Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “So then what did you do?”

  “I sold my seat, returned the money and the capital to my father, paid my income tax, invested everything else in tax-free municipals, and retired.”

  “You never did!” she exclaimed.

  “I did so! And don’t I feel like a terrible eejit altogether. I’ve finally found a woman who understands what happened and knows what a real eejit I am.”

  She pounded my arm. “You are the biggest eejit in all creation, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she announced. “The worst altogether.”

  Firmly she turned me around at the bottom of Grafton Street and directed me back towards the front gate of Trinity. We walked for a long time in silence.

  “I know,” I admitted sheeplishly. Now it would come; she would urge me to go back to the trading pits just as other women had.

  “I’m thinking you don’t want to know why I think you’re such a terrible eejit.”

  “I do too want to know.”

  “You’re an eejit”—we stopped again, right across from the entrance to Trinity College—“for thinking that you’re an eejit.”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “And yourself a clever man all along.”

  “I’m an idiot, excuse me, an eejit for thinking I’m an eejit when I wasn’t an eejit at all, at all?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Did you now?”

  Damn! I was mimicking her again!

  She didn’t seem to mind. She was looking up at me, her face wet with rain and glowing. “Anyone can be lucky. Isn’t it only the wise man who knows what to do with his luck?”

  Well, there it was: the first woman to understand completely and approve.

  “You don’t disapprove?”

  She jabbed a sharp finger into my chest. “And why would it matter whether I approve or not? And isn’t the world a better place if it has a few men who can drift and dream and then maybe someday tell the rest of us about their dreams?”

  Ah, Nuala, you’re an impoverished and shy kid from the Gaeltacht, smart and talented maybe, but shy and inexperienced. Yet you speak with all the wisdom of the ages. I should take you in my arms and hug and kiss you because I’ll never find another one quite like you.

  I didn’t do that, of course, worse luck for me. My life might have been much different if I had.

  She admired and liked me. She had already let me kiss her once, no, twice, without protest. We probably would have fought often in the years ahead and then made up loving each other even more. I was wise enough, maybe, to accept my luck with money. I was not wise enough to accept my luck with love.

  Why not? Why did I lose my nerve under the street-light in the rain in front of Trinity College, next to Molly Malone with the tart smell of the sea in my nostrils and the woeful moan of the foghorn in my ears?

  Wasn’t I telling you that I am a romantic? What more romantic situation could I find? Why did I blow the opportunity? Why did I lose my nerve?

  I guess because I’m shy too. I talk a big game. Beautiful and intelligent women scare me.

  Besides, I’ve had a lot of trouble with women.

  So what I said, still talking my big game, was “Can I ask you a personal question, Nuala Anne McGrail?”

  “Wouldn’t that be depending on the question?”

  Did she look just a little disappointed? Was she an incorrigible romantic too?

  “You’re from the County Galway, are you not?”

  “I am.” She seemed surprised that a Yank would be able to guess.

  “From Connemara?”

  “Now how would you know that?”

  “Carraroe?”

  “Glory be to God!” She jumped away from me.

  I recaptured her arm and pulled her back underneath my umbrella. “Who doesn’t exist.”

  “Or if He does, doesn’t care about us. . . . But how would you be knowing that I’m from Carraroe?”

  “Irish is your first language?” I took possession of her other arm, holding her captive.

  “A focking museum piece, that’s what I am.”

  Somehow she slipped away from me and directed me again towards Trinity.

  “My grandmother, God be good to her, was from Carraroe, Nell Malone that was.” I fumbled in my wallet for the pictures of her and Grandpa Bill and held them for her to see in the dim glow provided by a streetlight next to Molly Malone.

  Nuala inspected the pictures carefully under my umbrella. “Och, a beautiful woman, wasn’t she now?”

  “She was that and much more. He was from Costelloe down the road. Bill Ready, Liam O’Riada you’d probably call him.”

  “Sure, there’s no one there with that name anymore. And no Malones either.”

  “Here’s the last picture of them I have, both in their eighties.”

  She didn’t seem surprised that the big Yank amadon would carry his grandparents’ picture like a father would carry a snapshot of his son.

  “Grand-looking people, sure, aren’t they just like the rest of us from out there?. Brilliant!”

  “Grand” and “brilliant” are the two most popular adjectives in Dublin’s Fair City, the former being comparative and the latter superlative, especially when expressed as “focking brill!” or even “dead focking brill!”

  “Here’s a reprint of their wedding photo.”

  “Ah, and aren’t you the spittin’ image of himself?”

  “That’s what Grandma Nell said. It’s probably why they both spoiled me rotten.”

  “Terrible rotten altogether. . . . Sure, aren’t they children, beautiful children, in those wedding clothes?”

  Ma was not as tall as Nuala, maybe only five foot three, and her hair was short and red, not long and black, and her figure was understated compared to that of my companion. But she had, even in her old age, blazing blue eyes, just like Nuala’s. She was a dangerous woman, no doubt about that. Was Nuala equally dangerous?

  Probably.

  “Younger even than you are, Nuala Anne. They ran away during the Troubles and never came back.”

  “Eejit times and eejit people. Well, they had one another, didn’t they?”

  “And lots of children and grandchildren.” I returned the pictures reverently to my wallet.

  We walked by the statues of Burke and Goldsmith, the two sentinels at the Front Gate of Trinity.

  The names had meant nothing to her. The scandals of seventy years ago did not matter to the young people of Connemara today. It was ancient history, as unimportant as Wolfe Tone and Brian Boru.

  Nuala McGrail was considering me carefully. I was a quare one all right, odd even for a Yank. But maybe not all that bad. We walked into the Front Court of the college.

  “I’ll be taking my bike and going home now,” she said. “Thanks for the use of the umbrella.”

  She pulled a cheap plastic rain wrap out of her book bag and draped it around her head and shoulders. Then she began to unlock a solitary bicycle from a rack I had not noticed before.

  “You can’t ride home in this weather, Nuala,” I protested.

  “Don’t I do it every day?” She walked her bike through the vestibule and out the Front Gate, obeying the college rules against riding a bicycle inside the gate.

  “I’ll get a cab.”

  “You will not.”

  “But—”

  “No buts about it.” She mounted the cycle and then paused to ponder me again. “I didn’t like the way you looked at me while I was singing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like you were taking off my clothes.”

  “Woman, I was not!”

  “You were too!”

  “I know when I’m doing that and when I’m not. I was admiring you but respectfully. Mind you, I make no promises about what my imagination might do the next time it sees you.”

  She hesitated. “Little enough to admire.”

  “A lot to admire. You’re a beautiful woman, Nuala Anne McGrail.”

  “I am no such thing
and I won’t let you say that I am.” She kicked away the stand and prepared to ride off into the mists.

  I grabbed her arm. “A man can see a woman as desirable, Nuala, and still treat her with respect.”

  “Focking sex object.” She struggled to free her arm.

  “Sexed person.” I wouldn’t release her. “Understand?”

  She stopped struggling. “Clever-talking Yank. . . . You embarrassed me something terrible. I didn’t like it at all, at all.”

  “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, Nuala. I’m sorry if I did. But you are gorgeous and I can’t help admiring you.”

  “I am not.” She wrenched her arm free. Then, as if penitent, she added, “Mind you, I liked having you look at me that way.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t like it.”

  “Don’t be an amadon! I didn’t like it but I liked it, in a manner of speaking.”

  As I had said to her earlier, the Irish aren’t like the rest of us.

  She started to pedal away.

  “Wait a minute! Where do you live? What’s your phone number?”

  “I don’t have a phone,” she shouted over her shoulder. “And you have no business asking where I live.”

  “How will I find you?”

  “Sure, won’t you be looking into O’Neill’s pub the odd time?”

  And she disappeared in the mists and the rain.

  –– 4 ––

  ISOLATED IN soggy gloom that cut me off from the rest of the world, I reveled in self-pity. Sure, hadn’t I lost the last great Celtic goddess of the Western World?

  It was still a game then—infatuation, flirtation, self-pity.

  Then I realized, after enjoying my allusion to John M. Synge, that I could find out when and where they were performing The Playboy and track Nuala down that way—as she doubtless realized even before she slipped off, shy and embarrassed child, into the wet night.

  Shy, embarrassed, and attracted to me.

  She ought to know better.

  How could she know better?

  I had better protect her.

  From what?

  From myself.

  Don’t be an eejit.

  Forget about her. Don’t go back to O’Neill’s and don’t find out where they’re performing The Playboy.

  Well, that’s just what I would do. Probably.

  Not exactly a druid goddess, but a shy Catholic virgin. I suppose I couldn’t complain. They made much better wives than your druid goddesses.

  I glanced around uneasily. I thought I heard faint footsteps behind me on Dawson Street. It was a half-hour walk back to my suite in Jury’s and not a cab in sight. If they wanted to attack me again, this would be the perfect night to do it. This time they’d send tougher thugs.

  They had tried the night before, after my unpleasant conversation with the Special Branch cop. It was a lovely warm evening, the air fresh and soft, a three-quarter moon shining over Dublin Town and bathing the streets, still wet from the afternoon rain, a magic silver. On nights like that Dublin seems a faerie city, perhaps the set for a Walt Disney fairy-tale film. I drifted out of Jury’s, aimless as usual. I was still angry at Chief Superintendent Conlon’s clumsy attempt to bully me. I was a citizen of the United States of America, wasn’t I? Ireland was part of the free world, wasn’t it? And what the hell kind of professor was it that would report a couple of honest questions to the gnomes of the Special Branch?

  I’d show them. I’d write the whole story, the true story about Bill and Nell Pat Ready, and publish it as an American best-seller.

  Ah, not without ambition after all, you say? Dermot Coyne wants to be a writer, does he now? And a famous writer at that?

  I didn’t want it so badly that I’d return to my suite after supper and work on it. If literary fame came as easily as commodity trading profits, well, maybe. But in a choice between a leisurely walk down Pembroke Road and Baggot Street to St. Stephen’s Green and research for a book, the former would win any time.

  Auto traffic was heavy on the street, not unusual at that time of night, and there was a steady stream of pedestrians. I was hardly alone. There are streets in Dublin, particularly north of the Liffey, you avoid at half ten of an autumn evening, but not Pembroke Road.

  I noticed the three punks when they walked by going in the oppose direction just after I had crossed the Grand Canal, a glittering black velvet band in the moonlight.

  There was nothing particularly remarkable about them, kids in their late teens, jeans and black jackets, long hair, sneers painted on their faces. Over in the “Liberties” section behind Christ Church Cathedral or on the north side of the Liffey east of the Catholic pro-cathedral, they would be scary. Not, however, on Upper Baggot Street at this hour of the night.

  It takes longer to describe my reaction to them than the reaction itself lasted.

  When I felt someone grab my arms from behind, I knew who it was.

  I must have looked like a pushover—I usually do. A big patsy maybe, but still a patsy. Definitely not a white Richard Dent, as Nuala Anne would suggest the next day. Anyway, the three of them piled on like they expected a pushover.

  I let them drag me down the two flights of iron steps to a concrete areaway in front of the darkened windows of a basement tea shop. I thought about yelling but decided that they wouldn’t have jumped me if there was anyone nearby. They had waited for what seemed just the right moment.

  “We’ll teach you a lesson, you focking bastard,” one of them sneered as he buried his fist in my stomach.

  He must have felt pretty safe because his two pals were holding my arms. As I say, the focking Yank bastard was a pushover.

  So he was not prepared for the impact of my foot in his groin.

  He screamed and doubled up in agony, spitting out curses. Then I broke loose from the punk that had pinned my left arm and slammed him into the concrete foundation of the stairway up to the ground floor. Next I turned and slugged the punk who was trying to kick me. He fell back against the opposite wall, banged his head against the concrete, and stood there, momentarily stunned.

  The other one came at me from behind. “I’m going to cut off your balls, bastard!” He had a switchblade in his hand, a very long switchblade.

  He dove towards my groin.

  This knife slit my trouser leg as I jumped away from him. He wheeled around for another try, this time aiming at my face.

  I stepped aside, grabbed his arm, and twisted it behind his back. He roared with injured fury as the knife popped out of his hand.

  Looking back on the fight, I should have broken his arm. I don’t have much taste, however, for alley fighting.

  The other kid had his knife out and rushed at me wildly. I ducked his first swipe. He crashed into the wall of the tea shop, bounced off it, and rushed me again. I jumped up on a windowsill and tripped him.

  He fell forward, crashed into a bench, leaped up quickly, and lunged once more.

  One chop on his arm sent that switchblade flying too.

  Bounding back in blasphemous outrage, the two of them jumped on me and pulled me down on the cold concrete. I noticed a pot of geraniums next to my head, a useful weapon if I needed it.

  I bellowed like an injured bull, shook them off, and staggered to my feet. They jumped me again. I was hurting in a number of places and was now thoroughly angry at them.

  So I shifted my shoulders abruptly and threw the two of them through the plate-glass window into the tea shop. The third punk, still moaning over the damage I had done to his reproductive organs, lurched towards me, drunkenly waving his switchblade.

  I scooped up the pot of red flowers and bashed it against his head. He collapsed like he had been shot. I lifted him off the ground and tossed him after his friends into the wreckage of the tea shop. I hoped that the owners had insurance.

  I dusted off my hands and, trying to ignore my aching ribs and sore shoulder, walked back up the steps to Baggot Street.

  I looked around for Chief Supe
rintendent Conlon with the thought that I might toss him through the plate glass too. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Back in my room at Jury’s I noted that no visible damage had been done save to my jeans, though my ribs and shoulder were hurting. I took a couple of Advils, hung up my clothes, dirty and wet from the concrete, and slumped into my chair.

  Then the reaction came. I realized what had happened and began to shake.

  Should I call Conlon and tell him where he could find his thugs? Call the American embassy and protest? Call the local Garda station and report an assault?

  I decided to do nothing at all.

  So they called me.

  I picked up the phone. “Good evening.”

  It was not Conlon’s voice, at least I didn’t think so. “Tonight was a hint of what we can do if you don’t let the dead sleep in peace.”

  “You haven’t seen your punks yet. What I did to them is a hint of what I’ll do to you, focker, if you don’t leave me alone.”

  I hung up on him.

  Big deal.

  But why? What were they warning me about? Could it be worth so much trouble merely to stop me from poking around in my grandparents’ history? That didn’t seem to make any sense.

  It took me a long time to unwind and sleep. The sound of the cleaning staff in the corridor woke me up in the morning. I ached all over.

  And for the first time I was consciously scared.

  Not so scared, however, that I was ready to give up my determination to trace the story of my grandparents during the Troubles.

  Nevertheless, I stayed away from the Long Room of the library at Trinity where I had been poking around for a couple of days and did not visit again Professor Nolan who had probably blown the whistle on me.

  Instead I called home.

  “Why, Dermot darling, how nice of you to call. We were just wondering about you yesterday. Have you met any nice Irish girls?”

  “There aren’t any, Mom. All the beautiful ones like you and Grandma Nell are in America.”