Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “You haven’t grieved yet,” George had said after my breakup with Christina, his finger in its usual jabbing position near my chest. “You won’t talk about it to anyone, not even me. You’ve got all that grief tied up in side you. That’s why you stumbled into this relationship, which now you admit was a mistake. . . .”

  “At least you didn’t say I told you so.”

  “I just did. . . . Anyway, punk, did you share any of your grief with Christina?”

  A damned impertinent personal question. Yeah, but that’s George.

  “I tried to talk about it once. She didn’t want to hear about Kel. She said it was too gross to talk about.”

  “Kind of unfeeling, huh?”

  “That’s the way she was. She didn’t like to talk about the ugly aspects of life.”

  “So you just bottled up grief?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, if you can’t talk about it to the family and won’t talk about it to a shrink, you’d better find a girl who is ready to listen and understand.”

  “Yes, George.”

  “And, if she doesn’t want to listen and understand, don’t go out with her more than once.”

  “Yes, George.”

  “And find that girl!”

  “Yes, George.”

  Nuala had listened sympathetically to my crazy story about Christina. She would listen even more sympathetically when I worked up the courage to tell her about Kel. I hesitated to tell her because the grief, once out of the bottle, might explode. I did not want to break down in the presence of a woman. I would not do so.

  Even in the pool, deliciously warm under the bright Dublin sun (which probably would not survive till noontime), I felt my eyes sting at the thought of finally talking to someone about Kel.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have to talk about it. Maybe I could just give her the story to read.

  Then I became very embarrassed. The child, contentious, sensitive, foulmouthed, innocent, had pried open my soul with ease. She had no right to do that.

  And how had she known about Christina and Kel? A witch, she said?

  Then I became suspicious. It didn’t seem likely that the history of freedom fighters, to use a more modern word, of Connemara would be unknown to a bright schoolchild. Surely the teachers must have talked about it. And was it possible that a young woman could grow up in Ireland, even in the pacifist Ireland of the 1980s, and know almost nothing about Michael Collins?

  What was she trying to pull on me?

  Still, she was beautiful and I had a date with her on the day after tomorrow and I would tell her my story and maybe weep in her arms and rest my head on her elegant breasts.

  That thought made me feel good again. I returned to my room, refreshed from my swim and humming the lullaby again.

  I showered, still humming, and then dressed in a jogging suit because I needed more exercise to run off the various energies that breakfast with Nuala Anne had released.

  I sat at the table in my parlor where I had set up the Compaq 425C that I had lugged around Europe with me, turned on the machine, and hammered out a dozen paragraphs about Nuala in the journal I was keeping. It was more than a journal entry, however. It was the beginning of a short story, the end of which was still uncertain.

  Would this one have a happy ending?

  Well, the first beginnings of sexual arousal had at least produced a burst of literary creativity. Maybe that was a good sign.

  I came to the part of the story in which I would recount her reaction to Michael Collins. Was he thirty-one years old or thirty-two when he died? I reached for the biography, which I had left on the end table next to my makeshift workstation.

  It wasn’t there.

  Mechanically I glanced around the room. I was sure I had left the Collins book, with Ma’s file of clippings on the end table. I had planned to compare the article from the Cork Examiner about his death with the later account in the book and had never quite got around to it—like other things I had planned during a life of procrastination.

  For a moment I sat frozen on the hard-back chair that was my work chair. Slob or not, I rarely mislaid things. Had someone taken the book and the file of clippings?

  Impossible! Why would anyone bother? The book was a paperback, worth no more than a couple of Irish punts (which is what they call a pound). What good would the clippings be for anyone?

  I bounded out of the chair and ransacked my suite. No trace of the book or clippings. I dove into my luggage to look for the copies I had made. Sure enough, they were still there.

  I stood in the middle of the parlor, baffled.

  Why would anyone take a harmless book and a stack of old newspaper clippings? Could they possibly believe that I hadn’t read them? Or that, having read them, I would forget the story at which they seemed to point?

  What the hell was going on?

  Had they taken anything else from Ma’s papers?

  I examined the crates very carefully. As far as I could see, nothing had been removed. Someone, however, had gone through the materials. I couldn’t quite put my finger on how I knew they had searched through the papers. They’d done a careful job, leaving only a few traces of their activity—a manila file turned upside down, a rubber band stretched in the wrong direction.

  Or maybe I was imagining it all? Maybe my suspicious romanticism was turning into paranoia. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

  How did they know I’d be out of my room for a long breakfast conversation? Had I been set up?

  No one could be sure that I would wander into St. Teresa’s Church and see Nuala, could they?

  Not unless they knew I dropped in there often at the end of my walk down to the Liffey.

  I had never seen her at Mass there before, had I?

  The light in the church was dim. She might have been there on other days too.

  Maybe.

  I felt like a heel for suspecting her.

  Still, they, whoever they were, might know that a lonely young man would be a pushover for a pretty girl.

  Ma’s little diary books were still there. I sensed that someone had examined them and then returned them to almost the same place in the box where I had left them. Perhaps the searchers couldn’t read Irish and didn’t know that the diaries might be important or even that they were diaries. I’d have copies made that afternoon, just in case.

  I collapsed into an easy chair, my heart pounding, partly in anger and partly in fear. The search had actually happened. I was not imagining it. A warning from a cop, possibly a bent cop, an attack on a dark stretch of street, a threatening phone call, and now a search of my room. These were the kind of things that happened in mystery novels, not in real life.

  And, oh yes, a beautiful young woman. Except novelists didn’t think up young women as improbable as Nuala McGrail.

  Who had taken the book and clippings? The maid who normally did my room? A skittish little teenager with a Kerry accent who jumped with fright whenever I spoke to her?

  Not likely. She had a hard enough time making a bed right. She would not have been up to the challenge of a careful and thorough search of a single drawer in a dresser, much less five crates of papers.

  Someone else then. I would demand to know who had been in my room.

  Would that do any good? Whoever the searchers were, they had surely covered their tracks well, either with bribes or threats or government identity cards. Why not ignore them? That would surprise them and perhaps give me an ever so slight advantage over them.

  The phone rang.

  “Dermot Coyne.”

  “Is that you, Mr. Coyne?” A womanly voice, precise, sophisticated, sultry. Not Dublin, not even Anglo-Irish Oxford.

  “I think it is.”

  Pleasant little laugh. Amused at the peasant from America.

  “Angela Smith here. Smythe with a ‘y’ and an ‘e.’ From the British embassy.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Smythe.”

  “I wonder if I could persuad
e you to come round for lunch with me tomorrow. There’s one or two matters our people here would like me to discuss with you.”

  “Oh?”

  A cop doesn’t scare the dumb Yank, so you try a woman whose sex appeal oozes through the telephone line. Well, that’s direct enough.

  “Nothing very serious or important, I assure you. I you’d rather put it off till next week . . . ?”

  “What if I’d rather not have lunch with you at all?”

  “That’s entirely up to you, of course.” She laughed lightly, implying that she was no threat to me. “We would rather like to talk to you.”

  “All right.”

  “Shall we say at half one. Julio’s? It’s in the mews behind the Bank of Ireland building right off Pembroke Street.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Her Majesty’s government will look forward to buying you one of the best meals available in Dublin.”

  “You must thank herself for me.”

  “Who?” She sounded confused.

  Good enough for you, Dermot Michael Coyne.

  “Her Majesty. And Mr. Major too.”

  “Oh, yes. Quite. Till tomorrow then.”

  I reclined again in my easy chair. That was pretty quick work. They searched my files an hour or two ago at the most. Already they have a temptress on the phone to me.

  Damn efficient, these Brits.

  I put on gym socks and running shoes and set off on my job.

  I was most of the way down the Grand Canal towards the ocean when I finally asked myself the obvious question: Why would the Brits be all that interested in the death of Michael Collins?

  Dermot Michael Coyne, longtime solitary bachelor, now had dates on two successive days with one woman already proven to be beautiful (even by her own grudging admission) and another who certainly sounded sexy on the phone.

  Poor dear man.

  –– 10 ––

  ANGELA SMYTHE was all that the voice promised and maybe a little more. She was not perhaps a British woman operative out of a James Bond film, but she was someone with whom 007 (in his various manifestations, of which Sean Connery is my favorite) would not be ashamed to be seen. She smiled at me as I entered the restaurant—walls painted white and a huge skylight that, together with bright lights, created the impression of a sunlight glare more appropriate for Marseilles than Dublin—and I decided that the gumshoe business might be more fun than I had thought it would be.

  “Mr. Coyne, isn’t it?” She extended her hand.

  She knew damn well who it was. Had she searched my room? Would she have been so clumsy as to have taken Ma’s file and left a certain clue that she’d been there?

  Only if she and her superiors wanted to leave a clue.

  “I think so.” I shook hands with her. “I answer to the name of Dermot, Ms. Smythe.”

  “Angela.” A quick, bright smile, with a hint of smoldering fires.

  She was a few years older than I, medium height, trim, and neatly shaped in a beige jersey dress. Short brown hair, skillful makeup designed to create the wholesome English country girl impression, nicely formed face with full lips that seemed always to be playing with a smile.

  If I hadn’t met Nuala, this one would have swept me off my feet. As it was, she disconcerted me enough that I bumbled my way through the preliminaries of the conversation, yes, I would like some sherry, and of course white wine with the fish. No, I didn’t want to order for myself. I’d trust the wisdom of Her Majesty’s government in the matter. Yes, Dublin was a beautiful city on a day like this. Yes, I thought London was lovely. No, it was not my favorite city in the world. A place on the shore of Lake Michigan was still my favorite.

  Richard M. Daley, Mayor.

  The only point I scored.

  Angela Smythe was certainly not a shy child; rather she was smooth, practiced, sophisticated. No crude young woman from the bogs of Connemara she.

  “Oxford or Cambridge?” I asked.

  “Oxford of course. Harvard for you?”

  “Notre Dame, then Marquette.”

  “Marquette?”

  “Jesuit University in Milwaukee?”

  “Milwaukee?”

  “A city in Wisconsin.”

  I thought I saw a faint upward twist of her lips, a hint of a contemptuous smile. “I intend to visit America someday soon. It must be a fascinating country.”

  “Big.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  The waiter arrived with the Galway smoked salmon that, along with brown bread, was a staple for me at every meal in Ireland. This time, however, I didn’t even have to order it.

  When he had left, she deftly steered the conversation to the subject of her assignment.

  “I suppose you wonder why Her Majesty’s Government is buying you lunch?” She lifted a perfectly groomed eyebrow.

  “To promote international goodwill?”

  “That, of course. However, my colleagues have asked me to share with you some of our government’s thinking on the Irish question. They believe it is important that you understand all the implications of the present situation.”

  “Decent of Her Majesty.”

  “Quite.” Her smile was mechanical this time. Maybe I’d better be a good boy.

  “Not all Americans realize how intent the British government is on finding a solution to the problems in Northern Ireland. Obviously we must put an end to the violence. The recent Anglo-Irish proposals for peace represent the best hope in this century. You’ll note that the Irish Republican Army has not rejected them.”

  “I see.” I scooped up a piece of salmon and dropped it on a slice of brown bread. If she was offended by my (deliberately) bad table manners, she didn’t betray her distaste.

  What kind of a diplomat doesn’t know where Milwaukee is?

  Harvard indeed!

  “We have been successful in diminishing discrimination against Catholics, which pleases me”—quick smile—“because I’m Catholic myself.”

  A Catholic Brit, nice touch.

  “The unemployment rate is still high, higher even than here.”

  “Almost as high as among American blacks.”

  “Not quite.” I finished off the last bit of my makeshift salmon sandwich.

  “Moreover, Whitehall understands and has made clear that there must be some political role for Catholics in the North. Indeed we have made a number of attempts in that direction in the last several years.”

  “Which the Prots won’t buy.”

  “It is a very difficult situation.”

  “Genocide creates very difficult situations.”

  “Genocide?” She frowned at me. “Isn’t that a strong term?”

  “Let me be blunt, Angela. I’m not real Irish so you don’t have to be indirect with me. I’m not a rabid Irish nationalist. I’m not a rabid anything. I have no sympathy for the IRA. Moreover, I sense that the real Irish here in the republic often wished that the six counties might be towed out into the Atlantic and either be annexed to Greenland or used for target practice by Her Majesty’s Navy. I understand the sentiment. I don’t contribute to NORAID. I’m not one of those Yanks who supports violence thousands of miles from my own home. . . .”

  “That’s nice to know,” she said curtly, now quite upset with me.

  “But, I know and you do too that the Ulster Protestants were settled by an earlier Elizabeth and your man Cromwell and other such worthies with the explicit intention of eliminating the wild Irish just as the wild Indians were to be eliminated in America and the wild Tasmanians in Australia. You also know that Cromwell sold fifty thousand Irish women and children into slavery in the West Indies.”

  “It was your ancestors who eliminated the Indians.”

  “We call them Native Americans now.” I smeared butter thickly on yet another slice of brown bread. May as well get a good lunch out of Her Majesty. “Those who killed them were not my ancestors. Mine were surviving persecution and starvation on this island.”

 
“All that was a long time ago.”

  “There’s a statute of limitations on genocide?”

  The waiter showed up with our poached grouper. Angela bit her lip and cooled down. I congratulated myself on making her lose her temper. Maybe she was Irish in her remote origins too. There weren’t many Catholic Brits who were not Irish somewhere in their past.

  “I really don’t want to argue with you, Dermot. My colleagues and I hardly want to defend the actions of past British governments here in Ireland. They are, candidly, quite indefensible. I might disagree with your vocabulary, but I do not disagree with the general position it represents. The problem, however, is not the past; the problem is the future.”

  “Which is shaped by the past.” I sipped the wine she had chosen. First rate.

  “Not determined by it. . . . Are you familiar with the present Anglo-Irish initiative?”

  “I read the papers here.”

  “May I explain it to you?”

  “Sure.”

  She sipped the wine too and beamed her approval. “A nice year.”

  “Sure is. The California Chardonnays that year were not up to their usual standards.”

  Fake? Certainly. But I liked being 007 for a few minutes.

  “Quite.” She sipped it again, perhaps trying to recall what she might have read about California Chardonnay. “In the agreement both governments made major concessions, of symbolic and substantive importance. The Irish government explicitly agreed that it would never constrain Ulster to become part of the republic unless the Protestant majority agreed to such a merger.”

  “You mean the six counties, the other three counties of historic Ulster having been gerrymandered out because Catholics would have possessed a majority in Ulster too.”

  “The past, Dermot,” she said primly.

  “Yeah. Well, it was good of Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald to agree a few years ago that he’d never try to force the six counties back into union since he didn’t have the military might to do so or the stomach for fighting with a million Prots. Your man Albert Reynolds, now that he’s Taoiseach, doesn’t have the military to do it either.”