Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “You have any ideas that might explain the crime?”

  Again the shrug of resignation, very curial, I thought.

  “None whatsoever. I understand the interest in the family. Yet I can’t imagine anyone in the family ever conceptualizing such a plan. We love our mother and father too much. Mother is an extraordinary woman … When they arrived at Cortina, I realized that I was the proverbial third wheel and left them to themselves for the first day. The time together alone seemed to refresh them in an extraordinary fashion. I couldn’t help but think to myself how clever God was to design sexual differentiation. I rejoiced with them in their love.”

  “Not the kind of people anyone would want to harm?”

  “Not even my poor grandfather, who, however much he may have treated the rest of us, always seemed to talk about the firm with Father, in the most respectful and indeed praiseworthy manner.”

  I had not heard that before.

  “So it would seem that the destruction of River House was designed to destroy them and not the rest of you?”

  “Only if the bombers knew that they would be there and we wouldn’t. But how would they have either fact at their command, unless they were watching all of us very closely?”

  An acute observation.

  “The Cardinal offered to say Mass for all of us privately in the side chapel here; Blackie would preach of course. Mr. Casey advised against it. He didn’t want all of us in the same place at any time. So the Cardinal will say Mass for Mother and Father in their suite at the Four Seasons. Father Reide and I will assist. I would imagine that Blackie will stumble in, looking confused and unprepared, then preach brilliantly as he always does.”

  The young man had become a fan of the coadjutor just as quickly as my brother George had.

  “That’s about all, Rory.” I rose and he rose with me. “I’m the spear-carrier and I’ll bring all this material back to herself. Thanks for the conversation. Good luck in your work here.”

  “Thank you, Dermot.” He shook hands firmly. “Pray for me and for all of us.”

  The four she-demons waited in the corridor along with Crystal Lane.

  “I say she’s really pregnant,” Megan McCarthy insisted.

  “I say she’s not,” Megan Flores responded, “and the others say maybe.”

  “What do you think, Crystal?”

  “I think she’s not yet but would like to be.”

  “As far as I know Crystal is correct.”

  “She always is,” grumbled Megan Kim.

  I took the L north, then walked home in a drizzle trying to become a downpour.

  I encountered a domestic crisis as soon as I opened the door. The two older women in my family, Nuala and Nelliecoyne were glaring at each other in the middle of the room, the dogs watching anxiously, as they watched every family crisis. Danuta stood at the door, arms folded in imperial displeasure, frowning at the scene. Nuala was trying, as far as I could tell, to articulate the relationship between a lace veil and the still-incomplete white First Communion dress.

  “Nelliecoyne, it’s your fault. You have to stand still.”

  “Ma, I have been standing still.”

  My good wife was out of her frigging mind. As the Curran crisis continued she was trying to fix the dress for an event still two weeks off. How could she come home from a long session with John Curran, her nerves frayed, and hope to do anything but create a domestic crisis.

  “If you want me to make your wedding dress, young woman, you have to stand still.”

  “First Communion, not wedding, Ma. Not yet.”

  Danuta laughed. I laughed. Nelliecoyne laughed. Nuala started to cry.

  “Nuala Anne,” said the little redhead, “chill out!”

  “What did you say!”

  A thundercloud, no, a massive weather system, appeared on my wife’s face.

  “I said, Nuala Anne, chill out. God doesn’t care what kind of dress I wear the first time I approach the table. It’s not worth getting frazzled about.”

  It was a verbatim repetition of something I had said a couple of weeks ago, not knowing that nosey little ears were listening.

  The storm system wavered for a moment, then fell away. Bright sunshine appeared. With sun my wife’s laughter returned. She and Nelliecoyne hugged one another and laughed together.

  “Sure, child ’tis the first time you told your ma what to do, I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

  “It’s part of bonding, Ma,” she said. This was also a quote from you know whom. Eventually herself would figure it out.

  “I help, missus,” Danuta said. “I sew real good.”

  “Much better than I do … And one thing always remember, Mary Anne Coyne. When a professional offers help and you’re an amateur, always accept the help.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  I slipped across the room and up the stairs to my study, hoping no one noticed me.

  I began to work on a poem about priests, which had been kicking around in the back of my head. I managed four lines that were pretty good when me wife appeared with two goblets of the creature, straight up.

  “If you don’t want yours, won’t I drink it meself,” she said, collapsing on my couch.

  “You didn’t even take your gorgeous mint green suit off before you got yourself into that mess.”

  “’Tis true, I’m a terrible shite hawk.”

  “Go take off your suit. I don’t want you spilling the creature on your new suit. If you do, you’ll blame me.”

  “And wouldn’t it serve you right and yourself getting me into this detective shite!”

  She removed her suit (and her panty hose), folded them neatly, then reclined on the couch, glass in hand.

  “I don’t want you ruining your mint green lingerie either.”

  “Go along with you, Dermot Michael Coyne, and your seducing remarks. I’m in no mood for focking. I’m a neurotic ninny.”

  “I don’t like the adjective . . Do you mind if I admire you?”

  “You do that when I have all me clothes on … lock the door. I don’t want the doggies coming and slobbering over me.”

  So I locked the door.

  Glorious body or not, the poor woman looked terrible.

  “I shouldn’t have tried to mess with that Communion dress after blowing the interview this morning. I’m a real eejit altogether … And I know that Miss Nosey Parker caught that quote of yours about chilling out …’Tis all your fault that one of our children is spying on us.”

  “’Tis not. The child is afraid we might be planning divorce.”

  “She’s not!” Nuala sat up straight, spilling some of her whiskey on her bare belly.

  “I’ll lick that up if you want.”

  “Stay away from me, Dermot Michael Coyne.”

  “I was just going to give you this paper napkin.”

  “A likely story.”

  “Now drink your jar.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She swallowed a large gulp of the Bushmills’ Green, grimaced, then lay back on the couch and relaxed.

  “Sure, it’s a great medication now, isn’t it? And what’s this about divorce?”

  “She asked me the other day about whether we were getting a divorce. Apparently the parents of some kid in her class are divorcing and that kid cries every day that she doesn’t want a new mommy or a new daddy. She told Nelliecoyne that her mommy and daddy always fight and that’s why she’s getting a divorce. We fight a lot, so Nelliecoyne thinks we too might have to divorce.”

  “The poor children … Both of them.”

  Tears flowed down her face.

  “We don’t fight, do we, Dermot Michael?”

  “That’s what I told our Nellie. I explained that we banter and that’s an Irish way of expressing love. I said I never would really argue with you because I’d lose.”

  “And she said?”

  “She said, ‘’Tis true!’”

  “Gobshites!”

  “And I said that eve
n if we were really angry we’d never get a divorce and she said is that because we’re Catholics? And I said that too but we’re too hopelessly in love with one another and always will be.”

  “And that satisfied her, did it now?”

  “It did!”

  “’Tis true … Dermot, you can ogle me all you want!”

  “I will but I don’t need your permission … Now let’s get to work.”

  I told her my story of my lunch at Pane Caldo. It perked her up considerably.

  “Wicked little brats!” She laughed, as she destroyed the remnants of her jar of whiskey.

  In Ireland any container whether it be a paper cup or a Waterford tumbler like Nuala had in her hand is always called a jar, so long as it contains a drop or a splasheen (or much more) of whiskey.

  “But smart and I think honest. Poor Estelle. How much she had to suffer to be able to free them to have such fun.”

  “And John too.”

  “He had no choice—when she changed, he had to do the same.”

  “’Tis true,” I admitted. “Now tell me what you picked up from himself.”

  “Gimme your jar!”

  “Woman, I will not! You still have to do your exercises, take a shower, and have a nice nap—solo—before supper.”

  She sighed, sat up, and began to tell me about their long and discursive conversation.

  She did it in remarkably succinct and coherent fashion.

  “You’re as good a spear-carrier as I am!” I complained.

  “I am not!”

  She lay back on the couch, by then a little dizzy from the drink taken. Each such movement contributed to my concupiscence. A good husband, however, knows how to wait.

  “The question,” she began, after a long and weary sigh, “is still what it was after those terrible dreams … Who are the spies?”

  “Spies?”

  “Someone is spying on Estelle and John. How else would the bombers know where their car was?”

  “But the spy didn’t know they had left for Italy?”

  “Och, isn’t that the problem? The one to whom the spy reports wants to kill them. He provided the wrong information the night they blew up River House.”

  “That’s a problem,” I agreed.

  “I keep thinking I know the answer, but can’t quite find it … And now with the drink taken I can’t think straight. But we have to figure it out or they’ll have themselves another try.”

  She stood up, put on her mint green suit, and picked up her folded panty hose.

  “Do I really have to exercise and meself with the drink taken?”

  “Woman, you do! You haven’t taken that much of the drink.”

  “I would have if you’d let me have your jar and itself half-full.”

  She paused at the door and turned around.

  “I do love you, Dermot Michael Coyne, something terrible. You deserve someone better than me, but I won’t let you go.”

  Then as she left the room, she paused again but didn’t turn around.

  “I should have let you lick the drink off me belly.”

  “I’ll bring a jar to your boudoir tonight.”

  She didn’t argue.

  I turned to my notes to begin the task of putting them in order. It should not be the obligation of a poet to take responsibility for such matters.

  I thought of the possibilities for the night and drained my own jar.

  That didn’t help.

  So I called John Culhane to see what news he had.

  “I’m worried, Dermot. We’re hunting down the bombers. We think they’re Cubans but from Texas. The one who put out the contract is still somewhere and still conniving.”

  26

  In the days after the failure of the Rising, Bob Emmet was often on the move from the mountains down to Butterfield Lane in Rathfarham, then into the house at Harold Cross in Dublin.

  This was madness. He should have stayed in the mountains. Some say he was burdened with guilt and wanted to be captured, so he could make a brilliant statement in the courtroom. Others said that he was romancing Sarah Curran. I think he was probably attempting to persuade her to flee with him to America. I think she wanted to go but was afraid of her father’s wrath. If she had agreed, they’d most likely still be alive today—though the White Death could have taken her in America too. If she had asked me I would have urged her to leave. But she didn’t ask me.

  Bob was arrested in the house at Harold Cross on August 25, a place he had no business being at only a month after the Rising; he was still wearing the fancy green uniform he had designed for the Rising. On his person they found letters about a planned escape and what appeared to be an unsigned love letter.

  Bob went into panic when he was confronted with these letters and the letters from Sarah, which he had left at Harold Cross. They knew all about their romance.

  He wrote a letter to Lord Wickham, the First Secretary, in which he proposed a deal. If the letters to Sarah were left out of evidence, he would confess his guilt during the trial. He surely knew that he would be convicted. He also had planned a statement from the dock which he thought would make him immortal in Ireland—and heaven knows it did.

  Then some strange things happened. Major Sirr, the villain of ’98, went to the Curran home in Rathfarham and confiscated Bobby’s letters to Sarah. There were even then some questions about that raid. If Bob had agreed to plead guilty in effect, why were those letters needed? John Philpot Curran wrote a servile letter to Lord Hardwicke the Viceroy withdrawing from his role as Bobby’s trial lawyer—a letter which caused great amusement at the Castle because now they knew that they owned Curran like they owned other lawyers who had worked for the United Irishman.

  The legends say that Bob told his solicitor, Leonard McNally, about the letters at Sarah’s house and the danger they might present. McNally, who was an informer, immediately told Lord Wickham, who sent Major Sirr to pick up the letters. Wickham’s purpose was not to use the letters in the trial as he had already apparently promised Bob that he would keep Sarah’s name out of the trial. It is said that Wickham wanted to gain greater control over Curran, who had been a constant annoyance to the Castle, and to have more solid proof against Bobby at the trial if Bobby changed his mind.

  Even then I doubted this story. Wickham had the reputation at that time of being an honorable gentleman. It did not seem likely that he would retreat from an agreement, nor that he would doubt the word of another gentleman, which he had decided Robert Emmet was. In any event, Curran expelled Sarah from their home and sent her to the house of a friend, probably to convince the Castle of his fervent loyalty and his shame at the disloyalty of his daughter.

  It all seemed strange to me when I began to hear the stories.

  Down in Carlow, studying Latin texts, I heard only dribs and drabs of the story of Bob’s capture at Harold Cross. What was the idiot doing there, I wondered. Chasing after Sarah when his life was in danger.

  I was devastated by the inevitable death of a man who had been a close friend for the last ten years of our lives. The Latin words on the pages of the old books blurred before my eyes.

  Not that there was anything in the books that would help me as a parish priest in County Wexford.

  Should I go up to Dublin to see him? I knew they wouldn’t let me in. Attend the trial to watch his performance? That he would route the Ascendancy and indeed the whole British Empire I had no doubt. On the other hand … I don’t know what on the other hand. I wouldn’t risk much by appearing at the trial. Father would get me in and he’d admire my loyalty. Yet that part of my life was over. I was no longer a messenger boy for the republicans. I had firmly embarked on another route, which would be difficult in County Wexford. They had hung Father Murphy and Father Roache. The Yeomen were disbanded and hated.

  I might have gone anyway. A letter I received on the 11th made up my mind.

  Bob will go on trial on September 18. Please come. I need you.

  Sarah.
/>   I had no choice.

  I went to the president of the college.

  “Father,” I said, “I realize that term has just begun. Yet I must go to Dublin for a few days.”

  “For what reason?” He took off his thick spectacles and looked up at me, his large pale blue eyes blinking.

  “Personal reason.”

  “To attend a trial, I daresay.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I assume that you will go even if I do not give permission.”

  “I’m afraid that I would, Father.”

  “Hmm … I understand you knew the young man at Trinity College.”

  How did he know that?

  “I also understand that you were not involved in any significant way in either of the Risings.”

  “No, Father, I was not.”

  “There is no danger that the English police might pick you up in Dublin?”

  “They’re not very competent these days, Father, even less informed about me than you are. Little danger, I would think.”

  “Well, then, son, I cannot prevent you from following your duty as a loyal friend. In fact, it may be possible to find you a horse for your trip.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  He put his spectacles back on and returned to his work. “Be careful, young man, be careful!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  It was a dark cold miserable day to ride into Dublin. The horse was a pleasant and reliable one, what else would the president have. It was a smoother ride than the coach but wetter, though the roof of the coach leaked too. The drizzle was nasty; as Mother would say, the sky is in a bad mood today.

  I was tired and wet when I arrived home. My parents were sitting in the drawing room in front of a warm fire with a plate of cold cuts and a consoling bottle of port.