End of the Affair

"Just like MacArthur." said Frank Hayostek, after he got out of his plane at New York's Idlewild Airport, "I shall return." But that was what reporters and newsreel cameramen had told him to say. Actually, Frank had little hope of returning to Ireland and his Dingle Bay romance (TIME, Aug. 18), which now smoldered as sluggishly as peat in a Kerry bog. He explained: "She turned me down because she is too much devoted to her family, her farm and County Kerry. Sometimes." he added thoughtfully, "I wish someone would shoot those cows of hers."

Six years ago, Breda had found Frank's name and lonely appeal for friendship, bottled, on the beach near her cow pasture. Frank had tossed it overboard from a troopship. Ever since then, they had corresponded, and then Frank followed his heart and his aspirin bottle to Kerry. The press on both sides of the Atlantic tried to fan the romance into flame. Back in the U.S. last week, Frank suggested that the press had tried too hard. Said Frank: "The papers said she swam out to get my bottle when she really found it on the shore--and she was insulted."

Other reporters brazenly asked her if she was going to marry Frank. After that, said Frank, "she got to be more shy." Frank seldom got to see her alone at all. When Frank left after two weeks, Breda was not even there to bid him goodbye. She was in the fields of her beloved farm. "If God had wanted us to be married," mused Frank Hayostek, "that's how it would be. The way it happened, maybe God tried to tell me something I don't yet understand."

It also turned out last week that Frank had cast not one but several aspirin bottles, each enclosing his name & address. "A fellow from The Netherlands found one of the others." said Frank, "and wrote me for a carton of cigarettes."

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