Irish Gold

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The first Liam.

  Was I kidding myself? Would I really have made love with Nuala if she was still in my suite?

  Or did I suspect that she would have already left and hence that my grand and brilliant ideas were nothing more than frustrated fantasy?

  Does the Pope live in Rome?

  Naturally, she wasn’t in the room.

  I was disappointed and, as I knew deep down, I was fully expecting to be disappointed.

  Dermot Michael Coyne assault a teenage virgin, even a mostly willing virgin?

  Is the Pope a Baptist?

  There was, however, the usual note and printout, the latter perfectly typed by my perfect translator:

  Dermot Michael,

  There are bad things about to happen to them. She’s figured it all out, though I’m not sure what it is. Or who it is. She’s pleased with herself too, terrible strong woman that she is. I love her.

  But I’m not Nell Pat. So you don’t have to worry about me trying to seduce you the way she seduced your granda.

  I don’t have that much courage, not that the idea has not occurred to me the odd time.

  Love,

  Nuala Anne

  –– 37 ––

  August 17, 1922

  Maybe ’tis true what the nuns say about me, that I am a terrible sensualist. Faith, don’t I love being loved?

  I’m thinking about it on this day when I’m filled with terrible worries. ’Tis the love that keeps me going and gives me hope, the thought of himself pulling off me clothes and playing with me something terrible and then inside me and myself screaming with delight.

  Sure, I shouldn’t be writing down these thoughts at all, at all.

  ’Tis a grand day altogether, only a week after Mary’s Day in harvest and the fields already bare. The sky is blue and clear and the Aran Islands seem only a few yards offshore in Galway Bay, stark and rocky like ancient forts and wanting the worst way to join with the land so they won’t be isolated all winter long.

  Like I want to join with me Liam for winter and for the rest of me life.

  The houses of Carraroe shine in the sunlight and most of them painted fresh so that they look like homes in a fairy tale, all blue and pink and white along the bay and the loughs. ’Tis a day for dreaming about me and me Liam and not worrying about gombeen men and traitors.

  Ah, Liam, do you know how much I love you? I want to be in your arms this very minute!

  Some women say that love soon stops being fun, if it ever was. Well, not for me and me man. He loves me something fierce and I love him the same way. Ah, there’s so many wonderful things we do to one another and ourselves being beginners at that.

  I’ve promised him that never in all my life will I ever stop giving him as much pleasure as he needs and wants. That’s a big promise because so many women seem determined to give their men as little pleasure as they possibly can.

  Eejits, says I.

  Why be stingy to men and themselves enjoying it so much? What harm is done if you make your man as happy as you can?

  Liam takes it for granted that we’ll be married as soon as the Troubles are over, though the man has never asked me, and himself being shy though not when he’s kissing and licking and nibbling at me all over and pumping up and down like a steam tractor inside me.

  He also says that, sure, ought not we be thinking of moving to America and there being no chance for an ambitious man here in Ireland?

  I’d leave in a moment if he says, though I’d miss something terrible me ma and me da and me dear little pony and little Nell Tim. But as Ma says, you go where your love calls you.

  They might come to America too because they see hard times ahead for Ireland when the war finally ends. Like Da says, you always have to pay a big price for winning anything.

  Liam is terrible smart and ambitious; Da says he’d make a wonderful estate agent and himself knowing the value of land better than anyone in the whole of Connemara. No working the farm for that bucko, me da says.

  Da is now all for me and Liam. He and Ma pretend not to know that there’s anything between us and keep praising Liam, sort of hinting that I should take him seriously.

  And I pretend that I can’t be bothered by such nonsense. Sure, aren’t there other men in Ireland, says I, besides Captain Liam Tomas O’Riada?

  And all the time we having such wonderful love together over in the abandoned cottage!

  Do me parents know about it?

  I’m thinking that they won’t let themselves think about that.

  And myself still going to Mass every morning because I’m sure God don’t mind, not with the war on and Liam in danger of death every day.

  Oh, I love him so much! I want to cry and laugh and pray! I’ll be saying the rosary for him now and then come back to me diary.

  Well, I’ve said the rosary and dried my tears.

  ’Tis not that Liam and I are together all that often. Sure, the treaty has been signed and ratified by the Dáil, but now the lads are fighting with one another, bloody eejits, says I.

  They’re saying terrible things about poor Mick Collins, that he’s a traitor and a killer and that he let Lloyd George and Churchill trick him at the conferences in London because he was so busy whoring in the East End and seducing Hazel Lavery. I don’t believe a word of it. I know from his own mouth that he loves Kit Kiernan and that he’d no more be unfaithful to her than my Liam would be to me.

  The National Army, which Daniel O’Kelly says is no better than the Black and Tans and the RIC, is slowly taking over the country. Didn’t General Dalton chase the Republicans out of Cork City just the other day? ’Tis said that they’ll come up through Limerick and have some terrible fights in Clare—sure aren’t those Clare men the worst amadons in all the world! Then they’ll come to Galway, though there’s them that says there’s no reason to bother because there’s nothing in Galway worth fighting about at all, at all.

  Poor Liam keeps wondering whether Mick is a traitor.

  “Is he the one man in the whole Irish Republican Brotherhood,” says I, “who is not a total eejit? Is he the only one who knows you can’t fight the British Empire without bullets?”

  “Aye, that’s true.” Liam sighs. “We only have the odd few bullets left.”

  “And yourselves marching every night of the year up and down the County Galway pretending that there’s someone left to fight here!”

  “The colonel says we must be ready for when the Free Staters come to take away our country from us.”

  “Do you believe that? Do you think you’ll be fighting the Free Staters? Will you shoot at other Irishmen?”

  He’s quiet for a long time. Then he says, “I’m not sure, Nell Pat. I hope to God I won’t have to.”

  I almost tell him that he can forget about me if he does that, but, sure, it isn’t true.

  He’s off today, just himself and O’Kelly on some secret mission that the gombeen man says will bring peace to Ireland, and Liam all puffed up with happiness because he thinks he will do something wonderful, though he doesn’t know what it will be.

  I’m terrible worried about him because I now know for sure that O’Kelly is a traitor. Haven’t I seen it with me own eyes? I didn’t have enough time to explain it all to Liam, but when he comes back I’ll tell him the story and take him up to see the gold. (I’ve been there myself now and know exactly where it is, only thirty paces south of the old shrine, and no one would have the slightest idea that there’s a neat little cave, save they know where to look.)

  Then I’ll tell him what I saw in Lettermullen just the other day and myself hardly able to believe me two eyes.

  It was the day after Our Lady’s day in harvest and a Saturday and wasn’t everyone in the County Galway sleeping late in the morning as they do after harvest-time?

  So I decide that I need to ride me bike for a bit of a trip, and it being a day like this and the roads dry, I’m thinking that I’ll ride over to Golam Head and look out at the Atlantic Ocea
n and it being one of my favorite places to think and dream in all the world, and itself being a bit of land jutting into the ocean with a lake behind it, a narrow road right down to the strand, and some rhododendron bushes so you couldn’t see the strand from the pub just beyond.

  I sit there for a while and dream about America and how I’ll be a grand lady and have a big family and cute little grandchildren with me Liam.

  I decide it’s time to be going home and it still being the heat of the day. Then I see how calm the ocean is in the little cove where I’ve been sitting and I’m thinking how hot I am and wondering what would be wrong with a little plunge into the cool water.

  There’s no one around but me, so, wicked thing that I am, I take off all me clothes and jump into the water.

  Let me tell you, it cooled me off in a hurry!

  I climb out of it pretty quick and lie there on the strand in the sun until I dry off and me not ashamed of myself at all, at all.

  You see what love does to you!

  I dream about Liam and me lying in the sand together forever and ever. Amen. I must have fallen asleep, the saints protect me, because the next thing I know I hear a motor car up on the road. Quicklike I roll over and cover myself with me shift, but I don’t have to do it because the people in the motor car can hardly see the strand at all.

  What’s a motor car doing on this little island with only a wooden bridge back to the mainland and the next parish west on Long Island?

  It’s none of my business, I tell myself. Yet, Mother of God preserve me, I’m a terrible curious eejit. So I put on me clothes, and feel hot in them—sure, wouldn’t I like to be naked a lot of the time in the summer, so long as Liam is with me? I think about the motor car and I’m sure it’s going to the pub down on the end of land about a half mile away, the place where me ma says English tourists used to come when she was a lass.

  I’m calling myself an onchock for doing it, but I get on me bike and pedal down the road, and it being awful rough. There’s a great clump of fuchsia bushes at the turn of the road before the pub and them in full bloom and the bees making a terrible din as if they know there won’t be many days like this again. I stop and hide me bike in the hedge and peek around the corner.

  The pub is a broken-down old place with a thatched roof and some dried flowers in pots on its windows and a few chairs and tables outside for the odd tourist that might come by on a hot day.

  Well, there’s this man all dressed up in a fancy suit and himself not twenty yards away from me sitting at one of the tables and drinking a jar of spirits. I know I’ve seen his face, but not in Carraroe or even in Galway town. He’s too fancy a fella altogether for either place.

  ’Tis a face I’ve seen in the newspaper that Da has brought home now and again from market in Galway. I search for the name that goes with the face and finally remember it.

  I almost die of fright because if he’s here it means terrible troubles for the County Galway. Then I realize that he’s taking a big risk coming out here by himself with only the driver in his huge black touring car.

  Then again, I’m thinking, maybe not. Sure, he’s probably got lots of friends all around Ireland.

  Anyway, they never said he didn’t have courage.

  Then who comes out of the pub with two big jars in his hand but your man Daniel O’Kelly.

  I’ve seen enough. No, I’ve seen too much altogether. I’m thinking now that it’s a terrible dangerous place that me eejit curiosity has brought me. If either of them or the driver see me, I’m a dead woman, that’s for certain.

  I keep watching them, just the same, because of me eejit curiosity. They’re talking and laughing but above the hum of the bees I can’t hear what they’re saying.

  While I’m watching, the fella in the fancy suit takes out his wallet and passes money over to O’Kelly, a lot of money. Kelly counts it very careful, like he’s just cashed a check at a bank, which in a manner of speaking he has.

  Treason, I whispers to myself.

  Then one of the bees decides I’ve trespassed in his country two long and stings me on the arm. The bite doesn’t hurt that much, but I jump with surprise. They stop talking and stare at the hedge. I try not to move at all, at all.

  O’Kelly waves his hand and begins talking again—there’s nothing there, he says, just a. bit of breeze in the bushes.

  The other man is still suspicious. He continues to stare. I can feel his eyes penetrating through the fuchsia and into the hedge, hard, determined, deadly eyes. I’m sure he can see me own terrified green eyes staring back at him, and myself without me knife on this hot day in August.

  Then he shrugs his shoulders and they return to counting the money.

  As quiet as a mouse in the cheese house when he knows there’s a cat around, I slip away from the fuchsia and into the ditch behind the hedge. I’m telling myself that I’ll wait there as long as I have to even if it takes all afternoon and all night too.

  But I don’t have to wait for long because I hear the motor car starting up.

  I pray to the Mother of God, whose octave it still is, that they not see my bike.

  The car roars by, as loud as the surf is during a storm, and covers me with dust. I don’t move until I can’t hear it any more. Then I’m thinking that your man wouldn’t have taken O’Kelly with him in the motor car. He’s still at the pub, probably still drinking jars of spirits, if I know him.

  How did he get there? Did he ride a horse? Did someone bring him there in another motor car who will come back for him later? Or did he walk in by himself, so as not to attract any attention?

  I’m thinking that if I were a traitor, God help me, the last would be what I’d do. So probably he’s waiting until the sun goes down and it’s easier for him to slip out and not be seen by others who have wondered like the little red-headed eejit what a motor car is doing this far out in Connemara.

  Like a total onchock, I creep up out of the ditch and peek around the bushes. Sure enough, your man is still drinking away and a whole bottle of spirits now in front of him.

  If I had any sense at all, I would have waited there till dark. But I was scared and hot and eager to get away and maybe by then a little crazy, too. So, real careful like, I sneak around the hedge, pull out me bike, and drag it along the road, quiet as I can, till I’m maybe fifty or sixty yards away from the turn. Even at this distance, he could see me dust if he wasn’t totally fluttered, which I’m thinking he is.

  Besides, even if he did see me, I’m on me bike, and he can’t catch up unless I fall.

  As wet with sweat as if I’d been caught in a rainstorm and smelling worse than the cow barn in the morning, I climb on me bike and pedal madly away.

  I glance over me shoulder once to see if he’s following me. No one on the road!

  I’m so happy that I don’t even notice the rock till I hit it.

  I’m thrown over the handlebars and land in the dust with a loud thud.

  I’m destroyed altogether, I’m thinking. But somehow I’m still alive and me body hurting all over and me knees skinned and me face scratched and me skirt torn something awful.

  I climb back on the bike and tell myself that it’s like nothing happened and I must pedal as fast as I did before, no matter how much it hurts.

  Finally, it seems like years later, I’m back at home and me ma bawling me out for being so clumsy.

  I didn’t have a chance to tell Liam when he came in the dark the next night what I had seen and O’Kelly with him every second.

  I know he’s in terrible danger now, but, sure, if I’d try to tell him with O’Kelly listening, we’d all be murdered on the spot.

  Mother of God, bring him home safe, keep him from harm!

  And don’t let me be pregnant, not so soon anyway.

  –– 38 ––

  MAJOR GENERAL Emmet Dalton’s account of the death of General Michael Collins:

  About three miles from Clonakilty, we found the road blocked with felled trees. We spent about
half an hour clearing the road. General Collins, always ready for emergencies, great or small, directed the work and took a hand in carrying it out. Active and powerful in body as in mind, he handled ax and saw with the same vigor as he could exhibit in the direction of affairs of state, military or civil.

  Having at last cleared a way, we went into the town of Clonakilty, which is the hometown of General Collins. Here he interviewed the garrison officer and had conversation with many of his friends. It was pleasant to see with what delight and affection they met him. We had lunch in a friend’s house in the town before setting out for Roscarbery.

  It may be mentioned here that, on his arrival in Clonakilty, the whole town turned out to welcome him. . . .

  Just outside the town of Bandon, General Collins pointed out to me several farmhouses, which he told me were used by the lads in the old days of “the Terror.” He mentioned to me the home of one particular friend of his own, remarking “It’s too bad he’s on the other side now, because he is a damn good soldier.” Then he added pensively, “I don’t suppose I will be ambushed in my own country.”

  It was now about a quarter past seven, and the light was failing. We were speeding along the open road on our way to Macroom. Our motorcyclist scout was about fifty yards in front of the Crossley tender, which we followed at the same interval in the touring car. Close behind us came the armored car.

  We had just reached a part of the road that was commanded by hills on all sides. The road itself was flat and open. On the right we were flanked by steep hills; on the left there was a small two-foot bank of earth skirting the road. Beyond this there was a marshy field bounded by a small stream, with another steep hill beyond it.

  About halfway up this hill there was a road running parallel to the one that we were on, but screened from view by a wall and a mass of trees and bushes. We had just turned a wide corner on the road when a sudden and heavy fusillade of machine-gun and rifle fire swept the road in front of us and behind us, shattering the windscreen of our car.