Of Irish Blood (33 page)

Which is good, I guess. A bit disappointing to be so easily dismissed, though.

How will I explain these women to Madame Simone, I wonder as Georgette ushers us in. I’d promised to avoid Maud and Constance. But these three look so absolutely respectable that she asks no questions, especially when each tells Madame Simone that she wants a day dress and coat and is willing to let her choose a design from the Old Masters Collection.

Madame Simone begins with Mademoiselle Barton. “A revered name, Mademoiselle,” she says to her. “I myself enjoy the wine of your vineyards.”

“We must send you a case,” Mademoiselle Barton says, which helps.

Madame Simone and Georgette practically curtsy to Mademoiselle Barton as they lead her to the dressing room to take her measurements and show her various materials. Alice, Molly, and I talk quietly in English, general conversation, careful to say nothing about our mission. Molly mentions Alice’s book
The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing
, surprised I haven’t read it.

“But it’s an excellent history. Gives a picture of Ireland under the great Gaelic families—the wonderful music and literature the Tudors destroyed,” Molly says.

“Sounds like
The Annals of the Four Masters
,” I say. Let these women see that I have some knowledge of my heritage.

“Well, thank you, Nora,” Alice says. “That’s a lovely compliment. I did refer to the old manuscripts while writing.” She tells me she grew up in Kells and naturally was interested in …

And I finish her sentence. “
The Book of Kells
, Colmcille’s Gospels.”

And again, she nods.

“My grandfather was the bishop of Meath, Church of Ireland,” she says.

“Let’s hope so,” I say. Hate to think of an Irish Catholic bishop having grandchildren.

“We lived right across from Colmcille’s house, an ancient tower where the monks worked on the masterpiece. That sparked my interest,” Alice says.

“And then she married a famous historian,” Molly says.

“And he’s where?” I ask, expecting to hear that he’s living in the South Seas or somewhere.

“Passed away,” Alice says. These women do get free of their husbands one way or another. Except for Molly, who starts going on about her fellow, Erskine (odd name that), and how he’d swept her off her feet in Boston.

“Didn’t seem to mind that my legs don’t work so well,” she says. “I was injured in a skating accident when I was only three years old. We were married six months after we met. He was with the Royal Artillery unit of the British army.”

“But wait,” I say, and lower my voice. “Aren’t you helping to buy guns in Germany and bring them to Ireland to help in the revolution against the British?”

She nods but puts her finger to her lips.

“And your husband was in the British army?” I whisper.

“Oh, yes.”

I swear she doesn’t see the contradiction. Oh, well.

Alice goes to be fitted next, saying “I want something very serviceable” to Madame.

When Alice returns, Molly says to me, “You must go to Ireland,” then tells Alice, “Nora’s never been to Ireland.”

“Oh, my dear, that’s terrible! Why, it’s only a boat trip away. And the fares are very reasonable,” Alice says.

“Hmm,” I say. I can’t explain to them why I haven’t gone there. I don’t know myself. Ireland’s a dream to me, made up of Mam’s and Granny Honora’s memories, full of myths and music, not a real place you can go to. And through all the gauzy images floating around in my mind, I sometimes hear Aunt Máire’s voice: “They don’t write songs about children starved down to their bones, and bodies piled in ditches. You want to touch the best of Ireland go look at the stained-glass windows at St. Patrick’s Church here in Chicago.”

Now Madame Simone and Georgette come in and measure Molly in the gilt chair where she sits.

“Please don’t make the skirt too heavy, Madame.”

Molly goes on to tell Madame that she rides horses and helps dear Erskine sail their yacht.

“It’s walking that’s difficult. But I live quite a normal life,” she says, “with three children to keep me busy.”

And the revolution, I think.

Now the tour of Paris.

We bundle Molly into a taxi, which Alice Stopford Green tells me is called a fiacre, after an Irish monk, who’s the patron saint of taxi drivers.

“Why?” I say.

“That no one knows.”

A warm enough day for February. We start at the Tour Eiffel, where Louis lets me take their pictures in front of the tower. This impresses Molly.

“So you’re a photographer? I do enjoy artists,” Molly says. “They see the world in new ways. Am I correct, Nora?”

“Well, I do look at light differently,” I say, as I watch the reflected glow of sunset soften their faces. Who wouldn’t believe they are three well-born and fashionable ladies enjoying an afternoon in Paris with no worries except how their husbands will react to the money they’ve spent?

We keep the taxi, circle the obelisk on the place de la Concorde, ride up the Champs-Élysées, and then join the autos surging around the Arc de Triomphe. So innocent. Above suspicion.

Except when we settle in for tea at Fouquet’s, which they prefer to the Ritz, a heavyset man comes in and sits at a table near us. Not the type of fellow who whiles away an hour watching the crowds promenade on the Champs-Élysées. It’s the fellow I think of as the rugby player who followed Constance Markievicz. Molly looks at him, nods at me, and loudly leads us in analyzing Madame Simone’s designs. Will the bodices be pin-tucked or plain? Will Madame employ pleats? Should they purchase new petticoats? That drives him away.

“You really think he was spying on us?” I ask. Father Kevin had been so sure we wouldn’t be suspected.

“You can’t be too careful,” Alice says.

She hands me a thick envelope.

“We can thank Alice for a large portion of this,” Molly whispers to me.

Alice shrugs.

“Thanks,” I say. We order more tea and so my career as a secret agent begins.

The three are staying at Le Grand Hôtel near the Opéra. No shabby Left Bank two-star for them and certainly not Le Grand Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc.

We help Molly up the steps into the huge lobby, once an open courtyard. Horse-drawn carriages turned around in this space during the reign of Louis Napoleon. Now a skylight covers a lobby full of overstuffed chairs and small marble tables where guests—very elegant—sit and chat. I think Molly sees judgment on my face, because she says “Luxury can be a protection” to me as I stick my toes into the thick carpet.

“
Regardez
,”
Mademoiselle Barton says, and nods toward a corner where Monsieur Rugby sits slumped in an armchair. Not even trying to blend in.

“Let’s go!” I say, but Molly steers us right toward the man.

“Hello,” she says. “You look very familiar. Are you a friend of my husband Erskine?”

“The famous author,” Alice Stopford Green puts in. “He wrote ‘The Riddle of the Sands,’ a story of espionage.”

The man looks down. Says nothing.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” Molly asks. “Gentlemen usually rise when a lady addresses them.”

Oh, great. Make him mad. The absolutely worst way to deal with a cop.

“Perhaps he doesn’t understand English,” Mademoiselle Barton says, and addresses him in French.

The rugby man doesn’t respond but does kind of stumble up onto his feet.

“Are you staying in this hotel? Louis Napoleon was its patron, you know,” Molly says.

Now Alice Stopford Green speaks up. “He was a pal of my husband’s grandfather. Louis ‘Nap’ he called him. The emperor lived in England at the time and would come to call. A bit embarrassing because Queen Marie-Amélie, the wife of Louis-Philippe who the emperor deposed as king, sometimes visited my husband’s grandmother. Always worried the two might meet!”

The three laugh. Fluty and phony-sounding but I join in heartily. Overdoing it but we do manage to flummox the fellow. He wants out, I think.

“Well, nice chatting with you,” Molly says. “We’re going into the Café de la Paix right through that doorway for an apéritif if you’d care to join us?”

I make a sweeping motion with my hand like a matador waving a cape at a bull. The rugby player takes off.

Now we do laugh.

“Let’s not settle for an aperitif,” Molly says, as we look over the menus at Café de la Paix. “Let’s order glorious
pêches Melba
.”

We do.

“Well done girls,” I say, as I get just the right combination of peach, ice cream, and raspberry topping onto my spoon.

“Maud told me to always confront the watchers,” Molly says. “One of them followed her into the Brown Thomas store in Dublin. Maud led the fellow right into the corset section, then complained to the floorwalker that this unsavory and obviously perverted man was annoying her. They threw the fellow out and he was a Special Branch detective.”

Efficient, I think. Maybe revolutions do need highborn ladies.

The next day I’m back at Madame’s studio. Now I hate not being able to tell Madame Simone the story of our rout of Monsieur Rugby and even sorrier that I have to lie to my red leather book.

“They only gave you twenty-five francs?” Madame Simone says. “Terrible. I will give you a share of the two hundred francs they paid me,” she offers.

I assure her that I am satisfied. “They are my Irish countrywomen,” I say, as I open the red ledger and make an entry.

She shakes her head. “You are not like them,” she says.

I know she’s about to tell me why.

But Georgette comes in.

“A client, Madame,” Georgette says. “With no appointment.”

Strange. Madame’s doesn’t attract casual shoppers. But she has Georgette show the woman in. Not our usual customer. About forty and dressed a bit flamboyantly.

Georgette says, “Here is Madame LaSalle,” and stands behind the woman instead of leaving as she usually does.

Madame LaSalle wants a new dress, she tells Madame, who then asks the woman if she understands the cost of a Madame Simone creation. She nods, takes out a wad of francs from a pocket in her dress, and puts them on the table.

Madame sends Georgette for the tape measure and Madame LaSalle turns to me. “From where you come?” she asks in English, and seems surprised when I say America, Chicago.

“Ne pas Irlande?”
she says to Madame, and then lets out a long run of French.

“This one’s telling me that some Irish women she knows recommended me,” Madame Simone says to me. “Your friends. She wonders if they’re still in Paris and will they be returning here and also she wants you to take her on a tour too.”

The woman listens very intently, maybe she understands English better than she speaks it. Like me and French.

”Those Irish women?” I say to Madame in English. “Gee whiz. I don’t really know them at all. The concierge at Le Grand Hôtel put them in touch with me. But sure, I’d be happy to take Madame LaSalle on the tour. We’ll start at the Eiffel Tower. I’ll take her photograph and then…”

“Photograph?” The woman picks out the word, repeats it, and then speaks to Madame with many gestures.

“The lady doesn’t want a photograph taken,” Madame says to me.

I turn to the woman and tell her in careful French that I can even get her picture into the newspaper. A grand surprise for her friends—and what’s her full name for the caption, Madame What LaSalle?

Well, she panics, tells Madame Simone she’s changed her mind, turns, hurries out. Madame Simone stands up, walks over to where I’m sitting with the red ledger open, and looks down at me. Angry.

“She came from the police,” she says. “I told you not to become entangled”—her word, and believe me it sounds worse in French, like being pulled underwater by the tentacles of an octopus. Madame goes on and on. I don’t say anything. Georgette comes in.

“Not police or at least not French police,” she says. “I followed Madame LaSalle”—drawing out the “Madame”—“to the place Vendôme where a big man waited under the column. I saw her take money from him. Heard them speak in English.”

“The rugby player,” I say. “Damn!”

They both look at me.
“Comment?”
Madame Simone says.

So what do I tell this woman who befriended me, made my life in Paris possible? I can’t lie to her. But I do. I’m surprised at how easily the words come.

“He must be a private detective. The husband of Molly Childers is considering a divorce action.” Forgive me Molly and your oddly named husband. “He may suspect she met a lover here.”

“Ah,” says Madame Simone. She sits down. Georgette laughs.

“Not the first lady to use our premises for a tête-à-tête!” Georgette says.

“Georgette!” Madame says, but then smiles too. “I suppose
amour
is in the very walls here. Madame Geoffrin was most tolerant.”

I make that noise with my mouth French women use to mean
“C’est la vie
.
”
Whew.

Two weeks later, my next client comes in. We meet at the Panthéon. Best to stay away from Madame Simone’s.

“Good afternoon, I’m Alice Milligan,” she says.

Alice doesn’t want to linger in the Panthéon.

“There’s a church not far from here I would like to visit. On the rue des Carmes.”

“I know it,” I say. Hadn’t Peter taken us there on one of the student tours? “The church was originally a chapel of the Irish College,” I say.

“Then you can see why I want to visit it,” Alice says. “You see, I’m from Tyrone. ‘Tír Owen,’ the land of the Chieftain Owen.”

“Of course,” I say, though I’m not sure what she means. Peter had told us something about the church being a place where the exiled Irish chieftains and their followers worshipped, but I didn’t really listen. Too busy whispering with May Quinlivan in the back.

Now Alice Milligan tells me she believes two members of the chieftains’ clans, an O’Neill and an O’Donnell, are buried in this small church. St. Ephrem’s it’s called now and belongs to the Syrian Catholics. She says that a very conservative Catholic organization meets here. “Royalists,” she says.

“Do French people really think they’ll get a king back?” I ask.