1999 (10 page)

“Deliberate is the key word,” said Ursula. “I knew she wouldn't insist on anything for herself if she thought you could have a wedding gown that would impress the Belfast relatives.”

“My mother's a great negotiator,” Barry said. “You should see her trading livestock in the Ennis Mart. Ursula invariably gets the best of the deal, but she makes the other fellow think he has. She's the most amazing woman in Ireland.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to cast a fond glance over his shoulder at Ursula.

Barbara's lips tightened imperceptibly.

Barry parked the car in a nearby street while the two women went to meet with Mary O'Donnell. He had a number of things to do in the city but first he sat alone in the car for a while, staring at the long-fingered hands splayed out on the steering wheel.

The dedicated effort that went into training those hands. Those reflexes. Practicing, practicing till my fingers bled.

What was it all for?

In the editorial offices of
An Phoblacht
—a single cramped room overflowing with precariously balanced stacks of newsprint, typewritten pages, hastily scribbled notes, photographs, books, and miscellaneous flotsam organised according to a scheme only Éamonn MacThomáis could understand—MacThomáis was dialling his home telephone number. On the cluttered desk before him was an expensively engraved pasteboard square. Beside the invitation was a half-empty flask of black coffee, tepid now, which his wife had prepared for him earlier.

“Rosaleen?” he said when she answered the phone. “I have news for you. Barry Halloran's going to be married.” He chuckled at her surprise. “I'm not codding you, he really is. To that American girl. He just dropped our invitation in.

“I'd best warn you the police may be watching the church. Someone from Special Branch,
^*
probably. Through cleverness and sheer good luck Barry's never been charged with membership in the IRA, but some of his guests have. Now don't worry, Little Girl, the police will be wearing civilian clothes, you won't even know who they are. It's just a shame, that's all. His new wife will have to learn to cope. I only hope she's half the woman you are.”

Two days before the wedding Winifred Baines arrived with a small entourage of well-dressed Speers and Mansells. They displayed the mixture of curiosity and apprehension common to people visiting an exotic foreign country for the first time. Isabella met them at the train station. As she was leading them to the taxi rank, a Speer whispered to a Mansell, “Is Mrs. Kavanagh one of us or is she RC?”

“I hope she's one of us,” the other replied. “How could we tell our friends we've been to a Catholic wedding?”

Isabella took them straight to the Russell Hotel, where she had booked rooms for them. She insisted Barry and Barbara come to meet the cousins there, rather than in Harold's Cross. On the following day she planned to take them on a tour of the “better areas” of Dublin. The wedding reception would also be held at the Russell. By this stratagem Isabella hoped to keep the Belfast cousins from ever seeing the boardinghouse.

When Barry returned from meeting them he told Ursula, “Cousin Winnie's about eighty years old, bowlegged and back-bent, and gives off a powerful smell of dogs. Her clothes look as old as she is. No jewellery. Lace-up shoes. As you can imagine, Isabella's attempts to impress the old dear fall flat. She does seem to like Barbara, though; she invited her to come to Belfast and see her kennels. She raises King Charles spaniels.”

Ursula raised her eyebrows. “Flat-faced dogs. They sniffle.”

Later that evening Barbara knocked on the door of Ursula's room. “I've been wondering,” she began hesitantly, “if…well…is what we're doing legal?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I mean, just how closely are Barry and I related? I know my grandfather Henry was your uncle.”

Ursula laughed. “He wasn't really my uncle, that was just a courtesy title. I began calling him Uncle Henry when I was five years old, just as he called me Little Business. Henry and Papa were best friends.”

Barbara looked relieved. “That's all right then. I wish I knew more about Barry's ancestors.”

“Ancestors.” Ursula rolled the word around in her mouth, tasting it as if it were a foreign substance.
Meeting her Belfast relatives must have started this train of thought.

The girl went on, “He did tell me his grandfather was in the IRA, but that hardly constitutes a family tree.” She fixed Ursula with an enquiring gaze.

Ursula hesitated.
This wedding is certainly stirring up the mud. Maybe that's what weddings do; I wouldn't know.
“My parents—they're both dead now—were Ned and Síle Halloran,” she said. “They were both born in County Clare; her maiden name was Duffy.”

“Do you resemble them very much?”

Ursula hesitated again.

“Well, do you? I'd like to have an idea what my children may look like.”

“Is it so important? Surely you'll love them no matter what.”

“Of course I will, but I still want to know.”

She's going to worry this like a dog worrying a bone,
Ursula told herself.
And I suppose she has the right.
In a matter-of-fact voice she said, “I don't look like either Ned or Síle because I wasn't born to them. One of my parents must have had good teeth, though. Mine are excellent and you know how uncommon that is in Ireland.”

Barbara had only heard the first sentence. Her eyebrows shot upward. “You were an orphan?”

“I was a foundling.”

“Were you illegitimate?” Barbara blurted.

“I have no idea.”

“How could you grow up without knowing who you are?”

Ursula said firmly, “I know exactly who I am, Barbara. It takes a lifetime for any of us to learn that, but I have.”

 

On the eve of the wedding Father Aloysius was invited to dine at the yellow brick house. Leaving the dining room to the boarders, Barbara prepared the parlour for a private party. “There'll be six of us eating in there,” she explained. “Barry and me, our mothers, and Séamus and Father Aloysius.”

Isabella's lips narrowed to a thin line. “Are you sure you want outsiders at such an intimate family occasion?”

Barbara refused to give ground. “Father Aloysius is no outsider, he'll be marrying us tomorrow. As for Séamus, well…he is family.”

McCoy could not hide his pleased smile.

That evening Barbara assiduously sought to steer the talk away from politics. The men kept steering it back. As soon as the meal was over Isabella went up to bed, pleading a headache. Barbara promptly settled herself on the couch next to Barry and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. A small, proprietary gesture.

Father Aloysius—John to his friends—was stoop-shouldered and almost completely bald, with a deeply furrowed face. Barry had described him to Barbara as “born to look worried.” In actuality he was an engaging man with a wealth of amusing anecdotes. “The best man usually tells the naughty stories on an occasion like this,” he said to McCoy, “but I'd like to usurp the privilege if I may.”

“Feel free. I don't know any anyway.”

“I doubt that, Séamus. I'll expect to see you in confession for telling a lie. Anyway, here's a true tale which may be, ah, rather appropriate.

“Some years ago I was visiting a parishioner in Altnagelvin Hospital. He told me that the man in the next bed was the biggest troublemaker on the ward. He complained constantly, drove the nurses crazy. His private parts had undergone surgery for some medical condition, I don't know what, and he wanted everyone to be as miserable as he was. But the nurses found a way to get even.

“Picture this: the head of the malcontent's bed was directly in front of a window. In order to raise the window blind every morning a nurse had to stand close to the bed and stretch across him. So the nurses started coming in with no knickers on. The poor fellow couldn't resist trying to look up their skirts as they reached above him, and every time he did the inevitable happened. He made little tents with his sheet. And howled with pain.”

Ursula threw back her head and laughed as heartily as Barry and McCoy. After a moment's hesitation—and some shock at discovering that a priest would tell such a story—Barbara laughed too.

The levity did not last long. Soon the conversation returned, inevitably, to the situation in the north. Father Aloysius said, “A friend of mine is Father Alec Reid, who belongs to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer—they're known as the Redemptorists, Barbara. When the loyalists burned Bombay Street—”
^*

“Aided and abetted by the RUC,” McCoy interjected.

“I wouldn't know, I never see a constable in the confessional.”

Barbara asked, “Why not?”

“They dig with the other foot,” McCoy told her.

“What does that mean?”

“Protestants,” Barry said succinctly.

“Anyway,” the priest continued, “Alec was in Belfast at the time. He was baffled because until then the city had seemed relatively peaceful. He asked a man in the street, ‘When did all this start?' The answer he got was: ‘The first time the English set foot on this island.' Alec returned to his order and reported, ‘This is going to be very bad.'”
¹

Pressed against Barry's shoulder, with the scent of him in her nostrils and the feel of him tight against her body, Barbara closed her eyes.
I won't let the damned north ruin my wedding. I won't I won't I won't!

 

On May Day Barry was up and dressed while the rest of the house was still asleep. Raw energy was bursting from the pores of his skin. Energy that had been building up since Bloody Sunday. He and Barbara were still not sleeping together, but the reason for abstinence had changed.

“I want to come to our wedding chaste,” Barbara had said after accepting his proposal. “As chaste as possible,” she amended when Barry laughed. “Besides, I wouldn't feel right about sneaking around with our mothers under the same roof. Once we're married, though…” Her voice had trailed away, leaving the rest up to his imagination.

In the predawn gloom, Barry wandered aimlessly through his house, wondering what a man was expected to think about on his wedding day.
The wedding night, maybe? Is that why I'm marrying her? Be honest, Halloran. Is it sex?

Well, yes. Partly. I've never suffered from a shortage of women, though,
he admitted to himself. In spite of the stern inhibitions imposed upon generations of Catholic men by generations of Irish priests, Barry Halloran had enjoyed a relatively active sex life.
I'm marrying Barbara because I…

Love her?

He was suddenly impatient with himself.
Of course I love her. She's the most exciting woman I've ever met. Only a fool would let someone like that get away. I proposed because the timing was opportune, but I would have done it anyway.

Sooner or later.

The air in the house was stale with last night's cigarette smoke. Barry stepped outside. As the front door closed behind him he caught his breath in wonder.

Flung across a sapphire sky were swirls of cloud like skeins of pink silk. Reflecting the first rays of the sun, they painted the land with light.

Ireland through rose-coloured glasses.

He hurried back into the house for a camera.

 

Séamus McCoy waited with Barry Halloran below the altar. The older man was uncomfortable in his hired suit; he ran a finger around the inside of his collar to pull it free from his neck.
What if Barbara doesn't show? She might not. Anything could happen with that one.
He looked up at Father Aloysius for reassurance. The priest smiled blandly.
Do they teach them that in seminary?
McCoy wondered.
An all-purpose smile, useful for everything but funerals.
He glanced at Barry, noting a thin film of sweat on his friend's forehead.
Guess I'm not the only one who thinks she might not come.

When the organ music began Barry and McCoy turned as one. Alice Cassidy, a plump and pretty blonde who was Barbara's only attendant, appeared in the arched doorway. She was halfway up the aisle before the bride made a solo entrance. Barbara had refused to have anyone give her away. “I belong to myself,” she insisted. “If anyone's giving me to Barry, it's me.”

On her wedding day she made no effort to appear demure. Throwing back her head, she paced up the aisle like a queen. Her gown was a narrow sheath of ivory silk, elegant in its simplicity. Instead of a veil, a Juliet cap nestled in her upswept hair. Around her throat was a single strand of large, perfectly matched pearls, their lustre emphasising her glowing complexion.

A sigh of admiration swept the church. “She's absolutely gorgeous,” Rosaleen MacThomáis whispered to her husband. Paudie Coates, the garage owner from whom Barry had bought the Austin Healey, started to stand up for a better look. His wife tugged at his coattails. “Sit down!” she hissed. “What will people think?”

To Barry's dazzled vision Barbara first appeared as a luminous flame.

He narrowed his eyes to adjust the focus and the flame became a living woman. He automatically studied her the way he would study any photographic subject: seeking the truth behind the image. And the artist in him detected something the man had not. Barbara's posture was not proud but haughty. Her smile was that of a conqueror.

Barry's stomach clenched.
I'm making a dreadful mistake.

He was struck by the profound conviction that there had been another occasion long ago when he realised the same truth about the same woman.
It's just déjà vu. Happens to everybody.

McCoy's elbow dug into his ribs. “Come out of your trance, Seventeen. Father Aloysius has cleared his throat twice. Let's get on with it.”

 

Because they had a long automobile drive ahead, the newlyweds left the reception after a token appearance. “Séamus and I will stay here until the last guest leaves,” Ursula assured them in the hotel foyer. “And don't worry, I'll take Isabella to the airport myself. We'll book a taxi in the morning.”

When Barbara attempted a farewell hug Ursula seemed unaware of her. She was gazing past the girl with a distracted expression.

Barry said, “A farthing for your thoughts, Ursula.”

She snatched herself back from a faraway place. “You're going to have three children. Two boys and a girl.”

Barbara stared at her. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Ursula knows things,” said Barry.

“Well, she can't possibly know how many children we're going to have, because I've decided I don't want any. I'm not the motherly type.”