Barry heard no bitterness, but it was still “Miss O’Hallorhan.” “I’m going to Holywood. Can I give you a lift anywhere?”
She shook her head. “That’s kind, sir, but I am being collected. In fact, I—”
There was a knock on the kitchen door and Kinky answered. “Come in, Mister Auchinleck.”
Barry frowned. Funny time for a milk delivery. Then he noticed that Archie was carrying a posy of primroses. Barry smiled and stepped aside. Hadn’t Kinky told him in the hospital that her Paudeen had wanted her to move on? Was this the first step?
Archie Auchinleck, the milkman, was wearing what must be his best, or perhaps his only, navy blue serge suit, white shirt, tie, and highly polished black shoes. His dark brown wavy hair was as shiny as his shoes, probably because he’d used Brylcreem, Barry thought. It was precisely parted to the right. His cheeks had a freshly shaved look and there was a faint odour of Old Spice. “Good evening, Doctor Laverty, sir. Good evening, Mrs. Kincaid,” he said, bowing a little to both.
“Evening, Archie,” Barry said. “How’s your back?” Last August, O’Reilly had given the man a verbal tousling for coming to the surgery on a Sunday morning to complain of a sore back he’d had for weeks. At that time, Archie’s son had been serving with the British Army in Cyprus during the Cypriot state of emergency. The EOKA, the Greek partisans who wanted union with Greece, were making it hell for the Turkish Cypriots and the security forces caught in between the two factions, but Corporal Auchinleck was now safely back in Palace Barracks outside Holywood—and Archie’s back the better for it. But it didn’t hurt to let patients know you hadn’t forgotten their concerns.
“Och sure, it’s great, so it is. Thanks for asking.” He turned from Barry and said, “You’re looking very well, Mrs. Kincaid, if I might be permitted to say so. Very well indeed. It’s a great relief to me … well … to everybody in the whole village and townland, so it is, that you’re back on your feet. You was sore missed, you know.”
“It is nice to be home.” Kinky smiled. “Very nice.”
He thrust the flowers to her. “I brung youse these,” he said, and Barry could have sworn Archie blushed.
“Thank you, Mister Auchinleck.” Kinky brought them to her face, inhaled deeply, then ran water into a glass in the sink and placed them in it carefully. “They’re very pretty and they’ll be fine there for a while, so, until I can get them into a proper vase when we get back. I don’t want to keep you waiting.”
“So we’re all set?” Archie turned back to Barry. “We’re for going to the Tonic in Bangor to see My Fair Lady. It won a brave wheen of them Oscars.” He winked and continued, “The music’s lovely and see that there Audrey Hepburn? She’s a wee cracker, so she is.”
Barry saw how when Archie turned back to Kinky and offered her his arm he looked into her face and said, “I’ve always liked dark eyes, so I have.”
“You two have fun,” Barry said. “Enjoy the picture.” For a moment he had a mischievious notion of saying something like, “And don’t you keep her out too late, Archibald Auchinleck,” as a protective father might say to his daughter’s swain. Silly idea. Kinky Kincaid was no teenager. But Barry had seen how she glowed when Archie gave her the bouquet and he remembered a dried, pressed rosebud between the pages of a book on her bedside table.
As he watched them leave, the sound of O’Reilly and Kitty’s laughter filtered in from upstairs and he felt a wave of inexplicable melancholy he couldn’t explain. Or could he? If a certain young woman hadn’t decided to move to Cambridge, it might have been him upstairs planning a honeymoon. He straightened his shoulders and reminded himself that another lovely young woman was cooking him dinner and if he didn’t get a move on, he’d be late. And he hated being late.
The scent of Kinky’s primroses wafted up from the sink. If the little florist’s in Holywood was still open when he got there he’d buy some flowers for Sue.
* * *
“For you, Sue.” Barry handed her a bunch of mixed dark red and white carnations the moment she opened the door of her flat. “You look lovely,” he said. And she did. Her short-sleeved cream dress was pinched at the waist by a patent leather belt. The knee-length skirt was a swirl of pleats. In her heels she stood as tall as Barry.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and sniffed the flowers, “and thank you for these.” She kissed him. Hard.
Barry, clutching a bottle of wine in his other hand, still managed to enfold her in a hug, feeling the firmness of her breasts against him. He returned her kiss with interest and was breathing rapidly when they parted.
Sue ran a hand over her crown, swallowed, and said, “How did you know I was born in January?”
Barry’s hand mirrored Sue’s as he smoothed his cow’s lick. “I didn’t.” The night they’d gone to the Inn he’d meant to ask her when her birthday was, but he’d been so entranced by her company he’d quite forgotten. “But come to think of it, carnations are your birth flower. My mum told me about the language of flowers.” He smiled. “Although I’m not so sure the red goes with your hair. Sorry about that.”
“They’re lovely.”
“And I brought this.” He gave her a bottle of Nuits Saint George. “You said you were cooking beef tonight and it’s the same one the sommelier recommended we have with our beef Wellington in the Culloden on Saturday.” He thought of the drive home after the meal and the lingering kisses in this room.
“Lovely,” she said. “I’ll open it now. I think red wine is supposed to be left to ‘breathe,’ whatever that means. I’m cooking a beef stroganoff. My mum’s recipe.” She took a pace back. “Come in.”
He followed her into the bookcase-surrounded living room.
“Back in a jiffy,” she said. “Would you like a glass of white or rosé? We’re having prawn cocktails to start.”
“White, please.”
As Sue disappeared through a door, amazing smells came from the kitchen.
Max, who was lying on the sofa, lifted his head, looked at Barry, and promptly went back to sleep. Familiarity may not always breed contempt, Barry thought, but he was at least now saved Max’s formerly lavish welcomes. It also served to keep Max’s hairs on Max and not on Barry’s good suit. He gave the springer a pat on the head and looked around. The table was set for two. Sue already had the appetizers on the table, glasses of lettuce bearing prawns in a pink Marie Rose sauce.
On a desk in one corner, papers were carelessly strewn. He wandered over to take a look. One was entitled Northern Ireland: Why Justice Cannot Be Done–The Douglas Home Correspondence. Another, Northern Ireland: What the Papers Say. Both were dated 1964.
He smiled and shook his head. Please, no politics tonight, Sue. And perhaps not too much of the “Easy and Slow” either, he thought, still feeling the softness of her lips on his, the firmness of her breasts. They were well past their first date now and Barry recognised that the more he saw of Sue Nolan the more he wanted to see her. After Patricia he still hesitated to call what he was feeling love. Perhaps, he thought, I’m a bit gun-shy. But it was something damn close.
Her voice called from the kitchen, “Barry, can you give me a hand? I got the white poured, but I can’t get the cork out of the red.”
He went through. Sue stood with her back to him, arms akimbo as she struggled with the corkscrew. He stood behind her, wrapped his arms round her waist, and dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck. She leant back against him and murmured in her throat. Barry let his hands slip slowly up until he cupped a breast in each palm.
“Nice,” she said softly, and tucked her head down into her shoulders, rolling her head from side to side. Turning in his arms, she kissed him long and hard, then stepped back, breathing in short gasps. She held the bottle of wine between them. Her eyes shone. “Later, Barry,” she said, “later. Here. Please.” She handed him the bottle with the corkscrew attached.
Barry took a deep breath, savouring the promise of that “later.” Gripping the bottle between his k
nees, he hauled on the corkscrew. Slowly, slowly the cork began to budge. Barry clenched his teeth and pulled harder. “Open Sesame,” he said as the cork left the neck with an audible pop. “There.” He handed her the bottle and the cork.
“Thank you, Sinbad.” She laughed and put the bottle on the counter. Handing him a glass of cold white wine, she picked up her own and a vase with the carnations. “Come on through and sit down.”
She put the flowers on the table as a centerpiece, and Barry pictured the two red roses and a curl of candle smoke that symbolized for him that perfect evening at the Crawfordsburn Inn.
Once they were seated at the table, she lifted her glass. “Cheers.”
“And here’s to your bright eyes, Sue.” And bright they were, shining emerald and looking into his. He sipped and the wine was crisp on his tongue. “Sue—”
“Barry—”
They both laughed. “Go ahead. You first,” he said, relieved not to be the one starting the conversation. He’d had no idea what he was going to say. He put one hand on the tabletop.
“I’m so glad you were able to come over tonight.” She covered his hand with hers.
He turned his hand and entwined his fingers with hers. “So am I.”
“You see,” she said, “there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Go right ahead.” He wondered what was coming.
“I think … I think you’re getting fond of me.”
“Very,” he said without a second’s hesitation. He squeezed her fingers.
The squeeze was returned. Sue tilted her head to one side, gazed straight into his eyes, looked down, then back up. “Me too and I … I’d like it to go further—”
“So,” Barry said, “would I.” And he knew he meant more than her promise of what might come “later.”
Sue took a deep breath. “There’s one thing, I don’t think it’s a big thing, but I need to know.”
Barry had a vision of his asking her if she was a Catholic. They’d surmounted that. “Go ahead. Fire away.”
“What do you think of the work I’m doing for civil rights?”
Barry frowned. Since she’d mentioned it on their first date more than five weeks back, the subject had come up only once, when she’d come to Number One a couple of weeks ago and he’d told her he’d rather not take sides. But they hadn’t discussed it in any great depth. They’d simply been two young people having fun and getting to know each other. He sighed. He’d hoped the whole thing was a hare she’d let sit, but if Sue felt it must be discussed? Perhaps he could head her off. “To be honest I haven’t given it a great deal of thought.”
He felt the grip of her fingers relax on his.
“You should, you know.”
Barry’s frown deepened. The evening had started out so gently, now why were they heading in this direction? “Tell me why?” he asked.
She sat back in her chair and as if suddenly weary put her hand behind the nape of her neck. “Because what’s going on in this little country of a million and a half souls is wrong. Plain wrong.”
He frowned. “But I don’t see what it has got to do with me.”
She put her hands on the tabletop and leant forward. “Do you know what Edmund Burke said?”
Barry shook his head. He sipped his wine, but it had lost its crispness.
“‘All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.’ Barry, I’m trying to do something. We all are in the CSJ. The discrimination against the Catholics is appalling. They don’t get hired, they can’t get subsidised housing because the Council flats are two bedrooms … and Catholics have big families. They can’t vote unless they’re property owners, and if they don’t have work how can they buy property? Even if a constituency ever does look like it’s going to have a majority Catholic electorate, the boundaries are changed so they’re a minority again. That’s called gerrymandering.”
“Sue,” he said, wanting to change the subject, but at the same time feeling a need to defend himself and not being quite sure why, “I do know about gerrymandering. And I’m not a bigot. I have heard what you’re telling me before. But it’s been forever thus, since partition in 1922. You know as well as I do that the religious divide goes back to when Protestant settlers were imported to the north in the early seventeenth century in the Plantation of Ulster. And it’s not a one-way street. The Orange Order was formed in 1795 to protect Protestants from Catholic violence. It takes two sides to make an argument.” And, he thought, an argument’s the last thing I want tonight. He looked down at his plate, then back up. “I think we should try to understand a little of the Protestant attitude, then perhaps you and I can leave it at that. I can see how deeply you feel about this, I do. But honestly, Sue, I believe there’s right and wrong in both parties. And I’d rather not take sides.” He smiled at her. Maybe they could drop it now?
“Go on,” she said, “I’m listening. What do you understand about how the Protestants feel?” There was an edge to her voice.
Barry shook his head. Should he agree with her, declare himself to be on her side, placate her, or should he stick to his middle-of-the-road guns? He said slowly, “I can’t pretend to speak for every Protestant, but I’ve met enough hard-liners from both camps. The Royal Victoria Hospital stands between the Catholic Falls and the Protestant Sandy Row districts. The medical staff and nurses didn’t, don’t, care what persuasion someone is. They’re simply sick people.”
“That’s commendable. It’s how it should be in every aspect of life, but it’s not. So please, tell me what Protestants feel. I am one. I should know but I’d be interested to hear you describe it.”
Barry sighed. “Okay. In Ulster, the Protestants are the majority. The hard-line Republicans, who are mostly Catholic, want nothing short of a reunion of the six counties here in the north with the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland.” He tried to keep his voice level, his tone patient. But he could feel the impatience creeping in. He had not come here tonight to get—or give—a history lesson. “The Republic, of course, is an officially Catholic country with the church having a place in its Constitution. If Ulster were to unite with the Republic, that would put the one million Protestants in the minority in a country of four million. You see the same in South Africa with the white South Africans. They’re massively outnumbered so they’ve tried to segregate the races.”
Sue shook her head. “Apartheid. Barry, it’s bloody nearly like that here. It’s wrong.”
Barry didn’t want the argument to continue, but damn it all, he did have an opinion and it wasn’t, he half-smiled at the unconscious pun, as black and white as Sue seemed to think. “I agree,” he said, “but I’m willing to try to understand both sides. The committed Loyalists want to stay part of Britain. So it’s not just Catholic-Protestant, it’s to do with class, national loyalties that have been manipulated for political ends, desire to hold on to power. I believe people are frightened, and frightened people do irrational things.”
“And we want to change that.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I wish you could see that.”
Barry took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll try, Sue. I promise.” He inclined his head to his prawn cocktail. “Now, I’m a bit peckish.” Liar, he thought, his appetite had fled. “Should we perhaps start having our dinner? You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble.”
He looked at Sue, who was looking down at her food with about as much enthusiasm as he felt. The vase of carnations, dark red and white, seemed to be taunting him. Dark red for deep love, and white for pure love and good luck. The bloody things might as well have been Loyalist orange and Republican green. And he didn’t understand how things seemed to have gone so horribly wrong.
32
The Road Through the Woods
“And that concludes the agenda for this Friday evening. Thank you all very much,” the marquis said to the other six members. “The next session of the executive committee of the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts Sports Club will be after the
summer on the second Friday in September, but for now I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn unless there is any other business.”
“Mister Chairman.” Fergus Finnegan was rising to his feet and addressing the marquis. The bandy-legged little man was captain of the rugby team and the marquis’s jockey. “There’s one wee matter, sir. It’s not official, like, but if I could have the floor for a wee minute, and I know Dermot Kennedy has something to say too.” He nodded to a man sitting across the long mahogany table.
“Carry on, Fergus,” the marquis said.
“And get a move on,” Bertie Bishop snapped, “I’ve not got all night.” He fiddled with the Masonic Order fob on his gold watch chain.
O’Reilly stifled his annoyance. He’d been delayed by a patient with a nosebleed and had arrived late. He’d still hoped to have a quiet word with Bertie after the meeting, ask about the man’s possible interest in the shirt factory, test Barry’s ideas about the cottage, but it wasn’t to be.
Fergus ignored Bertie’s remark. He was holding a brown-paper-wrapped parcel. “On behalf of all the rugby players, we’d like for to give this here wee present to Doctor O’Reilly and Miss O’Hallorhan to mark the occasion of their upcoming wedding.”
Father O’Toole, sporting an egg stain on his rusty black cassock, said with a grin, “Having met your Miss O’Hallorhan, Doctor O’Reilly, I think you are a lucky man, bye.” His Cork accent was as soft and musical as Kinky’s.
Fergus handed the gift to O’Reilly and before he could say thanks, Dermot Kennedy rose and spoke. O’Reilly moved to face the captain of the hurling team. Dermot had a turn in one eye, making it tricky to determine to whom he was speaking. “This here’s one from all the hurlers, sir, you know. It comes with our wishes for a long and happy life for both of yiz, so it does.” He too thrust a wrapped gift at O’Reilly.