Of Irish Blood (30 page)

The hereditary enemy. Except now Madame Simone’s siding with the English because she’s so afraid of the Germans.

The gates of the park are open so I cross to the center of the place des Vosges and stop. Not cold by Chicago standards. I sit down on a bench. A bright moon tonight, casting shadows into the arcades. Ghosts under those arches. All those kings and queens and dukes and their mistresses and servants and good old Victor Hugo. I wish I were standing on a swath of Lake Michigan beach when the wind sweeps over the water and the waves smooth the sand.

But I am in Europe, where the old quarrels never get settled until somebody makes war on somebody else. What had Peter told me? Oh yes, the wife of the king who was killed in that tournament, Catherine de’ Medici, leveled this whole place after he died. Knocked down every building. Was that about to happen again?

I want nothing to do with their war, I think. And I must not be deported. Can’t face Tim and my family. If he doesn’t kill me, the questions and recriminations will. Henrietta’d be delighted that I’d completely disgraced myself. Brought home in handcuffs. No. I’ll be what Sister Ruth Eileen said a good Christian is, “in the world but not of it.” That’s me. An Irish American in Paris but not of it.

*   *   *

“… so I just can’t get involved,” I say.

I’ve led Maud and the countess upstairs to the library of the Irish College after Mass. We stand next to the shelf of leather-bound books near the door to the little room where Peter and I worked.

Maud and Constance wait. Very still, these two tall women so smartly dressed. Maud wears a dark red hobble skirt and a tunic and Constance is in a very finely woven tweed jacket and gored shirt, yet they are making themselves criminals.

Constance puts her cup down on the library table. “No need to explain. But Nora, you must be silent about us and Peter Keeley and Father Kevin.”

“Of course,” I say. “Jesus Christ, the Kellys are not informers. My uncle Patrick was a Fenian when your ancestors were confiscating my ancestors’ crops and evicting them.…”

Maud steps closer to me. “So that’s it? We’re still the gentry to you and not to be trusted?”

“No, no. I’m not judging you. It’s just … Dear God, Maud, I don’t want to be a secret agent spying for the Germans and you shouldn’t be one either.”

Now Maud sets her cup down with a definite crash. “Who have you been talking to? Some Englishman?”

“Have you betrayed us already?” Constance says. “And Peter Keeley. Did you give his name?”

They are nuts, I think.

“I haven’t talked to anyone except a French woman who is sure the Germans are planning to invade France. I don’t know if she’s right, but I certainly don’t want to help them.”

Maud looks at me. “You’d understand us better if you’d ever stood on Irish soil, seen the spring come—snowdrops and primroses, the baby lambs and yellow whin bushes against the green hills,” she says. “You’d feel a connection, a love that…” And that gets me.
She’s
lecturing
me
?

“Don’t talk to me about loving Ireland, Maud,” I say. “I’m of Irish blood! One hundred percent!”

Maud shakes her head. “Blood that runs very cold,” she says.

“I’m also an American, Maud. I’m not sure you understand what that means. We’ve put these European quarrels behind us. I want Ireland to be free. But I’m not getting myself arrested and deported. Maybe you don’t care about your family but to be a Kelly of Bridgeport means something in Chicago. And I’m, well, I’m not going to disgrace myself or them.”

I leave, walk out of the library through the tall wooden doors onto rue des Irlandais. Done. There. The right thing.

12

JANUARY 1914

So.

No Maud Gonne, no countess. I’m back at Madame Simone’s that Monday. I tell her I’m heeding her advice. She starts again about Alsace and
“la revanche,”
I give her my “I’m an American” speech. I looked up
“revanche,”
which I thought meant revenge. In my dictionary the word also means rematch, as in soccer. Jesus Christ, a game. All of it a game. And Maud and Constance in over their heads. Well, not me.

I suppose it was Father Kevin who gave Maud my address because a week later, she’s knocking at the door. Herself alone. No Barry or Constance. I almost don’t let her in. But it’s so cold in the hallway, and the fire glows just behind me, heating my room. She’s coughing, hacking away, not looking well. She’s still beautiful, of course; those cheekbones and gold brown eyes can withstand anything. But she’s pale and thin and I don’t know … diminished.

“Come in, come in,” I say, and make us tea.

She sits down by the fire and sips from my best cup while looking around. “So, you eat, sleep, and entertain in this one room?” She can’t hide her surprise.

“I do.”

“Very charming,” she says.

“I do like it. There’s enough space for me,” I say. Not about to apologize.

I can see she’s getting herself ready to talk and I stop her. “Look, Maud. If you came her to try to convince me to…”

She interrupts me. “I’ve been thinking of what you said. That I don’t understand what it is to be an American. You’re right. I often marvel at John Quinn. Born into a very modest family in the middle of nowhere.”

“Ohio, I think,” I say.

“Yes, somewhere like that. He’s not even sure where his family came from in Ireland, and yet he goes to New York, makes his way into society, and gets rich. Wealthy and accomplished in spite of his background.”

“Maud, he’s an Irish American. There are millions like him. My brother Mike, my cousin Ed, all doing well for themselves and proud of being Irish.”

She’s coughing again.

“Have you seen the doctor, Maud?”

“Ah, my chest. An old problem,” she says. “I’ll recover.”

“Well, then, thank you for stopping by.” I reach out for her empty cup.

“Nora, come to dinner with me,” she says.

“That’s very nice of you, but it’s cold and I’ve eaten.”

A lie. A bit of cheese and half a baguette would be my meal.

“Please, Nora. Barry and Iseult think I’m in bed. But I’m leaving for Dublin soon, and there’s somewhere I want to take you and someone I want you to meet.”

She stands up, putting on her coat.

“Someone?” I say. Peter, I think. It’s Peter. Suddenly I’m sure of it. He’s waiting, hiding. She’s afraid to say his name out loud.

I get my coat and hurry down the stairs after her. There’s a taxi waiting outside.

“Jesus, Maud,” I say. “If I knew you left the meter running, we could have skipped the tea and I would have let you convince me much faster.”

We cross the Seine on the Petit Pont, which is actually the widest of the bridges. Plenty of traffic, though it’s nine o’clock at night. New floodlights shine on Notre-Dame and illuminate the Fontaine Saint-Michel, where the archangel himself, wings spread, soars aloft.

The taxi turns off the boulevard onto a crooked street. One of those old rues that twists around this, the most ancient part of the city.

“Here,” she says to the taxi driver. And we get out in front of a four-story building.

Lights in the windows of the first floor. I can see people eating. A rather grand entrance with a marble staircase into the restaurant. When the maître d’ approaches us, Maud puts on her grande dame self. He leads us to a banquette by the window. Lots of red velvet and gilt.

“Here,” she says. “Right here.”

And spreads her hands as if giving me a gift.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This restaurant is called Le Procope. It’s two hundred and fifty years old. This is where your countrymen Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams plotted the American Revolution. They met here with the French who would help you defeat England. Lafayette came. He was only twenty years old. And Thomas Conway, an Irishman who’d fought in the French army but then enlisted in yours. He was the one who convinced the king to send money and troops to America. Poor Louis risked everything. Bankrupted the country. The start of his troubles.”

“What are you saying? That aiding the United States sent Louis XIV to the guillotine?”

“It didn’t help,” she says.

Maud seems to be watching the doorway. She half stands, looks toward the entrance.

And sure enough, before we can even order, a man comes in and walks right over to us. French, no question. Sixty, maybe. Bald, but with an impressive mustache. The maître d’ runs behind him, pulling out a chair, calls the fellow “Monsieur le Deputy.”

“Nora,” Maud says, “may I present Lucien Millevoye.”

Millevoye. Iseult’s father?

“Lucien’s a great student of French history and I thought he might be able to tell you more about how his country aided yours. Only a dream of revolution when those Americans sat in this place.”

Oh, great. Does she think I’ll help her from some sense of guilt or gratitude? France supported us so I aid Ireland?

“The Kellys were farming in Galway during the American Revolution,” I say. “Why…”

Millevoye leans forward, speaks to me in an English I more or less can follow. I expect to hear about Lafayette, but he wants to know about me. Am I friend of the American ambassador? Do I know any senators or congressmen in the États-Unis? Does my family have influence?

Maud shakes her head. “Don’t interrogate her. Not very gracious, Lucien,” she says. “You told me you would tell Nora about the glorious relationship between France and the United States at her country’s beginning.”

He flicks his hand at her. Leans toward me. His eyes protrude. Some disease?

“America must not remain neutral,” Millevoye says. “You must stop supplying Germany. Must…”

“Wait a minute, Lucien,” Maud says.

“And you, Maud, no more foolishness about Ireland. War is coming. The British have agreed to aid France.
Vive la revanche!
”

“
Vive,
indeed.” The voice comes from a tall man standing with the maître d’. A stringbean of a fellow dressed in a military uniform with a scar that seems to go right across his eye. Another bald man with plenty of mustache. The fellow with him looks familiar. Arthur Capel, Coco Chanel’s friend. What is going on? Are they dining here, too? Chairs are pulled out for them. The two men sit down.

Maud stands.

“How dare you, Lucien?” she says to Millevoye. Loud. The older couple, at the next table, looks toward us.

Millevoye grabs Maud’s arm. “Sit down, Maud. General Wilson wishes to talk to you.” And then he looks at me. “And you, too.”

“Lucien, what have you done?” Maud says. “Henry Wilson is my enemy.”

Wilson, I think. The man who’d rather have a European war than Home Rule for Ireland.

Maud is speaking French very rapidly. And I realize she moderates her Gallicness for me because now her hands, her shoulders, her face all are
très, très parisienne
. She reminds me of the woman I saw in the bird market yesterday. A fellow was poking his fingers into the cage of one of her canaries when she turned on him.

“Cochon! Cochon!”
she’d screamed, and her hands said worse things. Now Maud’s showering Wilson and Millevoye with
“Cochon”
s, her fingers stiff and quick as she points at each one of the men.

I think Wilson doesn’t understand until he starts to laugh, shakes his head, takes out his handkerchief, wipes his eyes as though Maud is overwhelmingly humorous. And now he’s batting French back at her. As dramatic as she is. Hands chopping the space between them. A lot of spaces between the French words, which he pronounces with a decidedly English accent. I recognize
“femme dérangée
.
”
Then he throws a litany of
“votre père”
s at Maud that shocks her into silence.

He turns to me and says in English, “I am assuming that you are merely stupid and don’t understand you are playing games with murderers.”

Maud rallies at this.

“It’s your lot who’s ready to march against the British government, not us. Those fanatics in Ulster can’t bear to see justice being done in Ireland. They refuse to abide by a law passed constitutionally.”

And now Wilson brays out his laugh again.

“Laws? Constitution? Remember, madame, King James had all the lawyers on his side. Everything all very legal with those Stuarts. But words written on paper didn’t stop King William from saving the English people. Wilsons marched with King Billy into Ulster, and my people have protected the Glorious Revolution ever since. Do you think I’ll see Ireland turned over to a bunch of priests and deluded poets? Might as well let the Hindus run India, or the Fuzzy Wuzzys Africa, or the idiot suffragettes take over Britain. Do you think we’ll risk the empire by letting politicians in frock suits call the tune? The army will not take orders from Johnny Redmond. Never. No Home Rule ever. Never. Never. Never. No surrender.”

“You can’t stop the bill,” Maud says. “The House of Lords can’t veto it anymore. Home Rule will pass.”

“There are two hundred and fifty thousand Ulster Volunteers who will rise up against it,” Wilson says. “We’ll take over Belfast City Hall and then march on Dublin.”

”You’re talking civil war,” Maud says. “Do you think the government will allow you to…”

He interrupts. “How will they stop us? You think that the British army will move against the Ulster Volunteers when half of the officers’ corps and most of the leaders of the Conservative Party are Ulster men themselves?”

Oh, God, I think. It’s happening. The
Tain
all over again. The men of Ulster against the men of Ireland. But this time, Ulster’s got the guns.

Now Maud’s laughing. “You throw my father up at me? And, all right, perhaps he had certain weaknesses. But he was a soldier’s soldier. And I’ve heard him say over and over: ‘A soldier’s glory is that he obeys his orders.’ Are you telling me officers would mutiny? Sacrifice their honor, destroy their careers? Never.”

And now Millevoye, who’d been watching the argument like a spectator at a boxing match, speaks up in English.