An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  A woman—another teacher, Barry assumed—appeared from stage left and began to shepherd the children off as the curtains were jerked closed.

  Miss Nolan, who must have known the words by heart, began to recite, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed . . .”

  Barry, who believed he had left religion behind, found he had a lump in his throat and a prickling behind his eyelids as she told the story. In his mind he repeated the words with her. As a concession to the Protestants present, they were the majestic words of the King James Bible, which he had made no conscious effort to learn but had absorbed in his childhood, and knowing those words was as much a part of Barry Laverty as his blue eyes and his fair cow’s lick.

  He looked to O’Reilly, and to Barry’s surprise the big man’s lips were moving too. They were forming the same words that Barry was hearing from the stage: “. . . into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child . . .”

  The pulleys creaked, the curtains opened. It came as no surprise to Barry that a group of shepherds near the back of the stage sat around a pen of live sheep. Such props would not be hard to come by in Ballybucklebo.

  A spotlight focused on Joseph, who wore open sandals and a white robe tied at the waist with a piece of rope. The same cordage must have been haggled to tie a chequered hanky round his head for a kaffiyeh. Micky Corry led a live donkey by its halter.

  Jeannie Kennedy, wearing a long blue dress up the front of which padding of some sort had been stuffed, rode sidesaddle. She clutched the donkey’s mane and looked to Barry as if she was terrified she might fall off.

  The party stopped outside the door over which hung the Bethlehem Inn sign. “Oh, dear, Mary. Everywhere’s full. Maybe this inn will have a room.” The lines were delivered in a flat monotone.

  “I hope so, Joseph.”

  Joseph knocked on the door.

  It was opened by Colin Brown. He was bareheaded and wore a grey robe that looked to Barry as if it might have started as one of Mrs. Brown’s dresses. He sported a blue-and-white striped butcher’s apron.

  “Hello, Innkeeper.”

  Colin’s smile was beatific, his words enunciated loudly and clearly. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Mary and Joseph. We’ve come to Bethlehem to be taxed.”

  “Mary and Joseph?”

  Barry had harboured a tiny doubt that Colin might try to pull some stunt. Now he relaxed. The little play was going perfectly.

  “Could we have a bed for the night? My wife’s having a baby, and she’s very tired.”

  Colin’s voice was soft, welcoming. “Well, Mary”—he emphasized the word “Mary”—“I’ve no room at the inn, but of course you are welcome to go into the stable.”

  Barry stiffened. That wasn’t how he remembered the script.

  “Of course you can, Mary,” Colin said. Then he turned to Joseph and yelled, “But as far as I’m concerned, Joseph, you dirty wee gurrier, you miserable little gobshite, you can just feck off.”

  There was such a communal in-drawing of breath that Barry thought the walls of the hall might bow inward.

  He glanced at the stage where the players, all save the innkeeper who had a wicked grin, were frozen as in a tableau vivant. Mary’s eyes were wide. Joseph looked as if he was ready to kill. A shepherd was on his feet yelling.

  It must have scared one of the penned sheep because the animal cleared the hurdle as easily as a horse named Battlecruiser, who Barry remembered from the Ballybucklebo races, had cleared the perimeter hedge of the racecourse.

  The sheep collided with the donkey. Barry heard an enormous bray. The donkey, with Mary clinging to its mane, ran at the door to the Bethlehem Inn and knocked the innkeeper flat on his back before disappearing into the wreckage of collapsing scenery.

  He knew he shouldn’t, but Barry couldn’t stop laughing. He felt a tugging at his sleeve, turned, and heard O’Reilly yell above the row, “Come on, Barry. I need a hand. The mother superior’s fainted.”

  Things That Go Bump in the Night

  Barry, still laughing, jumped to his feet. He was deafened by the noise. After the initial shock, everyone was voicing an opinion. People across the aisle were standing and craning forward to see what was happening.

  O’Reilly was heading down the row of chairs. Barry saw the reverend grimace, and he realized O’Reilly must have stood on the man’s toes. Barry followed. Trying to ignore the racket, he excused himself as he forced his way past a pain-faced Reverend Robinson. Then he crossed the centre aisle and stopped at the rear of a scrum of nuns. Some were standing; others were bending over what was apparently the supine body of the mother superior.

  All he could see was a kneeling O’Reilly and a pair of laced-up black boots sticking out through the edge of the throng. Barry thought of the ruby-slippered feet of the Wicked Witch sticking out from under Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

  “Excuse me . . . excuse me.” He edged forward until he stood over O’Reilly, now in his shirtsleeves because he’d used his jacket as a pillow.

  Mother Superior’s narrow face was ashen. Her breath came in little panting gasps. Her wimple was awry, and strands of grey hair had escaped from under its band. Tiny beads of sweat clung to her upper lip among the fine hairs of a faint moustache.

  O’Reilly held the woman’s limp wrist. He was taking her pulse.

  “Fingal?”

  O’Reilly looked up. “Simple syncope,” he said. “Fix her up in no time. Hold her head so she can’t twist away.”

  Barry knelt.

  O’Reilly bent over to rummage in one of his jacket pockets and pulled out a small glass bottle. He looked expectantly at Barry, who put a hand to each of the nun’s temples and then nodded at O’Reilly.

  The fumes of the smelling salts O’Reilly held under her nose made Barry’s eyes water. He’d have used a hand to wipe them away if both weren’t occupied restraining the mother superior. He was surprised by her strength.

  Her eyelids flew open like two camera shutters. Her eyes were unfocused.

  O’Reilly removed and recorked the bottle. Barry released her head.

  “Where am I?” she asked in a weak voice. She stared at O’Reilly. “You’ve no beard,” she said. Barry heard her puzzlement. “Saint Peter, you’ve no beard. Glory be.” She crossed herself. “Can I come in?”

  She thinks she’s at the pearly gates, he realized. As her question closely paralleled Joseph’s recent inquiry of innkeeper Colin Brown, Barry awaited O’Reilly’s reply with some trepidation. While he didn’t think his colleague was likely to say, “Feck off,” with Fingal you never could tell.

  “I think,” said O’Reilly, “you’ve a decade or two to wait before you’ll need to ask that, Mother. You fainted, that’s all.”

  “Fainted?” She shook her head. “I see.” She stared at the nearest nun and said severely, “And what are you staring at?”

  Barry saw the young woman blush. “We were worried, Mother.”

  “I see. Thank you, Sisters”—her tone was clipped, commanding—“I would suggest you all take your seats.”

  As the nuns shuffled away, she tried to sit up, but O’Reilly put a hand on her shoulder. “Just lie there for a few minutes. We don’t want you to be keeling over again.”

  She let her head fall back on the jacket. “Thank you.”

  Barry stood. The noise had lessened. Most people were sitting down. He turned and looked at the stage. All the children had vanished. The sheep pen was still there, and most of the original inhabitants now seemed to be their usual placid selves. Four men were reerecting the inn’s front, although he could see that the sign was smashed beyond redemption.

  Father O’Toole clambered up onto the stage, took the microphone, and said loudly, “My lord, ladies and gentlemen. Can I have quiet please?” He waited. “Please?” His Cork brogue was as soft as his r
equest.

  The noise gradually died.

  “Thank you.” He lowered his voice. “That was a bit unfortunate, so, but he’s only a little boy, and little boys do make mistakes. You’ll agree to that.” He waited.

  Barry heard one of the nuns mutter, “Sure he’s only little, so he is.” He assumed that the low buzz coming from the rest of the audience was likewise one of agreement.

  The priest’s gaze swept around the room. “Before you condemn the lad, remember, as I remember what our Lord said in the Gospel according to Matthew, ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’ ”

  Barry saw heads nodding. The hum rose in volume.

  “A child let himself get carried away, that’s all.” The priest held his left hand out, palm to his audience, fingertips to the roof. “All I ask is that ‘he that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.’ ”

  Barry turned and looked up the hall. He was concerned that Bertie Bishop, the staunch Orangeman, might object to the Catholic priest taking charge. Most of the audience was still standing, but Bertie, who must have retaken his seat, was struggling to rise. Flo was holding on to his arm and clearly remonstrating with him.

  A harsher northern accent caught Barry’s attention, and he turned to see that the Reverend Robinson was now on the stage, not needing the mike, but speaking in his best pulpit voice, the one Kinky had said “let his listeners feel the spits of him six pews back.” “All the children and Miss Nolan have worked very hard, so let’s give Colin a fool’s pardon, a Christmas reprieve. Let us all take our seats.” His gaze was directed at Bertie Bishop, who subsided.

  There was a scratching of chair legs on the wooden floor.

  “Please bear with us,” the minister said. “It’s going to take . . .” He turned to one of the men working on the inn front.

  Barry recognized Donal Donnelly’s red thatch.

  “About another ten minutes, your reverence.” Donal sounded confident.

  “About ten minutes, so I’ll ask you to be patient, and very soon we’ll be able to return to our portrayal of a night in Bethlehem of Judea and see again why we keep Christmas. We keep it to celebrate the birth of the Saviour who came to earth to take away the sins of the world.”

  “Thank you, Reverend. Well said.” Father O’Toole beamed out over the audience. “I think the Saviour’d be happy to take away young Colin’s sin of envy. Don’t you?”

  There was a long silence, then a swelling murmur of assent, above which O’Reilly could be heard bellowing, “Hear! Hear!”

  Barry felt a tugging at his sleeve.

  “Doctor Laverty?” Cissie Sloan, her hair obviously coiffed for the occasion, her floral-patterned dress freshly laundered, was pulling at him with one doeskin-gloved hand. “Miss Nolan says could you or Doctor O’Reilly please come backstage? And it can’t be himself because he’s still busy with the nice nun, so he is . . .”

  Barry saw she was right. O’Reilly still knelt beside the mother superior.

  “So it’ll have to be yourself . . .”

  “What’s up, Cissie?”

  “Wee Jeannie, her that’s Mary, and she’s a lovely Mary, isn’t she?”

  Barry started to walk toward a door that led to the back of the set, with Cissie in hot pursuit.

  “Wee Jeannie bumped her head when the donkey bolted, and I don’t think there’s a more stupid animal, so I don’t . . .”

  Barry held the door for Cissie before he climbed four wooden stairs.

  “. . . Except maybe my cousin Aggie Arbuthnot, you remember her, Doctor?”

  Barry, now standing in the dimly lit wings, raised his eyes and thought about six toes and was surprised when Cissie rang the changes and continued, “The one I think could use an anenema.”

  “Doctor Laverty. Thank you for coming.” Sue Nolan had taken off her academic robe. She wore a powder-blue cashmere sweater, which, he noted, she filled very well, and a black pencil skirt.

  Barry knew he should be concerned for the patient, but his first thought—O’Reilly’s comforting conversation of Saturday night notwithstanding—was how to get rid of Cissie and have a few moments to get Sue’s phone number. “Cissie says Jeannie bumped her head.”

  “That’s right. I have her lying down in a side room. If you’ll come with me?” She turned and Barry started to follow.

  “You’ll not be needing me no more, Doctor, will you?”

  He didn’t need an excuse to get Sue alone. Cissie wanted to go.

  “It’s fine, Cissie. I can manage.”

  “Good, for I want to see the rest. My wee lad’s one of the shepherds, so he is. He’s a good wee lad. Not like that Colin Brown. I’ll bet when his da’s done with him, he’ll be taking his meals standing up for a few days.”

  Barry grimaced. She was probably right. He didn’t like corporal punishment—he’d been beaten at his boarding school—but he couldn’t see how Colin could avoid being smacked. Oh, well, it would be over quickly, and the lad would be his usual self in no time flat.

  “My Hugie, my husband, would have taken his hand to our wee lad if it had been him. Aggie says . . .”

  Barry didn’t wait to hear the pronouncements of cousin Aggie. He followed Sue Nolan. As he did, he heard hammering from stage left and rattling as someone closed the curtains.

  When he entered the side room, he saw bookshelves lined the walls. Freestanding bookcases were arranged in ranks along the middle of the parquet-floored room. It must serve as a library.

  Sue stood beside a low couch against the far wall where the Virgin Mary lay with a pillow propping up her head. The belly under her dress was no longer swollen, so Barry surmised that the same pillow had been used to simulate her pregnancy. He sat on the edge of the couch. “Hello, Jeannie.” He remembered how sick she’d been last summer with an appendix abscess. It was quite remarkable how easily children could recover.

  “Hello, Doctor Laverty.” She grinned and pointed to a facecloth on her forehead. “I hit my head a quare rattle, so I did, when the donkey ran into the wall of the inn.”

  Barry removed the damp cloth. There was a bump right above Jean-nie’s left eye. It was about an inch in diameter and was raised for a quarter of an inch above the surrounding skin of her forehead. The skin was shiny and turning a dusky shade of blue. It was probably nothing more than a bruise, but Barry had once missed a diagnosis of bleeding inside the skull. He was not going to take any chances now.

  He rummaged inside his pocket for a pencil torch. “I’m going to examine you, Jeannie.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “And before I do, I’m going to ask you some questions, like what day is it?”

  “Don’t you know, Doctor?” He heard concern in the child’s voice and a soft laugh from Sue.

  “I do,” he said. “I want to know if you do.”

  “Sure it’s Monday. It’s four days before Christmas.” She looked around her. “And this here’s a wee room in the Parish Hall, so it is.”

  Barry smiled and explained to Sue, “She’s not disorientated. That’s a good sign. Now . . .” He shone the light into one eye, pleased to see the pupil constricting.

  In less than five minutes he had completed a neurological examination and was relieved that, as far as he could tell, everything was normal. He stood. “You’ll be fine, Jeannie. Just a bit of a bump.”

  “So she can act out the scene?” Sue asked.

  “Of course.”

  She bent down to Jeannie. “Come on then. Let’s get you ready.” Barry watched as she smoothed down Jeannie’s dress, produced a brush, and brushed the little girl’s hair. “Off you trot,” she said. “Take your place with Joseph in the stable. We’ll not need the pillow or the donkey because we’re going to start after the birth of Jesus.”

  “Good. I’ll maybe have a baby one day, but I’m never getting back on one of them donkeys, so I’m not.”

  Barry smiled at her vehemence.

  “Fair enough,” Sue said. “When the curtai
ns open, start from ‘It’s not a bedroom, Joseph, but it will do rightly.’ ”

  “Yes, Miss.” Jeannie left.

  “Thanks, Barry,” Sue said. He saw how she smiled. It was an intriguing smile.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I thought before Armageddon struck, your kiddies were doing very well.”

  “They are fun,” she said. “I—”

  Before she could continue, Father O’Toole appeared.

  “Are you ready to go, Sue? The natives are getting restless out front, and the set’s jury-rigged.”

  “Excuse me, Barry,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Damn it. The moment to get her phone number was gone. Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. He knew he’d be devastated if he found out Patricia had given her number to another man.

  “Why don’t you stay, Barry, and watch from the wings?” Her eyebrow lifted. He swallowed. “I’d like that,” he said. “Very much.”

  Sue vanished and the priest left. Barry walked to the wings above the doorway. He stood silently watching Sue Nolan positioning her charges, and he smiled when she ran across the stage and joined him. “It’s a good thing the innkeeper’s not needed for the rest of the play.”

  Barry grinned at her.

  She held a finger up to her lips.

  He heard applause and the rustling of the curtains, and he watched in silence, aware of her nearness and her light perfume.

  The children acted the old story of the nativity of the Christ Child; of heavenly hosts and shepherds abiding in the fields; of stars in the east and wise men. Barry recognized many of the little performers as patients he had seen in the surgery.

  The curtains were drawn on the final scene. “Barry,” Sue said, as they waited for the applause to die down. “I’ve to conduct the closing carol.”

  “Off you go.”

  Her voice was soft. “Will you wait here for me until it’s over? I’m leaving for Broughshane as soon as the performance is over. I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas properly.”

  He knew he should say no, find some excuse, but instead he said, “Of course.” And why not? She was going away that night.