An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  “Donal? I know he likes his jar but—”

  “Sure can’t we give him a fool’s pardon for today? It’s not every day he gets married.”

  “I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.” Barry took a look at the wedding guests who stood round the room. All had glasses of soft drinks in hand. All had their backs to Barry. The atmosphere was redolent of pipe tobacco. The wedding had been a small affair, and only the happy couple and the invitees were here at the reception.

  Barry saw Julie, the bride, in her going-away outfit, a neatly tailored cream suit over a maroon silk blouse. She looked well recovered from the miscarriage of three months ago. Her cornsilk hair was bright and shone to match the gleam in her green eyes. She was, as it was believed to be the duty of every bride, looking lovely. She was paying no attention to Donal but was engrossed in conversation with her maid of honour, Helen Hewitt, whose red hair was tied back with a green ribbon. Helen wore a matching green jacket and short skirt above a pair of wickedly high stilettos that accentuated her shapely legs. He was pleased to see she had not had any recurrence of the eczema behind her knees, and wondered for a moment if she was still seeing his best friend, Jack Mills.

  O’Reilly bent closer and muttered to Barry, “ ‘Two girls in silk kimonos . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘Both beautiful, one a gazelle.’ William Butler Yeats, ‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz.’ ” Barry seemed to have been playing this dueling quotations game with O’Reilly since that day he’d arrived back in July. “One a gazelle,” he repeated, and for a moment his thoughts strayed to another beautiful young woman, but Patricia Spence was in Cambridge, had been there since September studying civil engineering. He wished she wasn’t, but she’d be coming home soon for Christmas. Barry was counting the days.

  His daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of Donal’s voice carrying above the otherwise muted conversations. “Anyway, Willy, there’s your man explaining to Mrs. Murphy that her husband has drowned in a vat of Guinness . . .”

  Donal stood with one arm around the shoulder of his best man, Willy Dunleavy, landlord of the Black Swan pub in Ballybucklebo. It was hard to tell if Willy, who was shifting from foot to foot, was uncomfortable in his morning suit or with Donal’s obviously more than happy state. Donal had originally wanted Seamus Galvin, the man O’Reilly had hurled into the rosebushes, to stand up for him, but Seamus and his wife, Maureen, and their infant son, Barry Fingal, the first baby Barry had delivered in Ballybucklebo, were now in California.

  Barry saw Willy glance at an older couple sitting in chairs at the front of the room, and he guessed they were Julie’s parents down from Rasharkin in County Antrim. By the look of her mother, who now had grey among the gold, Barry could tell where Julie had got her gorgeous hair. Julie’s father was hunched forward, taking short breaths and scowling at his new son-in-law. The Pioneers took their abstinence very seriously. Willy must have noticed. “Wheest now, Donal.” He smiled nervously at the elder MacAteers.

  Oblivious to his friend’s efforts at being tactful, Donal continued in a contrived stage Dublin accent, “ ‘Jasus,’ says Mrs. Murphy. ‘Drownded is it? In Guinness? Did he suffer?’ ”

  “Wheest now, Donal.”

  Unabashed, Donal delivered the punchline. “ ‘Not at all, dear,’ says your man.” Donal took a prolonged count before announcing, “ ‘He got out three times to take a piss.’ ” He guffawed loudly.

  Barry had difficulty controlling his own laughter. He noticed a second older couple sitting beside the first. The man was as buck-toothed as Donal. Barry guessed he was Donal’s da, and judging by the way he was guffawing, he might have had something fortifying in his orange juice too. Beside him the older MacAteer sat more rigidly and, in Barry’s opinion, was feeling, like Queen Victoria, distinctly not amused.

  Ignoring his new father-in-law, Donal bowed to the audience, clearly relishing being the centre of attention. Then he straightened and noticed Barry. He strode over, hiccupped, and said, “How’s about ye, Doc?”

  “Sorry I missed the service, Donal.” Barry shook the outstretched hand.

  “Never worry. Better late than never. I’m sure you’d someone to see to.” He stepped back. “Come on now, you with me,” he hiccupped, “and say hello to Julie.”

  “I’d like that, Donal.”

  Donal giggled. “It’s Missus Donnelly now to you, Doc, so it is.”

  Barry followed a weaving Donal past the others, acknowledging their greetings as he passed. Finally the two men reached where Julie stood. “Julie,” he said, “you’re looking lovely. I’m sorry I missed—”

  “Thank you, Doctor Laverty. No apologies needed.” She smiled at him.

  “Are you not . . . hic . . . are not going for to . . . hic . . . kiss the bride?” Donal gave Barry a shove, and he found himself just that bit too close to Julie. He laughed and took a step back. “Easy, Donal.”

  “Well, if you’re not going to, I bloody well am.” O’Reilly now stood at Barry’s shoulder. “Come here, me darlin’ girl.” O’Reilly stretched out one big hand, took Julie’s, and pulled her to him. Even in her high heels, the top of her head barely reached the big man’s shoulder. He wrapped her in a bear hug and gracefully kissed the very crown of her head. “I wish,” he said, and his words were solemn, “for both of you, long life, good health, prosperity, an always stocked larder, a full crib, and may your praties never know the blight.”

  “Thank you, Doctor O’Reilly,” Julie said, blushing. She stood on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said O’Reilly, glancing sideways at Donal. “Well, Mrs. Donnelly, you pop in and see Doctor Laverty or me when you get back from your honeymoon.”

  “I will.”

  “Now,” said O’Reilly, inclining his head toward the door, “Doctor Laverty and I have some business to attend to.” He strode off, Barry at his heels. As soon as they were in the hall, he said, “Julie’s up the spout again. I’ll say that much for Donal. He doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet.”

  Barry frowned. “Fingal, is it not a bit soon after her miscarriage for her to be pregnant?”

  O’Reilly shrugged. “Hard to say, but I think it’s great news, so great in fact that if you’d like to join me in the bar we could drink to it.”

  “I thought, Fingal, you’d said, seeing you are on call . . . you wouldn’t be having anymore.” Barry couldn’t resist having a dig at his senior colleague.

  “Did I say that?” O’Reilly asked. “Boys-a-dear, whatever was I thinking of?” He headed toward the bar and was just about to open the door when John, the manager, rushed along the hall.

  “Doctor O’Reilly, there’s a Mrs. Kincaid on the phone. She’d like to speak to you.”

  “Bugger,” said O’Reilly.

  “This way, please, sir.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back.” He vanished into the lounge, leaving Barry alone. Well, Barry thought, Fingal was right about one thing. Julie’s news did call for another drink. He’d pop into the Parlour Bar, get himself a small whiskey, drink it, and go back to the party for half an hour or so to be polite. Then he’d head back to Ballybucklebo.

  He opened the bar door. Just another half hour here at the Old Inn, then home to Number 1 Main Street with its big bow windows and grey pebble-dashed walls. Home to Kinky and her superb cooking. Home to Lady Macbeth, and home even to Arthur Guinness, O’Reilly’s daft dog.

  Barry let the door close behind him and yawned. It had been a long night last night. He was looking forward to one other thing at home: his bed in the attic bedroom, snug under the eaves, warm and protected from the gale that raged outside.

  “Another one, Barry?” Colette asked.

  “Just a small John Jameson, please.”

  “Right.”

  As he waited for his drink, Barry wondered what kind of case had sent O’Reilly rushing off into the night. None of his business. He wasn’t
on call, and as O’Reilly was fond of saying about others, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O., Physician and Surgeon, was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself.

  A Little Snow, Tumbled About

  The Rover shuddered as it was broadsided by a gust that came funneling through a gap between the houses. O’Reilly gripped the steering wheel more tightly and swore at the gale. “Bloody weather!” With nightfall the sleet had turned to snow.

  He wondered what the trouble might be at the Gillespie farm. All Kinky had been able to tell him was that the call had come from Mrs. Gillespie, she was hysterical, and she wanted the doctor to come at once. There was something wrong with her husband.

  He had to slow down because the windscreen wipers of his elderly vehicle could barely cope with the accumulation on the glass and he had difficulty seeing. O’Reilly felt the arse end of the vehicle slide sideways as he nudged her out of a turn, had to steer into the skid, and nearly went into the ditch. He wrenched the car back on course. “Bloody weather!” But it would take more than a bit of snow to stop him getting to the Gillespies’ place. Molly Gillespie was usually an unflappable woman. She was unlikely to have sent for him for anything trivial on a bloody awful night like this. He’d find out when he got there, but damn it, getting there was going to take longer than he had anticipated.

  At least there’d be no cyclists to get in his way on a god-awful night like tonight, and he’d certainly seen worse weather at sea on the old Warspite during the war, nearly twenty years ago now. He missed the camaraderie of the battleship’s wardroom, and his friend Tom Laverty, the navigating officer.

  Funny coincidence, young Barry being Tom’s son. Of course during the war Barry would have been in nappies, and Tom, while being a convivial companion and a damn fine navigator, was, like many men of his generation, reticent about his family life. He’d never mentioned he had a son, and since the war he and Fingal had gone their separate ways, just the way the bloody Rover was trying to do by sliding toward the ditch again. O’Reilly hauled it back on course by brute force on the steering wheel. Tom Laverty was in Australia now on sabbatical. Probably kept in touch with Barry by letter. Perhaps, O’Reilly thought, he’d ask Barry for Tom’s address and drop the man a line himself, let him know how well young Barry was doing as a GP.

  He hoped Barry would be doing all right tonight, driving back to Ballybucklebo in that funny little German car of his. It made you wonder, O’Reilly thought. Twenty years ago the Germans and the British were trying to hammer the living bejesus out of each other. Now the same Germans were happily telling us, as they had done a year ago, in 1963, that we could whistle if we thought we were getting into the European Economic Community. Their antipathy on the trade front didn’t stop them selling us a model of car originally demanded as a “people’s car” by Adolf Hitler.

  Their little car might be built for the people, but it hadn’t been designed to cope with the narrow winding roads of Ulster in midwinter. That was what cars like the old Rover were for.

  O’Reilly turned left off the main Bangor-Belfast Road, dropped into third gear, and began the grind up into the Ballybucklebo Hills. The snow had stopped falling, but all he could see ahead was an unbroken sheet of pure white covering the road. No one else had been up here to leave tracks. On each side of the road the hedges, white-crowned, black-branched, stood stark and frigid. It was a good thing the snow had only been falling for about half an hour. It couldn’t be more than an inch deep.

  He passed a crossroads. The lane to the Gillespies’ farmhouse was a mile further on. The road would slip down into a hollow, then climb again to crest a hill, at the top of which was a stand of sycamores. The gate to the lane was just past the trees and to the left. The last time he’d been here was—he had to try to remember—three, no, four years ago.

  The sycamores that now appeared to his left had been in full foliage back when Molly had given birth to the twins. Those trees tonight stood out gauntly against a backdrop of moon-silvered clouds.

  He stopped the car at the lane and climbed out to open the five-bar gate. The fresh snow crunched under his boots, and the wind sighed in the trees. He felt the chill of it on his cheeks. He looked up through a gap in the clouds and saw the black of the sky and three bright stars. He’d not be seeing them if it was still snowing, and for that he was grateful. He’d not like to be stuck at the Gillespies’ overnight. Deep snowdrifts were rare in Ulster but they could happen.

  The gate was difficult to shove against snow, but he was able to ram it far enough open. As he guided the Rover past the gate, he was tempted to leave it open and save himself the trouble of having to reopen it on his way home. He stopped the car and walked back. Neither Molly Gillespie nor her husband Liam would be impressed if their stock wandered out through an open gateway. Come to think of it, neither would he.

  The Rover jolted along the tyre-rutted lane. The bouncing dislodged some snow from the sides of the windscreen where the wipers didn’t reach. O’Reilly grabbed a chamois leather from the dashboard and used it to wipe condensation from the inside of the glass.

  He could make out lights from the farmhouse up ahead. One was shining through an unshuttered upstairs window. A single glass-encased bulb burned above the front door. The shutters were closed over the downstairs windows, and only errant rays crept through the chinks where the panels didn’t quite meet.

  He parked the car outside the front door. He’d not be sorry to get inside, and the sooner he left the car the sooner that’s where he’d be. He grabbed his black bag and got out.

  “Get away to hell out of that,” he said sharply to the border collie that appeared from the darkness and crouched, belly low to the ground, lip curled, throat quivering, as it snarled.

  “Go on. Away to hell.” O’Reilly strode past the dog and was about to hammer on the door when it was thrown open by a large thirtyish woman who wore a calico pinafore and fluffy carpet slippers. He could see a little girl, thumb in mouth, peeping round the hem of her dress.

  “Come in, Doctor O’Reilly.” She stepped back and pushed the little girl away. “Run you away on and play with your brother.”

  The little girl, thumb still in her mouth, walked across the floor. O’Reilly noticed how she turned her left toes in. She stopped from time to time to stare at him with the biggest blue eyes he had ever seen. He winked at her, crossed the threshold into a spacious kitchen with a tiled floor, and said, “And what’s the trouble with Liam, Molly?” He started to shrug off his coat. The room was stifling from the heat coming from a cast iron range in the corner of the kitchen. “Kinky said you sounded upset.”

  “I’m better now,” she said. “I lost the bap when I seen Liam lying there out in the barn. I tried for to lift him, but he’s a big man and I couldn’t budge him so I ran in here and phoned.” She held one fist in her other hand and, resting her chin on top, pursed her lips and stared at the floor. Then she looked O’Reilly in the eye. “I thought he was dead, so I did.”

  O’Reilly stopped with this coat sleeves halfway down his arms. “Is he in the barn yet?”

  “No.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling above. “He’s in bed up there. By the time I was off the phone and heading back to the barn, Liam was on his way here.”

  O’Reilly finished taking off his coat. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “For the life of me, Doctor, I don’t know. We’d brung the cattle in out of the snow. Liam was getting a bale from the hayloft. I’d my back turned to him. I heard a thump, turned round, and there he was . . . out like a light. I couldn’t rouse him, so like I said, I phoned you.”

  “Ma-aa . . .” The four-year-old came in through the kitchen door. “Ma, Johnny’s just shit his pants.”

  “Just wait a wee minute, Jenny. Mammy’s busy.”

  “Liam got back here under his own steam?”

  “Aye. He wanted me to phone back and tell you not to bother coming.”

  Typical of countryfolk
not wanting to put anyone to trouble, O’Reilly thought, “It’s all right, Molly. Liam’s in your room, is he?”

  “Aye.”

  “Ma-aa . . . he’s shit himself.”

  “Mother of God, go and get your brother into the bathroom. I’ll be along in a wee minute, so I will.”

  “I’ll find my own way up there. You see to the kids.”

  “Thanks, Doctor.” She stepped across to the four-year-old, grabbed her by the hand, frowned, and said, “I’ve told you before, don’t you say shit.”

  “It’s what Daddy says, so it is . . .”

  The debate was continuing as O’Reilly left the kitchen, climbed a flight of stairs, went along a landing, and let himself into a bedroom where on one side of a double bed Liam Gillespie lay propped up on a couple of pillows on top of the eiderdown. “Come on in, Doc. I’m sorry we’d to trouble you on a night like this.”

  Liam was indeed, as Molly had said, a big man. O’Reilly guessed he’d be about six and a half feet tall and would weigh a good fourteen stone. He looked pale and was sweating.

  “It’s no trouble, Liam.” O’Reilly sat on the edge of the bed. “What happened?”

  “I was stupid. I was lifting down a bale of hay from the hayloft, and I slipped and fell, so I did.”

  “Hit your head, did you?” O’Reilly peered at the man’s eyes, noticing that both of the pupils were the same size.

  “Divil the bit. No. I hit my ribs, here on the left . . .” He pointed to just above where his shirt disappeared beneath the thick leather belt that held up his moleskin trousers. “I must have hit myself a ferocious dunder, for I passed out. I don’t know how long I was out for.”

  “Can’t have been very long. You were heading back here by the time Molly phoned me.”

  “Right enough. So it was only a wee short turn I took?”

  “Did you pass out before or after you fell?” O’Reilly reached for Liam’s wrist and took his pulse. The skin was clammy.

  “After. I remember hitting the corner of a workbench. The pain was ferocious in my ribs for a wee second, and then I was coming to lying on the floor.”