He swallowed hard. Closed his eyes and felt the p.r.i.c.kling behind the lids. Christ Almighty, you idiot, he berated himself, how could you have forgotten she gave you that book? How could you have forgotten when she gave you that book? Of all the books on the shelves, why in the name of the wee man did you ask Kinky to get you that one, when you're not at your best and the last thing you need to be reminded of is why you are still a bachelor. As if you didn't remember every b.l.o.o.d.y day, the golden girl, your bride of six months, snuffed out by a German bomb in 1941. Twenty-three years ago.

What did Kinky call you last night? An amadan. She was right.

He opened his eyes, lifted the book, reread the inscription, and firmly closed the cover. He knew that amputees, years after losing a limb, could for a fleeting moment be vividly conscious of its presence. But they must accept it is gone, as must he.

And yet . . . and yet, he still thought of her. Deidre, named for the Celtic princess, Deidre of the Sorrows. On their honeymoon night she'd quoted a line from the Tain Bo Cuailgne-The Cattle Raid of Cooley-the first epic in European history. He could remember her every word. "Deidre saw a raven drinking blood on the snow, and she said . . . 'I could love a man with those three colours: hair like a raven, cheeks like blood and body like snow.' And I do love you, Fingal."

b.u.g.g.e.r it. It must be the b.l.o.o.d.y bronchitis that had knocked some of the stuffing out of him, letting in these melancholy thoughts. He'd be all right once this d.a.m.n chest had cleared up and he was back in harness. If medical practice was no subst.i.tute for a wife, it was certainly a demanding mistress and had filled the empty s.p.a.ces for him, along with his lifelong interest in rugby football and his enjoyment of a day's wildfowling with Arthur Guinness for company.

He wriggled to a more comfortable position. As soon as his chest was better, he'd see if Barry would look after the shop for a day, and he, O'Reilly, would go down to Strangford Lough for a day's duck hunting. When Barry had had his knickers knotted about his love life and his professional life the first month he'd been here, hadn't O'Reilly suggested a day's trout fishing to the boy as a good way of clearing his mind?

And maybe, just maybe, it was time to go and see Kitty O'Hallorhan again. Ever since he'd taken her to Sonny and Maggie's wedding, they'd met once every week or so to rehash old times. He'd been a medical student and she'd been a student nurse back in Dublin, and he admitted to himself he'd been not a little in love with her. He might have married her if Deidre hadn't come along but, och, he told himself, if she hadn't he'd never have had those few months.

He felt the drowsiness starting to overcome him, but before he let himself drift off into a nap he resolved to get well as soon as he could. Barry's Patricia would be coming home, and he'd want time off to see her. He could only have that if O'Reilly could carry his load, as Barry was carrying it this morning downstairs.

All the World's a Stage, and All the Men

and Women Merely Players.

After five months in Ballybucklebo, Barry had learned how to keep his amus.e.m.e.nt hidden and his sense of decorum in place. He resisted the temptation to ask Santa Claus if Donner, Blitzen, Prancer, and the rest of the reindeer were parked outside. Instead he walked the man to the front door and showed him out. He was better known as Billy Brennan, a usually out-of-work labourer, who had been making a few extra Christmas pounds working as Saint Nick for Robinson and Cleaver's department store in Belfast.

His periorbital haematoma-the cla.s.sic black eye-was the direct result of having told a rambunctious six-year-old sitting on his lap that Santa might not be able to deliver a real motor car. "By Jesus, Doc," he'd said, "I never thought a wee lad like that had such a punch in him."

Barry had examined the eye, satisfied himself that there was no damage to the eyeball itself or the bones of the eye socket, and rea.s.sured the man. That had been easy. The tricky bit, for which Barry had no answer, was trying to decide whether the injury might be considered an occupational hazard and so eligible for disability benefit. Barry had given a palpably grateful Billy the necessary certificate. He'd let the bureaucrats at the ministry make the final decision, but as far as Barry was concerned, with a shiner like that, Billy would hardly be an acceptable Santa.

Barry did allow himself a little chuckle as he walked back to the waiting room. Most of the worried well had been seen and dealt with, and he felt satisfied that he was coping. He opened the door. Two patients left to see. He did his mental sums. Two plus the others already seen made fourteen . . . no, sixteen. He was pretty sure that was fewer patients than usual for a Monday morning. In some ways that was just as well because he knew he was getting through the caseload more slowly than O'Reilly would have. It was nearly lunchtime, and he still had to see Mrs. Brown and her six-year-old son Colin.

Colin wore shorts, his school blazer, and school cap-a peaked piece of headgear made of contrasting rings of red and blue cloth. Barry himself had worn something similar as a schoolboy, and as far as he knew the peculiar fashion had started in Victorian times. In its own way it was another symbol of the unchanging nature of rural Ulster.

"Morning," Barry said. "You know your way, Colin. Take your mum on down to the surgery." The lad had been in to have a cut hand st.i.tched a few months ago. Barry wondered what would be wrong with the little chap this time. He followed the pair along the corridor. He hoped Colin's complaint wouldn't be, like those of many of the earlier patients, another upper respiratory infection.

Barry had clapped his stethoscope on several wheezy chests and written enough prescriptions for the "black bottle"-a mixture of morphine and ipecacuanha, mist. morph. and ipecac. in Latin shorthand-to repaper the waiting room walls and cover the G.o.d-awful roses. The locals had great faith in the mixture. The morphine certainly was a cough suppressant, but the ipecacuanha had only one purpose. It tasted appallingly bitter, and among the countryfolk it stood to reason that the fouler the taste, the more potent the nostrum.

O'Reilly had been right when he'd said it was sniffle-and-cough season. Those were not conditions seen in a busy teaching hospital, but to the victims they were every bit as annoying as the exotic complaints Barry had been exposed to during his training.

Once in the surgery Barry sat himself on the swivel chair and waited for mother and child to be seated. There was no obvious clue to what might ail the boy, a.s.suming he was the patient today. No coughing, no snotty nose, no sweating.

"How's your paw, Colin?" Barry asked.

The boy whipped off his cap, held it in one hand, and silently offered the other for inspection. Barry could see the scar across the palm. It had been a nasty cut, inflicted by a chisel, and had required several st.i.tches. It had healed well.

"Looks good." He turned to the mother and smiled. "And so what can I do for you today?"

"It's Colin, so it is."

"I see. And what seems to be the trouble." The child looked perfectly healthy.

"He doesn't want to go to school, so he doesn't."

"Does he not?" Barry's immediate thought was, neither did I at his age. For the second time that morning his ability to keep a straight face was called upon. In all of his medical training years there had been no attention paid by his teachers to the emotions of childhood. "Hmmm . . .," Barry said, leaning forward, putting one elbow on his knee, and resting his chin on one hand. He squinted at Colin and, hoping for the best, asked, "And why would that be, Colin?"

"Dunno."

That was a great help. Think, Barry told himself. Why didn't you want to go when you were his age? "Is it one of the teachers?"

Colin hung his head and shook it.

"Maybe the work's too hard? I wasn't very good at sums."

More head shaking.

"Is one of the big boys picking on you?"

"No."

Barry, who in local parlance didn't know where to go next for corn, sat back and asked the mother, "Can you think of why, Mrs. Brown?"

She leaned forward and shook Colin's shoulder. "You tell the nice doctor about the Nativity play."

"Don't wanna."

"Maybe," Mrs. Brown enquired, the solicitude in her tones belying her words, "maybe you'd rather get a good clip round the ears?"

"No." Colin pursed his lips, frowned, and narrowed his eyes at his mother.

One thing about kids' emotions, Barry thought, they don't wrap them up behind bland expressions.

"I'm warning you, so I am."

Barry had to intervene. "Is there something the matter at the play?" he asked, looking Colin straight in the eye and turning his back on Mrs. Brown. Funny, that was the second time the event had been mentioned this morning, and O'Reilly had said something about a Christmas pageant last night.

Colin nodded.

Barry waited. Colin remained silent.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" He c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "Would you?"

"It's that wee gurrier Micky Corry," Colin sniffed. "He's going to be Joseph. It's not fair, so it's not." A tear ran down one cheek. "Teacher said I could be Joseph again." He prodded himself on the chest. "I have the robes and the Arab headdress and everything from last year."

"You see, Doctor Laverty, Colin was Joseph last year. Everybody said he done the part very well," Mrs. Brown added.

"That's right. But now Miss Nolan's changed her mind and says it's somebody else's turn. It's not fair." Colin stamped his foot, and his knee-length sock slid down his calf like the skin falling off a shedding snake. "I don't wanna be the innkeeper. He only has three lines. 'Who's there? Mary and Joseph?' and 'Well, you can go into the stable.' "

Nations, Barry knew, had gone to war over less, and he was blowed if he could see an acceptable solution. Should he offer to go and see Miss Nolan and try to intercede? No, because if she changed her mind again, he'd probably have Micky Corry and his mother in here tomorrow. "Um," he said, knitting his brow and regretting that he didn't have a pair of half-moon gla.s.ses to perch on his nose the way O'Reilly did when faced with a tough problem. He also regretted that unlike O'Reilly he did not possess the kind of wisdom King Solomon was reputed to own. O'Reilly would find a way to cheer up the little lad.

"Have you a half-notion you might like to be an actor when you grow up?" Barry asked.

"Mebbe." The little lad brightened a bit. "I'd not mind being like your man Joseph Tomelty."

Barry knew of the Belfast actor with the great shock of grey hair who had moved from regional theatre and portraying Bobby Greer on the BBC series The McCooeys to more important roles in the British cinema. "Perhaps you will be one day."

"I'm not fussed about 'one day.' I want to be Joseph this year, so I do."

Barry turned to the mother, shrugged, and shook his head.

"Aye," she said. "Me too." And he knew she meant she was as at a loss for an answer as he was.

He cleared his throat, looked seriously at Colin-and had a flash of inspiration. "Tell me, Colin, isn't the play all about the birth of Baby Jesus?"

"Aye."

"And when he grew up, didn't Jesus teach us to forgive our enemies?" He mentally blessed the boring Sunday afternoons that he, like every Protestant child of his generation, had spent at Sunday school. "So what do you think Jesus would have done about . . . what's his name?"

"Micky Corry."

"Right. Micky."

"I think Jesus would have done a miracle . . . and turned the wee gobs.h.i.te into a pile of horses.h.i.te, so I do."

"Colin!" Mrs. Brown delivered the promised clip. Colin howled.

This time, Barry had to work very hard to stifle a grin; then he held an admonitory finger to Mrs. Brown. He had hoped the respect of the countryfolks for physicians would have been instilled in wee Colin Brown and would have given those words of wisdom the weight he sought. Clearly, though, Colin was not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of fellow. "Well, Colin, you might be right, but if you want my opinion, I'd try to forget about it, go back to school, and just get on with the play."

"Thank you, Doctor." Mrs. Brown rose and made a little bow to Barry. "See, Colin, isn't that what I told you he'd say?"

"Aye." Colin scowled at Barry. "Youse grown-ups all stick together, so you do."

Mrs. Brown lifted her hand again, and Colin quickly said, "All right. I'll go back to school."

"Excellent," Barry said, rising. "Will that be all?" He moved to the door. As he showed the two out through the front door, he said to Colin, "And I'm sure you'll be a great innkeeper." Barry caught the glint in the little boy's eyes. G.o.d, Barry thought, he'd seen gleams like that in the eyes of demons in mediaeval ill.u.s.trations. He wondered for a moment what it might presage.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a lugubrious, middle-aged man standing on the front doorstep. He looked to be six feet tall and sported a black bowler hat and grey doeskin gloves. A pair of narrow, muddy, patent-leather shoes escaped from the pin-striped trouser legs that emerged from under a mid-calflength raincoat. Barry could see a polka-dotted bow tie nesting between the white starched triangles of a wingtip collar. And above that was the largest, most angular Adam's apple Barry had ever seen. He watched it bob up and down as the man swallowed. "I'm sorry," Barry began, "but patients have to use the waiting room door-"

The stranger interrupted in a harsh, high-pitched voice, "I'm not a patient, sonny. I'm Doctor Fitzpatrick, and I'm here to see Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly."

"Oh. In that case-"

It was as far as Barry got. Doctor Fitzpatrick forced his way into the hall. Barry pulled the front door shut, turned, and regarded the new arrival removing his hat and gloves. He had turned to face Barry, who saw a thin-lipped mouth, turned down at twenty past eight, set between a clean-shaven receding chin and a narrow, high-bridged Roman nose. Gold-rimmed pince-nez with thick lenses clung to it, distorting Barry's view of what seemed to be grey, l.u.s.treless eyes. If I'd had to guess this man's occupation, he thought, I'd swear he was an undertaker's a.s.sistant.

"Take these." Doctor Fitzpatrick tossed his gloves into his hat and handed them to Barry like a condescending master to his valet. Barry set them on the table of the hall clothes stand. The stranger unb.u.t.toned his coat and was slipping the sleeves down his arms when Barry spotted Mrs. Kincaid heading down the hall from her kitchen. She took in the scene before her and halted at the foot of the stairs, arms folded across her bosom, chins thrust out, agate eyes flashing.

"My coat." Doctor Fitzpatrick handed Barry his raincoat.

Barry hung the garment on a hook on the stand above the man's hat and gloves.

"You must be Laverty," Doctor Fitzpatrick remarked.

"Yes," Barry said levelly. "I am Doctor Laverty."

The man's gaze swept over Barry from head to toe. His thin lip curled. "You look to me as if you should still be at school." He sniffed. "I'm not here to waste my time with minions. I've come to see the princ.i.p.al of the practice. Where is O'Reilly?"

Barry's eyes narrowed. He kept his voice level as he said, "Doctor O'Reilly is a bit under the weather today. He's upstairs." Barry glanced above his head. "He's not receiving visitors."

He heard a strange, dry, braying noise and realized that the man was laughing. "From what I hear, I suppose you mean he's hungover."

"I do not." Barry's hands, which had been hanging loosely at his sides, curled into fists. He hesitated before continuing, but he decided that as the man in front of him was medically qualified, it would not be breaching a confidence. "My senior colleague has tracheobronchitis."

"Smoker too?"

"Yes. Doctor O'Reilly smokes a pipe."

"Filthy habit. Bronchitis, is it? Serves him right."

"Now listen-"

But Doctor Fitzpatrick was already striding to the foot of the staircase, head turned back as he remarked over his shoulder, "I'm not a visitor. I am a medical man with every right to visit a sick colleague."

"Is that a fact, sir?" Barry heard the tone in Kinky's voice. It was the same kind of understated growl that Lady Macbeth would give-seconds before she sank her fangs into the nearest piece of yielding flesh. He saw the man's head turn. He slammed to a halt and took two steps backward. To Barry it seemed as if Fitzpatrick, who had been proceeding like a square-rigger under full sail, had run up on the reef of Kinky Kincaid, where she still stood at the foot of the staircase, arms folded, feet apart, legs braced to withstand any shock.

Fitzpatrick shuddered, as would the masts and yards of the grounded vessel, collected himself, and then demanded, "And who might you be?"

"I," said Kinky very civilly, "am Mrs. Kincaid, housekeeper to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly."

Barry thought of how O'Reilly had described Kinky when he had first introduced her: his Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades. Except Kinky was such an effective guard she probably merited a fourth head.

Yet her effectiveness seemed to be lost on Doctor Fitzpatrick. As a grounded ship might try to force its way over an obstruction and might succeed with soft, yielding coral, he bore on. "Well, Mrs Kincaid, I am here to visit my colleague. If you would kindly show me the way . . ."

"I'll not, sir." Barry saw Kinky's shoulders rise. The good ship Fitzpatrick had hit granite, and jagged rocks at that. "When you phoned this morning, I told you himself was not receiving."

"Rubbish. I'm a medical man."

"That's as may be. Doctor O'Reilly told me he wasn't up to having visitors today."

As if to give emphasis to her words Barry heard a hoa.r.s.e voice from upstairs call, "What in the h.e.l.l's going on down there, Kinky?"

Before she could answer, Barry saw Doctor Fitzpatrick tilt his head back and look up to the landing. He took one step and said, "My good woman, step aside." He was beginning to raise his voice.

Barry's fists unclenched. He started to grin. He had to admire Doctor Fitzpatrick's persistence, but the man clearly had not got the measure of Kinky Kincaid. This was shaping up as the cla.s.sic irresistible force meets the immovable object-and Barry knew exactly where he'd put his money. He saw Kinky's eyes narrow to the merest of slits.

"Your good woman, is it? I am not one of your chattels, sir. My virtue, with all due respect, is none of your business, sir, and I will not step aside, so. Himself is ill. Himself needs his rest. Himself will not be disturbed by the likes of you, sir."