The Matchmaker of Kenmare (24 page)

“The long-expected ‘Second Front’ has finally materialized and the crisis of the war is upon us. The first point chosen was the obvious one, the short sea and air passage across the English Channel to the Seine Valley
and the north of France. Parachutists and glider-borne troops, estimated by the Germans to number four divisions, opened the invasion about midnight on Monday night.”

I stopped reading—to let the picture form in my mind, to let the negative develop. Looking for focus, I glanced across the page. A film called
By Hook or by Crook
starred Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. It was the feast of Saint Colman.
Uncle Vanya
was playing at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

On the other side of the editorial, the newspaper carried General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day to his troops. “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.”

At last the photograph developed into a print. Mr. Seefeld had been trying to eavesdrop on the plans for an invasion that the Germans felt certain would take place. That’s why Miller wanted him—to find out how much the Germans knew, how much code they had cracked.

I sent a telegram to Miss Begley, told her where I would be, and received a letter in return:

And then I remembered that she had taken the notes of the Seefeld debriefing, and that she therefore had known of all this in advance, and had never breathed a word to me, the man she said she trusted most in the world. In what other ways did she trust me—meaning, what else did she know that I didn’t?

I spent June and July of ’44 as I’d always tried to do—helping farmers with their harvest. In their houses at night, I gathered so much material that I often filled a notebook in a week. And I went home again, where I was able to sleep more soundly than anywhere.

Mother’s need for my company lifted my spirits, and my father seemed to compete with her for time spent with me. Evening after evening, morning after morning, the three of us dined and breakfasted together, and he, I was pleased to observe, paid her more attention than he’d ever done.

“No-no-no, let me pour that for you.” And, “I-I-I’m always telling you—you should wear blue, look at how lovely you look.”

He found a baby rabbit in the fields and brought it home to her, but Large Lily, our housekeeper (Billy Flock’s wife), left the kitchen door open, and the little creature ran away.

That year—perhaps it was the summer weather—they seemed to have aged less than previously, and Mother had commandeered extra square yards of the garden for raspberry canes, from which she got a bulging crop. And she’d added another beehive.

The war provided our main topic of conversation and we began to take an extra newspaper every day. All three of us agreed on everything—especially the fact that more fighting was taking place in France than any of us had expected. I told them the story of Miss Begley and her life and her new bridegroom, and I might have been unwrapping gifts for them, such a keen interest did they take.

Mother whispered to me later that she’d thought of telling me to invite Miss Begley for a few days, but decided against it.

“I didn’t want to risk it with your father,” she said.

Meaning that she was never again going to take the chance of letting my father anywhere near an attractive young woman.

As the weeks shone ever brighter, and the war became bloodier, I kept wondering where Captain Miller was at work. Had he now become a warrior in uniform, like the massed regiments of Americans who had landed in France on D-Day? Or was he deep behind enemy lines, pretending to be a Belgian or a Frenchman or even a German? Or, indeed, was he still alive—a question Miss Begley too must have been asking herself? In early July she sent me another missive: “I’m lonely.”

I’d hoped to be in Donegal, on the track of the wolf story. Yet, I found a means to justify the change of plans. I’d long promised myself a visit to the headland above Smerwick Harbor where I hoped—without much basis—to check a tale that I’d heard.

When the Spanish Armada foundered along that southwestern coast in 1588, the English soldiers were waiting, and they massacred the survivors who struggled ashore. As a child, I’d been told that the bodies lay in open graves, and I’d nursed the idea that I’d see the Spaniards in their armor, in those silver Cortés helmets and spiked halberds, lying faceup to the sky and the Atlantic clouds. And although I’d allowed for skeletons, my imagination refused to permit the armor to have rusted; I wanted it still shining and silver bright.

I never got to Smerwick. When I rolled up to Lamb’s Head at around two o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Begley sat outside as though waiting for somebody. She ran to me like a rocket and heaved herself into my arms.

“He’s here, he’s here,” she whispered, and I said, “Where?”

She pointed to the house and said, “Asleep. He’s tired out.”

“When did he arrive?” and she said, “Yesterday. Just after I sent for you. I had no warning.”

“For how long?”

“If I can I’ll kidnap him.”

I said, “That’d probably be treason somewhere.”

“Nana’s not here. She went down to her friends in Kenmare. To give us a bit of space.”

I said, “Stand here where I can see you.” She stood like a child, and I tipped her face up to the light. The sun came out to look at her.

Something had changed. Had I known then of the anguish in her journal, I’d have named the change, identified its root.

She asked, “Do I look married?”

I said, “You look great. How is he?”

“Very silent. A lot on his mind. But—well, he’s glorious, really.”

Above the collar of his army shirt he wore a long, serious plaster on one side of his neck; a blue bruise lit the ridge over his right eye. Miss Begley hovered, maternal like many women when they’re happy.

Captain Miller said, “Don’t say it.”

And I said, “What?”

“Everybody comes out with, ‘Well, you’ve been in the wars,’ and I say, ‘Well, yessir, I have, that’s what I do for a living.’ ”

And we laughed, and the ice was broken, and he shook hands with me like a president, even though I must have felt like an invasion.

He said, “Thanks so much, Ben.”

She said, “He means for looking after me.”

I flapped my arms, very like a duck, because I couldn’t think of anything to say or anything else to do.

While Miss Begley prepared a meal, Captain Miller wandered out and I followed him. Standing a little behind him—although he knew that I was there—he murmured something.

“Excuse me?” I said, and stepped forward.

He continued to look at the sea. “I said—have you been intimate with Kate?”

I said, “No. God, no.”

“Didn’t you want to be?”

“Well, if I say ‘no’ you might ask me, ‘Why, what’s wrong with her?’ and if I say ‘yes,’ you might feel you want to warn me off. She and I, we’re close friends. That’s all.”

“What do you think of her?”

“Of Miss Begley?”

He said, “I love the way you still call her ‘Miss Begley.’ ”

“It’s how we started. What do I think of her? Well, I think she’s—well, just delightful.”

“Is she moody? I can’t stand a woman who’s moody.”

I said, “She’s very forthright. She knows what she doesn’t like.”

“What doesn’t she like about you, Ben?”

“I used to drink too much.”

“She has anger in her, doesn’t she?” he said, and inside me I flared at the criticism of my friend. “And I think she may turn out to be a nagging wife.”

“But she’s remarkable,” I said.

He jumped in with, “Oh, do you think so?” and went on to say, “I can’t believe that I’m married.”

My mind raced.
How do I counter this?

“So many men wanted to marry her,” I said.

It didn’t work. He said, “But they were all Irishmen,” and his tone implied,
That doesn’t count
. “I wonder how she’ll fit in back home,” he said.

I replied, “You could always live here.”

“I don’t like the old lady,” he said. “And she could live to be a hundred.” Then he paused and asked the worst question: “Do you know any gossip about your Miss Begley?”

And still I didn’t dislike him; I should have, out of loyalty, but I didn’t.

“She has a stainless character,” I said.

And he retorted, “Nobody has.”

He bent down and picked up a stone. Ten yards away, one of the
boulders displayed a white circular badge, an old lichen stain the size of a beer coaster. Charles Miller threw the stone and hit that mark so hard and squarely that the pebble’s imprint on it can be seen to this day. Then he walked back into the house.

We ate bacon and cabbage, and a pile of new potatoes; they were round and white and innocent, and covered in melting butter and parsley. No beer; no liquor of any kind—we drank tall glasses of milk, and he had water from the Lamb’s Head well and declared it as good as gin.

I had time and opportunity to look at him closer. He had damaged his left hand; a bandage wrapped two fingers together, and when I looked again at his neck and eyebrow, I began to take in all the other marks on his face, and the jocose words came back, “Yes, you have been in the wars.”

I had a coughing fit. Over and over, I had tried to persuade myself that the experience of winning Venetia, and then of losing her, and the awful manner of the loss—all that must surely have insulated me against the more extreme swings of life. I was, of course, wrong. I coughed and coughed until I had to leave the table, step outside, and recover. When I came back in, Miss Begley was stooping by Captain Miller’s chair, touching the long sticking-plaster on his neck and throat, and they stopped their conversation when they heard me.

After dinner, they disappeared into Miss Begley’s room, and I didn’t see them again that night. Next morning, not long after dawn, I heard an engine in the lane outside, and—almost in stealth—Captain Miller left. A great unnatural hush fell over the house. I waited, uncertain, but wide awake. In time, I arose, shaved with the chilling water of the washstand pitcher, dressed, and made my tentative way into the kitchen. No sign of life there.

I went out. No Miss Begley there either; a faint smell of car engine,
oil, gasoline hung in the air. Down in the bay, a trawler much like Bawn Buckley’s shuffled northwest between me and Deenish Island, probably heading around Hogs Head to Ballinskelligs or Waterville with fish for the day’s hotel trade.

No life did I find in the atmosphere; no life in the cottage’s mood. So completely inert did everything feel that I assumed Miss Begley had left with Captain Miller.

And once again I misjudged. Two hours and more later, as I sat drinking yet another cup of tea at the kitchen table, she shuffled red-eyed from her room, moving with all the heaviness of an old lady. Head down like a sad child, she made straight for me, clambered into my personal space, sat on my knee, and wrapped herself around my neck and shoulders.

“He’s gone,” she said, “and they’ll kill him.”

I said, “Shhh. Shhh.”

She stayed like that, clinging to me.

“What in God’s name will I do, Ben?”

I said, “You’d tell me to pull myself together. Not to mope. That’s what you’d tell me.”

“But I don’t know how to stop it. It’s like dying.”

“Come on.”

I dislodged her, led her by the hand out into the sunshine, and stood behind her, watching as she gazed out to sea. She wore a nightdress of white lawn, neither opaque nor transparent—but thin enough for me to see the outline of her hips through the fabric, light visible between her parted legs.

Now I felt the lunge again—a wild swing into erotic attraction, and a retreat back to fond affection. Lover or friend or—even—potential wife: The question attacked me like a vandal swinging a club. Not only had I seen her naked, I had lain body to body with her; and I had slept—or stayed awake—in the same bed. I knew that she spoke to me in a way she never spoke to any other, not even to Miller—and I wondered whether she would be my friend for life. Or one day my wife.

“Will you stay?” she said.

“I can’t. I have to go.”

“Come back soon, will you?”

What can you do when you look back on your life and appraise so many of your misjudgments? What’s your consolation? That morning, I
pitied Kate Begley for the error she had made—as I saw it. I felt that she was unequipped for the marriage, for the war, for the world.

She, though, as I would discover, didn’t think like that. Whereas I viewed her as some sort of rustic folk maven, plying her vernacular skills out there in the wilds, she considered her matchmaking the opposite of confining. She saw it as something that had great potential, and varied application, something crucially useful and universal.

In short, I misjudged her, I was wrong to pity her, and it could have been fatal. I told her that I’d try to visit her every month until her husband came back. Or didn’t—though of course I never said that.