“We’re going to the Gresham Hotel. A friend of mine was married today. Since we’re in town, I thought we should attend the celebration. We missed the ceremony at St. Patrick’s, but the party is just beginning.”
“Is this friend the someone you’d like me to meet?”
“No,” he said, and his hand tightened around mine. “Dermot Murphy is a helluva guy. But he’ll only have eyes for Sinead tonight. You might remember Sinead.”
I was certain I would not remember Sinead, and I swallowed back my nerves. We turned off Parnell and onto O’Connell, and the Gresham loomed, overlooking the street. It was the matriarch of the city center, well lit and lively, her occupants spilling out into the misty evening only to turn back again for another go.
We were greeted like royalty, our coats checked with swift efficiency, and we were directed up a set of wide stairs to a private ballroom. Lights twinkled and music trickled, luring us into the wide expanse where a band played and people danced on a floor rimmed by small tables filled with men and women in their wedding finery. A huge bar ringed by stools and hanging lamps sat just beyond the dance floor, and Thomas paused to survey the room, his hand at the small of my back.
“Tommy!” someone yelled, and a few voices joined in, creating a chorus from the back left corner.
He looked down at me and grimaced a little, and I ducked my head, trying not to smile. He removed his hand and squared his shoulders.
“He always calls me Tommy. And then everyone else thinks they can too. Do I look like a Tommy to you?”
A flashbulb went off suddenly, blinding us, and Thomas and I winced, stepping back. We’d paused in just the right place, and the photographer, set up in front of the entrance to capture guests as they arrived, stuck his head out from behind a camera that looked more like a one-eyed accordion and gave us a smile.
“You’ll like how that one turns out, folks. It’s not often I get such a candid shot.”
Seconds later, we were swarmed by several men clapping Thomas on the back and greeting him with cries of welcome at his surprise appearance.
“I thought you’d gone back home, Doc!” was the gleeful refrain, until the men parted and someone else joined the fray.
“Introduce us to the lady, Tommy,” the man said, and I looked up into the speculative gaze of Michael Collins. His hands were shoved in his pockets; his weight was on his heels, his head tipped to the side. He was young. I knew his story, the history, the basic details of his life and his death. But his youth shook me all the same.
I stuck out my hand, doing my best not to tremble and squeal like a fan at a rock concert, but the significance of the moment, the weight of the past, and the measure of the man made my heart quake and my eyes shimmer.
“I’m Anne Gallagher. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Collins.”
“Feckin’ Anne Gallagher,” he said, each syllable deliberate. Then he whistled long and slow.
“Mick,” Thomas rebuked.
Michael Collins looked slightly chagrined and bobbed his head in apology at his language, but he continued to study me, holding my hand in his.
“What do you think of our Tommy, Anne Gallagher?”
I started to answer, but he squeezed my hand and shook his head slightly, warning me, “If you lie to me, I’ll know.”
“Mick,” Thomas cautioned again.
“Tommy. Quiet,” he murmured, his gaze locked on mine. “Do ya love him?”
I breathed deeply, unable to look away from the dark eyes of a man who wouldn’t live to make his own wedding vows, who wouldn’t see his thirty-second birthday, who wouldn’t ever know how truly remarkable he was.
“He’s easy to love,” I answered softly, each word like an anchor mooring me to a time and place that weren’t my own.
Collins whooped and swung me up in his arms, as if I’d just made him a very happy man. “Did you hear that, Tommy? She loves you. If she’d said no, I was going to wrestle you for her. Let’s get a picture!” he demanded, pointing at the smiling photographer. “We need to mark this occasion. Tommy has a lass.”
I couldn’t look at Thomas, couldn’t breathe, but Michael Collins was in charge, and he drew us around him and slung an arm over my shoulder, smirking at the camera as though he’d just bested the Brits. I was flooded with the feeling that I’d seen and done this all before. The bulb flashed and realization dawned. I remembered the picture I’d seen of Anne standing in a group beside Michael Collins and the picture of Thomas and Anne, the suggestion of intimacy in the line of their bodies and the angle of their gazes. Those weren’t photos of my great-grandmother at all.
They were pictures of me.
“Was Thomas in love with Anne?” I’d asked my grandfather.
“Yes and no,” Eoin had answered.
“Oh wow. There’s a story there,” I’d crowed.
“Yes. There is,” he’d whispered. “A wonderful story.”
And now I understood.
26 August 1921
I’ll never forget this day. Anne has gone to bed, and still I sit, watching the fire as though it holds a different, better set of answers. Anne told me everything. And yet . . . I know nothing.
I called Garvagh Glebe before we left for the Gresham Hotel, knowing the O’Tooles would be hovering, waiting for word on Robbie’s condition. There are two telephones in all of Dromahair, and Garvagh Glebe boasts one. I’d rationalized the expense of phone lines; a doctor needed to be easily accessible. But no one else had telephones in rural Ireland. They didn’t call me; they fetched me. The only calls I ever received were from Dublin.
Maggie was waiting breathlessly on the end of the line as the operator patched me through, and I could hear her tears when I told her “my patient” had come through surgery well and that the swelling had receded substantially. She was crying the Rosary as she handed the telephone to Daniel, who thanked me profusely, though he knew better than to specify what for, and then, oddly, he gave me an update on the foal that wasn’t due for another two weeks.
“We went in to check on her this afternoon, Doc . . . and the foal was gone,” Daniel said, his voice slow and heavy with meaning.
It took me a moment to understand.
“Someone’s been in the barn, Doc. It’s gone. Nobody knows where. Liam’s been by to see Brigid, and I had to tell him. He’s upset. He had plans for the foal, as you know. Now, with her being gone . . . we need to figure out who took her. Tell Miss Anne, will you, Doc? Liam is certain she already knows. But I don’t imagine how.”
I was silent, reeling. The guns were gone, and Liam was blaming Anne. Daniel was quiet for a moment too, letting me process his metaphor. I told him we would inquire further when I returned from Dublin. He agreed, and we signed off.
I almost told Anne we weren’t going to the Gresham after all, but when I stepped into her room and saw her, lithe and lovely, her curling mass of hair loosely bound, her eyes warm, and her smile eager, I changed my mind once more.
She held my hand, and I walked, half numb and wholly unprepared for the risk I was taking. All I knew was I wanted Mick to meet her. To reassure me. To absolve me. It was madness, bringing Anne to see him. I don’t know what compelled me to do it or what compelled him to draw a confession from her red lips. It was his way; I knew that well enough by now. He was completely unconventional, but he never failed to surprise me.
He asked her what she thought of me, asked her if she loved me, and with only a small hesitation, the kind that comes from admitting personal things publicly, she said she did. The world spun, my heart leapt, and I wanted to pull her back out into the night where I could keep Mick safe and kiss her silly.
Her colour was high, her eyes were bright, and she couldn’t meet my gaze. She seemed as dazed and dazzled as I, though Mick has that effect on people. He insisted we pose for a picture, then coaxed her onto the dance floor, despite her protestations. “I can’t dance, Mr. Collins!” I heard her say, though she’d always been a frenetic dancer, dragging Declan to his feet whenever there was music.
Mick made up for whatever skill she thought she lacked by tucking her close and doing a simple two-step to the ragtime rhythm that mostly kept them in the same spot. And he talked to her, eyes boring down into hers like he wanted to know all her secrets. I understood the desire. I watched her shake her head and answer him with great seriousness. It was all I could do not to cut in, to save him, to save her, to save myself. It was all madness.
I was pulled towards the corner table, Joe O’Reilly at my side. Tom Cullen put a drink in my hand while the newly released Sean MacEoin, who I had seen and administered to in Mountjoy jail in June, pushed me into a chair. They were ebullient, the calm of the truce and the cessation in hiding and fighting making them loud and loose in their conversation and celebration. I could only marvel. How long had it been since they could sit at the wedding of a friend and not have guards stationed at the doors, watching for patrols, for raids, for arrests?
Mick brought Anne back to the corner table as well, and she fell into a seat beside me and took a long pull from my drink, wincing as she set it down.
“Dance with the woman, Tommy. I’ve monopolized her long enough,” Mick ordered. His eyes were shadowed, and his mood was not nearly as jubilant as his men. They had been relieved, temporarily, of their burdens. He had not, and his nomination to attend the Treaty talks, to play the dancing puppet, was not sitting well on him.
I stood and extended my hand to Anne. She didn’t refuse me but begged patience with her abilities, just like she’d done with Mick.
She was light in my arms, her curls brushing my cheeks, her breath tickling my neck. I am an accomplished dancer. Not from any desire to be so. It is actually the opposite. I feel no pressure to impress, no desire to be noticed, and I approached dancing with the same attitude I have approached most everything else in my life. Dancing was just a skill to be learned and, in the case of traditional Irish dance, an act of defiance.
Anne followed along, stepping as little as possible, swaying against me, her pulse thrumming, her lip caught between her teeth in concentration. I reached up and set it free with the pad of my thumb, and her eyes found mine, looking at me in that very un-Anne-like way. We didn’t speak of her confession, of the growing feelings between us. I didn’t mention the missing guns at Garvagh Glebe.
Then something cracked, and someone screamed, and I pushed Anne behind me. Laughter ensued immediately. It wasn’t a gun; it was champagne. It bubbled and overflowed from a newly uncorked bottle, and Dermot Murphy raised his glass and made a traditional toast about death in Ireland. Death in Ireland meant a life in Ireland, not a life as an immigrant somewhere else.
Glasses were raised in agreement, but Anne had grown still.
“What day is it?” she asked, a note of panic in her voice.
I answered that it was Friday, the twenty-sixth of August.
She began to mumble, as if trying to remember something important. “Friday the twenty-sixth, 1921. August 26, 1921. The Gresham Hotel. Something happens at the Gresham Hotel. A wedding party. Who is getting married? Their names, again?”