Maybe the United States should have been a colony of Ireland and would never have wanted to rebel, I thought, but had more sense than to get swept up in a conversation in which I wasn’t needed.
Lowest inflation rate in Europe, highest balance of payments, Dublin the best-educated city in Europe, Galway the fastest-growing city in Europe. Now we had to give money to the European Union instead of getting it from them. Still, fair was fair, wasn’t it now?
Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to get to Jury’s and collapse into bed.
I opened an eye again to consider Dublin. It looked good in the sunlight, as it always did—though the mists on the eastern horizon seemed thicker. Yet there was a sheen of prosperity in the city that had not been there when I first encountered herself in the pub outside Trinity College.
Why did it look more prosperous? I wondered, closing my eyes. In a few minutes I opened both of them to look out the window. The car was not moving. The driver’s quasi bull had already come true. We’d never get to Jury’s.
I observed that, as always, there were large crowds on the streets of downtown Dublin. The difference today was that they all seemed well dressed. Well, their standard of living had a long way to go to catch up with Yankland.
“We’re here, Dermot love,” she whispered to me as though I were a small child.
“Sheffield Avenue?” I said, knowing full well that it wasn’t. The melodious voices had not really put me to sleep. Not much.
‘Jury’s,” she said as she paid off the driver, with a ten-pound note as a tip.
I struggled to climb out of the car.
“Why are we in front and not at the Towers’ entrance? We don’t have to go through the lobby?”
“Don’t we have to say hello to all our old friends?”
So I stumbled into the lobby. Our “old friends,” from the general manager to the bellmen and the women from the gift shop, swarmed around us as soon as we came through the revolving door—as if they had been waiting for our arrival.
Another one of Nuala Anne’s objectionable traits is that she never forgets a name. She remembered everyone who had worked in the hotel when she was acting as my secretary, even in many cases the names of their children.
There was much hugging and kissing and congratulating. My task in the situation was simple. I merely had to smile my stupid smile and agree when I was told repeatedly that I was a very lucky fella to have such a wonderful wife.
I could hardly disagree, could I—even if I were in such a rotten mood?
It was also my responsibility to supply herself with CDs for her autograph.
Finally we made it to our room. Just as I was about to collapse on the bed, herself displayed her most obnoxious trait—being right.
“Would you think now, Dermot love,” she said hesitantly, “that it might not be a bad idea if we spent a little time in the pool to work the kinks out from the trip?”
“It’s a terrible idea altogether,” I said, doffing my jacket, “but as always, Nuala Anne, you’re right.”
“If you don’t want to …”
“I don’t want to at all, at all, but I think we should.”
So we donned swimsuits and Jury’s terry cloth robes and walked down to the swimming pool, an indoor-outdoor affair with the water temperature comfortably above eighty degrees Fahrenheit—a swimming pool for Yanks who, as Nuala had tardy observed when I was her employer rather than vice versa, had never swum in the Atlantic Ocean.
“I’ve seen that bikini before,” I observed.
“Have you now?”
“I have.”
“And where did you see it?”
The first time you went swimming in this place.
It was a modest dark blue ensemble, as if anything on Nuala Anne could be considered to be modest.
“I don’t remember. A woman tried to seduce me in it, but I don’t think she was successful.”
She slapped my arm affectionately. “You’re a desperate man altogether, Dermot Michael Coyne!”
“So I’ve been told.”
We cuddled in the whirlpool, a concession, it was implied, to my weakness. She had undressed in our room and was now lying compliantly in my arms as the waters bubbled around us. Both were pleasant aesthetic experiences, but my hormones were on a temporary hiatus due to circadian dysrhythmia. I promised myself I’d make up for it later.
You’re pretty young to be turning impotent, the Adversary informed me.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
We then swam for a half hour. The exercise did not improve either my physical condition or my mental disposition.
“I’ll never make it to our room,” I complained.
“Poor Dermot love,” she said. “Your nap will be a lot healthier now.”
“I don’t want health; I want sleep.”
“Poor dear man.”
Just like I was her boy child—which might be what I was.
I collapsed into bed and watched her dress in light gray slacks, matching sweater, and a blue blazer.
“Where would you be going, Nuala Anne?” I asked.
“Out to look around Dublin’s fair city to see how it’s changed in a year and a half.” She bent over me and kissed me lovingly. “I’ll visit a lot of the places where we courted.”
“We didn’t court here.”
“You didn’t, but I did,” she said defiantly as she flounced out the door.
Then I had fallen into the deepest pit of sleep and woke much later in the day to call George the Priest and learn from him about Kevin O’Higgins.
Booterstown road, was it? Well, I wouldn’t tell her. Serve her right. We’d forget the whole subject.
I groped for the phone again and phoned Fred Hanna’s, my Dublin bookstore.
“Dermot Coyne here,” I said. “I have an account with you.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Coyne, while I look it up.”
Right. You gotta be sure I’m not lying.
“On Sheffield Avenue in Chicago, is it now?”
“ ‘Tis.”
“Welcome to Dublin, Mr. Coyne.… We’re all waiting eagerly to hear herself sing.”
Sure they knew who I was. Nuala Anne’s husband.
“You can see a preview on the telly this evening.… I wonder if you could help me with a couple of books.”
“I’d be delighted to, Mr. Coyne.”
“Would you have a biography of Kevin O’Higgins?”
“By DeVere White? I’m sure we do somewhere, perhaps only secondhand. Would that be all right?”
“It would.… Then there’s a book about that woman he might have been involved with?”
“Lady Hazel Lavery? Yes, I’m quite certain we have that in stock … That one was no better than she had to be, Mr. Coyne.”
“And herself from Chicago at that.… Would it be all right if I stopped by tomorrow morning to pick them up?”
“Certainly, Mr. Coyne. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you again. Perhaps you could sign some copies of your novel for us.”
“I did write a novel, didn’t I?”
“We could arrange a cup of tea for you.”
“And scones?”
“Of course.”
“Done.”
So I was a novelist after all. Nuala Anne’s husband, who happened to write novels.
I closed my eyes, merely to rest them. However, when herself bounced in the door I was sound asleep.
“Still sleeping, Dermot love? Ah, but don’t you look a lot better now, and meself feeling guilty that I was so wide awake.”
She didn’t mean a word of it.
“Did you visit all our old haunts?”
“Didn’t I go to O’Neill’s and Trinity and Bewley’s and Irishtown and meet a lot of me old friends. They were so glad to see me, not a touch of envy. It was brilliant, Dermot love, dead brilliant. They all wondered where yourself was.”
She doffed her jacket.
And her sweater.
I made no comme
nt.
“And you told them?”
“That you were resting up from the plane flight and would be as fit as a fiddle tomorrow morning.… And didn’t I make a dinner reservation for us at the Commons at half seven. I’ll pay.”
The Commons was in the basement of Newman House on the south side of the green, the house where Newman had given the lectures that became The Idea of a University, where Gerard Manley Hopkins died, and where your man with the dirty mind went to college. When I took her there for the first time, she thought the menu was too dear altogether. Now she wanted to pay for dinner.
“I’m hungry now.”
“Well, can’t we ring for tea in a little while.”
“And how’s Dublin?”
“Och, Dermot, isn’t it scary how much money there is in this city? I’m afraid all the Irish are becoming materialists.”
“Better than living on the edge of starvation.”
“ ’Tis true … ,” she sighed. “I found a bunch of secondary school girls playing Camogie. They let me have a run or two on the pitch.”
Camogie is the woman’s version of hurling, a dangerous, if exciting, sport in which a couple of dozen Irish folk were equipped with clubs.
“In your good clothes!”
“I took off me shoes.”
“How did you do?”
“I’m afraid,” she said, making a motion of swinging her club, “that I astonished the poor children.… What did His Rivirince say?”
She sat down on the bed next to me.
“Which reverence?”
“Your brother George, what other rivirince?”
She kicked off her shoes and slipped out of her slacks. George was always treated with great respect, a wise and holy man. I was still poor Dermot.
“Why would I be calling George the Priest?”
“About the man who was killed walking to Mass.”
Of course she knew that I would call George. Why would I think she wouldn’t know that?
“Oh, that.… Does the name Kevin O’Higgins mean anything to you?”
She frowned. “Wasn’t he one of the gobshites that killed Michael Collins?”
“No, he was on Collins’s side. Apparently he became the backbone of the new Free State Government. He cracked down on the violence in the country and made a lot of enemies. He was killed on the way to Mass down on the Booterstown road.”
She nodded.
“Apparently he became involved with my fellow Chicagoan, Lady Hazel Lavery.”
“THAT one!”
“Unlike the Big Fella, who seems to have evaded her, O’Higgins left a trail of letters that are in a new book.”
“Hm …”
“I called our bookstore over by the Railings, and I’ll pick up a biography of O’Higgins and the book about Lady Hazel.”
Hanna’s was across the street from the wrought-iron railings of Trinity College.
“Och, Dermot, aren’t you a grand husband to put up with my craziness.”
“Actively promote it.”
“You do indeed. … We’ve got to prove that the woman didn’t start the fire; don’t you see that?”
“If you say so.… What woman and which fire?”
“If I knew that, would I not have told you?”
“So we have to find out?”
“We have to find out.”
I’d been there before.
“Nuala Anne, WHAT are you doing?”
“Taking off your shorts.”
“Why?”
“Because you are so beautiful with all your clothes off.”
With one hand she caressed my chest and with the other unhooked her bra. Then she brushed her lips against mine.
“I love you, Dermot Michael; I love you something terrible.”
My hormones seemed to be working again.
—4—
I’M a terrible woman, terrible, terrible. And it’s all Your fault. Why did You make me such a focking good actress? Poor Dermot, he’s such a dear sweet man. He deserves a good wife, one who doesn’t pretend all the time.
I did mean it when I said his naked body is beautiful, so trim and strong and solid. I like to feel him inside me. I like it when he kisses and caresses me and holds me in his arms.
But I have to fake that I’m having real sexual pleasure. I’m a terrible good fake. Or at least good enough to fool him. I don’t think that woman he made love with could have been all that passionate either.
I AM passionate, but maybe not enough. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Bat I don’t think I enjoy what some other women enjoy. A lot of them say they fake it often, too.
All the time?
I started faking the first night because I wanted him to feel like he was a great lover. According to what I read in the books he does all the things a good lover should do. It’s not his fault that I’m such an iceberg. He’s kind and sweet and gentle and thoughtful—and clever, too. He knows what buttons to push, but my buttons just don’t seem to be working.
I kept thinking that I’d catch on soon, but I didn’t. Then I got so much into the habit of faking I couldn’t change. I start out with the feeling that I have to fake it.
The books say that I should talk it over with him. But how can I tell him that I’ve been acting all these months? It would humiliate him altogether, and it isn’t his fault
He tries to make me discuss orgasm, but I won’t do it because I’m so ashamed of faking. He’ll find out eventually and then he’ll blame me. He won’t love me anymore and I’ll lose him. All because I’m living a lie.
Will I really lose him?
Maybe not, but I might. He’ll be disgusted with me.
Why did You let me do this?
It won’t do any good to deny Your responsibility. You made me a faker.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean that It’s not Your fault I know that You love me and want me and me husband to be happy. I know that You ‘re always present to me, no matter where I go. But what am I supposed to do? Won’t I lose him no matter what I do now … and meself lying to him all these months?
Am I not pregnant because You are punishing me for me lies? That’s what the nuns would say. Maybe they’d be right
I know You wouldn ‘t do that.
Would You?
Am I a frigid Irish cow? Do a thousand years of inhibitions make me afraid to abandon meself to him, like that feminist woman wrote in the Irish Times this morning?
Or should I just wait and see what happens?
That’s what me ma says. I suppose You got a good laugh out of two Irish women talking around THAT subject! Still, we did all right She says I should stop worrying and trust You and that it will all work out just fine.
You know I’m not the kind to do that, don’t You?
But maybe Ma is right
Please help me.
I love him so much.
—5—
THE NEXT morning I picked my way through the mists to Fred Hanna’s, drank my cup of tea, demolished my pile of scones, and autographed a couple of dozen of my novels. They must have bought out the local wholesaler.
“Won’t the poster be saying,” I asked the very pretty young woman who had answered the phone the day before, “ ‘autographed novels by Nuala Anne’s husband’?”
The young woman blushed. “Not if you don’t want them to.”
“ ’Tis all right,” I sighed. “Now I know what Michael Jordan’s wife feels like.… Sure, couldn’t we get her to stop by and autograph them, too!”
“We’d never do that!” She sounded angry at the very suggestion, but her eyes glittered.
“She wouldn’t mind,” I said, well aware that my wife might go through the ceiling at any suggestion that I was a subsidiary character. On the other hand, she might think it great fun. With THAT one you could never tell.
“And wasn’t she grand on the telly last night? Didn’t she destroy them focking gobshites!”
“Didn’t she now!”
“You must be terrible proud of her!”
“I am that.”
“Wasn’t that Maeve Doyle person terrible, and herself saying that a Yank shouldn’t be singing at the Point?”
That Maeve Doyle person, a tall woman with a sweet face, had appeared on the telly after the clips from our press conference and denounced Nuala. Nuala had fled to the bathroom when the clips of her singing had started. So she hadn’t heard the woman with the saccharine passive aggressive martyr’s tone say sadly that everyone knew that my wife was an untrained amateur. Wasn’t it most unfortunate that one so young could become a tool of an American effort to take over Irish art? Wasn’t it inconceivable that an Irish singer would dare sing such trashy hymns in public? Didn’t most Irish women think that Nuala should go home to America where she belonged?
It was all done with so many sighs that you almost didn’t realize how much she resented Nuala.
“Would you donate your services for Irish International Aid, Maeve?” the interviewer had asked.
“I think that it’s a shame that the church in this country is unwilling to pay Irish performers the decent wages to which they’re entitled. I’m sure that poor little Nuala Anne doesn’t realize that she’s taking money away from us. I would certainly cut my fee for a charitable performance. I only wish the clergy would realize that not everyone is as wealthy as they are.”
Not a nice lady.
“Doesn’t the woman have green eyes?” I replied to the young woman at Hanna’s.
“Isn’t she mad because she’s not as pretty as your wife? And isn’t there no vitality in her singing at all, at all?”
This exchange of questions could have gone on all morning. I sighed, escaped from Nuala’s adoring fan, and took a cab over to the Point on the banks of the Liffey to watch the rehearsal. Herself, in jeans and her “Galway Hooker!” T-shirt, was having the time of her life. She had charmed all the other performers, the dancers and chorus, and the warpipe players and the bodhran drummers. In feet, when I came in she was pounding on a drum and singing some kind of Gaelic battle hymn. Or maybe it was a love song. It’s hard to tell the difference.
“Now I want all of the rest of youse to be quiet except the drummers and the pipers. I’m going to sing the ‘Pange Lingua,’ and I will want the drummers and the pipers to accompany me, but very solemn and gende like, because this is a procession in church and it has to be very respectful, doesn’t it now?”
Irish Mist Page 4
