The community chapel at the Merchants’ Quay friary was smaller and more intimate than the public church that fronted onto the river. Over a century of Franciscan occupation, the monastery on the sloping ground below Christ Church had become imbued with an aura of peace and seclusion. It was a sacred place, a refuge, for many Dubliners from all strata of society.
Friar Lawrence had arranged with the Friar Superior that once the community had completed the afternoon office of None, the chapel would be swiftly prepared for the wedding. A young novice rolled out a red carpet along the short aisle. Two branched candelabras were brought to either side of the altar. They would blaze with dozens of white candles for the ceremony. Green holly boughs and winter palms were brought from the friary garden to decorate the Communion rails.
It would be a small wedding, Swallow had reckoned. But when they put the numbers together, listing the immediate relatives on both sides, it was not such a small affair after all. Both of Maria’s parents were deceased, but her father’s brother, her Uncle Paddy, would give her away.
Waiting for his bride to arrive, Swallow, out of professional habit, counted the numbers present. He made it twenty. Two of his uncles flanked his elderly mother, who had travelled from Kildare. John Mallon and his wife sat side by side with Pat Mossop and his wife. Mick Feore and Mrs Feore sat behind, accompanied by ‘Duck’ Boyle and Mrs Boyle. Maria’s two immediate business neighbours from Thomas Street, Tom Fallon the butcher and George White the cabinetmaker, were there with their wives. Tom Dunne, Maria’s head barman, sat with Mrs Dunne. Carrie, Maria’s housekeeper and cook, was widowed, but her son, Jack, who worked as a gauger in Power’s distillery on John’s Lane, escorted his mother.
Father Lawrence, as the celebrant, stood at the centre of the altar, taking quiet pleasure in his precedence, for once, over the Friar Superior, who hovered behind him. Another novice who would act as Lawrence’s altar attendant knelt beside him. As the bride-to-be started along the red carpet, the organist played the opening notes of the ‘Halleluiah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah.
‘It’s quite profane, of course,’ Lawrence later told Swallow. ‘Nothing sacred about it. But it’s beautiful, and sure isn’t it nearly Christmas?’
When Maria arrived on her Uncle Paddy’s arm she looked nervous, Swallow thought. But her wedding attire made her more beautiful than he had ever seen her. As befitted her widowed status she had eschewed the white lace dress that had been popularised by the young queen, Victoria, in her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. Instead she had chosen a sculpted gown in cream silk, stitched with pearls. The same pearls decorated a short veil in matching lace, and she carried a small bouquet of flowering cyclamen. Her blonde hair was styled in perfect ringlets that framed her face and graceful neck.
Swallow would have liked to have a new suit for the occasion, but with the inquiries into Alice Flannery’s murder there was no time for a fitting at any tailor’s during the week. His best option had been for Carrie to sponge, steam and press the dark-blue three-piece he wore for court appearances. Harry Lafeyre, taking his duties as best man seriously, had volunteered to collect a new silk shirt and bow tie for him. Swallow reckoned he was passable.
Maria, naturally, had nominated her sister, Lily, to be her bridesmaid. But she had also asked Harriet to act as a second bridesmaid. They took their places in the front pew as Maria detached from her uncle to take Swallow’s arm, stepping forward to kneel in front of the altar. She glanced at Swallow and smiled.
He thought the ceremony was the most moving and most joyful experience of his life. Lawrence celebrated the nuptial Mass with the Friar Superior and the acolyte echoing the Latin prayers. After the consecration of the bread and wine, Lawrence distributed the white Communion hosts to the congregation, save for Lafeyre, Pat Mossop and his wife, who were Protestant. The friar-organist played Bach’s ‘Jesu, joy of Man’s Desiring’ and Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’.
Then they pledged themselves to each other. After Catherine Greenberg’s dramatic exit from Lily’s painting class, Swallow had prudently decided against visiting her family business in Capel Street to procure a ring. Instead he had gone to Weir’s, the recently opened jeweller’s off Grafton Street. He and Maria had agreed that the ring from her first marriage would be transferred to her right hand before the ceremony. Now he placed a new gold band, inset with three small diamonds, on her left hand. He drew the equivalent of two months’ salary from his savings to pay for it.
Lawrence’s homily was brief. He recalled the marriage at Cana when Jesus changed the water into wine at the request of his Blessed Mother. Jesus approved of marriage, he told them. Nothing could be clearer. Otherwise he would not have performed the miracle. He wanted the couple’s day to be perfect and not ruined by a shortage of wine.
‘Jesus is always to hand for married couples,’ he told Swallow and Maria. ‘As he will always be to hand for you in your lives together. All you have to do is reach out to him.’
When the religious ceremonies were concluded, they withdrew to the sacristy to sign the register, witnessed by Lafeyre and Lily. Lawrence carefully countersigned the registry sheet, adding the letters ‘OSF’ for Order of Saint Francis after his name in ostentatious capitals.
‘I’ve little time for the work of government,’ he told them by way of explanation. ‘When I sign the official register I’m an agent of the Crown, whether I like it or not. So that’s my way of letting them know that I’m still not one of them. I belong to my order and to God, not to Dublin Castle.’
The day outside was darkening when they emerged onto Merchants’ Quay. There were handshakes, congratulations and kisses. Swallow’s mother was not given to shows of emotion. Her relations with her son had been distant, cold almost, over the years since the death of her husband. But she threw her arms first around her son and then around Maria.
‘I couldn’t be happier for you both. May you have many, many years of good life together. May God bless you in his goodness.’
Maria had arranged the wedding breakfast, as it was euphemistically termed, for seven o’clock that evening at Mr Gresham’s Royal Marine Hotel in Kingstown, eight miles out from the city, along the southern shore of Dublin Bay. And Lafeyre had arranged a fleet of six closed cabs to bring the wedding party and their guests to Westland Row, where they would take the six o’clock train for the journey to Kingstown. From there a further fleet of cabs would take them the short distance from the railway station to the hotel.
It was fully dark by the time they disembarked from the train at Kingstown, and there were flecks of snow in the freezing air coming off the sea. They were glad to reach the warmth of the hotel and the private reception room on the first floor, where sherry, port and, for those who wanted it, warming tea were to be served in the interval before the start of the meal.
The room buzzed with conversation as they sat to table. Wasn’t Maria beautiful beyond words? Didn’t Swallow look happier than anyone had seen him before? Weren’t the bridesmaids a delight? Father Lawrence’s ceremony and short homily had been so uplifting, had they not?
Maria had chosen her menu with care, and Mr Gresham’s hotel staff delivered superbly on their responsibilities to their guests. There was consommé de poulet, fortified with Madeira. Next came steamed cod with white sauce, garnished with Dublin Bay prawns. Then the chef presented his pièce de résistance, platters of grilled black Dover sole with a macédoine of fresh vegetables and creamed potatoes. After that came a sirloin of beef, carved in front of the diners according to their preference and served with fresh vegetables and brown roasted potatoes. Then there was strong blue cheese. Swallow did not particularly like it. The last course was a sponge pudding with fruit, soaked in brandy and covered with meringue and ice-cream, a specialty apparently of one of the hotel’s Parisian sous-chefs, who named his creation ‘diplomat pudding’.
‘You have done us a great deal of damage, Mrs Swallow,’ the Father Superior said, raising a half-emptied glass of sweet Hungarian Tokay wine after he had finished the sponge pudding. ‘To say that we poor friars are unaccustomed to this kind of fare is an understatement. This will take months of penance.’
‘Then I suggest you take the gains with the losses, Father,’ Maria laughed. ‘If you’re going to be doing the penance, enjoy the food and the wine.’
There had been Gewürztraminer with the soup and the fish, and an excellent Burgundy with the beef. Then, when the last of the ‘diplomat pudding’ was done, the head waiter rolled out a three-tiered wedding cake on a trolley. Meanwhile, his acolytes were serving champagne around the room.
John Mallon stepped forward and wielded, as if from nowhere, a magnificent silver sabre. He called for silence, and then repeated the call. It took perhaps a minute for the conversations and laughter to be fully hushed.
‘Now, dear friends,’ he told the guests. ‘The new Mr and Mrs Swallow will cut their wedding cake with the silver sword, presented to the first chief commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on the date of its inception fifty years ago. Commissioner Harrel insisted that it should be used on this occasion, and he sends his personal congratulations and warm best wishes for the occasion.’
There was cheering and clapping around the room. Swallow and Maria stepped forwards, and with hands joined across the hilt of the sword began to carve through the white icing into the rich, dark cake below.
When every guest was supplied with wedding cake, Harry Lafeyre rose to his feet and tapped his glass with a fork for silence.
‘Dear friends, it is my pleasant duty as best man here to propose the toast of the bride and groom. There are no words that I can use to express my happiness and the happiness of my own future wife, Lily, Maria’s sister, at being witnesses to this wonderful event.’
He raised his glass.
‘Joe and Maria are to be together as one. It is their happy destiny. And everyone here wishes them long and happy lives together. I give you the toast of the bride and groom.’
The room rose as one and clinked glasses in a chorus.
‘To the bride and groom. To Maria and Joe.’
Maria’s Uncle Paddy, already struggling to maintain equilibrium after imbibing the wines, managed a few stammering sentences, proposing the toast of the guests. Then Swallow stood.
‘I have a few things to say, as you might expect.’
There was clapping and cheering from around the room.
‘First, I would like to thank you all for being here with Maria and myself on this very special day. I would like to thank Father Lawrence and the Franciscan community for doing the ceremony so wonderfully earlier today. I would like to thank Harry and Lily for being our witnesses. And I would like to thank the staff of this very fine hotel for putting on such a great banquet here for us.’
There was more clapping and calls of ‘hear, hear.’
‘And it is my pleasurable duty, of course, to propose the toast of the bridesmaids. To Maria’s lovely sister, Lily, and to my own beautiful sister, Harriet, who have so assiduously attended my bride here today. They have added grace and beauty to the occasion.’
Lily and Harriet blushed, smiled and nodded to acknowledge the compliment. There were whistles and more clapping as the glasses were raised yet again around the room.
‘But a thousand times more than anything else, I want to thank Maria for agreeing to be my wife. She is, as you all know, a wonderful woman, and I freely admit I’m not the best catch in the world. I’m well past the first flush of boyhood, and I haven’t exactly trodden a straight pathway through life.’
‘A classic understatement,’ Lafeyre interjected, grinning.
‘But that, as you will have expected, will now change,’ Swallow responded humorously to Lafeyre’s quip. ‘With Maria and myself united today, our lives are set together for the future. It is my pledge that I will strive with all of my energies and all of my resources to make her future and our future together a happy one. Now,’ he gestured to the doorway, ‘in the adjoining room we can relax, enjoy a drink to help our digestion and have a little entertainment.’
The anteroom had a blazing turf fire with plenty of soft chairs and settees and a baby grand piano. Maria was insistent that there would be no requirement for the ladies to withdraw to allow the gentlemen to smoke, and the entire party moved as one from the dining room.
Harry Lafeyre was straight away at the piano as the waiters proffered drinks. There was whiskey, cognac and port wine. A waiter deposited a tray of porter and ale, ready drawn from the barrel, onto a table beside the wall.
As soon as Lafeyre tinkled the opening notes of Moore’s ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, Pat Mossop was on his feet, singing out the lyrics in a fine baritone voice that belied his fragile frame.
Next up was Father Lawrence with a rousing rendition of ‘The Minstrel Boy’. Then Maria’s housekeeper, Carrie, recited six couplets from Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’. Elizabeth Mallon proved to have a surprisingly sweet voice as she rendered Mabel’s ‘Poor Wand’ring One’ from The Pirates of Penzance.
The waiters moved around the happy party, replenishing their drinks. The turf fire blazed in the grate as the northern winter wind, funnelling up from Kingstown Harbour, blew hard against the windows.
Few of the revellers noticed the G-man who had been assigned to the hotel for John Mallon’s protection slip through the door and cross the end of the room to whisper something urgently into the chief superintendent’s ear as he handed him a sheet of paper. But from where he sat with Maria in the centre of the room, Swallow saw it, and he knew from his boss’s expression that what it told him was not good news.