worrying that Notre Dame might lose. Don’t you have to worry so that they won’t lose?”

  I did not understand the logic, but I had heard it often enough. Irish women are genetically programmed to engage in such hedges.