Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I felt callow.”

  “’Tis different. Didn’t you want to take me to bed with you when you saw me boobs that night in O’Neill’s and didn’t I know it and didn’t I want the same thing? Your man wanted the same thing, of course”—she lifted the manuscript—“but wouldn’t he have been more afraid to show it?”

  I decided not to argue. As Nuala often said, a man should listen to what his woman means and not what she says. I knew what she meant all right.

  We were sitting in the parlor, with some disrespect for the “little people,” drinking our last cup of tea. The kids were sound asleep, under Fiona’s guardianship, in the nursery. My wife had settled down from her exuberance in the pub, where she had captured the gunman by methods that the Gardai wouldn’t believe if they knew and didn’t want to know anyway. Her moods had always changed rapidly. Since she had begun to take the medication, I had not noticed any unusual mood swings. Yet, I was afraid of the possibility. On the other hand, I half suspected (as they say in Ireland) that she had recovered from her depression, just as the doctor had predicted.

  “Somehow,” she began, putting aside the Fitzpatrick manuscript, “I’m more worried about the problem out here now than about the one back in 1882.”

  “That’s not unreasonable,” I said cautiously.

  She mounted her chin on the pyramid of her long and graceful fingers—strong from playing the harp—and frowned. I remained silent. When my wife is communing—I can think of no better word—that was the only sensible thing for me to do.

  “The evil in those days was clear enough. The English government and its oppression and injustice. There’s evil out there in the fog tonight. I can feel it, smell it, taste it, almost hear it. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Surely not as bad as, say, Mr. Bolton?”

  “He’s been dead a long time, Dermot love. Isn’t this one out there and alive?”

  I shivered.

  My wife’s mood changed again.

  “I don’t supposed you’d fancy one more fock before the day is over, Dermot Michael Coyne? I wouldn’t want to be wearing out an old man, would I now?”

  I was exhausted from the excitement and the pleasures of the day. Three romps in one day was too much altogether, wasn’t it? Still, I figured, one might as well enjoy the possibilities as long as one can, especially if one is an old man. My body, weary as it was, had no doubts about the possibility.

  “I might not mind,” I said casually.

  “Mind you, something really sweet and gentle.”

  “Sort of what I had in mind,” I said, sneaking my fingers under her sweater and sweetly and gently caressing her belly.

  “Hmm,” she cooed, “haven’t you got the right of it, Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  We did not make it to our bedroom. Afterwards, she insisted that I carry her to bed and then go back and collect our clothes and hang them up in good order.

  When I finally slipped in beside her, she was weeping again.

  “Did I hurt you, Nuala?”

  “Och, Dermot, you know you didn’t. I’m weeping for all those poor people in Maamtrasna, especially poor, sweet Nora, and for that poor gobshite we arrested tonight, and for you and me and for everyone.”

  I let her weep herself to sleep.

  She had, I told myself, survived the day with flying colors, flying tricolors to be exact. The intense lovemaking of the day was not part of any conniving. It was pure—one perhaps should excuse the expression—unbridled desire for her husband.

  Good on me.

  Yet I had, without altogether realizing it, an implicit condition for her complete recovery. When Nuala beat the depression, she would sing again.

  WHAT AN EEJIT YOU ARE, ASSHOLE! How MANY MEN YOUR AGE GET THREE GOOD FOCKS FROM THEIR WIFE IN ONE DAY? WHY ISN’T THAT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Is SINGING BETTER THAN FOCKING?

  I thought about that as I slipped off into sleep and gave the Adversary a blunt answer.

  “I want both.”

  The next morning, with sun streaming through the drapes, my wife stormed into the bedroom

  “Wake up, Dermot Michael,” she ordered. “Something terrible has happened!

  I rolled over. How could the woman possibly be so vigorous? She had been shot at, captured the gunman, and made love three times. Ought not she be in bed beside me, as drained as I was?

  “What’s happened?” I said, desperately searching for full consciousness.

  “Weren’t the three Russians at the hotel killed last night! Someone slit their throats while they were asleep.”

  That woke me up. While Nuala was smelling and tasting evil, it was doing its deadly work.

  “Get your clothes on. Peig and Declan are here already.”

  “Woman, I need me tea.”

  “Isn’t it on the night table right next to you?”

  I dressed and, bleary-eyed, teacup in hand, joined the group in the kitchen, most of them sitting around the table, drinking tea and eating Nuala Anne’s fresh scones. The exception being the rugrats and Fiona playing on the floor. Don’t the Gardai come calling every morning in this house?

  Had Nuala already done her morning run and swim? How late was it?

  “Sorry to trouble you, Dermot,” the Chief Superintendent said, glancing at his watch. “I know you and your wife had a difficult day yesterday. Still, we did want to tell you about last night’s horror.”

  No reason to send out the troops to tell me about it, except the Gardai were at a loss and were asking me wife for help. They were not exactly consulting a soothsayer or a clairvoyant or a “wise woman.” They were merely talking to a young woman who seemed to know a lot. Sure, weren’t there others like that out here in the “real” Ireland?

  I had been dragged out of my well-earned sleep by the need to pretend that they didn’t. The clock over the sink said it was 10:15. Impossible!

  “Apparently, the killer slipped into their rooms sometime after midnight,” Peig continued. “He had a carving knife from the hotel’s kitchen, which he left in the room of his final victim. He locked the doors after he left. We have no idea where he left the key. When the housekeeper, a child from Letterfrack by the way, knocked at eight-thirty and no one answered, she opened the door of one of the rooms with her passkey to see if she might start on making up the room. She saw a terrible bloody mess, screamed loudly enough to wake up anyone still asleep below in Clifden, and ran for help.”

  Peig was in uniform this morning, her long blond hair up in a knot and her belly, alas, covered again.

  STILL HORNY? DON’T YOU EVER HAVE ENOUGH?

  “Were there keys missing?” Nuala Anne asked, putting to rest the polite fiction that I was required for the conversation.

  Ethne refilled our teacups and put a plate of warm scones in front of me. Knowing my tastes, my wife always loaded her scones with raisins.

  “Not that the hotel administration is aware of. However, it would not have been very difficult for someone to make a copy of one of the skeleton keys,” Declan McGinn replied. “As you may imagine, Renvyle House is not troubled by frequent crime.”

  “He must have acted very quickly,” Nuala said thoughtfully.

  “We don’t know that there was only one killer,” McGinn observed.

  “If the person was a professional, he would have wanted to do it alone, wouldn’t he now? ’Course he could have been an amateur like your man yesterday.”

  “We don’t know for certain that the crimes are connected,” Peig sighed. “Though, there aren’t many crime waves here in this part of Ireland.”

  “What about the man you arrested last night?” I asked, figuring I ought to say something intelligent.

  “He’s still, ah, helping us with our inquires,” the Chief Superintendent said wryly. “Not much help. Some chap in Galway City gave him a hundred pounds to take a few shots at someone out here and miss. Doesn’t quite remember who the chap is. Insists he had no notion at whom he was shooting.”

  “He’s a
petty criminal,” Peig went on. “Eventually he’ll remember the name of the chap that gave him the money. Most likely at some point the trail to the man behind him will dry up. That’s the way it usually is. Or so I’ve been told.”

  “IRA connection?”

  “We don’t think so,” McGinn replied. “Not their type at all.”

  Silence.

  I had finished my last scone. I glanced up at Ethne, who grinned and shook her head negatively.

  “Mr. Coyne,” Peig began hesitantly, “you once suggested that these unfortunate men might be members of the Russian Mafia? Did you have any reason to think that?”

  “I’d seen them drinking over in Renvyle House last week. They looked like the Russian Mafia people on the telly.”

  Damn it! I was going native! The word is television!

  “Actually, it turns out that they were officers in the Russian Army, according to the Russian Embassy in Dublin. As you may imagine, the Embassy is very upset about their deaths.”

  “They don’t say what their officers were doing here, I suppose?” my wife asked.

  Declan McGinn smiled his tiny, wry smile. “On a well-earned vacation … We are checking with Interpol to find out if they have known criminal connections. We assume that they do.”

  “Factional fighting among them?” I asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  No one said a word. We were at a dead end. The Gardai had decided that it would be wise to brief Nuala Anne about the situation and hint that they would welcome her help. As well they might.

  “We’d thought we’d keep you informed. Naturally, we’ll maintain the security around you and your house in light of yesterday’s incident.”

  We thanked him. They departed quietly.

  “I don’t like it, Dermot Michael,” my wife informed me, unnecessarily, I thought. “Not at all, at all.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “It’s something worse than the Russian Mafia, something profoundly evil.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Anyway, you’d better put on your running suit and take herself out for another run if she wants. We might have a busy day. We have lunch with the manager of Renvyle House Hotel at half one.”

  “So we are an auxiliary of the Garda now, are we?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  I donned my running suit and shoes, kissed my children and wife, and collected my wolfhound, who, “expecting” or not, seemed eager for more exercise. It was a glorious day for running, ruined only somewhat by the blue Garda car that trailed behind me at a respectful distance.

  12

  Galway Town, August 23, 1882

  The “Magisterial Hearing” here today in the prison was ludicrous. The large room in the depths of the Galway jail was also used for hangings, a fact that could not escape the accused in their loose frieze prison garb. The immediate families were admitted and all the reporters who were interested. The hearings were in English, with Irish translations—occasionally.

  In the United States the case against the alleged criminals would have been dismissed out of hand. Here George Bolton permitted a shameful display and then adjourned the hearing to a later date.

  Henry Concannon, a Protestant who appeared for the accused (later I would learn, at the insistence of the Bishop of Galway), tore the so-called independent and irreproachable witnesses apart.

  “Mr. Anthony Joyce, how is it that you followed the accused for more than four hours on the night of August seventeenth without them once seeing you, even though the moon was full?”

  Anthony Joyce, a thin, spiteful little man in a suit and linens that the Crown had provided to make him look respectable, squirmed uncomfortably.

  “They had the drink taken and didn’t notice anything.”

  “Not so much that they couldn’t commit a murder?”

  “No, not that much.”

  “Now, how far away from the house were you? Let’s see, in the blackthorn bush was it?”

  “It was.”

  “And that was ten yards away?”

  The faces of the prisoners were expressionless during this exchange as they had been through the whole hearing, perhaps because, like Sioux being tried by an American military court, they did not know enough English to understand what was happening.

  “More than that.”

  “Twenty?”

  “More than that.”

  “More like a hundred?”

  “No, not that far.”

  “Maybe seventy-five?”

  “Probably fifty.”

  “Ah, and by that time, if my memory serves me properly, the moon had already set.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Yet you were able to see the faces of Myles Joyce, Pat Joyce, and Pat Casey when they went into the house?”

  “It wasn’t that dark.”

  “Wasn’t it now? Isn’t it odd that the surviving member of the family, Patsy Joyce, could not recognize the killers because their faces were covered with dirt?”

  “I wouldn’t know what Patsy said.”

  Periodically I would glance at the families of the prisoners. Like the accused, their faces were blank, resigned. Many of them could not understand English, I knew. Nora Joyce, however, who could understand English, was equally without expression. Perhaps they all took tragedy for granted.

  “I see … . Now you reported that you heard cries of terror and anguish in the house.”

  “Yes, sir. Terrible cries.”

  “Yes, indeed, I suppose they would sound terrible even at a hundred yards. But let’s see here now … Yes, in your deposition to the police, you do not report hearing a gun shot. Yet in fact John Joyce died of a gunshot wound to the head. How is it that you did not hear a gun?”

  “We didn’t hear it,” he said, the sweat pouring down his face. “Maybe the cries of the victims drowned out the sound of the gun. Perhaps that’s what happened.”

  “I see … Now let me ask you another important question. Why did not you and your associates go immediately to the police hut and report the crime? Perhaps some of the victims might have been saved, like young Patsy Joyce was later saved.”

  “We were frightened for our lives. There were ten of them, and they were mad with drink. Only when morning came did we realize that we should report it.”

  “When it was too late for the police to see if the accused might still be in their own homes?”

  “We did not think of that. We were frightened.”

  “Frightened? Yet not so frightened that you couldn’t follow these men for several hours on an improbably circuitous route while they talked of murder?”

  “We didn’t think they meant it.”

  “Ah, I see … . Now isn’t it true that your family has been at odds with the family of your distant cousin, Myles Joyce, since your grandparents’ time?”

  “We are not close friends … . We don’t associate with habitual sheep thieves.”

  “A very proper attitude … Is it not true that you attacked Myles Joyce with a club in your boreen only three months ago?”

  “He was trying to steal one of my sheep. He couldn’t see a sheep without wanting to steal it.”

  “I understand … . You don’t think very much of him then?”

  “I think he is the worst man in the whole County Galway.”

  “Do you now? Enough to want to see him hang?”

  “I don’t have to answer that question.”

  “No, Mr. Anthony Joyce, you don’t.”

  “Old Joe certainly destroyed him,” an Irish reporter sitting next to me whispered. “Bolton is in trouble.”

  “Is he?”

  “Indeed he is, but he’ll wiggle out. The bastard always finds someone to hang.”

  Mr. Bolton announced a continuance of the hearing till September 4. The families sighed. They would have to walk back to the valley and return another day. I sought out Josie.

  “Could I have a word with you, Josephine?”

  “Call
me Josie, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” she said with her mischievous smile.

  “I’m giving you this envelope with twenty pounds in it … .”

  She pushed the envelope away with a comment in Irish that meant, I thought, that she wanted Jesus and Mary and Patrick to defend her. I pushed it into her hand.

  “You know what I want you to do with it?”

  “Bring food to me cousin and take care of her.”

  “You’ll do that for me, Josie?”

  “I will,” she said bravely. “I promise you I won’t take a pence for myself.”

  “I never thought you would.”

  She shoved the envelope into a pocket of her skirt. “God bless you and keep you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You’re a wonderful gentleman.”

  Then I sought out her aunt, who was staring at the river, lost in thought. Or perhaps despair.

  “Mrs. Joyce,” I said cautiously.

  “What!” she exclaimed “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Fitzpatrick … . There is no hope for us in that prison, is there, sir?

  “We must never give up hope, Mrs. Joyce,” I said, realizing how hollow my words were.

  “That’s true … . They say the English don’t care about the truth.”

  “Some of them do, I’m sure.”

  “Perhaps,” she sighed.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the carriage again for the return trip.”

  “Will you come back to Maamtrasna?”

  “Not immediately … . The carriage is for my previous guests.”

  “You are very kind, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  “This time I insist that you ride in it, taking my place, as it were.”

  How stilted I sounded.

  “I cannot, sir.” The tears spilled out of her eyes.

  “You can and you will, madam, and that’s settled.”

  Her eyes pondered me, trying perhaps to understand why I was being so kind. I did not know myself.

  “In Ireland,” she smiled ever so slightly, “it’s the women who give the orders.”

  “As it is in Irish America. Nonetheless, you will obey me in this matter.”

  She lowered her head and looked at the ground.

  “That’s what my husband would say … . You must take care of the little one.”