Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (52 page)

I
’m still gripping the chain of events; I can still feel the cold, cold links. Without my need to know and perceive it, my life growing up on the farm had given me the concept of perfect days—no disturbances, a rhythm of the seasons, a wheel of life. In that light, you can see what had changed and you can also see the contrast with the system that had been mine. How could it have become so exotic so quickly—though not all for the best? On the simplest, most outward level, there I was, driving one of the few motorcars in the province of Munster, a great ghost of a machine, sitting up behind the wheel like a red-haired young grandee, Alexander the Great in corduroys, now a young bridegroom and a father-to-be and a slayer of dragons. Mystifying—in part, anyway, and I could begin to grasp the sense in James Clare’s view of life as a myth. Now consider what came next, and feel the chill of the chain.

That night, Venetia, at bedtime, said to me, “I want to arrange a surprise for you. Give me some time.”

I heard the sounds of furniture being dragged around upstairs. I sat in the living room and tried to net, as though they were butterflies, the thoughts flying about in my head. I kept returning to the problems that
had to be solved. And I also found comfort in summarizing them—and my life.

When at last Venetia called, and I went up to our room, I found that she had used curtains, sheets, clothing, and all kinds of props to create a miniature theater, much more elaborate than the previous exercise when Blarney had asked me if I loved Venetia.

She sat “center stage,” with Blarney on her knee. He greeted me.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Hello, Blarney.”

She had changed his costume. No longer an Irish farmer, or King Lear’s Fool, he looked like an old man; he had a white mustache and a battered hat and a black garment that might have been an overcoat.

“Ben, I’m learning to become a storyteller.”

I hadn’t yet interrogated the presence of Blarney in Venetia’s life. Once or twice I almost raised it—I wanted to know the training, the interface, how her personality and spirit belonged in his persona and stage act.

Reticent, awkward, she said, “I wanted somebody to speak for me. To say the things I wanted to say. To utter my rage.”

But she veered away from any discussion as to whether she viewed Blarney as a separate person. If I had to guess now, I’d say that she did—as evidenced by what now took place.

“I think you’ll be a very good storyteller, Blarney,” I said.

Blarney replied, in a sober, almost sad way, “Let me try out a story on you.”

“Good man, Blarney,” I said. “Vote for Blarney.”

He closed his eyes at the inappropriate levity and turned away his head. When he was ready, he spoke; and I sat down. This is the story that Blarney told me; although I’m now telling it to you in my own words, I’m content with its accuracy.

A long time ago, in a village not far from here, lived a young and clever girl. She went to America and started a school there and married. When she found that she was expecting her first child, she came back to Ireland so that the child would be born Irish. As indeed he was. Not far from here
.

And so, the child grew into a young man who spent his time between New York and North Cork, because he often came over to see his grandparents
,
and he was always welcome in these wide fields. In time, he married a girl from Connecticut—she was from an Irish family too, and had also been born in Ireland. And when she was expecting a baby, they came back here so that the baby would be born Irish, just as the young man’s mother had done
.

But the young man had a poor character, and he involved himself with bad local people. With their help he got a farm, but he got it through trickery and devilment
.

His young wife with her young child didn’t like this. She said it to him, and told him that if he didn’t make amends, she’d go back to her mother in Connecticut
.

A coolness sprang up between them, and the young wife made arrangements to go back to America, because she was afraid. And she took another precaution—she told somebody her story. She told a local policeman, a young fellow by the name of Luke Nagle, living in a place called Coolnagle. He, a clever and observant man, wrote down the story, and told of the young wife’s fears
.

She never went back to America. They found her body floating in the reeds in the lake named Lough Gur, not too far away from here. At the inquest the coroner recorded an open verdict, meaning that nobody would attempt to say how she died. The husband sold his farm and took his small daughter back to the United States. And the young detective has spent the rest of his life holding that story to himself in his house out at Coolnagle, where he reads books all day. He’s an old man now, and his daughter sells eggs to people here in the town. And that’s the end of my story
.

This was the time to weep. For all of us. I had the thought
If Blarney sheds tears, will his paint run?
In the silence I heard a door close somewhere. I helped Venetia to dismantle the little “set,” we stowed Blarney in his case, we lay down, and I can’t say who held whom the tighter. In the darkness I whispered to her, “You know, don’t you?”

Her head nodded at my chest.

“And you know what I’ll now do?”

Her head nodded again.

Luke Nagle and I became friends. I visited his house many times. In his late seventies when I first met him, still a steel rod of a man, straight as a
pike, he had hair that stood up as though he’d had a fright. And he had some kind of second sight, because the moment I walked through the door, he knew why I’d come.

His daughter made tea.

“No, Rose, give the young fella a drink.”

“He’s underage, Dada, he won’t be able to hold it.”

“He’ll hold whiskey.”

“No, he won’t and it’ll take that lovely gloss off him.”

How she spoiled her father—patted him, fixed his woolen cardigan, checked that his tea wasn’t too hot, smiled at him all the time. She winked at me.

“He’s a lovely man, my dada.”

Luke Nagle opened the furrow, so to speak.

“Did you see that resignation?”

I nodded.

“A thunderbolt,” he said. “A political thunderbolt.”

“They’re reeling from it,” said the daughter.

“He should be in jail,” said the father. A bead of milky tea hung from his mustache.

“Can we put him in jail?” I said.

“Will I get it, Dada?” asked the daughter.

“Rose hates him,” said Luke Nagle.

She went away and came back with an envelope.

If you yourself read what Luke Nagle wrote—and I hope one day that you will—you cannot doubt what happened. King Kelly murdered his young wife, Sarah’s mother. My guess is that he held her facedown in the water of the lake, and then dragged her body through the shallows along the bank of Lough Gur to another spot, the place where she was found, so that no traces of a scuffle could be linked with the discovery of the corpse.

Irish official writing has always been large and looped, every word as clear as elocution. In a vivid recounting, Luke Nagle, the procedural policeman, had listed the days and dates of the young wife’s visits to him, and had kept a detailed record of their conversations. At the very least it would have cast a shadow over the young husband.

“Is this the only copy?” I asked.

“No,” said the daughter. “The authorities, they had one, I don’t know if they still have. And we have another.”

“Can I keep this?” I said.

“Only if you’re prepared to use it,” said this feisty little man; no wonder we became such friends.

I sat back, read it again, drank more tea.

Rose said, “You can tell that it’s true, can’t you?”

Luke Nagle said, “I never tell lies.”

Rose ruffled his spiky hair and said, “Except about how many drinks you have with Tommy Heffernan.”

I said, “What was she like, the woman who died?”

Without having to think he said, “Tall as a statue, and she had the nicest nature, sometimes quiet, and sometimes she’d chat like a sparrow, and as kind as good weather.”

Rose said, “She was blondy-haired a bit, wasn’t she, Dada.”

“I wasn’t married then, but anytime she touched my arm—I’d have married her for that alone. And I’d have been better for her than him. That animal.”

“She was a dancer, wasn’t she?” said Rose. “Over there in New York.”

Luke Nagle shook his head in sorrow, and I rose to go.

He shook my hand. “Did you ever hear the saying ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’? Well, it isn’t. Politics is.”

I
t’s not a big lake but it’s lovely, in placid and welcoming countryside. The deep breast of the Knockfennel hill reaches down to the reeds. Woods line the other shore between the water and Bourchier’s Castle. You won’t find many places in Ireland with as much depth of antiquity. People have lived here since thousands of years before Christ. I often go there now and walk in the stone circles and touch the rocks that the ancient men lifted into place for their rituals. Ireland is a small country, with an ancient gene pool, so these were my people, and perhaps Venetia’s. Pagans then—and pagan enough still; her grandmother won’t have been the first beautiful woman who got sacrificed in the horseshoe lake.

For transport, I had the white Daimler. I shouldn’t have taken it down that long narrow lane to the lake, but it stood up well.

I had the thought
What is wrong with me? There’s a myth everywhere I turn
. And I changed that thought to
No. What is right with me? How did I get such good fortune?

With one last look at the thick and silver-sheened water, I drove back to Charleville, where Venetia held up her hands in a warding-off gesture.

“Don’t tell me. Not yet. Can you do—can you do what you have to
do, everything—can you do it so that it’s all over?” Today was one of those days when she flew through the air high above us all, remote and swirling, turning this way and that.

Another challenge. “I think so.”

I was used to challenges now. She put a note in among the clothes in my suitcase. All it said was,
Dear Ben
.

King Kelly recognized the car. Not many cars on quiet Dublin streets anyway. You know—he was frightened. He stood back against the railings, scared.

“Don’t come near me,” he said. “You’re after putting a curse on me.”

“The farm,” I said.

“Go away.”

“Give it back.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Give it back. We can go to a solicitor’s office and do the papers now.”

“Aren’t you after ruining me enough?”

I stood there, not saying a word, staring at him. He tried to hold the silence too, but couldn’t, and erupted.

“What?”

“The farm.”

“Go away. Forever.”

He began to walk down the street. I expected that he was catching a tram into the center of the city, and I walked beside him.

“Do you ever go near Lough Gur these days?” I said.

I hadn’t expected him to stop. And he didn’t—until I pulled the handwritten pages from my pocket.

He directed me and we drove to a gathering of shops and offices.

“Stop here,” he said.

I parked near some sidecars, used by visitors as sightseeing transport around the city. On the short journey, King Kelly had been subdued beside me; not a word, not a gesture until “Stop here.”

He led me through a doorway to a legal office above a greengrocer’s shop. I stood back, near the window, as he had a whispered conversation with a man in striped pants and morning coat. This man kept looking at me over his spectacles, looking at King Kelly and back at me.

Through the window, the rows of cabbages and pails of potatoes smiled up from the stalls below. The smell of farming came to me, and I grew passionately vigilant about the transaction that was supposed to take place across the room.

It didn’t seem to be moving fast enough. I walked across to the desk and said to the elderly lawyer, “This document has to be short, clear, and unchallengeable.”

“These things take time—”