Irish Cream
Page 30
A Midwinter’s Tale
Younger Than Springtime
A Christmas Wedding
September Song
Second Spring
Golden Years
“An unexpected smidge of gravitas helps Nuala Anne’s sixth rise to the top of the series.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Irish Cream
“Irresistible.”
—Booklist on Irish Cream
“No contemporary writer is better than Greeley at depicting the genius, humor, logic, personal skills, and cultural idiosyncrasies of the Irish, whether in American cities like Chicago or across the big pond in Ireland. This author is the master of modern Irish ethnic genius! … A delight to read … . This book is bound to give you a few hours of great reading pleasure!”
—Shelby-Utica News, Utica MI on Irish Cream
“Solid, modest Dermot and fiery, unpredictable Nuala Anne enjoy an ideal marriage: sexy and humorous and unabashedly loving.”
—Los Angeles Times on Irish Stew!
“’Tis a charmin’ tale that Andrew Greeley tells … . It’s a lively novel filled with Irish wit, interesting situations, and likable people.”
—Chattanooga Times on Irish Whiskey
“The prolific cleric plops his psychic singer heroine and her family into a delightful stew of trouble in his latest crowd pleaser … . The double plot is rich with detail, while the couple’s earnestness and good intentions are never in question.”
—Publishers Weekly on Irish Stew!
Author’s Note
My story is based on an incident described in The Outer Edge of Ulster by an Irish schoolmaster from Donegal, Hugh Dorian (edited in a new edition from Lilliput Press by Breandán Mac Suibhne and David Dickson in 1990). A new parish priest pried loose a local school from Protestant control, which had been tolerated by his predecessor. My imagination began to wonder if a story might be built around that incident. However, the story is not a fictionalized version of the event. It is a story stirred up by my reading about the event. None of the characters in this story are based on real people or real places. St. Colm’s well looks like the one in Glen Colmcille, but the town is not Glen Colmcille. Because it is a work of imagination I have not given my imaginary townland or its imaginary geography a name.
However, Hugh Dorian (who died in abject poverty in 1914, God be good to him) was not only a masterful observer, he was also a first-rate amateur sociologist, though he might have denied the charge. His book is the most vivid portrait of life in rural Ireland of the time between the Famine and the Land League Wars that I have ever read. It is the culture and the social structure of that era that I have tried to re-create in my story.
His chapter on the making of poteen is especially delightful. I direct any reader of this story who wants to make his own poteen to the book. The custom of making it has by no means disappeared from Irish life.
The Irish Church’s conflict with wakes, holy wells, and “patterns” in the last century is documented. Now some Irish clerics argue that the struggle against them was a mistake and are attempting to revive them without the abuses that crept in during earlier years.
The Irish have the lowest rate of per capita alcohol consumption in Europe.
AMG
Grand Beach
June 2002
Family Tree
FAMILY OF
John Patrick O’Sullivan (1942)
and Madeline Clifford (1943)
(Married 1963)
Kathleen Anne (1964) m. Thomas McBride
(Mary Elizabeth)
Sean Michael (1968) m. Patricia Quinlan (Megan, John)
Patrick Brendan (1970) m. Annmarie O’Brien
(Conor, Briana)
Maura Lourdes (1975) m. James Creaghan (Todd)
Damian Thomas (1976)
Look for
IRISH CRYSTAL
by ANDREW M. GREELEY
1
THE WOMAN in my bed woke up screaming. Hysterically. Legions of demons with pitchforks were chasing her, I thought with some lack of sympathy. And herself believing that there were only good angels.
Strong, resourceful spear-carrier that I am, I struggled out of the depths of sleep and put my arm around her. She was as stiff as a redwood tree.
“’Tis only a dream,” I said bravely.
She continued to wail.
“They’re all around us!”
“’Tis only a dream,” I insisted. “I’ll turn on the lights.”
“Don’t!” she begged. “I don’t want to see them.”
“Who don’t you want to see?”
“Whom,” she sobbed and collapsed into my arms.
I felt the soaking-wet cotton of her Notre Dame sleep tee shirt with the word “Irish!” scrawled above her breasts in gold—a redundant label if there ever were one.
“Whom?” I corrected myself.
“The spies, you friggin’ eejit!”
That was a new one. I didn’t like it. Often her nightmares were a warning that we were about to embark on one of our mystery tours. There are costs in being married to a fey woman from the Gaeltacht.
“They’re part of your nightmare. They’re not real.”
“They are too real!” She clung to me in desperation. “They’re all around us.”
Two other presences stumbled into the room, one large and canine, the other small and human.
“Are you all right, Ma?” Nelliecoyne, our seven-year-old daughter, asked.
A very large muzzle nudged around my arms—Fiona, our senior citizen wolfhound. Like the woman in my bed they were both fey. Three of the dark ones in my house—wife, older daughter, and hound.
She eased out of my arms so as to embrace the little girl and pat the big canine on her massive head.
“’Tis only a nightmare, dear,” she said to the little girl.
“Aren’t they the terrible things altogether, Ma!”
Since she was speaking English with a brogue, Nelliecoyne pronounced the “th” words as though they began with a “d” as in “dey da terrible dings.” She talks brogue only with her ma, and with me sometimes, when I’m around. Otherwise, she talks either Chicago English (with its flat “A”) or Irish. Trilingual, like I say, just like her ma.
“Did I wake herself up?” The woman put aside her hysterical mask and became an anxious mother.
“Sure, Ma, don’t you know that lightning could strike in the backyard and that one would sleep right through it?”
“That one” was her little sister, Socra Marie, a reformed two-year-old terrorist, doing her best to act like a three-year-old “big girl” and losing sometimes to her exuberance.
“I’m fine now, dear. You and Fiona can go back to sleep. Doesn’t your da always take care of me when I have these nightmares?”
“Da says that creative people have them all the time.”
“And isn’t Da always right?” She sighed.
“And doesn’t he always take good care of you?” Nellie replied with her own sigh.
“Always.”
They both sighed together. These were West of Ireland sighs that sound like the advent of a serious attack of asthma.
As spear-carriers go, Da isn’t the worst of them.
After hugs and kisses the dawn patrol departed. The woman reclaimed the protection of my arms. She was still trembling.
“Can I turn on the lights now, just to be sure?”
She huddled against me.
“All right,” she said dubiously.
YOU JUST WANT TO SCREW HER.
She’s my wife.
YOU’RE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HER FRIGHT.
I turned on the lamp at the bedside. Cautiously the woman turned away from my chest and glanced around our bedroom.
“Well, they were here when I woke up.”
Her long hair was in disarray. Her face red from tears. She was still shivering. Her sleep shirt was askew. Her eyes darted around, looking for monsters. She was nonetheless gorgeous.
As in all matters, the woman’s collection of sleepwear was variable—from outrageously erotic to dull. Moreover, her choice in night garments was not an indicator of her interest in sex. So the blue-and-gold shirt was hardly a hint—not that I needed much of a hint to want her.
I am going to make love to her. She’s in her shy West of Ireland mode. Can’t beat that.
ONLY IF SHE ASKS YOU. DON’T BE A HORNY NOTRE DOMER ALL YOUR LIFE.
“It was just a dream, Nuala Anne.”
“Sometimes dreams are true.”
She disengaged from me and lay back on her pillow, still trembling.
“They’re just reviews of the day, aided by that last drop of the creature you had at dinner.”
“A lot you know.”
“Cindasue talked about spies at dinner last night …”
“They’re all around us, Dermot Michael. Won’t we have to fight them!”
I didn’t like that one bit.
“Well, we’d better get back to sleep.”
She reached for a tissue on the nightstand and wiped away the tears. Almost nine years of marriage and a little gesture like that still destroyed me altogether, as she would have said.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she said.
“No problem.”
“I don’t suppose, Dermot, you’d ever want a little ride now, would you?”
“I could be talked into it.”
The result was marital sex—a gentle, tender, healing journey down a familiar path which was always new towards a sweetly explosive finale somewhere in a field of flowers. Perhaps, I thought as she slipped back into sleep, this is why God or evolution or someone created marriage.
I have been working, if that’s what poets do, on a cycle of poems about marital love. I suspect that the reason God and the evolution process made men and women so much alike and yet so different was to provide surprises in the marriage union. If herself ever stops surprising me, I’ll know that our marriage is in trouble.
Reversing the stereotypical expectations, I remained awake, wondering and worrying. Nuala Anne, my glorious and treasured wife, was in one of her labile moods, something that happens to your dark ones intermittently. The problem was that she wanted another child, a second son for the Mick (Michael Dermod, our son and so far our middle child) to fight with, though there was no sign that our self-possessed five-year-old was looking for a fight with anyone. “Four is a nice number, isn’t it now? A nice round number?”
Her first three pregnancies caused serious problems. Nelliecoyne proved difficult to carry and difficult to bring into the world. After the arrival of the Mick, my wife went into postpartum stress. Socra Marie showed up after twenty-five weeks, weighing eight hundred grams. I was uneasy about what might happen next, but I have enough sense not to argue. Then, despite considerable, and admittedly pleasant efforts, she did not conceive.
“Maybe someone is sending us a message,” I had suggested very tentatively.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
Earlier in the week we had our problems with the dogs—our large and amiable snow-white wolfhounds, Fiona and Maeve. On nice days, as Nuala determined them, they would accompany her and the kids across the street to the local Catholic school, where they perform for the entertainment of all parents and children present.
So on Monday evening I had received a call from the pastor of the parish, a humorless little man who considered our family one of the many burdens he must patiently bear.
“Mr. Coyne?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I’m calling about your dogs.”
“Yes, Father.”
“They are very big dogs, Mr. Coyne.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And frightening.”
“They’re very gentle and loving.”
Unless someone tried to harm Nuala Anne or her children. Her husband, the canines figured, could take care of himself.
“I have been receiving complaints, Mr. Coyne, about their presence in the school yard in the morning.”
“How many complaints, Father?”
“That’s not the issue. Parents are worried about the safety of their children. Would you tell Mrs. Coyne that I must insist that the dogs do not come to the school yard anymore.”
“I will relay your concerns to Nuala Anne, Father. I never try to tell her anything.”
“I would, Mr. Coyne, if it became necessary, request assistance from the police in this matter. I also wish she would stop bringing them into church. It is unseemly to have such large beasts in church.”
“I’ll inform my wife of your decision to ban her dogs from the parish.”
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IRISH CREAM
Copyright © 2005 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd. Teaser copyright © 2006 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
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eISBN 9781429912310
First eBook Edition : May 2011
First edition: February 2005
First mass market edition: February 2006