An Irish Country Christmas Part 11

"Indeed," said Kitty, "I'll be happy to drink to your health, Fingal, as long as you promise me you'll look after it."

Barry hid his smile. Poor old O'Reilly. Beset not only by Kinky but by Kitty O'Hallorhan as well. If concern was a medicine, he thought, O'Reilly would arise like Lazarus in no time flat.

"Slainte mHath," Barry said. He sipped the peaty spirits, the uisce beatha, the water of life, and relished its warmth. He now preferred it to the sherry he had favoured when he first came to Ballybucklebo.

Barry sensed movement behind him, and turned to see Kinky in the doorway. Her chignon was freshly coiffed, and she wore a hint of lipstick and rouge. Her calico ap.r.o.n was obviously fresh from the laundry, and she wore her best low-heeled brogues. "Miss O'Hallorhan," she said, "nice to see you."

"h.e.l.lo, Kinky. How are you?"

"Grand, so." Kinky smiled. "Now I want you all to enjoy your drinks but . . ." Barry heard the edge in her voice. "Doctor O'Reilly asked you to be ready to sit down and eat at six-thirty, Miss O'Hallorhan. If you need a little time to finish your drinks"-she looked straight at O'Reilly-"there's honeydew melon b.a.l.l.s ready in the dining room. They'll not spoil for waiting a few more minutes, but the main course will be ready at six forty-five. I'd not want for it to be overcooked."

"Fair enough, Kinky," O'Reilly said. "We'll be on time."

"I'll have the pork fillet ready in fifteen minutes, so," Kinky said. Then, glancing at the clock on the mantel, she said, "No, I tell a lie. Fourteen."

The Stars in Their Courses.

Dinner was over. O'Reilly pushed his chair back, dumped his linen napkin on the dining room table, and stifled a satisfied belch. Kinky, as usual when a guest was coming, had done him proud. Mind you, he thought, it wasn't as if she'd skimped in all the years he'd dined alone.

He knew he'd been content with his solitary life. The customers gave him more than enough contact with the human race, but he had to admit it had been pleasantly companionable since July to have Barry here, even if the pair of them were a bit like the two bachelors, Ratty and Mole, in Kenneth Grahame's cla.s.sic The Wind in the Willows.

O'Reilly looked at Kitty and he smiled to himself. Tonight he'd thoroughly enjoyed having a woman at his table. Kitty added a sparkle to the evening.

And he'd enjoyed the meal. Melon b.a.l.l.s sprinkled with ginger to start, stuffed roast pork fillet, roast potatoes, cauliflower in a cheese sauce, baby carrots, and for dessert Kinky's lemon meringue pie.

The whole had been finished off with coffee, and for O'Reilly another Jameson, and for Kitty a small c.o.c.kburn's port. Barry, who would shortly be popping out to see Sonny and Maggie, had elected to make this drink his last. Good lad, O'Reilly thought.

Barry and Kitty were deep in conversation. O'Reilly was happy simply to listen to what Barry was saying and keep his thoughts on the subject to himself.

"Actually, the three stars in the Summer Triangle are Vega, Altair, and Deneb." O'Reilly knew Barry had learned a fair bit of astronomy from his dad, who had been the navigating officer on the old Warspite.

O'Reilly hadn't known that Kitty would be keen to know the names of the stars and constellations, but then she always had been interested in the world beyond the confines of her chosen profession. He watched her face, animated one minute, serious the next, frowning when Barry was unclear.

"So Altair's the brightest star in Orion's belt?"

"No. It's the brightest star in a line of three stars in the constellation of the Eagle, which are often mistaken for Orion's belt. Do you remember the names of the belt stars?"

"Alnilam, Alnitak . . . I can't remember the third."

"Sure you can. Give yourself a minute."

She smiled.

It was a handsome smile on a handsome face framed by her well-cut silver hair. Her eyebrows were firm and arched above her deep-set, amber-flecked grey eyes. O'Reilly had seen many women's eyes in his years of practice but could not recall a pair as striking as Kitty's. They sometimes seemed more feline than human as, as he well remembered Kitty herself could be. He sighed. They'd both been so young then. The thirties were not a time when unmarried men and women fell into bed together, but he could remember summer nights when he was a student, still an overgrown boy, taking her to his digs, kissing her, holding her, caressing her, and how intensely she had responded. Perhaps, he thought wistfully, if they had made love even once, his life might have taken an entirely different path.

O'Reilly grunted to himself. Water under the bridge.

She interrupted his reverie by saying excitedly, "I've got it. Mintaka. Mintaka." Her laughter brought him back to the conversation.

"Well done, Kitty," he said.

"Such lovely, musical names."

"They're Arabic. Mintaka means 'belt,' and Alnilam means 'string of pearls,' " Barry said.

"Really?" Her smile broadened. "Glen Miller could have called his dance tune 'Alnilam.' " She chuckled deep in her throat before asking Barry the names of the stars in Orion's body.

"Rigel, Betelgeuse, Meissa . . .," he began.

O'Reilly let his mind wander. She has young Barry eating out of the palm of her hand, he thought, and he was surprised to find a stirring within him, he who had refused to become involved with any woman since Deidre had been killed. Not that he'd been entirely celibate-he left that up to the Catholic priests. He'd just had neither the time nor the desire to fall in love again. And, he smiled, not much opportunity either. As every woman in the village was one of his patients, the chances of his meeting anyone during his working days were pretty remote.

His occasional overnight trips to Belfast, or to Dublin to watch Ireland play rugby football, were times when in naval gunnery parlance he might be able to find a "target of opportunity" in the hotel lounge or in the bar after the game for a mutually satisfying night. But he rarely saw the same woman more than two or three times. He'd never had any interest in anything permanent.

So why, he wondered, had he been seeing Kitty on a more or less weekly basis since he'd taken her to Sonny and Maggie's wedding back in August? Well, she was an old friend and she seemed to enjoy his company and reminiscing about the old days as much as he did. That was it. Nothing more.

He looked at her more closely. She was more than a handsome woman. In his opinion she was strikingly beautiful. It didn't matter that her nose was too large, her lips perhaps overly full. She had taken off her jacket when they sat down to dine, and he could see the top of her cleavage in the open neck of her cerise blouse, the silky material of which accentuated the curve of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

He smiled to himself. In the country she'd be referred to as a "powerful woman." "Powerful altogether," he said, realizing too late that he had spoken aloud.

"I beg your pardon, Fingal," Kitty said with a chuckle. "They taught us in nursing school that talking to yourself can be a sign of insanity."

"Divil the bit," said O'Reilly. "I was just thinking aloud." He was looking straight at her, was surprised to realize he was seeing her in a different light. It was the kind of change he might notice on the seash.o.r.e when he and Arthur were pursuing ducks and the morning sun suddenly transformed ill-defined shapes into cleanly etched rocks and clumps of seaweed. It was almost as if he'd not been paying attention on the other evenings he'd spent with Kitty.

Perhaps, he thought, it was the musky perfume she was wearing, perhaps all the stars she and Barry had been discussing had lined up in a row, but whatever the reason, he was going to enjoy being alone with her later tonight.

He turned to Barry. "Now young fellow, far be it from me to chase you but . . ."

Barry rose. "I know. I promised to go see Sonny and Maggie about Eileen Lindsay's Sammy."

"Good man ma da," O'Reilly said. "And Barry, while you're at it, would you do me a wee favour?"

"Certainly."

"Arthur hasn't had a walk today." O'Reilly saw Barry glance to heaven. He couldn't blame the lad. The big Labrador still seemed obsessed with a desire to mate with Barry's trouser leg at the slightest provocation. "He'd really appreciate it, and I can't have him getting fat. I'm going to take him to Strangford for a day at the ducks soon."

To O'Reilly's surprise, Barry said. "All right, Fingal, just this once. When I came home earlier tonight, I seemed to be able to persuade him to do as he was bid." He turned to Kitty. "I'll say good-night, Kitty. You may be gone by the time I get back."

"Good-night, Barry. I hope to see you soon."

You will, O'Reilly thought. This isn't the last dinner you'll be eating in this house.

"I want to hear more about the constellations."

"My pleasure," Barry said. "Perhaps I'll see you later, Fingal?" It was his last remark as he closed the dining room door behind him.

"Right," said O'Reilly, rising and standing behind Kitty's chair, ready to pull it back when she rose. "Let's take our coffee and drinks back upstairs. It's warmer up there. Would you like a little more port?"

"No thanks, Fingal." She stood. "Let's go on up."

O'Reilly refreshed his whiskey and settled into his chair. He watched Kitty standing at the fireplace. She had her back turned to him and was looking at a row of Christmas cards on the mantel. "Pretty early for cards," she said.

"For local ones, they usually start showing up in Christmas week, but those ones are all from overseas. Cla.s.smates who emigrated. Shipmates from the navy. There's one there from Barry's folks in Australia. That one"-he indicated a hand-drawn card with a caricature of a doctor on the front-"is from an old patient of mine. Read it."

She picked up the card, half turned, and read, Old doctors never die. They just lose their patients. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Seamus, Maureen, and Barry Fingal Galvin. We're all doing very well here, and Barry Fingal is growing like a weed . . . "There's more but it'll be personal." She put the card back on the mantel and turned to face him.

"They're in California. They went in August," he said. "Seamus Galvin was the greatest skiver unhung. His wife, Maureen, sent the card."

"Still, it's nice they'd remember you."

O'Reilly laughed. "Never mind them not forgetting me. I'll not forget Seamus Galvin in a hurry. But he's in California and we're here." He looked at her face again. G.o.d, she was a handsome woman. "There are more interesting things to talk about," he said. "What have you been up to since I saw you last?"

"Since when? Ten days ago? Not a whole h.e.l.l of a lot."

"Come and sit down and tell me about it anyway." He watched her cross the floor as he imagined a Celtic princess might have glided. Why the woman had never married was beyond him. He waited until she was comfortably settled, legs crossed, thigh over thigh, shapely calves leaning to one side.

"So what have you been up to?" O'Reilly asked.

"Do you really want to hear about the doings of a ward sister on duty, keeping my unit running smoothly?"

He shook his head. "I didn't mean that. What did you get up to last week when you were off duty?" And have you been seeing any other men? he thought, although he realized it was none of his business.

She chuckled. "Enjoying a life of wild hedonism, if you consider it's living dangerously doing the housework in my flat, cooking for myself, shopping, getting my hair done, a trip to the dentist, my Monday night painting cla.s.s, and an evening at the cinema with my friend Mairead to see My Fair Lady. I don't think Audrey Hepburn did as good a job as Julie Andrews in the stage production."

"I haven't seen either," he said, "but I saw Pygmalion. I took . . ." He could visualize Dublin's Abbey Theatre on Lower Abbey Street and a young Fingal O'Reilly escorting a young Kitty O'Hallorhan. "I took you to see it." There was the suspicion of a catch in his voice. "We were awfully young then."

When she replied he heard wistfulness in her voice. Then she looked into O'Reilly's eyes. "I remember you when you were young, Fingal. I remember a lot about you." He felt her hand brush against the back of his.

O'Reilly coughed and not because his throat tickled. It gave him a split second to collect his thoughts. If his pipe had been handy to fiddle with, he could easily have stretched the second to a minute. He'd been looking forward to time alone with Kitty, but now that it had arrived he realized he wasn't entirely comfortable with the way the conversation was going. And if Kinky walked in just then and saw them practically holding hands, he knew he'd be embarra.s.sed.

"There's another reason I need to get back in harness," he said, hoping to deflect her. "There's a niggling question about how a new doctor in the area, a Doctor Fitzpatrick, might compete with us for patients. They'll be less likely to shift allegiance if their regular doctor, me, is there. I owe that to Barry. I should meet Fitzpatrick. I'll maybe get Kinky to arrange for him to come round here tomorrow."

"Fitzpatrick?" She frowned. "Not the great Ronald Hercules? He was a student with you, wasn't he?" she said. She did not remove her hand.

"None other than." It was pleasant, the warmth of her. He turned his wrist and enveloped her delicate fingers in his paw.

"He was the ugliest young man I have ever seen," she said.

O'Reilly guffawed, then said, "I'll bet he hasn't improved with age." He tightened his fingers around Kitty's, careful not to exert the kind of pressure he usually put into a handshake.

"But you have, Fingal," she said. Her voice was lower, huskier. He felt her hand squeeze his. "You're . . ." She hesitated. "You're distinguished."

He wanted to laugh, make some disparaging comment, but he looked into her eyes and was silenced. He saw a softness there. Somehow they were the same soft young eyes that had first attracted him in the springtime of his years. And Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, he who never let anyone, never mind his patients, get the upper hand, that same Doctor F. F. O'Reilly found himself completely at a loss for words.

Kitty solved his problem by leaning across the gap between them and softly brushing her lips on his.

He opened his mouth and savoured the port-wine taste of her. He wasn't such a confirmed old widower that he had forgotten the pleasures of the flesh, but inside something else was stirring, something that had lain dormant for a very long time.

He moved his head back. He was a little short of breath and very confused. He looked into her eyes again. "Kitty," he finally managed to say.

She gave him no chance to say more. She still held his hand. "Fingal, I was in love with you thirty-odd years ago. I've never quite forgotten you."

He stared down at the carpet.

"I could care for you again, if you'd let me." Her voice was level but still low and husky.

He didn't know what to say, but he saw the compa.s.sion, the understanding, in her expression. "I . . . Kitty . . . that is . . . well . . ."

She chuckled. "I've floored you, haven't I, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly?"

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"It's a big chunk for you to swallow all at once. I understand. It might take you a while to get used to the idea."

"It will." The words slipped out.

"So," she let his hand go, "pour me another port. We'll say no more tonight, but I've told you how I feel, Fingal, and I can wait for you to decide how you feel."

He rose and walked to the sideboard to pour her drink and refresh his own. Ordinarily he despised people who needed a drink in times of stress, but at the moment he needed one. If he followed where his heart seemed to be leading, it would be disloyal to Deidre's memory. And yet . . .

He carried Kitty's drink back to her. The smile lines at the corners of her eyes and at her upturned lips lit up her face. What had he called her before? A powerful woman. She was that, all right, and a beautiful one too. He handed her the gla.s.s of port.

She took it, and once more looking him directly in the eye, she said, "I will wait, Fingal, but I'll not wait forever."

You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It.

"Get in, Lummox." Barry held the back door of Brunhilde open and waited for Arthur Guinness to jump in. The little car lurched under the weight of the big dog. Barry was bundled up in his navy blue duffle coat and his old, six-foot-long, black, red, white, and yellow, vertically striped Belfast Medical Students a.s.sociation scarf, a reminder of his recent undergraduate days.

As he went to get into the driver's seat, the mud of the back lane crunched under his Wellington boots. He noticed the puddles were filmed with an icy rime that shone with a silver sparkle in the light of the half-moon that was setting in a cloudless sky.

His breath hung in a small cloud. The gale had died with the coming of the night. It was cold, but it was crisp-Christma.s.sy, not the bone-chilling rawness of earlier in the day when it had been so damp.

He put the car in gear.

Arthur stood and draped his front paws around Barry's neck. Barry braked before the lane opened onto the main Bangor-Belfast Road. Let's see, he thought, if Arthur remembers doing as he was told earlier today. Barry turned in his seat and lifted each paw in turn. "Let's you and me get one thing straight, dog . . ." He shoved Arthur away. "You, dog. Me, boss. Now . . . lie down, sir." He was gratified to hear Arthur sigh as only a Labrador can, and as far as Barry could tell in the dim light, the dog subsided into the rear-seat well. "Right," he said, and turned right on the road to Sonny and Maggie's place. "And stay there, d'ye hear?"

The traffic was light and the road clear of snow. The drive to where Sonny's house stood on a hill was uneventful. In the daytime, Barry knew there was a splendid view overlooking the fields, down across the waters of Belfast Lough to the Antrim Hills of the far sh.o.r.e.