The lighting provided by two ma.s.sive antique chandeliers was pleasantly dim. Dinner-suited waiters circulated silently, bringing full plates or retrieving empty dishes.

On an immaculately white tablecloth, secure in its cut-gla.s.s candle-holder, a single red candle burned in the centre of O'Reilly and Kitty's table. O'Reilly saw its flame reflected in Kitty's eyes. He smiled at her and raised his gla.s.s.

He wasn't much of a wine drinker, but the Montrachet she had chosen was crisp and dry. "Nice," he said, "very nice."

"I thought you'd enjoy it," she said with a chuckle. "At least you will until you see the bill."

"I've already told you, and thank you for asking. Tonight," said O'Reilly, sliding a little closer to her, "the sky's the limit. Here's to your bright eyes." He drank.

As she nodded in response, their waiter came to the table. "For madam," he said, placing a plate of escargots in front of Kitty. The garlicky smell tickled O'Reilly's palate. "And for you, Doctor, the scampi. Bon appet.i.t," he said, with a thick Belfast overlay, as he withdrew.

O'Reilly watched Kitty pop the first snail into her mouth and the corners of her eyes crinkle. She swallowed. "That," she said, "is very good."

"Good." O'Reilly speared three scampi at once, shoved them in his mouth, and chewed with gusto. The batter was crisp and done to perfection, the flesh of the little crustaceans firm and delicate of flavour. As he speared three more, Kitty asked, "Do you like garlic, Fingal?"

He nodded, his loaded fork halfway to his mouth.

"Try this," she said, holding an escargot on a fork. Before he could speak, she popped it into his mouth as a mother bird would feed a hungry chick.

He chewed.

Leaning closer to him, she said, "It's the only trouble with garlic. If you haven't eaten some yourself, it's not very pleasant being kissed by someone who has."

O'Reilly stopped in mid-chew. His mouth opened a trifle. By G.o.d, if that was an invitation to kiss her, he'd take her up on it at the earliest opportunity. That thought pleased him, and yet just as the wine had a slight aftertaste of apricots, so did her confident statement have an undertone. Kitty's remark was one of a woman not unused to being kissed, and that, quite irrationally, made him jealous.

He swallowed, grinned at her, and said, "You'll not have to worry about that tonight, Kitty." Let her decide if he meant he wasn't going to kiss her or if he was now well prepared to do just that.

Her smile was inviting and he moved a little closer, aware again of the musky perfume she wore. b.u.g.g.e.r the other diners, he thought, and he inclined his head and kissed her cheek. As he straightened up, he saw John, the desk clerk, standing at the table. "Yes, John?"

"I'm sorry to intrude, Doctor O'Reilly, but your Mrs. Kincaid's on the phone and says it's urgent."

"Right." O'Reilly stood and shoved the table aside. He was oblivious to everything because he knew Kinky, who was a dab hand at fending off trivial calls, wouldn't phone him unless it really was an emergency. He left the dining room and charged along the hall, not bothering to apologise to a guest he jostled on the way past.

The receiver lay on the desk. He grabbed it. "h.e.l.lo? Kinky?"

"Doctor O'Reilly. I've just had Miss Hagerty, the midwife, on the phone. She's with a patient, Gertie Gorman, at Twenty-seven Sh.o.r.e Road."

Gorman? O'Reilly didn't recognize the name.

"The woman's in labour, Miss Hagerty doesn't think it's going smoothly, and she can't reach the woman's doctor. Doctor Laverty's in Belfast, so she wants to know would you go and help, sir?"

"Of course. Kinky, call Miss Hagerty, tell her I'm on my way, and then bring the maternity bags through to the kitchen. I'll be there in half an hour." He handed the receiver to John. "Hang that up for me."

O'Reilly trotted back to the dining room and explained the situation to Kitty and to the headwaiter, who agreed to sort out the bill the next time O'Reilly came in.

"Come on, Kitty," he said. "Drive me home."

As he hustled her along the hall, he said, "I'm sorry about this. When we get home I'll take the Rover, and you head home yourself-"

"The h.e.l.l I will, Fingal," she said, grabbing her coat from the cloakroom. "I'm a nurse, remember? I'm coming with you."

On with the Dance! Let Joy Be Unconfined.

It was a short way from O'Kane's pub, the Oak Inn, to Bostock House, the nurses' home. Barry, Jack, and Mandy walked companionably side by side, Mandy's stiletto heels clicking on the pavement.

Barry felt the chill December air on his cheeks and nose, heard the descant of the siren of a rapidly approaching ambulance as the nee-naw, nee-naw rose above the constant ba.s.so rumble of the traffic.

He inhaled the bra.s.sy city smells of exhaust fumes and chimney smoke. The noise and stink were so different from the quiet and the clean air of Ballybucklebo. He remembered with affection his recent years of training here in Belfast but knew now he could never live here.

As they approached the nurses' home he heard, faintly at first but louder as they neared the redbrick building, the sounds of a traditional jazz band.

The three friends climbed the stone steps to the entrance of the home. Joe, the doorman and general factotum, a retired boxer, and jealous guardian of his young charges, sat at a table taking tickets. Jack handed over three. It had been decent of him to buy them and refuse Barry's offer to repay him.

"Doctor Mills?" Joe took the tickets. He was bald as a billiard ball. His battered face with its squashed nose broke into a wide, gap-toothed grin that spread from one cauliflower ear to the other. "How's the world abusing you?"

"Can't complain, Joe," Jack said. "Nice to be back at Bostock."

"It's great to see you, so it is, and you too, Doctor Laverty, sir."

"And you, Joe." Funny, Barry thought, a couple of years ago he and Jack had been chased across the lawns by an enraged Joe. They had brought two student nurses back after their curfew. It had been Jack's idea to taunt Joe so that he lost his temper, chased his tormentors, and left the door unguarded long enough for the two young women to nip inside undetected, thus avoiding being reported to the matron.

By the way Joe was greeting them, perhaps he had forgotten that particular episode. Then again, it had been widely believed among the medical students that Joe had taken one too many punches to the head, leaving him at least one stook short of a stack.

Barry went into the noisy, crowded foyer. Cut-out Santas and snowmen were stuck to the hospital-green walls. A fir tree stood in the far corner. Coloured gla.s.s baubles dangled from every tinsel-draped branch. A gold star at the tree's very top drooped sideways, acting as a pointer to a sign reading Merry Christmas.

The place was very warm. Barry waited in the queue behind Jack and Mandy, took off his overcoat, and then left it in the cloakroom. He reflexively smoothed down his blonde tuft and straightened his Old Campbellian tie.

Couples and single men and women came and went through a set of open double doors leading to the home's main hall. It was used for a.s.semblies, amateur theatricals, and tonight it was doing duty as a dance hall.

Barry recognized the strains of "Muskrat Ramble" being played inside the hall. He tried to hum along, cursed his tone deafness, and smiled at himself. If Patricia were here, she could have sung along in her deep contralto. His smile faded. If she were here? He ached for her to be here, wondered about making an excuse and heading back for home. d.a.m.n her intransigence.

"See you inside, Barry." Jack, holding tightly to Mandy's hand, led her to the dance floor. Barry watched them go, Mandy's b.u.t.tocks mincing saucily under her tight red knee-length skirt, the curve of her calves accented by her sheer black stockings and her heels. Barry smiled. She really did have great legs. He felt a little stirring inside his pants. G.o.d, it had been a long time since he'd been near a girl.

"Nyeh, how are you, Barry?" He turned to see an old friend, Harry Sloan, a budding pathologist who prefaced many of his remarks with that peculiar braying noise. He was the one who had speeded up the microscopic examination of slides of heart tissue-from a patient of Barry's who had died in August-when Barry had needed the results urgently. He still was in Harry's debt.

"Fine thanks, Harry."

"I thought you had a steady bird. In the cloakroom is she?"

Barry took a deep breath, shook his head, and exhaled forcibly. "No, I'm on my own." And despite thinking of Patricia only a few moments ago, he didn't want to be reminded of her again. Not just now. Not when merely thinking of her refusal to accept his offer made his anger rise.

"Nyeh. Blew you out, did she?" Harry shook his prematurely white-haired head and tutted gently.

Barry pursed his lips. "Not exactly, but she won a scholarship to Cambridge and she's not home for the holidays yet." If she's even going to come at all, he thought.

Harry's grin was wide. "Aye. So when the cat's away, the mice'll play, is that it?"

Barry shrugged. "Something like that," he said. He realized he was here in part to try to punish Patricia, although how his going to a dance would affect her in the slightest, unless he told her, wasn't entirely clear. And there was some truth in what Harry said. Barry had been faithful to Patricia since she left for England in September, but he had felt that frisson just looking at Mandy's legs. And the room next door was full of attractive, single young women.

"Come on then," Harry said, moving toward the double doors. "Let's go and have a look at the talent."

Inside the hall the lighting had been dimmed, and Barry blinked as he waited for his eyes to get used to the low light and the p.r.i.c.kly feeling caused by the tobacco smoke. The band, playing on a stage at the far end of the room, was well into "When the Saints Go Marching In." He could now read the letters painted on the ba.s.s drum. The White Eagles. He'd often danced to this well-known Belfast-based group at medical student affairs.

A large ball suspended from the ceiling spun so that the light reflected from the myriad small mirrors on its surface threw constantly moving bright patches against the walls, the floor, and the dancers. The patterns could have been made by a monochrome kaleidoscope. The dance floor was packed. Some couples maneuvered around, dancing a quickstep. Most happily jived, the men twisting and twirling their partners in flashing heels, with pirouetting legs giving glimpses of thigh above stocking tops, as skirts whirled merrily like the canopies of a mult.i.tude of carousels.

The trumpeter held a high note and the drummer whaled away happily as the music shuddered to its climax. Some couples stayed together as they left the floor; others thanked their partners and returned to their own side of the hall, men to the right, ladies to the left. The lights brightened. Barry felt Harry nudge him.

"Do you see that wee blonde?" He nodded to a girl talking to a pet.i.te brunette. "Her name's Jane Duggan. I took her out a few times last year. She's a bit of a flyer, so she is."

"Oh?"

"I'm going to ask her for the next dance. Will you ask her friend?"

Barry hesitated. Would Patricia be hurt if she found out? d.a.m.n it, if she was here in Ulster he wouldn't be at the dance in the first place-or if he was, she'd be with him, gammy leg and all. And it wasn't as if he was going to take the brunette to bed. It was only a dance. "Sure," he said.

Together they crossed the floor. For a moment, Barry thought of a story of the young man who had asked a girl from the Gallaghers' tobacco factory for a dance, only to be told, "Nah. Ask my sister. I'm sweating something fierce."

"So anyway," the brunette was saying, "Sister nearly went harpic . . ." Barry smiled. Harpic was a toilet cleaner with the slogan Cleans Round the Bend. He heard Harry ask the blonde to dance. Then he saw him take her by the hand and lead her out onto the floor.

Barry smiled at the brunette. "May I have the next dance?" He saw her dark eyes wrinkle at the corners, her full lips curve into a smile. Her dark hair-it was impossible to make out its true colour in the hall's light-hung to her shoulders, then curled in at the bottom to frame her face, the way Diana Rigg wore hers in the TV show The Avengers. He guessed she was about twenty or twenty-one.

"My pleasure." She offered a hand. He took it.

"Barry Laverty," he said, "from Ballybucklebo." Her hand was pleasantly cool in his. She wore a lime green V-necked sweater that showed a hint of cleavage, and a wide black patent-leather belt. Her knee-length pleated skirt was dark green.

"Peggy Duff. I'm living in Knock. We're nearly neighbours."

Barry was usually shy around girls, finding himself as often as not stuck with some inane opening gambit like "Do you come here often?" or a remark about the weather. But he suddenly remembered what he had overheard her saying. "Why did Sister go bananas?"

She laughed, a deep throaty chuckle that ended in a snort. "When I was a first-year student nurse, she sent me to clean all the old men's false teeth. I wasn't thinking, and I collected them all in one basin and washed them . . ."

"I'll bet you had h.e.l.l's delight finding out what teeth belonged to which patient." Barry laughed.

"It took me two days of trial and error." She laughed again. "Sister was not happy with me."

He liked her easy ability to laugh at herself. "I'm sure she got over it," he said.

The lights dimmed. The band swung into a slow number, "Saint James Infirmary." He took Peggy to the floor, put his right arm round her waist, and held her right hand with his left, their arms outstretched. This was the position he had learnt at the dancing cla.s.ses at his boys' boarding school. His partner there had been a wooden chair, and it certainly had not been as soft as the girl he was now holding close. Nor did it wear a perfume like Peggy's. He recognized it as Je Reviens because, it seemed like an aeon ago, he'd once bought a bottle as a birthday present for a certain student nurse. One he'd known before Patricia.

He worked them jerkily around the floor. Barry's tone deafness was complemented by his inability to keep on the beat. He knew film stars like Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda would have whirled this girl around and wooed her with their expertise. Barry Laverty, however, pushed her around the floor with a step somewhere between a waltz and the shuffling of a patient with some neurological disorder. At least he managed to avoid stepping on her feet.

They didn't speak during the dance, but she did allow him to hold her more closely and put his cheek against hers. He could feel the softness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and he let his hand slip down below the small of her back. She did not pull it back up but rather pushed a little harder against him. He felt again the arousal he had when he had watched Mandy's retreating backside. Sorry, Patricia, he thought, and he gently brushed his lips on Peggy's cheek, but you should be here with me. You really should.

He was a little breathless when the music stopped, and it was not from the exertion of dancing. They stood apart, but he held on to her hand and she didn't object.

"You're no Fred Astaire," she said with a smile. "Do you really want to dance some more, or would you like to buy me a drink?"

"I thought you'd never ask," he said, relieved that he would not have to stumble clumsily about anymore. "The bar's out in the foyer." Still holding her hand, he guided her around the edge of the dance floor. He didn't see Harry and his blonde partner anywhere, but did wave to Jack and Mandy as they spun past. Barry took Peggy through the double doors and into the foyer. "What would you like?"

"Vodka and orange, please."

He found a chair for her, left her sitting, and joined the line in front of the little bar. He turned and looked at her. Peggy really was a most attractive girl. Not as beautiful as Patricia, he reminded himself-no one was-but Jack Mills would describe Peggy Duff as "restful on the eye." Very restful.

He ordered her drink and an orange juice for himself. He'd be driving home soon; he hadn't really intended to stay for very long, but it had been pleasant to see Jack and Mandy, and Harry. Barry paid for the drinks and carried them over to Peggy. "Here you are," he said, handing her the vodka and sitting opposite.

"Thank you. You're a vodka drinker too?"

He shook his head. "Just orange. I'm driving."

She patted his free hand. "That's smart, Barry. When I was working in Casualty, I saw enough youngsters smashed to tatters because some eejit thought he could take a lot of drink and still drive."

"I've seen a few myself."

"How?"

"I'm a GP, a.s.sistant to a Doctor O'Reilly in Ballybucklebo, but I did three months in emergency at the Royal when I was a houseman last year."

She took a pull from her drink. "I must have just missed you. I was there this June, just before I got my R.N." She looked more closely at him and frowned a little. "Barry Laverty? Laverty? Are you the chap who used to date Brid McCormack?"

"That's me," Barry said, remembering Brid's green eyes and auburn hair, a remembrance made more real by Peggy's perfume.

"And she married Roger Grant, the surgeon, this September."

Brid had told him about that in January last year when she'd calmly announced she was going to marry someone else. Now it was December, and it looked as though Patricia was losing interest. There must be something jinxed about women, himself, and the wintertime. He sighed and was surprised to feel Peggy's hand covering his.

"She's a very pretty girl. She was a cla.s.s ahead of me at nursing school." He looked into her eyes and saw sympathy.

"Och," he said, shrugging. " 'That was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead,' " he said, quoting Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.

Peggy looked at him quizzically. "Brid's not dead, as far as I know."

"I know. It just means I'm over her." The next question would probably be "Are you seeing anybody else?" he thought. He didn't know how he was going to answer her, being warmed as he was by the increasing pressure of her hand on his.

"It's not nice to get dumped," she said. "My boyfriend and I split up six months ago." She sighed. "You get used to it, but it stings."

"Do you?" he said, wondering if Patricia dumped him would he ever get over it. He knew O'Reilly still grieved for his lost wife, but at least he was seeing Kitty now.

"Yes," she said, "you have to. Life has to go on."

Barry noticed that her gla.s.s was empty. "Would you like another?"

She shook her head and glanced at her watch. "I live in Knock, and I have to get up early tomorrow. My friend drove me here, but she seems to have vanished with your white-haired pal. I don't suppose you'd like to give me a lift home? It's on your way to Ballybucklebo."