The O'Briens

by Peter Behrens

  “We’re building to the specs we were given,” Joe replied. “They’re getting exactly what they’re paying for.”

  “Do you know how many men have died out there since the end of the war?”

  “They had the influenza.”

  “Hundreds! Have you seen the cemetery?”

  “The cemetery isn’t in the contract. We’re rebuilding the hospital. It won’t be fancy, but it’ll be a hell of a lot better than it was. Look here — you’re my brother, Grattan, but you can’t just storm in here and start yelling at me.”

  Grattan dropped heavily into a chair. “Oh Jesus, brother. Those boys got so used to being herded like cattle, they don’t expect anything better.”

  “I can’t run my business this way.”

  Grattan sunk his face in his hands. “Two hundred men on the iron lung. And, oh Lord, some of the chlorine gas cases . . . I saw it all in France, Joe, but it seems worse here.”

  There was nothing for Joe to say.

  Finally Grattan looked up. “I guess I’ll need to find some other sort of work, brother.”

  “That is probably not a bad idea.”

  A few weeks later, at eleven o’clock in the morning on Armistice Day, 1919 — exactly one year after the guns had fallen silent in France — workers in a rolling mill watched Grattan’s Ford car smash through an iron railing running along the Lachine Canal, just below the Côte-Saint-Paul Bridge. As whistles and bells sounded all over Montreal, heralding the city’s first two minutes’ silence in honour of the war dead, the Ford plunged nose first into the dis-coloured waters and sludge of Montreal’s industrial artery and sewer.

  Grattan, shivering and vomiting, was plucked out of the canal by workmen using a boathook. When Joe went to see him, he claimed he’d been checking his wristwatch when he lost control of the car. He insisted he’d been planning to pull over at eleven o’clock to observe the two minutes’ silence.

  Grattan developed pneumonia and spent the next four months recuperating in the veterans’ hospital at Sainte-Anne, also receiving electroshock treatments for sleeplessness. In the last weeks of his stay, a pretty night nurse read him the letters she was receiving from her brothers in Ireland, and on the Sunday after his release Grattan appeared on the church steps after High Mass, handing out Sinn Fein newspapers to anyone who would take them. At Sunday lunch at Pine Avenue he announced that he had joined the Loyal and Ancient Order of Hibernians, a disreputable organization with a clubhouse on Bridge Street in Griffintown, Montreal’s Irish slum.

  “You’ll be my guest at our next dinner, Joe. We’ve a speaker coming up from New York. The British swine have been burning people out of their homes — they’ve broken every inch of glass in the country. They come in motor trucks in the middle of the night, break up cottages, drag fellows from their beds, strip women naked in the street. Pour a scalding cup of tea on a man’s testicles to get information.”

  It was not the sort of talk Joe liked to hear in the presence of small children and servants. Stifling his irritation, he left Grattan to Iseult at her end of the table and begun talking business with his sister-in-law, something he enjoyed. Elise had recently photographed Winston Churchill and Georges Clemenceau when they came through the city. Her portraits of the statesmen had been widely published, and now she was booked for weeks in advance. Her smart little advertisements — “Portraits by Elise” — were running in fashionable American magazines, and she had repaid with interest the money Joe had advanced her.

  Grattan’s voice carried the length of the table. “If the British don’t get out of Ireland they’ll be shot down and thrown out one by one! It’s the plain truth that the best of them were killed in the war. Their occupation army in Ireland is dregs, halfwit boys from the slums of Birmingham, thugs and degenerates — ”

  “That’s enough Irish for today,” Joe interrupted. “Unless you happen to know a good Irish joke.”

  Grattan’s fist banged on the tablecloth, rattling silverware. “But it’s murder, Joe! They murder women and children!”

  The children — Mike, Margo, and Virginia — were listening, faces rapt.

  “It’s not a war, it’s a bloody massacre!”

  “Let’s drop the subject,” Joe said calmly.

  “Grattan, shut up,” said Elise.

  Grattan sulked for the rest for the rest of the meal. When he approached Joe afterwards — “Can we have a word between ourselves?” — Joe reluctantly led the way into his study. He had other things on his mind. Ever since coming to Montreal he and Iseult had been looking forward to building a house of their own, and he had just that week made an offer on a piece of land in the garden suburb of Westmount.

  Grattan sat on the horsehair sofa and Joe sat at his desk, prepared to be bored. One of the maids brought in tea and departed. The brothers lit cigarettes.

  “What’s your opinion of the state of affairs in Ireland?” Grattan asked.

  Looking at his brother sitting on the sofa, one long leg crossed over the other, Joe decided that Grattan, instead of growing up, was becoming more and more childish. A large, strange, steely-voiced child with a military moustache and an officer’s forceful bearing.

  Joe could not remember being told, but he had always known that their grandfather had come out of Ireland as a boy and up the St. Lawrence on a coffin ship, crawling ashore at Windmill Point, less than a mile from the spot where Grattan’s car had plunged into the Lachine Canal.

  “I don’t have any opinion, Sojer Boy. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Ireland.”

  “Well, Joe, I am sorry to hear you say that. After all, you’re an O’Brien and an Irishman by blood, Joe, same as I am.”

  Joe shrugged. “What does that mean?”

  “The fact is, I can’t bring myself to stay out of the fight any longer.”

  “What fight?”

  “For the independence of Ireland, Joe! To throw off the British yoke.”

  “You need to get your feet on the ground, get a job, and start making some money. Elise is getting sick and tired of your muling around.”

  “Perhaps I’m one of the fianna,” Grattan said. “Old Irish for the warrior race. You can’t put a square peg in a round hole. The fact is, there’s a war on and I’m going back across to take up the fight. I’ve booked my passage from New York to Queenstown, leaving next week.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What I’m asking is that you look out for Elise and Virginia while I’m away.”

  “You want me to take care of your family while you go off and play soldier again?”

  “I’ve nothing put by, but Ellie is doing pretty well.”

  Grattan reached inside his jacket, Joe assumed for a handkerchief or a cigarette case. But his brother’s large white hand came out holding an automatic pistol.

  “I took this from a man I killed,” Grattan said softly, “and now it shall go back to war with me.” The ugly German weapon gave off a sharp scent, like varnish.

  “Put that thing away!” Joe said. “Bringing a gun into my house — are you out of your mind? I’ve a mind to belt you, you goddamn fool.” For some reason seeing the weapon in his study made him think of his stepfather staggering up the road, cawing his fiddle.

  Grattan uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, holding the pistol loosely, barrel pointing at the floor. It looked small in his hand.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Joe warned. “If you go to Ireland now, you’re going to lose your wife and your daughter.”

  A faraway expression shrouded Grattan’s face, as though the heft and weight and oily scent of the pistol had him entranced.

  “She won’t stand for you deserting her a second time. She’ll move to New York or back to Los Angeles and take the girl with her. You’ll never see them again.”

  “Elise doesn’t understand the situation of Ireland,” Grattan said softly.

  “She never will, and neither will I. Listen to me, Grattan.”

  Grattan looked up. He
all of a sudden seemed very tired. He held the pistol gingerly, as though it was too dirty and heavy to hold much longer and he was about to drop it.

  “You’re not going to Ireland. So get that idea out of your head.”

  Grattan sighed deeply.

  “You’re going to settle down in Montreal with your wife and your daughter. What you want is a job. Grattan, are you listening? This is the truth now I’m telling you.”

  He waited.

  When Grattan finally spoke, he sounded weary. “Yes, Joe, you’re right. Of course you are.”

  “All right, then. You’ve had a rough time of it lately — ”

  “But Joe . . . there was something I was to ask of you . . . something important. What was it?” He seemed dazed.

  “I don’t know,” Joe said mildly.

  Grattan struggled to recall, then his face suddenly brightened. “The passage — I’ll need a loan for my passage, say two hundred dollars. Second class, New York to Queenstown. Elise won’t understand.”

  He had seemed so much better — stronger — when he first got back from the war.

  “Grattan,” Joe said gently, “you won’t need it. You’re not going.”

  Grattan seemed stunned. He shook his head. “Well, that’s right, I suppose,” he said slowly. “I’m not.”

  “You’re going to stay here and dig in. What about real estate? That seemed to work at Venice Beach. If you hadn’t been selling those bungalows I’d never have met Iseult.” He reached over, took the German pistol from Grattan, and dropped it in a desk drawer.

  Grattan sighed again, deeply.

  “I’ll tell you what, Sojer Boy. Some men I knew out west have been buying up farmland north of Outremont. They’ve laid out streets, parks, sewers — they’re putting in a garden city up there. The Town of Mount Royal, they’re calling it. With the electrified railway under the mountain it’s just twenty minutes to downtown.”

  “Selling lots isn’t my cup of tea, Joe. Even in California I wasn’t much good at it.”

  “You need to get your feet back on the ground. Otherwise you’re living on what your wife brings in, and that’s no good for either of you. I’ll give these men a call on your behalf. All right?”

  Grattan nodded.

  Joe tapped him on the knee. “We’ve come through a lot, you and me. I’ll set you up with these Mount Royal fellows. And in the meantime, if you need help with expenses, you can always come to me.”

  ~

  At certain times, not always predictable, a longing for solitude and silence came over Joe, and that was when he had his secretary book a sleeping room on the Delaware and Hudson overnight train to New York. He’d go directly from his office to Bonaventure Station. He bought his whisky from Pullman porters or cab drivers, from elevator operators and bellmen in the great hotels. He would barricade himself in a room at the Plaza or the Biltmore or the Commodore and slowly drink himself through the feeling of not belonging anywhere. He would awake on the floor more often than not, and with a terrible hangover, but feeling at home in the world once more. After sending his suit out to be pressed he would order himself a good breakfast, take a steam bath and a rubdown, and get a shave, haircut, and shoeshine at the hotel barbershop. He always kept an eye on the clock while picking out presents for Iseult and the children on Fifth Avenue, and if there was enough time he’d choose a couple of shirts and neckties for himself at Brooks Brothers before heading to Grand Central and boarding the next train to Montreal.

  At first he tried to conceal these jaunts from Iseult, but she found out easily enough. She wanted him to speak to a doctor, if not his own, then one of her medical students. But he could not imagine what any medical man could say or do that would have the slightest influence on the way he felt during those times, or how he could possibly describe to someone else what he could not explain to himself.

  Iseult wrote the Little Priest, now at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and he wrote back inviting Joe to a spiritual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains. Joe declined, although he told himself that if Father Jeremiah Lillis, SJ, were still alive, he might have gone into the woods to see him. The old priest had known something of loneliness and disgrace. But Joe had heard from someone out of Shawville that Father Lillis was dead and buried years ago.

  He didn’t need to consult any medical student and he didn’t need a retreat in the Allegheny Mountains. New York City was his retreat.

  ~

  The Armistice had been followed by a slump — three years shrouded in gloom and still tasting of the war — before Joe sensed the Dominion waking up again. Suddenly everyone wanted a car. Everyone needed a radio, and everything worn out by the war — clothes, manners, ports, bridges, governments — suddenly needed replacing. O’Brien Capital Construction Co. Ltd. moved into brilliant new offices in the Canada Cement Building on Phillips Square. Joe’s wartime contacts with politicians and businessmen all over North America and the British Empire proved useful, and soon the firm began signing contracts to build hydroelectric dams, ship terminals, and an oil pipeline from the ice-free harbour of Portland, Maine, to Montreal.

  Mike was eight years old, Margo six. Iseult was pregnant again. When they had first settled in Montreal, she’d asked him for a cheque for five thousand dollars. She’d used it, along with money of her own and another five thousand from the American Women’s Club of Montreal and the Montreal Ladies’ Benevolent Society, to establish a clinic in Sainte-Cunégonde for pregnant women and mothers and children. The clinic was staffed by students from the McGill and Laval medical schools, clean milk was sold there for a few pennies a quart, and a free dental clinic was held every Thursday.

  At Christmas and on Iseult’s, Mike’s, and Margo’s birthdays, Joe’s presents to Iseult were always cheques for the clinic. He had only visited it once or twice himself: the sight of sick children and undernourished mothers distressed him. He’d write a cheque anytime Iseult asked him to, but he didn’t want to have to look at those people.

  It was time to start building their house in Westmount. Iseult chose the architect and Joe’s men began excavating. Iseult’s darkroom was in the design from the start; she drew up the detailed plan herself: a medium-sized room, accessible through her bedroom, with a red lamp recessed in the ceiling and windows with steel shutters. She would have a pair of deep sinks, shelves for chemicals and photographic papers, and a long worktable with her enlarger mounted at one end. The room would have mechanical ventilation and a fireproof cabinet for storing lenses and cameras — her old FPK with its red leather bellows, the Nagel, and the Ernemann Miniatur-Klapp Joe had given her for Christmas.

  There were twenty or thirty fellows at work on the excavation and rough grading — more than the job required, but Iseult had insisted that the foreman hire a dozen men from Sainte-Cunégonde, fathers and brothers, who came wandering up the hill each morning pale and scrawny and blinking in the light. She photographed every stage of construction: the electrician and his assistant lugging great spools of copper wire on their shoulders; the driver of the cement truck with his pet cat; men laying hardwood floors, wearing leather hockey pads strapped to their knees.

  But her children would always be her main subject. She never posed them but took quick snaps, aiming and shooting fast, a technique learned from Elise — though Elise herself now posed all her subjects, charged them a lot of money, and made them look serious, thoughtful, and gravely intelligent.

  Joe kept hundreds of Iseult’s photographs organized in leather-bound catalogues on shelves in his office on Phillips Square, each print numbered and dated. Sometimes when he looked through them, all he could think was what an extraneous, cruel gift love was in a world where nothing lasted. When he felt that way, he knew he was soon for a hotel room in New York.

  Iseult was nearly six months pregnant the day she brought Mike and Margo out to Skye Avenue to watch the foundation being poured. It was sunny and warm, excellent conditions for pouring concrete. They ate a picnic lunch. Joe si
pped lemonade and watched the fresh cement slide from the mixer truck and slop into the forms. His son and daughter were laughing, his men were working, his machines were howling, and his pregnant wife was squeezing his arm as they watched the solid footings of their future literally taking shape. If that moment proved to be as near as things ever got to perfection, he told himself, he would be satisfied, because in his heart he’d never expected half as much.

  ~

  It seemed that Grattan’s life too might be acquiring a solid foundation at last. On Joe’s thirty-fifth birthday his brother invited him to lunch at the Ritz-Carlton. Grattan was selling house lots for the Mount Royal Land Company, he and Elise had just bought a new Buick, and in a few weeks their daughter, Virginia, would be starting fifth grade at the Sacred Heart Convent on Atwater Avenue.

  After ordering a bottle of champagne, Grattan began telling Joe about a business proposition he’d received from his old squadron leader, an Englishman now living in Buenos Aires.

  “Dicky’s getting out of B.A. and taking up ranching on the pampas. They’re exporting beef like mad from the Argentine. It sure sounds like a wonderful country, Joe. Dicky’s offering to let me in as a partner. I’d help run the ranch. It would mean putting up a bit of operating capital, but not much.”

  “It’s the other side of the world.”

  “So is the Town of Mount Royal, Joe. Too bloody far. Haven’t sold a lot in weeks.”

  “You bought a new car.”

  “Elise bought it.”

  “When things fall apart in South America, what are you going to do next?”

  “Drink your champagne, Joe.”

  “No, I can’t. I’ve got a busy afternoon.”

  Grattan tossed down his own glassful, then refilled it. “Not bad. Nearly as good as the stuff we drank in France. Used to drink champagne for breakfast, Joe. Good wine was a lot easier to come by than a decent cup of tea.”

  “You have a family, Grattan. You can’t ditch them.” Joe wondered if his brother had enough cash in his wallet to pay the check. It would be close to fifteen dollars. If he really hadn’t been selling anything, he had no business spending money on lunches at the Ritz when he had a wife and a ten-year-old daughter at home.