An Irish Country Love Story

  Mister Baxter banged with his gavel. “Silence. Silence.”

  The noise gradually subsided.

  “As that concludes the business for…”

  “Excuse me, Mister Chairman,” Bertie Bishop said, “but Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly have been living with a bloody great hole in their house for six weeks. I don’t think we should make them wait another four til the next meeting of council. The house is listed Georgian, and the builder, that’s me, has til apply for planning permission to council before he can begin reconstruction. Council can give that approval now if it so wishes because the existing structure will not be modified in any way, shape, or form from its original before the accident.”

  That was music to O’Reilly’s ears.

  “New curtains,” Kitty whispered with a smile.

  Bertie continued, “The ministry have never ever turned down a recommendation for road work by this council before. I’m willing til take a chance this time and at least get a start made on the work before they have accepted this one.”

  Mister Baxter nodded. “It is irregular, but you do have a point. Is any member of council opposed to giving that permission?”

  No one moved.

  “Mister Doran?” said the chairman.

  Doran scowled but held his peace.

  “Very well. The necessary papers will be issued tomorrow, Mister Bishop, and I will use my position to expedite a rapid decision by the ministry.”

  Bertie grinned at O’Reilly and Kitty.

  “And now,” said the chairman, “I will entertain a motion to adjourn.”

  O’Reilly paid little attention to the council going through the procedural motions. He was jubilant. Kitty and he would see out their days in good old Number One Main Street, with Kinky happy at her work. “Damn it all,” he said, “once the dining room’s done…” he made a half bow to Kitty, “and you’ve hung your new curtains, I think we’ll have a party to celebrate its reopening, and everyone who worked so hard for us will be invited.”

  38

  Gaudium, What Joy Is In It

  “Less than an hour to go until they post the results of Second MB,” Jack Mills said, shifting in his chair so he was closer to Helen Hewitt.

  “You’re going to be fine, Helen. I just know it,” Jack said.

  “Lord, I hope so,” Helen said. She looked into Jack’s eyes, and Barry heard a wistfulness in her voice that was soon replaced by something more down-to-earth. “One of the questions on the anatomy paper was a stinker, ‘Describe in detail the functions of the rotator cuff of the shoulder during the act of lifting a bucket of water,’ and I think I got the wrong results in the physiology practical exam yesterday. I always hate footering about with Douglas bags to collect expired breath for analysis.”

  “Me too,” Barry said. “I was all thumbs.” He sipped his pint. Barry hoped Helen passed for her own sake, but he also understood how much Jack was counting on it. In a phone call last week, his friend had confessed again that he was desperately in love with her and couldn’t wait for her results to be announced. “I don’t know if it’s any help, Helen, but when Jack and I were writing exams, our classmates who were sure they’d aced the test often hadn’t, and those who were worried stiff that they’d failed, like you are, usually had passed.”

  Jack nodded. “Often the confident ones hadn’t studied enough and couldn’t recognise how much they didn’t know, and the worriers knew very well the breadth and depth of what they were meant to have learned, and it scared them. But take it from someone who’s been there. You sure as hell do know your stuff.”

  Helen managed a weak smile. “Thanks, boys.” She sighed. “But I wish the time would pass.” She moved in her upholstered armchair and toyed with a vodka and orange. Her natural beauty was marred by the blue-black bags under her eyes. Her red hair was untidy and lank. “I don’t think I’ve slept much all week.” Her laugh was brittle.

  They were waiting, as was traditional, in the Club Bar on University Road, a short walk from the Queen’s University campus. The Club was favoured by medical students in their preclinical years, and this five-day marathon of written, oral, and practical exams just finished today, Friday, March 10, would decide who among them would remain preclinical students and who would move on to the teaching hospitals.

  Most of the students in the predominantly male class were next door in the men-only, spit-and-sawdust public bar. The lounge bar where Barry sat with his friends was carpeted and better furnished with comfortable chairs, individual tables, mirrors behind the shelves of bottles, and a marble-topped bar. The room admitted women and their escorts—and mine host, the silver-haired Mick Agnew, charged a premium for drinks served in the premises, as was the custom in lounge bars all over Ulster. Some of Helen’s classmates had brought their girlfriends, and one table was occupied by seven unattached young women, classmates all, Helen had said, awaiting their fates.

  Conversation was subdued. Cigarette smoke blued the air. Drinks that on a normal Friday night would have been swallowed greedily were sipped. Barry felt the tension in the air like a viscous substance, making everything duller, slower, heavier.

  He overheard one woman at the all-female table saying, “Did you hear what happened to Curly Gurd?”

  “No. What? What happened?”

  “He was convinced there’d be a physiology question on the red blood cell so he boned up on it.”

  “How could he know?” said one of the girls, her gaze darting around the room.

  “I don’t know. But he said he didn’t study all that much else because he was so sure.”

  “There was a question about the blood system all right, but it was ‘Discuss the function of the arteries.’”

  “So what did Curly do?”

  “He wrote, ‘A function of the arteries is to carry red blood cells and their functions are…’ and he described them in great detail.”

  “Poor man. He’ll have ploughed.” There was sympathy in the brunette’s voice, but tinged with a touch of the “rather him than me.”

  Barry caught Helen’s eye and she smiled wanly. “You heard that,” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Curly’s an eejit. There are no shortcuts.”

  A man at the next table remarked, “Poor old Barney Walsh. Daft bugger took amphetamine so he could stay up all night and cram, sat down to the first paper, wrote his name at the top, and then spent the three hours writing it over and over again. He didn’t show up for any more. He’ll be repeating a year.”

  Barry, seven years removed from the ordeal, could still shudder at the thought of what a time of stress the examinations had been.

  “This waiting’s killing me,” Helen said. “Can we please go over to the cloisters now?”

  “It’s only twenty to six,” Jack said, “but a bit of fresh air won’t hurt, and we’ll walk slowly.” He finished his pint, rose, and pulled Helen’s chair out so she could stand.

  Barry downed the rest of his pint and followed. He noticed that Helen’s vodka was only half drunk.

  The sun would set in about forty minutes and the light was fading. Streetlamps cast long shadows, and across the road the lights in the window of The University Café, better known as Smokey Joe’s, threw their brightness across the road where red double-decker corporation buses vied with motorcars and bicycles.

  Barry was pleased to see Helen reach out for and take his friend’s hand.

  They passed rows of three-storey brick and stucco terrace houses, then crossed University Square. To their right was the Georgian façade of Queen’s Elms, the men’s halls of residence where Barry and Jack had lived when they in their time had studied for and passed the exam Helen had just taken.

  To their left, behind cast-iron railings, stood the main building of the old university designed by Sir Charles Lanyon and opened in 1849. Queen’s University Belfast had been one of three Queen’s colleges, the others in Cork and Galway, established to give higher education in Ireland to Catholics and Presbyterians.
Previously, the privilege of advanced learning had been available only to Anglicans at Trinity College, Dublin.

  Barry, as ever, admired the Tudor-Gothic main building. He was proud of his alma mater, so proud that a numbered print of a painting of it hung in his quarters at Number One. He followed Jack and Helen through the gates to the courtyard in front of the building, its rosy brick and cream-coloured sandstone glowing in the dying day, electric lights burning behind high arched windows in the front of the building. They passed the war memorial, a bronze winged Victory supporting a stricken youth, and on to the passage through the high arched front double doors beneath the central square tower. Thin tapering spires topped each of its corners and from a flagpole on the roof the Union Flag drooped limply.

  In twos and threes, students and their supporters were drifting through the great marble-floored atrium toward a door at the back that led to the cloisters surrounding the quadrangle. Many of the medical students could be recognised by their six-foot-long red, yellow, white, and black British Medical Students’ Association scarves.

  “Through here,” Barry said, holding the door for Jack and Helen.

  A crowd had formed, encircling a glass-fronted notice board on the cloisters’ back wall. Farther along, light spilled from mullioned windows.

  Jack said, “The examiners are having their meeting in there.”

  Helen drew in a very deep breath.

  “Sometimes a very good mark in one subject,” said Jack, “can compensate for a poor mark in another and the student be given an overall pass.”

  “So even if you didn’t do too well in anatomy, Helen, you could still have compensated,” Barry said.

  She gave him a weak smile of thanks.

  Barry looked round. He didn’t know any of the students except Helen. A tall man with a fair moustache and wire-rimmed National Health Service granny glasses peered through the glass of the notice board and yelled, “Nothing yet.”

  Disappointed murmurs ran through the crowd.

  Barry usually thought of himself as a stable person, but like everyone else he hated waiting for results. Medical tests for a patient, deliberations of a jury, exam results. It was part of life, he supposed, but they had to be some of the most painful experiences to live through. That struggle of trying to close your mind to the possibility of a dreadful outcome, yet being rational enough to try to make plans if such were the result. The need to present a carefree façade to the outside world. The unspoken preparations for breaking unwelcome news to loved ones. He nodded. You went through all of that and if the result was the one hoped for, the relief and joy were overwhelming.

  Jack put his arm round Helen’s shoulder. “Won’t be long now, and you’re going to be fine. I just know it.”

  Barry heard the confidence and the hope in his friend’s voice.

  The crowd was shifting, drifting back. Students and their supporters were nudging each other, pointing. “Look,” a loud voice said. “He’s here.”

  “Give the fellow room. Let the dog see the rabbit.”

  A middle-aged man in the livery of a hall porter had appeared through a door beside the lighted windows. His boots rang on the cloisters’ flagstone floor. He lifted a key on a chain attached to his belt, unlocked the glass-fronted case, pinned a long sheet of paper to the corkboard, closed the glass, and locked the case.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced to reverent silence, “the results of the second professional examination for the degrees of bachelor of medicine, bachelor of chirurgerie, and bachelor of the art of obstetrics in this year of 1967 have now been posted. Good luck.” He withdrew.

  The crowd surged forward. “Look after Helen, Barry.” And as if piling into a rugby maul, Jack forced his way forward through a milling crowd. Already there were yells of, “Begod, I passed.”

  “Me too.”

  “Oh shite.”

  The young woman who’d been telling the story of Curly Gurd stood laughing while tears ran down her cheeks.

  Barry felt Helen tense beside him, saw her screw her eyes tightly closed. Jack was forcing his way back and he was grinning from ear to ear. He stood in front of Helen and said, “Congratulations, Helen…”

  Barry could sense that she was shaking. Saw her green eyes open wide.

  “Not only have you passed in every subject … you took first prize in physiology. So much for your worrying about the Douglas bag. Oh you beauty, Helen Hewitt. You did ace it. Well done.”

  She gasped, grinned, and said very quietly, “Thank you, Jack. Thank you very much. And thank you for being patient while I studied.”

  Jack shrugged. Smiled.

  Barry said, “Well done, Helen. And a prize too. My God, that is grand. Congratulations.”

  She blew out her breath through pursed lips. “Oh Lord,” she said, “I’m all atremble.”

  “Come on,” said Jack, taking her hand. “You need to see this for yourself.” He led her up to the front of the now-thinning crowd, and Barry watched as Jack pointed to the middle of the list where she would be able to read her results. She flung her arms round Jack’s neck and, careless of the bystanders, kissed him long and hard. Hand in hand they moved back to where Barry waited.

  “It’s true,” Helen said, “I really did pass.” She grinned, looked up at Jack and back to Barry. “And,” she said, “I know how close you two are, but I don’t know if Jack told you, Barry, but I’ve been keeping him waiting for months and I’ve a promise to keep and I want you to hear too.” She turned to Jack and said, “Jack Mills, you lovely, understanding, patient man, I was heartbroken when you dumped me—”

  “I’m sorry, Helen. I was—”

  She held up a hand and shook her head. “But, but, I took a second chance and I’m very glad I did. I love you, Jack Mills, and I always will.”

  Jack’s whoop echoed through the cloisters and he grabbed her, swung her round in a circle with her feet off the ground, and kissed her soundly.

  Barry’s heart filled for his friend.

  “Now,” said Helen, taking Jack’s and Barry’s hands, “there are phone boxes in the students’ union. I want to phone Dad and Doctor O’Reilly. Your boss, Barry, helped get me my scholarship from the marquis. And I’ll write a thank-you letter to the marquis, lovely man that he is, tomorrow. But once I’ve made my calls tonight, there’s a party and I want us all to go and celebrate.”

  “Now there,” said Jack Mills, “is one hell of an idea.” And his laughter, like his whoop, filled the quadrangle with peals of unfettered joy.

  39

  Come Live with Me and Be My Love

  Movement in the grass caught Barry’s attention. Two hares were standing on their hind legs, long ears laid back, boxing furiously until one leaped into the air then dropped to all fours and took off bounding like a frenzied liltie. For a moment, Barry had forgotten where he was—that the animals were two of the famous Aldergrove hares that, for reasons no naturalist could explain, had made the runways their home. He stood behind the plate-glass window of Aldergrove airport staring out to the tarmac to see if he could catch another glimpse of the long-legged, rangy creatures, dozens of which roamed the area. Sue’s flight from London was due in ten minutes. Ten interminable minutes, it seemed, and he had welcomed the comic distraction. For the last week he had thought today might never come, but it had. It had, and soon he’d be holding his love in his arms. She’d be back home here in Ulster with him where she belonged. Where from the first time he’d told her he loved her, she’d always belonged.

  He caught another flash of long ears poking above the grass. Mad March male hares, Barry thought. Their mating season was now, late March, and for reasons that did not surprise him he thought back to his night with Sue in Marseille and lamented how their holiday had been cut short. How long might it be before he could get Sue to himself in a private place?

  He tried to distract himself by examining the British United Airways jet aircraft parked near the terminal building. BUA had started Belfast?
??s first jet service in January 1966. The plane was different from any other Barry had ever seen, with a streamlined nose and its two engines mounted at the rear of the fuselage. Perhaps, he thought, with his appetite for foreign travel whetted by his short trip to France, he could whisk Sue off to somewhere exotic for their honeymoon in July.

  He was aware of the high-pitched whine of aero engines and a brassy announcer’s voice on a loudspeaker so distorted he missed pretty much everything except the critical, “… arriving at Aldergrove from Heathrow…” That was Sue’s plane coming in to land. He shifted from foot to foot.

  The twin-engined propellor-driven British European Airways aircraft touched down, taxied, and turned off the runway to come to a halt outside the terminal. The propellors changed from spinning discs reflecting the sunshine to slowly turning individual blades and then stopped. Ground crew ran a wheeled staircase to the front of the craft, where a door in the fuselage opened and a stewardess, neat in her Hardy Amies uniform of blue jacket and skirt, blue hat, and white gloves, stood smiling on the staircase’s upper platform. Passengers started to disembark.

  He waited to catch his first glimpse and, oh joy, there she was pausing at the top, with one hand shielding her eyes from the sun that made her copper hair glow. She trotted nimbly down and joined the crocodile of passengers moving toward the entrance to the building.

  Barry ran to the door. Already the entrance, a single glass door, was becoming clogged with people so impatient to meet loved ones that as soon as they came through the doorway there was hugging and excited talking. The little family groups forming held up later arrivals and kept them waiting on the tarmac. “Excuse me, excuse me.” Barry was not shy about forcing his way past. The second she appeared, he grabbed her hand, dragged her aside, and hugged and kissed her as if he’d never have another chance. “Welcome home, darling. God, I’ve missed you,” Barry said, hoping that at last his pulse rate would start to slow. He released her, holding her at arm’s length. She was glowing. “I love you.”