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.
26
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.
27
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.
28
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 w
ay 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?
29
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.
I sat in the rear of the jeep, and, to begin with, Miss Begley directed most of her attention back to me.
“Ben, you know this countryside, don’t you?”
“Ben, is there any place in Ireland that you haven’t visited?”
“Ben, how do you remember it all? You must have a huge brain.”
“Ben, I like that shirt very much. I haven’t seen that on you before.”
Flattery, deference, respect, admiration—before long Mr. Miller began to cut in, as I presume she’d intended.
“Ben, have you traveled all along this coast?” she asked me, and Mr. Miller said, “I have. If you go due north from here, you’ll see some of the biggest Atlantic breakers you ever saw. I never dreamed of anything like them, I come from nowhere near the sea, I come from a wide sky, and you can see for miles and miles and not a house anywhere”—and he launched into a description of how, in his boyhood, he measured in the family car the distance to the nearest neighbor. “Twenty-two miles, can you believe that?”
I asked, “When did you come to this side of the world?”
“London was the first place, I was there for eighteen months.” By now he had made himself the focus.
“Just, you know, working,” was how he answered a question she asked, and she pursued with “War work?”
“I’m a soldier. Soldiers do war work.”
“Who’s going to win the war?” she asked him.
“God Himself wouldn’t answer that question.”
“But isn’t Germany winning?”
“Winning, losing—they kinda mean very different things in a war.”
“Who do you think is winning?”
“It’d be good for nobody if Hitler won. Or Japan.”
“What do you think about Ireland being neutral? A lot of people don’t like it.”
“Folks can always volunteer for the British. Or for us.”
“Ben, do you want to be a soldier?” she asked me, and before I could answer Mr. Miller said, “I’d want you in my platoon, that’s for sure, big fellow like you. Can you shoot?”
“Never tried,” I said.
“We don’t have many guns in Ireland,” she said. “We don’t need them anymore,” and when he looked puzzled, she added, “Now that we have our freedom. We had wars here, too, that’s why we’re not fond of guns.”
The jeep bumped us—or was it the roads? I sat back, letting the sun warm my head and face. Watching them I could see the mutual voltage—mostly I could feel the heat from her to him. He seemed unfazed by her force, and I thought, This fellow could probably handle a live electricity cable with his bare hands.
“How do you like Ireland?” she said.
Around us spread County Donegal, in that pale mauve light you get in the northwest. The houses sat scattered about the countryside then; they’re more numerous today. Sheep dotted the hills, distant white blobs. A donkey in one field, a pony in another, low stone walls—Mr. Miller looked all around.
“Reminds me of northern Spain,” he said.
“Where haven’t you been?” she said.
We stopped at a pub in Clonmany. The proprietor grew excited at the American, and began to inquire about a job for his son at the new base. Lieutenant Miller undertook to see the young man himself—“Tell him to ask for me,” and wrote out his name. Drinks came on the house. I drank lemonade. Mr. Miller tried Guinness and made a face.
I can freeze that afternoon in my mind. I can go straight back to the moment and see us there, sitting on high stools at a long dark bar, eating sandwiches thick as doorsteps, with old newspaper advertisements plastering the walls, and posters for local charities, announcements of cattle fairs, and boats to Scotland. The sun found a way through the filth on the windowpane to fling a few bars of light on the floor, and the glow caught the young American full in his golden face.
Any attention that our group received went to Miller. A chatty local gave him the day’s newspaper. The proprietor’s wife gave him the largest plate of food. The proprietor gave him and him alone a souvenir mug.
The proprietor knew James Clare—who didn’t?—and, discovering my connection, began to tell me about a haunting on the shore at Malin Head, where the ghosts of two young fishermen kept coming back. They’d been drowned there in the middle of the nineteenth century and everybody had seen these ghosts. I took out my notebook to write it down and, from the corner of my eye, saw Miss Begley and Mr. Miller enter a deep conversation.
When it ended, I wondered whether Miss Begley too had seen a ghost, because, as she sat back, the sun that lit this young officer also showed a desperation in her face. And a sense of confusion. And, I thought, panic.
30
That Charles Miller enjoyed our company couldn’t be denied. As Miss Begley fell into a long silence on the way back to Derry, he wanted to know everything about my work. That’s when I told him about the two young Germans washed ashore at Ballymacadoyle, and in the urgency of his response he almost stood up behind the steering wheel.
How old? What did they wear? Were they armed? Did you see a boat? Could the
y have come from a submarine? Where are they now? He turned me inside out with questions.
When I had told the tale he subsided and held a silence for long minutes. What did I know in those days—oh, what did I know?
But we could have talked all day and all night, he and I. No wonder I came to admire him so—he showed such interest, not just in me, but in life generally.
“All our neighbors back home—they have old stories,” he said. “Their parents came west, or their grandparents emigrated from Germany or Russia or China. I love those stories.”
I missed him when we parted. He shook my hand and said, simple as a child, “We’ll meet again, Ben. I know it.”
Although I wanted to tell him about Venetia and my own life, the time proved too short. But I sensed that he was the kind of man who would have taken on the tale as a project, and he’d have approached it in a practical way as a difficulty to be solved. He might even have involved himself in the search. I thought, Maybe I’ll ask him. Maybe he’ll help or have some ideas.
That night, I said to her, “There was a time when you looked shocked today.”
Sounding candid, she told me, “There’s been intimacy with a girl back home. He says he must marry her.”
“Is there a child?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. He says it’s a matter of honor.”
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“He’s asked me to do something for him. It’s outlandish, but—”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“Not just now, Ben. Sleep’s gentle voice is calling me.”
Next morning, Miss Begley and I set out for the South. She, grave and less garrulous than usual, nonetheless made heads turn as we boarded the bus, the straw of her hat as round and yellow as the sun. We had no conversation, not enough privacy, until we caught the train at Sligo, and sat in a compartment, just the two of us. By then something of her bounce had returned.
The Matchmaker of Kenmare Page 8