An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  “Divil the bit,” said O’Reilly. “I was just thinking aloud.” He was looking straight at her, was surprised to realize he was seeing her in a different light. It was the kind of change he might notice on the seashore when he and Arthur were pursuing ducks and the morning sun suddenly transformed ill-defined shapes into cleanly etched rocks and clumps of seaweed. It was almost as if he’d not been paying attention on the other evenings he’d spent with Kitty.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was the musky perfume she was wearing, perhaps all the stars she and Barry had been discussing had lined up in a row, but whatever the reason, he was going to enjoy being alone with her later tonight.

  He turned to Barry. “Now young fellow, far be it from me to chase you but . . .”

  Barry rose. “I know. I promised to go see Sonny and Maggie about Eileen Lindsay’s Sammy.”

  “Good man ma da,” O’Reilly said. “And Barry, while you’re at it, would you do me a wee favour?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Arthur hasn’t had a walk today.” O’Reilly saw Barry glance to heaven. He couldn’t blame the lad. The big Labrador still seemed obsessed with a desire to mate with Barry’s trouser leg at the slightest provocation. “He’d really appreciate it, and I can’t have him getting fat. I’m going to take him to Strangford for a day at the ducks soon.”

  To O’Reilly’s surprise, Barry said. “All right, Fingal, just this once. When I came home earlier tonight, I seemed to be able to persuade him to do as he was bid.” He turned to Kitty. “I’ll say good-night, Kitty. You may be gone by the time I get back.”

  “Good-night, Barry. I hope to see you soon.”

  You will, O’Reilly thought. This isn’t the last dinner you’ll be eating in this house.

  “I want to hear more about the constellations.”

  “My pleasure,” Barry said. “Perhaps I’ll see you later, Fingal?” It was his last remark as he closed the dining room door behind him.

  “Right,” said O’Reilly, rising and standing behind Kitty’s chair, ready to pull it back when she rose. “Let’s take our coffee and drinks back upstairs. It’s warmer up there. Would you like a little more port?”

  “No thanks, Fingal.” She stood. “Let’s go on up.”

  O’Reilly refreshed his whiskey and settled into his chair. He watched Kitty standing at the fireplace. She had her back turned to him and was looking at a row of Christmas cards on the mantel. “Pretty early for cards,” she said.

  “For local ones, they usually start showing up in Christmas week, but those ones are all from overseas. Classmates who emigrated. Shipmates from the navy. There’s one there from Barry’s folks in Australia. That one”—he indicated a hand-drawn card with a caricature of a doctor on the front—“is from an old patient of mine. Read it.”

  She picked up the card, half turned, and read, Old doctors never die. They just lose their patients. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Seamus, Maureen, and Barry Fingal Galvin. We’re all doing very well here, and Barry Fingal is growing like a weed . . . “There’s more but it’ll be personal.” She put the card back on the mantel and turned to face him.

  “They’re in California. They went in August,” he said. “Seamus Galvin was the greatest skiver unhung. His wife, Maureen, sent the card.”

  “Still, it’s nice they’d remember you.”

  O’Reilly laughed. “Never mind them not forgetting me. I’ll not forget Seamus Galvin in a hurry. But he’s in California and we’re here.” He looked at her face again. God, she was a handsome woman. “There are more interesting things to talk about,” he said. “What have you been up to since I saw you last?”

  “Since when? Ten days ago? Not a whole hell of a lot.”

  “Come and sit down and tell me about it anyway.” He watched her cross the floor as he imagined a Celtic princess might have glided. Why the woman had never married was beyond him. He waited until she was comfortably settled, legs crossed, thigh over thigh, shapely calves leaning to one side.

  “So what have you been up to?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Do you really want to hear about the doings of a ward sister on duty, keeping my unit running smoothly?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. What did you get up to last week when you were off duty?” And have you been seeing any other men? he thought, although he realized it was none of his business.

  She chuckled. “Enjoying a life of wild hedonism, if you consider it’s living dangerously doing the housework in my flat, cooking for myself, shopping, getting my hair done, a trip to the dentist, my Monday night painting class, and an evening at the cinema with my friend Mairead to see My Fair Lady. I don’t think Audrey Hepburn did as good a job as Julie Andrews in the stage production.”

  “I haven’t seen either,” he said, “but I saw Pygmalion. I took . . .” He could visualize Dublin’s Abbey Theatre on Lower Abbey Street and a young Fingal O’Reilly escorting a young Kitty O’Hallorhan. “I took you to see it.” There was the suspicion of a catch in his voice. “We were awfully young then.”

  When she replied he heard wistfulness in her voice. Then she looked into O’Reilly’s eyes. “I remember you when you were young, Fingal. I remember a lot about you.” He felt her hand brush against the back of his.

  O’Reilly coughed and not because his throat tickled. It gave him a split second to collect his thoughts. If his pipe had been handy to fiddle with, he could easily have stretched the second to a minute. He’d been looking forward to time alone with Kitty, but now that it had arrived he realized he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the way the conversation was going. And if Kinky walked in just then and saw them practically holding hands, he knew he’d be embarrassed.

  “There’s another reason I need to get back in harness,” he said, hoping to deflect her. “There’s a niggling question about how a new doctor in the area, a Doctor Fitzpatrick, might compete with us for patients. They’ll be less likely to shift allegiance if their regular doctor, me, is there. I owe that to Barry. I should meet Fitzpatrick. I’ll maybe get Kinky to arrange for him to come round here tomorrow.”

  “Fitzpatrick?” She frowned. “Not the great Ronald Hercules? He was a student with you, wasn’t he?” she said. She did not remove her hand.

  “None other than.” It was pleasant, the warmth of her. He turned his wrist and enveloped her delicate fingers in his paw.

  “He was the ugliest young man I have ever seen,” she said.

  O’Reilly guffawed, then said, “I’ll bet he hasn’t improved with age.” He tightened his fingers around Kitty’s, careful not to exert the kind of pressure he usually put into a handshake.

  “But you have, Fingal,” she said. Her voice was lower, huskier. He felt her hand squeeze his. “You’re . . .” She hesitated. “You’re distinguished.”

  He wanted to laugh, make some disparaging comment, but he looked into her eyes and was silenced. He saw a softness there. Somehow they were the same soft young eyes that had first attracted him in the springtime of his years. And Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, he who never let anyone, never mind his patients, get the upper hand, that same Doctor F. F. O’Reilly found himself completely at a loss for words.

  Kitty solved his problem by leaning across the gap between them and softly brushing her lips on his.

  He opened his mouth and savoured the port-wine taste of her. He wasn’t such a confirmed old widower that he had forgotten the pleasures of the flesh, but inside something else was stirring, something that had lain dormant for a very long time.

  He moved his head back. He was a little short of breath and very confused. He looked into her eyes again. “Kitty,” he finally managed to say.

  She gave him no chance to say more. She still held his hand. “Fingal, I was in love with you thirty-odd years ago. I’ve never quite forgotten you.”

  He stared down at the carpet.

  “I could care for you again, if you’d let me.” Her voice was level but still low and husky.r />
  He didn’t know what to say, but he saw the compassion, the understanding, in her expression. “I . . . Kitty . . . that is . . . well . . .”

  She chuckled. “I’ve floored you, haven’t I, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly?”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “It’s a big chunk for you to swallow all at once. I understand. It might take you a while to get used to the idea.”

  “It will.” The words slipped out.

  “So,” she let his hand go, “pour me another port. We’ll say no more tonight, but I’ve told you how I feel, Fingal, and I can wait for you to decide how you feel.”

  He rose and walked to the sideboard to pour her drink and refresh his own. Ordinarily he despised people who needed a drink in times of stress, but at the moment he needed one. If he followed where his heart seemed to be leading, it would be disloyal to Deidre’s memory. And yet . . .

  He carried Kitty’s drink back to her. The smile lines at the corners of her eyes and at her upturned lips lit up her face. What had he called her before? A powerful woman. She was that, all right, and a beautiful one too. He handed her the glass of port.

  She took it, and once more looking him directly in the eye, she said, “I will wait, Fingal, but I’ll not wait forever.”

  You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It

  “Get in, Lummox.” Barry held the back door of Brunhilde open and waited for Arthur Guinness to jump in. The little car lurched under the weight of the big dog. Barry was bundled up in his navy blue duffle coat and his old, six-foot-long, black, red, white, and yellow, vertically striped Belfast Medical Students Association scarf, a reminder of his recent undergraduate days.

  As he went to get into the driver’s seat, the mud of the back lane crunched under his Wellington boots. He noticed the puddles were filmed with an icy rime that shone with a silver sparkle in the light of the half-moon that was setting in a cloudless sky.

  His breath hung in a small cloud. The gale had died with the coming of the night. It was cold, but it was crisp—Christmassy, not the bone-chilling rawness of earlier in the day when it had been so damp.

  He put the car in gear.

  Arthur stood and draped his front paws around Barry’s neck. Barry braked before the lane opened onto the main Bangor-Belfast Road. Let’s see, he thought, if Arthur remembers doing as he was told earlier today. Barry turned in his seat and lifted each paw in turn. “Let’s you and me get one thing straight, dog . . .” He shoved Arthur away. “You, dog. Me, boss. Now . . . lie down, sir.” He was gratified to hear Arthur sigh as only a Labrador can, and as far as Barry could tell in the dim light, the dog subsided into the rear-seat well. “Right,” he said, and turned right on the road to Sonny and Maggie’s place. “And stay there, d’ye hear?”

  The traffic was light and the road clear of snow. The drive to where Sonny’s house stood on a hill was uneventful. In the daytime, Barry knew there was a splendid view overlooking the fields, down across the waters of Belfast Lough to the Antrim Hills of the far shore.

  He parked on the road outside the fenced front garden and told Arthur to stay. Then he got out and let himself in through the cast-iron gate. Not four months ago he’d walked this path, crushing black horehound underfoot where it was growing through the cracks in the paving stones; he remembered how unpleasant it had smelled. That was the time Councillor Bishop, true to a promise O’Reilly had wrung out of him, had a crew at work replacing Sonny’s roof, the necessary condition for the celebration of the long-delayed marriage of Sonny Houston to Maggie MacCorkle, spinster of this parish.

  While he was still a few yards from the front door, Barry heard the clamour of barking dogs. Sonny had five and he doted on them. Before he and Maggie married and moved into this house, Sonny had lived in his car and housed his dogs in an old caravan. Now they must all be living in the house together. Oh, well, Barry thought, being greeted by animals was an integral part of visiting houses and farms in Ulster.

  He climbed the two front steps. The barking from inside was deafening. In many houses without telephones, and as far as Barry knew the Houstons didn’t have one, excited yapping was the first indication that someone was coming to call. It was the Ulster equivalent of an early warning system.

  Before he could rap on the front door, it was opened by a tall, older man with an erect posture, bright eyes, and cheeks that were slightly dusky, which Barry knew was a sign of controlled congestive heart failure. The man held a pair of horn-rimmed glasses in one hand. Dogs, yipping and barking joyously, tumbled through the open door and out along the path created by the hall light’s rays.

  “Doctor Laverty.” Sonny extended his hand. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Good evening, Sonny.” Barry removed his right glove before shaking hands. It would have been impolite not to do so. “May I come in?”

  “Please.” He stepped aside and as Barry passed him, Sonny stuck two fingers in his mouth and produced a whistle that Barry thought would have done justice to a steam-driven locomotive.

  Barry was surrounded by a tide of dogs as they jostled with each other to obey their master’s summons home. “Kitchen,” Sonny commanded, and the dogs disappeared along the hall. He heard Sonny close the door.

  “Let me take your coat, Doctor.”

  As Barry took off his coat and scarf, he noticed framed black-and-white photographs hanging on the hall wall. He could see porticos and pillars and house fronts carved into cliff faces. “Where’s that, Sonny?”

  “Petra. In Jordan. I took those snaps thirty years ago. I was on an archaelogical dig. It’s quite spectacular in colour.”

  Barry remembered that Sonny Houston, Ph.D., was an expert on, among other things, Nabataean civilization. “Petra.” Barry struggled to remember the obscure quotation. “Something to do with roses?” he said.

  “Petra, ‘a rose-red city, half as old as time . . . ’ ” Sonny said and smiled. “That’s what Dean Burgon called it after a Swiss chap, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, discovered it. Fascinating place. I must say I’d rather like to go back, but it would be much too hot for Maggie. Much too hot.” He smiled fondly. “She’s in the front room. Do come in, Doctor.” He opened a door and held it for Barry.

  His immediate thought was that Sonny was preparing Maggie for a trip to Jordan by getting her acclimatized to the heat to be expected there. A turf fire roared up a wide chimney, and the temperature in the room was probably close to that usually experienced in the boiler room of a coal-fired ship.

  “Doctor dear,” said Maggie from her seat in a high-backed rocking chair, “come on, on, in.” She grinned her toothless-as-an-oyster grin at him and turned to an overstuffed armchair where a large one-eyed, one-eared cat lay curled in a ball. “And you get to hell out of that, General Montgomery.” Then she pulled a ball of wool from a knitting bag on her lap and chucked it with unerring accuracy at the cat, who awoke, yowled, and leapt down from the chair. “Sit down, Doctor dear.”

  Barry sat. He knew better than to argue with Maggie.

  Sonny moved to a second rocker beside his wife and lifted a book in his gnarled hands. Barry noticed the title, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. As Sonny, a little creakily, lowered himself into the chair, he slipped his glasses onto his nose and smiled at Barry.

  “Now,” Maggie said, putting her knitting aside, “you’ll take a wee cup of tea in your hand and a slice of my plum cake?”

  It was less of a question than an order. Barry, who had tried Maggie’s culinary delights before, had his excuse ready. “I’d love to, but I’ve another call to make so I can only stay for a few minutes.” Maggie’s tea was brewed strong enough to trot a mouse on.

  “Not even a slice of cake?” She sounded disappointed.

  He shook his head. “Sorry.” It was an old country custom at a wedding to throw a slice of the wedding cake onto the ground. If, as was usual, the cake shattered, the couple would be assured of many children. If it remained intact, infertility might en
sue. But in the case of Maggie’s cakes, the concern was for whether or not the ground would fracture.

  “Oh, well, I’ll cut you a slice to take home.” She leant over and pinched his cheek. “Young men always have a sweet tooth.”

  “That would be wonderful, Maggie.” Barry made himself more comfortable. “So how’s married life suiting you?” he asked. He saw how she took Sonny’s hand and gazed at him. No words were needed. Hoping he’d not embarrassed Maggie, Barry cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Maggie, I have a favour to ask.”

  “A favour?” Her dark eyes twinkled. “From me? Dead on. What do you want?”

  “Do you know Eileen Lindsay?”

  “Aye. Lives on the estate? Her with the three kiddies and the useless layabout of a husband that done a bunk a couple of years back?”

  “That’s her.”

  “What can I do for her?”

  He leant forward and spoke seriously. “Her Sammy is a bit sick and needs looking after so Eileen can still go to her work, and I was wondering . . . that is, Doctor O’Reilly and I were wondering . . .”

  “God bless you, Doctor Laverty dear. Of course. Sonny and me’d be delighted, so we would. Wouldn’t we?” She smiled across to Sonny, who nodded and smiled back. “When would you like us to start?”

  Barry was now regretting that he had not accepted Maggie’s offer of a cup of tea. He knew that would have pleased her. “How about the day after tomorrow? I’ll need to have a word with her first.”

  “That would be grand, so it would. She still lives at 31 Comber Gardens?”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “You’ll run me there, won’t you, Sonny?”

  “Of course, my dear.” Sonny whipped off his glasses, squinted at her, and asked, “Are you sure you’re warm enough, Maggie?” Without letting her answer, he let go of her hand, rose, went to the hearth, lifted a sod of peat from a wicker basket, and tossed it on the fire. Sparks burst forth like a flock of overexcited fireflies to whirl and dance and cavort up the wide chimney mouth. “She feels the cold, you know, Doctor Laverty.”