The Matchmaker of Kenmare Page 13

  He was interrupted by Miss Mangan saying, “What kind do you like? ’Cause if I’d known I’d have brought some.”

  At which Miss Begley offered a burst of enthusiasm, saying, “Do you know those, do you call them cream horns? They look like a small cornucopia, and they have cream and strawberry jam.”

  I had the sense that Neddy the Drover wouldn’t have known a cornucopia if it licked his ear, and Miss Mangan had no greater understanding of the word, but she did appreciate the individual pastry, because she said, “Cream horns, yes, and for the little bit of variety, I sometimes puts in raspberry jam instead of the strawberry jam.”

  To which Neddy the Drover said with a sigh, “That’s inspired, like.”

  Clinking brought tea and Miss Begley did the fussing.

  “Now, I’ve to go and do a small job out in the yard,” she said, “and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I saw her stride out through the front door—and within moments she tiptoed through the door behind me, a shushing finger to her lip, a hand cupped to her ear.

  We stayed there, Miss Begley with her head cocked a little, me with pen and notebook, eavesdropping from our silent place. The trysters in the kitchen warmed to each other, and when we sensed that the eating and drinking had concluded, Miss Begley left my side, quit the room, retraced her steps, and bustled back in through her own front door.

  “You were hungry people,” she cried. “Will either of you have more?”

  Miss Mangan and her cattle-droving swain made demurring sounds, and Miss Begley drew up her chair. I sensed importance.

  “Now,” she said. “I’ve a few words to say to the two of you. My grandmother has made over four hundred matches. And with the exception of a few bereavements, and one match where the pair of them were complete rogues, all those people are still together, happily married.”

  Miss Mangan made a pleased, gurgling sound. I fancied that I heard Neddy the Drover’s rented teeth clash a little, but I may have imagined it. Miss Begley continued and I made more notes.

  “I learned a lot from watching my grandmother, and I’m going to say to the two of you what she says to every couple she introduced. This is what she says: ‘I hope the two of you get on well with each other, and I believe you will. But there’s a rule you’ve to follow—and you have to follow it from this moment on, no matter what happens. Neither of you is ever—not ever, not even once—you’re never, never deliberately to do anything that’d hurt the other, or make them feel low. If you do, you’ll have to answer to me. D’you understand that and agree to it?’ That’s what my grandmother would say if she were the one making this match.”

  Neddy the Drover got there first. “Oh, miss, like, she’s right, isn’t she, without a doubt, why would a person do a bad thing like that?”

  Miss Mangan followed by saying, “That’s a very good rule. If more persons only obeyed such a rule.”

  As Miss Begley remarked to me later, “Miss Mangan is still carrying an injury to the heart. She’s not over the fellow who ditched her. She was actually standing at the altar when he never arrived.”

  To the couple she offered some more words.

  “You’ve plenty of time to practice, and what you should be practicing is how to hold your tongue. Most people’s problems would never happen if they thought first and spoke later. Words aren’t like chickens. You can’t call them back once you’ve let them out.”

  Then she dispatched them. “Go and sit on the rocks and look at the sea, and talk to each other. And I’ll see both of you back here in a couple of weeks.”

  When they had gone, Mrs. Holst appeared from the other wing of the long, low house where she too had been listening. I walked, blinking, into the kitchen.

  “What do you think, Nana?” asked Miss Begley.

  “That’ll take,” said the grandmother. “They’ll be married before Lent.”

  44

  As the afternoon’s chemistry warmed the two departing hopefuls, I felt a familiar and loathsome chill return—my own sense of loss. Often at the moment when I thought I had it under control, it rose again like some sinister yeast, forced the lid off its box, and foamed down the sides. Whenever I encountered comfort and warm good feeling, I had to fight off tormenting images of Venetia. Mostly I lost the fight.

  We stood for a moment at the cottage doorway, watching the couple depart. I took Miss Begley’s arm and steered her out into the winter light, toward the steep cliff path. We halted at the place where she used to watch for what she called “the anxious fishermen” coming in search of wives. I blinked away the sudden rush of tears, for once able to track my own emotions and bring them under control.

  Down to my left, I could see the white horses on the waves galloping miles and miles of ocean as they charged the rocky shores of Deenish and Scarriff and Derrynane, then retreated and charged once more. Darkness from the rocky shadows cloaked the pool behind the jetty, waters magical enough for sea creatures. The sounds of the day ran around us high and free, with, always, the ocean mumbling and grunting and roaring below, like a beast beneath the ground.

  To take my mind off myself, I said, “You did that very well.”

  As I said it, I realized how rarely I’d paid her a compliment—because she blushed.

  “Oh, do you think so?” and then asked, “What was it that I did particularly well?”

  “You were gracious,” I said, “and you were firm. You were their leader.”

  She looked out to sea and said nothing for a moment. Then she spoke, slowing her speech.

  “Sometimes I hear them,” she said. “The voices on the wind. Mama’s voice, she was a lovely singer. And Dada laughing. Did you ever hear anything like that? Voices, I mean?”

  I said, “Oh, God, yes.”

  She said, “They’ll come back here someday, I know that.” When she saw my anxious face she changed her mood and asked, “How am I going to help you with your loss?”

  I said, “By not going to France.”

  She said, “Matchmaking gives me a special power. I know things. I learn things.”

  I have here in front of me the notes she wrote that night:

  A successful day. I introduced Mr. E.H., a Cattle Drover from Clare, to Miss E.M., a Baker’s Assistant from Kenmare. Each has something the other needs. She’s a fearful girl since being jilted, and she wants a steady man who will be hers and hers alone. He’s a greatly deprived and lonely fellow, with a very good nature, and he can’t imagine that a woman would be interested in him, so his eye will never rove. She needs an audience for her cooking and housework. He, always on the roads, needs a dream to come home to—a warm fireplace with happy flames and a smell of baking. They’ll fit physically; he’s built like a house, she has hips as wide and soft as a bed. Receipts: 200 from him, 100 from her.

  Their tryst was witnessed by my friend the folklore man, Ben MacCarthy, who sat behind the door in the spare room and made notes. I saw tears in his eyes as he listened to the conversation between the couple.

  I was so slow in those days. Too slow to see what had already been unleashed between Miss Begley and “CM,” too slow to understand how each was playing the other. And too slow to grasp that Kate Begley’s life might have been sheltered out there on the edge of the ocean, but her mind wasn’t.

  45

  March 1944

  No parachutes, no tap on the window in the dead of night, no submarine surfacing off the headland. Instead, after weeks of uncertain waiting, we got Bawn Buckley. The old smuggler himself docked his boat one bright morning, climbed up the headland path, strode into the kitchen, and said, “Are ye ready, lads?”

  And Mrs. Holst, face as sweet as a cake, smile as ready as a child’s, never asked a question, never queried our departure. Did everybody know everything—except me?

  If it’s night, and I’m returning from one of the Irish islands, I always feel the mainland approaching. Perhaps it’s because I have a sense of how long the journey should take. Or perhaps it’s bec
ause great landmasses tell you when they’re near. France did.

  If we were stopped and boarded—by either side—we were neutral. That was the whole point. We’d be taken, we hoped, for a fishing boat from the southwest of Ireland who had been fouled by German apparatus and war debris, causing us to put into port at Le Crotoy, renowned for mending nets.

  Miss Begley slept for much of the journey. When she did join us in the little wheelhouse, she seemed as calm as wool. Bawn Buckley whistled and sang; he was, Miss Begley told me, an outstanding navigator. If he said that he was going to find landfall at Le Crotoy, then he would. And he treated her with tender, grandfatherly regard.

  We hung offshore waiting for the tide. Bawn Buckley said that the skies promised weeks of unseasonal good weather. The long, comforting shape of France hardened through the breaking light. Not a vessel did we see in that quiet dawn. We stayed outside for another hour, as though becalmed, and when a small fishing smack headed in past us, we followed and sauntered into the harbor.

  There’s not much to see in Le Crotoy, except massive expanses of beach. When the tide ebbs, the sands have almost a desert feeling. Hazes shimmer over them, even in cold weather, and mirages appear—of hills and dunes and silver pools that vanish as you near them. Miss Begley and I were to walk those sands for three days. We were expected, we discovered, in the tiny hotel; Bawn Buckley stayed on the boat.

  Were we afraid? That’s the question I asked her as we walked those wide sands, those long days. In the flat sunshine and air cold as frost, Miss Begley kept on a woolen hat, as close to her head as a helmet.

  She said, “I don’t know whether I’m excited or afraid.”

  But once again, Miss Begley knew far more than I did, because on our first walk she said, “We have to go north along the beach for an hour. Then we’ve to turn and walk back for an hour. Then out for another hour. Then back to the harbor café.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  She said, “Just walk.”

  On the third day, midway through our first hour, with the tide far out, a galloping horse appeared. Far, far down the sands from us, its hooves sent up flights of spray. In the distance we could tell only that it was equine. No color discernible, or breed. We stopped to watch.

  A bareback rider. We stared. The horse veered toward us. It increased its speed. A teenage girl—that was the rider. Draped low along the neck. Gripping the mane. She never looked at us. As she thundered past, ten yards away, a tiny package fell.

  I retrieved it; an old ring box, glue-wrapped in strong blue paper. No indication whence it came. We opened it with Miss Begley’s fingernails. Inside, we found a square packet of the same tough blue paper. Unfolded it had only the word Larbaud. We walked on.

  When we returned to the café for lunch, Bawn Buckley joined us. He took the piece of paper, had a furtive look. After lunch we walked the sands again, and at the end of the day we wandered down to the men and women sewing the repairs in the nets.

  Under Miss Begley’s tuition, I had been practicing my newfound vocabulary on the locals. For instance, I ordered our food at each meal. Blinking in the late sun among the net menders, I now asked if the name “Larbaud” meant anything to them. A man complimented me on my French—“Bravo! M’sieu d’Irlande,” and a woman too.

  Nobody answered the question. But there are ways of not answering a question so that the inquirer is not offended. We strolled away, into the little café for dinner. A waitress more or less marched us to the big sea-view window. Miss Buckley nudged me.

  Parked outside stood a bright yellow van with the name Cirque Valéry Larbaud. Beside it, in the sunny evening, stood a man and a girl, juggling colored plates to each other—husband and much younger wife, we would discover. Both wore clown suits without the faces or red noses, though he had a conical hat with yellow pom-poms.

  “Now what do we do?” I whispered.

  Miss Begley murmured, “Why do you think they gave us this table?”

  The landlord, lean as a greyhound, long, sallow face, one eyelid drooping, came over. He muttered, “Très chaud,” and opened the window beside the circus.

  The jugglers now began to sing. In French, it had the weight and lilt of a folk song, and they sang it very slowly in time to the rhythm of the juggling.

  Miss Begley looked at me, her cheeks reddening, and said, “I have it. The song. They’ll pick us up tonight.” She waited. “They’re repeating it—two o’clock. Listen.” And they sang the chorus over and over, “Deux heures. Ici. Deux heures. Ici.”

  The pair of clowns finished juggling and held out a hat. I dropped some coins through the open window, as did Miss Begley. And so did two men I hadn’t seen until that moment—German officers, coarse yet starched young men who applauded and walked off. With tooting horns and rattling bells, the Larbaud circus pulled away from the café, and we heard it clang up the little streets of Le Crotoy.

  Later that evening, we alerted Bawn Buckley to the fact that we might be missing for some time. When we returned from the boat, the landlord with the drooping eyelid handed me an alarm clock. It was set to 1:45 A.M.

  46

  There was no moon when we rose, yet the light seemed not to have left the sky. Shoals can cause this effect; a great movement of fish just beneath the surface will grant a light to the sea. That night I saw the gleam of Heaven in the water and the sky. I always associate the color silver with hope.

  The drooping-eye landlord gave us mugs of hot chocolate. As we drank, he peered through the window. Soon, he snapped his fingers at us and opened the café door. Outside, a man appeared, the husband who had juggled. He said not a word, merely turned so that we followed the beam from his very weak flashlight.

  We walked through short twists and turns, past the high dark bulk of a church. A steep lane took us down to a sheet of water. In a rowing boat, the juggling young wife waited. We stepped on board, and as she cast off she waved good-bye to her husband.

  In all of this, nobody spoke. We did as bidden or as events indicated.

  “Go where others lead; do as you’re told,” Captain Miller had said in London. My fear had been that we’d forget some of the instructions, but in the moment they were few, and they never amounted to more than, “Follow what happens.”

  The curly-haired wife rowed like an athlete—long, powerful strokes that disturbed little water. Within ten minutes or so, she nosed the boat into an inlet, a lagoon. She steered us under trailing branches and tied the boat to a ring on a wooden fence.

  We followed her up a long staircase. Now we had almost no light, because trees surrounded the place and deep foliage hemmed in the walls. At the top of a long climb, she tapped on a door, and waited.

  In the silence, I listened to the night. I heard almost nothing—perhaps a slight wash from the water below, perhaps a rustle of leaves. For that moment I had a sensation that recurs with me and is not uncomfortable—that there was no world and I didn’t exist.

  Our guide folded her arms in a patient attitude, and we took our cue from her. The waiting felt like three or four minutes, a long time on a sightless, soundless night. When the curly-haired woman’s shape disappeared from the gloom, we followed her into deeper darkness. A presence beside us closed a door and drew a curtain; I heard the bolt rattling home.

  Then light flooded, and we blinked inside a French farmhouse kitchen, of a kind that I’ve seen many times since. A woman stepped forward, dressed for a day out in the world, though the porcelain clock on the mantel now said a quarter past three in the morning. She welcomed us with friendly if unsmiling handshakes and indicated the room.

  At a table sat four men. One of these was her husband, a farmer—the lady of the house, we would learn, was the local doctor. Of the other three, all very much younger, two belonged to the British and American forces. And one—who became and remains my friend—led the local maquis, the French Resistance. Hugo Barrive’s name was on every wanted poster in every village in the north of France.


  He spoke first, in perfect English, with a very slight accent: “May I have your names, please?” and when we’d answered without a hint of fear or reserve he said, “Sit down.”

  No drinks were offered, no informalities, and the curly-haired, juggling wife, Annette Larbaud, sat a little away from the table, as did the doctor, a frown on her face too.

  “Thank you for coming here,” said Barrive, “and we will now tell you the details of the assignment. We are most appreciative of your help, and Captain Miller has our gratitude.”

  “We have a question.” When Miss Begley butted in on any situation, her force of presence, and the clarity of her speech, and perhaps the unusual Irish accent, ensured that she was heard.

  The maquisard and the three other men turned a little in their chairs.

  Miss Begley said, “Will anybody be killed because of what we do?”

  Barrive said, “This is war.”

  “We won’t have anything to do with anything that gets somebody killed,” she said.

  Hugo Barrive said, “But you will save a lot of lives.”

  “You don’t know that.” She was scolding him. “But you will know if somebody gets killed. I only ever act on what I know, and I won’t do something if it’s going to have a bad end. And I won’t do something just because somebody tells me it might have a good end. This gentleman you’re going after, he was my neighbor. He was married to my friend.”

  The maquisard surveyed Miss Begley as a man looks at a pretty girl in a bar. He smiled and said, “A defined moral position, is that it?”

  “I don’t care what you call it.” She spoke in a civilized way, with no rudeness, but as direct as a knife.

  “What do you need?” he said.

  And she replied, “There’s to be nobody killed in anything we do for you.”

  “What do you think it is that we want you to do?”