Free The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney Page B

afternoon, with ribbons flapping out behind her head like red and blue tails.
    “What are you doing here?”
    She said, “I’m expanding my business,” and when I looked puzzled she added, “The Galway Races. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
    I said, “Which race are you in?”
    “The human race. You should try it sometime,” she said.
    “That was low,” I said.
    “So’s your mood.”
    She put her arm in mine, and we swung along the street like honeymooners. “Come on, Ben. Chin up.”
    “You’re not here for the races,” I said.
    “Maybe I’ll marry a jockey.”
    You have the height for it
.
    I wanted to ask her what she was planning now. Even on our short acquaintance I’d sensed that this girl always had something going on—a scheme, a stratagem different from her declared intent, and the moment I saw her in the big wide hat I said to myself,
Now what is she up to?
    Asking her would yield no fruit. She only replied to questions that she wanted to answer. I had learned to wait.
    “I met a man who knew your father,” I said. “A Mr. Buckley.”
    And she said, “I know,” but didn’t elaborate.
    She led me to a stone wall overlooking the water.
    “I have things to say to you,” she said. Hiking herself up on the wall, she arranged her skirts, holding her hat at the same time. “And I have questions to ask you.”
    Did I quail? I did, but could do nothing about it—because I had already let her in, something I hadn’t allowed with anybody, not even James or Miss Fay. With them, the exchanges had remained brief and delicate, as though they feared to tread on the eggshells of my sorrow. That cover was now broken; this woman was able to raid me.
    “First of all. Your parents. You don’t talk about them.”
    Some resistance must have lingered, or I was trying to take back lost ground, because I said, “I never had any, I come from a far distant star.”
    “How come you never mention them?”
    “They’re unmentionable,” I said.
    “I bet they’re not. Somebody brought you up well. I can see the traces. Brothers and sisters?”
    “I’m an only child.”
    “Like myself. One of God’s Special Angels, did you know that?”
    I said, “It’s not true. God told me ’twas a rumor.”
    She said, “Jesus was an only child.”
    “By Jesus, you’re right.”
    “All right, Ben. Stop being disgraceful. No more jokes and gibes, please. Do your parents know that you have a wife?”
    “Had.”
    “Right. So that’s how you want to play it,” she said.
    When Miss Begley folded her hands and her lips at the same time she meant business.
    “Tell me the truth. Did Venetia run away?”
    “Sort of. Her family intervened—”
    “Because they didn’t want her married to somebody who drank?”
    “I was eighteen,” I said. “I’d never tasted liquor.”
    “Is she, is losing her, the reason you drink?”
    I said, “What else is there?”
    She raised a mighty eyebrow at me. “That’s a shallow little pool of character.”
    I said, “You know nothing. You know nothing about searching. And I hope you never will.”
    (Hindsight, that mean-spirited spy, whispers to me now,
Well, wasn’t that a neat irony in the making?)
    “And she left no trace?”
    I said, “A suitcase full of her money. And her account books. And her clothes.”
    “Her clothes?”
    I nodded.
    “That’s strange,” she said.
    Miss Begley had the habit of thinking openly—by which I mean that she took on the attitude of thought in a very deliberate way. If I tried to interrupt her, she’d flap a hand and say, “I’m thinking.” As she did that day, and for what seemed about three minutes, which is a long time of silence between two people.
    At last she said, “No woman walks away from all her clothes. Things have to be done.”
    That last was a phrase I came to recognize.
    “What does that mean?”
    She said, “It means that I intend to take action on your behalf.”
    I have no doubt that she intended it. Now I ask