An Irish Country Courtship

  “Right. You want toast?”

  Barry shook his head.

  Jack played with his fork until the man was out of earshot. “So,” he said. His Cullybackey accent was its normal self. “She blew you out? I’m sorry, mate. I really am. I was shocked when you told me on the phone.”

  “Aye,” Barry said. “So was I when she told me.” He looked at Jack and saw concern on the red-cheeked face of his friend. “This time last week I thought I knew exactly where I was going. Where we were going. And now?”

  Jack put the fork down. “You know me. Love ’em and leave ’em. But she was special for you, wasn’t she?”

  “Very.”

  Jack leant forward. “You reckon you’ve no mission?”

  “Not a snowball’s. You’ve met her. You know once she’s her mind made up. And she says there’s another—” Barry swallowed. He didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “Shite,” Jack said. “That’s ferocious.”

  Barry’s friend’s words put everything in a nutshell.

  “So what are you going to do?” he continued. “Have you phoned her? Are you going to?”

  “Not at all. I’m—” Barry swallowed, felt prickling behind his eyelids. “I’m hurting enough. I’m not going back for seconds.”

  Jack nodded and said seriously, “You’re probably right letting her be.”

  Barry sniffed.

  Jack sat forward. “So what are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? I’ll have to try to put her behind me”—fat bloody chance, he thought—“get on with my life.”

  “And you can start with this here.” Brendan stood beside the table. “I’m sorry, Doctor Laverty. I wasn’t listening in. Honest.” None too gently he set down two chipped china plates, one for Barry and one for Jack. “Here y’are.” He put a trefoil wire condiment holder on the table. One set of rings held vinegar; one, HP Sauce; and the other, Heinz tomato ketchup. Brown lumps of the dried ketchup clung to the cap and neck.

  Jack unscrewed the cap, upended the bottle, and waited. Nothing. He shook it repeatedly until a gout of ketchup spewed out. “God,” he said, “‘shake and shake the ketchup bottle. None’ll come out and then a lot’ll.’”

  Barry couldn’t be bothered to try to identify the source of the quotation. He just wished he could pour out all that was in him—the ache, the longing, the disbelief, and yes, the anger, red as the bloody ketchup. But he couldn’t. Not here. Not in Smoky Joe’s.

  He cut up one of his rashers and took a bite. The bacon was undercooked, salty, and had been fried in lard that should have been changed. His eggs had scruffy, burned, brown bits in the whites. He prodded a yolk, and the yellow contents oozed across the plate.

  Jack tucked into his breakfast.

  Barry sat, elbows on the tabletop, chin on his clasped hands, and looked around at the familiar pale-green painted walls and the fading posters tacked to them. Take the Boat to Heysham. Come to the Isle of Man. The beckoning girl in that one wore a rubber bathing cap and a swimsuit that had been out of date when his father was a student at Queen’s. A student of structural engineering, the same sort of courses Patricia was taking at Cambridge. Damn it, even a couple of ratty old posters reminded him of her.

  Looking across his empty plate, Jack said, “I can go and call the cows home now.” He used the last bit of his toast to mop up some remaining egg. “Yours not up to scratch?”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “More tea?”

  Barry put his hand over his mug.

  “Fair enough.” Jack finished his tea. He looked at his watch. “Sun’s over the yardarm, and Doctor Mills’s prescription for those with classical, crushing, cardiac collapse, tending to chronicity—”

  Barry was only half listening. “What?”

  “A broken heart that could go for a long time unmended.”

  Barry wished the lump would leave his throat.

  “The Doctor Mills’s symptomatic cure is a pint—or two.” He rose. “Brunch’s on me, the Club Bar is open across the street, and the first pint’s on you, mate.”

  10

  We Have Drunken of Things Lethean

  Jack pushed through the bat-wing doors of The Club. Barry followed. It was dim inside and smelt of beer and stale tobacco. The simple room had a planked floor and a few tables surrounded by wooden chairs. Not long ago there would have been spittoons and sawdust. This, the public bar, was where workingmen and male university students drank. No women allowed. That law was ages old and had been aimed at preventing fights over prostitutes who might have tried for custom inside.

  In term time, The Club, the nearest bar to the main campus, would be packed, but it was quiet today. High stools were ranked in front of a straight bar. Three were occupied by men drinking pints of Guinness. Each man had a whiskey chaser beside his glass of stout. There were at least two empty places between each solitary patron. I suppose, Barry thought, I’m not the only one with troubles to nurse. It was small comfort.

  He walked up to where beer pumps on the counter stood to attention, waiting to dispense Younger’s Number Three, Harp Lager, Smithwick’s Ale, and Strongbow Cider. At the back of the bar, bottles of spirits were arranged along a shelf beneath barrels of Guinness, each with its spigot firmly hammered into the bunghole.

  “Barry. How’s about ye? Long time no see. You too, Jack. Happy New Year.” Mick Agnew, the pub’s fire hydrant–squat, silver-haired, ruddy-cheeked proprietor, stood in his accustomed place.

  “And to you, Mick,” Barry said.

  “Usual?” Mick asked.

  “Please.” Barry didn’t have to give more detail. The Club public bar was where he and Jack had had their first drink together in September 1957, and it had become, as Jack had described it, an extension to their living room.

  Next door in the adjoining lounge bar where women were welcomed, the room was better lit and much more fashionably appointed. Of course the drinks were more expensive there too. It was where Barry and Jack had entertained their dates before Saturday hops at the Students’ Union and formal dances at the Whitla Hall in the grounds of the university. Like the one he’d not gone to on Thursday night. Formal dances where Van Buren’s took your photo, Van Buren’s where he’d wanted her to have a picture taken to put by his bedside. At least, he thought, he’d never brought her to The Club. No real memories in every nook here.

  He heard Jack say, “Anyone in the tunnel, Mick?”

  The tunnel was reserved for Mick’s favoured customers when they wanted privacy.

  The owner turned from where he was drawing pints from the Guinness barrels. “Harry Sloan’s in with a wee blonde.”

  Damn. Barry had wanted to talk in private.

  “I’ll just go and say hello,” Jack said.

  Mick lifted a flap at the end of the bar counter and held it up until Jack passed through. He returned in a minute and with perfect mimicry of a Belfast docker announced, “Harry says to me, so he does, ‘Happy New Year. How’s about ye, oul’ hand?’ says he. ‘Rightly are yiz? Dead on. Come away on on on in.’”

  “I’ll bring your pints through,” Mick said.

  Barry smiled and ducked under the counter. He turned left into a narrow space where, against one wall, crate upon crate of beer and soft drinks were piled and barrels of Guinness were stored. Upended half-tuns served both as seats and tables. A single shadeless sixty-watt bulb hung overhead. In the tunnel, Jack was already seated, and Harry Sloan, a classmate and trainee pathologist, perched on another half-tun. Harry’s silver hair glinted in the bulb’s light. A petite blonde sat beside Harry. Barry recognised her as Jane. He couldn’t remember her surname, but she was a nursing student at the Royal Victoria Hospital. She and Harry both said, “Barry.”

  “Harry … Jane.” She’d been the object of Harry’s pursuit at a nurses’ dance before Christmas. Things must have progressed.

  “Grab a pew,” Harry said. “We’re off in fifteen minutes.”

  “Harry’s taki
ng me to the matinee to see Zorba the Greek.” Jane’s voice was little-girlish.

  Barry parked himself.

  “It’s been a while since we were in here,” Jack said.

  “The night we got our finals results,” Harry said.

  “And you three lads got full as goats,” Mick remarked, setting two pints on a makeshift table. “You, Doctor Mills, kept yelling, ‘I deserve it all,’ until you passed out.”

  “You never did,” Jane said, eyes wide.

  “And precisely how many nights in a man’s life does he qualify as a doctor?” Jack asked. “And I did deserve it all. Always did. Always will.”

  “Here, Mick.” Barry paid. “Cheers.” He lifted his glass and drank.

  Jack raised his pint and put on a Scottish accent. “Here’s to us, wha’s like us? Damn few—and they’re mostly deid.” He sank a swallow.

  Jane giggled.

  Barry managed a smile and took a pull. A deep pull.

  “So,” Harry said, “what do you reckon about the Irish rugby team this year, Jack?”

  Barry was happy enough to let the conversation flow around him. He drank.

  “Honestly?” Jack said. “I don’t know. They beat Scotland, but took awful pastings from England, France, and Wales.”

  “That fly-half Gibson’s a hell of a player,” Harry said.

  “Aye,” said Jack. “Barry and I were at school with his older brother Peter, and do you two remember a fellah called Kennedy? He was at Campbell College with Barry and me too.”

  Barry, who certainly remembered the lad, took a drink.

  “Nyeh.” Harry frequently prefaced his remarks with that noise. “Dark-haired lad? Ken Kennedy? A couple of years behind us?”

  “Aye. He’ll get an Irish cap this year or my name’s not Jack Mills.” Barry could hear the disappointment in Jack’s voice. He and Kennedy both played in the same position. If the younger man got the spot and proved his worth, Jack’s hopes of being selected to represent his country must be close to nonexistent. “Still,” Jack continued, “we need all the very best men we can get, and Ken Kennedy’s a bloody fine hooker.”

  That was typical of the farmer’s son. Big Jack Mills didn’t have a selfish bone in his body. Barry looked at his glass. Empty. That had gone down well. “Anyone for another?”

  “Pint,” Jack said. “I’ll call them. Harry? Jane?”

  “Not for us,” said Harry. “We’ll finish these up and be running on.”

  Jack called to Mick, then went right back to discussing with Harry the merits of two other Irish players, Willie John MacBride and Syd Millar, both from Ballymena.

  Ballymena, Barry thought, isn’t far from Broughshane. He was wondering why that had suddenly popped into his mind, when he heard Jane saying, “Nice to see you again, Barry.” She rolled her eyes at Harry. “He’s rugby daft, that one.”

  Barry smiled.

  “Did you never see anything more of Peggy?” she asked.

  Barry shook his head. Peggy Duff. The girl he’d driven home after that dance.

  Jane leant over.

  He found her perfume strong and cloying.

  “Two pints,” Mick announced.

  Barry reached for his and took a healthy swallow from it. The fresh yeasty smell in the mouth of the glass overcame the scent of Jane’s Midnight in Paris.

  Jane leant closer. “I see Peggy every day, so I do. We’re nursing on Twenty-six.”

  Ward 26, the metabolic unit that dealt with hormone disorders.

  “I think she fancies you, Barry. She told me a couple of times she’d not mind seeing you again.”

  If you get tired of your girl, you know where I live. He could remember Peggy saying that outside her flat only a few weeks ago. He didn’t know what to tell Jane, so he drank. He noticed her rummaging in her handbag.

  Barry was distracted, then heard Harry announce, “Nyeh … your man Anthony Quinn’s not going to wait for us at the cinema. Kickoff of the film’s in twenty minutes.” He spoke to Jane: “Get that down you, dear.”

  Jane finished a coloured drink that, by the fruit around the rim of the glass, Barry assumed had been Pimm’s Number One Cup. He felt her pushing something into his hand. “If you want to get ahold of Peggy, that’s her number,” she whispered.

  He stuffed the paper into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said.

  When the couple left, it was quiet in the tunnel. Barry didn’t feel much like talking, and he reckoned Jack understood because he held his peace for quite a while. Finally, when Barry had almost finished his second pint, Jack said, “Come on, I know you’re hurting, lad, but back in Smoky’s you mentioned getting on with your life.”

  Barry sipped. “Aye … I suppose.”

  “Aye … I suppose,” Jack said. “Jesus, Barry, you can do better than that. I’m going to ask you the tough one. How? How are you going to get on?”

  Barry set his glass on the half-tun. “O’Reilly says it’ll take time to get over things. I know that. It took me six months to stop moping over the nurse who went off and married a surgeon.”

  “So there’s light at the end of the tunnel? Six months isn’t long.”

  “I don’t know.” Barry picked up his pint. “I didn’t feel about her the way I did—still do—about Patricia.” He took a swallow. “Two more, Mick,” he yelled. Barry turned back to Jack. “O’Reilly says one trick is to chuck yourself into your work. It takes your mind off things.”

  “And can you? Get really immersed?”

  “At the moment we’re pretty slack with the holidays.”

  “Me too. Only emergencies right now, but it’ll be pretty hectic once we’re back to normal.”

  Barry sighed. “Sometimes all the trivial stuff can get boring.”

  “I know,” Jack said.

  “Specialist training takes a lot of your time, doesn’t it?” Barry asked.

  “Bloody right.” He looked up. “Just set them down, Mick.” He proffered five shillings. “Here.”

  Barry lifted his third pint.

  Jack hoisted his own and said, “Come on. Drink up. Like the old joke says, ‘Get it down you, Paddy. It’ll do you good.’”

  “Aye, and the punch line, after twelve pints, and your man outside with his head bent over the gutter: ‘Get it up you, Paddy. It’ll do you good.’” Barry took a deep swig and asked, “But, overall you really enjoy the work, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Jack said, “but don’t tell anybody. I’d not want people to think I was dedicated or anything like that.”

  “But you do enjoy it, don’t you?”

  “Between you and me? Yes. I like working with my hands.”

  “We don’t get much chance for that in GP. Lance the odd boil, sew up cuts … that’s about it.” He brightened for a moment. “Midwifery’s fun. I delivered a face presentation last summer.”

  “Rather you than me.”

  “I like obstetrics. A lot.”

  Jack frowned, scratched the back of his head, started to speak, but cut off the words.

  “What?” Barry asked.

  “I was going to ask if you’d think about packing up GP. Doing obs and gobs.”

  “Obstetrics and gynaecology? Me? A specialist?”

  “Why not? You always got better marks in it than me. Had a knack for it.”

  “Nah. I like Ballybucklebo.” I do, but I hate how everywhere there reminds me of her. He took a long drink. Barry shook his head. “I like working with O’Reilly.”

  “You think about it. Being a gynae. registrar would certainly keep you occupied, and don’t think training’s all work and no play,” Jack said. “I’ve still time for girls, like your old friend Mandy.” A good quantity of his drink vanished too.

  Mandy. The brunette ward clerk with the big smile and great legs. She wore short skirts and didn’t mind giving young doctors a flash of her thighs. “You can keep her, Jack.” Barry’s head felt fuzzy. He realised he’d barely eaten today and wished he’d made more of an effort with
the eggs and bacon back at the café. “You can keep the whole bloody lot. The whole ‘monstrous regi … regiment’”—he realised he was stumbling over his words—“… ‘women.’” He swallowed beer and coughed.

  “Fair enough,” Jack said. “I understand what you’re saying. You don’t give a tinker’s damn about girls—yet. But she’s only gone a week, remember.”

  “Seems like a bloody lifetime.” Barry sank the last of the pint in one swallow. “I miss her, Jack.” He heard his voice crack, then rise. “I miss her. Why did she do it to me, Jack? Why?”

  “I don’t know, mate,” Jack spoke quietly.

  “I hate her.” Spit it out, Paddy, it’ll do you good, he thought, but it wasn’t helping. He still loved her. “What’ll I do, Jack?”

  “You can feel sorry for yourself, if that’s what you want.”

  Barry shook his head.

  “In that case I’m only giving you a month.”

  “And then what? Then what?”

  “We’re going dancing. You and me.”

  “Jack. I don’t wanna go dancing with you.” Barry frowned. “We’d look silly together.”

  “Not us, you eejit.” Jack was laughing. “I meant we’d go to a dance together—looking for girls.”

  Barry shook his head. “Let that hare sit for a while. Let the hairy hare sit.” That line struck Barry as wildly funny. He giggled.

  “I will for a while, but I’ll not let you go broody on me. I bloody well won’t.”

  “I’ll go dancing when I’m good and ready.” Barry’s voice was cold. He stood, then shuffled a few unsteady steps. He looked at his glass. There were four dirty-white tidemarks on the sides of the glass and the remnants of the froth of the head on the bottom. Where the hell had the stout gone? “You fancy a wee half?” he asked Jack. Why was Jack smiling like that?

  “No. Not for me, but I’ll call one for you.”