“Tell us, so,” said Miss Begley, coming a pace or two to my side.
I know now, from the history of the period, from the government papers long released, that the two great antagonists, Britain and Germany, had drawn up extensive plans to invade Ireland. It didn’t matter that we were a mouse, an island smaller than some of the counties in American states—and certainly smaller than most of the states themselves. The Germans wanted to invade us because we sat a mere sixty miles from England. And the British wanted to invade us to stop the Germans. Did they need an excuse? If they did, we now might give it to them, and I said as much.
Captain Miller said, “A gambler would take a bet.”
Miss Begley said, “What kind of a bet?”
Miller said, “That one or the other will come in on top of you.”
I asked, “But wouldn’t you fellows stop it?”
He flashed like fire. “You could be sure to stop it now.”
“Ah, go on out of that,” she said. “Ben and me?”
“If he knew—”
“Who?” I said. “If who knew?”
“Hitler.”
“If Hitler knew what?” I said; my combativeness surprised me and made him laugh.
“Calm down and listen,” Charles Miller said. He had that most useful of gifts—command without force. “If Hitler knew that we knew his plans, he’d either change them or give them up altogether.”
“And we’d be the ones to cause that?” I said, sarcastic and cold.
Miss Begley stepped forward another pace. “Do you know where your ludeen is?” she said to him.
My turn to laugh; the ludeen, an old word from the Irish language, means the little finger. But Charles Miller looked as startled as though she’d suggested something indecent. She alarmed him further; she reached forward, took his hand, and held it up, then closed his fingers, but tweaked out the pinkie.
“See this? This is your ludeen, and Ben is saying we’d have as much chance of doing anything useful in that war over there as this ludeen.”
Her language often amused me. I’ve preserved as much of it as I can remember. She once said that a man she knew had a face “as shiny as a shark.”
Charles Miller saw no fun in this new turn of phrase. Instead, he said, cold as the east, “Perhaps you should wait until you learn more.”
I blurted, “I know enough. In among the Germans? Kidnap? Is that it? Kidnap one of their top men? Is that what you really want us to do?” My words now came out in chunks. “He’s a German, whose home is in neutral Ireland. He’d be there if he wanted to be.”
“No,” said Miller. “Hitler won’t let him. He’s too useful. They need him too much.”
That night, in the frantic anxiety this turn of events had caused, an obvious question came sidling up to me. It had a bitter taste: Why hadn’t she offered her “gift,” her “pendulum,” to me? To find Venetia?
40
Next day, they sent us back to Ireland. Claudia gave us two official envelopes and said an affectionate good-bye; she kissed me on the lips. A silent gentleman in a black car took us to the train.
One envelope held a document that guaranteed passage through England, Scotland, and Wales. Its power astonished us. We were actually saluted by the policemen and soldiers who inspected us on the train. And our private compartment had a guard standing outside it for the seven-hour journey from London to Holyhead. On the boat to Dublin we were given adjoining cabins. A sentry stood outside.
With my knowledge of her now, from this distance in time, I can see that Kate Begley was manipulating me, managing me, waiting for me to calm down. On the train, she’d initiated no conversations—nor had I, which was the only way that I could fight back. Nor, on board ship, did she attempt to reach me from her cabin.
The second envelope held our Irish passports. We had had no visas of any kind to anywhere, nor had we ever applied, or filled in forms. The supplying of them confirmed that we’d crashed into something very substantial. Government must have spoken to government must have spoken to government—American, British, Irish.
As the boat began to dock, we stood on deck, and I asked the question that had been rolled up and down my mind.
“The needle. How did you do it?”
She said, “The man found himself. That’s where he was.”
“There’s no logic to it,” I said.
She replied, “There doesn’t have to be logic to everything.”
In Dublin, we shopped for clothes. Captain Miller had given us the money, told us what to buy. We then took the train—on which life was normal—to the southwest; I was to stay at Lamb’s Head with Miss Begley and her grandmother until somebody came for us. It would be “some time,” said Miller.
One night that week, I wrote this entry:
Back at Lamb’s Head, awaiting instruction. Miss B. is completely serious about our “mission” to France. Should we be doing this “task” for him? Am I not more or less insane to be involved?
I can’t get out now, CM told me, because I know too much. And I can’t hope to persuade KB not to go—she catches fire when she’s near him.
Today, she asked a hundred questions of a lady in Kenmare, a Mrs. W. She asked about her late daughter, and about the bereaved husband, this Hans-Dieter fellow—where he was, what he was like, was he a good man, was he a violent man? I saw how she did it: She gave the lady an impression that she might know a nice wife for the gentleman, and Mrs. W. said she was very fond of her son-in-law, who had said he’d come back from Germany and live here when the war was over.
She told us that she had a letter recently from her son-in-law, and that the police delivered it and then took it away when she had read it. She added that all the neighbors loved him, and that she had felt very lucky when he married her daughter; he was a man who “wouldn’t hurt no one.”
41
And so we waited. My ice began to melt on the long slog of a journey; from the moment we got to Lamb’s Head, we talked and we talked.
That first night I asked her, “Did you know we were going to be asked to do this task, job, mission—whatever you call it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You promised to be direct with me.”
No answer.
I said, “All right. This is how we’ll do it. If I’m wrong, say no. If I’m right, say nothing.”
She looked at me with disgust.
I said, “This is what happened. He said to you, ‘Would you do something for me? Something big,’ and you asked him about his girl back home, didn’t you?”
Not a word from her.
“Isn’t that how this all came about?” I asked.
Not a word.
And I said, “So it was all set up in advance, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t speak and I had my answer.
I made one more effort. “That day he came here. He knew what he was coming for, didn’t he? And when you and he were down there on the headland—he told you a lot of things that he had learned about you, didn’t he? He startled you with his knowledge of you.”
She said, “I’m going to bed.”
42
I again failed to sleep. Being without alcohol was stretching me thin. I felt anxious, nervous all over, and I’d been reading too much in the newspapers about the war in Europe—massacres, burning villages, crowded trains to unknown oblivion. Am I crazy? I asked myself again and again. Am I stone mad to thrust myself into the pit of it? And for what?
Some time in the small hours, I rose, dressed, and went out of doors. Even if moonless, and in all seasons, the Atlantic seems to give off a light. On Lamb’s Head, it glowed bright enough for me to pick out the cliffs. I traced the badges of white on the rocks, the white sashes that the ocean wears as she approaches the land, and I could hear her, I could hear her advancing and fading, a rising and falling swish! of her waves, and I thought, She’s the one speaking the words of the night; there’s not a bird or an animal or a wind.
>
But I was wrong—the ocean didn’t own the only sound during that winter moment of mildness and calm. Miss Begley slept in a room beside the front door, and, in love with fresh air, she habitually kept her window thrown open. As I walked back across the little plateau that fronted the house, I heard her in her room. She was weeping as desperately as any child ever did, or any grown woman.
43
January 1944
If I may, I’ll use this sojourn that was forced upon us to catch up with something. You may recall that I asked at the end of that first meeting with Miss Begley in July ’43 if I might come back to observe her at work. Among the letters waiting when we returned from London, she found a postcard that read, “Dear Miss B., I’ll say ‘yes,’ won’t I, for, as you say, every chance of Love is a Gift from an Angel. Yours very faithfully, E. Mangan (Miss).”
Miss Begley showed me the card.
“I’m excited,” she said. “When you start putting two people together, and you know they’re ideal for each other—it’s just a thrill. This girl needs a kind man. And that’s certainly what she’ll meet.”
Next Sunday came the sound of that same “kind man” whistling like a blackbird: Neddy the Drover trundled up, as shining as the winter sun. His boots gleamed like black marble; he had a sober red tie on a white shirt and a suit of blue serge. I recognized the rig—somewhere in his life dwelt a returned emigrant. The water with which he had plastered down his hair had dried, and he was left with strands jutting all over his pointed head.
“Hello there, Miss. Ah, hello, sir, Mr. Ben! Howya doin’?”
I’ve rarely met a man so easy to like.
Miss Begley took Neddy aside and, as I learned, debated with him as to whether he objected to my presence at his wooing. He had no qualms—because, as I now think, he had no concept of boundaries. It would never have occurred to him that he had any personal rights, not even something as minimal as privacy. Still, I left them alone, went indoors, and found a dim place in a far corner of the long, friendly kitchen.
I could feel their buzz. They came in and sat on facing chairs. Neddy had his back to me. While she tutored him I made notes. Her face glowed with praise.
“You’re nicely dressed, Edward. Well done.” He nodded. “And you got the teeth?”
“My mother doesn’t like them.”
Miss Begley frowned. “Does your mother have teeth, Edward?”
“Thirty-one.”
“You mean she only ever lost one tooth?”
“She broke it on the bone of a pork chop. My father has thirty. And my two brothers, they’ve thirty each. And my sisters, one has the whole thirty-two, one sister has a few gaps at the front. But she has twenty-six if you add up the total. Another of ’em has thirty-one. And the twins, they have thirty each.” He grew animated. “Miss, there’s two hundred and seventy teeth in our house.”
“But you’ve none.”
“I bring down the average.” Neddy had raised his voice. “That Limerick man—I went back to him, the lease on the teeth was up, and he sold them to me.”
“Good man, Edward. Now, tell me.”
I thought, not for the first time, Difficult to believe that this woman is in her twenties; she has the authority of a dowager.
“Oh,” Neddy said. “And my grandfather has all his own teeth, and he’s ninety, like.”
Miss Begley rubbed her hands together. “Good.”
“And my grandmother, she had none at all, I take after her, I suppose.”
Miss Begley seemed keen to skip away from things dental. She clapped her hands.
“Now, Edward, did you remember? Soap and water?”
“Miss, amn’t I as clean as an infant?”
“And what are you to say to this girl when she arrives?”
Neddy sat up, straight as a spear. He groped for a reply.
“Will I tell her about my teeth like?”
“No. You’re to say”—Miss Begley enumerated on her fingers—“first, ‘How do you do? I’ve heard a lot about you.’ Second, when she sits down, you start by saying to her that you know a family the same name in Ballybunion. Now do you remember her name?”
“Eileen Mangan.”
“And what does she do for a living?”
“She works in the bakery in Kenmare.”
“Good. And what else do you know about her?”
“A fellow disappointed her two years ago. And she mightn’t be over it yet, but I’m not to say a word about it.”
Miss Begley, when she’d met Neddy, recognized a man “with a good heart,” she told me. Here’s the note I made of her remarks.
In the scheme of things [one of her favorite phrases] Edward was never going to have a decent life—unless he had somebody to live it for. He’s an intelligent fellow, caught in the middle of a raucous family where there’s nobody married. The parents keep them all at home and take all their wages every week. He left school at the illegal age of eleven, but can read and write and do numbers. As my grandmother said, he has great promise, and he’s a man who’ll never let anybody down. Why, I asked, do you call him “Edward” and not “Neddy” and she said, “To give him his dignity.”
Her behavior that afternoon illustrated her sense of respect, but didn’t stop her from introducing some controls. If her hand didn’t wag a finger, her voice did.
“Edward, it’s a big responsibility to introduce a lady to a gentleman. I’m responsible for her well-being and yours. Now, you’ll be spending time alone with her. Are you accustomed to spending time alone with young ladies?”
“I’ve my sisters, like.”
“That’s different, Edward. Now—I want you to know something. You’re to behave to this young lady as though she were a kind of a princess. Better than a sister. Be nice to her, be kind to her. Smile at her.”
Neddy interrupted. “And haven’t I the teeth for it now, miss?”
“You have, Edward. You have indeed.”
Although his back was turned to me, I could tell that Neddy smiled at Miss Begley, because she reached forward and patted him on the knee. “That’s a lovely smile, Edward, lovely. Just do that, and all will be well.”
He nodded, as earnest as a friar.
“When you go for a little walk with her, Edward, offer her your arm.” He must have seemed bemused, because Miss Begley stood up and said, “Like this. Stand up.” She took his hand, placed it in her curved arm, and escorted him up and down the kitchen. “Always let her walk through a doorway first. That’s what a gentleman does.”
“What about a gate, miss?”
“The same, Edward. A gate is a kind of door outside, isn’t it?”
Up and down the long kitchen they walked, turning and walking back, turning and walking back.
“Not too fast, and not too slow, Edward, and always making sure that she doesn’t step in a puddle. And don’t walk so fast that you’re dragging her along behind you. And don’t be so slow that she’s dragging you.”
Miss Begley, diligent as a governess, gave demonstrations of both. It was difficult to be a silent witness; I so much wanted to help.
“One more thing, Edward. If you feel you want to kiss her—kiss her hand, or kiss her cheek. Kiss nothing else, d’you understand? Nothing else. Here, let me show you.”
And she kissed Neddy’s weathered, menial hand, a paw of brown leather that mostly handled the rumps of cattle; and she kissed his cheek, that mottled, red cheek reamed by winds from the world’s four corners, and I shall never know to this day why Neddy’s new teeth didn’t at that moment fly in ecstasy across the room.
Mouth open as a bag, Neddy the Drover, who looked like an old shed with a new coat of paint, stood in the middle of the kitchen, as pretty Miss Begley, with her hair fluffed and curled, smiled her famous smile at him, and I thought he might swoon—until we all started at the swish of bicycle tires in the lane.
“Wait in here,” said Miss Begley to Neddy the Drover. “And you can leave your envelope over there on the w
indowsill.”
To me she said, “Go in there and keep the door open a little bit but don’t let yourself be seen.”
Neddy tiptoed with his envelope of cash to the broad white windowsill—and I heard Miss Mangan’s opening gasps.
“Miss Begley, there you are, God save us all, and aren’t I after seeing a man down there bathing in the sea and he naked as a pig, this time of the year an’ all, is he a polar bear or what?”
“Come in, Miss Mangan, I’ve somebody who wants to meet you.”
“Oh, Miss Begley, shouldn’t I not for a few minutes? With the heat on my face, look at me, I’m as red as your door.”
The women remained outside, chatting in voices too low for me to eavesdrop. Now and then from the kitchen came the scrape of a chair leg on the floor, or a creak of the chair itself—Neddy the Drover with cold feet. Of the grandmother I saw no sight; Miss Begley had taken over the stage.
The voices rose again as the women came in. Miss Mangan, well upholstered, with an embarrassed smile and Viking-blond hair, held back, then surged forward, and blurted, “Hello, very nice to meet you.” To which Neddy the Drover replied, “How do you?”
Miss Begley, in my eye line, sent a hopeful glance to Neddy and mouthed the word, “Do,” which Neddy repeated—“Do, like.” Then he strung it together; “How do you—do?”
“Edward, this is Miss Mangan, and Miss Mangan, this is Edward Hannitty. Now I want the two of you to be friends, so we’ll all sit down.”
Their voices reached me clear as bells.
“You’re very blondy altogether,” said Neddy the Drover, to which Miss Mangan replied, “Miss Begley didn’t say, did you, Miss Begley, that he was, that’s you, I mean, Edward, you’re as big, like, you’re nearly a tree.”
Miss Begley said, “There’ll be tea now in a minute,” and I knew that she had ears a-flap for every word, every nuance. It was like watching a great conductor getting the best out of two highly anxious musicians.
“D’you like the bakery work, so?” said Edward, as my notebook, I see, now began to call him. “I’ve a great fondness for cakes—”