Jan 2nd, 2025: Day 2
A while ago I found myself alone and painting my garage, and for reasons I can’t fully explain, I felt deeply homesick for Northern Ireland. It’s not a regular occurrence, but that day, I craved the company of familiar accents that weren’t American. Searching for something to connect me, I stumbled across Jamie Dornan being interviewed on the How to Fail podcast.
In the episode, Jamie shared that one of the things that kept him grounded was the humility and constancy instilled by his father. He recounted how, during outings in Belfast, young women who approached them were often just as interested in his father as in him, despite his status as an internationally renowned actor and model. His dad, a leading obstetrician at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital, had delivered thousands of babies from both sides of the political divide during a storied career, and so was never far away from a thank you.
The hospital, a grand Victorian structure, stood as a battle-scarred no-man’s-land during the Troubles, positioned at the intersection of deeply divided parts of Belfast. It served both communities in sickness and health amidst the backdrop of a low-grade, attritional civil war. Jamie spoke of his father’s ability to treat everyone with the same respect and warmth, whether they were porters or consultants, a trait that extended beyond the hospital walls.
The hospital is an odd and sprawling place, a mix of little flourishes of Victorian architectural splendour, and then the superimposed utilitarian generic vulgarity of any NHS facility. There used to be a swimming pool and tennis court at the hospital. Jamie tells the story on the podcast of how, just before it was due to be filled in to make way for some new wing or structure, his dad was driving past and spotted the swimming pool handrail—this was where he had originally spotted Jamie’s mum, a nurse at the hospital. He asked the foreman to take it home, and the stairs stood as a totem propped up against the backyard shed of the Dornan family home. I love that story. The Apollonian surgeon stops the car and gives way to the romantic, putting a cumbersome set of steps in the back of the car and bringing it home. When I heard this as I was painting the wall, some missing piece - of a poem that had been brewing in my mind - fell into place.
The Tennis court and pool at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. (image credit)
I cut my teeth at the Royal Hospital during my undergraduate training, and my first child, Leo, was born there during lockdown. I know the place and its rhythms well. When Leo was born, I wasn’t allowed on the ward for most of the labour due to restrictions, and the prolonged process eventually sent me out to the car park. Sitting alone in the car, I was caught in a strange mix of exhaustion, fear, and excitement, waiting for the phone to ring and call me back to my wife’s side.
On that cold January night, the car’s soporific warmth lulled me into a surreal state where I actually felt as though I were swimming in a pool. When I later heard Jamie talk about the pool at the hospital, something clicked—suddenly, the visceral experience of that night came flooding back, and the poem I’d been struggling to shape just congealed in my mind.
I wrote the poem in a handful of goes, and like anything we produce, didn’t really know what it was about. But with hindsight, as I read it back, it’s a testament to the ordinary as a way to transcend the awful. Throughout the sectarian nonsense of the Troubles, matter-of-fact people like Dr Dornan delivered babies. At the moment the baby came into the world, nobody in the room gave a fuck if their parents were Catholic or Protestant. When you are in these situations of life, death, and rebirth, all the absurdity of your day-to-day concerns come crashing around your head.
We are all, in our private moments (and to differing extents), hopeless romantics. More power to us. This means that every now and again we need to pull over, charm a foreman, and put a set of too-big stairs in the back of the car. It is this combination of common sense and uncommon love that will get you through. Every good man I have ever met has possessed a healthy dose of both. Every man who isn’t has let himself be dominated by one or the other.
I dedicate this poem to all the men and women of the Royal who rolled up their sleeves and got on with it during the darker days. I also dedicate it to my wife, the mother of my children, the love of my life, and to my son Leo, whose birthday it is today, and who is the real subject of this poem. Happy fourth birthday, son. Daddy loves you. Daddy is here to listen. This poem is a drop of my love, which is an ocean.
The Royal
Act 1 - The Pool
A covid baby
So Daddy is banished to the Car Park
At the Royal
Already wrecked, phone on high and placed on chest
Drivers seat goes back to supine
the heater hits it’s bliss point
I’m asleep in seconds.
“There was a pool and tennis court here before - you know,
at the height of the troubles!”
Filled in for car park.
Who told me this? Is it true? It doesn't matter,
in my hypnagogic swagger, I’m in it.
Starfished and gazing up
at a Seventies sky,
Mid-July.
The low thrum of a Lambeg drum
(but far away)
is forgotten.
Adjacent car door clunk,
is cat-gut, forehand thunk
Of decent length.
Dr Dornan applauds opponent’s winner
with heel of palm on strings,
“Too good” he sings
on his way to back fence.
He will think of that moment again
often before his end.
Of Colpo di fulmine.
A slender arm came first
salamander grasp on glistening silver handrail
Then the rest of her
Beautiful. His. Simply no other descriptor.
He changed ends and loved.
The phone buzzes on Xiphisternum,
and I am summoned.
Balled up mask is fished from glove box
Seat snaps into drivers position
Door is opened and
January night - sodden and pissed off impossibly cold,
exhumes the air.
Into the birthing room now
The business end
I want to vomit
a dry boke of the soul will have to do
She needs me and that’s the height of it.
All I ever really needed.
Act 2 - The Bath
The massive bath fills too slow
She’s on all fours
panting.
meniscus kissing belly
I offer valve as hookah between contractions
but the nitrous
no longer touches the sides.
“Baby needs to be born now”
My Australian wife
denuded of sunny inflection
hears the last word for what it is;
an injunction.
The floor falls out of the room
and we are swimming again.
“I cannot do this”
Say eyes, feral and insistent
Oh, but you can sweetheart - and you are”
I have properly lied to her a few times
This is not one of them.
Now molars flex each other
great Polynesian sidings
with Newtonian force.
Some new isle arises
Lush and forgiving
forged from magma rage
called by sea.
It can’t be but it is
bifurcating the strait.
Act 3 - The Baby
And then there is a wee blue hat
knitted by unknown ladies for unknown babies
and he is fat
and by all accounts happy.
“Is he alright?” I say (not knowing what else to say).
“Aye - sure listen to the head on him!”
says the midwife who knew just what to do.
Leo is your name
his face in mine
masks long forgotten
melded and welded
I am in love forever.
Tea and toast is brought
in a stainless steel pot
For the party of 3.
A Belfast Trophy.
And just what the doctor ordered.
With his birth
I realise
That I am not allowed to die.
A king for a day transported away
from all parochial horror
freewheelin’ down vaulted corridors
to the gift shop
Suddenly exhausted again.
The ghosts will meet on the road to Mandalay,
Sink into the bay
Mountbatten and the rest,
To the mothers.
Squat Victoria
A lion at the feet of the Madonna
snakes around painted toes
Orb in hand is hefted to a globe
as a little prince
same same but different.
Let all youse who refuse to understand
crawl through car parks with dicks in hand
Hunting for space. Fluorescent. Empty space.
We the people of the Royal
seek and audience with the queen of queens
for we float at her leisure.
Niall Campbell