An Irish Country Christmas

  “Doctor Mills?” Joe took the tickets. He was bald as a billiard ball. His battered face with its squashed nose broke into a wide, gap-toothed grin that spread from one cauliflower ear to the other. “How’s the world abusing you?”

  “Can’t complain, Joe,” Jack said. “Nice to be back at Bostock.”

  “It’s great to see you, so it is, and you too, Doctor Laverty, sir.”

  “And you, Joe.” Funny, Barry thought, a couple of years ago he and Jack had been chased across the lawns by an enraged Joe. They had brought two student nurses back after their curfew. It had been Jack’s idea to taunt Joe so that he lost his temper, chased his tormentors, and left the door unguarded long enough for the two young women to nip inside undetected, thus avoiding being reported to the matron.

  By the way Joe was greeting them, perhaps he had forgotten that particular episode. Then again, it had been widely believed among the medical students that Joe had taken one too many punches to the head, leaving him at least one stook short of a stack.

  Barry went into the noisy, crowded foyer. Cut-out Santas and snowmen were stuck to the hospital-green walls. A fir tree stood in the far corner. Coloured glass baubles dangled from every tinsel-draped branch. A gold star at the tree’s very top drooped sideways, acting as a pointer to a sign reading Merry Christmas.

  The place was very warm. Barry waited in the queue behind Jack and Mandy, took off his overcoat, and then left it in the cloakroom. He reflexively smoothed down his blonde tuft and straightened his Old Campbellian tie.

  Couples and single men and women came and went through a set of open double doors leading to the home’s main hall. It was used for assemblies, amateur theatricals, and tonight it was doing duty as a dance hall.

  Barry recognized the strains of “Muskrat Ramble” being played inside the hall. He tried to hum along, cursed his tone deafness, and smiled at himself. If Patricia were here, she could have sung along in her deep contralto. His smile faded. If she were here? He ached for her to be here, wondered about making an excuse and heading back for home. Damn her intransigence.

  “See you inside, Barry.” Jack, holding tightly to Mandy’s hand, led her to the dance floor. Barry watched them go, Mandy’s buttocks mincing saucily under her tight red knee-length skirt, the curve of her calves accented by her sheer black stockings and her heels. Barry smiled. She really did have great legs. He felt a little stirring inside his pants. God, it had been a long time since he’d been near a girl.

  “Nyeh, how are you, Barry?” He turned to see an old friend, Harry Sloan, a budding pathologist who prefaced many of his remarks with that peculiar braying noise. He was the one who had speeded up the microscopic examination of slides of heart tissue—from a patient of Barry’s who had died in August—when Barry had needed the results urgently. He still was in Harry’s debt.

  “Fine thanks, Harry.”

  “I thought you had a steady bird. In the cloakroom is she?”

  Barry took a deep breath, shook his head, and exhaled forcibly. “No, I’m on my own.” And despite thinking of Patricia only a few moments ago, he didn’t want to be reminded of her again. Not just now. Not when merely thinking of her refusal to accept his offer made his anger rise.

  “Nyeh. Blew you out, did she?” Harry shook his prematurely white-haired head and tutted gently.

  Barry pursed his lips. “Not exactly, but she won a scholarship to Cambridge and she’s not home for the holidays yet.” If she’s even going to come at all, he thought.

  Harry’s grin was wide. “Aye. So when the cat’s away, the mice’ll play, is that it?”

  Barry shrugged. “Something like that,” he said. He realized he was here in part to try to punish Patricia, although how his going to a dance would affect her in the slightest, unless he told her, wasn’t entirely clear. And there was some truth in what Harry said. Barry had been faithful to Patricia since she left for England in September, but he had felt that frisson just looking at Mandy’s legs. And the room next door was full of attractive, single young women.

  “Come on then,” Harry said, moving toward the double doors. “Let’s go and have a look at the talent.”

  Inside the hall the lighting had been dimmed, and Barry blinked as he waited for his eyes to get used to the low light and the prickly feeling caused by the tobacco smoke. The band, playing on a stage at the far end of the room, was well into “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He could now read the letters painted on the bass drum. The White Eagles. He’d often danced to this well-known Belfast-based group at medical student affairs.

  A large ball suspended from the ceiling spun so that the light reflected from the myriad small mirrors on its surface threw constantly moving bright patches against the walls, the floor, and the dancers. The patterns could have been made by a monochrome kaleidoscope. The dance floor was packed. Some couples maneuvered around, dancing a quickstep. Most happily jived, the men twisting and twirling their partners in flashing heels, with pirouetting legs giving glimpses of thigh above stocking tops, as skirts whirled merrily like the canopies of a multitude of carousels.

  The trumpeter held a high note and the drummer whaled away happily as the music shuddered to its climax. Some couples stayed together as they left the floor; others thanked their partners and returned to their own side of the hall, men to the right, ladies to the left. The lights brightened. Barry felt Harry nudge him.

  “Do you see that wee blonde?” He nodded to a girl talking to a petite brunette. “Her name’s Jane Duggan. I took her out a few times last year. She’s a bit of a flyer, so she is.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m going to ask her for the next dance. Will you ask her friend?”

  Barry hesitated. Would Patricia be hurt if she found out? Damn it, if she was here in Ulster he wouldn’t be at the dance in the first place—or if he was, she’d be with him, gammy leg and all. And it wasn’t as if he was going to take the brunette to bed. It was only a dance. “Sure,” he said.

  Together they crossed the floor. For a moment, Barry thought of a story of the young man who had asked a girl from the Gallaghers’ tobacco factory for a dance, only to be told, “Nah. Ask my sister. I’m sweating something fierce.”

  “So anyway,” the brunette was saying, “Sister nearly went harpic . . .” Barry smiled. Harpic was a toilet cleaner with the slogan Cleans Round the Bend. He heard Harry ask the blonde to dance. Then he saw him take her by the hand and lead her out onto the floor.

  Barry smiled at the brunette. “May I have the next dance?” He saw her dark eyes wrinkle at the corners, her full lips curve into a smile. Her dark hair—it was impossible to make out its true colour in the hall’s light—hung to her shoulders, then curled in at the bottom to frame her face, the way Diana Rigg wore hers in the TV show The Avengers. He guessed she was about twenty or twenty-one.

  “My pleasure.” She offered a hand. He took it.

  “Barry Laverty,” he said, “from Ballybucklebo.” Her hand was pleasantly cool in his. She wore a lime green V-necked sweater that showed a hint of cleavage, and a wide black patent-leather belt. Her knee-length pleated skirt was dark green.

  “Peggy Duff. I’m living in Knock. We’re nearly neighbours.”

  Barry was usually shy around girls, finding himself as often as not stuck with some inane opening gambit like “Do you come here often?” or a remark about the weather. But he suddenly remembered what he had overheard her saying. “Why did Sister go bananas?”

  She laughed, a deep throaty chuckle that ended in a snort. “When I was a first-year student nurse, she sent me to clean all the old men’s false teeth. I wasn’t thinking, and I collected them all in one basin and washed them . . .”

  “I’ll bet you had hell’s delight finding out what teeth belonged to which patient.” Barry laughed.

  “It took me two days of trial and error.” She laughed again. “Sister was not happy with me.”

  He liked her easy ability to laugh at herself. “I’m sure she got
over it,” he said.

  The lights dimmed. The band swung into a slow number, “Saint James Infirmary.” He took Peggy to the floor, put his right arm round her waist, and held her right hand with his left, their arms outstretched. This was the position he had learnt at the dancing classes at his boys’ boarding school. His partner there had been a wooden chair, and it certainly had not been as soft as the girl he was now holding close. Nor did it wear a perfume like Peggy’s. He recognized it as Je Reviens because, it seemed like an aeon ago, he’d once bought a bottle as a birthday present for a certain student nurse. One he’d known before Patricia.

  He worked them jerkily around the floor. Barry’s tone deafness was complemented by his inability to keep on the beat. He knew film stars like Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda would have whirled this girl around and wooed her with their expertise. Barry Laverty, however, pushed her around the floor with a step somewhere between a waltz and the shuffling of a patient with some neurological disorder. At least he managed to avoid stepping on her feet.

  They didn’t speak during the dance, but she did allow him to hold her more closely and put his cheek against hers. He could feel the softness of her breasts, and he let his hand slip down below the small of her back. She did not pull it back up but rather pushed a little harder against him. He felt again the arousal he had when he had watched Mandy’s retreating backside. Sorry, Patricia, he thought, and he gently brushed his lips on Peggy’s cheek, but you should be here with me. You really should.

  He was a little breathless when the music stopped, and it was not from the exertion of dancing. They stood apart, but he held on to her hand and she didn’t object.

  “You’re no Fred Astaire,” she said with a smile. “Do you really want to dance some more, or would you like to buy me a drink?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, relieved that he would not have to stumble clumsily about anymore. “The bar’s out in the foyer.” Still holding her hand, he guided her around the edge of the dance floor. He didn’t see Harry and his blonde partner anywhere, but did wave to Jack and Mandy as they spun past. Barry took Peggy through the double doors and into the foyer. “What would you like?”

  “Vodka and orange, please.”

  He found a chair for her, left her sitting, and joined the line in front of the little bar. He turned and looked at her. Peggy really was a most attractive girl. Not as beautiful as Patricia, he reminded himself—no one was—but Jack Mills would describe Peggy Duff as “restful on the eye.” Very restful.

  He ordered her drink and an orange juice for himself. He’d be driving home soon; he hadn’t really intended to stay for very long, but it had been pleasant to see Jack and Mandy, and Harry. Barry paid for the drinks and carried them over to Peggy. “Here you are,” he said, handing her the vodka and sitting opposite.

  “Thank you. You’re a vodka drinker too?”

  He shook his head. “Just orange. I’m driving.”

  She patted his free hand. “That’s smart, Barry. When I was working in Casualty, I saw enough youngsters smashed to tatters because some eejit thought he could take a lot of drink and still drive.”

  “I’ve seen a few myself.”

  “How?”

  “I’m a GP, assistant to a Doctor O’Reilly in Ballybucklebo, but I did three months in emergency at the Royal when I was a houseman last year.”

  She took a pull from her drink. “I must have just missed you. I was there this June, just before I got my R.N.” She looked more closely at him and frowned a little. “Barry Laverty? Laverty? Are you the chap who used to date Brid McCormack?”

  “That’s me,” Barry said, remembering Brid’s green eyes and auburn hair, a remembrance made more real by Peggy’s perfume.

  “And she married Roger Grant, the surgeon, this September.”

  Brid had told him about that in January last year when she’d calmly announced she was going to marry someone else. Now it was December, and it looked as though Patricia was losing interest. There must be something jinxed about women, himself, and the wintertime. He sighed and was surprised to feel Peggy’s hand covering his.

  “She’s a very pretty girl. She was a class ahead of me at nursing school.” He looked into her eyes and saw sympathy.

  “Och,” he said, shrugging. “ ‘That was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead,’ ” he said, quoting Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.

  Peggy looked at him quizzically. “Brid’s not dead, as far as I know.”

  “I know. It just means I’m over her.” The next question would probably be “Are you seeing anybody else?” he thought. He didn’t know how he was going to answer her, being warmed as he was by the increasing pressure of her hand on his.

  “It’s not nice to get dumped,” she said. “My boyfriend and I split up six months ago.” She sighed. “You get used to it, but it stings.”

  “Do you?” he said, wondering if Patricia dumped him would he ever get over it. He knew O’Reilly still grieved for his lost wife, but at least he was seeing Kitty now.

  “Yes,” she said, “you have to. Life has to go on.”

  Barry noticed that her glass was empty. “Would you like another?”

  She shook her head and glanced at her watch. “I live in Knock, and I have to get up early tomorrow. My friend drove me here, but she seems to have vanished with your white-haired pal. I don’t suppose you’d like to give me a lift home? It’s on your way to Ballybucklebo.”

  Barry finished his orange juice and stood. “I’d be delighted,” he said without hesitation. “Let’s get our coats and I’ll walk you to my car.”

  She waited to kiss him until they were far enough away from Bo-stock to be in the dark shadows, away from prying eyes. She kissed him softly at first, then harder, and Barry didn’t mind. He didn’t mind one tiny bit.

  The Absent Are Always in the Wrong

  “This is the house.” O’Reilly parked the Rover outside 27 Shore Road. “Out,” he said to Kitty, then piled out himself and opened the back door. He grabbed the two heavy maternity bags that minutes earlier he had taken from the kitchen at Number 1. “Can you close this door, Kitty?”

  She came around from her side of the car and slammed the door.

  “Open the garden gate.”

  Above the rhythmic crashing of surf on the nearby beach he heard the squeak of rusty hinges. The low cast-iron gate stood in a three-foot-high brick wall. Kitty hurried to the house, and he followed, leaving the gate open.

  All the detached houses along this part of the Shore Road were identical, and although O’Reilly had not visited this one before, several of his patients lived nearby. He moved quickly after Kitty and had no difficulty finding his way along the short path, even though the night was black as pitch.

  The door opened to Kitty’s knock, and Miss Hagerty, the district midwife, smart as ever in her blue uniform and starched white apron, was backlit by the hall lights. “I’m very glad you could come, Doctor O’Reilly,” she said. Then she turned and started walking quickly. “The patient’s in the main bedroom upstairs,” she called over her shoulder. “I don’t want to leave her alone for long. Follow me.” He guessed that the husband, like any sensible Ulsterman with a wife in labour, was at the pub, and that was why Miss Hagerty had answered the door.

  “This is Sister O’Hallorhan,” he called by way of introduction, as he lugged the heavy bags along a well-carpeted hall and up a broad staircase. Oil paintings of fishermen and landscapes that he recognized as painted by James Humbert Craig hung in ascending order to keep company with anybody climbing the stairs. Craig, a Bangor man, had often painted scenes of Belfast Lough.

  O’Reilly could hear a woman moaning, and he saw Miss Hagerty disappear through an open door on the right side of the landing.

  He followed, set the bags on the carpet, straightened up, tore off his overcoat and jacket, and flung them into a corner of the room. Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he moved across to stand beside a large double bed.
Miss Hagerty stood at the far side. Kitty came in and waited unobtrusively beside the door.

  Gertie Gorman, a woman he guessed was in her late twenties, lay on top of a rubber sheet that Miss Hagerty would have placed there to protect the mattress. The bedclothes lay in a heap beside a dressing table. Gertie’s nightie was rucked up just below her breasts. “Hello, Mrs. Gorman,” he said. “I’m Doctor O’Reilly.”

  She managed a weak smile. “Thanks for . . .” Her face creased. She gritted her teeth and moaned. O’Reilly glanced at Miss Hagerty and raised one bushy eyebrow.

  “She says the pains started about ten hours ago and are coming every three minutes and lasting for a minute. She’s well along.”

  He nodded. “How many’s this for her?”

  “Number three. The other two were short labours, eight and six hours. And she has small babies, six pounds eight ounces and seven pounds one.”

  Be thankful for small mercies, he thought. Second, third, and fourth were the easiest deliveries, the least likely to be complicated. On the other hand, the time of labour usually grew shorter with each successive pregnancy. This time it was longer, and that was worrying, but she was probably close to being ready to deliver. It was time to start to ascertain exactly what was happening and mobilize his forces. “Kitty, could you clear a space on the dressing table and get all the sterile packs out of the bags?”

  Kitty went to the dressing table and started moving things from the top.

  “Miss Hagerty, I’ll need you to bring me up to date. Is she at term?”

  “Thirty-eight weeks,” Miss Hagerty said, “and the pregnancy’s been uncomplicated as far as I know.”

  O’Reilly frowned. As far as I know? Usually most of the antenatal care of a woman with an uncomplicated pregnancy was the duty of her midwife.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “A month ago.”

  He heard his voice rise. “A month? In the third trimester?”

  Miss Hagerty sucked in her thin cheeks. “Doctor Fitzpatrick was most insistent that he be almost solely responsible for her care.”