An Irish Country Love Story

  Being used to Sue, who was sparing with her makeup, Barry thought Nonie’d been a bit enthusiastic with the eye shadow. He had belonged to the Queen’s University Film Appreciation Society. Pictures of movie vamps like Theda Bara, Pola Negri, and Rita Hayworth flashed into his mind. He cleared his throat. “That’s great,” he said, keeping his voice light, “because I need you to cover for emergencies, just for an hour.”

  “Oh, dear. How thoroughly boring,” she said, and crushed out her cigarette in a convenient ashtray. “Fingal’s out on some silly search for a dog—”

  “Come on, Nonie. Not just a dog. Jasper’s a much-loved pet.”

  She shrugged. “I like dogs as well as the next girl. Arthur and I are old chums, but really, this search seems like a waste of time to me, but each to his own. I just thought, since the boss and Kitty aren’t here and Kinky’s going shopping once she’s given you your lunch, that we could have some fun together.” She exhaled with a grunt. “Oh, never mind,” she said. “Yes, of course I’ll cover for you for an hour. But I don’t particularly want to sit in here or in the surgery and I only go upstairs when I’m invited. Could I wait in your quarters? They’re much more comfortable than my little room in the attic. Sometimes I feel like the poor cousin up there.”

  “Sure,” Barry had blurted out before the possible consequences dawned on him. He’d be coming home to a house deserted by everyone—everyone but a single, very attractive young woman who would be waiting in the privacy of his rooms.

  She lifted one eyebrow, pushed her chair back, uncrossed her legs with a rustling of nylon, and walked past Barry. As she did she let one hand brush against his shoulder. “Thanks, Barry. Are you sure you have to go out?”

  Barry swallowed. He felt the hairs on the nape of his neck tingle. Damn it all. Behave. You’ll be seeing Sue in February. He was struggling for a reply to her last remark when the front doorbell rang. “I do,” he said, following her through the door, “and I’d appreciate it if you don’t smoke in my place.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.” She managed to look hurt. “Have a good time.”

  “Thanks.” Barry grabbed his cap and coat from the coatstand. He met Kinky, who was trotting along from the kitchen to answer the door. “It’s all right, Kinky. It’s for me, and I’m sorry, but I can’t stay for lunch.”

  As he opened the door to Dapper Frew, he heard her tutting behind him. “It does not be a good thing for a young man to miss his meals, so.”

  “How’s about ye, Doc?” Dapper asked, leading the way to his new Mark II Ford Cortina.

  “Grand, and yourself?” said Barry, who was having a distinctly saved-by-the-bell feeling with Dapper’s timely arrival.

  “Grand altogether. Now, let’s get in quick,” Dapper said, holding the passenger door for Barry. “The road’s narrow here and I’m holding up the traffic.”

  “Right,” said Barry.

  As the estate agent nipped round the car, Barry frowned. Nonie Stevenson might be a first-class physician and appreciated by many of the women patients, but he was seeing some traits that he could not find appealing. Smoking? The profession had known about the link between tobacco and lung cancer for years. He had to admit she was a damned sexy woman, but he couldn’t quite understand her.

  Dapper climbed in, started the engine, and drove off in the direction of Bangor, followed by a string of cars. “This road was built before the motorcar was invented,” Dapper said. “There’s talk it should be widened, but och, I like it the way it is…” He shrugged. “Anyroad, it’s not far to the wee house.” Two cars passed him on a wider stretch. “The owners’ll be out so you can get a good look, and I want, if I can, to stop them knowing a doctor’s looking at the place.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Doctors are rich—”

  Barry burst out laughing. “Not this one. I’m a country GP, Dapper. I make two thousand pounds a year before tax and deductions.”

  “Doctor, dear,” Dapper said, “no harm til ye, but you’re young. You don’t know how the other half lives. If I can sell about ten or twelve houses a year I make about six hundred on commissions. A bloke like Donal? Maybe three hundred a year. Three hundred and fifty at the most, with his schemes on the side. Julie brings in a few quid more with her hair modelling.”

  “Gosh,” Barry said as the car turned left and headed downhill toward the sea. “You’re right, Dapper. I didn’t even suspect. As long as I’ve had enough I’ve never thought about money much.”

  “Aye, well, lots of other people do think about it. They budget, work hard, and hope they can make both ends meet. And when it comes to selling a house, everyone’s out to get the best possible price. I don’t want to see you getting rooked because people think you’re warm, so I don’t.”

  “But will that not cut into your commission?”

  “I get one and a half percent of the sale price, so if I save you two hundred pounds I only lose three quid. You can buy me a couple of pints.”

  “You’re on,” Barry said, and grinned.

  Dapper drove under a single spandrel railway bridge just as the one-carriage diesel, known to the locals as “The Covered Wagon,” rattled overhead. “The place is only a wee doddle from the Cultra Station, so if you don’t want to use your car, you can be in Bangor or Belfast and points between like Ballybucklebo in no time.”

  Barry nodded.

  Dapper turned left just past the bridge and onto a lane that passed between tall laurel hedges, behind which very grand three-storey granite or redbrick houses stood in extensive gardens.

  “The real highheejins live here,” Dapper said, “but wait til you see your bungalow. It’s dead wheeker, so it is.”

  Dapper Frew, Barry thought, you’re a damn fine salesman.

  They left the leafy hedges behind and crossed a stretch of moorland. Dapper pulled up outside a low, whitewashed wall that surrounded a whitewashed bungalow with a grey slate roof. They were at the rear of the house. To the left was an inlet of Belfast Lough that ended against a seawall some sixty yards inland of the bungalow and not much farther to his right a similar inlet met the same wall. The property effectively was on its own small peninsula. He glanced behind him. The high boundary fence of one of the mansions blocked his view of the house itself, leaving the property in privacy. He took a lungful of air, tasting the saltiness on the air, smelling and hearing the sea.

  “Come on, Doc, and we’ll go in.”

  “Right.” Barry followed Dapper through a black-painted wrought-iron gate. It squeaked on its hinges as it was closed.

  Dapper headed for a back door painted in a light brown that matched the window trim and opened it wide. “Come on on in.”

  Barry wiped his shoes on a coconut-fibre doormat and entered a small but functional kitchen overlooking the back garden, a stretch of heath, and a row of tall leafless elms in the near distance.

  Dapper closed the door. “This here bungalow’s nine hundred square feet. I’m going til give you the grand tour first and then if you want to see more—” Not waiting for a response, Dapper went through the kitchen door. Barry followed.

  In less than ten minutes he had inspected two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a larger bedroom. All neatly furnished. All, by Ulster standards, of a good size. Clean, warm, and practical but, Barry thought—and he had made a lot of home visits to a lot of houses—pretty much universal. Nothing to qualify for Dapper’s description of “dead wheeker.”

  “Now,” said Dapper, heading back past the kitchen door to where the hall made a right-angle turn to the left, “the lounge’s in here. It’s a lounge/dining room that runs the whole width of the house. There’s a fireplace…” He grinned and opened the lounge door. “But come and see for yourself.”

  Barry realised that the estate agent had kept the best until last when Dapper spread his arms wide and said, “What do you think of that?”

  Barry entered and his mouth dropped open. He’d look at the room later. Almost the entire front wall
to his left was filled with a vast picture window.

  And the view.

  A trimmed lawn was surrounded by a perimeter path of white and black oval stones. A solitary bed, flowerless in January, stood in the centre of the lawn. Barry barely heard Dapper’s, “There’s a wee snag with the front garden. I hope you and your missus-to-be aren’t keen gardeners. Nothing grows this close til the sea but nasturtiums and snapdragons.”

  And close they were. The garden was thirty feet from house to whitewashed wall. Beyond the wall fifty yards of coarse marram grass stretched to where jagged rocks tumbled fifteen feet to a rocky shore. From out in Belfast Lough grey combers rolled in, rank after rank, to growl and crash as they dashed themselves into far-flung spray.

  Past the shore Barry could look to his left and see a freighter nearing the port of Belfast, or Béal Feirste, meaning the mouth of the sandbanks. Cave Hill was in view on the upper far side of the lough, marching east with the Antrim Hills. On their top, the Knockagh monument, a needle obelisk, pierced grey clouds. At their feet squatted Carrickfergus Castle.

  If Barry closed his eyes he could picture John de Courcy’s men at arms supervising its building in 1177 and hear the clash of steel on steel and the sibilant hissing of flights of goose-feather-fletched longbow arrows as King John Lackland laid siege to it in 1210. With her love of the past Sue would probably gaze at it for hours.

  Nothing interrupted his view along the length of the Antrim coast right to Blackhead where the lough joined the Irish Sea. The far-distant mouth of the lough to his right was interrupted by a nearby green and treed County Down peninsula. What a view and what a private site. He could imagine sitting on deck chairs in the garden with Sue, watching a summer sunset, hearing the piping of oystercatchers, the plaintive cries of curlew, the never-ending siren song of sea on shore. Or sitting with her here in the lounge, a cosy fire burning in the grate, hot chocolate or a hot half-un in hand, watching the fury of an equinoctial gale when Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, tamer of horses, sent his war chariots squadron by squadron to storm the unyielding land. She’d love it. He knew that.

  Barry drank it all in as a single ray of sunshine, his dad called them angels’ searchlights, streamed down through the battleship-grey skies to highlight a vee of greylag geese heading down lough.

  Turning to Dapper, Barry said, his voice hushed, “It is wheeker, Dapper.” What a wedding present it would make for Sue. “How much?”

  Dapper laughed. “Hold your horses,” he said. “Hang about. You’ve not really had a good look at it and,” he winked, “we all know that you and Miss Nolan’s going til tie the knot in March. The owners don’t want til start me selling it officially until April.” He laid a finger beside his nose. “I’ve been in this business a fair wheen of years. Take my advice. Let Miss Nolan get a skelly at it before you try to buy it. You’d feel a right bollix if you had a twenty-five-year mortgage and she didn’t like it.”

  “Oh,” said Barry. “Yes. That does make sense. I will let her see it first, but seriously, what is the asking price?”

  “Five thousand.”

  Barry whistled. “Holy oh.”

  “But I reckon we’ll get it for you for forty-seven hundred.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Barry said.

  “It’s worth it,” Dapper said. “I’ll only start showing it once it’s on the market, or…” he laughed, “not show it at all if you and Miss Nolan want to buy it. The owners are getting on a bit and they’d be happy to avoid all the showin’s and such if they could get a good price.”

  “Thank you,” Barry said.

  “Now, sir,” Dapper looked at his watch, “I’ve a sales meeting coming up back at the office and then I’ve til pick up Donal on the Comber Road about four. He’ll leave a message at work if he’s got home sooner because they’ve found the dog. I’ll give you a lift home now.”

  “I wonder how Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly are getting on,” Barry said, looking up. “I think we’re in for rain.”

  On the short drive home, he kept picturing the little house on its own private peninsula. It wasn’t until Dapper dropped Barry off at Number One that he remembered the seductive Nonie Stevenson would be waiting in his quarters.

  He let himself in through the front door, hung up his cap and coat, and headed for the kitchen, hoping that Kinky was home from her shopping, but no such luck. The only sign of life was a drowsy Lady Macbeth curled up in front of the range. The door to his quarters was closed. He took a deep breath, opened it, and leaving it wide open strode in, half expecting to find Nonie lying seductively on his settee. She wasn’t.

  Nonie Stevenson was in his chair at his worktable, slumped over, head on a bent arm, fast asleep. And, damn it all, half his tools—forceps, tiny scissors, a jeweller’s loupe, a tube of glue—were littered all over the carpet. He clenched his teeth. Blue blazes. The woman needed her sleep, but it was a damn silly place to doze off, and if she’d been a bit more to the right she’d have knocked the nearly complete Rattlesnake onto the floor.

  Now what? He was sorely tempted to leave her there. Serve her right if she woke up with a crick in her neck, but she was lying within inches of the almost completed frigate. If she threw her arms wide when she woke up she could still dash it off the table. He stood beside her, put his hands in her armpits, and slowly pulled her backward. Her arms fell limply to her sides. She really was soundly asleep. For a split second he wondered if she’d fainted and that was why she was asleep at the table. He was damned if he was going to carry out a full neurological examination. He felt a vessel pulsing at his temple, but he bent and listened to her breathing. It was steady and regular. He felt for a pulse. Regular, strong, and eighty beats per minute. Nothing to worry about. He bent, got an arm under her knees, picked her up bodily, carried her to the settee, and none too gently lowered her onto it. Still she did not awaken. He shook his head and, still thoroughly irritated, muttered, “Sweet dreams, princess,” then turned his back and started to pick up his scattered equipment.

  “Anybody home,” Kinky called from the kitchen. Thank God I left the door open, Barry thought. He’d not want to be caught in his quarters behind a closed door with a girl other than Sue.

  Kinky had her back to him and was unpacking groceries from her shopping basket.

  “I’m in here, Kinky. Doctor Stevenson is having a nap.” He hurried on with his explanation. Kinky might wonder what Nonie was doing here in the first place. “She was covering for me while I was out and asked if she could sit in here. I’m just back.”

  Kinky turned, nodded and grinned. “That Doctor Stevenson. She’s a grand one for the naps. I suppose the doctor needs her beauty sleep. Now, Doctor Laverty, sir, it’s one o’clock and you must be perishing from hunger. Can I not heat up some soup before you start your afternoon home visits? My ma, God rest her, swore by hot soup for keeping up a body’s health, so, and I can’t have my doctors getting sick.”

  “That would be lovely,” Barry said. Dear old Kinky was such an open, trusting soul that if she’d suspected anything amiss she’d have been standing arms folded across her ample bosom, frowning to beat Bannagher, and, like the mother she almost was to him and O’Reilly, demanding to know exactly what was going on. “And Doctor Stevenson said you’d made Welsh rarebit.”

  “I had, and I have the cheese sauce yet, so go you through to the dining room. I’ll bring the soup in a shmall-little minute, so.”

  “Thank you, Kinky,” Barry said. He turned to look at Nonie. Still flat out. Barry set his collected instruments down on the table. What was he going to do about this Stevenson woman? He had to try to set aside his irritation about how close she’d come to wrecking almost a full year’s work. He glanced at her again. This constant need for sleep, her progressively more flirtatious ways? He’d little doubt about what she had been hinting at before he went out. Barry shook his head. Maybe he should talk to Fingal about letting her go before her three-month trial period was over? But taking a nap
was hardly a firing matter. And nothing untoward had actually happened. He knew Fingal trusted him completely, but the man still might be surprised by Barry accusing Nonie of being flirtatious. He tried to remember exactly what she’d said. There was nothing overt that he could remember. And being sacked by such a well-respected physician as Fingal O’Reilly would be a very large blot on her professional copybook. He shook his head and sighed. Twenty-two more days and he’d be in France with Sue.

  Och, blether. She was a good doctor and seemed to enjoy working here. She had extra training in women’s health. Maybe, just maybe, he should let the hare sit—and make sure he didn’t let himself get into any compromising situations with Nonie Stevenson in the future.

  10

  The Hunter Home from the Hill

  They had to cross twenty yards of sere brown bracken that crackled underfoot. “Poor old Jasper could have crawled under this anywhere for warmth.” O’Reilly poked randomly with his blackthorn walking stick, but to no avail. “I think we’re going to have to depend on Arthur’s nose.”

  But the dog had no luck.

  They left the open country and entered a wood of old birch trees. The branches were bare, their slender trunks mossy on their north sides. O’Reilly sent Arthur ahead into a forest floor dappled by light and shade and carpeted with last year’s brown soggy leaves. They gave off a musty smell that was half decay and half the aroma of the mushrooms in a fairy ring growing directly in front of his path.

  “You’ll think I’m a superstitious eejit,” he said, “but just to be on the safe side, let’s skirt that ring of mushrooms.”

  “Why?”

  “Now, don’t laugh, but it’s called a fairy ring, a place where the fairies supposedly dance. Celtic legend holds that anyone who enters such a ring will either die young or become invisible to the rest of the human race and never be seen again. And I want to go on seeing you for years to come.”

  She shook her head. “A few years ago I probably would have thought you were being silly, but since then I’ve heard Kinky’s stories about her encounters with the sidhe, the little people.”