Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Fiona did not seem so sure about that.

  A phalanx of Guards swarmed around us on the stage. Everyone seemed to be screaming.

  Except my wife, who was ready for battle.

  Gently I took the harp out of her hands and replaced it with the roses she had dropped to the floor.

  “Isn’t she a cute little thing?” she said.

  “Who?” I asked foolishly.

  “Poor little Flona.

  I didn’t argue that Fiona seemed just fine.

  “Let him go, Fiona,” she said firmly.

  The wolfhound did as she was told. She eased off the terrified young man and barked at him, as if warning him never to try such foolishness again. He sobbed hysterically as the Guards pulled him to his feet and slapped handcuffs on him.

  He was a little guy, at least eight inches shorter than me and two inches shorter than herself.

  “He had opened the nail file,” Commissioner Keenan murmured.

  I extended my arms around Nuala Anne, who rested her head against my chest.

  “This is a nightmare, isn’t it, Dermot Michael? I’m going to wake up in a few minutes and know it’s all a dream, won’t I now?”

  Of course my Nuala Anne wouldn’t turn hysterical.

  She probably didn’t need me or Fiona, who was now pacing around nervously, edgy after her triumph. If the would-be assassin had reached Nuala Anne, she would have smashed his head with her harp, my harp, the harp I had given her the first day she came to Chicago.

  I felt a solid nudge against my thigh. It was Fiona, demanding attention.

  “Fiona, leave the poor man alone,” said the Guard who was tugging on the wolfhound’s leash.

  I bent over and embraced our canine heroine.

  “Fiona, you are the absolute greatest.”

  She barked contentedly and wagged her huge tail.

  “The poor little girl just wants some attention.” Nuala knelt next to me and rested her face on the dog’s huge head. “Don’t you, doggy?”

  Fiona showed her agreement by trying to lick both our faces at the same time.

  “Hasn’t she bonded with the both of youse?” said her handler.

  “Aren’t we going to have to take her home with us?” Nuala Anne pleaded with me, as if I would have any say about such a decision.

  I was aware that flashbulbs were popping all around us. Great shot for the morning papers—wolfhound and friend.

  “Dermot Michael,” the friend said to me. “ ’Tis, too, a dream. Poor little Fiona is just a dog in a dream.”

  “It’s not a dream, love. Both Father Placid and this punk are real.”

  I continued to pat the dog, who seemed especially fond of me.

  “Me poor ma and da out beyond; won’t they see it all on the telly?” She continued to lean against me.

  I looked around. Annie and Gerry were waiting patiently beyond the line of Guards.

  “That good-looking couple over there,” I said to the Commissioner, who was still standing next to us, “the woman looks like Nuala. They’re her parents.”

  “Right!” he said and waved at the Guards who were keeping them off the stage.

  “Me ma and da!” herself shouted and ran towards them, leaving me and the wolfhound to fend for ourselves.

  She began to sob only when she held both of them in her arms.

  “Ms. McGrail is fine.” The Commissioner had found a microphone somewhere. “The Gardai have taken the young man who created the disturbance into custody. It’s all right to go home now.”

  The crowd left reluctantly, perhaps wondering what we would do next.

  Later at the party in Jury’s—at which vast quantities of Guinness were being consumed (though not by Nuala and her parents)—Maeve Doyle showed up with her huge black-bearded scowling husband. No one had invited them, but they were there anyway. She was dressed in a black skin-tight dress with an enormous gold belt that was not adequate as a corset Before I could intercept her, she went straight to Nuala, a bulging Celtic Valkyrie bent on revenge.

  “I just want to congratulate you, child,” she said, oozing passive-aggressive sweetness. “You were really wonderM. You deserve all the praise you’ll receive.”

  ‘Thank you,” my wife said, taken aback by this weird apparition.

  “You shouldn’t forget that they’ll turn against you eventually. They always do. I’m sure you’ll have the courage to stand up to them.”

  Pure poison.

  “That will be as may be,” I said, cutting in front of her. “Nuala Anne, you owe me a dance.”

  We danced away from Maeve, who glared at me like an angry banshee.

  “ ’Tis yourself that’s quick, Dermot Michael,” herself sighed into my chest “Another second and I might have clawed her eyes out.”

  Maeve whispered into her huge husband’s ear. He nodded and began moving towards us.

  I hoped he’d keep coming. I was in the mood to flatten someone.

  Gene Keenan slipped up easily on the advancing giant and said something with a casual smile. The giant and his outsize wife departed quickly.

  “Och, Dermot, didn’t your man just save that fella’s life.”

  “I wouldn’t have killed him, Nuala Anne.”

  “Ah, no, but wouldn’t you have put him in the hospital.”

  “Just thrown him into the swimming pool.”

  MACHO ASSHOLE, the Adversary reprimanded me.

  Gene Keenan winked. Later, when herself was dancing with one of the drummers, the Commissioner reported to me.

  “The kid with the knife is a nutcase, Dermot. They just let him out of a home. He thinks he’s St. Patrick and has a mission to purify Ireland. Your man’s little diatribe up beyond set him off.”

  “You should put Father Placid in a home, too.”

  “I don’t think they’d take him. … Seriously, he couldn’t have done too much damage with a blunt nail file, not with our secret weapon and your wife’s harp.”

  “It looks like we’re stuck with the secret weapon.”

  Fiona was curled up in the corner of the party, sleeping the sleep of the just.

  “You’re welcome to her, God knows. … Still, Dermot …”

  “You don’t think the kid …”

  “Sean MacCarthy. …”

  “Is involved with the other characters.”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  I nodded agreement. “Not very likely.”

  “We managed to keep your little escapade in Thomas Street out of the media. No word from the allegedly ‘Real’ IRA about it, so it looks like they were tagalongs.”

  “That’s nice. … Do me a favor and get them anyway.”

  “We’ll try. … I noticed, by the way, you didn’t have your shillelagh with you on the stage tonight.”

  “No time to pick it up off the floor,” I said lamely.

  His wife appeared with diet Cokes for the two of us and slipped away. She had apparently been told that her husband needed a word or two with me.

  “You have a tough decision ahead of you, Dermot Michael.”

  “Do I now?” I said, sipping at the Coke.

  “Your wife is a beautiful and incredibly gifted young woman.”

  “Funny that you should mention it, but I noticed the same thing.”

  “Her performance tonight was a tour de force if I’ve ever seen one. She knows what Catholic Ireland really is because it’s all there in her Celtic soul. Your man over at Drumcondra ought to hire her to teach religion on RTE every night of the week.”

  He was referring to Dublin’s hand-wringing archbishop.

  “He won’t be that smart.”

  “Probably not. … Incidentally, if you haven’t heard already, RTE cut off your man just as he started to talk. He has a bit of reputation, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “But my point is …”

  He said “pint” of course.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not making exc
uses for our failures so far. Still, the point is that she is so spectacular that she is bound to stir up resentment not only here but back in America, too. I don’t think she understands that or ever will.”

  “I very much doubt that she could imagine such twisted perceptions.”

  “You saw how the witches from the media treated her at the airport. They hated her because she was beautiful and brilliant and happy and had a wonderful husband.”

  “Yeah?”

  Wonderful, indeed!

  “They had to lay off because she put them down and because she won everybody’s sympathy with that show over above at the Grand Canal. The reviews will be good tomorrow because if anyone attacks her just now they’ll be laughed off this island. But once she’s back in Chicago they’ll start in again.”

  “Sick!” I exploded.

  “ ’Tis all of that,” he sighed. “Envy is a great sickness.”

  “Where does my decision come in?”

  “Whether she goes on with her career. If she does, there will be a lot of sick people who will want to hurt her.”

  That was true enough.

  We both glanced across the room. Riding the crest of a wave of triumph, Nuala was dancing with her da.

  “You think I can stop her?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Of course not.”

  —19—

  “THE FOCKING bitch is right”. Herself waved the Irish Times at me. “I’m a focking hypocrite.”

  “She didn’t say that,” I replied mildly,

  knowing that my comment would do no good at all.

  “And meself up there in front of the whole of Ireland acting like I was Rosin Dubh herself.”

  She hurled the paper across the room.

  “I thought you were just being Nuala Anne.”

  “Fock Nuala focking Anne!” she shouted.

  My woman, as is probably obvious, was in a vile mood, as vile a mood as I had observed since I had first met her in O’Neill’s pub.

  She was curled up in a chair in our room, almost in a fetal position, huddling in a terry cloth robe. She wanted no part of the world and no part of me.

  The Irish mists had returned, this time as dense fog. The swimming pool below was invisible. So were the lower floors of the hotel. The fog fit her dark mood.

  No, she did not want to swim.

  No, she did not want to run in the park with Fiona (who was waiting for us in the kennel in the bowels of the hotel, which was reserved for dogs prominent enough to stay at Jury’s).

  No, she didn’t want to talk to me.

  No, she didn’t want me to go down to the lobby and work on my report.

  No, she didn’t want me to stay in the room with her.

  No, she didn’t want any breakfast.

  No, she didn’t want to take a shower.

  No, she didn’t want anything.

  Moreover, she wasn’t hungover. She had consumed only one pint of Guinness at the party. However, she had not even bothered to get into bed but had spent the whole night sulking in the chair like a little girl who had been grounded for a bad attitude. I had the good sense not to argue with her.

  The reviews in the morning papers had been wonderful. There was no mention of either Father Placid or Sean MacCarthy but pictures of Nuala and Fiona kissing each other. Somehow I didn’t make it into the pictures. Good enough for me. A columnist in the Times had been a bit grudging:

  Ms. McGrail has a pretty young voice which may eventually mature into something much better, though it obviously will never be quite as good as that of Ireland’s most beloved woman singer, Maeve Doyle. However, she is gorgeous and has more stage presence than all of the Riverdance troupe put together. She is, above all else, an actress, a skilled and instinctive performer who wins over even the most critical instantly. In a startling display of courage, she chose to re-create in an hour and a half the whole history of Celtic spirituality. Astonishingly, she almost carried it off. For those who admire the absolute purity of Ms. Doyle’s highly artistic performances, Ms. McGrail’s west of Ireland exuberance may well seem offensive, even a bit too American. However, within the obvious limitations of her talents, she is a compelling presence. We will hear more of her and from her in the future.

  I thought that wasn’t half-bad, not for an Irish Times columnist who was clearly a friend of Maeve Doyle. Nuala Anne chose to interpret it as a charge of hypocrisy, doubtless because it confirmed her feeling that she was a focking fraud and a focking phony.

  We were to have a late lunch at the Commons with her parents, who were determined to return to Galway on the six o’clock train. I thought it inappropriate to remind her.

  “Well,” I said with a sigh that was a fair imitation of hers, “if you want to know what I think …”

  “I don’t,” she snapped, “not at all, at all.”

  “Nonetheless, you’re going to hear it … You’re astonished at how well you did and at how much the people liked you. You’re afraid of success, because you’re convinced that you’re a worthless little gobshite from the Gaeltacht who has no business singing about God and Mary and the Baby Jesus and talking about the Celtic soul. You think it was all an act to cover up that your voice has room to improve.”

  No response.

  “I think that’s a ton of horseshite. I think you know it is. I think you’d better face up to who and what you really are. And, since I’ve bought his book, now I can quote your man from the Gaeltacht, too:

  “ ‘We are so privileged to still have time. We have but one life, and it is a shame to limit it by fear and false barriers. Irenaeus, a wonderful philosopher and theologian in the second century, said,‘The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” It is lovely to imagine that real divinity is the presence in which all beauty, unity, creativity, darkness, and negativity are harmonized. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life. If you allow yourself to be the person that you are, then everything will come into rhythm. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessing in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love, rather we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.’ ”

  I put the book down on the armrest of her chair, very gently. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Now I’m going down to the lounge and work on my report. Someone in this family has to get things organized.”

  I picked up my Omnibook 800CS and walked to the door. I turned as I was about to leave. She was glaring at me, her eyes pools of sapphire fire.

  “Oh yeah, I know what your next CD will be: Nuala Anne Celebrates Christmas. Maybe we’ll call it Friggin’ Nuala Anne Friggin’ Celebrates Friggin’ Christmas.”

  I think she giggled as I shut the door. I didn’t stop to find out.

  Och, your man Dermot Michael is a tough one, isn’t he?

  I asked the starry-eyed young woman in charge of the Towers whether she would ever be able to get a big breakfast delivered to me in the lounge.

  “Wasn’t herself brilliant last night?” she demanded. “Didn’t she show up that terrible Maeve Doyle woman?”

  “Sure,” I replied, using the interrogative of emphasis, “wasn’t she dazzling altogether?”

  “And isn’t that poor little doggy a darlin’ girl altogether?”

  “Hasn’t she taken over me whole family?”

  Then the young woman deigned to order me, er, my breakfast.

  I settled down at a table, plugged in my Omnibook, pulled together my notes, and began to work. While I earn my living these days by writing stories, such as they are, I found the story of Kevin O’Higgins a difficult one to tell. I was also astonished that there had been only one biography of a man who played a critical role in turning Ireland into a peaceful and democratic country almost immediately after two bitter wars, one with the English and one among the Irish themselves.
He was a little too forbidding a man to like, yet clearly those who knew him did like him. There was also the mystery of his romance with Lady Lavery, so contrary to his adamant Catholic principles. I almost wrote “poor Lady Lavery” because she, too, was a tragic figure.

  When my breakfast came, I ate it as I wrote. Real writers can eat and work on a computer at the same time. Right?

  As I was finishing up around noon, I heard a loud slobbering noise. I looked up and there was Fiona, vast paws on the table, delicately finishing off the remains of my scrambled egg.

  A woman began to sing:

  “We three kings of Orient are,

  Bearing gifts we traverse afar

  Field and fountain, moor and mountain,

  Following yonder star.

  “O star of wonder, star of night,

  Star with royal beauty bright,

  Westward leading, still proceeding,

  Guide us to thy perfect light”

  “Not bad,” I observed, “for a still-immature voice.”

  I looked up. Her hair was tied in a prim knot, and she was wearing white shorts and her beloved Marquette sweatshirt, thus hedging against the Irish weather. The “soft” mist had soaked her clothes and pasted them against her body. Her face was covered with a mix of rain and sweat. I smelled all kinds of wonderful womanly aromas.

  “Sure, isn’t that fine, because I’m still an immature person.”

  I looked her up and down approvingly. “Not in every respect.”

  She blushed. “Aren’t you the one with the dirty mind, Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  Fiona, having cleaned my plates, turned to licking my face. Her fur was wet from the rain. I hugged her.

  “Good dog,” I told her.

  “That’s enough, girl,” my wife informed the new member in our family. “I have kissing rights on that face. … I’ll put her back in the basement. Then will I be after seeing you up in our room?”

  “There’s just a chance of that, woman.”

  A few minutes later, she charged through the door, pulling off her sweatshirt as she did.

  I almost, almost, became a wildly abandoned lover.

  But I didn’t.

  ASSHOLE.

  This time I didn’t argue with him.