The Matchmaker of Kenmare (7 page)

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 strange 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:

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.

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.

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.

On the Sunday night, I stayed with her. Monday morning after breakfast, I waited for a shower to pass by, said good-bye to Mrs. Cooper, and set out for the long ride to Valentia Island. I hadn’t yet decided where to stay for the coming night, but as usual I’d take steps to secure a roof before dark.

Clear of Killarney town, I was soon floating in long corridors of green, between hedges taller even than I on my bicycle, with an occasional glimpse of a field, cows, a farmhouse.

Those were wonderful moments, those long spinning rides through quiet country places. I had the open road to myself because few cars were able to get fuel in the middle of the Second World War. How fondly I think of those times, the hedges brushing me now and then, a bird screeching indignantly as her roadside nest was threatened by me, a tall marauder on his high contraption.

On those whirling days I saw things, images that to this day hang in my mind’s gallery:

No war or rumors of war in these places, just scenes that could have been observed at any time in the previous hundred years in that part of Ireland. That’s what I loved about my job—I traveled also in the past.
And so I went that morning, heading from Killarney down to Valentia Island, a place with nobody west of it, as they like to say, until the island of Manhattan.

Let me use this moment, as you ride along with me, to get something off my chest. Every story costs you something; as you tell it, you give it away—but that’s all right; generosity comes with the storyteller’s gift. In this case though, as my recollection will demonstrate, I’ve had to consider another element, very different from the impulse of generosity—I’ve had to weigh the anguish I’m reopening.

By telling the tale of Kate Begley and me, with its wide canvas, its wild swings of emotion, its heroes and villains, and its extraordinary conclusion, I’m opening old wounds to examine why I took the actions that I did, some of them terrible. Once more I’m hurting myself, and even though I long since traveled past all that, even though the life I’ve lived rewarded me acceptably, I’m still, as I write these words, having to calculate the control that I’ll need merely to tell you.

It’s discipline well expended, though; it’s an effort worthwhile on many levels. Whatever my protests, I was enabled by Kate Begley and by the events in which she embroiled me, and by the people with whom she involved me—I was enabled to grow into a man I might never have become. I believe that the heights I reached were greater than the depths I plumbed, and if that isn’t a recipe for a good life, what is?

By now you know, don’t you, why my direct speech is addressed to the two of you, my delightful children. And as understanding as I feel you will be, you’ll each forgive me a number of things—or so I ask.

Forgive the very indulgence of telling the tale; it’s what old men do. And forgive me too a trait of mine, of which I think you may already be aware—my Digressions. It’s a habit I picked up on the road. I spent most of my life listening to people telling me stories by their firesides, and those storytellers loved to digress; they wanted us to see not just the trees in the forest but the leaves on each tree.