Passport to Peril

Nine

When she awoke the sunlight was streaming in through her window. She blinked at it and rubbed sleep from her eyes. The sky was cloudless, the day ideal for the beach. She dressed quickly and went downstairs for breakfast, sharing a table with Sara Trevelyan.

The Cornish schoolteacher was filled with plans of her own. There was a shop in town where bicycles could be rented, she told Ellen, and she intended to hire a cycle for the day and cycle north and west, exploring the remnants of prehistoric Ireland, the old earthen forts that stood as relics of ages long past.

“And I do want to see this,” she said, passing her guidebook to Ellen. “Gallarus Oratory. One of the most perfect and best preserved early-Christian church buildings in Ireland, unless this booklet is telling me lies. See how perfectly shaped it is? Like a boat turned topside-down. And there’s not a drop of mortar holding those stones in place, or so says the book. ‘Carefully fitted together and completely watertight after more than a thousand years.’ Can you imagine that?”

“It sounds remarkable.”

“I’d like to see it.” The older woman smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d care to keep an old lady company, would you?”

“Oh...”

“It might be a pleasant trip for two. And it doesn’t look as though it’s about to rain, although I certainly don’t trust this country in that respect. Do you like to cycle?”

“I haven’t in years. I’d love to go, but—”

“You have other plans.”

She nodded. “A young man I met in Dublin. He turned up in Dingle last night. It was quite unexpected. He asked me to go to the beach with him today.”

“How grand! I’m sure that will be more enjoyable than a trip through the countryside with an old lady who talks too much. An Irish boy?”

“American.”

“Ah. And he chased all across the country after you, did he? I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourselves. I’d ask you to bring back a few pretty shells for me, but I suspect you’ll have better things on your mind. Oh, you’re blushing! Quite becoming, I assure you. I didn’t know young ladies blushed in this modern age. I’m happy to see that they still do. I hope your young gentleman is worthy of you, Ellen.”

A few tables away, the Koenigs were methodically working their way through a breakfast of eggs and sausages. The doctor’s wife was a plump woman with dyed blond hair and a vacant, faintly bovine expression. The two children, both boys, showed no great resemblance to either parent. They were ten or twelve years old, Ellen guessed, and she wondered if children that age were capable of appreciating the greater delights of foreign travel. At the moment they seemed totally preoccupied with their food.

She wondered again where she might have seen Koenig. He did look familiar, there was no getting around it. Probably, as he had suggested, she had passed him in the street once in New York or Philadelphia. And yet she couldn’t avoid the feeling that she had seen him more recently than that, in Tralee or Dublin...

She finished her breakfast, then went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for David. He appeared just a few minutes after ten, a large paper sack in one hand, a blanket folded over his arm.

“A glorious day,” he announced. “The beach beckons.”

“It does indeed.”

“I hope you like ham sandwiches.”

“I’m mad for ham sandwiches.”

“And I had them fill a Thermos bottle with coffee. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a Thermos bottle in Dingle. They seem to call them something else here, and storekeepers gave me the blankest of stares. So I had to explain just what it was that I wanted. Something to keep coffee hot, I said. One man presented me with a portable gas stove. Communication became impossible. I persisted. At last I triumphed. See what I go through for your sake, sweet Ellen?”

“You’re a wonderful madman.”

“I’m David the Rambler from Clare. I’m Kelly the Boy from Kilann. I’m taking a beautiful young lady to the beach. Ready?”

“Ready when you are, C. B.”

“Onward!”

She sat on the blanket, her knees tucked beneath her. David was at the water’s edge, his arm curved to send a flat stone skipping over the surface of the sea. He turned and walked to join her.

“Overcast already,” he said. “I think it’s going to rain.”

“It does look that way.”

“At least we had a few hours of sunshine. Is there any of that coffee left?”

She poured him a cup. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Yes.”

“I love the shore. There’s something positively hypnotic about the waves rolling in. Like a campfire. I can sit and stare at a campfire for hours and never say a word. David?”

“What?”

“I was thinking.”

“Will a penny buy your thoughts this time?”

“You can have them free of charge. I was thinking that I don’t really have to go to Berlin.” He looked at her, puzzled, and she averted her eyes and rushed on. “It’s not really a very important festival,” she said. “It’s an honor to be chosen, and I don’t suppose the State Department would be elated if I failed to show up, but they’d barely miss me. I don’t have a very important part in the proceedings. They could get along without me.”

“But I thought you were so excited about it...”

“I was.” She fumbled for a cigarette, and he scratched a match, cupping his hands to shield the flame from the wind. She drew on the cigarette, hoping she could find the right words, hoping she would not sound forward to him. “I was very excited about Berlin,” she said. “But since then I’ve had enough folk music to last me awhile. I don’t think I’m up to the rush and bustle of another festival. It would be a whole new country to get used to, and tons of people, and no sleep and all that singing, and I don’t really feel equal to it.”

“What would you do? Go back to New York?”

“No.”

“Then...”

She took a deep breath. “I thought I might ...oh, I thought maybe I could come to Connemara with you.” She paused, and the silence was overpowering. “There’s just no way to say this without sounding dreadful, is there? I don’t want to leave Ireland. I’m enjoying myself too much. And I’d love to see Connemara. The things you’ve told me about the area make it sound magnificent. Maybe I could even learn Irish myself. I know I’d be able to pick up an enormous amount of Gaelic music. I could buy more tape and come back with some really exciting material. Stuff no one’s even touched so far. And...”

She went on, parading all the reasons she could think of before him, talking as much to convince herself as to convince him. I just don’t want to leave him, she thought. I’m afraid, afraid I won’t see him again. And I can’t give him up...

When she finished he got slowly to his feet. She watched him move slowly to the water’s edge. He bent over and scooped up a handful of small stones. One by one he skipped them out to sea. After a few moments she rose and walked forward to stand by his side.

“I think you should go to Berlin,” he said slowly.

She didn’t say anything.

“Ellen, there’s nothing I’d like more than to have you with me in Connemara. I hadn’t even thought of it until you mentioned it. I hadn’t dared. I only knew how I felt about you, you see. I couldn’t be sure that you felt the same way about me.”

“Oh, David...”

His hands found her shoulders, and his eyes sought hers. “But you have to go to Berlin. You say you don’t want to now, and I’m sure you don’t, but if you pass up this chance you’ll be sorry later. You’d start to regret it the minute we got to Connemara. You’d wonder what sort of an opportunity you were passing up. You’d keep thinking about it, and you’d start to see me as a man who was already getting in the way of your career—”

“Oh, don’t be silly!”

“It’s the truth. You do have to go to Berlin, you know. And Berlin won’t last forever. How long is it, a week? You could come back to Ireland as soon as the festival is over. Unless you’ve decided by then that you don’t want to see me.”

“That won’t happen.” She swallowed. “Would you want me to come?”

“More than anything.”

He kissed her. She felt warm and secure in his arms, and yet there was a feeling of awkwardness between them that had not been present the night before. She had been too forward, she told herself. She had made a suggestion that it was not her place to make, and he had tactfully but definitely rejected it, and she felt personally rejected in the bargain. Now they were awkward with each other, and it might take them time to get over it.

She felt a drop of rain on her hand, then another on her forehead. “I think it’s starting to rain,” she said.

“Yes, I just felt a drop.”

“I suppose we’d better get back to town.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

He shook the sand out of the blanket, folded it neatly, and slung it over his arm. She took his hand, and they headed slowly back toward town.

They each needed to be alone, and both of them recognized this. She went to her room after making plans to meet him in an hour or so. She sat for a few minutes at her window, watching the rain pour down on the streets of Dingle. After a while she opened her guitar case and sat on the edge of her bed, playing the instrument softly, not singing now but merely playing old melodies on the guitar and letting her thoughts drift with the rhythms of the music.

She was still playing when Sara Trevelyan entered the room. “Don’t stop on my account,” the teacher said. “You play beautifully. I thought I might listen for a moment or two.”

“How was your expedition?”

“Ill-fated, I’m afraid. I did reach Gallarus Oratory, and it looked every bit as remarkable as the photograph. Extraordinary structure! But I only had a few minutes there, when a look at the sky told me that this country was about to be favored with a bit more rain. Fortunately I started back right away. I did get rained upon, but I missed the worst of it. And I also proved to myself that I’m too old to be pedaling a bike up and down hills. How was your day at the beach?”

“All right.”

“No more than all right? Well. Let me leave you alone, Ellen. I think I’ll lie down in my room for an hour or two. These old bones could do with a rest. And do play that guitar. I enjoy listening to you.”

But Ellen did not return to the guitar after the older woman left the room. Instead she put it back in its case and sat on her bed, staring moodily about. She picked up her purse, dumped it out on the bed, and sifted through its contents idly. She looked at her passport, remembering how she had presented it to David the night before. “Everything there is to know about me. Age, height, weight, place of birth, color of hair, color of eyes...”

Was that all she was, the sum total of those few facts?

She opened the passport and read the dry data to herself. Such an important document, she thought. And she peered at her own face in the passport photograph. (“A full-face shot, no larger than three inches by three inches, no smaller than two and one-half inches by two and one-half inches; both ears must show.”) It certainly did not flatter her, she thought. But then she had never taken a very good picture. They’d had several sittings to get a portrait shot of her for use on her second record album, and she had never been particularly satisfied with the picture eventually chosen.

She started to close the passport, then noticed that the corner of the photograph had come loose. That was wrong, she thought. They sealed the photo to the passport, and it had to remain that way. She poked the corner back into place and it sprang persistently loose again. She wetted her finger with the tip of her tongue, touched her fingertip to the back of the loose corner, and sighed in dismay when the entire photograph came loose altogether.

Now what was she supposed to do? Probably the simplest thing would be to get some glue and put the silly thing back where it belonged. But would that be considered tampering with her passport? Maybe she was supposed to present herself at the nearest American consulate — wherever that might be — and have them laminate the photo in place according to their own particular methods. But what a load of red tape that would involve!

She looked at the passport and then at the troublesome photo, and then gaped in astonishment at a third article, which she had not seen before. It had been lodged in back of the photo, and now it was on her bedspread, very small, but suddenly alarmingly prominent.

She recognized it at once.

It was microfilm, a small square of microfilm, and it had been carefully hidden behind her passport photograph.