Irish Tweed Read online

  He placed his hand on her forehead.

  “No, sir.”

  “Regular flow of blood?”

  “Not for a long time, sir.”

  “Would you mind if I listened to your chest?”

  He produced a stethoscope and listened very carefully, moving the instrument back and forth and then around the back of her neck.

  “Good strong heart, good strong lungs, good strong young woman . . . Hard worker, I’d wager.”

  “I try, sir.”

  He removed an ink pad and a stamp from his overcoat pocket and briskly stamped all her documents.

  “Angela Agnes Tierney,” he read the name off the top document. “Welcome to the United States of America! May it be as generous to you as you are willing to be to it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “And may the good Lord in heaven be as generous to you as you have been to me.”

  Ma would be proud of that response.

  “Is someone waiting for you outside?” He tightened his white silk scarf.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  The street was cold and dark, the gaslights cast strange shadows—ghostly, Angela thought. The clatter of horses and the spin of wheels on the pavement grated on her skin. She clutched her rosary more strongly.

  “Anyone waiting here for Angela Agnes Tierney? Bound for Chicago on the New York Central? Mrs. Sheehan, why did I have to ask?”

  “Thank you, Colonel. Her friends in Chicago asked me to wait for her and transfer her to the New York Central. I think we can get her on the eight o’clock train.”

  “Angela, may I introduce you to Mrs. Cordelia Sheehan. She heads a group of women who take care of immigrants that might be lost when they come out of Castle Garden.”

  “How do you do, ma’am.” Angela curstied.

  She shook hands with the Colonel and entered Mrs. Sheehan’s private carriage.

  “Are you hungry, Angie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well let’s see if we can get you a bite to eat.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What was the Colonel’s name?”

  “Harry Flannery. He’s in there to make sure that Irish immigrants are not persecuted. It still happens, as much as it might surprise you.”

  So with her first good meal in three weeks warming her whole body—beef, mashed potatoes, and chocolate—Angela was delivered to Grand Central Station and Train 111 to Chicago. Mrs. Sheehan, who seemed to know everyone, introduced Angela to the conductor, who promised he would deliver her safely to Central Depot in Chicago, for which Mrs. Sheehan rewarded him with a bill of American currency. Then she gave Angela three one-dollar bills.

  “A boy will come around offering food for sale. You give him these three bills and tell him that Mrs. Sheehan said that you could have any food that you want.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “And my love to your friends in Chicago. We’ll meet again, I’m sure, Angela Agnes. God bless. Oh, there are few passengers today, so you’ll have that seat all to yourself.”

  She kissed Angela firmly on the forehead and dashed off the train, whose engine was already beginning to huff and puff.

  “This is the water-level route, Miss Tierney,” the conductor informed her. “No big mountains. Just up the Hudson River to Albany and the Erie Canal to Buffalo and around the Great Lakes to Lake Michigan and right into Chicago. By now they’ll have the tracks plowed from the snowstorm last night. More snow and ice than you’ll ever see in the Old Country.”

  Angela watched the Hudson River go by under frozen moonlight, then curled up in her blanket. She was very tired and, though frightened about what might await her in Chicago, she slept while she still could. There would doubtless be many things for her to do as soon as she arrived at the house on Union Square. Before she permitted herself to sleep she finished the final decade of her rosary and prayed for the good people that had rescued her so far on her journey. “I’m sure you sent them,” she murmured to the Lord.

  She slept soundly enough because she was exhausted, but fears of the Gaughans haunted her dreams. There were five of them, Paddy and Mae, the parents, Timothy, a son, perhaps fifteen, Rosina, a daughter about her own age, and Vincent, perhaps nine or ten. They were wonderful folks according to Agatha, but none of them were likely to welcome a dirty, smelly, skinny little serving girl that they probably didn’t need into their family. From the books she had read about life in the Big Houses of Ireland she knew that the poor serving girls were especially likely to be at the mercy of the young men of the family. She was already fashioning in both her dreams and waking moments how she would deal with this Timothy Gaughan should he become forward. Rosina, she decided, would be a spoiled brat, and Vincent an obnoxious brat. Dr. Paddy Gaughan would be an overweight and pompous fraud and his wife Mae a nervous perfectionist. Well, she could deal with them one way or another. They would be better than a crowd of nasty nuns. All she owed them was the cost of her journey. They would specify what that was and what her wages were and she would establish when she would feel free to leave. It should be possible to obtain another position where she would be treated justly.

  It had not been generosity and concern for her to have sent the remarkable Mrs. Sheehan to meet her at the gate of Castle Garden. They were protecting their investment, that’s all.

  When she awoke in the morning and reviewed the decisions she had made during her hate-filled sleep, she felt a little guilty. She had tried them and found them guilty without giving them a chance to testify in their own defense. She would do her best to be fair to them. She would certainly work hard to earn her salary. No employer of hers could ever claim that she was a lazy worker. Maybe they were lonely people who needed an extra amount of love. She doubted that. Rich people were never lonely. “You should always judge new people gently,” ma used to say. “They’re entitled to that.”

  It was before those years when poor ma hated everyone.

  “I think you should hate strangers,” she had argued. “Then, when they’re nice, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Aren’t you’re a terrible woman altogether, Angie Agnes, and yourself fixing to have an unhappy life.”

  Poor ma. Yet her life had not been unhappy, not at first anyway. If you have to die young, maybe it’s good to die with the man you love and with the children you love.

  Could ma read her dreams?

  That thought troubled her. She’d better be careful.

  She was awakened by bright sunlight. Snow-covered fields stretched in all directions and reflected a huge sun in a cloudless sky. Was this what Amerikay was like all the time in winter—snow, ice, and a sun without mercy?

  “Good morning, Miss Angela,” said the conductor. “I hope you slept well? The porter will be along shortly with your tea. Isn’t it lovely outside? That’s Lake Erie over there where the fields end. It is a shallow lake, so it often freezes over in the winter. Lake Michigan tends to be open, though they have icebreakers to let the ore ships get to port. We should be in Detroit in another hour and then in Chicago by five thirty in the afternoon. No more snow is foreseen in the immediate future.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “There are soap and towels and water in the restroom at the head of the car. It’s not like the Pullman cars, but we try to keep our restrooms clean.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said again.

  She was sure that she would always hate America with its drab and dull scenery, its endless distances, its gigantic lakes and its strange names—what was a Detroit? What was a Chicago? What was an Erie? How could people live in such horrid places?

  Yet the people in the train car with her were not horrid. They were sympathetic and friendly, delighted by her youth and her quick tongue. They assured her that she would love America, and especially Chicago, which had burned down two years ago and restored itself like a phoenix from its own ashes.

  “It’s a dirty, noisy, smelly place, with too many people and not enough ho
mes. Still, honey, it is alive, and we love it.”

  They all knew of Union Square, where she would live and work. It was a beautiful neighborhood with a lovely park and striking stone homes, one of the nicest places in the city. Very salubrious. She would certainly love it.

  Well, she didn’t want to live in a salubrious place with striking stone homes. She wanted to be back in West Galway where she belonged.

  No, she admonished herself, not anymore. Now you belong in Union Square with its lovely park and its striking stone homes. These Chicagoans are a little crazy but Brits they are not.

  “There’s Lake Michigan,” a woman cried out. “We’re almost home!”

  From what she could see of Lake Michigan it was the ugliest place in the world—a huge sea, surrounded by ice-covered trees, Galway without the bays and the little harbors and the farm houses.

  “Great summer resort area,” a man said proudly to her. “Wonderful weather, big beaches, lots of kids. Wonderful relaxation.”

  Angela flat out didn’t believe him.

  Eventually the train seemed to curve around the south end of the lake and turn into Chicago, mercifully perhaps covered by snow to protect its tawdry ugliness. The last run up to Central Depot was along the edge of the lake. The sun was setting behind a thick curtain of smoke and bathing the dark waters in an evil rusty gold. Hell, Angela thought, could not be more ugly.

  “Central Depot,” the conductor announced.

  Home.

  The train eased its way into the depot. The lake had frozen near the shore.

  “Back there was a place called Camp Douglas,” a young man told her. “Confederate prisoners during the war. A lot of them died of disease.”

  “War?” she said.

  “Our Civil War. North and South fought over freeing slaves. North won. A lot of young men died, millions, more from disease than from bullets.

  “The University of Chicago is down there too. It’s very famous.”

  Angela shivered. What a strange, deadly, mysterious country. With such nice people.

  She glanced out the window, wondering if she would be able to pick out the Gaughans in the light of the gas lamps. In the crowd of people waiting for passengers, they were easy to see—five very well-dressed, attractive people and, Lord save us all, they had brought their wolfhound!

  Angela gulped and sat down.

  She was dirty, smelly, messy, and tattered. Give her a wheel barrow and she was Molly Malone, disgusting, repulsive, an untouchable. She was going to invade their clean, beautiful home with her terrible smells. Once they saw her and smelled her, they would loathe her. Dear God, take me now. Let the lake come up and carry me away.

  The car was empty. The crowd was thinning out on the platform. The Gaughans were growing uneasy.

  “Help you with your luggage, Miss?” the porter asked.

  “No, thank you. It’s not all that much.”

  And, like me, it has the smell of steerage and of the sea and of human waste.

  Darkness settling over the depot. The sun had given up its battle with this little section of Hades.

  “Well, now, isn’t it time to get out and face your new owners?”

  A woman in a shawl at the back of the car.

  “ ’Tis yourself,” she said softly.

  “ ’Tis.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll face them.”

  “You’ve always been a brave one, first child of my womb.”

  She lifted her blanket and stumbled toward the door of the car. She almost tripped as she climbed down the stairs to the wooden platform. The Gaughans circled around her.

  “I’m Angela,” she said in a voice from another world.

  And the wolfhound barked his approval.

  6

  MY WIFE was in her studio, which, naturally, was bigger than my office. In an expensive gown and robe which suggested perhaps imperial Japan or a very high-glass Vegas bordello (an image I never advanced), she was stretched out on a chaise as though she were considering which one of her lovers she would summon for lunch. However, the meaning of the scene was quite different. She was thinking. Or, more precisely, she was communing with the various wisdoms of the ages that sometimes floated into this sacred place.

  Usually the result was work for me.

  “You’re going off to the links, are you now?’

  The words sounded as if they were a protest—irresponsible husband deserting his family responsibilities. In fact, they were an observation.

  “Woman, I am!”

  That sounded like a husband laying down the law when in fact he was agreeing to the obvious.

  She sighed loudly.

  “I don’t like it, Dermot Michael, not at all, at all. What did Mr. Casey say about poor Finnbar?”

  “That he’s not poor at all. Son of a big and successful construction company over there that has a reputation for honesty and responsibility. Rock Solid.”

  “I don’t like it, Dermot Michael. There’s evil at work.”

  “Does our young friend know about it?”

  I sat on the edge of her chaise. She moved a bit to make me more comfortable.

  “How could he and himself desperate in love? You’ll win today?”

  “I usually do.”

  Another sigh.

  “Butterfield?”

  Upper Middle Catholic.

  “Ridgemoor.”

  Originally wealthy Protestant. Now Catholic. Traders who didn’t have to work in the afternoon. Still in the city. Quick ride.

  “Elite, he’ll like that. He’s a nice young man. Too bad there’s so much evil.”

  “We’ll take care of him, Nuala Anne.”

  “We will. There’s new evil over across too.”

  That meant the parish.

  “The rough ones are taking money from the others. Protection money.”

  “Parents uprising?”

  “Those obese seventh-graders made the mistake of hitting on Peteyjack Murphy.”

  “They’ll have the feds all over them.”

  Peteyjack was the younger child of Cindasue Lou McCloud Murphy and Peter Murphy. He was named for his father and his father’s uncle, John Blackwood Ryan, Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago. Cindasue, from Stinkin’ Crik, West Virginia and a Commander in the Yewnited States Coast Guard with some sort of gumshoe tie up to the Secret Service. She carried in her purse a .45-caliber service revolver and was definitely not the kind of person a stray polecat would want to be a-messin’ around with.

  “They took a quarter from poor Peteyjack and sent him home crying. Cindasue was at work, and she and Pete went over last night. She put her gun on the Pastor’s desk and warned them that polecats attacking her children were taking a big chance. It scared the pastor a little, but I’m sure they won’t stop. The place is Donnybrook old style.”

  Donnybrook is a fashionable suburb of Dublin now, but it was once the locale of the wildest annual fair in Ireland. Founded by King John, the Fair was a week of drunken violence in which the criminals who had poured in from all of Ireland took control of the event and as much of Dublin as they could manage.

  “Thank heaven you don’t pack a .45 in your purse.”

  She looked up at me and tilted her head.

  “Sure, Dermot Michael, don’t I still have me canogi stick below in the parlor and itself fading from not being used.”

  Camogi is a form of field hockey played by Irish women who are considered too delicate to play hurling, the national sport of Celtic Ireland. My wife at sixteen had been All-Ireland at camogi. Alas, I had never seen her play.

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t I now?”

  “You have your taekwondo?”

  “Not as good as cracking a couple of heads.”

  Pushed hard enough, me wife could become an Irish Tiger. The crowd across the street might push hard enough. We would have to take action soon.

  “Don’t do anything till I come home.”

  I brushed my lips
against hers. As always there was an electric charge in those lips. The fire, whatever it was, never went out.

  “Take good care, guys,” I instructed the hounds. They dutifully walked me to the door and then returned to herself’s lair.

  I considered the camogi stick, slumped in the corner of the parlor.

  “Never mess with that one,” I issued a general warning.

  Before I turned the ignition on in my battered old Benz, I called Mike Casey, former Superintendent of Police and President of Reliable Security, a shadow police force composed of off-duty cops earning a few extra dollars. Reliable and the “real” cops cooperated closely, since they were in fact the same people. The city was more secure, and the cops had a little more spending money and better insurance coverage. I had a permanent retainer on them because me wife—herself with the camogi stick—was a world-famous singer.

  “Cindasue produced her .45?” Mike said. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “She don’t cotton to polecats a-robbin’ her kids.”

  “That school yard is a tinderbox, Dermot. We have to watch it closely. Father Sauer and Dr. Fletcher are pushing the envelope. John Culhane should go in and arrest the lot of them.”

  “He can’t until there’s more complaints. I’m sure he’s heard from Cindasue already . . . Your people are all around the place?”

  “Sure, mothers pushing buggies, sewer workers checking manholes. It doesn’t look like it’s a situation which is likely to explode.”

  I thought about if for a moment.

  “Mike, one of the things I’ve learned from herself is that once you have a situation in which a lot of little things are wrong, they can suddenly coalesce and you have a firestorm of evil. Like Germany in 1932. Or Iraq. Minor evils feed on one another and suddenly evil breaks out all over the place. We have a parish with Yuppies pouring in, stress with the old-timers, an unhealthy relationship between pastor and principal, disagreement about grades and athletics, the usual crowd of bullies, resentments towards celebrities—each of these problems edging towards the limit and then suddenly they explode into something that is much bigger than any of the individual conflicts and become demons. So a very rational civil servant begins to revert towards her Stinkin’ Crik style of dealing with polecats.”