An Irish Country Welcome Read online

  Barry and Jack exchanged a smile and Jack stooped to give the dog a quick pat. “You’re a grand old boy, so you are, Max. Don’t listen to Barry.” With that, Jack picked up a tray and went back to collect the rest of the breakfast things.

  By the time he had rejoined Barry, he had rolled up his sleeves and was busy washing and putting the clean plates on the draining board.

  Jack grabbed a tea towel and went to work. “You and Sue certainly sounded chuffed last night when you told us Sue was up the spout. Hey bye, I’m delighted for you both.”

  Barry put a saucer on the board. “We are too, and thanks, mate.”

  “It’s a big step, starting a family. You feeling a bit nervous about being a daddy?”

  “A bit. It’s going to be all very new.”

  “You’re right. No classes in daddyhood. You’ll have to make it up as you go along.”

  “We can always ask our mums.”

  “True.” Barry looked over at Jack and saw the fleeting look of sadness that passed over his face. Barry wondered if he was thinking of Helen’s mother, dead now these past ten years of kidney disease. “Good luck anyway, mate,” Jack said. “I wonder if we’ll ever have a family.”

  “Why?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m twenty-nine now. Helen’s twenty-five. She’s one year as a houseman then four more to train as a nephrologist. She’ll be thirty by then. Then like me, she’ll have to wait for a consultant post.” He picked up a plate, swiped it dry, and placed it on the counter. “She’ll not want to lose her place in the queue to some junior by taking time off to have a baby. She’s really worked her arse off to get where she is. I know Helen would be a terrific mother but all that’s going to have to wait. She could be thirty-five or older when she has her first pregnancy. We were taught that makes her an ‘elderly’ primigravida.”

  Barry screwed up his face. “I never really liked that term, but it’s true there’s more potential for complications after that.” Barry put the last teacup on the board and pulled the sink’s plug. “I’d rather not think about possible complications. I want Sue’s time to be as easy on her as possible, but I heard what you said, my friend. It is hard for women to juggle a career and have children.”

  Jack nodded. “There’s an old Jewish saying, ‘Thank God I was born a man.’” He dried the last cup. “I guess I’ve been thinking about this a lot these days.”

  “Thinking about what?” Barry dried his hands.

  Jack’s County Antrim accent thickened. “Complications. Career complications. It’s going to be tricky for us both to get consultant posts at the same hospital or even in the same city.”

  “I don’t see why. If you count the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, that’s five major hospitals in Belfast.”

  “I suppose, but I’ll probably not be offered a post for another six or seven years. Surgery’s a popular speciality. Lots of competition for those senior jobs. But what happens if one comes up, say, in Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry, while Helen’s still training at the Royal in Belfast?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Barry frowned. “You’re still thinking about overseas, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Barry. Mebbe.”

  “Some of our classmates who emigrated say that kind of thing’s easier in places like Canada.” He rolled his sleeves down and buttoned the cuffs. “But I’d hate to see you go. You know that. We’ve been friends since 1953.”

  Jack mock-punched Barry on the shoulder. “And we’ll still be friends in another sixteen years. And your son or daughter will almost be ready to start borrowing the family car by then…”

  Barry chuckled.

  “Anyway, I’m sure it will all work out for us.”

  “You’re right. One step at a time.” Barry tilted his head to one side. “If Helen did fall pregnant—no contraceptive is without its failure rate, after all—she’d stop work anyway. Might solve your problem. Huh?”

  “Ever heard of an American woman called Betty Friedan?”

  Barry shook his head.

  “Helen has. She says Friedan and now a lot more women who share her views are asking why should a woman have to give up her career to raise a family? I think it’s a valid question.”

  “You mean she’d go on working after the baby’s born?” Barry was puzzled. In rural Ulster, women had the babies and reared them while the husband provided for his family. Now, according to Jack, women wanted to change that. He frowned. He’d need to think about it, but already he could see a kernel of fairness in the idea. “I’ve not discussed it with Sue yet, but I’d assume she’d take her full maternity leave and then an unpaid leave of absence until the wee one, or ones, had started school.”

  Jack laughed. “Helen wouldn’t. She’d take time off after the baby was born, but she’s already told me that with two doctors working we can easily afford a daytime nanny.” He adopted an American nasal twang, “In the immortal words of one Bob Dylan…” Jack sang a few lines from “The Times They Are A’Changin’.”

  Barry shook his head. “Indeed, they are. If that’s what Helen wants? More power to her wheel. I hope you will have a family, though.” And, he thought, that you’ll not have to leave Ulster to find work together in a few years. “Just don’t do what the British upper classes do with their children—put them up in the attic with the nanny and then send them off to distant boarding schools when they’re eight.”

  Jack, bending his left elbow and draping his tea towel over his forearm, made a sweeping bow and said in his best upper-crust English accent, “The Doctors Mills will not just have a nanny. We’ll have a butler too. Would sir care for a cup of Earl Grey tea?”

  Barry laughed. “Stop acting the lig, Mills.”

  Jack returned to his normal County Antrim voice. “Don’t you worry. If we have kids, we won’t abandon them.”

  “I know you won’t, and I know you and Helen will sort things out. But I’ll say it again, I hope you’ll be in Ulster forever.”

  “And as your senior partner is fond of remarking, ‘I’ll drink to that,’ hey bye.”

  “To what?” Helen asked as she and Sue, dressed for the outdoors, came into the kitchen.

  “It’s just an expression,” Jack said. “Barry and I were discussing his imminent daddyhood. He’s like the fox who lost his tail and wants all other foxes to cut theirs off. Thinks we should start a family too, but I told him we’re in no rush.”

  “Heavens,” said Helen with a laugh. “We’re not even married yet.”

  “And he hopes we’ll stay in Ulster. I said I’d drink to that. Come on, Barry, let’s get our jackets and we’ll all go for that walk.”

  * * *

  Barry inhaled the tang of the sea, heard the lapping of waves on the rocks below the coastal path and the mewing of gulls dancing overhead. The waters of the lough were rippled by the breeze, and yachts, their sails taut white triangles if they were heading into the wind, scudded over the waves. Most of the boats sailing downwind ran under ballooning, multihued spinnakers. He’d not mind being afloat himself. He held Sue’s hand, which he squeezed. “It’ll be fun teaching our offspring to sail.”

  Sue sighed. “Oh, yes, won’t it?”

  Jack and Helen were walking ahead, Jack holding Max’s leash. They had to stop because the springer was exchanging sniffs with a British bulldog. Max and Winston were old friends who often met here.

  Barry and Sue joined the group and stood to the side of the path.

  “How are you, Billy? Haven’t seen you for a while,” Barry asked the middle-aged bus driver who Barry had seen last year suffering from psoriasis. The man politely lifted his duncher.

  “Them lotions the skin specialists at the Royal give me done me good so I’m rightly, Doctor, but poor oul’ Winston had a bad bout of the brownkitees and wasn’t able til get his walk for three weeks, but the vet fixed him up.”

  “Bulldogs are susceptible to bronchitis,” Barry said. “I’m glad he’s better.”

  “Me to
o. And yourself and yours?”

  “We’re all grand.”

  “Dead on.” Billy replaced his cap. “Come on, Winston. See you and Max again soon, sir.” He strode off, with Winston rolling along on his bandy legs.

  “You know, Barry, I’m a bit tired,” Sue said, “and that picnic table up ahead’s free. Could we sit down for a few minutes?”

  They had been walking toward Helen’s Bay for half an hour.

  Barry turned to Jack and Helen, who were now coming up behind them hand in hand. “We’re going to take a breather and sit at that table.”

  “Fair enough,” Jack said.

  Jack and Helen took the landward side, giving them a view over the lough.

  Barry and Sue sat opposite and Max, after several commands and much pushing on his backside, eventually deigned to sit.

  “You couldn’t beat that view with a big stick,” Jack said.

  Barry half turned as Jack waved an all-encompassing arm from the head of the lough to his left past Cave Hill and the hills of Antrim, blue with heat haze, with the granite grim Norman motte and bailey Carrickfergus Castle at the foot of the hills. To the east the view continued on past Whitehead at the lough’s mouth to the distant Scottish Mull of Galloway. “I’d not want to leave Ulster. I’d surely not and, Barry, never mind our work prospects, there’s one other hurdle out of the way. Helen’s dad has no objections to us getting married.”

  Barry turned to Helen. “He’s a big man, your father. I remember him saying, ‘Just because you and yours and me and mine worship the self-same God in different ways is no reason til hate each other. The Saviour preached, ‘Love thy neighbour,’ and he made it mean everyone, not just your own kind.’”

  “He is a big man,” said Helen. “And it must have been hard for him rearing me all by himself after my mother died. It’s a great relief he’s not going to cut us dead because we’re going to be a ‘mixed marriage.’ I love him, and I love Jack.”

  He said in a plummy English accent, “And I’m quite fond of you too, old gel.”

  All four laughed so loudly that Max barked, and Barry had to pat the dog to calm him down.

  “I just wish,” Jack said, “my father was as open-minded as Helen’s.”

  “Barry told me about your dad when he came home after the pair of you had dinner in that Chinese restaurant in Belfast. I don’t quite understand why you’ve decided to keep it quiet, Jack. No ring.”

  “Helen had six months to go before she sat her finals. I—we both thought it better to have her concentrate on her exams and see what our families thought after she’d passed.” He sighed. “I did raise the subject. Said I had a friend who wanted to marry a Catholic girl and he exploded. ‘Damned civil rights groups,’ he said.”

  “Like your Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, Sue,” Barry said, threading his fingers through hers.

  “Went on about Ulster being for Protestant Ulstermen.” Jack shook his head. “I wish he could have seen how both sides were getting on with each other last night.”

  “I’m afraid,” Sue said, “there are a lot on both sides who feel like your dad. The Orange and Green are a blot on this little bit of Ireland.”

  “So, how are you going to break the news to him about your engagement?” Barry asked.

  Jack sighed. “I’m going down to Cullybackey next Saturday for lunch. Tell him face-to-face. Hope he’ll accept our engagement now it’s a fait accompli. I know Mum will.”

  “I’ll come with you, Jack,” Helen said. “That might help.”

  Jack shook his head. “No, but thanks for the offer. I need to do this on my own. I’d rather you’d not be there if he blows up again, and I think he will.”

  Barry felt for his friend, and his eyes narrowed as two thoughts struck him. “Jack, would you like me to come with you?”

  Jack frowned, hesitated, then shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, bye.”

  “Sure you can. And it might help. I’m not a family member, so having me there might actually, out of good manners, make your dad moderate his response.”

  Jack looked down at the table, then over to Helen. “I don’t know, Barry. The old man—” His voice trailed away as he took Helen’s hand.

  “Tell you what, Jack. We’ll go together, and if you want to speak to him alone, I’ll make myself scarce. But at least you’ll have a friend there to back you up if it’s unpleasant.”

  “Yes, okay. I’d appreciate that, Barry. It might help.”

  “And I’ll drive. If things do turn nasty we don’t want an upset man behind the wheel.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but thanks, mate, that’d be grand.”

  “Never worry but, Jack, I wonder if maybe you should pick another day?”

  “Why? What’s wrong with the nineteenth of July?”

  “Jack. Jack.” Barry shook his head. “I don’t know how you ever show up on the right day to operate. Even at school you could never keep dates right. Next Saturday’ll be all Orange parades, anti-Catholic speeches, and drink taken. Next Saturday is the Twelfth of July.”

  4

  Harmful to the Brain

  O’Reilly had, as promised, collected Donal Donnelly from Dun Bwee at eight on Monday morning.

  Wearing his Sunday-best two-piece worsted black suit and clutching a bottle of Lucozade, Donal followed O’Reilly past the outpatient department and the under-the-wards cafeteria and up the stairs to the main corridor of Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital.

  “Boys-a-boys,” he said, stopping dead in his tracks, “but this is a quare nor busy place.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I don’t care much for the pong.” O’Reilly was quite at home there with the smells of floor polish, antiseptics, and a faint tang of vomit, the bustle of medical students, doctors, uniformed nurses, physios, almoners, and porters pushing trolleys.

  Donal clearly was not. “Reminds me too much of my time in here in 1965 with blood in my bonce. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. Too many sick people.” He sniffed the air the way O’Reilly had seen the man’s greyhound Bluebird do when in the vicinity of one of the rabbits that wandered into Dun Bwee’s garden. Donal turned and began walking back the way they’d come. “Mebbe I’ll just wait in the car and you can tell me about Dapper after you’ve seen him and Mister Greer.”

  O’Reilly knew that quite a few country folk, with their strange superstitions like “don’t get discharged on a Saturday for you’re sure to be readmitted,” didn’t care for hospitals. He caught up with Donal, put a hand under his elbow, and propelled him around. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken time off work and let me drive you up here so you can sit in the car? You want to see Dapper, don’t you?”

  “I do that. But, well, you told me last night when you phoned that you’d spoken to the ward nurse and he was okay.”

  “Yes, he is. But he’ll be better for seeing you. And he’s getting an important test this morning.”

  Donal nodded. Swallowed. “Right enough.”

  “Am I not with you?”

  “You are, sir.”

  “And don’t I know my way round here?”

  “I’m sure you do that.”

  “Come on then.”

  Donal took a deep breath and straightened his narrow shoulders. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  To keep the man’s spirits up and distract him from the busyness all around them, O’Reilly kept up a conversation until they passed wards 19 and 20, presided over by Sir Ian Fraser, one of the senior surgeons.

  “We’re out of the main hospital now,” O’Reilly said as they entered a narrower passageway. “The place we’re going to, Quinn House, was opened in 1953. It has seventy beds on two wards.”

  “And Dapper’ll be on the same one I was on.”

  “That’s right. It’s the brain surgery unit and it has its own X-ray department and a dedicated operating theatre.”

  “Boys-a-boys, isn’t modern medicine a wonderful thing?”

  O’Reilly s
miled. Now that they were out of the main hospital, Donal was looking a little more confident. “Much more so than when I started. Nobody then would have thought of putting up an octagonal unit with a corridor running through the place with four-bedded rooms on the outside of the corridor and single-bedded units on the inside. I hope Dapper has a single room.”

  “Me too.”

  They entered ward 21. O’Reilly knocked on the door of Sister’s office and went in.

  Donal snatched off his duncher and stood wide-eyed.

  “Morning, Sister,” O’Reilly said to the senior sister, neat in her starched white fall headdress and red dress under a white apron. “This is Donal Donnelly, a friend of Mister Frew’s.”

  Donal stood to attention.

  The woman nodded to both men. “Sister O’Reilly’s briefed me, and I’ve spoken to Mister Greer. He says it’s against the rules, but if your friend Mister Donnelly would like to have a short visit with Mister Frew”—she bent and with a perfectly straight face whispered in O’Reilly’s ear—“bugger the rules.”

  “And I imagine those were his exact words, Sister?”

  “They were.”

  Typical Charlie. Still the irreverent lad O’Reilly had met in 1931. He chuckled. “Grand.”

  “And Mister Greer’s waiting for you in the ward office. You know your way, and I’ll take Mister Donnelly to see his friend. He’s two rooms along from here on the inside.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Dead on,” Donal said. “Is he all right, Sister?”

  “He’s comfortable and he’s resting. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you.” She smiled. “But I’m sure Doctor O’Reilly will explain once he has seen Mister Greer.”

  “Thank God for that. Doctor O’Reilly’s very good at explaining, so he is, and we’ll need that, for Dapper and me’s dead ignorant about urology.”

  “Neurology, Donal.”

  “Aye. Right enough.”

  “I’ll not be long with Mister Greer, but don’t you be getting Dapper worked up.”

  “I’ll not.”

  O’Reilly headed for the clinical room, a place where students might be taught, doctors would go to consult, and tea, coffee, and biscuits were always available. He let himself in. “Morning, Charlie. How are you?”