“But she didn’t say anything about any Americans or these … Provos? I don’t even really know what he was saying.”
Conor took a deep breath and leaned back against the wall. “That’s … I’d say his implication was that the Americans were over as part of some kind of arms-smuggling arrangement. Or maybe just arranging financing.”
I stared at him. “And Erin was somehow connected with these guys?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought they were trying to recruit her.”
“What? To the IRA?”
“One of the splinter groups, like. I know it sounds mental, but it’s happened. Not recently, though. It feels like a bit of a relic of the seventies and eighties, if you know what I mean. But a clean passport, an American who can travel freely. I’ve heard stories, but it’s probably pretty uncommon.”
I say, “Erin, she … I never heard her talk about any of that stuff. I don’t think she even, like, understood the Troubles. I tried to explain the demographics of Northern Ireland to her once when some guys got into an argument at the bar, and she didn’t understand it. I mean, beyond singing ‘The Foggy Dew’ on Saint Patrick’s Day, I never heard her talk about politics. I don’t think she could have told you what ‘home rule’ meant.” He was watching me, a little smile on his face. “What?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to offend you.”
“You were about to say that not understanding Northern Ireland has never stopped Americans getting involved before?”
He grinned. “Yeah, but.” We stared at each other for a long moment.
A couple of guys at the front started playing traditional tunes, not a proper session, just the two guys, a guitar and a fiddle between them.
Now he was watching me. “You’re a bit of an Irish history buff, are you?”
“I went to Notre Dame for English and focused on Irish Studies. I got a prize and everything.”
“Really?” I liked the way he said really. He found vowels in it I didn’t even know it had. “Erin never said. Are you in grad school?”
“No, I was planning on it. I was about to do my junior year here but then my mother got really sick. And then she died. And after all that was over … I don’t know. It was all I could do to finish my undergrad degree.” He didn’t say anything for a minute, so I went on, babbling out of nervousness. “Maybe I’ll still go. I really like it here, even with … I don’t know what I’m doing, to be honest with you. I’ve been working at my uncle’s bar. I think I sort of just felt like, what was the point, you know? Did I really want to spend the rest of my life reading and rereading one particular passage of Joyce and, like, writing about chickens in his work or something? I mean…”
He had an amused look on his face and I realized with horror what I’d done. “Oh God,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing. “I just totally offended you, didn’t I? Oh my God, you’re studying chickens in twentieth-century Irish history, aren’t you? What are you studying?” I covered my face with my hands. But I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.
He was laughing, too. “Well, yes, it’s true, I’ve devoted my entire academic career to … the role of chickens in late-twentieth-century Irish political history, but you know, you’re right. It’s totally pointless, so if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just go and off myself in the toilet.” He pretended to get up, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back onto his stool. He fell against me and I felt a charge of energy when he grabbed my arm to steady himself.
There was a raucous shout of laughter from the other end of the bar. The guys were playing a jig now and a drunk tourist was trying to dance.
“I’m so sorry. What are you really studying? I bet it’s hugely important to the survival of the planet.”
He put on a mock formal voice and said, “Irish neutrality during the Emergency and the development of European identity.”
“Hmmm. Interesting.” “The Emergency” was the term used to describe the World War II years in Ireland. “What are you writing about?”
“Right now I’m writing about the secret negotiations between Ireland and the US to buy arms during the war.”
“Did we sell them to you?”
“No. You rejected us.”
“I’m so sorry. I thought we had this special relationship, America and Ireland. I took a whole class about it.”
“Ah, but you see, there was FDR, who was very pro-British. You also have a special relationship with Britain, a very, very special relationship. And see, that’s always been the tough thing about our relationship.”
I swallowed, ventured. “Is that right? That’s the tough thing about our relationship?”
He laughed. “I don’t know what the tough thing is about our relationship, mind you…” He grinned at me and I felt my heart shift. “But the tough thing about the Emergency was that Roosevelt wasn’t going to do anything to go against Downing Street, even though there was the Irish and American relationship, fed and watered by Irish Americans in Boston and New York and—”
“And Long Island, probably.”
“And Long Island.”
“So what happened? We wouldn’t sell you any guns?”
“No, you wouldn’t. Though you made up for it later.”
“Northern Ireland?”
He studied me for a minute. “You and Erin, you grew up around the bar, right?” I nodded. “Did your uncle have a bucket hanging on the wall? For the widows and orphans in the north?”
I hadn’t thought about it in years, but suddenly I remembered it. It had disappeared at some point, but when I was little, it had been there. “Yeah. He did. Was that the IRA?”
“In the late sixties, when the civil rights protests started in Northern Ireland, things got really violent. Once internment of IRA members started, people started raising money for the internees’ families and for the widows and orphans of hunger strikers. NORAID’s the big one most people know. But loyalist groups and the British government have always claimed that NORAID was actually fund-raising for the Provisional IRA.”
“Were they?”
“There was certainly some mission creep there. You have to remember that the Troubles started with the civil rights protests and the slaughter of protestors on Bloody Sunday. From there, different groups sort of used the struggle for their own purposes.”
“That bucket. I never thought anything of it. But he took it down in the eighties when I was in high school.”
“Yeah, the Provisional IRA leaders would go over and talk to the NORAID guys in New York. They’d do the rounds and rally the troops and raise some money. By the eighties, Reagan and Thatcher had such a romance going that the general American attitude toward Northern Ireland shifted. But there are bars in the Bronx and Boston that still pass the bucket.”
“But Erin?” I was trying to think now, trying to remember. “She never said anything to you about being involved with anything like that?”
“No,” he said. But there was something. His brown eyes narrowed and flashed. “I just thought of something, though. Not about that, but only…”