Shannon (13 page)

“Twenty-four years, seven months, and twenty-two days ago.”

Those who knew Robert Shannon before the war admired him for many things, one of which was a capacity to generate thought. He could stop an argument dead in its tracks; he could turn a debate around to face the way it had come. Now, some of that came back, and although the idea turned in his head as slowly as a ship turning in a bay, it had force. He looked at Sheila Neary and held eye contact.

“Did your children— did they like their dad?”

He did not say
love,
and the word
like
stopped her.

She looked irked at first, and then the frown eased. “I don't know.”

No more conversation took place regarding the departed Mr. Neary For dessert she served bread pudding with thick cream. Thereafter she talked without cease again— but it was neighbors, the strife on the streets, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the land.

At ten o'clock she said, “Father Robert, you must be tired.”

She led him up the stairs. On the first landing she stopped. From a nook she groped down a key and opened a wide closet. The interior had been rendered with love: paneling on the walls, green felt on the shelves. A man's clothes filled the large space. Suits hung on excellent wooden clothes hangers, pants on an accordion rack. Men's shoes, highly polished, lined the floor pair by pair like happy twins; she opened drawers full of shirts.

Standing there, she sifted through the jackets first and then the shirts. Her hands felt the fabric like a queen buying silk; her fingers dawdled here, lingered there; she inspected a collar, patted a cuff.

Robert stood back; privacy needs space. She took down a tweed jacket, turned it this way and that.

“He bought this for the Galway races,” she said. “We had a horse running there that year.”

She began to groom her hair like a girl on a date. She took down a suit. She turned it back and forth and said, “This was for a law case, a full day in court. I bought him this. We won— and he always called this his law suit.”

Then she stepped back and surveyed the closet. All had been beautifully preserved and maintained, more of a memorial than a wardrobe.

“They get laundered every few months,” she said.

She lingered, then made a decision.

“My husband was a bit heavier than you, but better too big than too small.” She glanced back at Robert and chose shirts for him. “I always feel great when I change my clothes,” she said, as though apologizing for her reverie.

Next morning, shaved and bathed and wearing a fresh shirt— not too large after all— Robert stood at his window. Down in the square the
baker's horse van delivered loaves to every door. The housekeeper arrived, brisk and trim; her voice rose in argument with the van man over the bread. Two men checked the streetlamps, replaced some gas mantles. Slowly the square woke up and, since it faced east, Robert received a lemon-colored dawn. Trees shone in the park.

At breakfast, Sheila Neary looked radiant. She had taken great care with her appearance: an oatmeal-colored sweater and a string of pearls assisted by a cream tweed suit. Just inside one of the lace-curtained long windows, a table had been set for two. In this favorite corner Sheila could chat with her guest— and see into the square without being seen.

The housekeeper came by, and came by again, heaping food onto Robert's plate. He launched himself at this breakfast, a Limerick staple meal. Ham, sausage, steak, and eggs led the way; the housekeeper came back with fried bread and tiles of fried potato. As a coup de grâce she delivered thick slabs of toast, dripping with butter, on which she plastered homemade marmalade, thick with rinds of gold.

Robert ate like a soldier. His hostess applauded and offered more; he demurred and sat back.

Suddenly they heard gunfire. Both turned their heads in the direction whence it had come. More shots echoed; impossible to say how close to the house. Then the gunfire stopped. They waited, looked at each other in careful alarm— and heard no more.

Robert sat easily by a woman's side and had always been comfortable there. Misogyny never touched him, from his own attitudes or anyone else's. Other than awkward snickers, he'd known no bad talk about women; the students and priests spoke lovingly of their mothers, sisters, and aunts. Women deserved respect, so the teachings said; the Blessed Virgin Mary exemplified all of her sex.

And then came the Woman in the Chancery.

One day in the seminary, Robert happened to eavesdrop by an open door. A senior priest, visiting from New York, was speaking to one of the seminary professors.

“She appears with him. In the open. In public. I saw them at the opera. I saw them in a restaurant. He looks away, he affects not to see me. But what can I do? And her rouged face, and her hat, and her lipstick, and the tight clothes? I blame
her,
I blame
her
for it. No excuses.”

As the professor murmured concurrences, the speaker ran off at the mouth again.

“What kind of woman is that? You have to say she must be some kind of filthy bitch. Because if you don't say that, you have to draw the conclusion that he is the initiator.”

Robert had never heard a woman denigrated thus. In his family circle, his mother and her sisters held a constant sway, neither pampered nor dismissed. One aunt's bossy nature occasioned jokes; the melancholy of another aunt raised eyebrows. Beyond that, balance existed; his father and mother worked on such a level of equality that arguments never broke out.

“And the latest thing I heard is, she was in the chancery with him. Inside the house. I mean— what do we do?”

Robert repeated the story in Confession. With no names asked, Father Viniak put close questions. He then cautioned Robert, “Tell nobody. Woe to the scandal-giver.” Finally he said, “Be prepared— in the years ahead—to forgive and forgive and forgive. This matter,” he said, “will not evaporate. All touched by it may suffer.”

Limerick City is one of Ireland's most distinctive places. It has a fierce and interesting personality, born of long and fractious times. In 1922, when Robert Shannon first passed through, it had begun its newest incarnation, as a post-garrison town of the dented British Empire. Several of its other distinctions were already in place: the prettiest girls in Ireland, the best meat in the world, gossip as sharp as teeth; they had made uniforms here for the American Civil War.

And always, always, there was the river. Ever since the Vikings built citadels on this
luimneach,
this “bald marsh,” ever since the unstable English King John set a round powerful castle on the very tide, the Shannon has defined the city.

So has the love of God; few other populations in the country have ever shown such zeal. Every week for years, thousands of men gathered in the famous Catholic confraternities of Limerick. As powerful and congealing as the deepest freemasonry, they had sprung up as perhaps a counterweight to empire. On one level they heard firebrand sermons on temperance and the evils of the flesh; on another, they controlled the
city's jobs and the levers of power. And their influence had a raw side; Limerick also bred bigotry and ran pogroms against the Jews.

Commerce throve too, from large department stores serving the farmers to tough public houses for the port. And politics raged; the race memory of sieges bred defiance, mistrust, and an independent heart. If ever a twentieth-century city might have walled itself in, Limerick would have been the one— and never more so than when Robert Shannon arrived. Unknown to him, Dublin had just erupted— but Limerick looked potentially worse. Both sides had occupied key positions, and each believed they faced a bloodbath.

After breakfast, Sheila Neary and Robert left the house. As they walked away, Sheila Neary said, “Now, Father Robert, we mustn't forget your relations. I know of only one Shannon family here— well, not so much a family as a bachelor. He's a butcher up on Mulgrave Street. They call him the Chopper.”

Their steps were lively and crisp; their faces were warmed by the sun. Across the square they walked, two people with simple intent. They turned their first corner— and were rudely stopped. Twenty or thirty gunmen blocked the width of the street; a few sat propped against the walls; ahead, many more formed up. Some of these men wore ad hoc uniforms; the majority dressed like the guerrillas whom Robert had met in the fields: rough clothes, belts of ammunition. The Irregulars had come to town.

A man pointed a gun at Robert and stepped forward, aiming it at Robert's head. Robert closed his eyes and didn't move.

Sheila Neary reddened with rage. “Put that thing down,” she said. “You young pig.”

Robert opened his eyes— and saw the rifle bolt hauled back.

“What did you call me?” The youngster's voice held ice.

“I said you're a young pig. How dare you?”

The gunman walked forward and stood at Robert's side.

“Who's this fella here?”

“None of your bloody business,” said Sheila Neary, and Robert winced like a maiden.

Another, older, man walked up. “What's going on here?” He had
greater authority and didn't need to take out his handgun. Instead he asked Sheila Neary, “Who's he? And who are you?”

She answered sharply “He's a visiting American priest, and I'll thank you to let us pass.”

The man sized them both up. To Robert he said, “Over here.”

He grabbed Robert's shoulder and forced him to face a wall. Sheila Neary moved up— and the “pig” with the gun barred her way. The senior fellow spread Robert to search him, kicking his legs apart.

“Has he any proof of who he is?” he called.

“I have plenty,” she said. “You're some men. This is Irish hospitality, all right.”

In moments the searcher found the Sevovicz letter. Both guerrillas read it— and visibly changed.

“Sorry, Father,” they said, and handed back the letter.

“You ignorant pigs,” said Sheila Neary. As they stood aside she asked, “Are we going to have to go through this farce at every corner? I want to be able to walk around my own city in peace.”

“Tony go with them,” said the senior man, embarrassed now, and the boy with the rifle walked them down the street. On the way Sheila Neary bombarded him with words that Robert scarcely heard. The youngster blushed and tried to state his aims.

“Get a bloody job,” she said. “That's how you help your country.”

Powerless to retaliate, the youngster walked ahead.

“Let these two through,” he said at the next barrier. Several men stood guard.

Led by an Irregular in his bandolier, Robert and Sheila walked across the street to the next corner. In the distance down to his left, Robert could see the Shannon; the river looked timid this morning, a sign of no showers upstream.

The guerrilla at the barrier stepped aside. “There's different soldiers over there.” He nodded in the direction ahead of them. “Be careful, Father,” he told Robert. “They'll think you're one of us. And they're the real dangerous ones.”

Ahead they could see no sign of human life. Their footsteps echoed.

“What would you call this atmosphere?” said Sheila Neary, half to herself.

“It's certainly very quiet,” said Robert.

“Eerie,” she said.

They reached the end of the small street and turned another corner. A voice shouted, “Stop there!”

To their left a row of rifles faced them— spikes across piles of sandbags. The voice yelled again, “Walk over here! No, not you, ma'am. Him.”

Sheila went too, in a fury. She yelled, “Put down those bloody guns.”

“Shut up, ma'am.”

She erupted and strode to the sandbags. “Who are you, you little brat? Where is your commanding officer?”

They still hadn't seen a human face, nothing but soldier's caps above the sandbags and the black round holes of rifle muzzles. From the side, a short wiry man in uniform and with a holstered revolver appeared.

“We observed you talking to them.”

“You eejit,” she said. “Of course we were talking to them. We had to get through.”

“What were you talking to them about?”

“I was telling them what would happen to them if they harmed or offended a visiting American priest, that's what I was telling them. Now put down those guns at once and don't point them at us again.” Fury had made her voluble. “Where do you think the money comes from to buy those guns? Who do you think is paying for this new government? Who's paying your wages, who's buying your uniforms? Do you want Father Shannon here going back and telling the Americans not to support the thugs who are running the new Ireland?”

At that moment they heard a distant crack, a high whine, and a breaking sound. Plaster fell, a few snowflakes. Everybody ducked and thereafter nobody moved.

“Where was it?” asked a voice.

“High up,” said another.

“Same old caper,” said a third.

Said a fourth, “They've more ammo than us.”

“Are they opening fire?” asked another voice.

“Naw. They haven't the guts,” said someone else.

Robert put his hands to his face and staggered into the street. The officer waved a hand, and the guns nearby went down. Sheila Neary
stepped deeper into the shelter of the walls. Robert lurched here and there; she looked at him anxiously but didn't know what to do.

“Are you all right, Father Robert?”

He didn't answer her. The officer glanced from her to Robert. He walked over and touched Robert's arm.

“Come in here,” he said quietly, so that only Robert could hear. “Step back out of the way.” Robert allowed himself to be led to a nook in the high sandbags. “Take your time,” said the officer. “I suppose you were in France?”

Robert didn't reply. The two men stood side by side for some moments. Everybody watched from a little distance.

“Wait till he tells them this in America,” Sheila Neary said to the soldiers behind the sandbags.

A red-haired soldier popped up, cocky and bright-eyed as a squirrel. “Father, I've a sister in Philadelphia: Janie Kelly. D'ya know her at all?”

The nonsense, the ludicrousness of the question, broke the spell. Minutes later, Robert and Mrs. Neary walked on.