Irish Lace Read online

  “The back door,” he said edging me in that direction.

  “As you wish.”

  Might he have friends in back? I kind of doubted it. His image would require that the fight be man to man, if hardly by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

  I stepped aside at the door. “You first.”

  “Get outside, you fucking gobshite!”

  I permitted myself to be shoved out the door. A very dark and garbage-littered alley. A big Dumpster parked near the door. The river was a wide band of darkness in the background. No one else around.

  Sucker punch in the back of my neck first, I thought.

  I spun away and ducked it. Then I grabbed his arm and threw him against the wall.

  He shook his head to clear away the stars that were circulating in his brain.

  “I’m going to beat the living shite out of you,” he said.

  Then he ducked his head and charged at my stomach.

  I spun away again, and instead of my gut, he banged into the side of the Dumpster. He wheeled around and leaned against the Dumpster, breathing heavily. No fear in his eyes yet. No hint that he was facing the possibility that he might lose.

  The next charge ended in a kick at my sexual organs. At the last moment, I tripped him. He fell on his face.

  “You’re a dirty fighter!” he screamed at me.

  “I didn’t want the fight,” I said. “I’m willing to end it now.”

  I was, but I knew a remark like that would pour gasoline on the fire of his bruised male ego.

  He struggled to his feet and charged me again, this time aiming for my legs, a kind of clumsy open field tackle. I stuck out my knee so that his jaw collided with it.

  He sank to the ground, gasping for air.

  “This is getting boring,” I said, immensely proud of myself. “Let’s end it.”

  I pulled him off the ground, banged his head a couple of times—not too hard—against the Dumpster, then picked him up and threw him into it.

  “Garbage into the garbage. This time you get off easily. If you bother Ms. McGrail, I will be much harder on you.”

  I dusted my hands off and returned to the pub, another triumph for the guys in the white hats.

  Nuala was singing her medley of Irish revolutionary songs, to the accompaniment of the stamping feet of the crowd. This was about as violent as they could get, a long way from the real IRA.

  Herself was something of a nationalist. She wanted the Brits out and thought the Ulster Orangemen were “horrible gobshites.” But she hated the gunmen and despised terrorism. She understood, however, that the music made her crowd feel good and wasn’t any threat to anyone.

  I returned to my table and sipped some of my Guinness. I was ashamed of myself. I wanted that fight, I wanted to destroy that little bastard, I wanted blood and I got some. What the hell was wrong with me? Was sexual frustration turning me into a caveman? Was I any better than he was?

  He had asked for the fight, but I didn’t have to provide him with it, did I?

  And what was he, anyway? The lads did not send fools on missions far from home. They were, in their most recent manifestations, far too sophisticated for that.

  My heart was beating rapidly. Apparently there was still some adrenaline in my veins.

  Frigging eejit, I told myself.

  More applause for Nuala Anne.

  “Now if you would give me time to catch my breath, I’ll come back to sing some more.”

  She slipped through the crowd, responding politely to the praise, and came unerringly to my table.

  She kissed me on the cheek, sat down, and said, “How did I do?”

  “Weren’t you as wonderful as ever?”

  “I can answer a question with another question, Dermot Michael—” she slapped my hand playfully—“but you’re not supposed to do that.”

  “Then I’ll have to find another woman who doesn’t give me the habit.”

  “Don’t you dare!” She slapped my hand again. “But seriously, did those, uh, spells this afternoon have any effect on my singing?”

  I could have said, “Is it the effect of the spells you’re worrying about?”

  That would be the appropriate Irish response. In the circumstances, it also might be dangerous.

  “None at all. Do they still bother you?”

  “It usually takes a day for them to wear off.”

  “How awful!”

  “I told you I didn’t like the frigging things. Well there’s no help for it … . Did I see you sneaking out the back door with some eejit while I was singing?”

  Even in the dark, this one didn’t miss a thing.

  “You did.”

  “Why?”

  “The frigging amadon was determined to pick a fight with me. I believe his very words were that he’d beat the shite out of me. When I declined politely, as you know I normally do, he insisted on starting the fight in here while you were singing. So I accepted his suggestion that we go outside.”

  “No marks on you.” She examined my face.

  “No.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “The last time I saw him he was in the Dumpster—ah, the large dustbin outside.”

  “I’m still a greenhorn, Dermot Michael, but I know what a Dumpster is … . Did you really throw him in it? He looked like a hard man.”

  “Not as hard as he thought.”

  “Fluttered?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Odd … You know, Dermot Michael, you’re an accident waiting to happen to someone else. They kind think you’re a weakling, and then you beat the shite out of them.”

  “I’m not proud of myself, Nuala. I didn’t have much choice.”

  “Would you ever let me have a sip of your pint?”

  “Woman, I would.” I moved the drink across the table in her direction.

  Nuala was not much into the creature. Not only had I never seen her fluttered, I had never seen her finish her evening pint when we went to pubs back in Ireland.

  The Irish, by the way, have the lowest per-capita alcohol consumption in Europe—and the lowest liver-infection rate, too. The reason that even they think they are such terrible drinkers is that so many of them can nurse a whole pint or even part of a pint all evening long.

  “You bring memories of Ireland to them, Nuala, to heal their homesickness, don’t you?”

  She took another sip of my pint. “Sure I do, Dermot. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  (Point is pronounced “pint,” by the way.)

  “I guess so. And these poor thugs need those memories.”

  “Do they ever … . Will I be seeing you afterwards?” she asked anxiously, as though there were some nights I didn’t wait for her.

  The scenario was that she’d spend her first break with me and her second with her admirers in the audience.

  “Well, I might just hang around,” I said.

  “You’d better.” She jumped up, kissed me again, and hurried back to her harp.

  Her voice was so lovely in her second interlude that I almost forgot about the hard man. Not quite, however. If he were someone from the lads, his plan might have been to pick a fight, beat up some hapless victim, and establish himself as a kind of hero. Then he might be able to talk a few of these poor kids into joining him in some crazy stunt. Even if he wasn’t IRA, there would be nothing to prevent him from posing as one of them—nothing, except that the lads were known to take an exceedingly dim view of someone pretending to be one of them.

  They shot off people’s kneecaps for such behavior.

  Odd. Probably just a storyteller’s fantasy.

  He came at me again just as Nuala’s second break was ending. He entered through the same back door out of which we had exited an hour before. He charged through the crowd towards me, knocking aside those who blocked his path. He looked a bit the worse for wear from his time in the Dumpster. His eyes gleamed with manic hatred. He was holding a short but dangerous-looking knife in
his left hand. People screamed as they saw him.

  I felt a touch of fear in my gut. The man was just crazy enough to be very dangerous. What should I do?

  For a moment of pure terror, I had no idea. Then, just as he was upon me, I picked up the table and smashed it in his face. He went down, screaming in pain.

  Then he bounced up and, blood pouring from his face, charged me again. I barely stepped out of his way this time. Then, as a matter of pure instinct for survival, I grabbed his arm and twisted. I must have twisted too hard because I heard bones crack. He dropped the knife and doubled over in agony.

  Now thoroughly frightened, I straightened up and, just in case the table hadn’t done it, broke his nose with my fist. That usually stops them.

  Blood gushed out and splattered his already-dirty T-shirt. He fell back against the wall, sobbing in wretchedness. I noticed that he smelled of Guinness, probably from his time in the Dumpster. As a precaution, I picked up his knife.

  Only then did I notice Nuala standing behind him, a heavy tray in both hands.

  I gently removed the tray from her hands. “I think he’s out of action, Nuala Anne.”

  The manager of the bar appeared.

  “Did this gobshite try to attack you, sir?” he asked.

  The sports coat and the clean face and blond hair meant I was the good guy.

  “He seemed to want to start a fight earlier in the evening,” I said mildly. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t oblige.”

  Nuala, grim and pale, was watching with a stony face, her chest moving up and down in rapid—and distracting—breathing. Kathleen ni Houlihan, I’d know you anywhere.

  “We can’t have that going on in here. This is a respectable pub.”

  That was a matter of terms.

  “I quite agree.”

  “Do you want us to call the police, sir?”

  “No, just throw him out and don’t let him back in again.”

  A massive black-haired giant lifted the sobbing man up, said, “Here we go now,” carried him to the door, and dumped him unceremoniously into that good night.

  “You’re very handy in these contests, sir, aren’t you, sir?”

  “For some reason, people like him seem to want to start fights with me. I must look like a pushover.”

  Nuala smiled and relaxed. Smiled proudly, I thought.

  The bouncer came back.

  “That gobshite has been hanging around all week,” he said. “Last week, too, according to some of the folks.”

  A warning bell went off in my head.

  “I’ve seen him, too,” Nuala said. “He has the look of the hard man about him.”

  “Only the look, it would seem,” the manager said with a bow in my direction.

  “The lads wouldn’t send a gobshite like him,” I suggested.

  “Not the real lads, maybe,” said the bouncer who, come to think of it, looked as if he might know. “But with the truce on and all, you can’t tell who’s likely to start pretending to be with the lads.”

  Having watched Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness on television, I would have judged that they were much too sophisticated to get mixed up with someone like my friend.

  “Well, please let us get on with the singing,” I said. “I’m sure Ms. McGrail is far more entertaining than this little contretemps … . Oh, by the way, sir, that, er, gentlemen made some threats of sexual violence against Ms. Grail. You might want to have some extra security when she’s performing.”

  A massive thunderhead appeared on Nuala’s face. She reached for the tray again, and then put it back down reluctantly.

  “That’s a very good idea. Thank you for your suggestion. We can’t have that sort of thing going on in a respectable pub.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “You don’t have to continue, Nuala,” he turned to her and said, “if you don’t want to.”

  “I wouldn’t let a frigging nine-fingered shite hawk like that stop me.”

  Not in a thousand, million years.

  As Nuala Anne sang some of the classic songs of Percy French, I thought about what had happened. I didn’t like any of it. What was that guy—old, by the standards of the pub—doing hanging around here for a couple of weeks? Why did he want to take me on? Would he go after Nuala? Come at me again?

  I decided I would order some discreet security for her. And for myself. Why not? What was there to lose?

  With his broken arm, the guy would not be much good at a lone attack. But maybe he had a gang.

  Tell herself about the security?

  No way.

  The security idea would turn out to be a very good one, a lucky decision for Dermot Michael.

  Her last song was the famous plea for a certain Paddy Reilly to come back to Ballyjamesduff, sung with a rollicking enthusiasm and joined by the whole crowd in the chorus.

  A grand performer she was. She knew instinctively how to deal with the audience. Instinctively, and doubtless with a lot of careful study.

  After the crowd had drifted out, she put a white sweater on over her dress, stored the harp carefully in its case, and joined me at the doorway.

  “Will you be walking me home now, Dermot Michael?”

  “I might be able to work that into my schedule … . Give me the harp?”

  “Be careful with that thing!” she warned me, “Didn’t it cost someone a lot of money!”

  “And didn’t he insure it?”

  “Did he now?” she said. “And wasn’t that clever of him?”

  She brushed her lips against mine and then took my left hand (the right being encumbered by the “thing”).

  “You get homesick, too, don’t you, Nuala Anne?”

  “Something terrible, Dermot Michael! Frigging terrible! How sweet of you to think of that.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I miss the lakes and the bays and the painted houses and the whitewashed stone fences and the funny little donkey carts and the narrow roads and old men and the old women and the gossoons playing soccer in the fields and even the tour buses that come by for teas. And most of all, I miss me Ma and me Da. It was bad enough when I was in school in Dublin and knew I could go back on the odd weekend.”

  “It isn’t easy to be an immigrant, is it?”

  “My sister who is in San Francisco told me how hard it was, but I didn’t believe her … . What a pissant gobshite I am, and meself feeling sorry for meself, as though I were the only immigrant to leave Ireland.”

  “Did your sister tell you that she got over it?”

  “She said most of the time, but even after twenty years, there are some sad moments.”

  I remained silent as we walked in the gentle spring night down the streets of De Paul, as the neighborhood is now called after the university in the middle of it.

  “The thing of it is,” she continued, “that it’s too late for me. I can’t go back. I’m a Yank whether I want to be or not.”

  “Irish-American.”

  “Even if I’m still a greenhorn, this is where I belong now. I’d be a fish out of water if I tried to go home and stay there.”

  I thought about asking her why, but did not.

  “You can fly home to visit often,” I said.

  “And won’t I do that, as soon as I save up enough money to go home. But it’ll be different. I’ll be counting the days until I can come back home. This home, I mean. There’s nothing in poor old Ireland for me anymore.”

  “Did you know it would be like this?”

  “I half-knew the risk I was taking when I applied for a Morrison visa. After that there was no turning back.”

  Silence as we turned the corner of Southport and Webster and walked up towards Belden Place. Men and women were sitting out on the porches and the stoops and enjoying the soft evening air.

  “I’m a real gobshite, Dermot Michael,” she said, squeezing my hand harder. “Why am I complaining to you, and yourself and your family being so good to me?”

  “You’re not complaining.”
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  “And me and me frigging independence. I have to disagree with you a lot, just so I think I’m free and meself knowing that you’re practically always right.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “I’m wrong about where I live, and I’m wrong about where I sing, and I’m wrong about cutting the disk and about taking voice training.”

  “If you say so.”

  It was not the right time to drive home my points on these subjects.

  “I tell meself I sing there to cheer those kids up. What a friggin eejit. I just make them more homesick. I’m afraid to try anything better.”

  “As usual, Nuala, you’re too hard on yourself.”

  “Well, I’ll be following all those suggestions, and I won’t guarantee that I won’t ignore all the ones you make from now on. Do you understand me, Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  “Woman, I do.”

  “And I’ll pay for me own voice lessons!”

  “Well, I’m not going to pay for them—that’s for sure.”

  “But you can find me a teacher.” She threw her arms around me and kissed me.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, struggling for breath.

  It was a classic conversation with Nuala Anne McGrail, my shy child.

  We arrived at her apartment. I had visions of her falling down the wobbly stairs.

  “You can make recommendations about my new apartment when me lease expires.”

  “Which is?”

  “The end of the year.”

  “OK … . One more thing, Nuala. I called Prester George and asked him about what was along the lakeshore before Lake Meadows. He said there were some elegant old homes turned into slums. Before that there was a place called Camp Douglas, which was a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War. A lot of men died there.”

  Her hand went to her throat.

  “How long ago?”

  “A hundred and thirty years, give or take.”

  “Were the men murdered?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Most of them probably died of disease. During that war, there were more deaths from disease than from enemy action.”

  “Oh.”

  “One other thing. George says that there was some kind of conspiracy to seize the camp, free the prisoners, and burn the city down. Chicago was mostly wood. We managed to burn it down in 1871 all by ourselves.”