by Bette Paul
Claire laughed. “Oh no, we have our own keys. It’s not like school, you know.”
“So I see.” He looked at her appraisingly. She’d slipped off her warm red jacket now, revealing a silk shirt, shot with dark metallic blues and greens which were reflected in her eyes. “You don’t look like a schoolgirl any more.”
“You never knew me when I did,” she reminded him, flushing under his gaze.
“Ah, but I have photographs of you – all ages and stages.”
“Really?” Claire was surprised – and not nicely. Why would his family collect photographs of a distant niece?
“I found quite a few family documents amongst Dad’s things. He must have kept them hidden; my mother wanted nothing to do with his family, you know.”
She didn’t. She knew nothing about his family except for some vague references to “poor Liam and that English woman” on family occasions, followed by a hint of “the trouble” he’d been in. Maybe that trouble was Patrick?
“So you’re picking up the family threads then, are you?” she asked tactfully.
“I hadn’t thought of it like that; it was your mother invited me to the party.”
“So she did.” That was strange now she came to think about it; Mammy had always been ready to dismiss “poor Liam” as the family failure, so why should she be interested in his son?
As if aware of her speculations, Patrick again changed the subject. “So what do you want to do now? Film? Disco? Anything you like.”
Claire thought for a moment. “It would be nice to listen to some music,” she said. “Could we go to a folk club?”
Patrick looked surprised, and not enthusiastic at her choice. “Any particular one?” he asked.
“Well, an Irish club, actually,” Claire admitted. “There’s one quite close – The Harp. Do you know it?”
“I do.” Patrick looked at her quizzically. “But I thought you were cutting free of the Irish?”
Claire flushed. “Only from the family,” she said. “I love Irish music; I don’t ever want to put that behind me.”
“Ah well, if that’s what you want, we’ll go over to The Harp.” He took the credit card slip from the waiter and signed it. “Come on, then; let’s listen to some music.”
It was bitterly cold and blowing half a gale but Patrick was reluctant to take the car, muttering something about parking problems and security. He offered to call a taxi, but Claire opted to walk off her dinner, and anyway, she loved the wind. She’d let her hair loose that evening, and all the time they walked it lifted in the wind like some demented halo. She pulled up the collar of her soft cashmere jacket and strode out alongside Patrick.
They turned off the main street down several little lanes to a terrace of tall houses, showing dingy white in the lamplight. There was no missing The Harp at the end of the row: the instrument itself, picked out in green neon lights, advertised the club. The faint sound of a fiddle, the sweet-sharp odour of stout, the bibblebabble and laughter took Claire straight back to a summer evening when she and Jan had strolled hand in hand down this same street and discovered the folk club.
Once inside, she peered through the smoke in search of an empty table. She had a sudden vision of Jan, as he’d sat last summer, wincing at the bitter taste of stout and trying to think of something polite to say about it.
“There’s a table over there.” Patrick’s voice brought her back to the present. “I’ll go get the drinks; what’ll you have?”
“Oh, fizzy water – lots of ice and lemon. I’m terribly thirsty.”
“Don’t count on the ice or the lemon,” he warned.
Claire sat at a little rickety table close to the performance space and dance floor. She shrugged her jacket on to the back of the chair, pushed her wind-blown hair into some sort of shape, and looked around her.
The music had stopped now, but a few people were moving around the wooden floor, picking up instruments and adjusting speakers, preparing for the next session. Claire felt a surge of excitement; would they be playing one of the jigs that had so delighted Jan?
“Like the music of my home,” he’d told her. “We are both strangers in this country, Claire.”
And although she couldn’t agree – she never felt like a stranger in England – Jan’s suggestion had given her a warm glow. And a lasting one, she reflected now. That evening had been the start of something special between Jan and herself, something still undeclared, unresolved. Maybe something that just faded away so far as he was concerned?
Claire sighed and pushed the thought away. She watched a woman place a high bar-stool in the middle of the floor and sit on it. Dressed simply in black T-shirt and black cotton skirt, with reddish hair hanging untended down to her shoulders, she might have been a teenager, but a glance at her face proved otherwise: strong cheek bones, pale complexion, and the lines of laughter and experience etched around the fine, dark eyes. Claire felt she had seen the face somewhere before but she couldn’t think where.
She recognized the young man who followed her as the leader of an up-and-coming folk-group, Erin. He picked up a fiddle, moved forward, and began to play a strange, wailing solo.
The woman sat back on her stool, eyes closed, body swaying slightly, listening intently to the music. She began to hum, softly at first, then louder, clearer, until her voice joined the fiddle in a long, plaintive melody whose lyrics were incomprehensible to most of the audience. Claire recognized the sounds, though not the words – Gaelic. She sat back and felt the mysterious keening eat into her soul, so deep into the music that she barely registered Patrick’s presence as he sat beside her and put their drinks down on the table.
No one moved, not even to lift a glass. Then the song reached a painful crescendo and a kind of echo followed it, as people began to hum softly. Claire had never heard the song before, but obviously these folk knew it well.
When it ended there was a second’s pause, then a gentle ripple of applause, a few appreciative comments, nods, smiles.
“Is that the kind of thing you sing?” asked Patrick.
“How did you know I sang?” Claire was unpleasantly surprised. Patrick seemed to know far too much about her.
“Oh, I don’t know. Somebody must have mentioned it,” he said vaguely. And then, with an obvious attempt to change the subject, “You speak Irish, then?”
“No, I don’t.” Claire spoke abruptly, feeling the need to shake her mind free of Celtic cobwebs.
“Well, maybe they’ll sing something a bit more cheerful now,” said Patrick.
He was right. The singer went on to a slightly naughty Irish ballad, the fiddler and piper whirled tunes out of the smoky air, then together they led the audience into a collection of rebel songs. Again, Claire noticed how well the audience knew the songs; she herself knew only a couple of them, but by midnight she’d learned several more and was singing along, as Irish as the rest of them.
Midnight was closing time, and Claire felt it was time she got back to Kelham House.
But just as Patrick stood holding out her coat someone at the bar called him over; he was known even here, apparently. She stood alone for a moment until the singer came down off the stage and spoke to her.
“You enjoyed it tonight?” she asked.
“Ach, and it was great!” Claire’s accent was stronger now. “I thought I knew a lot of our songs but some of yours were new to me.”
“You’re from the west, are you?”
Surely her accent wasn’t so pronounced? “I’m from Donegal,” Claire said.
“Well, and you have songs in the sea and in the mountains up there,” the woman said. “Come again and I’ll sing them to you.”
“Yes, I will.” Claire had a sudden, brilliant idea. She’d ask Jan to come with her. He’d accept an invitation like that, she thought, with only his student ticket to pay for. Jan was terribly poor and far too proud to let her pay for him, but he played the fiddle himself and he loved all kinds of folk music.
> “I’m here Wednesdays and Saturdays for the next three weeks,” the woman told her. “Kathleen Brogan,” she added, holding out a hand to Claire.
“Claire Donovan. I hope we meet again.”
“We will, Claire, never fret.” Kathleen looked over to Patrick, now arrived back at Claire’s side. “You’ll be bringing her again, won’t you?” she smiled.
Patrick didn’t react. “We must be going,” he said, rather briskly. “Good night.”
“Well, a good night to you, sir,” Kathleen said, in mocking tones. “Come back soon, Claire, and I’ll sing you the songs of Donegal.”
But before Claire could reply, Patrick took her arm and almost pushed her to the door.
They walked quickly through the bitter night, back down the dim alleys to the bright lights of the hotel.
“Who is Kathleen Brogan?” asked Claire when they were finally settled in the car. “Why have I never heard of her back home? She’s great!”
Patrick shrugged. “Suppose she makes more money over here,” he said. “Folk roots are all very well in songs, but it’s money makes the music in the real world.”
The car started up and Patrick pulled off down the brightly lit main street. “Well, now, let’s get you home.”
Home, thought Claire, with sleepy satisfaction. My little room in Kelham House, not the Leonmohr Hotel.
“Thanks for a lovely evening, Patrick,” she murmured. “Especially the club; I loved that part.”
“So I noticed,” he teased. “In spite of your protests about getting away from it all.”
“Next time I’m going to take my friend Jan. He loves the jigs and the fiddle music.”
“Sure,” Patrick said easily. “I’ll let you know when I’m coming up here again.”
“Oh, we’ll probably go next weekend – ow!” Patrick braked suddenly at the lights and Claire was jerked forwards against her safety belt.
“Sorry, they changed sooner than I’d expected.” He turned to glance at her. “I don’t think you should go there on your own,” he said.
“Why not?”
“You’d better wait until I come back,” he said with barely-suppressed irritation. “It’s not the sort of area for you to be walking around alone.”
“I won’t be alone; I’ll be with Jan,” she pointed out. “We’ve been before, last summer, several times.” This wasn’t really true; they’d only been twice, but Claire was stung by Patrick’s assumption that he knew better than she did.
“Summer’s different,” he said, and Claire opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Arguing with Cousin Patrick about how she should spend her free time was a bit too much like arguing with Da, she decided.
Soon Patrick pulled up in Kelham’s car park, switched off the engine and turned to her. Claire suddenly felt apprehensive; would he expect her to kiss him? Well, she could handle that. She put up her face, as for a brotherly (or was it cousinly?) peck.
It never came.
“Seriously, Claire, you ought not to go wandering about in that district now the nights are drawing in. Your mother would kill me if she thought I’d taken you there.”
“Why would she? I’ve been around the folk scene in Donegal for years and she’s never objected to my going into pubs.”
“It’s not that. You know as well as I do there’s more dangers than alcohol—”
“Oh, the drugs scene, is it?” She laughed. “Come off it, Patrick. I’ll bet there’s more drug abuse in this hospital than at The Harp. We’re warned of it daily.”
“That’s different.” He made it sound as if drug abuse were quite respectable in a hospital. “I mean, there’s a funny mix of folk hang about there. Sometimes it gets dangerous – violent – fights and all.”
Claire laughed. “You can’t have been around some of the pubs in the aptly named wilds of Ireland,” she said. “I know how to take care of myself.”
He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Not in this city,” he said. “You just keep clear of the place until I come up again in a week or two. I’ll take you – and your fiddler friend if you insist, OK?”
“OK,” Claire agreed. But she didn’t promise.
Chapter 4
“Who was that dishy feller I saw you with last night?” Katie Harding demanded. Claire grinned. “Would you believe my cousin?”
“No, I would not.”
“Well, he is, sort of.” And before the
irrepressible Katie could question her further Claire went on to tell her about the Irish club and the songs Kathleen Brogan had sung.
“Hey, why don’t we organize a Kelhamites ceilidh for Charity Night?” said Katie, always eager to snatch at a new idea. She was, of course, on the committee organizing the biggest event of the autumn term – St Ag’s Charity Night, when all kinds of schemes, from a karaoke competition to a midnight disco, were set up to raise funds. “You could take Jan down there and pick up a few ideas.”
Claire looked doubtful about both plans. “I’d love to but I’m not sure that Jan would come.”
“Why not? I thought you two were good friends.”
“I don’t know. He seems a bit distant since we got back.”
“Oh, maybe he’s just broke; I know he’s having trouble with the agency that sponsors him. Look, you go ahead and get tickets. Tell him it’s for a good cause. After all, some of the money we raise will buy medical supplies for his country.”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” said Claire happily. “Maybe we’ll go down on Wednesday.”
But by Wednesday Claire had more to worry about than a new song collection and a date with Jan.
It was a frantically busy day on A & E.
“Fetch his X-rays.”
“Collect her records.”
“Get his details.”
“Do me a coffee, can you?”
“Find a plaster-chair.”
“Take him to fracture clinic.”
“Make up the dressings stock.”
“Do me a coffee, will you?”
“Sit with him and watch out for vomiting.”
“Rub her hands – they’re frozen.”
“Just keep talking to him, calm him down.”
“And bring me coffee, please?”
This last was from Dr Ahmed Durahni, who was not really due for coffee until his official break. But he turned his shining brown eyes on her, smiled, and Claire melt ed. She all but ran to the staff kitchen.
Mug of steaming coffee in hand, she rushed past Sister Banks’s office just as she was coming out.
“We almost had two more casualties on our hands there,” she observed, backing off. “Where are you going with that?”
Claire controlled the impulse to tidy her hair and adjust her cap. “Taking it to Dr Durahni,” she said.
Sister frowned. “Dr Durahni can take his coffee break in the staff room when there’s time.”
“But. . .” Claire looked at the coffee mug, then over to the cubicle where Dr Durahni was examining a patient, then back to Sister Banks.
“Take it back to the kitchen,” said the Sister firmly. “And come back quickly. Ben has a job for you.”
I’ll bet he has, Claire thought resentfully. And it’ll be filling in a form, going down to X-ray, mopping up the vomit. . . it certainly won’t be nursing a patient. She slopped the wasted coffee down the sink.
But she was wrong. She got back to find Ben emerging from Cubicle Five.
“Oh, Claire – mother and baby, Cubicle Five. Baby’s peaceful but Mum’s a bit shocked. Stay with her, calm her down, I’ll be back as soon as I’ve helped Ahmed with a suture. . .” Ben swept off down to the end cubicle.
At last, a real bit of nursing! Claire swept eagerly into Cubicle Five, beaming brightly, exuding – she hoped – confidence.
“Good morning, sorry to keep you waiting. . .” She stopped. The girl – she was only a girl – was sitting by the bed, looking blankly at the still, small baby lying there.
“Ah. . . Mrs. .
.?” Claire looked around for the blue admission form.
“Is she going to be all right?” The girl looked up at Claire, then immediately back to the baby.
“I don’t know,” Claire told her honestly. “There’ll be someone round to examine her in a moment.” She still couldn’t see the admission form anywhere. “What’s the matter with the baby?” she asked. It seemed a good idea to get the girl to talk, help her to relax, and at the same time collect some information in case the form had really gone missing.
But the girl didn’t seem to have heard her. She just went on staring at the baby, not anxiously or even lovingly, just blankly, as if she hardly recognized it.
“What happened?” Claire prompted her gently.
The girl took a deep breath and, without taking her eyes off the baby, began to speak.
“Nothing. I mean – she fell. I told them – out there. . .” The girl nodded towards the reception area. “I told them that’s all it was, just a fall, only a little one. She’s all right really. . .” And she opened her eyes wide, staring at the child as if willing it to move.
But it didn’t, Claire observed. She was standing by the bed, opposite the girl – the mother. Heavens! She was younger than herself, Claire decided; barely out of school. And dressed in denim jacket and T-shirt, though it was a bitterly cold day.
Claire shifted her gaze to the baby. Good colour, she noted; breathing steadily – snuffling, rather, as if she had a cold. But no sign of distress.
“Did she hit her head?” she asked, hoping she sounded professional.
“No, she didn’t!” The girl’s gaze snapped up to Claire. “I’ve told you – I’ve told them out there all about it. How many more times. . .” Her voice rose hysterically. “Where the hell is everybody? Where’s the doctor? That’s who I’ve come to see, not some lousy Irish infant!”
So much for calming her down! Claire swallowed her fury and looked frantically round for some way of distracting the young mother.
“You’re very cold,” she said. “Can I get you a cup of tea . . . coffee?” Catering again, but at least this time it would be part of the treatment. For a moment she thought the girl was going to start shouting again, tell her where to put her tea and coffee, but suddenly she seemed to lose all her hostility. She sat back in her chair and almost smiled.