An Irish Country Love Story (31 page)

She frowned as if unsure where this was leading. “Of course, Fingal.” she said. “I always enjoy my time with you.”

“And begod, I enjoy my time with my bride of not so very long ago, and I'd like to enjoy more of it. The pair of us will be sixty soon. ‘Time's wingèd chariot,' and all that. Since Barry and now Ronald Fitzpatrick are working with me and the prospects are good for Nonie getting back to work in a couple of months, I'm going to have more time off than I've ever had before and I want to make the most of it,” with you, he thought, but wanted her to draw that conclusion herself. People were always more likely to embrace a new idea if they thought it was their notion.

“You've earned it,” she said, and sipped her brandy.

“The younger doctors today aren't willing to work singlehanded anymore. They're getting together in things called group practices and they have other professionals attached.”

“Midwives, physios, occupational therapists, health visitors,” she said. “Some even have professional administrators to fill in the forms. You'd like that.”

“I would indeed, and thanks for doing that at Willie John's.”

“Doing a bit of nursing tonight was fun.”

“It always was with you, Kitty. Remember the day I met you at Sir Patrick Dun's?” He remembered a pair of amazing amber-flecked grey eyes smiling at him.

She laughed. “The day I'd been told to wash the old men's false teeth and I'd collected them all up in one basin. You helped me restore each set to its rightful owner.”

“Och,” said O'Reilly, “we all did foolish things, but you did turn out a first-class nurse, Sister O'Reilly, and a trained midwife to boot.” Now, he thought, give your little speech. “Kitty,” he said, “bear with me. I have a lot more free time, but you seem to be working harder than ever and coming home frazzled too many days.”

“Are you suggesting I should go part time? Quit? I'll not quit.”

“I'd not expect you to. What would you do all day? We've no kids or grandkids and you're not cut out to sit at home being the country doctor's wife, helping out with afternoon teas and charities. I know nursing's an important part of your life, part of who Kitty O'Reilly is, but what would you think of changing jobs?”

She frowned. “Go on.”

“What if I was able to get a group practice started in the village? We already have three doctors taking call, and probably a fourth coming back. Nonie deserves her chance. Ballybucklebo has a health visitor who visits patients in their homes to promote healthy living, good nutrition, particularly among the children. And there's Miss Hegarty, the midwife, and Colleen Brennan, the district nurse. I know you're a highly trained neurosurgical nursing sister, but we'd need a nurse or two in the facility, perhaps a second health visitor, and you have the necessary nursing and midwifery experience to do that job.” He remembered the night she'd celebrated the arrival of the weekend: “No more committee meetings, no more commuting, no more Belfast rush hours…”

“And don't forget the professional administrators to do all the paperwork.” She winked at him over the top of her glass.

He laughed. “We'd have to get a budget from the Ministry of Health to build it, take the money Lars says we'd get from the government if Number One is expropriated, build a new house. I could almost argue a case for not living over my work anymore, you having more time off.”

She rose and kissed him. “You are a sweet old bear worrying about me.” She kissed him more strongly and he felt the tip of her tongue. “I'm no angel, but neither am I a fool to rush in to where the heavenly host fear to tread. So I'll not give you an answer tonight. Let me think on it.”

“All right,” he said, seeing this very much as a step in the right direction.

“And I'll tell you one thing, if we do open such a practice…”

He read her mind. “Of course you can choose the curtains, but,” he pulled her onto his lap, “there will be roses in the waiting room.”

And Fingal O'Reilly had to wait for a long time until she'd stopped laughing and he could kiss his wife.

 

26

Fair Stood the Wind for France

The four turboprop engines of the Vickers Viscount seemed to Barry to be remarkably quiet. His initial anxiety—excitement mixed with what he guessed was a normal human response to the prospect of soaring twenty thousand feet in the air—had subsided and he settled back in his port-side window seat to enjoy the experience. He stared down in fascination as the sleek aircraft climbed out of Belfast's Aldergrove Airport. He could see where he'd parked Brunhilde in the airport car park. The pilot set a southerly course to pass over the city. Below him were rows of terrace houses, church spires, and the Lagan winding its way with an occasional flash of reflected sunshine past the gantries of the shipyards and on to the headwaters of Belfast Lough.

This, he thought, must be how a soaring bird of prey or a mountaineer on the summit of some great peak sees the world. “Amazing.” He was barely aware that he had spoken aloud.

“First time up?” the passenger sitting beside him said.

Barry nodded to a middle-aged man in a three-piece grey suit. “Yes.”

“Hardly anyone flew before the war,” the man said. “Just the real highheejins. Too expensive. It's really only in the last ten years or so that more and more people are using air travel. I go to London twice a month just for the day now on business. Not like the old days on the smelly old Belfast to Liverpool ferry, half the passengers seasick on a bad night, half of them stocious on a good one, and a wretched six-hour train journey after that. No fun.”

“I've never been,” Barry said. “To tell you the truth even Belfast's too big for me. I've never really wanted to see London, but I'm off to France now.”

“Good for you,” the man said. “I hope you enjoy it.” He leant forward and peered past Barry. “We're going over Strangford Lough. Have a look and I'll shut up, let you enjoy the view.” He sat back and opened this morning's
Daily Mail
.

Barry peered out at glistening mudflats, blue waters with pale stitchings of whitecaps, and many islands. The locals said there was one for every day of the year. One looked like a wishbone from this height, and he wondered if it was the Long Island that Fingal had been on with Doctor Jack Sinton eleven days ago. A vee of geese was passing under the plane's wing. They seemed to be flying backward. It felt strange to be above the birds. Fingal had shot a goose somewhere down there that weekend. Stuffed and roasted by Kinky, it had been delicious.

And here he was hurtling along at several hundred miles an hour, twenty thousand feet above Strangford. He smiled. As Donal Donnelly might have said, “Modern science is a wonderful thing.”

On over the Ards Peninsula with its little fields. Barry took a deep breath. That was the Ireland he loved. He'd never been consumed with wanderlust as a boy. When Dad had come home to Bangor after the war, he'd announced more than once that he'd seen enough of the world in the navy to last a lifetime and Ulster was good enough for him. Family holidays had been taken in Newcastle where Dad had taught Barry to fish on the Shimna River or in Ramelton in County Donegal so they could fish the quiet waters of the River Lennon. Medical school had been all-consuming once the class had left the basic sciences behind and begun their clinical work. What few holidays he got he took in the summer to go sailing. Some of the lads had been given trips to Spain by their parents between passing the final exams in June and starting their houseman's year. Dad and Mum had offered him the chance to go, but Barry had been happy to secure a locum houseman job in the private Musgrave and Clarke Clinic for the month. It had been that money that had bought his Volkswagen.

He'd had plans to visit Patricia Spence in Cambridge in '65 but she'd put the lid on that all right when she'd left him for another man. Water under the bridge. He watched the vista unfold ahead and hugged the thought that in next to no time he'd be landing at London's Heathrow to change to an Air France flight direct to Marseilles—and Sue.

*   *   *

Barry looked through the plate-glass window of Arrivées at Marseille-Provence Airport. A plane was taxiing along the main runway, built on reclaimed land out into the waters of the Étang de Berre, an inland sea twenty-five kilometres northwest of Marseille. He joined a queue in front of a uniformed official who, in a very short time, though it seemed like forever to Barry, had dealt with the passengers in front, briefly inspected Barry's passport, and waved him through onto a crowded concourse smelling of Gitanes and Gauloises cigarettes.

“Barry. Barry.” Sue shouted and waved.

Like in a trick shot in a film, all the other people thronging the hall became blurred, out of focus, and all he could see was Sue waving, her copper hair tossing as she jumped on the spot. Barry, clutching his holdall, started to run and in moments had crushed her in a massive hug and planted a firm kiss on her soft lips. “Sue. Darling.” He was trembling.

“I thought your flight would never arrive,” she said.

“Heathrow was jammed and it took a while for my flight to get cleared for takeoff.” He laughed. “This journey is my first time on planes so it was all a bit scary at first. But I'd have walked and swum the whole way to get here to be with you.” He kissed her again. “Now, where's the bus? I can't wait to get you alone.”

“We've waited for six weeks, another twenty minutes won't kill you.” She laughed, and beckoned to a dark-haired young woman standing at the far side of the concourse. “The bus, once you've caught it, takes at least an hour. My friend Marie-Claude is going to give us a lift in her car. Much quicker.”

The young woman, who had the deepest brown eyes Barry had ever seen and an enormous smile, said in barely accented English, “Welcome to Marseille, Doctor.”

Barry mumbled,
“Enchanté,”
struggled to try to remember his schoolboy French, then took her hand and raised it to within an inch of his lips.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Doctor.”

“It's Barry. And it's very decent of you giving us a lift,
Ma'm'selle.
”

“It is my pleasure, and you must call me Marie-Claude. Sue has told me a great deal about you.”

“All of it good,” Sue said with a wink. “Marie-Claude teaches with me and has a little Citroën Deux Chevaux. It's the most popular car in France for underpaid folks like schoolteachers. She'll run us to our
pension
.” She grabbed Barry's hand and started pulling him toward the exit.

They left the terminal building and walked under a Mediterranean sky of blue where the sun, while not scorching, certainly took the chill off the air.

“Here's your magic carpet,” said Marie-Claude, opening the rear door. “Hop in, Sue, Barry. I'll play chauffeur so you can sit together.”

Barry climbed aboard and sat on a simple wooden slatted bench. The 2CV was not Citroën's luxury model. He clutched Sue's hand and felt the length of her thigh pressed against his. Control yourself, boy, but his thoughts went to their first sweet lovemaking in her flat in Holywood the day after their engagement last year.

“Corner of Rue Beauvau and Rue Saint-Saëns,” Sue said. “We're practically in the Vieux Port and not far from the Canebière, the main street.”

“And,” Marie-Claude said, pulling out of the parking lot, “it's almost a straight run down the A 55. I'll have you there in twenty minutes.”

Barry smiled at Sue and was rewarded with a beaming green-eyed one in return. Twenty, twenty-five minutes and he'd have her to himself. It would be no imposition to be polite to this French girl on the journey. Barry turned back and said, “Thank you, Marie-Claude.”

“It is always a pleasure to do a favour for your fiancée, Barry. Sue has become a great asset to our staff. We shall miss her when she leaves next month.”

And I'll be very happy to have her back, Barry thought. The car was passing through a built-up area. “Big place, Marseille.”

Sue laughed. “It's bigger than Ballybucklebo, that's for sure. Marseille is a wonderful place and I am going to show you all the sights.” She increased the pressure on his thigh. “All of them.”

Barry swallowed and tried to concentrate on what Marie-Claude was saying.

“Sue's correct about Marseille. It is a wonderful place. I have lived here all my life,” said Marie-Claude. “Look out there to your right. We are passing the modern port, which is not very exciting, but out in the bay are the four islands of the Frioul archipelago, and the Chateau d'If is on one of them. And that's the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde on the top of that hill directly ahead.”

Barry peered through the windscreen at a massive white building, its square campanile revealing a belfry with a statue of the Madonna and Child on top, and a lower tower surmounted by a dome.

“The first church on that site was built in 1214,” Sue said.

“You couldn't ask for a better guide than Sue,” said Marie-Claude. She drove the car through 360 degrees around a small lake. “Vieux Port to your left…”

Barry saw a narrow harbour with fleets of private pleasure vessels tied up at fingers. Four-storey terrace houses, all with wrought-iron balcony railings and opened louvered shutters, stood at the harbour's head.

“We're on the Quai de Rive Neuve now,” Sue said. “We'll be at the
pension
in a couple of minutes.”

Barry was still staring out at the harbour and inhaling sea and fish smells. He'd read about a daily fish market on the Quai des Belges at the head of the harbour. The car turned right, then after three more quick turns pulled up at the kerb.

“Here we are,” Marie-Claude said.