Irish Mist

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I did not enter Mount Carmel because of that incident. I was not seeking a place to do penance for a sin which, at worst, was not my fault. But the incident made it clear to me that I would have to decide soon.

  I said I would leave the castle as soon as the Troubles were over. We were all fools then. We thought the Troubles would be over in a few months. We were sure that the British Army would leave Ireland as General McCready wanted them to and that Home Rule would finally take effect.

  We didn’t realize that the Troubles would go on for years and never really end, not even today.

  General Tudor came back several times. He was always respectful and always persistent. I told him that I would not commit adultery again. He said that he and his wife were close to divorce. He would divorce her and marry me.

  Did he mean it?

  I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. Officers coming home from the war in those times found it difficult to adjust to family life. Perhaps he and his wife were really estranged. He was lonely, as I was, and overwhelmed by the carnage of the war and the violence in Ireland, which he did not, could not, understand.

  I told him that I was grateful that he had saved my life, but that I did not believe in divorce.

  Suppose, I used to ask myself in those days, that he was not married. Would I marry a man who had shot down captives in cold blood, a man who was the O.C. of the Black and Tans? Not very likely, but there was no point in bringing up that point, since adultery was my main argument against any romance between us.

  He never tried to push himself on me. He probably thought that he was a perfect officer and gentleman and had never violated me. I had not resisted, had I?

  Was I tempted?

  I was a young woman of flesh and blood, alone in the world, and frightened. Certainly I was tempted, especially since the Church of Ireland tolerated divorce. I suppose there was enough Catholicism left from my ancestors that made me resist that path.

  Yes, I was tempted, severely tempted.

  Fortunately for me, I did not really believe that he would break up his family for me. Rather, I suspected that once the war was over he’d go back to England and his family and forget about me.

  There was also this other love, lurking patiently all the time.

  Then, just before the truce and the withdrawal of the Auxiliaries and the Cadets, the IRA came again to Garrytown, again up from Kerry, again dangerous wild men. This time, however, they were on the run from the Tans. They were all very young. The leaders were four brothers named Whelan, nice respectful young men, despite their later reputations. They took over the house as a kind of sanctuary, feeling that the Tans would not attack an English, as they saw it, manor house.

  I didn’t try to tell them that I believed in their cause, that I was Irish, that my husband had died a Catholic, and that I was almost a Catholic. I didn’t think then it would have made a difference. Later when I accompanied Kevin O’Higgins’s daughter, who is one of our nuns, to the annual Mass they have and again met Tom Whelan, now a totally changed man, he told me that it would have made a difference, but they were not going to harm us anyway.

  Tom is a remarkable man. He will go to his grave sorrowing for what he did that Sunday morning and grateful for Kevin’s forgiveness and for what it made possible in his life.

  Then the lorries appeared with the Cadets.

  I was at a loss as to what I should do. I really was on neither side. I knew the men in my house were very dangerous men and would do more harm. If Ireland’s cause was my cause—and it was—then their way of lighting for the cause was not my way. On the other hand, the Tans were no better. I didn’t want another massacre on my land. I went outside to forbid them entrance to my house, as daft an idea that a still-romantic young woman could possibly have.

  They shouted obscenities at me. Hugh Tudor stood there in his puttees and his Sam Browne belt and glared at me coldly.

  “You’d better decide pretty quickly whether you’re English or Irish,” he said in an icy voice.

  “I’m Irish,” I said flatly. “And English, too. As you very well know, General Tudor, my husband, who is buried behind that house, earned the Victoria Cross. As both an Irish and English gentlewoman, I forbid you to enter my house.”

  I turned on my heel and strode back towards the door of Castle Garry. As it turned out I saved the lives of my servants and of the IRA men. I had delayed just long enough for them to escape from the back doors of Castle Garry before the shooting started.

  When the shooting started, I had not yet reached the house. I think they were trying to kill me. Did Hugh Tudor give the order to fire? I must say candidly that if he did, I did not hear it.

  I fell to the ground, trying to escape the bullets, I suppose. Something hit my head and I lost consciousness.

  Later, as dawn was breaking up the night, I awoke and saw that our lovely house was a mass of rubble with only two walls standing. I had a large lump on my head and a bad headache. Otherwise I was all right. I found it hard to believe that the house was gone. All traces of our family history and of my love with Arthur had been obliterated in a crazy burst of gunfire.

  For a moment I felt hate. Then I realized that my lover had sent an unmistakable message. I hurried down to the Catholic parish house, awakened the canon, and told him I wanted to leave for Mount Carmel immediately. I was admitted the next day, a penniless postulant with only the clothes on her back.

  The canon had a way of managing things. He arranged for the sale of some of the property which was left and provided me with a dowry for the convent He told me that the IRA men had escaped, as had my servants. He had arranged with the undertaker, the only other person who has ever known the truth, to bury a wooden casket in the grave next to Arthur. He promised me that when I died he would see that I was really buried there.

  “ ’Tis better,” he said, “if you disappear altogether.”

  It was. Much later, when Ireland was free, I could have claimed some compensation for my property. But I did not need or want the property. Lady Downs was dead. There was no reason to bring her back to life.

  I heard nothing about General Tudor. I prayed for him of course. But I did not want to know what had happened to him. Tom Whelan told me four years ago at the Mass in Booterstown that Tudor was still alive. He had been living in exile in Newfoundland for thirty-five years. Kind of like he’s doing penance, Tom says.

  For the men and women the Tans killed? I wondered. For killing me?

  I wrote him a short note, assuring him of my prayers. I received an equally short note back. He thanked me for my prayers and asked me to continue them because he needed them. He said that he had become quite good friends with an Irish priest who lived near him. That was all.

  My new lover has not deceived me. Like all love affairs ours has had it ups and downs, mostly because I am a selfish and weak human. But He always has been with me and will be with me when the time comes in the very near future for me to go down into the valley of death.

  He will walk with me, and Arthur will be waiting at the end of the valley.

  So, my young friends—I must think of you as very young—there is my story. As I read it over, I find it banal. Perhaps you will, too. In any event, I have been loved twice in my life, both times by wonderful lovers who in some fashion are the same lover. I have lived and died a happy woman.

  Nuala piled together the sheets of the manuscript, written in a clear and forceful hand, and gave them back to Father MacNamee. In exchange he gave her a manila envelope.

  “ ’Tis a photocopy,” he said. “Do I understand you have her memoir of Lord Downs?”

  “And her poetry, which she never mentions.”

  “Maybe she wrote more in the convent. You’d have to ask them about it.”

  “Did they know the whole story?”

  “The Prioress who admitted her did. I presume that the subsequent ones must have or the burial arrangement would not have survived.
They never, never regretted it.”

  “I’m sure not.”

  “She had no way of knowing whether Tudor thought he had killed her?” Tasked.

  “I don’t know, Dermot. I don’t know. Who can say what he thought or what he cared? Maybe he would have fled to Newfoundland anyway. He must remain a mystery.”

  I looked at Nuala. “End of the road?”

  “End of the road, Dermot Michael. I am reluctant to take this with us, yet I know she wants us to have it.”

  We shook hands with the P.P., who still hadn’t opened the envelope, and left the rectory, Fiona trailing after us.

  “ ’Tis a relief to get that off my mind,” Father MacNamee said with a sigh. “A great relief altogether.”

  “Well, Nuala?”

  “Do you want to tell the story, Dermot Michael?”

  “I do.”

  “Then Gussie will be happy to have it told at last.”

  We walked slowly back to the castle under the thick clouds that hovered over us.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ll have two more days here with nothing to do.”

  “More golf?”

  “Maybe a little bit, but mostly lovemaking.”

  She looked at me anxiously, knowing that we had come to our turning point.

  “Two whole days, Dermot Michael?”

  ‘Two whole days.”

  She gulped but did not protest.

  “That might prove interesting. … Do you mind if I take me shower first?”

  “Not at all.”

  —37—

  “DERMOT MICHAEL, whatever are you doing!”

  “We have three hours before supper.”

  She was quite dry after her shower. I continued to rub her with the towel, insistently, passionately.

  “I know that. … Och, Dermot, you’re scaring me!”

  “We can’t use dinner as an excuse to stop.”

  “I don’t want to stop!”

  I loosened her hair so it fell on her naked shoulders and breasts. She gulped and stiffened.

  I ran a finger across her breasts, brisk, imperious, possessive. She moaned. Her mouth hung open. I ran my finger back, more slowly.

  “Dermot! …,” she exclaimed, her shoulders sagging-

  She was pale, hesitant, frightened, but, no, she didn’t want to stop. Maybe we were already half there.

  My fingers worked their quick designs on her belly and then her loins. I had visited those wonderful scenes before but never in a context like this. Then they returned to her breasts, this time much more slowly

  She threw back her head and cried out wordlessly.

  “There’s a terrible fire inside of me, Nuala Anne.”

  “Inside of me, too, Dermot Michael,” she gasped. “But I’m afraid.”

  “So am I, but we’re not going to quit now.”

  There is, I reflect now, few joys in life greater than to face a beautiful naked woman who desperately wants you to challenge her to the depths of her sexuality.

  Was I up to it?

  Damn right I was.

  But my heart was beating rapidly and my throat was dry. I musn’t blow this opportunity.

  “Och, no, Dermot, don’t ever stop. …”

  “I won’t.”

  “Aren’t you playing me poor body like it was a violin?” She was smiling now and her eyes were round and glowing.

  “A rare and priceless violin.”

  “A Stradivarius?” she asked.

  “What other kind?”

  Suddenly we both were convulsed with laughter. Whatever the inhibitions were that had stood in the way between us, they vanished.

  Then I understood for the first time that sexual ecstasy is comic. We both started to laugh as we challenged each other and drove one another further and further away from the restrained sanity and the decorous propriety of ordinary life.

  We were two pillars of fire dancing around each other, crossing back and forth, enveloping each other, possessing each other and being possessed by each other, soaring together to the skies. It was a scenario as old as humankind but new and fresh and young.

  We both cried out, screamed, and laughed. It was on wings of laughter that we flew to the heavens. Then with final cries and final laughter we plunged back to earth, astonished, spent, exhausted but happier than we’d ever been in all our lives.

  “Now that was nice, wasn’t it, Dermot Michael?” said my sweat-soaked wife as we huddled, breathing heavily, in each other’s arms.

  “Woman, you’ll do till a better comes along.”

  “It took us long enough to get here.”

  “Not long at all, I think.”

  “You’re right, Dermot love,” she sighed. “Not long at all.”

  We hadn’t done it perfectly. We were new and inexperienced. But we’d done it. And we’d get better. We had not disposed completely of all our fears and hesitations, but we had routed them.

  YOU SHOULD FUCK HER AGAIN, the Adversary insisted, JUST TO LET HER KNOW YOU CAN.

  “I don’t need to do that.”

  YOU’D STILL HAVE TIME BEFORE SUPPER. THEN YOU COULD DO IT AGAIN TONIGHT.

  “That wouldn’t be fair to her. I don’t want to use her.”

  ASSHOLE.

  I fell asleep and then felt a woman on top of me, her demanding breasts pressed against my chest. What choice did I have but to respond?

  —38—

  I DIDN’T realize it was so much fun. Sure, didn’t me ma just about say that? But I thought it was terrible hard work. And it wasn’t at all, at all! It was terrible scary at first, and then when I kind of gave up hiding and abandoned meself it was just like an airplane taking off, no effort at all, at all. I just sort of soared into the sky and rode the clouds.

  Me man is a grand man altogether, and I thank You for him. I almost said that he doesn’t deserve me. But he thinks he does … and I wouldn’t say this to anyone else but You. … I’m beginning to think I’m not all that bad a wife at all, at all!

  Nuala Anne great in bed!

  Who would ever have thought it!

  I want to squeal with joy!

  And we’ll get better at it, too. Like himself says, it won’t be that good all the time, but it will always be good and sometimes even better!

  I almost died of pleasure!

  I used to say that I believe You existed, but I didn’t think You gave a good shite about us, meaning me. I never really meant that, but I’m sorry for saying it I’ve always known You loved, but I could never understand why. So you send Dermot Michael as Your representative. Now I know You love me for the same reason he does.

  I’m afraid to say it, but I will anyhow.

  You love me because I’m lovable.

  There, I’ve said it and I’m glad. I hope You’re glad, too.

  Every time I think about all the things toe did to each other I shiver with delight!

  Mother Augusta, I know that somehow you are here with us. Not out in that grave but here in the house that was yours. You love us. You wanted us to come here. You want us to tell your story. It looks like I will have two lovers at the same time. Help me to give both of them whatever they want from me.

  I’ll call me ma in the morning. I won’t say anything but she’ll know from the tone of me voice.

  Thank You again.

  We played with each other like two little puppies. Wasn’t it grand fun! Brilliant!

  I’m not a prim and proper wife at all!

  I’m a grand and glorious wife!

  Nuala Anne good in bed! I still can’t believe it.

  But I do believe it.

  Will we be able to do it again?

  What if we can’t?

  That’s silly.

  I tell You what, if You don’t mind I’ll wake the poor man up and we’ll do it all again. You don’t have to go away. I don’t mind You watching.

  You’ll watch anyway.

  Dear God, the fire is burning in me again! Worse than ever!

  Well, I’ll
just pull the sheet off him and roll over on him like this and then go mad.

  I love You.

  —EPILOGUE—

  ON THE anniversary of Kevin O’Higgins’s death, my wife and I entered the Catholic church in Booterstown. A plainclothes cop moved to stop us at the door and then backed off when he saw that we were accompanied by the Deputy Commissioner and his wife.

  There were perhaps sixty people present for the Mass, only a sprinkling in the large church. They all seemed to be respectable members of the uppermiddle class, no one looking remotely like a revolutionary. They wore ordinary summer clothes, as we did, light dresses, summer suits. Like us they entered the church quietly, though hardly with a mournful air. An elderly Carmelite nun knelt in the front row, Kevin’s youngest daughter.

  The priest who presided over the Eucharist wore white vestments. I accepted on the authoritative testimony of my parents the fact that at one time the Catholic funeral services had required black vestments and somber Latin. How could one have so completely missed the point of our faith?

  The music was from Father Liam Lawton’s Mass for Celtic Saints. Nuala sang softly next to me. If anyone heard her or recognized her they gave no sign of it. Perhaps the rules were that you never recognized people at this memorial.

  The middle-aged priest read the Gospel in which Jesus teaches the “Our Father.”

  “The key phrase,” he said, setting the Gospel book aside, “in this prayer is ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ This is the fundamental truth Jesus came to teach us. This is the core of our faith. This is the most important truth we Catholics have to offer the rest of the world today as always, even though we have often not lived it ourselves. Note carefully, my friends, that there is no question here of earning God’s pardon. We do not plead that He forgive us because we have forgiven others. You do not bargain with God, not even for forgiveness. Quite the contrary, God’s pardon is an implacable given. In this prayer we rather promise God that we will forgive because we have been forgiven—we will manifest His forgiveness in our forgiveness of others. This is what Catholicism means.