Authors: Patrick McCabe
I felt tears well up in my eyes as a neighing, chirruping jennet ascended the lip of the plateau and sailed close by my shoulder. Within minutes, we were both weeping copiously, whilst below in
the valley, the raucous cacophony – an absurd tournament of jousting whistles and snorts (as though some form of rudimentary phonetic mockery) – became more than we could endure and at
once we began our journey back to the town of Labashaca.
*
I took my leave of the town very soon afterwards and to this day have not laid eyes upon my learned, misfortunate blood relative. Thus, I have no means of substantiating this
tale for those readers who might be of a sceptical nature, surreptitiously adverting to ‘lassitudinous days in Trinity’, perhaps, or ‘excessive consumption of white powders and
opium tablets’.
Even were he to present himself for those purposes, I fear I could not find it within myself to prevail upon him to relate anew the horrors experienced by us that night upon the plateau. No, I
have laid the facts before my readers for them to make of them what they will. I realize that in these days of ‘information superhighways’, exotic bottled beers and video disc players,
tales involving lost valleys, vanished relatives and ludicrous equine-angel hybrids will most likely be dismissed as nonsense. If that is indeed the case, then so be it. In response, all I can say
is that, to this day, not one of the Parkes family is fortunate to live in a decent house, or bear a dignified name (shame has decreed that we shall all be appelled ‘Bunty’,
‘Mickey’, ‘Bridie’, and – most loathsome of all – ‘John Joe!’), for my own part, my residence, since I resigned my practice, being a derelict shack
on the outskirts of Barntrosna, my sanity preserved only by the occasional indulgence in a little cigarette or perhaps a tablet or two. The image of Fortescue Hastings-Parkes still resides proudly
upon my mantelpiece, praying – no doubt! – that I will not one day turn to find its visage completely blank and obliterated, just as I do that I will not one day innocently gaze outside
my window and there locate a dead-eyed, obstinate creature, complete with haplessly flapping, entirely unlaundered wings, staring back at me as though some thoroughly redundant, sympathy-craving,
bargain-bin Pegasus. For that, dear reader, would be, I assure you, more than I, John Joe Parkes MD (retd.), would be humanly capable – and here, please, I implore you, do not judge me too
harshly –
Puff! Puff! Choke! Choke!
– of enduring.
Mrs Tiernan, Noreen’s mother, was well known in Barntrosna as a woman who could ‘turn her hand to anything’ and was on more committees and boards than anyone
could begin to remember. But it still came as a shock when she immersed herself in what later became known as ‘The Noreen Tiernan Affair’ with an obsessive fury. There were those who
said that if her husband, Oweny James, had still been alive it would never have happened. But how can we possibly know? Who is to say that he too, on discovering the truth about his beloved
daughter, would not also have abandoned everything and caught the next available flight to London? Love is no bedfellow of reason.
And Noreen Tiernan was loved, and loved deeply – let there be no mistake about that. Ever since her days as a young girl strolling about the streets and byways and butterfly-populated
lanes of Barntrosna, her gap-toothed smile had been the delight of all the hard-working farmers, who would cry as she passed: ‘There you are now, Noreen! Lovely day, thank God! How’s
your father?’
‘He’s very well, thank you,’ Noreen would shyly reply. Sometimes they would lean on their hayforks and marvel after her: ‘God, but isn’t she growing up to be the
powerful young girl, all the same! Oweny James Tiernan should be a proud man this day!’
As indeed he was, and in the years before he passed away tragically after misjudging his footing while negotiating McCracken’s drain late one night on his way home from the Bridge Bar, it
was not uncommon to hear him, as he fixed a single, determined eye on the invariably considerable length of ash that extended precariously from his Player’s cigarette, remark: ‘You
won’t get a better girl in this world than our wee Noreen, eh? What do you say, men?’
Whereupon his fellow parishioners, as with one voice, would cry: ‘Now you’re talking, Oweny James. You’re talking now and no mistake!’
Beneath the sign for Capstan Plug in the half-light of those summer evenings the consensus would be absolute. Noreen was truly incomparable, as with each day that passed she assumed the features
of nothing less now than a world-famous beauty queen. As one Thomas Hartigan, a neighbour of hers and something of a poet, observed one day, there were times when the light slanted across her face
that you wouldn’t think you were looking at eyes at all but two precious stones set in a head carved from finest ivory.
By the time she reached sixteen years of age, the beauty of Noreen Tiernan had become so striking that whenever she walked down the main street of Barntrosna all the men who lined the corner
would stare after her in stunned silence. As Jackie Burdon said on one occasion, shaking his head: ‘If young Tiernan doesn’t turn out to be an international model, I’ll eat all my
winter silage.’
*
But Noreen Tiernan didn’t have the slightest intention of becoming a model of any kind, international or otherwise. As anyone who had bothered to take the time to ask her
would have learnt. This was because she had known from a very early age when her father – ironically, under the impression he was immersed in a thrilling Western story (his one passion
– he made it his business to read at least a half-dozen per week) entitled
Forty Guns to Apache Pass
somehow managed to read aloud to her a significant section of the life of Florence
Nightingale, filling her with the deepest admiration for the English nurse whose selflessness throughout the Crimean War was legendary. As her father continued reading in the firelight, rocking
back and forth on his chair and punctuating the narrative with anachronistic and wholly illogical snippets of frontier vernacular along the lines of ‘
ornery
’ and
‘
critters
’, Noreen could see herself standing, in her crisply starched uniform, over any number of broken, helpless men, briskly administering tonics and medicines as they
reached out to her – futilely, for all in Noreen’s eyes were equal – courting preferential treatment in frail, hoarse voices. As she sat there in the shadows, she thought of
herself sometime in the future, clapping her hands smartly and chirping to the other nurses, ‘Come along, staff! There’s work to be done here!’ rigid and unshakeable as a Doric
column as her subordinates filed past her with eyes downcast, but with hearts full of affection – and, most of all, respect.
There were times too when she would envisage herself on the remote, baked plains of the Australian outback, landing the rickety craft that was the flying doctor plane and dashing through the
dust with her medicine bag flapping as a plaintive cry echoed somewhere in the bush.
And often, too, it cannot be denied, in the arms of a close-shaven, handsome young doctor, who as they danced to the music of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett would touch the soft lobes of her ears
with his lips and gently whisper: ‘How I love you, Queen of the Ward! My sweet and wonderful, wonderful Noreen Tiernan.’
No, that was why, Noreen knew, she would never be a top model. Not for her the vulgar assault of flashing bulbs and prying lenses, the facile, ill-informed and essentially exploitative
interrogations of supercilious chatshow hosts. For her, she knew only too well, the catwalks of Europe would be but as highways to nowhere.
To appear, however unostentatiously, within the pages of
Nursing Times
was her sole ambition.
Which was why when, at the age of seventeen years, she learned that she had been accepted as a trainee nurse into St Bartholomew’s General Hospital, Chiswick, London, she was absolutely
over the moon! She stood in the middle of the floor in the kitchen of the Tiernans’ simple four-room cottage and cried: ‘I got it! I got it, Mammy! I’ve been accepted into St
Barty’s!’
Her mother smiled and thought to herself how pleased Oweny James (ten years dead that very week – the anniversary Mass was due to take place, as usual, close by McCracken’s drain
where they had placed the wooden cross which read:
I. M. Oweny James – tragically drowned on this spot Sept. 7 1970
) would have been if he had been there to see it. To witness all his
children, Ta and Willie and Wee Patty, clustered about the skirts of his eldest daughter, as if about to burst with pride. Which they were indeed entitled to do, having had it hard throughout the
dark ‘post-Daddy’ years with every penny counting and each scrap of bread and bit of fish gathered up to go into the next day’s dinner. But they had managed. With the help of the
most wonderful neighbours a family had ever known and the strength that God had given them, they had endured, thought Mrs Tiernan. And now her daughter was to be a nurse! Small tears came into her
eyes as she thought of her eldest daughter, resplendent now in her spanking new uniform, standing in a vast, polished ward, surrounded by awe-stricken colleagues. Her fist closed as, unbidden,
vague folk memories of coffin ships and starving wretches pawing the stench-ridden dark came to her, and suddenly she felt limitlessly empowered. It was all she could do not to cry out, ‘My
daughter’s going to be a nurse! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!’, clutch the sweeping brush, which was very close to hand, and proceed around the kitchen with triumphant, almost girlish glee.
But she didn’t. Dignity and restraint won the day and all she did as she reposed in a single funnel of dusty sunlight was bite her lower lip and softly intone the words: ‘God be
praised for sending us, his loyal servants, the Tiernans of Barntrosna village, such happiness true and bountiful.’
Rarely in her life had Mrs Tiernan known such feelings. Or her daughter Noreen now as she took her seat in the neat and tidy compartment of the British Rail train which was about to make its way
steadily all the way from Holyhead to Euston Station, London. Outside, fields and hills sped by. Fields and hills and sheep – English sheep! The first, she reflected, she had ever seen. There
were butterflies in Noreen’s tummy as she thought now of all the exciting days that lay ahead of her. The moment she arrived, she would write home and tell them all about it. She had promised
Ta that she would send him a special postcard. How she was going to miss him! And Bimbo! But, as she had told them, she would be back at Christmas when the fields were covered in a white eiderdown
of snow – and the tales she would have for them then!
Of course, it had been especially hard saying goodbye to Pobs (her pet name for her boyfriend) – how would it not be when she loved him so dearly? As he did her, revealing the true depth
of his feeling when he broke down in tears in the dance hall, crying: ‘No! No! Don’t go to England! They’ll take you away from me just like they took everything else!’
He was such a good sort, Pobs. Emotional, yes, but as kind and considerate a boy as any girl could ever wish for. She had promised she would write every day. ‘You promise?’ Pobs had
implored, wiping his eyes with the large white handkerchief which he seemed to bring everywhere with him. ‘I promise,’ Noreen had replied, and despite the fact that things did not quite
turn out like that, her sincerity at the time was unquestionable.
*
The backs of houses sped by as she thought of St Bartholomew’s; what would it be like, she wondered. No, she didn’t wonder. Didn’t, because she
knew
!
Knew that within its walls there would be beautifully polished corridors and nurses with watches pinned to their starched uniforms and preoccupied young doctors running around with clipboards,
vases of roses neatly placed on tables at various intervals throughout the wards – and of course, patients.
But, most of all, a children’s ward. How she hoped she was assigned there on her ‘probby’ (as the girls called their six months’ probation). Which she knew because Imelda
Stronge, who was now a fully qualified nurse in Huddersfield, had told her so. They had had a lovely few drinks in the Arms Hotel before Imelda returned. ‘Always remember to call it that now,
Noreen,’ she had instructed her, ‘Won’t you? Probby, I mean!’
‘Yes,’ Noreen had dutifully replied, ‘probby.’
*
Armed with this knowledge, Noreen felt a confidence building quietly within her as the train sped along, a conviction that there would be few challenges in the coming days which
she would be incapable of facing. A billboard, S
UPPORT
THE
NHS, sped past and Noreen smiled. She thought of herself sitting there, on the edge of a small bed, reading from
Tommy the Turtle
or
My Friend Alpaca
with all the children ranged around her, gazing up adoringly. A tiny tremor of satisfaction ran through her.
That was not to say, she realized, that there wouldn’t be hard work too – of course there would! And nobody knew it better than Noreen! But she was more than prepared for it, and
would see to it that through a combination of the fiercest effort and the intercession of St Jude – who was the saint to whom she had the deepest devotion – she would come through her
first-year exams with flying colours.
As indeed she might have, if only – almost as soon as she arrived at St Bartholomew’s – things had not begun to go horribly wrong, a chain of events being set in motion which
would ultimately not only result in Mrs Tiernan abandoning her perfectly contented life as a Barntrosna housewife for one of obsessed and dedicated private detection, but propel a perfectly
ordinary, God-fearing, truly conscientious young nurse to the very brink of death and destruction.
*
It was 4.05 p.m. and Noreen, standing with her belted suitcase at her knee, was in such a state of excitement that she was not entirely aware of what was going on around her, to
such an extent that when the sister superior (a potato-shaped woman in her forties) placed her hands on her shoulders and exclaimed: ‘Noreen! There you are! I’m going to take you over
to the Nurses’ Home where you’ll be billeted for the entire duration of your stay with us!’ Noreen heard the involuntary ejaculation of ‘Omigod!’ leaping from her lips
in a tiny squeal!