Of Irish Blood (66 page)

“I have to stay,” I say. “Please give me something to do.”

“You have a job,” Maud says. “Using your photographs to tell our story.”

Michael Collins looks me right in the eye.

“More important than ever for America to pressure the Brits. Old Orange Henry Wilson is telling Lloyd George to give him a hundred thousand soldiers and he’ll end all this nonsense. Jesus, Maud, look what Dyer did in India last year. Massacred three hundred and seventy Indians. Opened fire on a peaceful demonstration, killed people who had no weapons. The army practically gave him a medal. Britain is very close to being governed by its soldiers, Nora. Wilson and Macready openly advocate the ‘Indian solution’ in Ireland. They’ve already imposed martial law. Wilson wants to replace what he calls ‘indiscriminate reprisals’ with official arrests and executions. He said he’ll have the ‘full approval and backing of the English people.’ They want to set up prison camps over the whole of Ireland like they did in South Africa. Some British politicians see the danger. Want a truce. Negotiations. They’ll want to keep the North.”

“That’s impossible, Mick,” Maud says.

“I don’t know,” Mick says. He’s standing by a bookcase, runs his fingers along the spines of the books, reads the authors’ names aloud. “Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, the Irish story as told by the gentry,” he says, “all very high-minded and full of ideals.”

And then he turns to me. “You saw those people in Connemara and Donegal. They were living from day to day in the best of times and now they’re afraid the Tans will descend at any moment.”

“The people will fight on,” Maud says.

“The people. You speak of the people. I don’t see ‘the people’ much when I’m out and about. Only individual families, widows and sonless mothers, fatherless children. Why not buy ourselves some peace? The North won’t stay separated. The men of Ulster, the O’Neills O’Donnells and O’Cahans, were the last free chieftains in Ireland. Their descendants can’t be anything but Irish, no matter what lines are drawn on a map.”

“But Mick,” Maud says. “Dev and the rest, they wouldn’t stand for it.”

“I know that. If I put my name on a treaty, it’s my own death warrant I’ll be signing,” he says.

“But surely, the British wouldn’t dare assassinate you,” I say.

“Oh, it’s somebody who loves me will kill me, Nora Kelly,” he says.

“No,” I say. “No, the Irish revolution’s not going to have a reign of terror like the French. It can’t,” I say.

“We’d be bucking history if we came out with a clean pair of heels,” Michael Collins says.

“But we did,” I say. “America.”

“Seems to me you had a bit of a civil war. Worse maybe for being delayed,” he says.

“But that was different,” I say.

“Always different, he says. “Ah well. I might wish I’d taken that job Pat had for me in Chicago.”

*   *   *

The rest of the committee sails from Queenstown directly to New York, but I’m to take a late-night ferry to London, then the boat to Paris. Cyril takes me to the docks. Two British soldiers are checking each embarking passenger.

“Those army lads will be gone out of Ireland soon enough,” Cyril says.

And glad to be gone, I think. Practically holding their noses. The older one overweight with a bristly mustache. The younger soldier hollow-cheeked, slight.

Cyril carries my suitcase and camera case. As I hold my passport out to the official at the bottom of the gangplank, the older British soldier steps in front of me.

“Come with us,” he says.

“Am I under arrest?” No answer. I look around for Cyril. Not there.

A military car’s waiting and the husky soldier pushes me into it.

“Leave me alone,” I say. “I’m part of an official delegation. I’m an American…”

“Fenian scum,” he says. Bad teeth and breath to match.

“Where are you taking me? I’ll miss the ferry,” I say.

“The least of your worries,” the young soldier says.

“I was a Red Cross nurse,” I say to him. “Cared for fellows like you on the Front. At least tell me where we’re going.”

“Kilmainham—where the leaders of the Easter Rising were held and executed,” the slight one says. “Official retaliations now. Arrest. Quick military trials. Execution. Ireland’s under martial law. The army can do what it wants.”

But they wouldn’t kill me, I think. I’m not important enough, I’m just ordinary. And then I remember those burned-out shops, the destroyed cottages. The Tans in Donegal set a cottage on fire then shot the inhabitants as they came running out. Hit a mother carrying a two-year-old child. Both dead. Killed on their own doorstep.

But these men are regular army soldiers, I think. Not Tans or the auxiliaries.

Little comfort in that, I think, as one on each side they march me down a long corridor.

Calm yourself, Nora, I think. I repeat words in my head—official delegation, an observer, impartial, an American for God’s sake. The fat soldier pushes me into an office.

An officer at the desk. An older man, gray-haired. Surely he fought in France. Who do I know in the British army? All those soldiers passing through the hospital wards. Somebody we must know in common and I realize I’m acting the way I would if this were a Chicago police station and I’d been arrested for drunkenness or something, trying to come up with a relative of the desk sergeant, a friend of the lieutenant. Tell him I’m connected, special.

The gray-haired officer looks up. Hard to get so much disdain in one expression. I’m in for it, I think.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Nora Kelly,” I say, and take my passport out of my bag and put it on his desk.

He flicks his finger and it knocks the passport back toward me.

“Who are you?” he asks again.

“Nora Kelly, 2703 South Hillock, Chicago, though I’ve lived in Paris for almost ten years. I work for the couturier Madame Simone and take pictures.”

I’m babbling I know but I can’t stop myself.

“Who are you?”

“Nora Kelly,” I start again.

“Nora Kelly of Chicago is dead,” he says. “Drowned on the
Volterra
in 1914. Where did you get this passport? How long have you been impersonating her and why?”

“I’m not impersonating Nora Kelly. I am Nora Kelly,” I say.

The door opens and who comes in only Captain Pyke. Bad to worse. Pyke salutes.

“Good evening, General Macready.”

Macready? The general in charge of all the troops in Ireland?

“Is this the woman?” Macready asks him.

Pyke nods, then says to me, “I thought you were just a fool, but I seem to have underestimated you.”

“You didn’t. I am just a fool. I mean, I really am Nora Kelly from Chicago.”

Oh dear God. Groveling and I’ve been in custody less than an hour. Help me, God. Joan of Arc, where are you? I take my passport, open it to the photo. “Look,” I say to Macready, “that’s me.”

“The passport is obviously forged,” he says. “So you took the identity of this Nora Kelly. Why? I insist you tell me who you are.”

“I am Nora Kelly,” I said. “I was born in Chicago, but my father was born here in Galway. Patrick Kelly, his parents were Honora Keeley and Michael Kelly. You must have records somewhere. Look them up. For God’s sake, the Pykes were their landlords.”

And now I lean forward, desperate to get Macready to believe me.

“My great-aunt has children by this man’s grandfather. My cousins are his uncles and aunt!” There, I think.

Macready looks at Pyke.

“What is she talking about?” he asks.

Pyke laughs. “You’re surely not asking me to explain my grandfather’s bastards are you? We’ll be here the rest of the night.”

“Ireland,” Macready says. “Sometimes I think you Irish landlords deserve what you’re getting. I loathe this country and people, with a depth deeper than the sea and more violent than what I felt against the Boche.”

Then to me, “You’re a spy, madame. We hang spies.”

“A spy? I was traveling with an official party, Quakers for God’s sake. Openly taking photographs. You saw my camera. I’ll show you.”

My camera. All those pictures on the rolls of film. The people we met. Peter. But Cyril had been carrying my Seneca and he’s long gone. Thank God.

“I suppose we can have the trial as soon as he comes,” Macready says. And then to me, “We need three for a proper military court.”

“Proper court? What? A trial? Don’t I get a lawyer? Where’s the jury?”

Pyke laughs again. “Maybe she’s an American after all.”

“I am.”

“You are what?” A third army officer is coming in from the door behind me, walks over to the desk. Pyke straightens up, salutes.

“As you were, Captain. Hello, Macready.”

Wilson. Henry Wilson’s the third judge. The man who wants to shut the natives into concentration camps. The fellow who warned me off before the war. Damn.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,”
he says. “Or is it
madame
? Have you married some rebel? Is that why you’re betraying the laws of civilized society?”

“Civilized?” I start, then stop. No smart mouth, Nora. Surely they wouldn’t hang me. The British spared Constance and she’d commanded a unit in the Rising. Shot English soldiers. Probably wish now they had executed her. And what did Wilson say about marrying a rebel? Just a random insult or does he know about Peter Keeley? I have to be very calm and logical.

“Now, General Wilson,” I say. “You remember the night I met you with Maud Gonne, Millevoye, and Arthur Capel?” I ask.

“I remember you disregarded some well-meant advice,” he says.

“But didn’t Maud introduce me as Nora Kelly? And that was before I died, or I mean the
Volterra
went down.”

“I’d hardly use Madame McBride in your defense,” Wilson says.

“But listen, I left Chicago because of a man and…”

Now Wilson laughs. That awful bray I remember from the Procope restaurant.

“Always put the blame on some fellow.” This from Pyke, how he dares.

“His name was Tim McShane,” I go on. “A gangster, I was afraid of him. I got away to Paris, but I heard he was coming after me so when the
Volterra
went down I had someone get word to my family to pretend I’d been on it and…”

Couldn’t tell them my own sister had engineered my death. Not to protect me but to get rid of me. Some pride left after all.

“A fairy story,” Wilson says. “The natives are so imaginative. Maybe that’s why they’re all such bloody liars.”

To the others he says, “Even if this woman, whatever her name, is American, there’s a good chance she was born in Ireland and so is the subject of the Crown. Treason is a capital offense. Let’s declare her guilty and get it over with.”

“It’s just we’ve never executed a woman in Ireland,” Macready says.

“No time like the present,” Wilson says. “Deadlier than the male. Hey, Pyke. Heard a few tales about your family. The Scoundrel Pykes, aren’t they? From some place near Galway City? And that’s where this woman was operating. Interesting, I wonder who she met out there. Maybe you can save yourself, madame. We’re always grateful for information. There was an attack on a police barracks in Clifden last night. Give us a few possible names.”

So this is how it happens, I think. How someone becomes an informer. Up to now, I’ve felt as if I were in a bad play, that this couldn’t be real. Hadn’t Father Kevin said Wilson was all bluff and bluster? But anything can happen in the middle of the night at Kilmainham jail. I have to be careful. I can’t lead them to Michael Collins or Peter Keeley.

“You’re losing,” I say. “That’s what this is all about. You outnumber Michael Collins and his men twenty or thirty to one and yet they’re beating you. You’re having a tantrum and taking it out on me. Well, go ahead hang me and see what happens. I
am
Nora Kelly from Bridgeport in Chicago. When my family finds out you’ve hanged me, they won’t care if I was already dead. My brothers, my cousins, the whole Democratic Party of Cook County will come after you and…”

Wilson’s braying again. “Don’t waste time hanging her. Shoot her now as she tries to escape. A terrible accident, a frightful misunderstanding for which we’ll all be very sorry indeed.”

And now I
am
scared. These bastards are going to kill me. I hear a clicking sound. My teeth are chattering. I won’t even get the last rites. An Act of Perfect Contrition. How does it go? “Oh my God, I’m heartily sorry…” But I’m not sorry for fighting these bastards. I wish …

There’s a kind of crash. The door opens. Maud, Charlotte Despard, and Mary Spring Rice march, no other word for it, up to the desk.

“Stop this ridiculous charade, immediately,” Maud says.

“No charade,” Wilson says. “We’ve arrested a spy. We’ve tried her, we…”

“Be quiet, Wilson,” Charlotte says.

“What are you women doing here? How did you get in?” Macready asks.

“I’m afraid they came with me.” I hadn’t noticed the man behind the women. Macready stands up.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Hello, Johnny,” Wilson says. “Don’t think this is anything you need to be concerned with.”

General Sir John French, Charlotte’s brother. But he’s an enemy too, as bad as the others. Worse. Old now. White-haired, pot belly. Wheezing. Tired. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

“Let this woman go,” French says.

“There are serious charges against her. She’s impersonating a dead woman.”

“She is the dead woman,” Maud says. And repeats my story of Tim McShane and the
Volterra
.

“See?” I say. “Who’d make up something like that? And how would Maud know?“

“A story agreed upon between you,” Pyke says.

“Who are you?” French asks him.

“Captain George Pyke,” he says.

“From Galway?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Scoundrel Pykes I suppose. A captain? Who do you command?”

“A squad of auxiliaries, sir.”

“Black and Tans,” I say. “He’s never been on a real battlefield. Didn’t set foot in France. I was a nurse at the Front, General French, British troops and with the U.S. Marines and…” But French isn’t listening. He yawns.

“You heard my brother,” Charlotte says. “Release Nora this minute.”