Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Them things cost a lot of money, don’t they?” my wife asked, frowning. “And I suppose there’s some expense in hiring a man to take wild shots at harmless waterskiers … .”

  “Was it the kind of bomb the lads would use?” I asked.

  “It was,” Peig agreed, “but a lot of people know how to make them bombs. We’re inclined to think that the man who made the bomb has some experience with the paramilitaries up above. It doesn’t follow that he is working for the paramilitaries now.”

  “He could have planted the bomb,” Nuala reflected, “given the remote control to someone else, and be far away when the bomb went off. ’Tis dark enough out here at night that someone could have done it very quickly and not been noticed.”

  “We’re afraid that we’ll never find him.” Peig sighed. “We hope we find the man with the rifle.”

  “We’ll find him all right,” my wife said softly.

  “Even if we do,” I cautioned, “the people behind these events probably covered themselves.”

  “If they are as clever as they seem to be,” Peig agreed, “that is undoubtedly true. Still, no one is perfectly clever. They’ll make a mistake, and we’ll get them.”

  I did not find that hope terribly reassuring.

  Nuala stiffened next to me. She seemed to be watching three men who had just entered the pub as they picked their way through the crowd and found a table at the far side of the room.

  “Peig, would you ever check the car of that little fella who just came in with them big fellas? I wouldn’t be surprised altogether if you found a thirty-caliber rifle with a telescopic lens in the boot.”

  Peig glanced towards the three men.

  “Just a quick look, mind you. We don’t want them to know that I’m suspicious.”

  Peig slipped away.

  “Are you sure, Nuala?”

  “Of course I’m sure, Dermot Michael. Would I send herself out to search the shitehawk’s car if I wasn’t sure?”

  Good enough for you, Dermot Coyne.

  I waited anxiously and fervently hoped that my wife would not engage in any mayhem. The little fella was little all right, but the other two fellas were big enough.

  Peig entered the door of the pub and nodded briefly. There were two Gardai behind her.

  Nuala bounded out of her chair and thundered across the room like an NFL tight end. I tried to follow.

  “You know,” I heard her say to the little fella as she picked up his pint of Guinness, “I’m not going to try to throw this in your face. I hope to miss it. Still, I make mistakes occasionally, don’t you know!”

  Thereupon she splashed the contents of his glass right in the middle of his face.

  “Oh, shite! Didn’t I miss now! What a shame! Here I’ll try again with this man’s pint! Och, didn’t I miss again!”

  “What the fock!” the man cried as he rose to his feet.

  The two other fellas bounded up. One of them tried to grab Nuala’s arm. For his pains, she hit him in the throat with the edge of her hand. He gasped sickly and fell back against the wall. Somewhere in her career, long before she met me, my wife had learned how to be an alley fighter, though only when someone she loved was at risk.

  The other fella found himself on the floor, nursing a very sore jaw, before he knew what hit him. In this case it was my fist. I only look sweet.

  Nuala shook the little fella, who, his spectacles askew, was cowering in terror.

  “You focking little gobshite! Endanger my husband and children’s lives will you! And too much of a focking eejit to take your focking gun out of your focking car!”

  “Alfonse Ryan”—Peig took charge—“I arrest you on the charge of attempted murder. I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used against you in a court of law … . Nuala Anne, please put the focker down!”

  The pub exploded in applause. They all knew what had happened earlier in the day. They did not quite understand how the Gardaí, with my wife’s assistance, had apprehended the gunman. If we explained it to them, they probably wouldn’t believe it—or would make the sign of the cross and run home for their holy water.

  “Good on you, Nuala Anne!” someone shouted.

  “Serves the focker right!”

  “Hooray for Nuala Anne!”

  My wife waved her hand in appreciation.

  “A round of drinks,” she announced, “on meself for the whole house!”

  Then she whispered to me, “I hope you have one of your credit cards, Dermot Michael.”

  10

  August 23, 1882

  A sorry procession wound its way out of Letterfrack in the rain this morning, carriages carrying Mr. Bolton and the other government officials and armed constables on horses, a lumbering covered wagon filled with the still-chained prisoners, and a pitiable little band of wives, parents, and children of the ten accused men.

  I had rented a carriage and driver for myself. Or rather for Nora Joyce and Josie.

  “Excuse me, madam,” I said to Nora. “I wondered if I could offer you a ride in my carriage. It might be easier for one in your condition … . You too, Josie.”

  “You’re an American, are you?” she stared at me without any hint of emotion.

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, Irish American.”

  “That’s evident … . Josie, apologize to the nice man for spitting at him. He wants to help us.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Josie said morosely. Then she added with a bewitching grin, “Sure if I knew you were an American I wouldn’t have spit on you. Didn’t I think you were English!”

  “Josie!”

  “I’m sorry,” the child said again, still grinning.

  “I am grateful, Mr … .”

  “Fitzpatrick.”

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick, for your kind offer; but I am young and strong. I think I would rather walk as the others must.”

  “I understand.” I tipped my hat politely and returned to my carriage.

  Then I realized what an awkward fool I was. I walked back to her.

  “Perhaps I could offer a carriage ride to some of the older folk …”

  She smiled briefly. I melted at the radiance of her smile.

  “You are a gentleman, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  “Would you invite some of them for me? I’m afraid I don’t have the Irish.”

  “No reason why you should.”

  She spoke in Irish and three elderly folk, two women and a man, hesitantly approached me. Nora Joyce insisted, and they came to the side of the carriage. I helped them in. They murmured sounds of gratitude.

  “Are you a religious man, Mr. Fitzpatrick?” Nora asked me.

  “I try to be a good Catholic.”

  “Then pray for us, please.” She was holding her rosary again. “For the dying and the dead.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” the ineffable Josie said with a raffish grin.

  I thought that someday it would be good to have a daughter like Josie—a piquant imp, not unlike my own younger sisters.

  The long ride to Galway was dreary and mournful. Wind and rain lashed us as we bumped over the muddy roads. My passengers talked to one another occasionally in Irish, the only language they knew. I did not know what they were saying, but I was sure that their exchanges were melancholy and uncomplaining. Indeed, the people of Maamtrasna did not seem capable of complaint. Myles Joyce had denounced British justice but did not complain about it. His wife had fought furiously to protect him, but she did not bemoan her lot. The straggling mass of relatives slogging through the mud to Galway Town were mostly silent and patient. Perhaps they had learned from their earliest years that complaints accomplished nothing. They knew that they were doomed to tragedy and that their only defense against the fates was patience.

  The black wagon was a hearse and we were a funeral cortege.

  Nora Joyce, in her familiar red cloak, seemed somehow to be in charge of the relatives. Head high, back straight, she moved among them, assisting, encouraging
, consoling, while Josie bounced along after her. Though her husband was at least two decades older than she was, she clearly loved him. She knew he was going to his death and that she and her child might well follow them soon. She had resolved that she would suffer bravely.

  I had no right to my admiring and tender thoughts, not unmixed, as I am ashamed to admit, with lustful emotions towards her. At most she would remain a poignant memory that would haunt me for the rest of my life. So I prayed for her, as best I could, and for all of them on the interminable ride.

  The prison in Galway is surely one of the bleakest buildings in all the world—a heavy mass of foreboding rock across from the salmon weir. As I peered at it through the icy fog that shrouded Galway Town, I thought that the walls of hell could not be more threatening.

  My guests whispered words of thanks as I helped them out of the carriage. They stumbled over to where Nora was talking to a tall, white-haired man in a frock coat.

  “’Tis his lordship, the Bishop of Galway,” my driver told me. “He’ll find them places to stay while they’re here. They say he’s a very good man.”

  At some point I would want words with him about the funeral service. Where was the priest for these people when they needed a priest?

  I was admitted to the prison yard because the constables knew me to be a reporter. There were at least a dozen from the Irish and English papers. I was the only American. We watched as the accused were unloaded from the wagon. Their muscles stiff and cramped from the ride and their chains, they hobbled into the prison building, shoved by harsh guards who seemed to delight in their work.

  Several of my colleagues gasped at the sight of the ten. At first I thought they sympathized with the poor wretches. Then the man next to me, speaking in what I suspected was a lower-class English accent, said, “What a disgusting lot of animals. Typical of people out here. The whole lot of them should swing.”

  “Will they?” I asked.

  “Not the way Bolton works. He has already heard the cicries from Dublin and London for swift justice. Some of the brutes will turn on the others and testify against them. A few will hang, the others will plead guilty and spend twenty years in prison. All neat and quick and easy. The script is already written.”

  “Apparently, the actual crimes were committed by three of them. Will those be the ones who hang?”

  “Bolton couldn’t care less as long as he gets three executions.”

  “Is that English justice?”

  He looked at me in surprise.

  “We’re not talking about justice out here, son. We’re talking about controlling an uncivilized people and placating Dublin Castle and Westminster. Bolton is not a nice fellow, but London needs someone like him out here.”

  The lead for my dispatch was forming in my head. The English treated the Irish the same way we treated the Indians in the American West. Most of us, like most of the English, thought it was a superior people driving off an inferior people. Or so my father said, much to the dismay of most of his friends.

  Outside the prison in the fog, the Bishop of Galway stood glaring at the prison. I walked up to him boldly and introduced myself.

  “I’m Edward Hannigan Fitzpatrick, Your Excellency.”

  He was a broad, solid man with a broad, solid face and gray hair. The expressions on his face changed rapidly. When he heard my name, his angry frown turned into a warm smile.

  “John Kane, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduff. I am told that you are the kind gentleman who brought some of the older folk over in a carriage. That was good of you, sir.”

  “I wish I could have brought them all.”

  “You did what you could … . My wish is that they would all go back tomorrow with their men. That, of course, will not happen.”

  “I gather not.”

  “They’ll leave the next day after the first hearing. There are cows to be milked, gardens to be tended, even if someone they love is in mortal danger.”

  I tried to understand the poverty that would drive wives and parents and children to that necessity. Nora Joyce, so deeply in love with her Myles, would leave him in the Galway jail to go back to Maamtrasna?

  We said nothing for a moment, both of us depressed by the fate of the accused.

  “Mrs. Myles Joyce told me that you are a reporter.”

  “From Chicago. My grandparents were born in this city.”

  “Welcome home, then.” He shook my hand vigorously. “What will you tell your readers in Chicago?”

  “I will indicate, subtly perhaps, but not too subtly, that English justice is a farce here in the West of Ireland.”

  He nodded grimly.

  “That is only the truth … . Nora Joyce assures me that her husband never left their marriage bed that night. She is the kind of woman who would never lie to a priest, much less a bishop. Yet her husband will surely hang.”

  “Why is that, Your Excellency?”

  “Because he is a strong man who will never admit guilt to save his life, much less perjure himself against others. Those are the kind the English like to hang.”

  “What will happen to her and their child?”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “She will not marry again, I think. Without marriage there is no future for her.”

  “She reminds me of my own sisters.”

  “If her grandparents had migrated her life would be very different, would it not, Mr. Fitzpatrick? You doubtless wonder whence came her grace?”

  “I think, Bishop Kane, that’s the precise word.”

  “Consider how difficult it would be for your sisters to maintain such grace if they lived out there. Poverty and suffering destroy it in most people. Nora Joyce is simply stronger than other women.”

  “It’s more than that, Bishop Kane.”

  He sighed again.

  “You’re right, Edward. God has touched her with a special grace. Yet I fear she will be destroyed too, as so many others have.”

  In my head were the foolish words that I would not permit her destruction. I knew, however, that I ought not to make that promise, both because it was inappropriate and because I could never fulfill it. So I changed the subject and asked the Bishop about the absence of a priest at the funeral.

  He grimaced and sighed.

  “I’m afraid that’s my fault. There is no curate in the Maamtrasna valley because I have been unable to persuade a priest to go up there. However, one young man, Father Corbett, has just volunteered. I will fill that vacancy immediately. You must understand that such funerals were typical in penal times when it was a crime to be a priest. The people are used to such burials. Unfortunately, the tradition of their saying prayers over the bodies of the dead has died.”

  “And no requiem Mass?

  “A requiem Mass is very rare out in the country, and then it is only in the house of the corpse. We’re trying to revive the custom. It takes time. The penal years are still with us.”

  He offered me supper. I pleaded that I had to write my dispatch. We agreed that I would accept his invitation on another day.

  I returned to my room at the Great Southern. The fog was so thick that the square across the road was invisible from my windows. I had been away from the room for only two nights, and yet it seemed like a lifetime. I wrote a strong dispatch, then modified it so that it was more restrained, but, I thought, still effective. I went over to the telegraph office and sent it off to Chicago, marveling again at the efficiency of the modern world.

  As I write this account of another terrible day, I finish the last bit of whiskey in the bottle that I had kept in my room. I have drunk more whiskey tonight than I have in all the rest of my life. I must be careful. The ugliness and the horror of what I have witnessed could make me a drunk.

  I have also seen grace, as Bishop Kane said. I wonder why God creates grace only to permit it to wither. One does not, as my father has often said, litigate with God. One does pray, however. So I now I will pray for all of them, for the living and the dead.r />
  Especially for Nora.

  11

  TEARS STREAMED down my wife’s cheeks. Nuala Anne wept easily and often. There were different kinds of tears, however, and they meant different things. My task, indeed my obligation, was to interpret them all correctly

  “What a sweet young man.” She sighed her most pathetic sigh as she put down a chapter of Eddie Fitzpatrick’s journal.

  “Meself?” I asked, though I knew who she meant.

  “Certainly not, Dermot Michael Coyne! You’re sweet in your own way. But this poor lad doesn’t even realize he’s sweet, and you do some of the time. He won’t unless he finds a woman who persuades him that he is, like I’ve persuaded you.”

  That settled that.

  “It doesn’t look all that good for him and herself, however.”

  “Have you peeked at the end, like you usually do?”

  That was pure defamation. She was the one who always read the last page of a novel before she read the first page.

  “It breaks off. Jack Lane thinks there may be other segments around the parish house. He promised he’d search for them.”

  “The poor dear little priest probably doesn’t want his heart broken when he reads an unhappy ending … . Don’t give up hope, Dermot Michael. This is a very special young man. Nora may die before her time, but he’ll do his best to save her.”

  The century and a quarter that separated us from them had somehow slipped away. The two lovers were alive as we were.

  “Does she know he loves her?”

  “Don’t be silly, Dermot. Certainly she does. Women know those things, even if they won’t admit it to themselves. There’s too much grief in her now to pay any attention. Still she likes him, as any woman would.”

  “I kind of identify with him,” I said, “callow lad that I was and maybe still am.”

  “Aren’t you a terrible amadon altogether, Dermot Michael Coyne! I would never have fallen in love with a callow lad, would I now?”