An Irish Country Love Story Read online

  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.

  Barry let himself out, walked around the small car to open Sue’s door, and helped her out. “Thanks for the lift, Marie-Claude,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” Marie-Claude said. “I’ll be off. See you next week, Sue, but if you need anything between now and then just let me know.”

  “We will,” Sue said. “Ciao.”

  Barry watched the little 2CV drive away, trailing a small plume of blue exhaust fumes. “Decent lass, your friend,” he said.

  “She is,” said Sue, “and knew to get off-side at once,” she winked, “because she understands that…” It was a spot-on imitation of Marlene Dietrich: “Ve vant to be halone.”

  He found her wink bordering on the lascivious and laughed at her accent.

  “I’ve already registered us and even if it is only four o’clock I really would like to go up to our room and lie down.”

  His pulse started to race as if he’d run here from the airport. “I think,” he said, and swallowed, “that would be a very good idea.”

  * * *

  Barry, spent, drowsy, and deeply in love, sat in a chintz-covered armchair in their second-storey room. The bed was tossed and untidily covered by a duvet. When he looked outside, beyond the roofs of houses, the Quai de Rive Neuve, and the mouth of the Vieux Port, he saw the now-darker waters of the Golfe du Lion waiting for the sun to slip down and bring dusk’s soft blanket to Provence’s Bouches du Rhône and the marshy Camargue to the west.

  Sue sat in front of a dressing table mirror, rhythmically brushing her mane. Now she wore an open-neck white silk blouse and bottle-green mini when not an hour ago she’d been wrapped in nothing but Barry’s embrace. “You look lovely,” he said, consumed by her beauty. Seeing her, still tasting her.

  “Thank you,” she said, “and thank you for loving me, Barry. Please don’t ever stop.”

  He rose and dropped a kiss on her crown. “Never,” he said. “How could I? I promise.”

  “So do I—promise to love you always,” she said. “It is so good to have you here. And it’ll not be long now until we’re wed. Mum’s been going round like a bee on a hot brick making arrangements for next month.” She stood, faced him, kissed him chastely, and said, “I must say after all that—uh—exercise, I’ve suddenly got an enormous appetite. I’m starving.”

  “Me too.” He smiled. “You know the town. Where to?”

  “The whole of the Vieux Port is awash with great little fish restaurants. There’s one called the Chope D’Or…”

  “The golden chop? Or perhaps the golden shop?”

  She chuckled. “No, silly. The Golden Tankard. It’s just on the far side of the Vieux Port. Six-minute walk. They do super moules et frites.”

  “That I can translate. Mussels and chips. Sounds good, but I’d like to try some bouillabaisse.”

  “So you shall,” she said.

  The light in the room dimmed and Barry turned to watch the last of the sun sink beneath the horizon, and all over the city as far as he could see, streetlights and apartment lights, shop windows and cafés came to life. All he could hear was the snarling of traffic, the honking of horns, and the demented buzzing of a multitude of mopeds. The nee-naw, nee-naw of a police car in the distance was not a sound to be heard in Ulster. It was all very foreign to a young man who had never been out of Ireland in his life.

  She handed him his sports jacket and picked up a heavy cardigan. “It can get a bit nippy once the sun has gone down.”

  He slipped on the jacket. “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  He took her hand and they set off.

  Barry could not remember ever having been happier. He skipped as they crossed Rue Pytheas and swung her hand as a sixteen-year-old might swing the arm of his first love. Around them, the crowds swirled.

  Sue pointed to a large building on their left between the wide Quai du Port where they strolled and the water. “That’s the city hall, built in the seventeenth century, and that great wide street to your right heading uphill is the famous Canebière. We’re on the Quai des Belges. Not far now.”

  “You seem to know your way round pretty well,” Barry said. “You did say in your letters you’d done lots of sightseeing.”

  “And reading too,” she said. “Did you know there’s evidence that this part of France was inhabited by Paleolithic man? Some cave paintings east of here are said to have been done between twenty-seven and nineteen thousand years BC.”

  Barry whistled.

  “Ancient Greeks arrived about 600 BC from what today we call Turkey and named the place Massalia. It’s been an important seaport ever since.”

  “And now we’re on Rue de la Republique,” Barry said, looking up to the street sign. “Even with my grammar school French I can translate that.”

  “This is an important street. Five hundred volunteers left from here to march to Paris in 1792 to support the Revolution. And guess what marching song they were singing?”

  “‘La Marseillaise’?” Barry laughed. “Trust the French to compose an anthem that’s a damn sight more cheerful than ‘God Save the Queen.’”

  Sue smiled. “Okay, I’m officially off duty as a travel guide. Here we are, 32 Quai du Port. La Chope D’Or.”

  They stopped outside a low railing. Tables were arranged on a patio in the open air, but only two were occupied by patrons, well bundled up in heavy overcoats. One couple were accompanied by a large shaggy dog that sat on one of the wicker chairs. The sign above the restaurant’s picture window, white letters on a bright blue background, read Brasserie LA CHOPE D’OR Crêperie.

  Sue led the way inside. The place was packed and the sounds of conversation and laughter rose and fell, punctuated by the boing of a spring closing a door that, judging by the coming and going of waiters with loaded trays, led to the kitchen. Barry breathed in the aromas of garlic, onions, thyme, fresh fish, and Turkish tobacco. He was definitely in France.

  A waiter greeted Sue like a long-lost friend, showed them to a table for two in the window, pulled out a chair so Sue could be seated, and with a flourish spread a spotless white napkin on her lap. “Les menus.” He set two down. “Et quelque-chose à boire?”

  “Barry?” Sue asked.

  I’d love a Guinness, he thought, but said, “When in Rome. What are you having?”

  Sue ordered a carafe of the house white and the waiter left.

  Barry turned to stare out over the harbour and south to where Notre Dame de la Garde,
lit by floodlights from below, stood on its hill surveying the scene. He turned back to Sue. “It’s lovely,” he said, “and you are lovely. Very lovely, darling.”

  She inclined her head and smiled. “Thank you, Barry.”

  He looked into her eyes and took her hand, and for the second time that day, the people all around them faded.

  The waiter reappeared, coughed discreetly. He poured for each of them from a carafe. Sue sipped. “Très bien.”

  Barry presumed that the rapid-fire conversation between the man and Sue was to establish that they needed more time to study the menu. He left.

  “You know I’m not very good at languages, but I think I detect quite a nasal quality to the waiter’s speech?”

  “Pierre’s a local,” Sue said. “The French spoken here is much harsher than that in Paris.”

  “I thought there was something different. Our French teacher at school, Mister Marks, used to say, ‘Laverty, vous parlez français comme une vache espagnole.’ You speak French like a Spanish cow.”

  Sue laughed and squeezed his hand and said in a low voice, “But you make love like an Italian called Casanova.

  Barry glowed. He raised his glass, sipped the cool, crisp wine, and said, “I love you, Sue Nolan.”

  She said, “And I love you, Barry.” She lifted her menu. “And I think, prosaic as it sounds, we really should think about ordering.”

  Barry smiled. “Let’s,” he said.

  Sue said, “I’m going to have some pâté to start with, then the mussels.”

  Barry said, “Bouillabaisse for me. The local fishermen invented it here.”

  “No starter?” Sue said.

  He shook his head.

  She leant across the table and whispered, “I’m taking you sightseeing tomorrow, but with what I have in mind for later this evening I really would suggest half a dozen raw oysters.”

  Barry started back in his chair. “What?”

  “You heard me,” she said, and her smile broadened, her right eyebrow lifted, and she half turned her head, never letting her gaze leave his eyes.