I’m back again at the Great Southern Hotel for the last time, in this trip in any event. We leave Kinsale next week and with a smooth passage should be in the United States by the following week. I sent a cable to my family from London. “Arrive mid-October with Galway princess. Ned.” Their reply was immediate. “We knew you would. Mom and Dad.”What if after two months of modern living, my bride-to-be tries to change her mind?
That seems unlikely. Nora is not the kind of woman who backs out of a bargain.
Yet I am afraid. Afraid of losing her and somehow afraid of not losing her. What will the wedding night be like? I have had little experience with women. She was married to one of the most remarkable men in the world. How can I compare to him?
I remember comments in pubs and saloons about women. Complaints about how long it took to get them “in the mood.” Astonishment at how patient one had to be with them. And gentle. Someone had said that you
never can be too gentle. So I would be patient and gentle and not rush.
I have no idea what that means.
I will walk to the Corbett house across the square tomorrow morning with some considerable trepidation.
The Corbetts, knowing that I was visiting this morning, discretely found something to take them out of the house. When their butler showed me into the drawing room, I did not for a moment recognize my bride. She was wearing a light blue dress and a corset, her hair was done up on her head, and she was blooming with vitality.
I must have permitted my mouth to fall open.
She rose, smiled, and extended her hand graciously.
“Have I changed that much, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
I kissed her hand. She blushed. I was speechless.
“Mr. and Mrs. Corbett have been very kind to us. I never expected to feel healthy again.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you … .”
“Doubtless you will not recognize Mary Elizabeth either.”
She lifted the cooing little child out of her crib and extended her into my arms. Mary Elizabeth was fat, healthy, and happy. She cuddled into my arms and rested her head on my chest.
“Is she not a miracle, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“As is her mother.”
“Thank you, sir.” She blushed, removed the child from my arms, and returned her to her crib. The little girl smiled and giggled.
“Wait till you see Josie. You will never recognize her with her clean face.”
“The Corbetts have truly treated you well?”
“Look at me, sir.” She sat on the couch next to her
daughter’s crib. “They have done their best to make me a lady. I have learned about bathtubs and water closets and corsets and good manners and to wear shoes all the time. I have found lots of books to read. As I awaited you, I have been reading this book of Mr. Trollop, whom I find very interesting.”
She was uneasy, not sure what kind of impression she was making.
“My mother reads him too. So does my father.”
“Do I seem to have been transformed into a lady, sir?
“Nora.” I sat down on the couch next to her. “You have never been any less than a lady. No one had to teach you how to be one.”
She turned crimson.
“Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”
How many years before I became Edward? And how many more before she would call me Eddie? Or Ned?
I removed the little box from my waistcoat pocket, opened it, and placed the ring on her finger.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick! This is really too much! It is utterly inappropriate! I cannot possibly accept it!”
“You could always give it back to me.”
She looked at the ring, looked at me, and then, with a peasant’s craftiness, back at the ring.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I suppose that now I am wearing it, I should keep it. Really, however, it is too big.”
“Nora,” I said firmly, “I wouldn’t dare make many rules for our marriage. I am, however, going to make one now. Whenever I give you anything, you say, ‘Ned, how wonderful! Thank you very much!’ No other response will be accepted. Is that clear?”
She looked at me with the penetrating scrutiny that I had become accustomed to during our ride down the mountains.
“Clear enough, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” she said with a
sheepish grin, “and, I might add, fair enough … So this is a wonderful ring! Thank you very much!”
Spontaneously, I leaned over and brushed my lips against hers. Her lips were soft, unprepared, and yielding.
“Oh.” She gulped.
I lifted her off the couch, put my arms around her, and kissed her again, firmly but not passionately. She gasped and rested her head against my chest.
“You kiss very effectively, sir.” She sighed.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said and kissed her for a third time, this with some hint of the passion that was now raging within me. She trembled but did not pull away until I released her.
She steadied herself, holding on to my arm for support.
“You take my breath away, sir.”
“So do you,” I said.
She laughed, the first real laugh I had ever heard from her, a laugh with church bells and surf and the song of mountain birds.
“Shall we go find Josie?” she gasped.
“Indeed. I warn you, however, that I propose to steal kisses from you whenever possible.”
“I expect you will, sir.”
We encountered Josie waiting outside the door of the drawing room, doubtless knowing that we were about to enter the corridor.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick!” She hugged me. “Is my face pretty now that it doesn’t have any dirt on it?”
“Your face has always been very pretty, Josie, dirt or no dirt.”
“Do I smell nice with this perfume?”
She danced around me joyously.
“Do you like my dress?”
“You are dazzling, Miss Josephine!”
“Are you really going to take me to America?”
“Really!”
She bounded back down the corridor to the play room of the Corbett daughters.
“She didn’t notice your ring,” I protested.
“Yes, she did, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Josie notices everything. She thought it discrete to leave us alone.”
“So I could kiss you again?”
I did indeed kiss her again, more passionately than the previous time. This time she responded in kind.
I also caressed her, violating ever so slightly her modesty.
“That was truly inappropriate, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” she said, embarrassed and distraught.
“It wasn’t,” I insisted.
“Then neither is this!”
Thereupon she kissed me with furious passion. It was my turn to gasp.
This was not, I thought as I returned to the hotel in a cloud of delight, part of the bargain.
She might not want to love again. But she was a young woman with a young woman’s passions (about which I know nothing except that they exist). Perhaps she found me an attractive young man. The “perhaps” is, as she would say, inappropriate.
With the ordeal of the wedding day ahead I find that notion quite consoling.
We sail tomorrow morning. My wife is sleeping in our stateroom. Josie is next door to us with Mary Elizabeth since she insists with total determination that we need to be left to ourselves. Josie enjoys having an uncle again.
“Why do you call Mr. Fitzpatrick ‘Ned,’ Aunt Nora?”
“Because” — my wife blushes — “that is his name.”
My wife blushes often and becomingly. She blames my lack of respect for her modesty.
“Uncle Ned!” the lovely, well-scrubbed urchin shouts joyfully and embraces me.
I glance at Nora’s exquisite face, as I rest my pen. She seems peaceful and content with her fate. Yet the three of us will watch the disappearing towers of the Kinsale church tomorrow morning with very different thoughts. I will reflect on the last incredible fifteen months of my life and yet be glad that I’m going home with my prize. For Nora and Josie it will be a farewell to their homeland, which they may never see again. For Nora it will be a physical departure from all that remains of the great man who was once her husband. She talked about him only once in the last several days. It will be a long time before she speaks of him again, I think. Yet, she will never forget that the little that is left of him lies in the quicklime under the Galway jail.
At our wedding dinner, she was radiant and gracious. I have learned that she is a bit of an actress and can play many different rolls. She avoided my eyes during the dinner. Possibly I avoided hers. After the Corbetts and the Bishop and Marty and Marie Dempsey had left us and Josie carried Mary Elizabeth to our suite in the Great Southern, my new wife said to me, “Would you mind terribly, Mr. Fitzpatrick, if we walked over to the salmon weir and said a couple of decades of the rosary?”
“On the contrary, I think it is a very good idea.”
So, under a gray and gloomy sky, we strolled over to the salmon weir and turned towards the prison. We said precisely two decades of the rosary, a leave-taking for both of us. Then we walked in silence back to the Great Southern, both of us preoccupied with our own fears.
At the entrance of the hotel, she murmured, “I am frightened, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”
“Of me?”
She nodded.
“I will never hurt you, Nora. I will always respect and cherish you.”
“I know that,” she said softly.
“Then what do you fear?”
“Your passion and your strength.”
“Will it help any if I tell you that I am afraid of you too?”
She laughed, “And what do you fear in me?”
“Your passion and your strength.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
In the room, I helped her out of her dress and corset, just as if we were an experienced married couple who had made love many times. She suggested that we kneel and finish the rosary. I agreed again, relieved that we had postponed the moment of truth. On her knees next to me she shivered through the final decade of the rosary.
So, for that matter, did I.
Then she was very generous with herself. She deftly directed my efforts. I was very patient and gentle and tried not to rush. We both experienced great joy.
Then, suddenly and without warning, we seemed to be snatched up in an overpowering love that for a few moments made our human passion tiny and united us with all the joy in the universe.
Afterwards, we laid next to each other in bed, our bare shoulders touching.
“Was I satisfactory, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“Superb, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”
“You are quite good with a woman, sir. You take away all our secrets.”
“I’m glad you are pleased,” I said tentatively.
“Very pleased, sir.”
I wasn’t good with women and I didn’t take away any secrets as far as I could remember. But I was a young husband with a beautiful wife and her words were the kind of approval for which I hungered.
Then she sighed and continued.
“You deceived me that day in the valley when you threatened to carry me away.”
“Oh?”
“You did not speak of love.”
“I was afraid if I did I would lose you.”
“You surely would have … . Now I feel that I am bound by my bargain to permit you to love with all the skill and the passion you possess.”
I did not like the way the conversation was turning.
“That troubles you?”
“Only that I must tell you that I will never love you in return.”
What does a new husband say to that?
He doesn’t say a thing because his wife sobs wildly and mutters terrible things in Irish.
Instead of talking, I put my arms around her and let her sob.
Finally she stopped. She did not try to escape from my embrace.
“I am sorry, Mr. Fitzpatrick. My behavior was thoroughly inappropriate. I did not mean to say that.”
I drew her closer. Both of us were too exhausted to have bothered to put on our nightshirts. She was soaking with perspiration.
“I must say some things to you, sir, perhaps to make amends for ruining this sacred night for you.”
“I don’t think it’s ruined.”
“The first thing I must say is that I have known all along where Josie found the money that kept us alive. I am deeply grateful for that gift.”
I said nothing.
“Second thing,” she went on, “is that I also read the article you wrote about me in the Chicago Daily News. My brother sent it to me. It made me blush. It makes me blush at this very moment. I can’t believe that I was the
person you described. Nonetheless, I was vain enough to be pleased for a moment and then the horror of what was happening recaptured me. Since Mary Elizabeth was born I reread it often when I was ready to give up and die. That woman, I told myself, would never give up.”
“And didn’t.”
“She came very close … . The third thing is very difficult for me to discuss, but I must on this night while we lie in each other’s arms.”
“Naked in each other’s arms.”
She laughed.
“I have noticed that … . Did you ever talk to Myles about me?”
“No. I never spoke to him about anything.”
“I thought not. Yet he told me the last time I saw him the day before he died that you would come for me to take me away and I should go with you. He described you as that nice-looking young American journalist with the blond hair.”
“He did!”
So I told her of Myles’s smile of approbation and invitation in the Green Street Court.
“How very like him!” She sighed. “It was the sort of man he was.”
I remained silent.
“Then that day up in the valley when you finally came as Myles had promised, in my stubborn pride and despair, I almost refused you. I would have if you hadn’t been clever enough to mention Josie. While I was preparing to reject your offer, I knew that up in heaven Myles was greatly displeased with me.”
“He is pleased now?”
“Oh, yes. Naturally.”
I searched for something to say.
“Would you really have carried me off?”
“I would certainly have carried you off before John
Casey had a chance to kill you as he killed the John Joyce family.”
“Yes, I think you would have. You are such a romantic, thank God.”
“Tell me mother that when you meet her.”
“You can depend on it, I will … . There is one other thing I must say and then I am yours to do whatever you want.”
“And that is?”
“Oh, Neddie, my dearest, I love you so much! I will always love you!”
Neddie is it, I thought to myself, as the wedding night continued. I think I have won the woman.
Even though I am still an unseasoned young man with little knowledge of the world and practically no knowledge of women, I am at least a little more mature than I was a year ago.
Or even yesterday.