Of Irish Blood (41 page)

“Maybe a surplice for evening wear,” Father Kevin says.

I find that hilarious and even Peter contributes.

“A soutane around the waist,” he says.

Which stops me laughing, surprised he even knows I have a waist. We spend the rest of the time convincing ourselves that there will be no war and that the British will keep faith and enforce Home Rule.

I say to them, “The armies will all line up at the borders and the generals will send planes up to observe and they’ll see acres and acres of armed men and they’ll all report that the soldiers will just bump in to each other and go nowhere. So what’s the point?”

Now, I’ve had a few whiskeys. Glad I’d promised no wine to God and left spirits out of the bargain. Sure He won’t mind. Not on the day Ireland faced down England. Everything does seem possible. Ireland free. The world at peace. And Peter and me … married? Well, why not? With Father Kevin pushing us along, our own personal cupid. I imagine Father Kevin, his face on a cherub’s body with a bow and arrow, like the image decorating a Valentine’s Day card, and I start laughing so hard, Peter hits me on the back, thinking I’m choking. His hand feels so solid. The rest of the world goes away.

Almost nine o’clock when the rain stops. My clothes are dry enough and me sober enough after plenty of cups of strong tea to go back into the cloakroom and reassemble myself.

We walk out into the hallway together and I’m sure Peter will offer to see me home. But as the three of us stand there, there’s a knock at the hall door. No porters, so Peter pulls on the iron handle.

A messenger stands there. “Cable,” he says.

Sunday-night delivery. Somebody’s paid a fortune, I think, as Peter hands the boy a franc.

“For me.” Peter says.

“More news?” asks Father Kevin.

Peter nods.

“Casualties,” he says, and hands the cable to Father Kevin.

“The soldiers who let the volunteers pass were the King’s Own Scottish Borderers,” Peter says to me. “They met a crowd of Dublin people at Bachelors Walk who started to jeer at the Tommies. The soldiers shot into the crowd. They killed a woman and two men, wounded thirty-eight right in the center of Dublin. These weren’t Irish Volunteers or members of the Citizen Army, only regular Dubliners.”

“Damn,” I say. “Damn, damn, damn.”

I put on my damp clothes and leave. Father Kevin and Peter don’t seem to notice.

Two days later Austria declares war on Serbia. Russia mobilizes. Germany calls up its troops and on the first of August declares war on Russia. The German army moves into Luxembourg and, on August 3rd, Germany declares war on France.

Bands of young fellows head for the Gare l’Est singing the Marseillaise “Marchons, Marchons,” a great song for making fighting seem glorious, fun almost. I run into a group of them as I’m on my way to the Irish College.

One tall young man is waving his necktie like a flag. I want to reach out and grab his sleeve: “Don’t go. Don’t make your mother walk up and down through rows of graves looking for yours.” He feels me staring at him and stops. Now, tell him. But I don’t. Instead, I take the Seneca out of my bag and ask if I can take a picture of him.

And he’s only too delighted, calls out for his friends to wait. They cluster together. A soccer team posing for the victory photo.

“I’ll send it to your mother,” I say.

But they’re gone, singing,
“Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons!”

Some of those boys I just photographed will die, I think. But I’m alive, Peter Keeley’s alive. Now I understand the urgency of those couples that have come to Father Kevin to be married. I know why St. Valentine was willing to perform marriages even though it meant martyrdom. Life against death.

Marchons,
huh? Well, I’ll march too, right up to Peter Keeley’s door and pound on it. And I don’t care about ceremonies or Brehon laws or fallen women. I’m going to take him and go back to my apartment and we’ll make love all night. Tomorrow morning. I’ll book passage on the first ship heading for New York. Borrow money from Madame Simone if I have to, and when I get back to Chicago and he’s with me, I’ll tell everyone something. That I was saved and have been living on an island. That I had amnesia. Peter and I will handle Tim McShane together. I’m going home, he’s coming with me, and that’s it.

But when I get there Peter isn’t at the Irish College. He’s gone back to Louvain.

16

THE GREAT WAR 1914–1918

AUGUST 1914

During those first few days of war, what complete idiots we all are … me, Madame Simone, even Father Kevin. Part of it is the newspapers. Story after story about the brave French soldiers and the success of
“l’Offensive à outrance
.
”
The generals had learned from the failures of the last war. The army is attacking this time, not merely defending. Alsace is the first target. Me, as foolish as everybody else.
Le Monde
buys my photo of the young students who’d gone off singing to enlist. They use it big on the front page with the headline “Esprit de Corps.” The caption says that the students embody
“Victoire c’est la volonté,”
the will to win, which will bring victory.

“Strasbourg will be free,” Madame Simone says to me. Thursday now, August 6. “The people will rise up in support of their French liberators. Look.” She shows me an article quoting a French general who promises “a quick strike, few casualties.”

A week later, the real news comes. The French army is defeated. Casualties: 250,000. Jesus, not a month into the war and 250,000 gone already. A third of the French army lost and the rest are skedaddling toward Paris with the Germans rushing at us and cutting down the Belgian army as they come. And Peter Keeley at the center of it all in Louvain.

But that Sunday, August 9, Father Kevin is reassuring, telling me after Mass he’d gotten word from a priest at Louvain that the Belgian army was occupying a fort near the city from which they would stop the German army. Even if the Germans reached Louvain, they would not attack the college or the library.

“The Germans aren’t barbarians,” Father Kevin says. “They won’t hurt civilians. Peter will be safe.” He squeezes my hand.

“The Brits are in it now,” Father Kevin tells me. “Half of the army are
Irish
. Good fighters. Stalemate, that’s what we want, Nora, a quick peace treaty. There might be some good come from this. England’s trumpeting Belgium’s sovereignty and the rights of small nations. And what’s Ireland but a small nation that deserves sovereignty.”

We’re sitting in the one shady part of the courtyard. Only two weeks since the celebration of the landing of the guns at Howth and our silly, rain-drenched afternoon. Are we even the same people? Father Kevin is saying England has to go forward with Home Rule for Ireland or look like a complete hypocrite.

“But haven’t they suspended the implementation?” I ask.

“An emergency measure,” he says. “And now, with the Irish Volunteers enlisting into the British army, Redmond’s hands will be strengthened. We’ll get even more…”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “What are you talking about? The Irish Volunteers are enlisting in the British army? The same Volunteers that armed themselves with rifles two weeks ago? The rebels?”

Just when I think I’m getting some grasp of Irish politics, I realize I haven’t a notion. My brain flinches. I feel like I did in Chicago trying to follow Mike and Ed through some complicated strategy during a primary fight in the Sixth Ward.

“It’s true that half of the Volunteers did refuse Redmond’s directive to join the Brits. ‘Why help England?’ they said. ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.’ And I see their point. But a long war serves nobody. Tom Kettle plans to join the Dublin Fusiliers, and Childers has been commissioned a naval officer…”

I stop him.

“Childers? The fellow who sailed the guns in?”

I am confused and wish Maud were in Paris. Which side would the colonel’s daughter take? Or, Constance, for that matter, with Poland at risk of invasion by Germany and her Markievicz family in jeopardy.

And what do I think? Peter and I should get out of here. Go home. I’ll find some way to resurrect myself. The United States has too much sense to get caught up in this maneuvering. We fought our revolution, suffered the Civil War, done and dusted. Get out.

But on the last Sunday in August, Peter is not back. The Belgian army is finished, and the British have failed to stop the Germans.

Father Kevin is beside himself.

“That fool general
Sir
John French! So full of his own importance. He should be court marshaled. He lost the Battle of Mons through sheer stupidity.”

My Donegal scholar has become a military expert all of a sudden. We’re in the courtyard with a map held between us. He points to the area that the British were supposed to defend—their portion of the line. Their army has fallen back.

“Criminal,” he says. “They wouldn’t support the French army. It’s that pigheaded English sense of superiority. Won’t even cooperate with their own allies.”

I didn’t point out to him that last week, the British army was going to save us all. And I say to him, “Father, I’ve been thinking. It might be time for me to go home. As soon as Peter gets here, I’m going to make him go with me.”

But Father Kevin lifts the map, shakes his head. “Nothing to hold the Germans back, Nora. They’ve already taken most of northern France. Impossible to travel, I’m afraid. You’ve left it too late.”

“And Peter?”

“All the railroads between here and Louvain have been commandeered by the various armies. The Belgian, the British, and the French soldiers are retreating. The Germans are moving forward. I’m afraid he’s stuck there.”

“Trapped,” I say.

“I’m sorry, Nora,” Father Kevin says. “You could’ve gotten out. It’s me and my matchmaking that stopped you. But when Peter told me…”

He stops.

“What?”

“He does love you, Nora. But pride and custom keep him silent. He’s poor and his older brother holds the lease to their farm and the fishing rights.”

“But we’d find some way. I’m making money with my photographs.”

“A man who depends on a woman for his living is held in very low esteem where Peter comes from.”

“That’s … that’s bollocks,” I say.

“Nora, that is a word no lady uses,” Father Kevin says.

“I’m not a lady, Father Kevin, and I’m angry. If Peter feels that way, why won’t he speak up?”

“Oh, Nora, you are so American.”

“Damn right,” I say, and stand up.

“Don’t leave,” he says. “It’s my fault. Peter had accepted his life as I’ve accepted mine. But I’m close to eighty and Peter’s half my age. He still has a chance to have a wife and a child.”

“Oh, Lord, Father Kevin,” I say. “Did you want a family?”

“I didn’t, Nora, not at the start. God was calling me. And if I had to sacrifice the ordinary joys of life, well, that was the price. I was a priest, father to hundreds, thousands even instead of only a few. And to be honest, I thought myself a bit above the kind of labor a man has to do to support a family. My father was a schoolmaster, very well respected. But earning a pittance, really, and always concerned about money and staying on the right side of the parish priest. Priests are in charge of the schools in Ireland, and pretty much everything else.”

He shrugs.

“So, I made my choice. And then, I’m in the seminary. I entered that other world of books and great thinkers. I missed my studies when I was assigned to a parish though I told you I did enjoy the people. But my battles with the parish priest ended that. Probably for the best. I always liked the Irish word—
‘léann
.
’
A bit of a mystical charge on that word, memories of the druids.
‘Léann’
means ‘study,’ but shift the
fada
and add
‘nán’
and the word becomes
‘leannàn,’
‘lover’ or ‘darling.’ Also the root of ‘faithfulness’ and ‘continuity.’”

Father Kevin can go on like this sometimes, covering what I think I hear him say, so I interrupt him.

“Wait—do you wish you’d married and had children? And you don’t want Peter and me to miss that chance?” I ask.

Father Kevin leans back. “That’s putting it a bit baldly. I’d layer some nuance around those words, but I suppose I do. I wish it for you.”

“For God’s sake, Father Kevin, can’t you just say ‘yes’?”

He laughs. “No word for yes or no in the Irish language. Entirely too diametrical for us, and I think Providence shapes us and knows what’s best. So my path…”

“Yeah? Well, I am an American and we believe in giving Providence a helping hand.” And my prayer is, Just get Peter here, God, and I’ll take care of the rest.

During those last frantic days of August, I watch every Parisian left in the city who can afford to get out head for the hills or the mountains, or the seashore. On the rue de Rivoli bourgeois fathers drive Renaults loaded with family and suitcases, chauffeured limousines with shaded windows pass horse carts jammed with children and bundles. Madame Simone does not go.

“The French army will make a stand,” she says. “They will not let the Boche into Paris.”

But when I hear the pounding on my door just after midnight on the last day in August, I think it’s Madame Simone. She has some news. Time to get out. I don’t bother with a dressing gown but run to the door in the wisp of shift I wear on this hot night. I turn the lock and pull on the heavy brass knob. Open the door.

And there stands Peter Keeley, the collar of his shirt undone, his hair matted, unshaven. His coat’s open; his shirt’s hanging out of his pants.

“You’re a mess,” I say.

“I am,” he says, “and wounded. I’m afraid.”

“Dear God, come in. What happened?”

“The Germans burned the library, Nora. Three hundred thousand books and manuscripts put to the torch. I tried to stop them. A thousand years of knowledge, gone overnight. No military reason. A show of force. Evil.”

I open my arms and Peter steps into them and we hold on to each other. A still point in this brutal nightmare. Comrades protecting each other except I’m more or less naked with only my silk shift between him and me. I should pull away, but I press closer to him and begin patting his back. I look up. He’s closed his eyes, and I feel each of his breaths.