Of Irish Blood (50 page)

“Charlie Kinsolving, I bet,” I say. I’m right.

“Mr. Michelin found out that I had been wounded twice. Told me that is enough for any man. The prayers of my Mary Caroline are answered. I am out of the trenches and up into the air,” he says.

Doesn’t sound a lot safer to me, I think.

EASTER WEEK 1916

“Glad to see the last of that fellow,” Paul says to me.

It’s Good Friday, April 20th. Father Kevin is going through the wards for the Veneration of the Cross. I remember how we lined up at St. Bridget’s to kiss the crucifix as the choir sang dirgelike hymns. Paul and I accompany Father Kevin. Paul rings a small bell as we enter each ward. I walk next to Father Kevin with a candle as he goes from bed to bed. The men do seem to get some comfort from touching their lips to the wooden figure of Christ.

Paul’s still muttering to me about Lieutenant Cholet as we move to the next ward.

“Don’t know why you took against him,” I whisper.

“He’s a show-off,” Paul says. “Airplanes? I ask you! And to take a little shite like Charlie Kinsolving and then laugh at me when I volunteer…”

“You volunteered?” I say. “To fly?”

“I’m mechanically inclined,” he says. “I could work on the planes on the ground. Very nice accommodations for the air units. They live in hotels.”

“What’s happened, Paul? Someone pressuring you to go back to the Front?” I ask. “Have your superiors finally realized we’re no threat?”

“It’s that Frenchie who stirred things up,” he says.

We move onto the next ward. I think of Maud’s vision, what did she call it? The peace of the crucified? I’m voting for Easter.

Maud’s in Normandy for the holidays, planting potatoes in her garden, convinced that there will be no food next winter.

A lovely Mass Easter Sunday in the dayroom. In his sermon, Father Kevin tells the soldiers that in Ireland the rooster symbolizes the resurrection.

“The connection originated,” he says, “in the story of the Roman soldiers assigned to guard the tomb of Jesus. Pontius Pilate was afraid Jesus’s followers would steal his body, so the soldiers rolled a huge stone in front of the sepulcher and went back to the barracks for their dinner. The cook had a fat rooster on the boil. They all sat down. But their captain came in, furious. Why were the soldiers here? They should be on guard, he said. But the sergeant stood up to the captain. ‘There’s no more chance of that Jesus getting out of his tomb than of that rooster in the pot standing up and crowing.’ And at that very moment, the rooster flew out of the pot, his cry in Irish is
‘Slán mhic Máire!’
‘The son of Mary is safe!’ Those soldiers became believers, right then and there. I think Our Lord had a
grá
for soldiers. He understood the fellows didn’t have much choice in what they did. Some had probably enlisted in the army to earn a bit of money to send back to Gaul or Syria. Others had been drafted, and even the ones who were convinced that fighting so Rome could rule the world was a noble thing, probably ended up with some doubts after enough years of service. But Jesus showed great compassion for soldiers. Remember when Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s bodyguard? Jesus rebuked him, and made the soldier whole. He cured the centurion’s servant. Be assured that the Risen Christ loves you men and is with you always. But remember too, that the Lord greeted all of His followers after the resurrection with the same words. ‘Peace be with you.’ May the peace of the Risen Christ be with each of you and may that same peace come to our troubled world.”

Dear God, please, I pray.

Late Easter Monday afternoon, I’m scrubbing out the toilets when Paul O’Toole comes in.

“Come outside,” he says. “News from Dublin.”

Oh no, I think, Peter’s dead.

I follow Paul out into the garden.

“Your friends have gone mad all together. They’ve occupied the GPO. Declared an Irish Republic, if you can imagine, and are shooting it out with the British army.”

I just stare at him

“Pearse and that lot,” he says. “Daft. The Tommies will mow them down before morning.”

I run through the wards looking for Father Kevin. I find him anointing an Irish soldier. The fellow doesn’t seem to be conscious. I take a step forward, but Father Kevin waves me away from the bedside. I stand back while he dips his finger in oil and makes the sign of the cross on the young fellow’s forehead, hands, and feet. Father Kevin prays not in Latin but in English. “The Lord forgives your sins and will raise you up,” and then adds in both Irish and English, “
Slán abhaile
. Safe home.”

The young soldier opens his eyes. He looks straight at me. I can’t help myself. I step forward and say to him, “They’ve done it. The Rising. Pearse and the others. Declared an Irish Republic.”

Not sure if he has any notion of what I’m talking about, but he smiles, then closes his eyes. I feel for a pulse. Gone.

Father Kevin’s not at all pleased with me.

“You should have waited,” he tells me when we finally leave the ward.

“But it’s happening, Father Kevin,” I say. “Right now, finally happening. I thought he’d want to know.”

Father Kevin’s desperate to get some real news. We find Paul. He learned about the Rising from the British colonel.

“He telephones me from time to time,” Paul says, “and I tell him things.”

But after the first contact, the officer doesn’t call again. Paul hears nothing more. No one does.

“It’s like Dublin’s cut off from the world,” I say to Father Kevin.

All the next week we struggle to get information. The French papers report only that a thousand Irish rebels are concentrated in the center of Dublin and that there’s fighting. Maud telegraphs from Normandy. Hoping we have news. We don’t.

I go to the Irish College on Thursday. A priest at the college has gotten a call from the archbishop. British naval guns have destroyed whole blocks of Dublin.

It’s ten days before Father Kevin gets his hands on a London newspaper. “Irish Rebels Surrender,” the headline says. And there’s a photograph of Patrick Pearse, in uniform. “The President of the Irish Republic,” the caption calls him. He’s arrested.

The newspaper story says that Pearse and James Connolly ordered a cease-fire on Saturday, April 29
,
, to prevent more civilian deaths.

“An unconditional surrender,” Father Kevin reads. All the leaders and hundreds more have been arrested. I don’t go to the hospital that day. Martial law in Ireland, the papers report. All communication subject to government censorship.

“They’re court-martialing the leaders, executing them starting tomorrow,” Paul O’Toole says. “What the hell did they expect?”

I’m back at the hospital. The British colonel has stationed himself in the ward, watching the Irish soldiers.

“Afraid of a mutiny,” Paul O’Toole tells me.

“From men who can’t walk?” I say.

It’s all happening so fast. Why doesn’t President Wilson speak up? The French? Somebody? But the British accuse the Irish rebels of staging the uprising to aid Germany. The allies are silent.

On May 3rd, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Thomas Clarke are shot by a firing squad. The next day, Joseph Plunkett, Willie Pearse, Edward Daly, and Michael O’Hanrahan are executed. May 5th, John MacBride dies. He’d been in Dublin for a wedding, knew nothing about the Rising, but happened upon the force occupying Jacob’s biscuit factory and joined the fight. Four more on May 8th, and finally on the 12th Séan Mac Diarmada and James Connolly, who was so badly wounded they shot him while he sat in a chair. Again it’s a week before we get the details. I have no way of knowing where Peter is. What’s happened to him? Father Kevin says there was fighting in Galway.

“I’m going to Ireland,” I say to Father Kevin at the end of May, “I have to.”

AUGUST 14, 1916

“No, miss,” the young clerk at the British embassy says to me, “your request for permission to travel to Ireland is refused—again.”

I know this fellow well. I’ve been coming to the office once a week since May. Each time this young man passes back my application stamped “
NO ENTRY
.” Won’t give me any explanation.

“But did they read the letters I’ve enclosed from Mrs. Vanderbilt, Dr. Gros, five American nurses, four ambulance drivers?” I ask him, pointing at the thick stack of documents on the counter.

He shakes his head, shoves the papers toward me. Says nothing.

Each time I bring more letters, more testimonials from ever more impressive people, and still I’m refused permission to travel to Ireland.

“I suggest you do not return here, Miss Kelly. You have become a nuisance,” he says to me.

“How old are you?” I ask him.

“I can’t see why that’s any of your business,” he says.

“I’d guess you are about twenty-five, very healthy-looking. Though you’re getting a bit fat and that high color—too much wine. Odd to see a fellow your age looking so pink and pampered. The men I take care of at the hospital…”

He turns away, walks from the counter into a back office.

No news of Peter and no way to get to him.

“Give it up,” Margaret says to me when I get back to the hospital that afternoon. “Do you really want the British government to start investigating you?”

“They’d hardly stumble across my obituary in the back issues of the Chicago
Tribune
,” I say.

We’re standing outside the nurses’ dormitory. I’m taking the night shift. Paul O’Toole comes up. Doesn’t even pretend he’s not listening.

“There’s a young fellow here wants to see you,” he says. “One of the American ambulance drivers who’s been at Verdun.”

“And he knows me?” I ask.

“Not you exactly, Nora,” Paul says. “But I was chatting with him about Ireland. He’s one of those Americans who fancies himself Irish. Keogh you call him. But a very posh given name. Grenville Temple, if you can feature that. Says his own father was born in ‘Auld Ireland.’ Mentioned Maud Gonne to me, said I hadn’t seen Madame around here much lately but her pal would be available. He’s in Ward Eight.”

Maud was in Paris for May and June. We spent hour after hour with Father Kevin at the Irish College poring over every English newspaper we could get our hands on.

“My friends. My friends. Dead. In prison. Why is no one writing to me with news?” Maud said over and over.

“Censorship,” Father Kevin said. “None of the priests here are receiving letters from Dublin either. Now that the government’s imposed martial law, the British can do anything to us they want.”

Only two pieces of good news. Constance Markievicz’s death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, and Eamon de Valera, another one of the leaders, was spared execution because, Maud says, he was a citizen of the United States.

“Helps to be a woman or an American,” I said to Maud that last afternoon on rue de l’Annonciation as I helped her pack to return to Normandy.

“I have to get back to the sea,” she said, “out from under this black cloud. I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten. I’m frightening the children. I am so very, very sad, Nora, when I think of the friends I have lost but at the same time I’m so proud to belong to the Irish nation that produced them.”

“Yes,” I said. “Me too.”

“At least,” she said, “they died fighting for the liberty of their country. Not like the poor Irish soldiers on the Front who fight because they would be shot if they didn’t.”

“True,” I said.

“I’ve had no letter from John Quinn. I’m hoping American opinion favors Ireland,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “Carolyn Wilson said the newspapers at home are full of condemnations of England. Americans not so ready to fight for England now.”

“I sent an article off to the New York
Sun
. I hope they print it. If you would stop by my place every once in a while, Nora, to look for any mail I would appreciate it,” she said.

Of course I agreed. But during the last months there’d been no letters from America, though a number from W. B. Yeats, which I had forwarded to Normandy. Courting the Widow MacBride, I thought.

Paul is waiting for me to follow him. We find young Keogh sitting up in bed with the sketch pad on his lap, drawing away. More college football star than artist though. A big smile for me.

“Gosh, Miss Kelly,” he says. “You look just like my aunt Annie.”

“A favorite aunt, I hope,” I say. “And my name is Nora.”

“Well, mine’s Grenville Temple.”

He shrugs.

“Family names from my mother’s side of the family. Very proud of her ancestry. Claims we’re related to the Bold Robert Emmet.”

“Good for her,” I say.

“Most of the fellows call me ‘Keogh,’” he says.

“Lots of Keoghs in Chicago,” I say. “Most of them from Galway.”

“My father was born in New Ross, Wexford,” young Keogh says. “Came to America at eighteen. Went to Boston first because a family called Kennedy from New Ross was doing very well for themselves there. Helped him. Then he came to New York. Got involved in politics. He’s a judge now.”

Be careful, Nora, I tell myself. Judge Keogh could very well know Ed Kelly. I take a quick look at the chart. This boy is only nineteen and has been in France over a year and wounded twice.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Paul says. “But I brought Nora over because you said you have a message for Maud MacBride.”

“A letter, actually from a friend of my father’s. John Quinn. He sent it to me here at the hospital because he was afraid her mail might be…”

“A wise man,” I say.

Young Keogh takes the letter from the back of his sketch pad.

Paul reaches for the letter.

Keogh pulls it back and then hands the letter to me. “Thank you,” I say. “Can we see your drawings?” I ask, but I’m really thinking, What is Paul up to now?

“They’re only cartoons really,” he says. But turns the pad toward me.

I pick it up and turn the pages. Pencil sketches of his fellow ambulance drivers, a French infantry soldier with the weariness of battle in the droop of his shoulders. A number of quick impressions of the people he must have met on the roads. Peasant women, young children, a few very beautiful Mariannes.