Irish Lace Page 6

  “Your brother,

  Tim”

  Nuala started to weep as she read Tim’s first letter. She was sobbing at the end of them.

  “I’ll never feel sorry for myself ever again,” she promised. “I’ve lived the life of a rich woman compared to those poor people.”

  “My guest is reading some very powerful material,” I said to the concerned waiter.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well,” she said, “God took care of them all, I’m sure, and loved them very much, and they are all happy now.”

  I did not think it appropriate to remark on the sudden reappearance of her religious faith.

  She dabbed at her eyes and returned to my report.

  If he did write again, the archives don’t have his letter. The tragedy of such deaths is that if Tim and his family had been able to survive another year, he would have been able to find steady work and a better home, and they might all have survived to become comfortable and even affluent Americans. Their descendants might still be with us. Can we pray that Annie did live and experienced a better America than the rest of her family ever knew?

  She would die eventually, as we must all die eventually. Grim thoughts, eh, Nuala Anne?

  I wonder if Dublin in the years after the famine was any better a place for poor people. I suppose it was not. Years later, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Jesuit poet, died at Newman House from typhoid fever. The people who write about him say that the disease was caused by inadequate drains in the building. Our cities have come a long way since then.

  That’s enough background about Chicago. Now about prisoner camps.

  Neither side expected to have prisoners of war because they expected a short war, each underestimating the resolve of the enemy. Moreover, the few wars fought before in America were like many of the European wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, conflicts between small professional armies. Prisoners were exchanged almost as a matter of course if they gave their parole (their word) that they would not fight again, or in exchange for prisoners on the other side.

  In the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe, the wars were usually short, settled in one decisive battle. But our Civil War was more like World War I in Europe, a long and bloody war fought by large armies with terrible casualties and large numbers of prisoners. Moreover, as the bitterness grew between the two sides, prisoner exchanges diminished. Both the Union and the Confederacy found themselves with large numbers of prisoners and little idea of what to do with them. Fort Donaldson in Tennessee fell to General Grant, and suddenly he had thousands of prisoners. What to do with them?

  Someone made the decision to ship them upriver to Camp Douglas on flat-bottomed boats and on forced marches across the country. Suddenly Chicago had thousands of Confederates on its outskirts.

  The troops assigned to guard prison camps were usually unfit for combat, or they would have been in combat. The officers were also not combat quality. Either they had failed in battle, or had been wounded, or were not deemed fit to lead troops. The prison commandants tended to be misfits, failures, schemers, ditherers, liars, and incompetents. They were also often ambitious careerists, more interested in pleasing superior officers than they were in protecting the lives and health of their prisoners.

  All of this was clearly a recipe for disaster. The measure of how many men would die was usually the ability and the integrity of the officers. If more Union men died at Andersonville than Confederate men died at Camp Douglas, the reason was not that the Andersonville rebels were more vicious, but that the commander was utterly unable to cope with the chaos that had suddenly been dumped upon him. In all prisons there is some venality and corruption and cruelty. The prisoners become less human than their guards or captors. As the Civil War went on and the other side was demonized, hatred for the prisons increased. Thus, when a commandant asked a superior officer for money to build more efficient drains in Camp Douglas—and thus perhaps save many lives—he was rebuked sharply. The Union had better things to do with its money. Let the prisoners—many who could barely walk—do the work themselves.

  Yet, as I read through the literature on the prison camps, I have to conclude that lack of preparation, stupidity, and incompetence account for most of the deaths.

  One more bit of history, Nuala. The North was a lot more divided about the Civil War than our history textbooks in this country admit. War had never been dedared, you see, never approved by Congress. The Rebs fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for volunteers, and both sides stumbled into a gory mess that neither expected. Many Northerners—especially Democrats—hated President Lincoln as much as the Confederates did. They thought the war was a foolish and crazy business, that the Confederates had the right to leave the Union, and that Lincoln should have let them go. In retrospect, maybe they were right. Many Northerners, especially outside of New England, had no great love for the slaves and did not want to fight to free them. Even those who opposed slavery thought there had to be a better way to end it.

  Most of the time, Lincoln had a thin majority of support in the North, but the size of that majority changed as did the fortunes of war. In the spring of 1864, it seemed that a war-weary Union would not reelect him. There was more support for the Union in Chicago than in other places (partially because of the incessant Union propaganda in the Tribune). Yet there were also many Confederate sympathizers in Chicago, perhaps one-third of the city. They had their own paper (the Times) and their own organizations, usually secret for fear of the Union police and their spies. The Union people were made nervous by the presence of so many rebel soldiers on the outskirts of their city and the Confederates were outraged at the cruel treatment of the prisoners.

  By 1864 the city would be ripe for the “Great Camp Douglas Conspiracy.”

  4

  NUALA REREAD the text of my first report as she sat next to me on the couch in my apartment that faced west towards the city, now washed in gold in one of our more spectacular sunsets.

  I had walked back to her office with her.

  “I must read this again, Dermot Michael, and talk about it with you. I don’t dare read it at work,” she had informed me.

  As we reached the entrance of the building, she reverted to her incompetent-stenographer image.

  “You could come to my apartment this evening.”

  “To your apartment, is it? You wouldn’t have any etchings there, now would you?” She had never been there before.

  “Woman, you gotta be kidding!”

  “Well, don’t I know all about the morals of you rich Yanks? … I should come right after work?”

  “I might take you to dinner at the Cape Cod Room afterwards. And you might bring a swimsuit along. Don’t we have a wonderful pool here?”

  “A pool is it?”

  “A pool it is, and the highest aboveground pool in the world.”

  “As warm as Jury’s in Dublin?”

  “Even warmer.”

  “Won’t I perish with the heat, now?”

  “And I’ll drive you home after supper.”

  “That’s the least you can do … . I’m misbehaving again, Dermot, having you on. I’m sorry. I’ll be happy to have supper with you tonight and to use your pool.”

  “I like you when you misbehave.”

  “Go ’long with ya.”

  She had appeared at the door of my apartment with a Marshall Field package in one hand and a dress bag folded over her other arm.

  Poor child had spent a lot of her hard-earned money for a date with me. I was a dummy not to have thought of that.

  SHE’S MAKING A GOOD SALARY, the Adversary informed me. STOP FEELING SORRY FOR HER.

  “Didn’t I have to buy a swimsuit?”

  “I hope it’s a modest one?”

  “Would I buy anything else?”

  “’Tis a long ride up here,” she had announced, “and meself afraid of heights. I see no etchings, Dermot Michael; you’ve lured me here under false pretenses … . And what a wond
rous view! Sure, this is like a fairy-tale city! Hold me, Dermot, while I look out the window.”

  “The windows don’t open, so you won’t fall eighty-five stories.”

  With my protective arm around her, she approached the window cautiously. “’Tis glorious,” she sighed approvingly. “Don’t you dare let me go!”

  “I won’t.”

  “Where is this Camp Douglas place?”

  “Out there”—I pointed—“beyond the airport on the lake, where those high-rises are.”

  “Can you see Grand Beach from here?”

  “On a clear day.”

  “You can let me go, Dermot. I’m not afraid anymore.”

  “And if I don’t want to let you go?”

  “That’s another matter altogether … . Where can I hang me dress bag?”

  COWARD, whispered the Adversary.

  “In my mistress’s suite.”

  I led her into the spare bedroom.

  “Looks like you haven’t had the mistress in here in a long time.”

  She hung up her dress bag in the empty closet and put the smaller bag and her purse on the bed.

  “I usually clear out all the evidence before she leaves.”

  “Do you now?”

  She removed my report from her purse.

  “I do.”

  Before she started to read, she glanced around the apartment.

  “Kind of a spartan place, isn’t it, Dermot?”

  “’Tis. I don’t need a lot to be comfortable here … . Would you like a drop of something? White wine, maybe?”

  “A very wee drop,” she said as she began to read.

  I had opened another bottle of my prize eiswein, filled a goblet, and handed it to her.

  “Not Waterford.” She took it from me as she continued her reading.

  “Nope. When I finally find a wife to bring into this place, I’ll buy more elaborate stuff.”

  She had ignored my comment and replied, “Nice wine.”

  “Thank you.”

  She wept again at the letters from Tim to his brother Danny.

  “Sure, Dermot, aren’t you a wonderful clear teacher?” she said when she had finished. “And don’t you make everything so interesting?”

  It was still be-nice-to-Dermot week. I wouldn’t fight it.

  She gave the manuscript back.

  “Why are we doing this, Dermot Michael?”

  “Because you had a strange experience out there at 31st and Cottage and want to learn more about the place.”

  “It all seems kind of silly, doesn’t it?”

  “Not if you don’t think it’s silly.”

  “I know we should be trying to figure it all out, but I don’t know why.”

  I told her about the “buried treasure.”

  “Why would a letter like that be so important?”

  I filled her in on the myth of Abraham Lincoln as the great martyred president, a myth which told us much about those terrible times. She nodded at my story.

  “I must learn more about this strange, sad, and wonderful country, Dermot Michael.”

  “I’ll be happy to teach you.”

  “The letter was about the Camp Douglas conspiracy?”

  She frowned as though she were reaching back in her memory of her Sunday-afternoon experience.

  “That’s the story. Or maybe I should say the legend. We don’t know whether it was even mailed. There’s no written record about it. Only rumors which became folklore. Some of the biographers mention it, but there are no citations of primary sources.”

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  “You think we should continue our investigation.”

  Already talking like Sherlock Holmes.

  “I learned in Dublin not to question your instincts … . Let’s go swimming.”

  “Do you have a blower so I can dry me hair?”

  “The apartment isn’t that spartan. Now put on your swimsuit.”

  I gave her a white terry-cloth robe.

  She emerged a few moments later from the spare room in a black maillot. The robe was conveniently open.

  “Stop staring at me like you’re imagining me without any clothes on,” she ordered.

  “I can’t help it.”

  She snorted.

  “You’re not trying.”

  “And someday I won’t imagine anymore.”

  “That will be as may be.” She stuck her nose up in the air. “Now, are we going swimming?”

  “We are.”

  Two of my neighbors were in the pool. They glanced up at Nuala, wondering if I had myself a bimbo. They took a second look and realized no way. On the third look, they saw her dive promptly into the water and kick into her crawl.

  “The young woman is a splendid swimmer,” said the man.

  “Comes from swimming all year round in Galway Bay.”

  I dove in after her but did not try to compete. A pretty good writer and a fair alley fighter, I did not want to compete with that one in anything athletic.

  “’Twas grand,” she said in the service elevator returning to the eighty-fifth. “Super, brilliant. I should swim more.”

  “Well, there’s two ways to be able to swim every day. One is to join the East Bank Club … .”

  “I’ll never do that … wouldn’t I have to pay a year’s salary to buy the jewels those women dress in just to run?”

  “The other is to move into an apartment in this building.”

  “If that were a serious offer”—she turned up her nose—“I might begin serious negotiating. Since it isn’t, I won’t.”

  A zinger right between Dermot Michael Coyne’s eyes.

  GOTCHA! said the Adversary.

  “You want me in your apartment permanently,” she was saying in effect, “you’ll have to marry me.”

  Well, didn’t I half-know that already?

  At least she hadn’t flat-out said she wasn’t going to marry anyone.

  “Derm,” she yelled from the mistress’s room. “Where’s your friggin’ hair blower?”

  I brought it to the door of her room.

  “Here it is, Nuala.”

  Her head, wet hair sleek against it, and bare shoulders appeared around the door. She snatched the blower and ducked back behind the door.

  “Thank you, Dermot,” she called as the door closed.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I went back to my notes and tried to work over them as I fantasized about her alabaster shoulders.

  She emerged a few minutes later, wearing heels and a slinky black sleeveless dress that barely reached to her thigh with a vee neck and a big scoop out of the back. She must have bought lingerie, too. She also had applied a tasteful touch of makeup.

  I whistled.

  “Well,” she said with a pleased flush, “I can’t go to this fancy Cape Cod Room looking like a dweeb, can I?”

  After we had dumped her bags in my car, we crossed Delaware Street on the way to the Drake Hotel, my hand on her bare back. She returned to the subject of my report.

  “I feel guilty, Dermot Michael.”

  “I know how you feel. I feel the same way.”

  “I have a good job, a friend with an apartment with a gorgeous view and a wonderful swimming pool, and I’m going to eat at a wonderful restaurant in a beautiful city. What right do I have to a better life than those poor people—not only that family, but all the men who were killed in your terrible war?”

  “I asked myself the same question all day yesterday and today. Maybe more is expected of us.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said grimly.

  We entered the Drake’s arcade from the Lake Shore Drive side because it was a pleasant walk to the Drive. Our table at the Cape Cod Room was waiting for us.

  Nuala wanted some more of that “brilliant” wine I had served her. I told her that I didn’t think they had it. I did not say how much eiswein costs. Not after our discussion of Chicago a century and a half ago.

  “Well
, get me something that tastes like it and order me dinner. I’ve never heard of any of these things.”

  So I ordered Bookbinder soup and crab Maryland and a sweet white wine.

  She turned up her nose at the wine. “Nice, but not as good as yours, Dermot.”

  I may be creating a monster, I thought to myself.

  She devoured the soup and the crab.

  “’Tis frigging good, Dermot Michael,” she said. “Dead frigging good. I’ll have to learn how to make them.”

  (“Dead” is pronounced in such expressions as “did.”)

  “Any sightings of your man?” I asked her over the crab.

  “Not by me; some of the others have seen him around, and his arm in a sling.”

  “We’ll have to see if he turns up tomorrow night.”

  “Thursday night,” she said. “I’ll be singing on Mondays and Thursdays from now on. Your man was upset, but I told him that he’d make more on those nights.”

  This time “your man” was the manager of the Tricolor.

  “Why the change?”

  “Well,” she considered me carefully, as she usually does when I might accuse her of scheming, “I thought that if I’m ever invited back to that Grand Beach place, you won’t have to drive me in on Sunday afternoon.”

  “I don’t know about inviting you back, Nuala, and yourself winning all those tennis matches and swimming in the cold lake and wearing a Galway Hooker shirt to Mass.”

  “I can have you on, Dermot Michael.” She tilted her nose in the air. “But you can’t have me on.”

  “Well, we don’t really mind the swimming or the T-shirt. It’s the tennis that puts us off. A guest shouldn’t humiliate her hosts.”

  “I’ll beat the shite out of you whenever I want, Dermot Michael Coyne!”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “Besides, your mother said I was invited every Sunday of the summer.”

  Had she now? No doubt what Mom had in mind.

  “Well, maybe you can ride up on the South Shore. It really is a nice train ride.”

  “And then tomorrow after work you can take me to meet me new voice teacher. I assume you’ve found one?”

  “Woman, I have. A retired French opera singer who is a very lovely woman and a fine teacher.”