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.
82
October 1944
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.
Using her very slow and simple up-and-down method, Miss Begley scanned the map of Ireland, from Donegal down to the tip of west Kerry, from the coast of north Antrim down to the Saltee Islands off the Wexford coast in the southeast. Along those lines and at no point in between did the pendulum once halt or quiver.
“She’s not in this country,” she murmured, so softly that I had to ask what she’d said.
Now she turned to Europe. She began with Scandinavia; no surprises; I hadn’t expected any.
“Avoid the war,” I suggested, and we covered Spain and Portugal. The fruitlessness, the deadness of the needle, began to bore into my brain.
“Europe is the least likely,” I said. “There’s nowhere she’d have felt safe. What about America?”
I’d been told that Sarah Kelly, my mother-in-law, had boarded a liner for the United States not long after Venetia’s disappearance. My own mother had mentioned America—not exactly a pinpoint; and some other gossip had long ago said Florida. Did I dare suggest Florida? No. I lay back, then stood and walked around.
“Do I want to go on with this?” I asked myself, and didn’t realize that I’d spoken aloud.
Miss Begley said, “A pain endured is an inch grown.”
I spun around to look at her—because she hadn’t spoken claptrap for such a long time.
She climbed from the bed and walked to me. I, stretching, had my hands on my head, and she wrapped her arms around my body so tight that I could think of nothing.
I said, “We’ll drop it.”
“Whatever you like, Ben.” She gave me an extra squeeze and turned to putting all her maps away.
We ate supper. For long intervals we said nothing. She played with her hair a great deal, and every time we caught each other’s eye she smiled at me as though I were the most important man in the world.
83
Next morning, I joined forces with her in earnest. Together we set out a list of information that we needed, and its possible sources. I rode my bicycle down into Kenmare and returned with every newspaper that I could buy. At the library I searched for any and every book about war that she hadn’t already taken out.
Were we crazy? I thought so—but what was the alternative? Faced with her drive, I had to either help or go away. I tried to think my position through—I was assisting in the search for somebody whom I believed dead, and I had a strong belief that all the inquiries Miss Begley was making, or was about to make, would either confirm that fact or lead her down long roads to nowhere.
A thought ran through my mind like one of those songs that you can’t shake off: Who could be better qualified for such a task? Haven’t I spent a dozen years searching?
We approached it in a disciplined way. At my suggestion, we entered in a large notebook various snippets of information about the fighting in France. I, the eater of newspapers, tracked every paragraph on the Allied advance.
Four sessions of three hours, fifteen-minute breaks—we worked from eight o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night. In the last effort of every day we compared notes, and then tried to assess whether we’d advanced our knowledge of the war to any purpose.
But we were amateurs, butterflies alighting on this vast burning tree. I joined in her assumptions—that Captain Miller had worked forward from Fauville in the Allied push. We agreed that he could have gone anywhere; up northwest to the Belgian border or due east to wait for the American troops slamming up from the south of France. If fit enough, he might even, in disguise, have reached Berlin by now, to run some kind of deadly work there. Who knew?
Actually—one man might. And I suggested his name.
Miss Begley “eyebrowed” me, that “lawyer’s look,” as I called it, and I said, in something of a hurry, “Why don’t I go and talk to him?”
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“Let me.”
She frowned. “Why do you think I shouldn’t?”
“He might be afraid of Charles.”
She said, “But Charles is a sweetheart.”
“I still think,” I said, “that it might be better if you let me do it.”
“Ben, it’s my husband we’re looking for.”
“But suppose you learn something about the kind of work Charles does in the army?” I was training myself to remain in the present tense.
“You mean that he’s an assassin? Oh, he told me that ages ago.”
“Will you tell Mr. Seefeld that you’re married?”
And she said, airy as a sprite, “I’ll tell him I’ve found a wife for Charles.”
“Then he’ll want to marry you,” I said.
She replied, “I can handle Mr. Seefeld.”
As you did before, I thought, and surprised myself at the bitterness of my jealousy.
84
By mid-October, the Allies had liberated much of France—but the German armies had shocked the world with the ferocity of their retreat. Initially, as the maquisards had done in the south, the Germans used the terrain to their advantage. The rich farms along the coast of northern France had been fenced for centuries by tall, tough hedgerows, and the Allied troops found these medieval bocages unfamiliar and impenetrable.
When the fighting moved inland, the Germans, directed from Berlin, and led by some of the best soldiers the world had ever seen, defended as though attacking. The Allies experienced many, many days in which they took two steps forward and one step back. And often one and a half steps back. And sometimes two. And days came when they took three steps back, thrown into reverse by massive German infantry and air bombardments. That’s what we’d run into in the little to
wn near Dieppe.
Viewed from neutral Ireland all of this might as well have been a drama of the silver screen. The newsreels in the cities, though, didn’t make it to the country towns for weeks. In Killarney they showed the Normandy landings two months after the event. Those who watched the newsreels felt pleasantly knowledgeable, as though they were viewing the confirmation of what they had already ascertained from their reading. The Irish newspapers, generally up-to-date, also seemed to tell the war from the German point of view, too. Neutrality might yet be our guide.
85
Mr. Seefeld beamed at us like the moon. Miss Begley pretended to be checking on his health and general well-being; I behaved as though collecting his lore. I’d written him a postcard, giving dates. On the second of those, we called on him—a Sunday, at Miss Begley’s suggestion: “He has no religion.”
“Kate, will you find me a wife on Lamb’s Head?”
She laughed and said, “There’s only my grandmother and myself.”
He said, “It is not a grandmother that I wish to marry.”
By now he had recovered so much that he almost had a twinkle. She laughed again—but kept him charmed, and on a leash.
After sipping the elderberry wine that he’d made, and admiring the four cats, and marveling at the weather, I chose to dive in.
“If you were looking for an officer in the middle of this war, where would you look?”
He laughed. “Ben, my friend, what tricks are you doing now?”
My mind called up the picture of how frail he’d looked walking up the jetty that morning, or standing beside me on the trawler’s deck. How had he recovered so well? Not only had he been through the trauma of kidnapping that we’d inflicted on him, he’d been grieving for his wife—and God knows I was familiar with that feeling.
“No tricks,” I said. “There’s somebody we need to find.”
He asked, still smiling, “Your side or mine?”
I said, “It’s somebody you know.”
He knew whom I meant, and said, his face growing cold, “Don’t look for him. Let the war take him.”