Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Four men?”

  “Aye. He’s another big fella, not likely to come quietly.”

  “Was he at odds with his cousin?”

  “Myles Joyce is a fierce man, but peaceful enough until he is pushed too hard. He had no serious quarrel with John Joyce that we know of. Still, these people up here are quiet about their grudges. You discover their hatreds only after the explosion … . Do you want to come along?”

  I didn’t. I was too much a coward, however, to refuse. Yet I told myself it was time to prove that I had still a remnant of manliness. So I told him that of course I did.

  In the mists, the mountain we climbed and the little valley into which we descended were foreboding places, permeated, I thought, with hatred, revenge, and death. Myles Joyce’s house was as small as the others, but it had been whitewashed and flowers had been planted in front of it. A child of eleven or twelve, a girl to judge by her red petticoat, saw us coming. She stared at us and then darted into the house.

  “That’s the wife’s niece. She doesn’t live here but spends most of her time with the wife. Myles Joyce has no English, but Nora, his wife, can speak both languages well enough. This will be difficult. They say the woman is pregnant.”

  An icy shaft stabbed at my soul.

  A moment later Myles Joyce and his wife emerged from the hut. He was a short, burly man with iron gray hair and a dark, handsome face, probably in his middle forties. His eyes were deep black pools of hatred. She was wearing a thin red cloak, which set off her beauty, but no shoes.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at us.

  “Myles Joseph Joyce,” Tommy intoned solemnly, “it is my duty to arrest you on suspicion of the murder of John Patrick Joyce.”

  Nora translated for her husband, though there was little doubt that he knew what had been said. He responded in a fierce flow of Irish.

  “My husband says that he had nothing to do with the murder of his cousin and his family. He was here in our bed all that night. He will not come with you.”

  “He must come with us, Nora,” Tommy insisted. “If he is innocent, he has nothing to fear.”

  Nora translated again. She was, I thought, containing her fury by sheer willpower. I was ashamed of the attraction I felt for her, a pregnant, barefoot woman whose husband was about to be dragged off by the police of a foreign nation.

  Myles Joyce’s dark and handsome face twisted in rage. He shouted his defiant reply in words that needed no translation.

  Nora, her arm around her husband now, hesitated and then translated.

  “My husband says that he has no faith in English justice and that he will not permit himself to be arrested.”

  “Nora,” Tommy Finnucane pleaded, “he must come with us or we will have to take him by force.”

  “You’ll have to take me too,” she raged.

  “Take him and chain him,” the Sergeant ordered.

  The four men approached Myles Joyce warily. Then they lunged at him. He threw two of them off his body with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. Nora and her niece beat at the constables’ backs with their fists. Myles gave a gruff command. Rebuked, Nora backed off.

  “Josie,” she said to the girl, “go home now!”

  He must have ordered his wife to think of their unborn child.

  Josie hesitated, still eager for a fight.

  “You heard me, Josie. Go home!”

  The child turned and ran off sobbing.

  After a long struggle, the constables finally subdued Myles Joyce. He was a gallant warrior, I thought, overcome by his enemies. They dragged him down the path into the valley. Nora ran screaming after them.

  Again Myles Joyce gave a brief command. Nora, head bent, shoulders slumped, returned to the house, where Tommy and I were standing.

  “You can visit him in the Galway prison in a couple of days, Nora,” Tommy said, trying to be kind.

  “I’ve lost him forever,” she moaned. “He’ll never hold me in his arms again.”

  It sounded almost like a death sentence. Was she one of these Irish women, one of the dark ones, who knew the future? I shuddered at the thought.

  I strove desperately for something to say to this woman in her terrible grief. No words came to my mind, no thoughts to my lips. I was helpless.

  Josie appeared again, hesitant and wary. Sobbing, Nora lurched back into the house. Josie followed her on the run, pausing only to spit on me.

  “Josie! Shame on you!” Tom yelled after her.

  “I feel like I deserved it,” I said.

  “Aye, lad. I understand.”

  “I believe her.”

  “What woman, Eddie, would not lie for her husband?”

  “She might well lie, Tom, but this time she’s telling the truth.”

  “Mayhap she is. They all say she’s a fine young woman. She would not have had to marry Myles, and herself so young, if her parents had not died and her brother off in America, no one knows where.”

  “She obviously loves him.”

  “No doubt about that.”

  “What happens to her if he does not come back?”

  “The way times are now, she and her baby will be lucky if they don’t starve to death.”

  Great sheets of rain beat against us as we returned to the police hut. Already six men in chains sat sullenly on the floor. Only Myles Joyce glowered defiantly at the constables.

  Worn and dejected, I walked back to the inn here in Letterfrack and drafted a dispatch for the Daily News. I described the funeral service without a priest and the arrest of Myles Joyce with as much detachment as I could achieve. The passionate cry of Nora Joyce did not need any elaboration from me.

  There was a wire from the paper congratulating me on my previous dispatches. I crumpled it up and threw it away.

  I write this entry in my journal with the sense that I am a callow, worthless young man, caught up in tragedy beyond my experience or my comprehension. I stood by, silent and powerless, while a family’s future was destroyed and while perhaps a death sentence was passed on all its members. I am an interloper, a voyeur, a shameful participant in what increasingly seemed to be a vicious game being played by the English authorities.

  I am quite incapable of any more lustful thoughts about Nora Joyce, but the pain of loss in her wondrous blue eyes will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  9

  “ARE YOU all right, Dermot love?”

  My wife, in a Mayo 5000 sweatshirt and the inevitable jeans, had thundered into our bedroom with the same serenity as that of a herd of cattle en route from Texas to Dodge City.

  I had been sitting on the bed reading Eddie Fitzpatrick’s book and identifying with his feelings of being a callow youth. I looked up at Nuala Anne and grinned.

  “As best as can be expected after the attack on me in my own bed.”

  “Och, Dermot Michael Coyne, aren’t you a desperate man altogether!”

  She threw herself on the bed and embraced me.

  “Didn’t I say to meself that night at O’Neill’s pub that it would be grand to slip into bed with that big blond Yank and tumble with him? Didn’t I know then that he would be the greatest lover in all the world?”

  The history of our encounter that foggy evening was subject to constant revision. I very much doubted this new essay in revisionism. Moreover, I had hardly been the aggressor in our earlier romp.

  “As I remember this afternoon,” I said, putting aside the manuscript, which was a good deal less compelling at the moment than my wife, “I was hardly the active partner.”

  “Go ’long with you, Dermot Michael Coyne.” She slapped my arm. “Wasn’t I just the defenseless woman overwhelmed by your violent desires?”

  Total lie. I had, however, enough sense not to argue.

  “Well,” she continued exuberantly, “haven’t I forgotten to take me pill? So, lest I be divorced and lose the custody of me children, I’m going to take it right now, in your presence.”

  She produce
d a pill from the pocket of her jeans and gulped it down.

  “See, am I not a good and obedient little wife?”

  “Good, anyway.”

  She laughed as though I had said something wildly funny.

  I wondered if her new-found exuberance was an indication of a manic phase. How would one be able to tell the difference between a manic Nuala Anne and the ordinary garden-variety Nuala Anne?

  “Well, now, aren’t we going off to O’Donnell’s pub tonight for a bowl of soup and a bit of a sandwich and a drink for you and a glass of Evian water for me?”

  “Are we?”

  “Haven’t I just said so?” She hugged me more tightly. “And not to worry about them shiteheads with guns? Won’t we have ourselves a bodyguard like we’re really important people?”

  “Will we?”

  “Haven’t I just said so? Now will we have our shower and yourself sitting here on the bed without any clothes on?”

  The woman was conniving again. However, as exhausted as I was from the terrors and the pleasures of the day, hadn’t she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse?

  Our fun and games in the shower were limited to gentle kisses and caresses—which, all things considered, was just as well.

  “How did you know that the young murdered woman was blond?” I asked.

  “Well, she was blond, wasn’t she? Very pretty, poor little thing.”

  “Her terror is long since over, Nuala Anne.”

  “Indeed, and her tears wiped away. Still, you hear a noise in your house, you come running into the room, and a man has just shot your father and then they beat you to death.”

  “Why would they do such terrible things?”

  “Hate, Dermot. And the drink!”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What about Ethne?” I asked as I covered my wife’s breasts with suds.

  “What about her?”

  “Does she come home with us to get her Ph.D. in history?”

  “Och, Dermot Michael, what do you know about that?”

  “I’m fey on occasion, though only when fondling a woman in the shower.”

  “Any woman?”

  “Any woman, so long as she’s my wife.”

  “Well,” Nuala adopted her fishmonger’s tone, “don’t the kids simply love her? And doesn’t she want to study in America? And won’t it be nice for me to talk to someone who has the Irish?”

  “About me.”

  “Sure, we could do that in English when you’re not around, couldn’t we now? … So, what would you be thinking about it?”

  Actually, I didn’t get a vote. However, I did earn some points for guessing one of the schemes that were going on. Not many, however.

  “I think it’s a brilliant idea!”

  My wife hugged me.

  “You’re a wonderful man, Dermot, always so kind and generous.”

  I was no such thing, but I let it pass.

  “I’ll read some of your man’s manuscript,” Nuala continued, “when we come back from O’Donnell’s. What’s it like?”

  “Painfully candid.”

  “Och, I don’t need that at all, at all! … You know, Dermot Michael Coyne, wouldn’t I like to stay in this warm shower with you for the rest of me life!”

  However, we eventually left the shower, dressed, kissed the children (whom Nuala had already fed), and left them in Ethne’s charge.

  “Aren’t there enough Gardaí outside, Ethne Moire, to put down a revolution? There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Who’s worried?” the young woman asked. “Except about passing me comprehensives?”

  Fiona bestirred herself from her close watch on our children.

  “No, girl,” Nuala admonished her, “stay here and take care of the wee ones.”

  The wolfhound settled down, happy perhaps to have a peaceful evening after an exciting day. And herself expecting, as my wife would have said.

  Two Garda cars waited in our driveway. Peig Sayers, in jeans and a sweater like my wife’s, was in one, and two uniformed constables were in the other. We entered Peig’s car.

  Both sweaters represented the current women’s fashion of leaving uncovered the navel and varying amounts of associated flesh. As I had remarked to my wife, navels aren’t as erotic as asses or teats, but in a pinch—you should excuse the expression, Nuala Anne—it will do.

  “Don’t be vulgar, Dermot Michael. Besides, would women be doing it these days if it weren’t difficult to get men’s eyes off the shameless hussies on the telly?”

  There was a lapse in logic there to which I wisely did not point.

  “No, don’t you dare ogle her tonight, Dermot Michael Coyne,” my wife whispered to me, “and yourself exhausted from almost raping me this afternoon.”

  “Love one woman,” I whispered back, “love them all.”

  Inside the car, I congratulated Officer Peig on her promotion to the rank of detective.

  “Sure, isn’t it only for the night, Mr. Coyne? … We have the house surrounded, Nuala Anne. Nothing to worry about at all, at all.”

  “Unless the Russians land commandos from one of their subs.”

  “Their subs don’t work anymore, Mr. Coyne. And, if they did, wouldn’t your American navy pick them up long before they got to shore?”

  “Right,” I said, slipping into silence.

  Mr. Coyne, indeed.

  O’Donnell’s was filled with people that night, noisy, contentious, difficult people. Which is to say, mostly fishermen. I quite agreed with my wife’s judgment that they were eejits. Peig came in with us while the two uniformed officers waited outside. A table was reserved for us in a corner, as far from the door as possible, so that if any Mafia types entered, they would have to walk across a crowded room.

  I collected two pints and one Evian water at the bar. “You an alcoholic or something?” a redneck American fisherman asked me.

  It would have been very easy to get into a fight with him. People look at me and think I’m a pushover, probably because I have a boyish face and a sweet smile and curly blond hair. They learn the hard way that such appearances can be deceiving. However, an elderly man now with two children, I tended to act mature. So I ignored the guy. I carried the drinks to our table. My wife never complained about her forced abstinence from the “creature.” She hardly seemed to notice the glass. She was busy scanning the room, as though looking for a face.

  My heart did a flip-flop. She was looking for the man who had shot at her on the lake. What would happen if she found him?

  It didn’t seem that he was in the room. Nuala abandoned her search, temporarily at least, and joined the conversation.

  Then a tall, rather striking woman in her early forties ambled over to our table. Her body had been poured into tight jeans and tight sweater, her long black hair hung defiantly around a face that displayed more makeup than it needed. She carried a half-empty pint of Guinness in her ring-bedecked hand. All in all, she was worth a second look. Maybe even a third.

  “Mind if I sit down?” she asked as she sat down.

  We didn’t say no, but we were less than enthusiastic about her joining us, even Nuala Anne, who normally personified West of Ireland courtesy towards strangers.

  “My name is Margot Quinn. I’m an estate agent down in Clifden. I understand you’ve bought the bungalow next to the one that was blown up yesterday?”

  “’Tis true,” Nuala Anne said, “and a brilliant bungalow it is.”

  “Well, its lost a lot of its value since yesterday, hasn’t it now?”

  She sipped from her pint.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Curiosity value.”

  “You put it on the market tomorrow and you’ll find out how much curiosity value it has!” Margot Quinn sneered.

  Not a word about our experience on the lake earlier in the afternoon. Perhaps she didn’t know about it.

  “We’re not about to put it on the market tomorrow,” I said firmly. “We’ve just bought it, and we like it. A cou
ple of years from now, people will have forgotten about the explosion.”

  “If there are not any more.” She smiled knowingly. “Once these things start out here they tend to continue.”

  Peig Sayers was listening attentively. No one would imagine that this pretty young woman was a police constable in mufti.

  “You expect there’ll be more explosions?”

  “Someone is up to something, aren’t they now? That prick MacManus has a lot of enemies. If you ask me, they’ve only begun to work him over.”

  “Och, sure, our bungalow isn’t for sale at all, at all,” Nuala said firmly.

  Margot Quinn looked at Nuala as though she were out of her mind.

  “Well, it’s up to you, but, if I were in your situation, I’d think about a quick sale. It happens that at the moment I have some clients who are interested in constructing condos along this stretch of the coast, and they’d be willing to pay pretty much what you’ve put into it.”

  “Ah, no,” Nuala said gently.

  “Well, here’s my card,” Margot Quinn said, rising from her chair. “Call me when you change your mind as I’m sure you will.”

  My two companions stared after her as she walked away.

  “Aren’t those jeans a size too small?” Peig observed.

  Me good wife, who is catty only when the situation absolutely demands it, disagreed: “Two sizes.”

  The sweater was apparently beneath their notice.

  “Feminism has apparently created gombeen women in Ireland,” I offered.

  “Sure, she didn’t know you were a constable, did she now?”

  “Och, that one wouldn’t care at all, at all!”

  They exchanged a couple of sentences in Irish that I thought might be a more clinical comment on Ms. Quinn.

  “It’s almost like she wants to be a suspect.”

  “Wouldn’t it give her more publicity?” Peig said, sniffing disdainfully.

  “So what DO the Gardai think is happening out here on Long Island East?” I asked.

  “Officially, we’re continuing our investigations. Unofficially, we think someone is trying to scare people away from Renvyle, depress property values around here, and then buy up a lot of land for development. However, there is no evidence that anyone has made any offers for the hotel or the land. The bomb at the T.D.’s house was planted several days before the explosion and then detonated by remote control.”