The Matchmaker of Kenmare (10 page)

I’d never been north of the Irish border, where, by all accounts, they felt jumpy about folks from the South. Since its establishment in 1922, the North of Ireland, as we called it, or the Six Counties, had felt more and more like a huge ghetto, into which southerners like us weren’t welcomed.

That impression prevailed from the moment of first contact. They stopped the train on the border, and hostile policemen in black uniforms squeezed along the packed corridors; they glared into every face at close quarters. I remember thinking,
Of course they’re suspicious. Because they’re in the war, and we’re not. Because they’re under British rule, and we’re not
.

Miss Begley tried charm: “Hello. Are we in the North?”

The man in the black uniform looked at her—as she said later, “The way a butcher looks at a pig”—and made no reply. She tried again: “Are we near Derry?”

He snapped back. “The city’s name is Londonderry. Make sure you remember that. Londonderry.”

Her eager smile died at his force.

As I moved forward to challenge him, she put a hand on my arm. When he’d moved on she murmured, “What would you expect from a pig but a grunt?”

Miss Begley used a lot of pig similes, probably on account of her liking for bacon and pork.

Our boardinghouse proved friendlier; as the woman said, “We’re not heathens”—meaning not Protestants, meaning Catholics; the fault lines of the city ran then, as now, between the two religions. Miss Begley and I ate a long and hearty dinner, but I couldn’t get her to discuss—or even confirm—her forthcoming meeting.

Now I know that her diffidence represented fear—not that she might be rejected, not even that she might be used and discarded, but fear of the unknown, fear that her own gamble, the kind of risk to which she spent her life directing others, might backfire and not pay off. When I think back on it, I see her utter bravery. She had decided to break all the taboos that she knew and pursue a man for herself. Accustomed to doing it for other girls and women, when it came to her turn she had more nerves than a debutante.

I did the unthinkable, couldn’t stop myself.

“Shouldn’t he be the pursuer?” I asked.

She said, “Next you’ll be telling me that I’ve hair on my head.”

I asked, “What does that mean?”

“To state the painfully obvious is a sign of low intelligence.” She forced a silence and left the dining room. When she came back she offered no eye contact.

I pressed again. “Tradition is against you,” I said. “If this were a legend—isn’t he the warrior and shouldn’t you be the shy maiden?”

With that powerful sniff of hers, she looked away.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“If a man is worth having, he’s worth chasing.”

“Whoa-whoa,” I said. “Slow down, slow down.”

She didn’t listen, and so the world threw its worst at her.

When she quit the table to go to bed, I sat there.
Does he know that she’s arriving? Has she set up an arrangement to see him?
Unable to fall asleep, I made notes, including this one:

In the night, however, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Trembling, and without explanation, I found myself desperate for Miss Begley’s company. I climbed out of bed, dressed, and tiptoed along the corridor. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to knock on her door.

I can tell you how his superiors viewed Charles Miller. They had made him, in every sense, a pathfinder. He belonged to a powerful division of the U.S. Army known as the Special Observation Group, which had been sent into western Europe, specifically London, when the war had first gone against the Allies. With France long fallen and England in retreat, American officers, unobtrusive yet backed by full military resources, led the regrouping.

In the summer of 1941, two years before we met him, Lieutenant Miller had left his temporary headquarters at the American embassy in London for northwestern Ireland, to open the pathway for Operation Rainbow; that was his “cover.” Strategic billeting would hold at least 25,000 American troops in readiness for a possible entry by the United States into the European theater. Eventually the number reached close to 125,000.

Near the city of Derry, whose official name is still Londonderry, the Americans built a major navy base, with facilities for seaplanes, the now-famous flying boats. Though close to the Irish Republic, the base was built strictly in the United Kingdom; our neutrality had been observed, and, I recall thinking, when I’d grasped the extent of it,
Is this a prototype? Did Miller and his two comrades come south along the coast to find other potential bases in places such as Kerry? Safe places, if, say, London fell to Hitler?

In time I found that I was right and I was wrong; he had indeed been looking for something in southern Ireland, but it didn’t include possible
bases. And that wasn’t his only visit. All this is hindsight, of course, but his familiarity in the jeep with the map, his keen interest in the southwest of Ireland, his pointed questions, his unexpected depth of knowledge—every bit of it came back to me.

A long time afterward, I agreed with the officer who said that something in the tale didn’t fit, something was wrong. He said it because Mr. Miller would have been more than a match for the unpardonable Sebastian Volunder. I said it because so much had always felt out of true. Time gave its answers, as it usually does—but it didn’t give all of them.

I’ll come to that, but for now I still ask myself:
Should I have been more alert? On behalf of this girl-woman, my new friend?
As you’ve seen, I had already tried to halt her gallop. What more could I have done? In my bones, and despite her gaiety, I knew something wasn’t right, because secrecy always implies a threat, and Miss Begley had hired a driver to take us to a place whose location she had “been asked not to disclose.” Why didn’t that Klaxon blare louder in my ear?

In my own defense, I did try to get the exact picture—of anything—from her. She twisted and turned; she wasn’t sure where we were going; she wasn’t sure who’d be there; she wasn’t sure she was expected. All of this was, I imagined, false.

“If we’re to be friends,” I said, “why do I get evasions from you?”

People from Kerry have a renown for answering one question with another. She did so less than most, and only when under pressure. Now she said, “Does everything need a direct answer?”

I said, “That isn’t what we’re discussing.”

She said, “Can’t I travel if I want to?”

“Just so I know,” I said. “You’re chasing this Mr. Miller, you’re pursuing him. Is there any other word for it?”

“Well, wouldn’t you want to meet a fellow like him again?” And she smiled like Mona Lisa.

As you’re about to meet him again, it’s time to explain why Mr. Miller seemed different. To begin with, he had one of life’s greater gifts—the gift of being believed. When he spoke, he could not be doubted. His manner of speech helped, a slow, thoughtful delivery, and, coming from that open face, his words conveyed unchallengeable sincerity.

Also, he conducted himself well, not in that exaggerated way that some military men have, as though rank mattered to them more than anything else. I think what I’m saying is: In my dealings, I saw nothing of the bully in him.

Which isn’t to say that he couldn’t be as hard as a hammer. Months later, I watched as he questioned, with words of ice, a distinguished man, a doctor of no little eminence.

“Is that your considered opinion, Doctor?”

The man bridled. “By which you mean—?”

Miller cut him off: “Prove to me that you’re competent to make such a statement,” and he kept the doctor hanging. “No, do not answer until you have thought about it.”

In a bluster, the man rose to his feet, but Miller raised a warning finger and forced a longer pause. The doctor hesitated, bowed, and said, “Sir, I spoke loosely, I will correct it”—and clicked his heels.

Charles Miller had no such frightening effect upon me. I found that I wanted to do things for him. In his company, I was the one who offered to fetch the drinks, the tea, whatever—even though he couldn’t have been more gracious or attentive.

He also made me check my own standards. In the times to come, whenever I knew that I was about to meet him, I took extra care with my appearance. Also, I find now that I remember the details of our every meeting; standing on a slipway in West Kerry, or playing snooker in London, or pitching stones on Lamb’s Head—and especially our heartbreaking last journey. And I recall in particularly sharp focus the moment
when Kate Begley and I saw him that morning, on the shores of the Foyle estuary outside Derry. It was a day with air so clear that I wanted to fly.

At a quiet word from Miss Begley, a uniformed soldier raised a barrier at the entrance to a military site flying the Stars and Stripes, and we drove onto a long flat of wide beige strand. Charles Miller was sitting at a portable table on the sands, examining maps and charts with two other men, amid a scattering of half-erected buildings. In his khaki shorts and military shirt he looked like a nineteenth-century explorer on an archaeological dig.

Miss Begley said, “Come on, Ben. I need you now like I never needed anybody.”

A hundred yards from the building site, we climbed out of the taxi-cab, and she set a sauntering pace over the foreshore. Did we look like two people out for a stroll? Of course not—and besides, we had entered a restricted property.

What I recall is the expression on Charles Miller’s face when he looked up.
He’s not so much pleased as satisfied
, I thought.
And that’s odd
. His lack of surprise interested me equally; if delighted to see her, he wished it not known; and if not surprised that she appeared, he didn’t want that visible either. But what was the satisfaction about?

That morning, ever the gentleman, he rose to his feet and gave a brief salute before grasping Miss Begley’s hand. At least she had the good grace not to say, “What a surprise!” She said, “Very nice to meet you again.”

Mr. Miller then turned to me and, shaking hands, said, “Ben. Hi.”

I said a weak “Hallo,” and I recall the thought,
What can I do to please this man?

In my later researches, I discovered that he’d been identified as special from the day he enlisted. Sidetracked to a fast commission, he had always been taken up by his superior officers—no matter who they were—
and given significant duties. Out of this remote Irish corner, he would lead a small, fierce team into undercover operations in Europe.

It’s so plain to me now when I look back: He was running a different war. Yes, he had natural reserve, but the need for secrecy intensified it. And yes, he had a shrewd way about him, but he was also gathering every useful scrap of European local knowledge.

It took me a long time to find out the deal that Miss Begley and he had made in their moment on Lamb’s Head. When I did at last put it to her, she told me everything—but on that morning they hadn’t yet moved beyond the earliest stages. So far, he was the one who wanted something from her. I doubt that he yet knew how much she wanted from him—but in her fearless way she would soon make it plain.

That morning, she played it all in such a low key. Beyond the folding table stood a wide tent. They’d erected plywood boards on easels, and to these they’d pinned drawings and blueprints.

“Now tell me,” said Miss Begley, “what are you doing here? Or is it all a big secret?”

Mr. Miller said, “I can show you,” and led her across the sand to the tent.

“Hundreds of people—from all around the place—they’re working here. So there’s not much chance of keeping it secret, is there?”

They both laughed.

“Careless talk costs lives,” she said, repeating a wartime refrain that we’d all heard on the radio, and they laughed again.

I saw him look down at her and I also saw how easy they were together. These were my thoughts:
When they stood on the headland, and I lay on the heather looking at them, he startled her with something he said, and then when she was rocking off her guard, he asked her for something. Whatever he asked—it’s big. And she’s here for a second look at him before she agrees, before she strikes her side of the bargain
. And I reflected,
Is it a devil’s pact or an angel’s?
And then I reflected further,
In a war, who can tell the difference?

We met them that night at a hotel for dinner. Tall John and little Hugh came along too—Tweedlehugh and Tweedlejohn, as Miss Begley called them, though not to their faces. We ate vile food—a soup thin and sticky as green drool, followed by something alleged to be beef. The green cabbage tasted raw as nettles. However, the Tweedles exulted, and declared this a meal of Ritz quality after army rations.

Lieutenant Miller said to Miss Begley, “I’ve been dreaming of your grandmother’s baking.”

“Oh,” she said, “that was mine.”

After dinner I discovered that the men had driven to meet us in separate transports—the Tweedles in a truck, Miller, alone, in a jeep. Which meant that he could stay as long as he liked—and he did. At two o’clock in the morning I looked out of my window and saw him on the street below. Turned sideways to face him, Miss Begley sat in the front seat of the jeep, as he squatted beside the open door. On a balmy summer night in the high northwest of Ireland, twilight lingers forever; the sun scarcely leaves the sky.

At breakfast next day I said, “What time did you get to bed?”

“A policeman wouldn’t ask that question.”

“You don’t look tired.”

She said, almost to herself, “You can’t feel tired near that man.”

“How important is he?”

“He’s taking today off,” she said, “and we’re going for a drive out to Donegal, up onto the north coast. I want to see what happens to the Atlantic Ocean after it goes past my house.”

“When will you be back?”

“You’re coming with us.”

Good
, I thought,
because my anxiety is rising again
.