The Matchmaker of Kenmare Page 5

  My professional interest kicked in. Who were these women and girls? I knew who they were—the future wives and mothers of the southwest. Kate Begley was, among other things, the broker of the next generation.

  13

  As a consequence of my fight, she told me, Miss Begley changed her plans; she decided not to stay Saturday night in Killarney. With no more than a quick introduction to the two young Americans, she arranged for a hackney driver to take her back home. She insisted that I go with her. En route she sat as far away as she could from me in the back of the car and spoke not at all. I, dabbing my split lip, feeling the sore bumps on my head, speculated that she might have been disgusted.

  Dawn had almost broken on the coast. As the hackney clattered and rattled away back down the lane, Miss Begley halted at the door and didn’t lift the latch. She laid a hand on my arm and a finger to her lips. And then I heard what she was hearing: the ocean.

  We stood there for long minutes, amid the beating and shushing noises, with now and then a seabird’s call. When she stepped forward on the little plateau outside the house, I followed. A low sea-mist had draped the coast in a long gray stole. Above its shoulders, offshore and inshore, I could see the hundreds of scattered rocky outposts, fragments of the ancient mainland.

  Maybe it’s the pure vision of hindsight, but I swear the ocean at that moment represented something. My personal history had left me charged up by words such as destiny and fate and I began to feel as though I were standing on the edge of something else enormous, something that would prove as far beyond my control as the white breakers below.

  Kate Begley felt it too. I know it, I saw it. She covered her face with her hands as if she’d had a sudden surge of emotion. I eased forward for a better view of her, and for the first time I saw her vulnerability. I saw the child who had lost her parents and who had countered that loss using such tools of life as she could muster—courage, skill with people, any small power she could get her hands on. Most of all she relied upon a blind faith that her lost parents would return to her one day.

  Standing there with her, in the gray, tremendous silence, remains one of my most powerful images of our relationship—which, in all its myriad forms, began in earnest that dawn.

  14

  I slept so deeply that she had to shake me at noon. My head and stomach hurt.

  “Every pain is a lesson, don’t you know that?” But she giggled as she said it. (By the way, it seems that she destroyed her notes regarding the brawl at the Farmers’ Dance; there’s evidence of pages ripped from her journal around that date.)

  The house, when I reached the kitchen, had the same air of blue coolness looking out on brilliant sun that you’ll also find in deep France or the American Midwest. August on the southwest coast of Ireland offers two seasons at the same time—deep summer and rising fall; that morning, they had merged again. I lurched straight for the open door, across to the mouth of the steep little pathway, paused, and sucked in ozone to clear my head.

  Miss Begley followed, sidestepping spiky yellow gorse. On the fast slope, I feared losing my footing but I didn’t want to stop. Yesterday’s drinking and last night’s fight had now begun to stab me; remorse is a knife that twists when it’s in you. As the familiar abuse ramped up inside my head, I walked harder—but I began to slip on the steep grass. The waves lashed up, too close for comfort, their menace a cold cobalt on that heavenly, serene day.

  “Where d’you think you’re going?” she called down.

  Outwardly, I didn’t answer. Inwardly: To perdition, muttered my mind. To the green, cold safety of the seabed. To oblivion—again.

  “If you fall,” she shouted, “you’ll slide down onto those rocks and into the sea. I won’t be able to help you.”

  I halted and turned back.

  “What are you doing?” She had her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to run away from me?”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  True emotional pain is internal. We keep it to ourselves. Sorry. Yes, sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry am I that my spirit has died. Sorry’s the name of the horse I ride.

  “Ben MacCarthy, what’s up with you?”

  I repeated, “I’m sorry. I want to apologize. The fighting and that.”

  “Did you think I was going to scold you?”

  “But I was badly behaved—”

  She wouldn’t let me protest. “Come on, Ben.” She held out both hands, like a forgiving mother to a small child. “Come on. You’ve had enough trouble.”

  I said, “But I didn’t behave well.”

  She said, “You got me home safely, didn’t you?”

  I began to climb back up the pathway, saying good-bye to some vague notion of shriving myself in the chilling sea. She took my hands.

  “You’ll be all right. We’ll get you there.”

  Light on her feet as a pony, Miss Begley turned and went ahead of me.

  Back inside the house, Mrs. Holst sat at the fireplace. She said nothing, didn’t even glance at me.

  Hey, Mrs. Holst. It’s me, Ben. Come on, you old bitch, look at me. Tell me why you don’t like me. If I told you that I’ll one day likely inherit four hundred acres of prime Tipperary land—you’d look at me then, wouldn’t you?

  I hadn’t seen her on my pained way through, and I apologized.

  “My head isn’t very clear this morning, I’m afraid, but that lovely day out there—it’ll clear soon.”

  Well, we don’t have to speak to each other, you disapproving old sow.

  ——

  No electricity in that house, and no running water; they cooked on the fire, which even now in the late summer smoldered with peat, not too hot, and aromatic—most comforting.

  At lunch, I ate little and remained as silent as good manners permitted. The women chatted to each other, principally about the dance. Miss Begley’s smiles for her grandmother, her touches—a hand on the shoulder, a fetching of food, an adjusting of her shawl—warmed, I felt, not just that kitchen, but the entire coastline back as far as Dingle.

  I had notes to write and returned to the room in which I’d slept. Through my open door I could hear Miss Begley tell Mrs. Holst about the girls she had interviewed. She made her grandmother laugh out loud many times—and she never mentioned my regrettable antics.

  A couple of hours later, when the afternoon had grown quieter, the rest of our lives began. We all heard the engine, we all listened from our respective chairs, and I swear to this day that I knew who had arrived—the two young American soldiers from last night. A third man rode with them, and he was the world changer.

  15

  For the moment, I’ll stick to the simple facts of what I saw in him that day. I saw a serious, considered fellow a few years older than I and some inches bigger. His name, he told me, with a handshake of oak, was Charles Miller. He had a grave, open face and large eyes.

  By now, since so much is over and done with, I can say what the grandmother, Mrs. Holst, told me years later: “From the moment Miller walked through that door,” she said, “I sensed the power and felt the fear.”

  She was like that, Mrs. Holst; I tend to scoff at all claims of hindsight. In that case, however, I’m inclined to give the old woman the benefit of the doubt.

  Some years later when we were discussing it, Miss Begley said that she too had been anticipating “something.” Maybe she was, but there’s no trace of premonition in her diaries, whereas from the moment I met Charles Miller, I made notes about him in my personal journal.

  In my preparations for writing this account for you, I’ve looked back at those entries and I find that they’re characterized ambivalently—by admiration and unease, by love and fright. I like to think now that I got him right, though, because here’s one sentence from a remark that I wrote about him some months later: Have I heard too many legends about heroes, and the uncaring gods whom they serve?

  And they did look like heroes, those three young soldiers—they gleamed in the cottage kitchen, as st
range and marvelous as from a shiny planet. The fuss of welcome, the apologies for arriving unannounced, the reminiscence of the previous night, the introductions—our warm hubbub died down and we settled into the visit.

  That’s when, with a shock, I observed something new—Miss Begley had begun to blush, and she frisked like a dog. In my brief acquaintance with her thus far, she’d planned every move she made, got everything under her control, and the more I knew her, the more I confirmed that. That afternoon, though, spontaneity took her over as though glamour had asked her to dance. She began to flutter here and there like a warm breeze; she talked fast and high, she laughed with delight, she teased.

  “Oh, but you should see the ocean when the gales come in. The spray drenches the house, doesn’t it, Nana?” And “It’s considered a great feat to row across the bay—I bet none of you fellows could do it.” And, “I don’t suppose you’ll leave us that old crock of a car you’re driving—sure it doesn’t even have a roof.”

  A coquette of the kitchen, she commanded her own stage—positioning the cups and saucers on the table; offering richness in a blue pitcher of white milk; slicing a voluptuous pie; prancing across the stone-flagged floor—while eliciting all kinds of information without seeming to pry, as when she asked, “Now, do you know anybody from Kansas?”

  The young officer, Charles Miller, eyeing Miss Begley like a woman eyes a sable coat, said, “That’s the very center of the United States.”

  “My grandmother’s late husband was from Kansas, wasn’t he, Nana?” And turning to Miller again, she said, “I hope some of you are farmers, because we have farmers all ’round us here. Of course the farms are very small—” and immediately the young officer told us that his father owned five thousand acres, but the Great Depression had hit the farmers hard.

  She elicited details of their posting—a U.S. military camp in the far north, near the Donegal border.

  “We all believe the Yanks will come into the war, don’t we, Nana?”

  John, one of the two younger soldiers, said, “Well, ma’am, that’s what we’ve been told to expect.” At which the others shot him “shut up” glances, thereby confirming what I thought—they were in Europe under marching orders.

  Throughout this hospitality, I also observed Miss Begley’s exchanges with her grandmother—eyebrow lifts, subtle nods, tiny hand gestures, and I wondered if I were seeing an operation in progress; were the Matchmakers of Kenmare sizing up?

  They were. Easy to tell from their attitudes—and, next, their questions.

  “Is it hard being away from your loved ones?” asked Miss Begley, but the soldiers gave no hint of wives or sweethearts.

  “Of course it is,” encouraged the grandmother. “And fine young men like you always have girls waiting for them.”

  “You didn’t dance away with any of the girls last night,” said Miss Begley.

  “I’d say they’re still in that dance hall waiting for you all to come back,” said the grandmother.

  Other than pretty blushes, mumbles, and shrugs, the two women got nothing out of the three men.

  That night, I wrote my observations of Lieutenant Miller:

  He might indeed be a farm boy, but not the kind I know. College-educated? Maybe. Hasn’t been on a farm in a while—look at those hands, big as shovels, bigger even than mine, but perfect, level fingernails. Sharp fellow; thinks before he speaks, that little pause before he answers a question. Does he laugh much? His face is too smooth to tell. Does he perhaps have something of the winter in him, a certain bleakness?

  He’s perfectly turned out. Uniform spotless; pant creases like blades, even after traveling down from the north. Height? Six feet five inches is my guess. He’s smart enough, I can see that; he glances around him, he takes in everything. How does he look at Miss B.? With definite interest, and I think some respect. But why do I feel threatened? Is he a little sinister?

  Today, I look down on that scene from high above—I am a camera at one corner of the ceiling. The uniformed young lions sit to eat in an Irish country cottage. They ooze energy and good manners. The most distinctive of them, their crisp and powerful leader, has taken the chair at the head of the table, directed there by Miss Begley.

  On the table itself, the blue pitcher draws the eye to its point of color. And this girl, this lively, inexhaustible girl in her mid-twenties, patrols the fringes of this little feast; she’s like a fixer, looking, checking, scrutinizing, and chattering.

  Past them all, through the panes of the little window, the waters of the ocean sparkle aquamarine, and under passing clouds some of the rocks are purple again.

  16

  I’m not quite sure how the next development arose; no crude or obvious moves occurred, therefore I must have missed the signals. Yet, when tea had been taken, Miss Begley separated Mr. Miller from the others and led him out of doors. His comrades remained at the table, asking polite questions of the old lady.

  My curiosity flared. I gave them some minutes, then I too moved out, catching as I did so a frown from Mrs. Holst. Guessing that Miss Begley would have led the officer down the path to see the view, I took an opposite direction, back down the lane, and turned inland to climb. Cutting across the higher slopes, I reached a point on the crag above and behind the house where, if I lay forward on the heather, I could see all of Lamb’s Head and not be seen.

  There they stood, far below me, on the slope that led down to the jetty. Miller had taken up a position beside Miss Begley that spoke of responsibility, attention, respect. She, clearly telling him something in detail, laid a hand on his arm now and then; she moved in close, stepped back, moved in again. He in his olive green uniform, she in her yellow gingham checks—they looked like couples we’ve all seen so often in films. The wind tried to get fresh with her skirt, and in the distance below them, the sea kept coursing to the land, trying again and again to climb ashore.

  Then, something changed. He turned from viewing the ocean and began to speak to her in a more direct, focused way. She took a large step back from him, as though startled. He followed, reached for her, took her arm, held it, and wouldn’t let go. She subsided and listened with all her force. I didn’t feel anything sinister—but I did sense an urgency.

  In the months and years ahead, that picture came back to my mind so many times. A couple on a cliff top, a more intense Heathcliff and Cathy: That was one thought I had, and yet there was something disturbing there, something that alarmed her—and drew her to him. My mind filled up with questions: He wants something from her? What is it? He matches her eagerness—why? Is he challenging her in some way?

  Time proved that I misinterpreted it all. He wasn’t propositioning her with a soldier’s wartime opportunism. Lewdness, crass advantage, sex, even the borrowing of money—I considered every possibility, but none had a part to play. Down there on the headland’s edge, a more sinister matter was taking shape—a profound and dangerous transaction between those two people who had first met just an hour ago.

  17

  September 1943

  The Sunday at Lamb’s Head ended as I expected. Mr. Miller held out an arm, Miss Begley accepted it, and they toiled back up the crags. I slid backward, got to my feet, ran down to the lane, and was in my kitchen chair again before they reached the front door. Of a sudden, I had begun to feel angry, but I did my best to push the mood away.

  With many thanks, words of appreciation, promises to write, all the trimmings of excellent manners, the visitors prepared to go. Miss Begley walked across to where I sat and murmured to me in a quick, low voice.

  “Go with them and find out everything about him. I’ll drop you a note to the post office at Valentia.” I’d already told her my next port of call. She didn’t have to specify Mr. Miller.

  I watched with care how Miller took his leave of her, but I didn’t watch nearly as closely as Mrs. Holst. The officer bent over Miss Begley’s hand, bowing slightly from the waist, almost old-fashioned but not exaggerated. She, cool now, said how
nice it had been and hoped they’d all come again. The grandmother circled, her eyes narrowing.

  Outside in the sunshine came another urgent murmur from Miss Begley: “Can we make a bargain?”

  I said, “Oh?”

  She grabbed my arm. “You help me and I’ll help you. All right?”

  From that moment on, I felt it unnatural to refuse anything she asked.

  In Killarney the Americans and I said our good-byes. From their map I advised their best route; they said they’d stay in Galway overnight. Exhorted to find out all I could about Mr. Miller, I wrote down his address.

  “I hope we meet again,” I said.

  He said, “I never asked what it is you do.” When I told him, he said, “That’s so neat! I wish I could come with you sometime.”

  “If I’m in Derry,” I said, “maybe we can go out to Donegal or somewhere, and you can hear some of the things I hear.”

  “Write me,” he said, with another champion handshake, and at that moment the desire to like him was born in me. But how often it would be challenged! My postcard to Miss Begley, sent next morning from Killarney, read, “To use his own word—he’s neat.”

  They drove off, I cycled away, each of us roaming the globe in his own fashion. I think that I had the greater affliction—because wanderlust is based on the homing instinct; we’re always looking for the one place in which we’ll feel safest. Miller already had such a place, on some big farm in a far continent.

  As a stopgap for home, I liked bed-and-breakfast houses with older landladies; they know in their bones when a person wishes to eat in silence. In Killarney I kept returning to Mrs. Cooper, on account of her tact and her cooking. Also, I liked her, probably on the basis that we tend to like people who seem to like us. She knew some relatives of mine in County Limerick, and she had a gift of knowing exactly how much conversation to make about them or anything else. Furthermore, her husband had died in the previous war and, childless, she understood people who want to be left alone.