Shannon

  Robert said, “I didn't say anything. Did I, Fergus?”

  Fergus just smiled.

  Back in the car, they drove down the western bank of Lough Derg. Sometimes they could see the lake, sometimes not. At Mountshannon they stopped on a height with a wonderful view and ate their sandwiches and drank their milk. Robert told Ellie the legend of the eye and the red lake. If they hurried, they could make Limerick by nightfall.

  They stayed at Cruise's Hotel. At dinner in the hotel dining room he told her all about Chopper Shannon, Maeve MacNulty— and the soldiers.

  “And the soldiers are still here,” she said. “Look.”

  A troop of six uniformed men, rifles at the ready, marched into the hotel and arrested a young man in the dining room; they ushered him out with a gun in his back. Robert shuddered.

  “I hate it,” she said. “I never want to see another gun or uniform as long as I live.” When she spoke the words, she saw Robert relax. This is good. Talking about it helps. Maybe the fact that I feel the same— maybe that's a real help. But— but what? Why have I all of a sudden grown fearful? Oh, Jesus God, this comes from a part of me that I know. This is the part that told me Michael was dead, that Mama was dying.

  They finished dining at seven and Robert, now increasingly in command of his steps and movements, asked the hall porter for directions to Pery Square, was it within walking distance, and was it safe? The answer was yes to both questions.

  “As luck would have it,” said Sheila Neary “my bridge game was canceled.”

  She regretted that they had eaten, and over massive drinks she began to talk to Ellie about Robert— in Robert's presence.

  “He came here with a friend of mine. D'you remember Maeve?” Robert smiled. “Well, Maeve fell in love with Robert. Yes, she knew he was a priest. Anyhow, we all fell in love with him. D'you know what? This house was never so peaceful. And the peace has never left it since. And”—she turned to Robert—”you'll be pleased to know that Maeve got her man. Her widower is going to marry her.” To Ellie: “She does a bit of matchmaking and she met this man. He has no teeth but she loves him. There's a place here in Limerick, she tells me, where she can hire teeth for the wedding.”

  That night, in their hotel room, Robert said, “There's something you never asked me.”

  “Which means that there's something you never told me.”

  “Well, I've been thinking. I invaded your house one morning at dawn.”

  “And I was out walking the dog down the fields. Before going to work.”

  “You never asked me,” said Robert, “how it was that I came back. Or why.”

  “You never told me,” said Ellie. “But I reckoned that you would one day.”

  Robert sat up in bed. “I had slept the night in a wood. There were soldiers. I think I told you about that. All along my journey I had been afraid to ask for food. But people were so hospitable that I never went hungry. Part of the reason I came to your front door was— I think— to ask for food.”

  “And you'd have got some,” said Ellie.

  “I sure would.” He laughed. “But when I opened the door and looked in— and I've never done that in my life— I began to think of you. As I walked farther and farther in, I kept seeing your face. And I remember standing in the kitchen and thinking that this was the kind of house Nurse Kennedy would have.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “I don't know,” Robert said. “I don't know. And then I got nervous and was afraid somebody would see me and I ran out. And on the way out I caught a glimpse— but I didn't know it until later— of the Currier and Ives.”

  Ellie said, “It always reminded me of you.”

  “So,” concluded Robert, “I went on up the river, but the image of that house wouldn't leave me. And it rained and rained and when the rain stopped and I went out and looked at the river, I said to myself, ‘That is Nurse Kennedy's house.’ And boy did I race back down the banks of the Shannon. How many miles did I ride in that day?”

  “About a thousand,” she said.

  The drive next day thrilled Robert. He made Ellie stop the car at several points to look and recall how he had walked or stopped or sat— and he recalled his own state of mind.

  “It was like— it was as if I would see something, remember something, and then it would go blank. Disappear.”

  She said, in bittersweet voice, “It will so help your parents to hear this. And your doctor.”

  If Sheila Neary in Limerick had been delighted, her joy paled beside Miranda's in Glin. She turned cartwheels on the grass in front of the castle. Silently, she took Ellie by the hand and showed her everything— the massive gunnera; the soft brown wrinkles of the Jersey cows; the crow, Henry.

  Her father said to Robert, “Bloody gunmen still out and about. Thought when Collins was killed they'd stop. Well, they bloody haven't. Bloody peasants. Just be careful.”

  They had lunch in the castle. Ellie's knowledge of old furniture enchanted Miranda's father. Mrs. Harty appeared and blushed red to see Robert.

  “Oh, sir, oh, sir,” she said, and managed not another word.

  Lunch ended at two o'clock.

  “If you need a bed for the night,” said Miranda's father, “we're easy to find with our big white walls.”

  Miranda, who had been almost sitting in Robert's lap all through lunch, climbed into the car onto his knee and threw her arms round his neck. She put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Come back soon. And bring her with you.”

  A few miles away both O'Sullivans happened to be at home. Almost two months had passed since they saw Robert walk away from their house in that bizarre determined walk.

  “Well, well, well,” said Joe.

  “You still looking for Jesse James?” said Molly.

  With tea and hot soda bread, they sat and talked and looked at the river and talked some more. They marveled that Robert had known Ellie in France and had found her again.

  Joe managed to cut Ellie out of the herd and, when alone, asked, “How is he?”

  “You can see. He's just— well, getting better all the time.”

  “You shoulda seen him when he got here. He was in bits. Mind you, he had a bit of a tantery-ra the day he landed.”

  He told Ellie about the Dargan boy and how the Irregulars had hijacked Robert, hoping for the Last Rites.

  Ellie, when she calmed down, said, “He told me some of it. Well, thank God all that nonsense is nearly over.”

  Joe said, “Well, it is and it isn't.”

  She looked at him.

  “We had a fella here,” said Joe, “looking for Robert. Big fella. Blond hair, the color of a girl.”

  “American?” said Ellie.

  “Ah, yeh. We were in a bad way we were so frightened of him, so we passed the word on, like.”

  Ellie said, “It's all been taken care of. If he was a bad hat, Robert knows nothing about it. No need for him to know.”

  “No, no, you're right, so long as he's all right. And he's looking great.” Still, Joe seemed less than satisfied. “Where are ye going next?”

  “Robert wants to go to Scattery Then— he has this ship in Limerick.”

  Joe still seemed uneasy. He shuffled his feet. “What's he going to do?”

  Ellie shook her head and looked away, close to tears.

  Joe said, “Robert'll do the right thing. That's my guess.”

  Ellie thought but did not say, Yes, but what's the right thing?

  And still Joe shuffled his feet; and still he seemed uncomfortable. He took a deep breath.

  “That big fair-haired fella. He frightened the life outa Molly.”

  “He frightened the life out of us all,” said Ellie. “He stayed with us for two days. Then Robert's bishop came to the house— I don't know how he found us— and he got rid of him.”

  “He didn't,” said Joe. “No.”

  Ellie looked at him. “Oh, Christ. This is why I've been nervous all day.”

  Joe said, “
He's in Limerick. A man from the village met him, he was asking about joining the Irregulars.”

  “Oh, Jesus God. What do we do?”

  But Robert came across at that moment and said, “Joe, there's somebody I have to meet.”

  After some conversation with her husband, Molly gave the precise directions, and they set off in the car, Ellie, Robert, and Joe. Ellie drove the little lanes, the small roads. There is no protection here. And those bloody Irregulars are commandeering motorcars.

  Joe identified the house, and Robert knocked on the door. A faded woman appeared.

  Robert said, “Excuse me. Are you Mrs. Dargan?”

  The woman looked up at him. “I am.”

  “I'm a visiting American priest. I was with your son when he died.”

  She did nothing. Not a muscle moved. Then she looked away, then back into Robert's eyes. “Was he all right?”

  “I was with him. To the very end. He was more than all right.”

  “Did you know he was only twenty?”

  “I guessed he was young. He was very peaceful.”

  “Oh, thanks, Father. Thanks. I won't say no more now.”

  To Robert the resemblance to her son seemed striking. She turned away and went into her house and didn't close her door. As Robert watched she halted by a chair, a simple kitchen chair, and rested her hand on the top bar of the chair back. She stood there for a moment and then turned to put both hands on the chair, and then she bowed her head until her forehead touched her hands. Robert watched for a moment and then tiptoed away from this unspeakable grief.

  When they returned to the house, Joe said, “We can take you to Scattery on the boat, but we've no room for you to stay tonight. You could go to Kennelly's; they have room over the pub.” He never made a judgmental comment or asked an intrusive question, even though he had seen and assessed the relationship accurately.

  While Robert and Ellie remained at the house, Joe rode his bicycle to the village and called to Kennelly's. He made the arrangements and got a key, so that Robert and Ellie could get in through the side door of the pub late that night and not be seen by the drinkers. Joe talked to Denis Kennelly for a long time.

  The conversation moved from high anxiety to greater worry to near panic. Both men, old friends, batted back and forth in equal concern.

  “What we don't want,” Joe said, “is them stopped on the road and the car taken, and this fella being part of the gang and recognizing my two friends.”

  “He's open about it. He was staying in Cruise's Hotel in Limerick last week and talking to everyone. Wants to fight for his country, he says.”

  “Will they take him on?”

  Denis Kennelly said, “The Irregulars are desperate for men. There was a Cronin boy from here killed last week. They said he was an informer. But he wasn't shot like usual. Bayonet wounds, they said.”

  “In Limerick?”

  “Yeh,” said Denis Kennelly.

  “Oh, God above! My friend— he has to be in Limerick for the ship. Isn't that easy to trace?”

  Both men fell silent.

  “I have an idea,” said Joe.

  Vincent Ryan was not in Limerick that Thursday night. He had indeed been staying there, at Cruise's Hotel, in comfort, patriotic bonhomie, and goodwill. At least that was the side he presented to the world. In the bar he had asked discreet questions about the Irregulars. Soon he was taken to meet them— and he made many fine speeches about Ireland and Irish freedom and the U.S. Marine Corps and war.

  But on the long journey down from Lanesborough, Vincent had been in a welter of depression. He rode some of the way, he stowed his bicycle on trains, he caught a bus. Hour by hour, minute by minute, he fought for focus. The ship leaves Limerick on Friday. This is my best chance. It'll call for a different tactic.

  At no time during the week, however, did he get an unbroken or peaceful night's sleep. A ferocious debate had arisen within him, a discourse that he likened grandly to “a battle for my soul.” He took bath after bath after bath. Water is supposed to heal, to cleanse, isn't it? What am I cleansing? They told me— they told me what? What did that archbishop say? He's a man of God.

  The more he fretted, the more his focus slipped. He vacillated— wild swings between thoughts and feelings. Loneliness, the mood he feared most, swept in, and to his anguish he realized that he missed Robert Shannon. He could be such a friend to me. A friend like I've never had. What am I thinking of What am I thinking of

  All week he didn't sleep, and on the day before Ellie and Robert got to Tarbert, he made a major decision. At least I should try the archbishop's suggestion. At least I should see how I feel. Captain Shannon went back to his roots, and he didn't even know where his roots were. But I know mine.

  He jumped out of the bathtub, stood in the middle of the suite, and raised his hands above his head. I know it. I know I can do it.

  In the mouth of the Shannon, over near the coast of Clare, Scattery Island has legendary status in the early Celtic Church. The sixth-century monk Saint Senan, an austere and difficult man, built his monastery there to face not the east but the sun. Women who lived there at that time, Keans and MacMahons, Scanlons and Hanrahans, had to leave, because Senan would tolerate no women near him or his monks.

  From this cranky, misogynistic friar arises also the legend that probably became the dragon of Kerry Head, because by all accounts Senan banished a serpent that harassed Scattery Island. His hand raised in blessing, he stood on the bank watching the serpent's coils thrash the water as the beast headed toward the ocean.

  People still lived on Scattery when Robert Shannon came through in that summer of 1922. They piloted Captain Aaronson into the estuary before Robert came out on deck that dawn. Had he visited the island, they would have shown their cemetery to Robert with pride, the Temple of the Dead.

  He saw it now, as the little party of four walked up into the body of the island. Before they left, Molly said, “Shouldn't I stay at home? You know what they say: A woman on the island brings a curse, not a cure.”

  “Ah, how could you bring a curse on anything?” said her husband.

  Ellie Kennedy said, “To hell with that. I'm going.”

  Sometimes on the Shannon estuary a remarkable haze shimmers. It's always distant, it's always a few hundred yards away, and it's not silvery like many heat hazes— the Shannon haze has almost a mauve tinge, as though the heather on the headlands had a say in the color. It's the kind of haze that was made when one of the gods found that his wife needed a light cape around her shoulders. That haze shimmered on the day that Joe O'Sullivan and Molly took Robert and Ellie across to Scattery in the white rowing boat. On the journey, Robert, holding Ellie's hand, remained silent.

  Joe tried to gain Robert's attention. “I came across here one day and I saw a whale turning back to the sea.”

  Robert smiled but said nothing. He had reached the last moments of his journey, and he believed he knew now what he had set out to discover. The estuary spread its welcome for him, and the water could not have been calmer, could not have shone brighter. When he turned to look back over his shoulder, he could see the little stone pier where Captain Aaronson had put him ashore.

  The night before, in the quaint room over Kennelly's bar, he had talked to Ellie.

  “I still fear my dreams. And with no warning at all I can still see the piles of rags and hear the guns. When that happens I am rocked and shaken— it's like being hurled to the ground by something I can't see.”

  She said, “But look at the change in you. Look at the improvement.”

  “Making decisions frightens me. I feel I don't have the tools for the job.”

  “Robert, you do. I know you do.”

  “But look at the magnitude. I was ordained a priest. And I have been looking for that part of me. That's one of the reasons I came to Ireland. At least I think it is.”

  Neither slept. From time to time Robert paced. When he stopped, Ellie paced. In between they lay in each other's arms.


  “I always wanted to be a man of God.”

  “Does one have to be ordained to be a person of God?” she said. She opened the window and put out her head. “Come over here. Smell the sea.”

  He walked to the window; a traveler in the street below would have seen two heads glowing side by side in the faint light of the starry night. Together they sniffed like hounds.

  “This was my first smell of Ireland,” he said. “The morning I landed. I stood down on the jetty, terrified. There were green weeds flapping in the water.”

  As they lay down, timelessly side by side again, he took her hand.

  “Here's how my mind has been working,” he said. “Given my vows, what is the honorable thing to do? And is it the best thing I can do for everybody? How can I behave with equal honor all round? This is the tyranny of choice.”

  Ellie began to laugh.

  “What's so amusing?”

  She raised herself on an elbow and looked at him; in the darkness she could still see his face.

  “I was laughing,” she said, “because this isn't the first time that I said to myself, ‘He's cured.’ That's what I was laughing at.”

  She paused. “And by the way. Suppose that it isn't tyranny. Suppose it's the magic of choice?”

  Vincent didn't join the Irregulars. He made a symbolic gift of his bayonet to the commandant, whom he met in a safe house, and returned to his room, to his thoughts and preparations. If I find solace, I will know what I am meant to do. If I don't find healing there, I will also know what I am meant to do. Whatever, I know it will be the right thing.

  It took him three hours to ride from Limerick to south Tipperary He slowed down many times, past houses whose family names he now recalled, seeing hillside woodlands in the distance. The best days that he remembered had been in the open fields, looking at rabbits or hiding in long grass. In one grove behind the house he had known every tree, because he had climbed them all.

  At Ballinagore he swung into the lane; nothing much had changed. Were the bushes a little bushier, the trees fuller and taller? The house had never been visible from the road, and he freewheeled down the slope as the sun began its long slide down the sky. The lane had even more potholes now. Rounding the corner by the gate that still hung askew, he staggered the bicycle to an abrupt stop. The place had been destroyed.