Of Irish Blood (29 page)

And the four leave the room.

“Maud’s little tribe,” Constance says after they’ve gone. “I admire her for keeping her children with her.”

“So Iseult is her daughter. I thought so. They look so alike,” I say.

Constance nods. “Everyone knows but we all pretend we don’t. Makes it easier in Dublin.
Ná habair tada,
” she says.

“I know that phrase,” I said. “Whatever you say, say nothing.”

“Exactly. Iseult’s father is a French politician. Maud met him when she was twenty. Married. But he and his wife, well, they had an understanding.”

“Mmmm,” I say.

“Maud gave birth to a little boy here in Paris. A great secret. The child got very sick a year later when Maud was in Dublin. She got back just before he died. She blamed herself. Iseult was born to reincarnate little George’s spirit.”

I say “Mmmm” again.

“Don’t judge her, Nora. Her mother died when Maud was a child. Her father did his best to raise her and her sister. Then he died suddenly. Maud adored her father. But after he died, she discovered her father had put his brother in charge of them and of the family’s money which had originally come from Maud’s mother. The uncle told the girls there was very little money left, made them move into his house in England. A real tyrant but Maud,” and now Constance laughs, “found work as an actress. As soon as the uncle saw the poster with the Gonne name writ large he admitted there was money after all.

“So a small but steady enough income for her. Always generous though. It seems her father had a mistress who gave birth to a baby daughter right before he died. The woman came to Maud’s uncle’s house asking for help. The uncle threw the woman out. But Maud found her and helped her. Later she arranged a job for her with a family traveling to Russia and Maud took the girl in. Eileen, you call her, lived with Maud and MacBride until one night…” Constance lowers her voice. “Maud doesn’t talk about it but soon after the incident, Eileen married MacBride’s brother, much older than she but a solution. I believe the marriage is happy.”

“Sounds awful,” I say.

“Life doesn’t always follow the patterns we would wish,” Constance says. “When I met my husband, he was married. His wife died, but if she hadn’t.” She shrugs.

“Oh, Constance, believe me I’m in no position to judge anyone. I…” Ready to spill the whole Tim McShane story only Maud comes back.

“Time for me to go,” Constance says.

“We’ll talk more,” Maud says. “After Mass on Sunday, Nora,” she tells me as she walks us to the door.

“Nora hasn’t said she wants to join us,” Constance says.

“Of course, she does,” Maud says. “She is of Irish blood.”

“Well,” I say.

I want to say, “Yes, yes, I’m with you,” but I don’t. Not sure what I’m thinking or feeling really. Who would after such an afternoon?

Constance says she’s staying with relatives of her husband. He’s in the Ukraine, she tells me very matter-of-factly, as if husbands usually are separated by thousands of miles from their wives.

“The apartment’s being watched, of course,” she says. “My minder followed me here but I hope he didn’t bother to wait. British Secret Service will probably get all the information of what happened this afternoon by questioning one of those women.”

“Not me!” I say.

“We don’t suspect you, Nora. You’re not the type,” Constance says. “Too naive.”

Should I be insulted?

“That’s why we want you,” Constance says. “Would you like to have a coffee with me?”

“Now?” I say.

“Why not?” Constance says.

Constance tells me to go to the café at the end of rue de l’Annonciation and wait. She’ll look for me there. If someone is following her, she’ll go past, she says.

Maud looks out the window. “The British sometimes use French police. Then it’s hard to tell. I found that my former maid was copying my correspondence and sending it to Clemenceau’s people when he was in power.”

Constance nods.

“The French have joined the hereditary enemy. Too bad. My minder’s a very English-looking officer. A rugby type. Probably one of General Henry Wilson’s fellows. Wilson grew up in our world, Nora, but he never woke up. For him, Irish people are ‘the natives,’ bound to serve the British Empire and him,” Maud says.

“Just our hard luck that so many officers in the British army are Irish unionists,” Constance says.

“Hard luck for the world,” Maud says. “Wilson and the others will do anything to prevent Home Rule for Ireland including pushing the world into war.”

Now that is too dramatic for me.

“Come on, Maud,” I say. “I don’t think what happens in Ireland makes that much difference to the rest of the world.”

“Listen, Nora. I know what’s going on in the French cabinet. Prime Minister Viviani doesn’t want to go to war against the Germans and the Austrian Empire. He’s a socialist and wants peace. But Poincaré…”

“He’s the president, right?” I say.

“The president, of course. He thinks if France and Russia unite, they can pick up some territory from the Ottoman Empire, which is falling apart. And even push the Austro-Hungarian Empire over the edge. Lots of territory to occupy then,” Maud says.

“All right,” I say. “I can follow that.”

“But France and Russia won’t take on Germany unless England will support them,” Constance says. “And there’s a war party in the British Parliament ready to sign on for the fight.”

“Oh, well,” I say. “I suppose the British want territory, too.”

“Perhaps. But most of the British cabinet want to stay out of Europe. Why fight so France and Russia can get rich? Better to stand aside. Let the European nations have a go at each other and then move in. Pick up the pieces. Get new colonies at bargain prices, as it were,” Maud says.

“Which sounds sensible,” I say.

“Except the army and the Conservative Party told Asquith—”

“The British prime minister,” I say.

I want them to know I’m somewhat informed.

“Very good,” Constance says.

If she’s being sarcastic, I don’t care. Difficult to keep all this straight in my head.

“So they told him that the army cannot both enforce Home Rule in Ireland and intervene in Europe,” Constance goes on.

“There are two hundred and fifty thousand men in Ulster pledged to oppose with arms any move towards Irish self-rule,” Maud puts in.

“The Ulster Volunteers?” I say. “Peter, er, Professor Keeley and Father Kevin mentioned them to me.”

“That’s right,” Maud says.

“The leader of the Conservative Party, Bonar Law, is encouraging them to fight against their own government. He himself has Ulster roots though he was born in Canada and should know better,” Constance says.

“Wilson’s got the French believing that the English will join them which the French have told the Russians,” Maud says. “So, of course, the Germans and the Austrians found out that the British are getting ready for war and now they’re mobilizing. The unionists know if Britain goes to war in Europe, that’s the end of Home Rule.”

Now that’s a lot to take in. But I manage to work out the conclusion.

“Wait, you mean the Irish Unionists will push England into a war to keep Ireland … down?”

“Exactly. They’re terrified that Catholics will get power. The Protestant minority in Ireland will no longer be in control,” Maud says. “Half the aristocrats in England live off rent from their Irish estates. That money supports the Big Houses full of underpaid servants, the tennis parties and hunt balls and well, the world we grew up in. Rotten to the core.”

“So you see why you must help us,” Maud says. “We have to show the British we nationalists can defend ourselves. Only way to stop Wilson.”

“And save the world from war,” I say, and can’t help laughing. But I do agree to meet Constance at the café.

They’re both nuts, I think as I walk down rue de l’Annonciation. Imagining things. But I do as Constance says; turn in to La Mirabelle and take a table by the door and wait.

Countess Markievicz, looking very prosperous and Russian in her full-length sable coat and fur hat, strides by the café without looking at me and, Jesus Christ, if a few minutes later a fellow doesn’t come after her. Probably just a man out to buy cigarettes, I think. But he’s tall for a Frenchman, and broad-shouldered, wearing a gray overcoat that doesn’t fit him very well. Officer? Rugby?

I pull back from the window. The waiter is watching me. Suspicious. Is he an agent too? Placed here to see who goes into Maud’s house? But then the waiter asks if I’m going to order something or not.

“Not,” I say, and get up.

He shrugs. A Parisian waiter, no questions.

I go straight to Madame Simone’s apartment. Only been there a few times. French people, she explained to me, prefer to meet friends in cafés, brasseries, and restaurants. Why there are so many such establishments, I guess. She lives on the Île Saint-Louis right in the middle of the Seine with bridges to everywhere—Notre-Dame Cathedral, Right Bank, Left Bank. Her gray stone building has tall windows. “For the view,” she’d told me. A big rambling place where she’s lived all her life. Her parents had died years before but I’d say the furniture was theirs. Comfortable armchairs that I want to sink into right now.

She lets me in and leads me to the kitchen, where she brews coffee while I try to sort out what’s happened. I start by telling her about the French-Irish noblewomen, which interests her. And she likes the countess part of Constance Markievicz’s story and isn’t a bit surprised that Maud’s passing off her daughter as her cousin or that her marriage to MacBride failed so spectacularly.

“I think she married him for respectability,” she says.

“But he’s a revolutionary. A fugitive practically,” I say.

“So? He’s a husband and now she’s a matron with a son.”

We move into the main room, which I can see she uses instead of keeping it only for guests as we did our parlor in Bridgeport. There’s a fire in the grate. We sit down. I set our cups on a table between the chairs, which are every bit as comfortable as they look.

“A separated matron,” I say, “living in fear of…”

And I tell her how terrified Iseult had been when Coco Chanel and her group arrived because she thought it was MacBride.

But Madame Simone hears only one word. “Chanel? She was there?”

“With an entourage,” I say, and start describing the other women. She laughs when I tell her how surprised Gertrude Stein was to see me there but stops me when I mention Natalie Barney’s name.

“I know her. At least, of her,” Madam Simone says. “Her affair with Liane de Pougy was the sensation of Paris one season. But Liane could not give up men,” Madame Simone says. “After all, they support her.”

“Of course,” I say.

And Madame Simone says, “You have no idea, do you Nora?”

And I don’t know what I have no idea about so I say, “Well…”

“The women you met today prefer to love other women. Gertrude and Alice are married to each other. Gertrude’s the husband, Alice the wife. And Natalie, well, she’s freer, has many partners but I think she and that painter…”

“Brooks?” I say. “Romaine Brooks? The one who dresses like a man?”

“Yes. They are together.”

Now, I am pairing them off in my mind. Sylvia and Adrienne. Natalie and Romaine.

“Was Elisabeth, the Duchess de Cleremont-Tonnerre there?” Madame Simone asks.

“She was.”

“Ah, you met the
crème de la crème
of
les femmes de Lesbos
.”

And Madame Simone explains to me how in ancient Greece Lesbos was the name of an island where a poet named Sappho wrote and lived with a community of women.

“She composed poems about their love for each other,” Madame says, and tells me that Natalie Barney wants to re-create that community within her circle in Paris.

And I think, Love? What kind of love? And ask, “Do they…?”

“They do…” Madame Simone answers. She sighs. “Sometimes, I wish I were attracted to women. It would have saved me a great deal of trouble.”

“Me, too,” I say. And we laugh. Paris.

Almost midnight now and Madame Simone’s yawning, half asleep when I start telling her about Maud and Constance’s battle against the English. I think she’s not listening.

“And I thought Countess Markievicz was just crazy, talking about being watched and followed by the police. But then, I saw somebody who I think was a policeman.”

That woke her. “Police? What police?”

“A British agent I think but I suppose if the French suspect that Maud and Constance are agents for Germany…”

“Your friends are spying for the Boche?”

“No, no, they’re not. I don’t think so, at least. All they care about is Ireland, though if Germany would help Ireland…”

“You are not to see these people again. I forbid it.” Madame Simone slaps the table. Our coffee cups rattle. “I am your employer. I give you clients. And you betray me?”

Then she stands up. “Go, go!” Takes the cup out of my hand. “Go, go!”

“Wait, wait, I’m not spying for Germany and neither are they. Please, Madame Simone, please!”

I manage to calm her down with the help of a glass of brandy from a bottle I see in a cabinet near the fireplace.

“You are so naive, Nora. Do you know what French mothers tell their children? Not ‘Be good’ like the English do but
‘Soyez sage,’
‘Be wise.’ So I tell you: Be wise. War is coming. And the police will not think it amusing if an American woman involves herself in such intrigue. They will deport you, Nora, and be right to do so.”

I’m an Irish woman too, I want to tell her. But I don’t. Instead I promise not to see Maud and Constance again and head for my apartment.

The rue Saint-Antoine’s quiet but I walk as fast as I can home. No rugby player follows me as I start across the place des Vosges desperate to get to my room.

How old this square is. All of Paris really. Peter told me the place des Vosges was once the place Royale. For centuries kings lived and died right where I’m standing. Some fell in battle. Others were murdered, by a relative, as often as not, who wanted the throne. One fellow, Henri II in the sixteenth century or so, got himself killed in a jousting tournament. Wouldn’t you think the other fellow would have been more careful of the king? Peter says when the English took Paris in fourteen hundred and something, the duke of Bedford claimed the square, planted a garden. His brother was one of the Henrys of England. History is like breathing to Peter and he’s good at pointing out how England has been trying to take over France forever.