He wanted to go home.
“Now,” said O’Reilly to the little crowd, ignoring the approving noises, “all the excitement’s over. I’m sure Doctor Laverty here has explained that the patient’s going to be fine.” He took a swig from what must be a recently refreshed glass of whiskey. “I see no reason to let this ruin an otherwise wonderful party.”
“Hear. Hear,” Bertie Bishop said. “I’ll open another bottle.”
“Ah,” said O’Reilly, raising his voice. “Of Jameson, Bertie?”
“Aye, surely,” said the councillor.
O’Reilly grinned and lowered the level of the liquid in his glass considerably. “I’m sure Mrs. Kincaid can wait twenty minutes more so we can have just one more wee wet.” He positively beamed at Bertie Bishop and looked down at the now somnolent Mr. Coffin. “I’ll need to stay to keep an eye on him until the ambulance gets here.”
Barry looked down at his bloodstained pants. “You stay here, Fingal, but I want to get washed, then go home, change, and get these pants in the wash.” He glanced at Patricia, but she would still not meet his eye. He did want to go home, and not because he gave a tinker’s damn about his bloody pants.
“Go on then, Barry,” O’Reilly said. “Go and wash. But there’s no need to walk home. As soon as I’ve finished my jar and seen Mr. Coffin off to Belfast, I’ll drive you and Patricia back to Number 1.” He looked directly at Barry, then said very quietly, “I’m sure you need to have a chat with Patricia.”
Barry nodded. The big man had heard her too.
“When I’ve dropped you, I’ll take Kitty straight home. It’s no night for her to try to get to Belfast in her wee Mini.… And I’ll get your car up to you, Kitty, as soon as the snow’s thawed a bit. If I give Donal a few bob, he’ll drive it up and come back on the train.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Kitty said quietly, “but when you’ve had your ‘just one more’ whiskey, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, I’ll drive your Rover.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Kitty O’Hallorhan certainly had the measure of O’Reilly. Barry doubted if anyone, other than a senior officer when O’Reilly’d been in the navy, could order the man about the way she had. Perhaps Kinky Kincaid, but no one else. Barry swallowed a large mouthful of sherry and set the glass on a nearby table. Kitty understood Fingal all right. He wished he could fathom Patricia. Her “It’s over” was crystal clear, but why? Why?
He headed for the bathroom. He washed his hands, then bent and splashed cold water over his face. The icy sting of it matched the chill in his heart.
Perhaps he’d misheard? Perhaps she hadn’t really meant it? He headed back to the party. Once he got home, Mrs. Kincaid, who had stayed behind to answer the surgery phone, would take her turn at the Bishops’ party. And with O’Reilly on his way to Belfast with Kitty, he and Patricia would have Number 1, Main Street, to themselves.
Perhaps he could still straighten all this out?
3
Flee from the Cruel Madness of Love
Barry sat stiffly beside Patricia in the back of O’Reilly’s Rover. They did not speak or touch, but her faint perfume whispered to him. He stared out the window. On the trip along the Shore Road where the Bishops lived he’d seen that the drifts on the verges were at least two feet deep. They’d returned the car’s headlights with a flat white glare studded with the glinting of icy sequins. It was dark by four thirty in December in Ulster, and beyond the twin beams and their reflections the evening was pitch black. Sombre as Barry’s mood.
Kitty drove under the single-arch railway bridge and along Station Road to the left turn at the traffic signals—the only ones in the village—onto Main Street. The sign at the Black Swan wore a topping of icing-sugar snow. The thatch and the slate roofs of the low terraces of cottages lining the road were frostily glistering in the glow of the few streetlamps.
On the way to the party Barry’d thought of the snow as a winter wonderland. He’d imagined walking through it with Patricia, laughing with her, kissing her, but now it was a cold barren place.
He said good-bye to O’Reilly and Kitty, held Patricia’s arm, and walked slowly to accommodate her limp as they stepped along the slush-covered footpath to the front door of Number 1, Main Street.
Barry pushed the door open. No one would dream of locking a house here. Then he stood aside, letting Patricia precede him into the well-lit hall. By the time he’d hung his overcoat beside her duffle on the hall clothes-stand he’d warmed up. At least his fingers and toes had. Inside he was numb.
“I’m going to change these trousers,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute.” Barry climbed slowly to his attic bedroom, pulled off his stained trousers, made sure his legs weren’t bloody too, put on a pair of corduroys, and headed downstairs with the soiled pants. As he passed the upstairs lounge, he noticed Patricia sitting in an armchair. It seemed so natural to see her there. Why, Patricia? Why is it over?
In the hot aroma-filled kitchen, two saucepans steamed on the stove. Mrs. Kincaid had her back turned to Barry. She was wearing her overcoat and her best green hat. Grey rubber galoshes, large and lumpy, covered her shoes. Wisps of silver hair strayed from her chignon. She patted the escapees with a beefy hand, then turned and saw him.
“I never heard you. Is it home you are, Doctor Laverty?” She glanced at the bloody trousers he held. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, have you done it again?” She tutted. “Maybe we should get you a set of dungarees—or oilskins.”
“I’m sorry. It was an emergency. Nothing too serious. Everything’s OK now.” He knew his voice sounded flat.
Kinky gave him a long look. “They’ll have to be soaked before I go to the Bishops’ or I’ll never get them clean. There’s cold water in the sink, sir. Could you put them in?” Her native Cork brogue was soft against his harsher, northern accent.
He dropped the pants in, watching the blood drift out into the water to swirl, and thin, and vanish like smoke in the air on a windless day—or as love when it has flown. His hands shook.
“I’ll wash them later,” she said, fussing in a cupboard, then closing the door. “I’ll finish up here; then I’ll be off.”
He did not want to ask, but courtesy demanded. “Can I give you a lift?”
“Not at all, bless you, Doctor Laverty. It’s no distance. Only a wee doddle. I’ve walked further back home in County Cork on much worse nights, in deeper snow than this, so. The exercise’ll do me a power of good.” She paused, looked straight at him, and frowned. Then she said, “Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes, Kinky?”
“If you don’t mind me asking, are you all right?”
“Why?”
“You’ve a face on you like a Lurgan spade, and I hear dry rot in your voice.”
“Sorry, Kinky, but I’m fine. Honestly.”
“If you say so, sir. But it’s not like you to be down, so. Is it something to do with the emergency?”
Barry shook his head, took a deep breath, and then exhaled. “Go on, Kinky. Go and enjoy Flo’s hooley. I’ll be grand.” Of course I will be fine. And apples will grow on a cherry tree.
She inclined her head. “I’ll be off then”—she pointed to the stove—“and don’t worry about the lentil and the turkey-vegetable soups I’m making. They’ll come to no harm for I’ll be home soon. So if you’re sure you’re all right, sir, you go upstairs and see to your young lady. There’s Christmas cake and meringues on the sideboard in case you get peckish, and I’ll go and see what the craic’s like over at Flo’s.”
“Thanks, Kinky.” He followed her into the hall and climbed the stairs, trying to decide exactly what he should say to Patricia.
It was cosy when he went into the lounge, and the fire’s cherry-red clinkers and ebony anthracite pieces were blended colours on an abstract painter’s canvas. Arthur Guinness, O’Reilly’s black Labrador, snored on the hearth rug. Patricia sat in an armchair with Lady Macbeth on her lap, stroking the little cat’s white head.
&
nbsp; He saw Patricia’s raven-wing hair glossy in the light from the overhead fixture, her deep, peat water–brown eyes soft in their almond-shaped settings, her cheekbones those of a Slavic princess, her lips full and kissable. And he was enraptured by the loveliness of the young woman, the golden girl who’d stolen his very being in a train compartment riding down from Belfast on a soft starlit night.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. He heard the front door close below. “Kinky’s going to the Bishops’,” he said. Then he stood there, tongue-tied.
“Will you sit down please, Barry?” Her words were clipped. “Please?”
“I’d rather stand,” he said. “Would you like a meringue?”
“No, thank you.”
“A drink?”
She shook her head.
“I will, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead. Of course I don’t mind.”
The conversation was stepping along as formally as a Restoration minuet. I know you don’t mind if I have a drink, he thought. After all, it’s over. Why would you care about anything I did? He poured himself a Jameson and drank. The spirits caught in his throat. He coughed. His vision blurred. When it cleared, he saw her looking at him, but the warmth he sought in her eyes was not there.
“We need to talk, Barry,” she said.
“I know. I heard what you said to Kitty.”
“I’m sorry. You weren’t meant to.”
“I’m sorry too.” Lord, man, what are you apologizing for? “But I did hear. You said—”
“I know exactly what I said.” She was sitting stiffly, knees together, hands clasped in her lap. “Barry, I’m sorry. I’m awfully sorry.”
“But you meant it.” Say no. Say, Barry, you were mistaken about what you thought you’d heard. Please, Patricia, say it.
He set his drink on the sideboard and knocked over half a dozen Christmas cards. He couldn’t be bothered to straighten them up. “Why?” he whispered. “Why?”
“Why did I tell Kitty?”
Barry shook his head. “I don’t care about you telling Kitty. I want to know why it’s over. What did I do wrong?” Before she could answer he carried on, the words tumbling, unstoppable and burning as molten metal from a blast furnace. “I should have guessed when you almost didn’t make it home for Christmas. I should have known. You’d plenty of time, but you wanted to go bird-watching, to London, to carol services. Excuses. That’s all excuses. You never wanted to come back to Ulster at all. Did you? You never wanted to see me again. Never.”
She looked down.
“Why not? Why the hell not?”
“Please don’t get cross, Barry.”
He felt his fists clench and took a deep breath.
“Barry, I’m sorry.”
He tried. He really tried, but he could not stop himself from saying with an edge in his voice, “Don’t get cross? You’re sorry?” His lips pursed; his eyes prickled. “Sorry? How the hell do you think I feel?” He moved two steps toward her, and she held up one arm in front of her face as if to ward off a blow. She looked so vulnerable. His voice softened. “Patricia, I still love you. I’m trying to understand, that’s all.”
She lowered her arm and looked up at him. Little tears trickled down her cheeks. “Barry,” she said, “I thought I loved you—”
“But?” He tried to keep the bitterness away. “But you didn’t.”
She looked at the carpet and said in a little voice, “It would have been all right if I hadn’t gone away.”
“No, it wouldn’t. You know I love Ulster and this job here in Ballybucklebo. It’s too small for you, Patricia. You want the world. Ballybucklebo’s not Cambridge.”
“That’s right. There’s always something going on there. It’s … it’s alive … vibrant. London’s only an hour away.” Patricia stared at the carpet. She held one hand in the other in front of her skirt. The fingers of the left entwined with the right and she brought her locked hands up and rested her mouth on the knuckles for what seemed to Barry like an eternity. Finally she lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Barry, I couldn’t live here. I’d get claustrophobia. And I’ve seen how O’Reilly and you work. The village owns you both. You’d have no time for me.”
“I’d have every other night off, one weekend in two.”
“And be coming home too tired to do anything but sleep. Barry, I’m not cut out to sit at home knitting, waiting for my man.”
“I see.” He was at a complete loss for words. Surely there must be some compromise they could both accept?
“It’s not just that. And I had to tell you to your face. That’s why I came home. I couldn’t tell you over the phone.” She swallowed. “Can you please sit down?”
He came close to saying, “Why bother?” But he nodded and sat.
“Well?” Barry let the word hang. “I’m listening.”
“Barry, I thought I was in love with you. I did all this summer. It was wonderful.”
Indeed it was. “But once you got to Cambridge you started having second thoughts?” he said. “You’ve just told me.”
“There’s more—”
“More?” His voice rose.
“Barry, please, don’t get angry. Please, just listen.” She held her hands outstretched to him, palms up.
“Go on.”
“Phone calls and the odd letter weren’t enough,” she said.
“They were for me. They had to be.”
“You never saw anybody else?”
Barry pushed back into his chair. He looked away, then back at her. “I was angry because you were meant to have come home, but you kept putting it off. I went to a nurses’ dance with my friend Jack Mills.” He shrugged. “I drove a girl home. It was on the way here anyway, nothing happened, and I’ll not be seeing her again.” He forced a weak grin. “Ships that pass, that’s all.”
“I see.” She pushed Lady Macbeth away and stood. “It’s not just about how small this place is.” Her face screwed up. She picked at a nail bed.
He knew. He absolutely knew what she was trying to say. He’d make it easier for her. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
She nodded.
Barry rose. He stood beside her. “I don’t want to hear any more. I understand.”
“Barry, how can you be so calm?” Her voice broke. Tears flowed.
He ached to comfort her but did not move. “Because I’m trained to understand,” he lied, but he’d not tell her that he could not bear to see her cry. “It really is over, Patricia? There’s no hope?”
She nodded.
“I love you. I always will.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wish you well with your career and—” He didn’t want to think about another man.
She whispered, “Thank you, Barry,” and pecked his cheek. “I’ll miss you.”
He raised both arms, thinking to hug her to him, but let them fall limply to his sides.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “I’ll go and read in my room.”
“All right.”
“I’ll phone Dad first. Ask him to come and get me tomorrow.”
“Fine.” Barry’s world had collapsed. He was shrouded in confusion as dense as the dust from a blast, shattered like a jumbled pile of bricks. Yet here he was discussing practicalities like getting her home to Newry.
“Good-night, Barry.” She moved toward the door. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she was gone.
Barry sighed. Blinked back all but one tear. There wasn’t much point going to bed. He’d not sleep. Supper? He shook his head. The room was colder since she’d gone. He picked up his whiskey and flopped in a chair.
A cinder rattled as it fell through the bars of the grate and the embers settled. Barry stared into the hearth. The fire was only a red glow. Fires, like feelings, needed attention if they were not to go out, so he rose, told Arthur to move, and waited until the big dog stepped aside. Then Barry put on lump after lump of coal from the scuttle, and each made a pleas
ant, crackling noise as it fell into the hot embers.
“You can go back,” he said to the dog. You can, but I can’t.
Arthur settled down on the rug again. In a moment, the little white cat had snuggled up against Arthur’s tummy.
A comfortable room, a warm fire, contented animals, a small whiskey, and a pleasant glow. It was the kind of domesticity Barry had been sure was going to be in his stars once he had secured the job here. But now? Dear God, what about now?
He swallowed the remaining whiskey in one gulp and relished the way the spirits burned. If only he could cauterise his soul. Make it empty, but he couldn’t because he knew she’d always live inside him, the way O’Reilly’s dead wife, Deidre, dwelt in him.
Barry inhaled very deeply. Perhaps Kitty could exorcise Deidre’s spirit, make Fingal whole again.
But—he sighed and hunched forward, elbows on his knees—who could do that for Barry Laverty?
4
Tired with the Labour of Far Travel
We Have Come unto Our Own Home
O’Reilly didn’t want to talk while Kitty drove to Belfast. He knew he might have seemed to the onlookers to be completely in charge back at the Bishops’. Inside he’d been taut as a tightly sheeted sail in a stiff wind. Now he was happy to sit alone in his thoughts and let the tension ease.
Barry had been his competent self. That boy had the makings of a great GP. How was he getting on back at Number 1? O’Reilly had nearly choked on his Jameson when he’d heard Patricia say, “It’s over.” The statement had burst from the calm waters of the party as violently as the great plumes hurled up by an exploding depth charge. Lord knew he’d seen enough of those in the Med.
Kitty braked at a red light. “You’re quiet, Fingal,” she said.
He didn’t want to talk about Barry. “I’m not used to being driven,” he said. “You’re doing a great job, Kitty. Thanks.”
“You did a good job yourself on Mr. Coffin.” The light changed and she turned onto May Street.
“Aye,” said O’Reilly, “with your help—and Barry’s.”