An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  He saw her eyes glisten as she turned to gaze at Baby Gorman. O’Reilly’s cheeks grew warmer, but fortunately Miss Hagerty was too busy supervising Gertie’s attempts to breast-feed to have noticed.

  “Even if it cost you your dinner?”

  “I prefer having been here with you, Fingal. We can always have dinner some other time.”

  He would look forward to it. “I’ll make up the missed dinner to you, I promise,” he said, as his tummy growled. “How about next Sunday? Young Barry will be on call, so there’d be no chance we’d be interrupted like tonight.”

  Kitty shook her head. “I can’t make that. I’m sorry,” she said, and she sounded disappointed. “I’ve a week’s holiday starting next Monday, the fourteenth, and I’ve promised to go down to see my mother. She’s eighty-one. She lives in Tallaght, outside Dublin.”

  O’Reilly found that her not being available disappointed him, and he was going to be occupied or on call for the days after next Sunday. But he had an idea. “You’ll be up north next Friday week for Christmas Day, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How would you like to come for dinner at Number One?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “I’d love to.”

  O’Reilly’s stomach rumbled more loudly.

  She chuckled. “You must be starving. Take me back to Number One,” she said, “and if Kinky won’t mind me using her kitchen, I’ll make us both a quick bite.”

  “By God, you’re on. Give me just a minute.” He went to the bedside.

  He looked down on the feeding baby and her mother. Such serenity was on Gertie’s homely face that O’Reilly immediately thought of Madonna and Child by Michelangelo. She smiled up at him. “Sorry we had to bother you, sir.”

  “Nonsense. Isn’t it what I’m for?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What’ll you call the wee one?”

  “Well, sir, seeing it’s the Christmas season, I can’t decide between Carol or Noelle, but I think I like Noelle best.”

  “Good for you,” said O’Reilly. “It’s a lovely name, isn’t it, Miss Hagerty?”

  “It is indeed. It was my mother’s.” She straightened up and said, “Thanks for coming, Doctor O’Reilly. Don’t you worry now. I’ll tidy up. You and Sister run along.”

  “We will,” said O’Reilly, crossing the room to pick up his overcoat. “And I’ll arrange for Doctor Fitzpatrick to do the follow-up.”

  “Will you not want me to have a word with him, sir?” She hesitated before saying quietly, “It’s not my place to criticize, sir, but he should have been here. He really should.”

  You’re right about that, O’Reilly thought, and he should have made the diagnosis weeks ago and saved us all a lot of trouble. “I’m sure there’s an explanation, and anyway, all’s well that ends well. You go ahead and speak to him. You must, Miss Hagerty.”

  O’Reilly took Kitty by the elbow and began to steer her to the door. Then he said, “But so must I.” And he caught a glimpse of his nose in a mirror hung on the wall. The tip almost as far back as the bridge was alabaster white. “So must I.”

  Woe unto Them That Rise Up

  Barry helped Peggy into the car, went around to the driver’s side, and got in. “Do up your seat belt,” he said, fastening his own. He didn’t always use it, but he knew it would please her. “You’re the one who mentioned the carnage in casualty. I once saw a girl who’d put her face through the windscreen and bounced up and down on the broken glass. It took the plastic surgeons fifteen hours to try to give her back something that resembled a face.”

  “Yeugh,” Peggy said.

  “Seat belts aren’t standard fixtures, but I had them fitted to Brunhilde.” He started the engine.

  “Brun who?”

  “Brunhilde. My car.” He drove out of the car park. “I thought she deserved a name. Volkswagens are made in Germany, and Brünhilde appears in a lot of Teutonic stories.”

  “Oh.” Peggy paused while Barry signaled for a right turn onto the Grosvenor Road, then entered the city centre–bound traffic. “Who exactly was this Brun-thin-gummy-bob?”

  “A Norse goddess. Wagner made her a heroine in some of his operas.”

  “You like opera?” Her voice rose in a surprised question. “Good Lord.” She giggled. “I prefer the Beatles and Buddy Holly. I cried when he was killed. Silly me.” She giggled.

  “February third, nineteen fifty-nine,” Barry said, “along with the Big Bopper.”

  “And Richie Valens.” She chatted on merrily about pop music and informed him proudly that the two best songs of 1964 were Jim Reeves’s “I Won’t Forget You” and Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over.”

  Barry was too busy concentrating on making his turns onto College Square, then onto Wellington Place.

  Peggy seemed happy enough to prattle away. “I’ve never been to an opera. What’s it like?”

  “I’m just learning about it,” he said, thinking of the first aria he’d heard—and who he’d heard it with. Damn you, Patricia. Why won’t you come home?

  “Tell me more about Brun-what’s-her-face,” she asked.

  “Brunhilde. I’ll tell you in a tic.”

  The traffic was slow-moving stop-and-go in Donegal Square. Barry had lots of time to notice the brightly lit storefronts to his left. A ski scene with hills of artificial snow and mannequins in gaily colored ski clothes filled most of the Athletic Store’s window.

  On the corner of Donegal Place the windows of Robinson and Cleaver’s blazed with light. There was a crèche and . . . he was distracted by catching a whiff of Peggy’s perfume. He glanced at her face in profile. She certainly had good cheekbones.

  He stopped at the traffic lights at the junction of Donegal Square with Donegal Place. He could hear “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem” being piped through amplifiers.

  He thought about her perfume, her open lips, the way she’d responded to his kisses in the car park. Peggy was a pretty—no, very—sexy girl. Barry wondered if she would invite him in when he got her home—and more importantly, he wondered how he would respond. He swallowed and looked to his right where the many-domed City Hall was festooned with fairy lights. Smack front and centre in the broad drive from the Square to City Hall’s colonnaded portico stood a massive Christmas tree. Its lights flashed and sparkled.

  “That tree’s Norway’s annual gift to Belfast,” she said.

  The traffic started to move. “I know,” he said, “and Brunhilde was from Iceland. She was a princess and a mighty warrior. A bloke called Siegfried fell in love with her, but when he betrayed her with another woman, Gudrun, Brunhilde killed herself.”

  “Och,” she said, “that’s sad. Poor Brunhilde. I know exactly how she felt.”

  The traffic was on the move again, and Barry drove ahead. “How?” he asked.

  “I found out my lad was seeing a girl who worked in the Civil Service, and when I asked him about it, he swore he wasn’t. The two-timing bugger.” He heard a catch in her voice.

  “It must have been hard on you,” he said, wondering who was speaking. Was it Barry Laverty, the ordinary young man who could be sympathetic to a young woman, or Barry Laverty, the doctor who was professionally interested in someone who was upset? Sometimes, he was discovering, it was difficult to disentangle the two sides of his life. Like O’Reilly, Barry’s doctor self was never entirely off duty.

  “I didn’t mind so much that he’d taken her out, but he’d been lying to me about it. I couldn’t stand that. A wee while ago there I think I might have done a Brunhilde. I honestly do.”

  Barry turned left onto Victoria Street and simultaneously ran through a mental checklist of what to do if someone threatened to commit suicide. He wondered how he should respond to Peggy’s confession.

  “But sure”—he heard a lightening in her voice, a gay light laugh—“life has to go on. It’s just like my friend Diana says, men are like buses. There’ll be another one along in a few minutes.” He felt her hand squeeze his left thigh.

 
“There’s lots of good fish in the sea,” he said, not entirely sure he wanted to be regarded in such a light. But if that was what she was thinking, he could always invoke Jack’s line, “Why buy a cow when you can get a bottle of milk anytime you want?” Do you want this Peggy as a bottle of milk? he asked himself. A quick bit of slap-and-tickle?

  “I’ve heard that,” she said and giggled. It was a harsh, grating sound. “Are you a good swimmer?” She’d let her voice drop, grow a little husky. Barry was a keen fly fisherman. He’d no difficulty recognizing a cast made to see if it would produce a rise. There was certainly a stirring in his pants.

  If you let this go the way it seems to be going, will you be able to back out whenever you want? he asked himself. Or will you want to see Peggy again, and if you do, will you be able to face Patricia—if, damn it, she does finally make up her stubborn bloody mind to get on the stupid bloody ferry and come home to Ulster? Patricia, I’d not be with this Peggy if you’d kept your promise.

  He decided to see how far this girl wanted to play the game. “Swimming? It was my best sport at school.”

  He was approaching the Albert Clock. In no time, he’d be across the Queen’s Bridge and heading along the Newtownards Road to the suburb of Belmont.

  She giggled again. It really was grating. “Ooh,” she said, kneading his thigh harder. “I like swimmers.”

  And I’m starting to move out of the shallows, Barry thought. I’d better tread water, slow things down a bit. “That was at school. I didn’t have much time for swimming at medical school. I’m a bit rusty.”

  The traffic sped up as he crossed the bridge, and he didn’t dare risk a glance at her face to see if, in the illumination provided by the lights evenly spaced on the bridge’s parapets, he could judge her response. By her silence and the stillness of her hand on his thigh, she was thinking about his last remark, deciding how to reply.

  He passed Queen’s Quay on his left. That was the terminus of the Belfast-to-Bangor railway line. That was where, in August, he’d waited for Patricia so together they could catch the last train of a summer night. That was the train ride where he had lost his heart, and at that time he’d been sure he’d lost it forever.

  “Maybe,” she said, “maybe you just need a bit of oiling?”

  He’d often wondered what signals—perhaps the merest sensation of the sharp tip of the hook on its lip—made even the hungriest trout sip at a fly, then spit it out. “Maybe.” He kept his voice noncommittal. “Maybe.”

  He sensed that Peggy drew away a little. “Suit yourself,” she said. He heard a muted, “Huh.”

  Good. That had cooled things, given him time to think. She hadn’t, in local parlance, been backward in coming forward, in taking the initiative. Girls usually didn’t in Ulster. Barry had no doubt that if he really wanted to take things further with Peggy, it wouldn’t be difficult to arouse her, but for the time being he was happy to drive.

  “You’ll need to turn off soon,” she said and took her hand from his thigh.

  He ignored the opportunity for a double entendre. “To get to where you live?”

  “That’s right. Take the Upper Newtownards Road to Ormiston Crescent. I live in a flat at Number Twelve.”

  “Right.” Barry turned right at the fork at the Holywood Arches, where O’Reilly had arranged for the ambulance to collect Liam Gillespie the night he’d ruptured his spleen. Liam should be well on the mend by now. “And if I go on up Ormiston, I can get to the Belmont Road?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought so. I went to Campbell College, and it’s just up the road.” He had spent four years and met Jack Mills there. If it hadn’t been for Jack, Barry wouldn’t be here now.

  “You’re an Old Campbellian?” Peggy asked.

  “That’s right.” The all-boys school had a reputation of being snooty. “The school for the sons of the cream of Ulster society.”

  “The cream?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, turning left, “definitely the cream. Rich and very thick.”

  She laughed loudly at the old joke about the place.

  It didn’t seem she was going to hold a grudge because he had cooled to her advances.

  “It’s here,” she said, and he began to slow down. “Next house on the left.”

  Barry parked in front of a three-storey redbrick detached house, undid his seat belt, got out, went around the car, and opened Peggy’s door.

  Peggy got out. “Thanks for the lift.” She rose on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Would you like to come in? It’s not very late . . .”

  Barry hesitated. He inhaled her heavy perfume. His arms slipped around her waist, and she moved closer. He lowered his lips to hers, felt the warmth of her. He tasted her, felt her tongue probing. He held her more tightly, feeling through the layers of their clothing the firmness of her breasts against his chest. He broke the kiss and used his hand to guide her head to lie on his shoulder. She felt so natural in his arms, and it had been months since Patricia had left for Cambridge. His breathing quickened, and he bent to kiss her again, harder and more deeply.

  “We really should go in,” she said huskily, taking his hand and walking toward the gate.

  Barry followed.

  “My roommate Jane, the blonde with your white-haired friend, won’t be back for ages if I know her.” She said. The invitation was clear in her voice.

  Barry took a very deep breath. Was it really true that what the eye didn’t see, the heart couldn’t grieve over?

  “So you are coming in,” she said. “I’ve some super Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers records.” And then she giggled. The harshness of the sound broke the tenuous spell she had begun to weave around him.

  Instead of her metallic braying in his ears, he heard in his mind Patricia’s deep throaty contralto. Instead of Peggy’s heavy, overly sweet perfume, he sensed the delicate musk Patricia sometimes wore. Instead of Buddy Holly, whose music Barry disliked, he imagined hearing the beautiful aria he had first heard in Patricia’s flat. She’d said it was “Voi che sapete” from The Marriage of Figaro. He wanted Peggy now, but he didn’t want her enough to jeopardize having Patricia for what he hoped would be forever.

  Barry stopped walking and took his hand from hers. “Peggy . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m not coming in.”

  “You’re not? Jesus. Talk about leading a girl on.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I really am. But I have a girlfriend—she’s in England at the moment—and it wouldn’t be fair to her, and it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  She shook her head. “She’s a lucky girl, whoever she is.” She pecked his cheek. “And you’re a decent man for telling me, not like some I could mention.” She kissed him softly. “Good night, Barry Laverty,” she said softly, turning to leave, “and if you get tired of your girl, you know where I live.”

  “Thanks, Peggy,” Barry said, “but I don’t intend to tire of her,” even though, he thought, she seems to be tiring of me. “Good-night and merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Barry, and safe home.” She let herself through the gate, and he waited until he was satisfied that she was safely inside the big house.

  Then Barry Laverty hopped into Brunhilde and pointed the car for the back road that climbed over the Craigantlet Hills before descending and meeting the road into Ballybucklebo and home.

  He hoped O’Reilly hadn’t been too busy taking calls to enjoy his evening with Kitty. That Kitty O’Hallorhan was a very special woman, and so, by God, was his Patricia Spence. And if he really wanted to know if she was coming home for Christmas, he’d ask Kinky. She was fey. He was convinced she was. He shouldn’t be, not with his scientific training, but if Kinky didn’t have the gift he’d eat his hat. Kinky would know. Of course she would.

  It Is Best Not To Swap Horses

  While Crossing the River

  Judging by his scowl, O’Reilly was in one of his bear-with-a-sore-head moods. He barely than
ked Mrs. Kincaid when she set a serving plate bearing a large omelet in front of him and silently left. He helped himself to two-thirds and told Barry to pass his plate.

  Barry accepted his one third, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and kept his counsel. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the breakfast table sipping it. He glanced out the bow window, past the church steeple, to a sky so bright blue that it looked as if God had fashioned it from enamel. He listened to the Sunday pealing of the chapel bells, loud in the clear and no doubt frosty air.

  He tried the first mouthful of his omelet. It was light, fluffy, and filled with melted Cheddar cheese. He tasted a subtle hint of onion. The omelet was liberally studded with mushrooms and melted in his mouth. Delicious.

  He tried to ignore O’Reilly where he sat in his customary place, hunched over his plate, filling his face. There was no doubt, thought Barry, the keen game fisherman, that in angling circles his mentor would be referred to as a coarse feeder. Still, if O’Reilly behaved in his usual fashion, the food should go directly from his stomach to whatever brain centre affected his mood and change it for the better.

  “That was powerful,” said O’Reilly, swallowing the last morsel of his lion’s share. He grinned, then belched happily. “Good morning to you, young Barry.” He stretched and picked up his coffee cup.

  Barry smiled. The transit time from gut to brain had been very rapid this morning.

  “Good morning, Fingal,” he said.

  “And how were things in your particular Glocca Morra last night, lad?”

  Barry finished his mouthful before answering. “Well,” he said, quite happy to play the quotations game, “the willow tree was certainly weeping there, and Finian’s rainbow was as bright as ever. It was good to see Jack, and the nurses’ dance was fun.” He filled another forkful. “How was your night, Fingal? I got home early, and I heard you and Kitty in the dining room. But I didn’t want to disturb you, so I went on up to bed.” He’d wondered why they were in the dining room and not the upstairs lounge.