Irish Linen

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “When I’m in Dublin I might stay in the row house on the park. This is a short walk to the government buildings. If you and the Old Fella came down, we might have dinner at the Lafayette Restaurant at the Royal Hibernian …”

  “Well, we’ll see what himself wants to do. You know what he’s like.”

  “By the way, is he around the premises?”

  “I’ll see if he wants to talk.”

  The Old Fella was on immediately.

  “Where the fock are you!”

  “Lisbon. That’s in Portugal.”

  “Is anyone listening in?”

  “I’m at the Irish embassy here. Supposedly we have a secure line. Nowadays you can’t tell.”

  “What the fock you doing there?”

  “Waiting for the BOAC flight tomorrow.”

  “They shot one of them down.”

  “Only because they thought Winston was on it … I need a favour.”

  “Name it and you got it.”

  “I need an hour with Winston tomorrow morning. just him, no Foreign Office wallahs.”

  “I imagine that I could arrange that. Urgent, is it now?”

  “Extremely.”

  “I’ll ask him to have a limousine pick you up.”

  “Smashing!”

  My second weekend at Schloss Stauffenberg was, I hate to admit it, fun. The much-heralded tennis match between Uncle Tim and Aunt Hannah had attracted everyone in the Schloss, servants included. What was it that Welleseley said about Waterloo, “it was a damn fine run thing.”

  “I’ll have no trouble beating you this time, Herr Ridgewood. I am younger than you are and in better condition.”

  “A little younger,” I had admitted, “and I delight in your better condition.”

  She was slimmer than when we had played the last time and in her tennis whites, more breathtaking. However, I was willing to bet that the poor nutrition of wartime food had deprived her of the energy she would need. I was willing to accept a one-set match, she had insisted on two out of three.

  She overwhelmed me in the first set 6–2. She was stronger than she had been at sixteen. Lots of practice and self-discipline, both traits impressed me. My beloved was serious about such matters. However, she was panting at the end of the set and I was breathing easily. I had been overconfident. Never again with this woman. I became aggressive immediately and broke her first and second serves 4–0.

  She then broke two of my serves and I had to be content with a 6–3 victory. However, she was exhausted, partly because I had volleyed to force her to run across the court. Her wet tennis clothes clung to her body in a most distracting way. However, I was determined to win.

  I did—6–0.

  She glared at me, shook her racket in general displeasure, and then ran to the net to hug and kiss me with considerable affection.

  “Better than the last time.”

  “older” She laughed.

  Then with the kids we adjourned to the swimming dock. Her bathing costume was much more abbreviated this time—bra and panty, green matching her goddess eyes. It looked new Bought especially to please me? I felt like weeping, sentimental mick that I am.

  I noticed that she was not wearing her wedding ring anymore.

  “I owe you a brief row on the lake,” I said when we trudged back to the Schloss.

  “I need a small nap. I would have beaten you if I’d had more sleep.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  Dinner—the main meal at noon—was a delight. The little girls were upset with me for beating Aunt Hannah. I had cheated because I made her chase the ball all the time.

  “Herr Ridgewood did not cheat,” Annalise said solemnly. “He is always un gentilhomme parfait.”

  “I blush modestly at Aunt Hannah’s compliment,” I said. “However, I did make her run a lot. She’s so much younger than I am.”

  More laughter and applause.

  “Sixteen hundred for the boat trip?” I said as I showed her to the door of her room.

  She nodded.

  “Very well.

  “Pleasant dreams, Aunt Hannah.”

  “For you also, Herr Ridgewood.”

  There is no point in recounting my dreams, except to say they were pleasant.

  She was still wearing the green swimsuit, this time with a white shirt over it to protect herself from the sun. She insisted that I go back to my room and don a shirt too.

  “Irish skin.”

  The summer heat had abated somewhat. The lake was glass smooth again. She sat in the bow of the boat, safely away from me.

  “You are wondrous in your swimming costume, Annalise,” I said.

  She blushed.

  “I don’t mind you admiring me, Herr Ridgewood. I didn’t mind the last time either, though I pretended I did.”

  My turn to blush.

  “I must say something serious to you, Herr Ridgewood.”

  “I will listen carefully.”

  She hesitated, searching perhaps for the right word.

  “You are a very attractive man, Herr Ridgewood. Also you are a very good man … I need more time.”

  “How much more time?” I asked as gently as I could.

  “Not much, a year perhaps. I cannot ask you to wait. still …”

  “I will wait gladly, Annalise. But I promise you that in a year, I may carry you off by brute force.”

  She laughed, the rich, full laugh of a happy woman.

  “And I will resist your force!”

  “That will make it very interesting. Your gentilhomme parfait will become a Viking berserker.”

  This time she had giggled.

  The thought of Viscount Ridgewood as a Viking rapist rated only a giggle.

  I had escorted her to the station for the train to Munich early in the evening. There was lightning in the distant sky. A summer storm. The Lancasters would not be flying tonight, thanks be to God. As we heard the train huff down the track, we embraced and kissed passionately At long last.

  “Good night, Herr Ridgewood,” she said as she boarded the train.

  “Good night, my love.”

  She turned towards me for a moment and smiled.

  That smile still remains with me.

  On the flight to London, I thought of nothing but our final embrace. Talking to Winston would have to take care of itself.

  So the next afternoon after my father’s call, precisely at 11:00, I found myself in his tiny office in the bunker beneath 10 Downing Street, a room filled with the aroma of cigars and whiskey. Winston looked older and tired. But the glow of battle was on him. Or maybe only the whiskey. A bottle of Middleton’s and two tumblers rested on his desk. Good sign.

  “Who are you working for, young man?” he demanded with a fierce, Winstonian growl.

  “Ireland,” I said.

  “You’re absolutely and totally neutral.”

  “And because my ancestors repealed the principle of contradiction, we are also pro-English.”

  That line reminded me of Annalise, from whom I had heard it for the first time.

  “You won’t let us use the treaty ports.”

  He meant Cobb and Dun Leary as we called them, now that they were ours. The treaty Mick Collins had signed promised them to Britain in time of war.

  “You didn’t ask politely. You know us better than to demand anything.”

  He growled again. He knew I was right. I’m sure the Old Fella had told him the same thing.

  “I’ve been reading your dispatches. They’re brilliant. Very informative. And you’re out of your mind to take such risks. You are crazier than even your own father. You’re the best spy we have in the whole damned country.”

  “I write them in Irish. Abwehr would have a hell of time deciphering that. I’ve been more careful recently because there’s been a change of administration there.”

  “You should receive an OBE for this work, maybe after the war.”

  “Thanks but no thanks. It wouldn’t go down well wi
th my superiors. Just the same I’m honoured.”

  He threw up his hands in resignation. He always knew that we Irish were crazy. Alas for Winston’s problematic career among us, he never did comprehend that brilliance and imagination were comfortable companions of our craziness.

  He filled the two goblets with the creature. Winston might have sloshed through the war as someone said much later. It did not, it seemed, interfere with his judgment.

  “Your very good health, Timmy.”

  “And to victory, Winston.”

  “Indeed yes.” He smiled, raising his fingers in the “v” sign which he had made famous.

  He finished his drink during our conversation. I had only a sipeen or two.

  “I suppose you’re here to tell me about this resistance movement in Germany, whatever they call it.”

  “Widerstand, it means resistance.”

  “I don’t like resistance movements,” he thundered.

  “No de Gaulle in this group,” I assured him.

  “I’m glad of it.”

  “This is all between us, Winston. The Foreign Office wallahs should not hear of it. There are some English Communists in MI5. They will pass this information on to the Russians.”

  He raised his huge eyebrows a bit and then nodded.

  I relayed to him Claus’s message, virtually word for word.

  He listened impassively.

  “When?”

  “Shortly after you and the Americans land.”

  “Hmm … What do they want from us—guns, tanks, planes?”

  “Nothing at all, only your belief that they are what they say they are and your willingness to negotiate with them when they are firmly in control.”

  “That does not seem an unreasonable request. You may tell them that I said that if they declare a cease-fire and begin to release the Jews and to arrest the criminals, I would have no choice but to talk to them … . What do you think the Russkis will do?”

  “The hope is that they will stop to figure out what will happen.”

  “That’s what Stalin will do all right. He is a very cautious man. The Red Army is in no mood for another war and its generals hate him.”

  “I believe that too, sir. He’s been negotiating a separate peace with Himmler and Ribbentrop for some time.”

  “You sure of that?” he growled again.

  “Quite sure.”

  “My old friend, Admiral Canaris, is alive and well?”

  “Alive, sir, but fallen from power.”

  “I am genuinely sorry to hear that. Sometimes I hear his voice in your words. You must give him my very best … Did they really think they could destroy the Royal Air Force in four days?”

  “Only Goering.”

  “Fools … Your estimate of the plotters’ chances, Timmy?”

  “Slim, very slim. All other attempts to kill Hitler have failed. The Antichrist takes care of his own, one of my contacts says. If they kill Hitler and Himmler at the same time, their chances improve. Most of the General Staff will support them, some already do.”

  He nodded.

  “Does the Pope know? Has he truly blessed them?”

  “He knows in a general way and, yes, he has blessed them.”

  “God grant them success,” he murmured. “It could save millions of lives.”

  “Thank you for listening, Winston.”

  I stood up to leave.

  “If they fail, how long will the Nazis continue to fight?”

  “They’re running out of manpower … No more than a year after you and the Americans land.”

  “Just as we all did the last time around … God support those brave men you have described. You will stay in touch with us, Timmy?”

  “Of course, Winston.”

  I stood up, glancing quickly at my watch. Fifty-five minutes. Not bad.

  The Prime Minister was lighting a cigar.

  “You’ll be going home for a couple of days?”

  “I must report to my minister.”

  “Give my very best to your mother.”

  “The Galway woman,” I said.

  “Yes, the Galway woman.”

  The weekend at our Schloss was great fun. I beat both of my brothers at tennis. Annalise would have no trouble with them either. They accused me of practicing too much. I said that there was not much else to do in Berlin, though dodging bombs offered some exercise too. Both of them were officers in the Irish Army, exercising Irish citizenship this time around. Since we were technically on the north side of the border of what me da called “the rump state of Protestants, Puritans, and pookas,” they didn’t wear their uniforms. In the midst of the laughter, I wondered how my wife—for so I permitted myself to think of her on occasion—would fit in with this madcap crowd. At first she would be shy and they would be in awe of her Gothic queen’s beauty. Then she’d say something funny, probably at my expense and she’d be part of the crowd.

  My parents drove me down to Dublin. We ate each night at the Royal Hibernian’s Lafayette Restaurant which the Old Fella said was the best in all of Ireland. In those days of the Emergency (as we called the war) and the folly of Dev’s mercantile economics there wasn’t much competition.

  “You shouldn’t go back,” the minister said to me. “One of them bombs might decide to hit you.”

  I had given him a briefing like the one I had presented to Winston.

  “I’ll come home after the Rising,” I said. “If it fails, then there will be nothing left for Germany but death and destruction and rape—millions of each. By your leave, I’ll get out of there in a hurry. If it works, then it will be safe again in Berlin and everywhere else.”

  “Winston knows what you told me?”

  “In substance, yes.”

  “You know, Timmy, I probably ought not to tell Dev about the plot. He has enough to worry about … What if your good friend Winston tries to take over the treaty ports?”

  “I told him that if he had asked politely, we probably would have gone along with him under some limitations.”

  “Even the best of them don’t understand Ireland. They probably never will.”

  “’Tis true.”

  “All right, Timmy. We’ll want you back here a year from September in any event. We’ll need to have you do a little work here before we send you off to Washington as ambassador.”

  “That would be a very interesting posting, sir.”

  “I hope you can keep out of trouble there, Timmy.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’m not sure you will, but you’ll do a good job, of that I’m confident.”

  Thank you, sir.”

  I was dazed when I left the office. I had enough sense not to ask whether Washington was a settled matter. I knew already, since I understand the way we Irish talk.

  I walked down to the passport office, where a very good friend presided happily over a very dull job.

  “Would you ever be able to create a passport for this young woman?” I asked, using again the Gaelic subjunctive of polite request.

  “It will be a pleasure and herself so lovely … Diplomatic passport is it now?”

  “’Tis,” I agreed. “Anne Elizabeth Ridgewood.”

  “And yourself married to her when next you come home?”

  “With the grace of God and a little luck.”

  “I’m sure God will be on your side, Timmy, and yourself always the lucky one … All kinds of stamps on it, like showing that she came into Germany say a week hence?”

  “That would be brilliant altogether.”

  “Won’t I be making it so that all the border guards in Europe will think it’s authentic, but it will cost you when you come back.”

  “Whatever it costs …

  “One visit here so I can say hello to Lady Anne.”

  “She would insist on it even if I didn’t.”

  “You’ll be back here tomorrow morning to talk to some of the other staff and then off in the afternoon to Holyhead?”

 
“I will.”

  “We’ll need stamps from Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and bloody England. Anyplace else?”

  “Italy.”

  “Easy as cutting butter with a warm knife. Then when she’s back in Ireland, and herself a citizen, won’t we make everything legal like.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Glad to help … Tomorrow about 12:30, convenient for you?”

  “Perfect.”

  If he were more ambitious, he could make a fortune on false Irish punts, not that they were that valuable back in those days.

  I stopped at a jewelers across from the green and bought the biggest and most brilliant rings they had.

  I collected the passport the next morning. It was a work of sheer genius. Now I had all the materials I needed to smuggle a new wife out of the country.

  If the “Rising,” as an Irishman would call it, were a success, all of this would become optional. I prayed to God every night as I said my Rosary that it would be a success. If it failed, it would fail the first day and I would have to move quickly to get Annalise out of the country. Would she escape with me? Would she feel bound to stay and let the Gestapo rape her to death? I hoped the words in Claus’s letter were strong enough. Would she hate me for forcing her to live when she wanted to die?

  I should not worry about such things.

  As it was, I would have to leave the country pretty quickly myself because the evil men on the Albertstrasse would discover my relationship with Claus. Irish diplomatic immunity would be scant protection.

  My ma and da drove me over to the ferry docks in the Liffey. We stayed in the car until the very last minute.

  “You’ll be coming back soon?” the Old Fella asked, not quite sounding casual.

  “Probably within the year.”

  “Um.”

  “You’ll go to the bomb shelters during the raids?”

  “Naturally.”

  That was what my Jesuit teachers would have called an equivocation.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be bringing home a nice German girl, would you now?” the Galway woman asked.

  “And if I did, would you be wanting a German daughter-in-law around the house?”

  “I might get used to her if she were a nice young woman … It would be easier if she were a Catholic, now wouldn’t it?”

  “It would,” I said.

  She and my hoped-for new wife would quickly bond together against the rest of us. Still, it would be interesting to be present at the meeting, if the meeting should ever happen.