The Matchmaker of Kenmare (30 page)

Every corner of the country, and each one of the islands, had seen James Clare, with his bicycle and his gleaming black leather document cases. In all weathers, he journeyed to all parishes, following a regimen as organized as a military campaign, yet seemingly as relaxed as a gentleman.

“I have only one clock,” he liked to say, “that smiling man up in the sky,” and indeed he lived by the sun—and the moon, and the stars, and the rotation of the earth, every tremor of which I’m certain he felt. His was the kind of character that I most admire; he was a generous and steady man.

He tried to make me steady too. Whatever his declared reliance on the orbits of the solar system (and I suspect that it was somewhat pretended, uttered more for the poetry than the veracity), he insisted that I note down my daily rising and retiring times. I also had to keep a record of the weather, the food I consumed, and the times of my meals, the mileage covered, the number of days spent in a neighborhood, the enthusiasm of the people for the tales they told me, their general health, the mood of the house, and the level of their comfort.

Not only did he instruct me in building the content of my daily record, he drilled into me the necessity of pristine form.

“You can always tell a good craftsman,” he used to say, “by the way he keeps his tools. They’ll be neat and clean and always near to hand. A drudgy fellow will scatter them all over the place.”

And he supervised me by inspecting my notebooks, my pens, my erasers. He taught me the system of taking down the original site notes in pencil, then transcribing and expanding them in ink. When I asked the obvious question, he answered, “Because you’ll have made a deliberate effort to establish something permanent.”

To hear James recount one of the thousands of stories he had collected amounted to a theatrical experience. He had a deep open voice, and the broad simple accent of west County Clare.

I asked him once, “James, what’s the shortest tale you ever collected?”

Not for a second did he have to pause.

“A man in Clifden told me how dolphins came about. You know how sweet they are, with a kind nature and always ready to help or play. Well, this man’s great-great-great-great-granduncle, gentle of temperament and playful of nature, fell in love with a female seal back at Rosses Point. He’d go down to the water every day, and the girl seal would swim closer. One day she seemed very lonely, and when he spoke to her, he found that he could interpret her barks, and she was asking him, this young man, to come and live with her people.

“So he said good-bye to all his family—who had always considered him a bit strange—returned to the shore, and threw himself into the ocean. As he hit the water, hundreds of seals popped up their little heads, and with big smiles they surrounded him, and he swam with them out to sea and never came back. And when, some years later, people along that coast saw dolphins for the first time, they recognized this boy’s gentle
smile, and they knew what had happened. He had married his seal and the dolphins were their children.”

I believed every word, as did anybody who listened to James.

He was a wonderful man. I could ask James any question, and I’d get a decent attempt at a useful answer.

James, I met a man in Ballinrobe, and I think he’s making up the stories he’s telling me
.

And James said, “Record the tale anyway, but make a note that it might be an invention rather than an inheritance. In its own time it’ll belong to the literature of the country. Because that man had to get it from somewhere. Maybe the wind told it to him. Or he heard a whisper from the river.”

James, there’s a widow in County Monaghan who keeps asking me to come and stay in her house, and she wants to buy me clothes and give me money. What’ll I do?

And James said, “Treat her with the utmost kindness and the good manners of a gentleman, and that behavior will give you the distance you need to keep from her.”

James, do you think that Venetia—and you knew her, and you liked her so much, and you were so kind to her—do you think she’s still alive?

And James said, “Let the world tell you that. Let Time bring you that information. And be sure of this—whatever it turns out to be, you’ll not guess the circumstances accurately.”

Now I wondered what he’d say when I asked him,
James, I want to help my friend, even though I’m sure her husband is dead, but I’m afraid that if she goes looking for him, she’ll be killed or maimed. And so might I
.

The Folklore Commission confirmed for me that James was indeed staying in Dublin; his respiratory problems had cut him down again. That, however, meant that I got two birds with one stone—he was without question staying with my beloved friend, Miss Dora Fay. She, a woman of great intellect and learning, taught me—among so many things—generosity of spirit, and how to identify people worth valuing.

When the Disappearance first caved in on me, when I didn’t know whether it was Tuesday or Easter, Miss Fay rescued me, kept me in her house, gave me absorbing tasks to do—saved me. She knew when to let me weep and when not; she knew when to feed me and to leave me alone. Where and how she herself acquired those gifts I cannot say.

——

The two of them had been expecting me; they always seemed to know when I was arriving. James was more ill than I wished to see, but I also knew his resilience. Miss Fay had been making (and tasting) blackberry jam, and had a purple halo around her mouth that made her look Egyptian—doubly bizarre in a woman with very prominent teeth, and who never wore cosmetics of any color. With her high steps she looked more than ever like a heron or an emu as she walked back and forth across the kitchen floor.

I told them what amounts to the story I’ve written for you so far. They applauded Neddy the Drover and his rented teeth, and they worried whether Miss Mangan would bully him. They marveled at Claudia, the matchmaker of the Ritz Hotel—and they hushed like rapt children when I talked about Miss Begley.

James had known her father.

“Has she brown eyes?” he asked me.

I said, “She surely has.”

“And is she as brave as a charioteer?”—one of his favorite expressions; I’d heard him use it many times, but never had it fitted so well.

“That’s exactly what she’s like,” I said. “She thrusts forward into the world without fear—but I know she’s afraid to her stomach.”

“Her father’s name was Florence or Flor Begley, and he was the most mourned man to die on that coast in a century,” said James. “Everybody loved him. And the mother was by all accounts a beauty.”

Miss Fay, who, for all her perfect English, loved slang, said, “I want to zero in on Captain Miller. What’s he like? If the present tense still applies.”

I told them my fears—the Kansas and Pennsylvania contradiction, the neck wound, the kidnapping of poor Herr Seefeld, and the terrifying nickname, “Killer” Miller.

They fell silent. Not a word. I, as they had taught me to do, let the silence hang. The wisdom would descend with their first remarks.

Miss Fay said, “You must of course help your dear friend.”

And James Clare said, “Take care, if you can, to get killed rather than maimed. But be sure to fill in your journal as much as possible.”

Thus was I committed; that was my “interlude.” I told James of my intentions, and he agreed to arrange my time off with the Folklore Commission.
I also told him of my interest in the wolf legend, and he promised to try to locate the tale’s teller for me.

And so, after two days with my spiritual parents, and then ten days with my blood parents—during which I again told them nothing of my adventures—I returned to the world of Miss Begley.

What did I find? If I expected water, I found blood. If I expected a soft breath, I found a gale. If I expected a mourner, I found a dervish.

I had sent her a telegram. A wind off the sea made my face fresh. She, sharp as ever, heard me come up the lane and rushed out. Her embrace contained as much relief as affection.

“Come in, I’m alone. You’re so good. I knew you’d do this.”

“How are you, Kate?”

“Look, Ben,” she said. She grabbed my hand and dragged me through the doorway. “This is what I’ve been doing.”

“Where’s your grandmother?”

“She goes away this time every year. Friends in Cork.”

Standing at the kitchen wall, she showed me her work. Against cold winds some of those old houses had rough wainscoting that reached almost up to the roof. To these planks she’d pinned a series of newspaper headlines, culled from many sources, detailing the progress of the Allies through France.

On the table beneath sat a pile of newspaper and magazine clippings, again from many sources; and on the floor stood a high stack of books—military history, war strategies, campaigns.

“I’m acquainting myself with everything that’s going on,” she said. “And I have a good idea of where Charles might be.”

In a grave in Normandy
, I thought.
Or a plain pine box, awaiting burial with all the other thousands of fallen men
.

“Oh, and I’ve heard from the American embassy. They’ve put out an
inquiry to see if they can locate him, and they promise to come back to me.”

I held up my hands, as though to ward off things. “Kate—what’s going on?”

She retreated a little. “I knew you’d jib.”

“You’re planning to go and look for him, aren’t you? Are you a lunatic?”

Tears came to her eyes. She turned away, and I watched her shoulders make the effort to gain composure. When she was ready, she turned back.

“I didn’t tell you this,” she said. “Charles and I made a pact.”

“What kind of pact? Another of your deals?”

“He told me.” She stopped, in difficulty, then forged on again. “He told me—that I’d hear all kinds of things about him. He told me to ignore each and every thing I heard. He said, ‘You and I, we’re a team now, Kate. You’re my platoon leader. Of the rest of my life. No matter what you hear—come looking for me. Think about it carefully, take your time, and come for me. You’ll find me. I know you will.’ And that’s what I’m doing, Ben.”

I never saw such force. And she saw my slump of acquiescence.

Refreshed by her confession, she grew as enthused as a good teacher. “I’m up and running here. We’ll have to do this ourselves. Given the special nature of Charles’s duties, I figured that they’re never going to tell me where he is.”

On the train to Killarney, on the bus to Kenmare, on the long ride to Lamb’s Head, I’d been reflecting.
I must become the safety net, the great mattress, that gives her a soft landing when the truth brings her down
.

Now, though, because she had invoked the pact they’d made, her denial of his death had set in stone. Only if the U.S. Army brought Captain Charles Miller’s corpse to the red door of that cottage and asked her to identify the body—only then would she believe him dead. Fingers in the wounds of his feet; a hand in the gash at his side—Doubting Thomas was gullible compared to Mrs. Charles Miller.

So I worked out my own strategy—go along with her belief, never challenge it, and when the blow came, my arms would be held out to catch her when she fell.

She, though, steamed on. “So,” she concluded, “I’ve been analyzing how war works.”

And how does war work, my dear?
said my keeper and guardian, and out of kindness to my friend I stifled him. I didn’t need to say a word.

“This is what will have happened,” she said, and like a general briefing his officers she pointed to the wall, and the newspaper clippings and the maps. “With the Allied gains in Normandy, they’ll have begun the push toward the German border.” She had even begun to sound military. “Now Charles will—this is my guess—have gone ahead, and he’ll have crossed from France into either Germany or Belgium. I’ve asked the American embassy to confirm whether such a move would be typical of their Special Operations people in this war, and I’m expecting their reply any day now.”

Oh, yes, and you’ll surely get an answer to that little inquiry
.

I had a question; I dreaded to ask it, but couldn’t avoid doing so. “Have you tried your pendulum?”

She said, “Come with me,” and marched me to her bedroom.

On the little table beside her bed sat her pincushion; on the floor lay a great map of Europe.

“Every morning when I get up, I concentrate on this.”

Her zeal reminded me of a missionary whom I’d once seen in County Donegal. A firebrand Presbyterian, he’d ventured across the border and was preaching gospels at the people in the street of Ballybay like a vandal hurling stones.

“Have you had any result?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing yet. That usually means somebody is traveling.”

Or dead
, I thought.

“But I may not have looked widely enough,” she said. “It’s a huge area.”

There and then I did something that I’ve tried to train myself not to do—I embarked upon an act of potential self-destruction.

“One day perhaps,” I said, and I sounded a little tentative, “you might use your pendulum on my behalf.”

“Oh!” She clapped her hands. “I forgot. I meant to. I’ll do it now. It’ll let me pay you back. All you do for me. Ben, of course I will. Do you
have something that”—she paused, seeking the delicate phrase—“that was touched?”

“I have a lock of her hair,” I said. As I’d always had, from the first night we spent together, a night that I’d so often replayed—with all the others—like a film that only I could see.

Straightaway, I regretted what I’d done. Miss Begley took the little silk purse from me. Soft as a cat’s paw, she drew out the lock of hair. I tried not to look, but couldn’t manage that.

“My God above in Heaven,” said Miss Begley. “Did she wear the whole moon on her head?”

In truth I had forgotten that glowing light, that silver blond color, and it had been a long time since I’d opened the purse.

“I suppose we should begin with Ireland,” Miss Begley said.

She spread the atlas on the bed and found the appropriate page. The room grew so still that I could hear the sea beneath us. So hushed I could hear the distant call of the kittiwake, a bird that frequents those coasts. So quiet that I heard the peat shift in the kitchen fire.