1949 (44 page)

“I'll be with you soon,
mo mhuirnín dilís
,”
^*
he promised.

She shook her head until her hair tumbled around her shoulders just the way he liked. “There's no hurry. We're always together, living or dead.”

His heart jumped. “You've always been with me? Even in Spain?”

“I was at your shoulder wherever you went.”

“A ghost?”

Síle laughed; the rippling laugh so well remembered. “There are no ghosts,
a stór
. Only spirits. Every thing that lives or has ever lived has a spirit. You're surrounded by them like drops of water in the sea.”

“That's my oldest nightmare,” Ned told her. “The dark sea, waiting.”

“Not dark, Ned. It only looks that way because human eyes can't see past the waves on the surface. The unknown frightens people and they call it death. But beneath those waves is the most wondrous light! Just beyond your vision, all spirits are united in one immortal being.”

The word triggered something in him. “United. In Ireland too?”

She laughed again. “In Ireland most of all. Can you not see it? Can none of you see it?”

“Not yet,” Ned said sadly.

Síle melted into the surrounding darkness. He started to call her back, then remembered.
Living or dead, we're always together
.

For Christmas 1947, the Mooneys sent Ursula an Eastman Kodak camera. “Please send some photographs of yourself and Barry. Take pictures of your horses, too,” Ella urged. “Hank in particular would love to see those.”

 

Early in 1948 Éire held a general election. The results saw Fianna Fáil's hold on government reduced to 68 seats in the Dáil; not enough for a majority against Fine Gael and a coalition of smaller parties. They held the balance of power now, and from their ranks the new taoiseach would be chosen.

Richard Mulcahy, the current leader of Fine Gael, had commanded Free State forces during the Civil War. He therefore was not acceptable to Seán MacBride, a former chief of staff of the IRA. The Clann na Poblachta party that MacBride had founded two years earlier had gained ten Dáil seats in the election and MacBride's individual voice carried weight as well. He was the son of Maud Gonne and the executed Major John MacBride, one of the heroes of the Rising. When he refused to accept Mulcahy a compromise was necessary.

On the eighteenth of February John A. Costello, a former attorney general in the Cosgrave administration, was named as taoiseach. To him fell the task of forming the first coalition government in the history of the state.

“So Dev's out of power again,” Ned commented, sounding bemused.

He and Ursula were sitting together in the parlor. The wireless and the electric light had been turned off for the evening. Ned did not need the light anyway.

The darkness that had claimed his eyes was slowly creeping over his spirit. As Ursula watched with a heavy heart, the boundaries of his world were shrinking. His physical condition was deteriorating day by day. He hardly ever went outside now, even when he had visitors. Soon, she suspected, he would not even leave his room.

Wild, reckless Ned Halloran, whose entire life had been one of action. Only his mind was still alert and alive.

“Do you think Dev will admit he's beaten and retire gracefully?” Ursula asked him.

“Not a chance. There's no way he'll simply disappear like an old soldier hanging up his rifle. We'll hear more from him, wait and see. In the meantime…who's this John Costello, anyway?”

“He's the Fine Gael lawyer who once boasted in the Dáil that the Blueshirts would be as victorious in Ireland as Mussolini's Blackshirts.”

Ned chuckled. “He predicted more rightly than he knew, then. Where are the Blueshirts now?”

“Coming back, I'm afraid. Costello as taoiseach bodes ill for this country.”

“Don't bleed before you're shot, Precious.”

“Don't tell me you'd have any sympathy with a man who admired the Blueshirts!”

Ned gave a deep sigh. “It's a strange thing,” he remarked. “When my eyes were good I saw everything in black and white. Now I can see all the shades of gray.”

“You've become remarkably tolerant in your old age,” said Ursula sarcastically. “I liked it better when you were a firebrand.”

 

Ireland still had her share of firebrands. To the amazement of many, Costello appointed one of them, Seán MacBride, as minister of external affairs.

It was a shrewd move, coalescing radically diverse political philosophies within one cabinet. An apparently colorless man, Costello had a gift for springing surprises.

But no one thought of him as radical; indeed not, when his government sent a formal assurance to the pope: “We repose at the feet of Your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and of our devotion to your August Person, as well as our firm resolve to be guided in all our work by the teaching of Christ and to strive to the attainment of a social order in Ireland based on Christian principles.”
¹

“De Valera's brand of republicanism has been supplanted but the hold of the Church remains as strong as ever,” Ursula wrote to Henry.

Ursula took countless photographs of her horses. At first the pictures were fuzzy and out of focus, and sometimes the animals lacked heads. But she persevered. When she had a dozen photographs she considered satisfactory, she announced she would take them to Dublin in August for the annual horse show. “I need to start advertising our stock to people who can afford really good horses.”

Ned's sister laughed. “Buy some American lipstick for me too, will you?”

Ursula concealed the twinge of guilt she felt. “I'm not going on some frivolous shopping trip!” she insisted.

“And nylons,” Eileen added wistfully. “I would dearly love to see a real pair of nylon stockings.”

 

The postwar prosperity that Henry Mooney wrote about in his letters to Ursula had not reached Ireland. Dublin in August of 1948 was, at first glance, little different from Dublin in 1938: shabby and curiously oldfashioned. Shop windows were fly-specked. Advertisements on hoardings were yellowed and peeling. Private automobiles were slow to return to the streets; many still used bicycles for transport.

But a few stirrings could be felt beneath the surface.

The Costello government was settling in and interest was focused on economic policy. The External Relations Act which had been part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty meant that the Free State retained strong economic ties with Britain. Some wanted to see those ties cut and the nation stand on her own two feet at last. Others were reluctant to cut the apron strings, no matter how onerous the relationship had been. “Stay with what's known,” was their attitude.

Before attending the horse show Ursula paid a call on the Lesters. Let Eileen yearn for lipstick and nylons. She was hungry to discuss the changing political landscape with people who were knowledgeable.

Seán had returned from Geneva and he and Elsie were living at Avoca, County Wicklow. Ballanagh House was a spacious country residence, two-storied,
L
-shaped, embedded in rhododendron bushes and perfumed by newly-mown lawns. A pack of friendly dogs ran to greet Ursula when she arrived.

Elsie professed herself delighted with the rural life, but Ursula was curious to know how Seán Lester was adapting to a smaller stage. He seemed content, but admitted he was disappointed in the local fishing. “And how do you find life on the farm?” he asked her. “Is it dull after Geneva?”

“Dull?” Ursula laughed. “Hardly that. Every day is at least one new crisis. Working at the League prepared me admirably.”

“I thought the new coalition government might find a place in its ranks for Seán,” Elsie confided while her husband was at the other end of the room, fixing drinks. “But de Valera had no interest in employing his experience after the war and neither, it seems, does Costello.”

Ann Lester entered the room carrying a tray of sandwiches. “I hate seeing my father ignored like that,” she said hotly. “After all the credit he's brought to this country!”

“It's all right,” Seán assured her as he passed the drinks. “I'm a man without ambition. Though I would like to think I make a good brandy and soda.”

Elsie met Ursula's eyes. “At least the new United Nations appreciates him. Just this June the secretary-general, Trygve Lie, sent a long telegram asking Seán to lead a commission to deal with the India-Pakistan question.”

“I thanked him most warmly,” said Seán, “but explained that certain urgent personal affairs made it quite impossible to accept the commission.”

Ann laughed in spite of herself. “He meant fishing season!”

The long afternoon was drowsy with the warmth of late summer but sparkled with conversation. Ursula hated to leave and promised to come back soon.

I have a foot in each of two worlds
, she thought.

The grounds of the RDS were thronged with people. Several motorized horseboxes blocked traffic while sleek animals wearing head bumpers and protective bandages were being unloaded. The air smelt of dung and petrol and excitement.

This one
, Ursula told herself.
This is the world I want. Isn't it?

As Ursula joined the queue to buy her tickets, she found herself behind a stocky woman in a huge straw hat. For some reason the queue was hardly moving. Every time Ursula tried to peer around the hat, the woman shifted to one side or the other and blocked her view.

Ursula muttered irritably, “They'll be calling the first class soon and we're still going to be out here.”

The woman in the hat turned around. “Ursula Halloran!” cried Felicity Rowe-Howell. “I'd have known you anywhere.”

Ursula stared at the dumpy woman in the expensive but unbecoming print dress. Gone was the girl who once described herself as “jolly hockey-sticks.” Only her voice belonged to the Fliss of memory. Her puffy face, slashed by dark red lipstick, was a campaign map of lost wars.

“You…you're looking very well yourself,” Ursula stammered.

Fliss smoothed the front of her dress. “You're kind to say so, but I'm afraid I've put on a teeny bit of weight. They do claim it irons out the wrinkles, though.” She gave a high-pitched, girlish giggle.

The queue at last started to move. The two old friends bought tickets together in the grandstand. While they waited for the first class to begin, Fliss asked a few personal questions that Ursula parried with the skill born of long practice. The other woman did not seem to mind. It was obvious that she really wanted to talk about herself.

“You didn't miss much by not coming to my wedding,” Fliss said. “I married the wrong man anyway.”

Ursula looked at her in surprise. “Did you now?”

“Oh yes.” Very calmly. “I realized it when I was walking down the aisle and saw him waiting for me at the altar.”

“Then why in God's name did you go through with it?”

“I had the dress and everyone was there,” said Fliss, as if it were the most reasonable of explanations.

“Jaysus, Fliss!”

The other woman shrugged.

Ursula commented, “You don't seem very unhappy about it.”

“Why should I be? He has his life now and I have mine. He lives in London and does the social rounds, or goes drinking with his old RAF pals. Drinks rather too much, really, but it's nothing to do with me anymore. I live in the country and do the sorts of things I like. Our paths almost never cross.”

“Will you divorce?”

“Of course not, Ursula. Our arrangement suits us both just as it is.”

“Have you children?”

“Two; a boy and a girl. Rather a miracle, really, considering their father never fancied me.”

“Then why do you suppose he asked you to marry him?”

“Oh, I found out soon enough,” Fliss replied. “He was in love with someone else but she threw him over.” A shadow crossed her face; was swiftly blinked away. “He proposed to me out of bravado, really, to prove he could get anyone he wanted. He's still doing it.”

Ursula gave a wry smile. “Proposing marriage to women?”

“Not marriage, no. Being married to me keeps him safe to make indecent proposals to others. He's quite successful at it, my friends tell me.”

Ursula said, “If they tell you things like that, they're not what I call friends.”

A bell rang. The two women turned toward the arena, where a big bay gelding was cantering toward the first jump. “Some think my husband is romantic,” Fliss remarked while keeping her eyes on the horse. “A man who was spurned by the love of his life.”

“Did he love the woman who threw him over?”

“Oh yes, I'm very certain of that.” Fliss sounded so monumentally indifferent that she broke Ursula's heart. “My husband never discussed his ‘grand passion' with me, but I once saw him reduced to tears by a piece of music that reminded him of her. We were at a dance and the orchestra played ‘My Wild Irish Rose.' Lewis was so upset he left the hall. Left me standing in the middle of the dance floor by myself. I knew then there was no hope for us.”

Ursula gaped at Fliss. “Lewis…Baines?”

“Of course. I thought you knew. Did I never tell you his name?”