Free Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan Page A

nothing wrong. When John told him we had no certificates with us, he asked us to swear an oath that we were both baptized and free to marry. The chapel was cold and dark, and the familiar scent of incense reminded me that my father should be there. The friar called out the sacristan, a small man with a face like a ferret. “Mr. O’Neill will be your witness,” he said. “I will count as the second.” It was clear that they had done this a hundred times or more.
    The ceremony was short and somber, but we both said our vows willingly. When we were finished, the friar stood with us outside for a few minutes and John talked politely with him. He asked John about men whom I had never met, and I tugged at John’s hand to indicate that I wanted to move on. I was excited, anxious to enjoy my new husband. Before we left, the friar put a hand on both our foreheads and blessed us, “Be kind and gentle to each other always.”
    The sun was shining and it was so hot that I removed my coat and carried it across my arm. We walked down Dorset Street and turned left toward the heart of the city. I remembered Sheila telling us all how she had come to Dublin and drunk tea in a cafe in the city center. Looking around me, I was enthralled, tripping over my feet as I stared in shop windows, mesmerized by the glossy carriages and the women in feather hats with pale faces and scarlet lips. I saw five or more motorcars trundle past, their noisy engines belching out smoke—smart men at the wheels with hats and suits and big, delighted heads on them. I remembered the place Sheila had talked about—Bewley’s Cafe. I would get John to take me there.
    Suddenly, from about halfway down Sackville Street, the landscape changed. To our left the tall, elegant buildings gave way into a no-man’s-land of rubble. Stones and dust and bricks in a disintegrated heap stood next to half a building with ornate windows and fancy coving that must have been a grand shop. Its side torn off, it looked like a once-lovely woman now destroyed. John stopped and his arm went limp where I was holding it. He was staring at a huge building to our right—like a palace, with tall, white pillars at the front. I was reminded of illustrations I had seen of ancient Rome. “It’s beautiful!” I said.
    He looked at me as if I were mad; he was as white as a sheet. I looked again. Behind the beautiful facade, there was just sky. The fifty or more windows echoed despair and defeat like the cavernous eyes of a skeleton. Burned out, gutted.
    “Is it the GPO?” I felt so stupid for asking.
    Now John was gazing at me strangely—it was as if he wanted to say something and had then decided to hold back. My blood ran cold. Was this where the boy had lain dying? If so, I didn’t want him to name it. I didn’t want to think about death on our wedding day. Searching my new husband’s face for reassurance, I saw that he was gone from me. His shining eyes reflected the rubble that lay all around us, piles of concrete and dust. A cloud passed overhead; the rubble disappeared from his eyes, but the war was still alive in them. There was no love here for me, only for his country and for the boy whom he had held during his dying moments. I felt ghosts were calling to him in a language I didn’t understand.
    I grabbed his arm again, bending it into a crook, letting him know that I needed him too, and started to walk, all but dragging him alongside me. So we marched through the debris of my husband’s war: scraggy waifs building castles out of broken bricks; half-naked workmen hanging from the side of buildings; fancy city people—all of them blind to the destruction, as I might have been had I lived here. As I wanted to be.
    John stopped again at a pile of dust and crumbled stone in the center of the road. A small breeze caught up a puff of gray smoke, some of which settled on the bottom of my skirt. “Bastard Nelson.” It was the only thing he had said since we had left the steps of