London, May 9, 1883
Tim Harrington, the M.P. whom I’m assisting, said to me this morning, “There is something big happening out in Galway.”
“What?”
“It’s not clear. Apparently someone is going to make a major statement at Mass next Sunday when the Archbishop comes to Maamtrasna. The new priest up there, Father Corbett, is behind it. We’ll have people there, of course. Yet, you know the valley better than anyone. Would you go out and observe what happens?”
I hesitated. I did not want to know whether Nora and Mary Elizabeth Joyce were alive or dead.
“It might provide great material for one of your dispatches.”
I had not sent a dispatch to the Daily News for several weeks. It was time I went back to being a serious reporter.
“All right,” I 1 said reluctantly. “I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“Tonight,” Tim insisted “I want you to be out there for the show.”
My heart is pounding.
21
I FELT lips brush my forehead. A gentle scent touched my nostrils. The aroma of tea and fresh scones and oatmeal lurked in the background.
“Are you awake, Dermot Michael?”
“Woman, I am not.”
“Yes, you are, Daddy.”
Half the bitch population of the household.
“Would you ever like a bit of breakfast?”
“I might just.” I rolled over.
My wife, in a green and white Galway sweatshirt and jeans leaned over me. A matching ribbon bound her long hair in place. She was carrying a breakfast tray. Behind her, similarly attired, was my daughter, holding, very cautiously, a plate of scones.
“Are you feeling all right?” my wife asked me.
“I wasn’t till you came into the room, woman of the house.”
She blushed as she lifted the tray over me. If Nelliecoyne had not been with her, I would have fondled her breasts, neatly outlined under the sweatshirt.
“You had a good night’s sleep, did you now?”
“I did. No distractions.”
She continued to blush.
Nelliecoyne put the plate of scones on the tray.
I was feeling in the mood for love and Nuala Anne was well into her busy day.
“Wasn’t the vet from Cork here already? And didn’t he say that the three puppies are in wonderful health? And isn’t our Fiona a proud doggie mother if there ever was one? …
“Should we feed Daddy his breakfast, Nelliecoyne?”
“Just like we feed the Mick?”
“Yes, dear. Just like we feed your brother.”
“What time is it?” I asked as she fed me my first spoonful of oatmeal.”
“Ten-thirty on this grand spring morning.”
“You’ve done your run already?”
“And wasn’t the ocean water terribly refreshing?
“You smell refreshing.”
“Do I now?”
“And to what do I owe the honor of this special service?”
“Didn’t your daughter and I think it would be nice and ourselves laughing at you yesterday because of your seasickness and your medicine?”
I couldn’t quite remember that they had actually laughed at me. However, I would not reject the attention.
“Nelliecoyne, dear, why don’t you go play with the puppies. I think I can handle Daddy by meself.”
My daughter said something in Irish that I think might have hinted that the puppies were more interesting than Daddy anyway.
Some may suggest that being fed breakfast in bed by your wife is hardly an erotic experience. I assure them that if the wife is Nuala Anne McGrail, it can be a very erotic experience.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings yesterday,” she said contritely. “I’m a terrible, thoughtless bitch altogether.”
“I was so dopey that I can’t remember my feelings being hurt.”
Nuala Anne is so magical that my feelings are almost never hurt. However, there is no point in arguing with her that she hasn’t hurt my feelings when she thinks she has. So I don’t try.
“You were a terrible good sport about it, like you always are, except when I beat you at tennis.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
She eased back the sheet that covered me and caressed my chest and belly.
“Woman, I thought you were feeding me breakfast.”
“Can’t I do both at the same time? … Drink your tea while I butter some scones for you.”
I sipped the tea and teased one of her breasts. She sighed and smiled.
“How is it, Dermot Michael Coyne, that you know exactly what I want exactly when I want it?
“I’m fey.”
“Are you now? … Ah …”
“Where’s me scone?”
“Beast,” she slipped a scone dense in cream and raspberry jam between my lips. I didn’t take my hand off her breast.
“I should warn you”—she sighed—“that we’ll have to wait till later. Don’t we have to go to Lord Ballynahinch’s for luncheon?”
“For a woman like you, Nuala Anne, I can wait a lot longer than that.”
“Go ’long with you, Dermot Michael Coyne.”
So we proceeded with a mixture of foreplay and scones. If the kids were not awake and Ethne not in the house, Nuala might not have got off so easily. Still her tease was a promise of wonders yet to come. It would be delightful to wait to find out what she had in mind.
“Enough lollygagging,” she informed me, rearranging her sweatshirt, which I had disordered. “Time to get to work.”
“What did you think of himself deserting Nora at Christmastime?” I asked her as she lifted the breakfast tray off the bed.
“Isn’t your man too hard on himself altogether?”
“You think he should have left her alone?”
“If he didn’t, wouldn’t he have made matters worse for the poor woman?”
“She and the baby might have died.”
“Wasn’t that a chance he had to take?”
My wife is almost always more fiercely realistic than I am.
“Well, we’ll have to see what happens next.”
“Won’t we now?” She bent over and planted a lingering kiss on my lips. “Am I forgiven?”
I had learned through the years that instead of arguing that there was nothing to forgive, would be much wiser to say something. “You bet. I can’t stay angry at you for long, Nuala Anne.”
“Now get your lazybones out of bed and take a nice shower.”
“Alone?”
“Certainly! … Get a move on now … . And that picture of the cemetery the priesteen gave us is interesting, isn’t it now?”
“’Tis.”
“I’d like to know why they covered it over with their park in front of the house.”
“You can’t expect a Lord to look out of his front room on graves of Irish peasants.”
She swayed out of the room and I forced myself out of bed and threw on a robe. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. A new painting of Nora Joyce was almost finished. She was dressed in Irish peasant clothes this time, including the famous red petticoats.
She was my wife.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I grabbed our wedding picture off the mantle and held it next to the easel—same tall, slim body, same long black hair, same elegant breasts, same slender face, same dazzling blue eyes, same mysterious smile.
I gasped. What the hell was going on?
“Nuala!” I screamed.
She came running.
“Whatever happened, Dermot? Are you hurt?”
“No, no! It’s that picture!”
“’Tis only Nora Joyce.”
“’Tis you.”
“’Tis not, not at all, at all!”
“Compare her with this bride.”
She took the wedding picture from my hands and held it next to her painting.
“’Tis definitely not me at all, at all.”
“How’s she different?”
“Well, for example, I’m not wearing a red petticoat … . Ohmigod! Dermot Michael, it is me!”
She recoiled, holding our wedding picture against her breasts. Now she was genuinely spooked. She quickly made the sign of the cross.
“Should I get the Holy Water?”
“Don’t be blasphemous, Dermot Michael,” she reprimanded me. “Nora won’t hurt us.”
“I’m sure she won’t.”
“After all …” She rubbed her determined chin in serious thought. “Isn’t there Philbin blood in me too?”
“What?!”
“Me ma’s grandma was a Philbin from this part of the County Galway. Hadn’t I forgot that altogether!”
“And Nora Joyce was a Philbin?”
“And her little niece Josie was a Philbin too, and the poor man who was arrested.”
“So you’re their descendant?”
“I don’t think so, Dermot Michael. More likely a distant cousin, but with enough of the genes in me so that I look like herself.” She gestured towards the painting, still a little uncertain.
“So there’s a perfectly natural explanation for the similarity,” I said with a rationalist’s sigh of relief.
“Och, isn’t it all natural? There’s just different kinds of nature … . Some things are linked in ways we don’t understand, aren’t they now?”
“’They are,” I said, knowing that this was true, even if I didn’t understand it. At all, at all.
“Still”—she shivered again—“’tis passing strange, isn’t it?”
“’Tis,” I agreed.
“Well, don’t stand there all day without any clothes on. Don’t we have to go out to lunch with the nobility?”
“Tony Blair nobility,” I said.
“Better than some of the other kind.”
A half hour later, herself in a light gray spring suit that suggested a competent business person and meself in a dark blue business suit that suggested a commodity trader taking his leisure, we were preparing to depart the bungalow.
The doorbell rang.
I opened the door to discover Margot Quinn and Sean O’Cuiv outlined against the gray sky, a leprechaun and a banshee come to call.
“Would you ever mind having a word with us?” O’Cuiv began.
“We have an engagement for lunch,” I pleaded.
“We will take only a minute,” Ms. Quinn said confidently. “It’s about your house.”
They elbowed their way in. I showed them to the parlor. My wife was not pleased. She believed in punctuality as strongly as she believed in neatness. She offered them no tea. They reclined in parlor chairs as though they were in for a long talk. Margot Quinn’s V-neck dress, I noted, showed a good deal more décolletage than was necessary.
“We thought you should know,” Sean O’Cuiv began with his usual attempt at genial charm, “that there have been some important developments on the matter of development in this region … .”
“We must leave almost at once for lunch,” Nuala said flatly.
“MacManus’s silly plots have fallen through,” La Quinn waved aside my wife’s objections as though she had not made them. “You have a marvelous opportunity, but you must move quickly.”
“Our house is not for sale,” Nuala said firmly, as though she were the head of the family, which, of course, she was.
“Because of your influence in the world beyond Connemara,” O’Cuiv continued the argument, “we could offer you today—tomorrow might be too late—half again as much as you paid for your house.”
“Not for sale, even if it’s twice as much.”
I relaxed. There was no need for my sales resistance.
“Some important people worldwide have a deal virtually in place”—Margot Quinn plunged ahead—“for a massive development in this region. It will reach all the way down the Traheen River to Matt Howard’s place. It’s not generally known that he’s in over his head back in London and has to sell out his Irish holdings.”
“Everything from here to Letterfrack”—O’Cuiv grinned happily with his offer of his pot of gold—“is on the table. We’d like to include you in the deal while there’s still time.”
“No.” Nuala’s face was clouded over, a big blow was coming in from the Atlantic of her soul.
“It’s your loss if you don’t come on board,” Quinn warned us. “By tomorrow night you may well be kicking yourselves.”
Nuala stood up. The Archduchess was not amused.
“Me family and I are very grateful for your consideration and generosity. However, we must leave at once for our engagement at Lord Ballynahinch’s. Our decision is final, irrevocable, and not subject for further discussion. Our bungalow here is not for sale at any price. Thank you very much for your offer. Dermot Michael, would you show our guests to the door?”
I would and did. They left most ungraciously, not that I was particularly gracious as I virtually shoved Quinn out the door.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Trying to outmaneuver the T.D., I suppose. We can worry about them later, Dermot Michael. We must not keep the gentry waiting. Come along.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
In the family room, Ethne was presiding over a scene of relative domestic bliss. Nelliecoyne was teaching her brother how to play with blocks, making clear to all observers that she was the soul of long-suffering patience. Fiona was nursing her pups complacently. Ethne herself was busy with her books. An unattended cartoon program played on the “telly.”
Nuala bent over to kiss the kids good-bye. Suddenly and without warning our daughter went into a tantrum. She kicked over the blocks and ran screaming to me.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Don’t go away!”
Not quite sure what was wrong, the Mick joined in the chorus of wailing.
Her mother turned deathly pale.
“Dermot Michael, shouldn’t we stay at home? I’ll be after calling his lordship and telling him that our children are sick.”
“No, you won’t,” I said, as if, strong male of the house that I was, I was in complete charge of the situation.
“But she’s so upset!”
“She’s manipulating us, Nuala, like all kids do … . Now listen here, young woman, your ma and I are going out for lunch. Ethne will take care of you until we come back. Stop crying like a baby.”
The comparison with a baby was perhaps not a good idea. She released me, ran across the room, and began to pound the wall hysterically.
It was, I had to admit, a good act. For a terrible moment I was ready to give in. I glanced at Ethne. She nodded her encouragement.
“Come on, Nuala, this show will stop the minute we’re out the door.”
It had better or I would be in the deepest of deep trouble.
Despite her guilt and her worry, Nuala extended her hand to me for the keys to our van. She did not trust me to drive on an Irish country road—even though I had taught her to drive on just such roads meself. Myself.
A couple of hundred meters behind us a blue Garda car pulled out and joined our procession.
“You told them where we’re going?”
“Of course!” she snapped.
I picked up our cell phone and called the bungalow.
“Hi, Ethne, Dermot here.”
“Och, sure, Mr. Coyne, aren’t they fine altogether? Playing with their blocks and having a grand old time! Didn’t she calm down as soon as you walked out the door! Tell Nuala everything is fine.”
“Everything is fine,” I repeated. “Having a grand old time with their blocks. Calmed down as soon as we walked out the door.”
“That’s the way kids are, Mr. Coyne.”
“Tell me about it.”
Nuala drove the car onto the shoulder of the road, and turned off the engine.
“Bitch!” she said between clenched teeth.
“Just a little girl learning painfully that she can’t always have her way.”
My wife sighed loudly and pounded the steering wheel.
“Och, Dermot, why can’t I be as sensible and sane as you are? Why do I act like a terrible amadon and meself already taking me Prozac thing?”
How do I answer a question like that?
“Because you make too many demands on yourself.”
“That’s what the woman doctor was after saying.”
She wasn’t crying. It would have been easier if she was.
“How old are you, Nuala love?”
“Twenty-five, almost twenty-five and a half.”
“Consider all the things that have happened to you since you were nineteen.”
“Fer instance?”
“You graduated from college, migrated to America, worked at an accounting firm, began a singing career that has been successful beyond all expectation … .”
“I hate it.”
“I know that, but let me finish me list.”
“My list,” she corrected me with a giggle.
“You fell in love, married, adjusted to marriage, discovered that you could give and receive powerful sexual love, solved mysteries, and produced two rugrats after difficult pregnancies and complicated birthing. Isn’t that a busy agenda?”
“’Tis,” she said with a soft sigh.
“Maybe you had too much to do too soon in your life and yourself only a few years away from Canogi Field and the lanes of Connemara. Still you did them all well, some times incredibly well and never any less than reasonably well. Right?”
“I suppose so,” she admitted.
“Yet, you still have to be perfect and make no mistakes at all, at all.”
She snorted, both a protest and a concession.
“And take me pill every day.”
“Thank the good Lord that there are such pills to help people get through difficult times.”
She turned over the ignition of the van.
“And God thinking what a terrible eejit I am for making such a fuss when I should be grateful for all his blessings !”
“You said it, woman, I didn’t.”
“Well,” she steered the car back onto the road, “at least we showed the little bitch who the bosses were, didn’t you?”
We both laughed. Another crisis survived. The Garda car followed us onto the road.
Irish Love Page 21
