Irish Lace Page 9

  “Good night, Dermot Michael.”

  She hung on my neck, kissed me, and then pushed me out the door.

  “Won’t I see you tomorrow afternoon?”

  “You will.”

  As I walked down the steps, I saw three men waiting in the gloom at the corner, only faintly outlined in the streetlight. One of them had his arm in a sling.

  I felt fear again in my gut, this time a whole lot of fear. I’d disposed of three thugs before, but these guys were older and more experienced. It could be a much more dangerous situation.

  Nonetheless, I walked down the steps with all the aplomb I could muster.

  I’d go for the big guy first.

  They were closing in, so they’d be only a few feet away when I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Maybe I should jump and send them sprawling.

  “We’re going to get you, gobshite,” said your man with the arm. “And a lot more than your arm will be broken.”

  Just then a black sedan pulled up on the street, the front door opened, and a man’s voice said firmly, “Your car, Mr. Coyne.”

  The guys stopped dead in their tracks.

  “Hi, guys, nice to see you again. I suspect I won’t see you in hell, since I’m not planning on going there.”

  My heart pounding and my chest heaving, I climbed into the car.

  “Well timed, gentlemen,” I said.

  “Those are mean-looking ones, Mr. Coyne.”

  “They are that.”

  “No wonder you want protection for yourself and the young woman.”

  “One of them had a broken arm,” the other cop observed.

  “Can you imagine that!”

  “Happened before you called us, huh?”

  “There was a fairly level playing field at that time.”

  I told them about our weekend plans.

  “You don’t want security over the weekend.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I think we’re pretty safe up there, but I don’t want to take chances.”

  “We’ll be around.”

  “You guys are good at what you do. Thank you.”

  The next morning, bright and early, I set to work on my notes. I didn’t want to inundate herself with too much information. I finally figured out how to do it.

  I finished just in time to throw a few things into a bag, dash down to my car, and drive over to her office. She emerged from the door just as I pulled up.

  Good, I’d be in trouble if I were late.

  She was not wearing her glasses, and her hair was down. They’d actually given her a raise or a promotion.

  She threw her bag into the back, placed her harp carefully on the floor, jumped into the front seat, and kissed me vigorously.

  “You’re kind of loose today, young woman, for a respectable, hardworking accountant.”

  “Didn’t I just get a raise and a promotion? Didn’t they tell me that they were very pleased with my work?”

  “Congratulations … I hope it was a big raise?”

  “I almost lost me mind.”

  “Did you now?”

  “And do you know what they said?”

  She clung to my arm, squeezing it with happiness.

  “Didn’t they say they were worried about how shy I was?”

  “Were you shy?”

  “Well, sure. I was cautious, wasn’t I?”

  “Didn’t say much, looked timid, barely whispered?”

  “Well, not that bad.”

  “Are they going to be surprised on Monday morning when the real Nuala Anne McGrail comes bounding in.”

  “They also said that they hoped with the extra money I might buy some more stylish clothes. Isn’t that mad?”

  “On Tuesday, maybe you could come in with a beige sweater and not one that’s a half-size too big.”

  “Go ’long with ya!” she said and slapped my arm very gently.

  “They have sowed the wind; on Tuesday they’ll reap the whirlwind.”

  I said Tuesday because I would drive Nuala into work on Monday. But Nuala wouldn’t be working on Tuesday.

  She guffawed. “Well, they’ll see a slightly different persona.”

  Then, suddenly anxious, she added, “Do you think they’ll mind?”

  “Not a chance … Hey, why the harp?”

  “Didn’t your man ask me to sing at Mass?”

  “Prester George?”

  “His Lordship, the little bishop!”

  She aimed her nose at the sky. Nuala Anne was an important person, doing business now with the hierarchy.

  “I’m impressed altogether.”

  “Shouldn’t you be?”

  Traffic was slow because of the weekend rush. When we finally arrived at Grand Beach, it was after seven, and we were both starved. My mother was delighted to serve us huge roast-beef sandwiches with coleslaw and crab salad and listen to our adventures of the past week or more specifically to Nuala’s adventures, since I was deemed too much a sluggish Irish bachelor to have adventures.

  Nuala babbled on happily about her job and her voice lessons, and the willingness of Arthur to send her to graduate school at the University of Chicago’s riverside campus.

  That was a new one on me. I didn’t like it, though only for selfish reasons.

  “Dermot Michael,” she said to me after she had disposed of one of Mom’s special Bailey’s Irish Cream malted milks, “Would you ever come down on the beach with me while I have a bit of a swim. I have to run off some of me hoyden energy.”

  She should never forget my accusation that she was a hoyden.

  “I will, but don’t expect me to join you in the water.”

  “You’ll freeze to death, dear,” Mom warned her.

  Until Nuala became a daughter-in-law, she would be treated like a very young daughter.

  “’Tis much warmer than the Irish Sea or the Atlantic. And I won’t stay in it more than a few minutes.”

  So down the steps we went, Nuala bounding enthusiastically and meself trailing along behind.

  I can bound, too. I’m not that old.

  I had donned trunks, just in case there was some lifesaving to do, which was a pretty funny notion, come to think of it.

  We walked to the edge of the quiet water. Only a touch of froth dabbed the beach. The air was pleasantly warm. I dipped a couple of toes tentatively in the water.

  “Yipe!” I shouted. “It’s freezing! It’s no more than fifty-eight.”

  “’Tis grand,” Nuala said, after she had dipped a foot in the water. “Brilliant! Invigorating!”

  The moon had taken its leave. Nuala and I were indistinct shadows against the stars, beyond the pane of light coming from the house up on the dune.

  “You know what I’m going to do?” she asked.

  “Woman, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to take off this bikini thing and pretend that this is the Irish Sea.”

  “Nuala!” I said in shock. “I’m not your ma!”

  “That’s all right,” she replied, as her outline discarded some cloth on the beach. “You can’t see anything. It’s too dark.”

  “That’s what I object to.”

  “Have me robe ready when I come back,” she shouted and dashed into the water till it might have been up to her waist, judging by the outline and then dove. Soon she was a phosphorescent splash ripping through the water.

  All I had seen was the outline, worse luck for me. It was, however, a very lovely outline.

  She was staying in too long. Why had I let her do it? Why did I tolerate such an awful chance?

  The Adversary crept up to me.

  BECAUSE, GOBSHITE, YOU HAD NO CHOICE!

  “Yeah, but …”

  No BUTS. WOULD YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF, DERMOT MICHAEL COYNE, THE LAST PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, TO COIN A PHRASE—AND YOU SHOULD EXCUSE THE PUN—HAS TURNED INTO A WOR-RYWART. YOU WORRY MORE ABOUT HER THAN SHE WORRIES ABOUT YOU.

  “Women are supposed to worry. That’s one of the thin
gs they’re for.”

  I WON’T DEBATE THE POINT. BUT I WANT TO MAKE THESE TWO POINTS.

  Irish fashion, he said “pints.”

  “All right.”

  THE FIRST IS THAT YOU WORRY THAT WAY ONLY ABOUT SOMEONE YOU LOVE.

  “I’ve never denied I love her.”

  YOU’VE ALWAYS SAID SHE HAS TO BE FREE TO BE HERSELF. IF SHE’S NOT FREE TO DIVE NAKED INTO WHAT YOU THINK IS A COLD LAKE, THEN YOU’RE TRYING TO CHANGE HER FROM WHO SHE IS.

  “What if someone comes down the beach?”

  THAT LEADS TO ME SECOND POINT. YOU’RE ALREADY ACTING LIKE AN OLD MAN.

  He was absolutely right.

  I’d have to put a stop to that.

  The speck of phosphorescence grew larger. I heard the splash of her strokes, then the delightful outline ran out of the water and up on the beach.

  “Dermot!” she shrieked. “Me robe!”

  Instead I folded her into my arms and pressed her against my body, exchanging my warmth for her cold.

  She snuggled contentedly against me.

  “Dermot Michael Coyne, whatever are you doing?”

  “Warming you up, woman!”

  “Och,” she murmured softly. “You’re sure doing that, aren’t you now?”

  We clung to each other—peacefully, happily, joyously.

  “What’s going on, Derm?”

  “We’re experiencing ecstasy.”

  “Is that it?” she sighed. “I like it.”

  Obviously, there was an erotic component in our embrace. You don’t hold a wet and naked woman in your arms on a beach under the stars without some erotic reactions. But we felt more than that, much more. I would have to write it up to figure out what it was.

  Finally, I picked up her robe off the sand and wrapped her in it.

  We both giggled.

  “You’re a desperate man, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she sighed.

  “Am I now?”

  She began to feel around the sand with her feet for her swimsuit.

  “What did you do with me swimsuit?” she demanded. “I’ll have to put it back on, or your ma will think I’m a terrible wicked woman altogether.”

  I gave it to her.

  “No, she won’t. In our family, Nuala, it has become a matter of definition that Nuala can do no wrong.”

  I guided her up me dark stairs to the dune, the two of us giggling all the way.

  “What about that?” I asked the Adversary.

  NOT BAD AT ALL, he replied. YOU KEEP THAT SORT OF THING UP AND YOU’LL BE A MARRIED MAN BY CHRISTMAS.

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  Most of the family was in the house when Nuala burst in, glowing from her swim, her hair trailing behind her.

  “’Twas glorious,” she said. “Nothing like it! You can’t beat it! Even if your man is afraid to swim in the dark.”

  She swept my delighted three-year-old nephew Brian into the air.

  “What about it Brian, me lad? When you grow up, you won’t be afraid of a bit of cold water, will you now?”

  “No, Aunt Nuala,” he lisped, “not if you’re swimming with me.”

  General laughter from the family—at my expense.

  Obviously, Nuala was going to put on a show. As much as I liked those shows, even when they were at my expense, I had something else to do.

  I dashed up to my room, unpacked my subnotebook computer, and set to work on a short story about the ecstatic experience of a somewhat-reluctant young man as he held the shivering, naked body of his true love in his arms after a midnight swim under the stars. It was a story about glory and hope.

  In the story, he swam, too. Artistic license.

  The point of the story was that the experience was not of lust, but of love and grace and promise, none of which need ever end.

  I finished it before midnight. I reread it. I was sure it would work. The editor would love it. It might also be the germ of a novel.

  The plot would be simple: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy loses girl. Boy hesitates before he tries to reclaim girl. Boy may fail. Boy may succeed. What will happen?

  Wait and see.

  Outside, the lake continued to lap against the beach. I opened the door to my room. The house was quiet. Everyone had returned to their own places. Only Mom and Dad and Nuala and Prester George, if he had arrived yet, were in the house.

  I’d wait till the morning to show it to her. After she read my Camp Douglas report.

  Lust cures death.

  So does love, even more.

  5

  IT WAS a glorious weekend. The whole summer is going to be like this I told myself: a delightful summer romance with my incomparable Nuala Anne.

  I was wrong.

  The persona Nuala donned that weekend was of the helpful, happy, singing servant. I struggled out of bed early because I wanted to see her every available minute of the day.

  Dressed in white shorts and a black-and-gold T-shirt which celebrated the alleged 5000th anniversary of the County Mayo, she was already in the kitchen helping Mom with breakfast—raspberry pancakes and bacon. Rather, she was making breakfast, chattering away a mile a minute, while Mom sat at the kitchen table watching her new servant with undisguised bemusement.

  “Ah, ’tis himself, is it now? Dermot Michael, would you ever keep an eye on the bacon? I don’t want to burn it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dad and the Priest arrived shortly thereafter, attracted by the smell of pancakes, maple syrup, and bacon. Nuala kissed them both on the cheek, something she had neglected to do to me.

  “You both sit at the table. We’ll have everything for you in only a minute, unless your man burns the bacon.”

  “I will not burn the bacon.”

  “You’ve hired a new cook, Mom,” the Priest observed. “And she gives orders like a matriarch.”

  “Just like Ma,” I said, referring to Mom’s mother, the ineffable and greatly lamented Nell Pat.

  “Bossier,” said my father, “But unquestionably competent and efficient.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” herself sniffed.

  A grand time was had by all at breakfast.

  “Out of the kitchen, all of you,” she said after we had licked the last plate clean. “Won’t I join you on the porch to read your latest work, Derm, after I’m finished here?”

  She reminded me of an ad for a miracle cleaning compound—the White Tornado with a brogue.

  The porch is really a deck overlooking the lake. Cup of tea in hand, I walked out and sat on the swing we keep there in memory of the days when you couldn’t have a front porch without a swing.

  Nuala joined me on the porch after about a quarter of an hour later.

  “We’ve become quite the homemaker today, haven’t we, Ms. McGrail?”

  “Ah, sure, Mr. Coyne.” She sat on the swing and sent it spinning back and forth. “Didn’t I ask meself what me own ma would do if she were here, and isn’t that just what she would do? And your Nell Pat, too, and isn’t that a grand picture of her in the parlor? Sure wasn’t she the super woman?”

  When she was translating Nell Pat’s diaries for me in Jury’s Hotel in Dublin, Nuala had identified with Ma (as all called our grandmother) so intensely that she claimed she actually heard her voice and received advice from her about a number of matters—presumably including me. I no longer questioned Nuala’s psychic propensities.

  I had learned, however, that when she fired off three Irish rhetorical questions in a row, she was in high good humor.

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Now let’s see your frigging report.”

  She rested the document on her bare thigh and examined my face intently.

  “Sex is a frigging mystery, isn’t it, Dermot Michael?”

  “’Tis all of that.”

  “Last night our …” she paused.

  “Embrace?”

  She hesitated. “Well, we can call it that, I suppose. Not a very good word.”

&
nbsp; “What about it?”

  “It was holy, wasn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Not like the other night—not at all, at all, was it?”

  “Woman, it was not.”

  “Yet we were the same two people, the same two bits of cosmic fluff with the same needs and longings.”

  Cosmic fluff, was it?

  “’Tis true.”

  She sighed. “Why was it so different? And don’t talk about the difference between love and lust. It was more than that altogether.”

  “I don’t know, Nuala. I do know that I felt terribly guilty the other night and wonderful last night.”

  “I don’t understand it at all, at all.”

  She sighed again and picked up my second summary of my research on Camp Douglas.

  “’Tis a much greater mystery than what happened to your man’s frigging letter.”

  “After you’re finished reading it, I have a short story I wrote, ah, recently. I’d like your reaction to it, too.”

  “Only after I’ve finished the serious work of the morning.”

  Nuala my love,

  Let me begin with two letters:

  “January 18, 1863

  “My dear mother,

  “I’m very sick today. It’s terribly cold in the barracks. Eight inches of snow outside. Only a slice of bread this morning, and I could not keep it down. some of the men are killing rats and eating them. They tell me that rats taste like chicken. I’ll never know whether they’re joking.

  “I’m dying, Mother. By the time you receive this letter, I will be dead. When we marched out of Macon on that sunny day last April, I never thought that I would die of cold and hunger in Chicago nine months later. I was nineteen, I had finished two years of college at Emory. A young woman loved me. I had a wonderful mother and father and a darling brother and sister. I had my Christian faith to protect me. A house full of darkies loved and respected me. I had a whole life ahead of me. I was confident that with the new levy of troops we would capture Washington and drive on New York and force that devil incarnate Abe Lincoln to grant us our peace and freedom.

  “Instead of an assignment to the valorous and victorious Army of Northern Virginia, we were sent to the Army of the Mississippi and to that charnel house of brutality, Shiloh.

  “We fought valiantly and killed more of them than they did of us. But we were captured and sent here to this antechamber of hell called Camp Douglas.