Irish Tweed

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Mike Casey was silent.

  “From the beginning, Dermot, this situation has not smelled right to me. I don’t quite know what to do.”

  “I’ve told my brother that when it starts to burn we have to put out the fire immediately.”

  “Tell him and Blackie I agree completely.”

  I did not add that I feared that my wife and daughter would be at the center of the explosion. They were the focus of the envy and the resentment which was corroding the parish and its school. No woman had the right to all the talent Nuala Anne possessed, and no tween should have such poise. Why not hate them?

  As I drove downtown to pick up young Finnbar Burke, my other voice, quiet for sometime, intervened to offer his opinion.

  That place is a loony bin. If you weren’t afraid of running away, you’d get your children out of there now.

  The kids want to stick it out. Herself thinks that it’s our parish and we ought to defend it.

  I thought you were the head of the family.

  Whatever gave you that idea?

  Finnbar Burke was waiting for me in front of an old hotel just off the Magnificent Mile, which was being rehabbed as a boutique hotel for business travelers. He was wearing a dark green tweed hat, a buttoned tweed vest, and a white shirt. Both his vest and his tweed cap informed the world in gold letters reminiscent of the Book of Kells that he was a member of OLD HEAD LINKS/KINSALE/IRELAND. He was carrying the biggest set of golf clubs I had ever seen, also in a dark green bag with the Old Head logo.

  “Kinsale, is it?” I said, having learned from me wife how to express irony.

  “And a vintage Benz,” he replied. “Cool!”

  I opened the trunk with a key, so old was the car.

  “Not vintage, just old. I’ve had it longer than I’ve had me wife. She drives that red Lincoln Navigator parked in front of our house. She feels it makes a statement. I have to hide this in the alley. She wants to replace it with a Lexus, which means she’ll have two cars and I won’t have any.”

  He sighed the approved Kinsale sigh. “ ’Tis the way of it . . . You don’t carry many clubs, do you now, Dermot?”

  “I always have a hard time deciding between a three iron and a five iron. Since we’re playing Ridgemoor, I’m bringing me five.”

  A driver, three irons, and a putter—more than enough for a golfer who knows his way around a course. Me wife claims I’m showing off.

  Which you are.

  “One of the great old Chicago courses,” my guest informed me as we pulled away from the hotel. “It will be an honor to play it and itself inside the city limits.”

  Be careful, kid. Isn’t your man a great one for gamesmanship?

  “This is one of the hotels your firm is redoing, isn’t it?”

  “Slowly and carefully, Dermot. We bought it when the market was at bottom for such places. We’re working on it now that the contractors are looking for something to do, and we’ll open it when the business travel increases again and men and women will be looking for a comfortable, elegant hotel which is not run like a reform school.”

  “Low risk?”

  “As low as we can make it. You see, our tradition back home, and now here, is to save things that should be saved—homes, hotels, even neighborhoods. We found that you can always make an honest profit that way, so long as you’re quiet about what you’re doing. We’re astonished at how you Yanks let wonderful neighborhoods disappear.”

  “Some make it because, like ours, they luck out, mostly because of transportation.”

  “Yet others, like your old westside, had wonderful transportation and it disappeared almost overnight.”

  “Racial fear and corrupt real estate.”

  “And isn’t there tension in your neighborhood between the new folks and the old folks?”

  “Stirred up by the church?”

  “We’d stay out of that neighborhood.”

  “A wise decision, though there’s some old homes a block north that deserve to be saved.”

  “Not till you get rid of the amadons at the parish.”

  The kid was too smart by half.

  “Me Julia tells me that you and herself can beat the amadons.”

  “We don’t lose many times,” I agreed.

  “She wants me to buy one of those old homes so we can raise our kids in the parish. I tell her that sometimes the survival of a community is a damn fine thing, as the Duke of Wellington said.”

  Finnbar Burke was a very shrewd young man. He wanted to know how far we’d go for himself and his possible bride.

  Pretty far, but now was not the time.

  “We’ll drive out on Chicago Avenue to Ridgeland, which becomes Narragansett when it crosses North Avenue. Isn’t the course named after the third ridge of sand dunes that survived from the last ice age, the first being Clark Street, where you need a microscope to see the ridge. The second is the Vincennes Trail out in Beverly, and the third is Ridgeland. The course was built for rich commodity brokers who have every afternoon off and figure they can get on the first tee by one thirty. Rich Protestants, now rich Irish Catholics . . . You let one in and the first thing you know the whole neighborhood is gone.”

  “And yourself one of those brokers?”

  “Retired,” I said sharply. “I made a lot of money one day because of a mistake. I now take the occasional position, but only when others wiser than me are taking it.”

  Like your wife.

  “Ridgemoor is your official golf course?”

  I had to think about that.

  “Butterfield probably is, though we belong to Oak Park River Forest too, my family that is. My handicap is three at each of them. I got a four at Polerama this summer.”

  “I do about the same at home,” Finnbar Burke said cautiously. “Maybe we should play each other even, and yourself with only five clubs.”

  “I should give you three strokes because you’re new to the course.”

  “That wouldn’t be proper at all, at all, would it now and yourself paying the green fees.”

  Finnbar Burke was testing me to see if he could properly pull my leg, which is fair enough between two sons of Erin.

  “Well, you wouldn’t expect me to pay them when I come down to Old Head from Polerama next summer?”

  “Would you ever do that? It would be grand craic altogether and ourselves preparing for the World Irish Open?”

  “I’d bring me wife along—you do let women play at Old Head, don’t you now?”

  He threw up his arms in dismay.

  “How can we keep them out! The Brits and the Scots don’t think we’ll pull it off, but the prizes will be big, and isn’t your man playing with us the year after next?”

  “He’s played the Old Head and yourself in the foursome?”

  A stab in the dark.

  “And didn’t he beat the living shite out of me? A nice man, mind you, but not the world’s greatest conversationalist, save you’re talking about his golf game.”

  So Finnbar’s family were among the movers and shakers in County Cork and the low-key imagement was probably part of the family’s business style, membership in the Old Head by way of being an exception. They made money by saving whatever was worth saving and could be saved with a nice profit margin. The firm would be run by a tight family management with the shrewd oversight of a butcher shop or a bakery.

  Finnbar was duly impressed with the old elegance of the clubhouse (a little less old than it pretended to be) and the easy style of the staff.

  “And, sure we don’t have this kind of autumn colors back home.” He marveled at the late September symphony of leaves which was also carefully orchestrated by the staff. At Ridgemoor nothing was left to chance, especially the courtesy for the young man in the funny clothes who was the guest of Dermot Coyne who was also a nice young man—and always would be—with the world-famous wife.

  “They have the same atmosphere here we want to cultivate in our boutique hotels,” he whispered to me, “and it�
��s meself who doesn’t like that dogleg on the first hole—long par four is it now?”

  “Long par five, actually, Finnbar. We try to separate the men from the boys here at the top of day.”

  “I may want some of those strokes I rejected.”

  The twosome which would play after us appeared while we were teeing up on the first hole. Both were traders a little older than me and hence respected the Dermot Coyne legend more than it might have merited. They were friendly to my little guest with the odd clothes and the almost unintelligible Cork brogue.

  “Rusty,” I said, “this is my friend Finnbar Burke from Cork City.”

  I didn’t know Rusty’s last name and I had no idea who the other fella was. You learn to be a good faker if you’re married to an Irish wife.

  They shook hands and watched with some amusements as he drew a four wood.

  Finnbar was a no-nonsense golfer. He glanced down the fairway, shoved the tee into the ground, addressed the ball briskly, and then, without any fooling around, bashed it towards the green. I was impressed with his first shot, which stopped about two hundred and fifty yards from the tee, right at the bend of the dogleg.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. The kid was good, very good indeed, but not quite good enough to take Nuala Anne McGrail’s aging young man. I drove over the trees, taking the short cut towards the green, and landed almost a hundred yards closer to the green.

  “Brigid, Patrick, and Colmcille, aren’t you a desperate man, Dermot Coyne, and meself wanting all of them three strokes you were after wanting to give me.”

  “Be careful, Finnbar Burke,” one of my friends told him. “We say around here that Dermot Coyne is a charming young man, lots of fun and all that, but never play golf with him for money.”

  “And meself, nothing but a poor man with a hundred dollars riding on each hole!”

  We weren’t playing for money.

  He was an excellent golfer and managed to get a par on the first hole against my birdie. And that was the way of it. Sometimes we were tied, but then I forged ahead on the next hole.

  “This is great craic,” he said, sweat pouring down his face, “but you’re a desperate man altogether.”

  I almost blew it. He pulled even with me on the seventeenth, which I had planned to win but missed the putt for a bogey.

  “Youthful vigor and healthy living will triumph in the end and I’ll beat you by a hairsbreadth.”

  Eighteen at Ridgemoor is called “fool’s gold” because the huge green is protected on three sides by a pond. Many a fool thinks he can hit his drive two hundred and ten yards and hit the green on his first shot. The psychological and physical obstacles are too many, however. When I get serious and concentrate, I can hit it every time. This round I drove to within three feet of the hole. Then I sunk the putt for an eagle.

  Finnbar Burke of Cork City and the Old Head Links dissolved in laughter.

  “Didn’t I know all along you’d end it this way! Serves me right for trusting a frigging Yank!”

  “And himself on his favorite course.”

  We sat down at the bar, ordered two shepherd pies and two Guinnesses, and settled down to talk about the game. Finnbar Burke was not only a good loser, he was a loser who celebrated the give and take of the game. Nice young man. Julie and he would do well.

  “So what’s the big project for you guys here in Chicago? What is your big save?”

  He glanced around, smiled and said, “I know you’re the kind of man who can keep a secret.”

  His light blue eyes sparkled with glee.

  “A westside Irish Catholic like yourself knows about West End Parkway, doesn’t he?”

  “If he has any sense . . . You’re going to restore it!”

  “Why not?”

  “From Central to Austin?”

  “It never really was that long, but we’re going to improve on the original. Some of the gracious old homes are still there . . .”

  “But pretty much wrecks . . .”

  “We hope to make it one of the great streets in Chicago. Ballrooms with parquet floors, indoor and outdoor pools, elegant gardens, stately homes, everything it once was and even more. It will continue south what your friends up at St. Lucy’s did north of the L tracks and extend the redevelopment all the way to Jackson Park and the Expressway and then across Austin into South Oak Park and Forest Park.”

  “Your scheme?”

  “With a good architect, yes.”

  “And your family buys in?”

  “They like it, compare it with what they did in Donnybrook, only bigger potential. Mind you it’s all done slowly. We never chew off too much. So we start with reviving two old homes at West End and Austin and see what happens.”

  “And the city is behind it?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Like I say, it’s all transportation. You have two L lines—the Green and the Blue—and an expressway that runs out to the Mississippi River.”

  “At least.”

  “I don’t see why Chicago let it all fade away so quickly.”

  “It happened so quickly out here that no one noticed. Panic pedaling and white flight.”

  “We’ll have integration every step of the way, low-key, volunteers, all taken for granted.”

  “The people at St. Lucy’s had a hard time at first,” I said.

  “They saved the whole area, an enormous achievement. We come along and stabilize it and extend it, with full cooperation. We know it won’t be easy. That’ll be the fun of it. If something is easy, we won’t be doing it.”

  I swore myself to secrecy and drove him back to the hotel, which was the company office and home for the personnel from Ireland. For a hundred years and more, American money had been flowing into Ireland; now some of it was flowing back, and not only for the big spire at the mouth of the river.

  Finnbar Burke and I had become fast friends on the golf course, and in the conversation afterwards. I promised my help if it were ever needed. We promised that we’d play Butterfield next. He swore he’d be out practicing before the next match. Two guys enjoying great craic together.

  Only it was not to be.

  7

  ME GOOD wife was still clad in her imperial gown and robe, still unprepared, it would seem, for the work of the day. She had arrayed herself on the antique couch in our parlor (living room to her), the two snow-white puppies deployed in protective modality at the foot of the couch, and the long inactive camogi stick on the floor next to her. She was so appealing that I experienced a strong impulse to fall on her and claim her as my own—which indeed she was.

  Go for it!

  Go away.

  I settled for finding a place to sit next to her on the couch.

  “You were on the links with Finnbar Burke? And you defeated the poor young fella on the last hole?”

  “Woman, I did, and himself a grand young man.”

  I recited the history of our game and of his economic background and big plans. She nodded approvingly.

  “Julie will never want for breakfast, will she? And in our neighborhood too? Dermot Michael Coyne, I don’t need another pretty daughter and herself with pale gold hair like the poor thing in the story.”

  The phrase was pronounced the way it would be in Connemara: “Da pur ding in da story.”

  “You like Angela, do you now?”

  “We Connemara women have to cling together, don’t we?”

  She sighed and readjusted her position on the couch. In the process, one of her marvelous breasts pressed against the fabric of her gown. Naturally, I rested my hand on it. She gasped and bit her lip. Sometimes I manage to surprise her.

  “You battle a man on the links and then you come home and ravage your woman . . .”

  “An interesting possibility, now that you mention it.”

  “I had a battle too,” she said, “with your good friend Dr. Fletcher.”

  Dr. Fletcher was the former nun with a doctorate whom our pastor, Father Sauer, had appointed CEO of our parish
school.

  “What was the battle about?”

  “Me doggies! Didn’t she threaten me doggies?”

  “The puppies!”

  “She said that she couldn’t promise that harm would not come to them from the attendant if I brought them on school property again.”

  “What attendant?”

  “The escaped convict she had hired as her security guard . . . and didn’t she say that in this time of global warming and food shortage that such dogs were a luxury of affluence which took food out of the mouths of poor people all over the world?”

  “They knew she was talking about them?”

  “Of course they did. Didn’t I send them downstairs?”

  She had a scary trick of signaling to the dogs by a kind of telepathy.

  “And you responded by threatening to rearrange her physiognomy with your camogi stick if any harm came to them.”

  “I told her that she already had one of the ugliest faces in the world and that children and adults would run at the sight of her when I was finished. Didn’t I chase her out of me house and warn her never to come back or I would turn the doggies loose on her.”

  I tightened my grip on her breast and felt her nipple rise to my hand. This one would be easy. An angry Nuala Anne was always a good lay, unless she were angry at me.

  Predator.

  A man takes what he can get.

  “How do you know that the attendant is an ex-con?”

  “Didn’t Cindasue find out and wasn’t he charged with assault and intent to kill?”

  “I’ll have to call my brother George . . .”

  I began to rearrange her garments. The hounds withdrew.

  “Didn’t I talk to him already . . . He said Father Sauer was out of control . . . And now you’ll be attacking me, poor defenseless woman that I am?”

  “I had that thought in mind, but only when I saw you stretched out so invitingly. There’s no point in having a mistress tucked away in an attic in Paris if I can’t come in from the battlefield and fall all over her.”

  “And the poor woman with no choice at all, at all.”