An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (6 page)

“Shall we walk to the light and cross there?” Charlie said, eyeing the busy road.

“Och, come on, Charlie. We're not so old that we can't get across Nassau Street without a light. I'll race you.” O'Reilly led off, dodging between the bikes and motorcars. On the other side he said, “Just as busy as when we were students, and just as many bikes.”

“Aye,” said Charlie, puffing, “but I've only seen a couple of horse-drawn drays since we've been down here for the hooley. Guinness still use a few.”

“Aye,” said O'Reilly, wondering what might have happened to one of his old patients, Lorcan O'Lunney, who had made his living pulling a handcart. “And not a tugger in sight.”

“Never mind tuggers, or the rag-and-bone men like Harry Sime they worked for in the Liberties and on the Northside. There's hardly a tenement left standing since our days, Fingal,” Charlie said as they turned right into Duke Street. “The Dublin City Council have done quite a job of slum clearance.”

“It was a great interest of my ma's, God bless her. She knew they were terrible sources of disease—TB, cholera, scabies, fleas,” said O'Reilly, having to stop himself from reflexively scratching in memory of the times he'd picked up some of the little devils. “But I heard it broke the hearts of a lot of tenement dwellers when the old neighbourhoods were scattered to the new housing. People, friends for years, and even families lost touch.” O'Reilly smiled. “I did enjoy working there, you know, way back when.” And, he thought, they were good people, folks like one-armed Sergeant Paddy Keogh; John-Joe Finnegan, a cooper with a Pott's fracture; and a little boy with an infected foot, Dermot Finucane. He could picture each one, and wondered what had happened to them. Where were they today?

“Change does happen,” Charlie said, holding open the door on the right side of the narrow front of Davy Byrnes Pub, “but this place? None of your ‘All changed, changed utterly…'”

“Yeats,” O'Reilly said, “‘Easter 1916.'”

Charlie guffawed. “Same old Fingal. Walking bloody encyclopaedia, but what I'm trying to say—” They went into the pub. “—nothing ever seems to be any different in here. I like that.”

“Me too,” said O'Reilly, taking in the atmosphere.

It was still the same long, narrow room of their student days, with tables to one side, mostly occupied. He could see Kitty at one near the back of the room, waving at him. He waved back. He and Charlie were approaching a marble-topped bar with a brass rail beneath, running the length of the dimly lit room with its familiar smell of beer and tobacco smoke. The muted hum of conversation filled the air. O'Reilly noticed that no longer were there any brass spittoons. Shortly after the war, all over Britain and Ireland, a massive public health campaign had helped control the spread of tuberculosis by, among other things, stopping people spitting in public. That had been a change for the better.

A middle-aged, rotund, double-chinned man in an apron was standing behind the bar. He stopped drying a straight glass as his eyes widened, and he said in a loud voice, a grin splitting his open face, “Holy Mary Mother of God and all the saints, stop the lights. Stop the feckin' lights and stall the ball there. Look what the cat's dragged in. Charlie Greer and Fingal Flahertie O'-feckin'-Reilly.”

As the barman lifted the horizontal flap and came round the bar, hand outstretched, O'Reilly saw heads turning in their direction, sensed the unspoken questions.

“Jasus, lads, Jasus Murphy, lads, me oul' segotias, it's feckin' lovely to see youse both. Absolutely gameball.”

“Terrific to see you too, Diarmud.” O'Reilly shook the proffered hand and said, “It's been a while. How the hell are you?”

“I'm grand…” He shook Charlie's hand. “Grand altogether and all the better for seeing you two oul' bowsies.”

A voice from behind O'Reilly said, “Can your estate sue if you die of thirst in a pub?”

“Arra be wheest, Kevin Haughey, you bollix. Isn't your pint on the pour behind the bar? Christ, you've been coming in here for ten years. Do you not t'ink I know your feckin' habits by now?”

“Sorry, Diarmud.” The voice sounded contrite.

Diarmud, who, as O'Reilly well remembered, was another member of the
always keep the upper hand
school, went on, “And aren't these two men that used to be students here t'irty odd years ago, now great learnèd medical men up in the Wee North, and haven't I not seen them since they were down here in '64 to see Ireland play Scotland at the rugby…”

“We lost six to three, remember?” O'Reilly said sotto voce to Charlie, who nodded.

“And haven't I the feckin' right to greet my old friends?”

“You have, Diarmud,” Charlie said. “It's been a while and it's very good to see you. What have you been up to?”

“For starters, as you can see, I'm still on this side of the feckin' grass and I'm still bar manager here. Have been for the last ten years. Seems like a donkey's age since I started workin' here as a bar porter in 1930. I always remember because it was the year the R-101 airship crashed in France.”

O'Reilly shook his head. It was as if he and Charlie had come in for a jar straight from Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in 1936. There was a great feeling of coming home. The place, the cadence and expressions of the Dublin man's speech, and the familiarity of Diarmud, who had grown up with them. And O'Reilly liked it. He liked it very much.

“But if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, that Kevin Haughey's as thick as pig shite and he has a great lip for the stout,” Diarmud said, not bothering to lower his voice.

“I heard that, Diarmud. I'm not feckin' deaf, you know.”

“Nah, you're only a buck eejit, Kevin.” The barman grinned like an impish child, and O'Reilly had heard the affection hidden in the apparent insult. “I'd better get him his pint. I'll maybe get a chance for a bit of
craic
with youse later, Docs.”

“Away you go,” said O'Reilly, “and when you've a minute…”

“Two pints,” Diarmud said. “Kevin's not the only customer that I know what they drink … and the first two'll be on me. I'll bring menus when I bring your pints and—” Diarmud stopped. “Kitty O'Hallorhan. That's who it is sitting with that other nice lady at the back. I knew she looked familiar. I reckon Kitty's wit' you, Fingal? Just like she was the night you all came in here after you'd passed your final exams. And I tell you, she was a fine bit of stuff back then—and she hasn't changed a bit. Not one bit.” And with that he winked and left.

“Regular rock of ages, our Diarmud,” O'Reilly said. “You could never be offended by that man. He's got a heart of corn.” He looked down the room and said, “Come on, let's join the girls.”

As O'Reilly parked himself between Kitty and Pixie Greer, he said, “Afternoon, ladies. I see you have drinks.”

“We're both having a nice white Bordeaux,” Kitty said.

Charlie sat at the opposite side of the table and simply grinned.

“We've had a lovely time,” Kitty said, “haven't we, Pixie?”

“We have indeed,” said Pixie, a slight, fair-haired woman of medium height whose sharp retroussé nose and laughing green eyes had probably been the source of her nickname. “Kitty knows a great deal about painting and she was able to tell me all kinds of things. You really brought the exhibition alive.”

Kitty smiled and lowered her head. “I'd glad you enjoyed it.”

“The exhibition was to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising,” Pixie said. “There were two paintings that I really liked,
Kilmainham Jail
by Maurice MacGonigal and
Go Lovely Rose
by John Keating. Kitty says his best painting is called
Men of the South
and is in a gallery in Cork.”

“She knows her Irish artists,” O'Reilly said, “and she's a dab hand with a brush and a palette knife too.” O'Reilly was rewarded with a smile from Kitty. “She's exhibited at the RHA, but I'll bet she didn't tell you that.” Kitty had always been one for hiding her light under a bushel, and while he wanted everyone to know what a talented woman she was, he also loved her modesty.

“I didn't know that,” Pixie said, and there was admiration in her voice.

“Fingal,” Kitty said, and shook her head. “You're embarrassing me.”

A discreet cough announced Diarmud's arrival.

“Pints,” he announced, “and menus.” He set the glasses in front of the men and handed the menus around. “It's not changed much since you was here last, gents,” he said.

“Lovely,” O'Reilly said. “I'm so hungry I could … come on, Diarmud, tell us what a real Jackeen would say.”

Diarmud hesitated and looked at Pixie and Kitty.

“It's all right, Diarmud, the ladies are broad-minded.”

Diarmud shrugged and said, “Take your pick from ‘I'm so hungry I could eat an oul' one's, ahem, derrière through a blackthorn bush,' or the same bit of the anatomy of a farmer through a tennis racquet.”

Everyone laughed.

“I'll be back for your orders.” Diarmud left.

“Sláinte,”
said O'Reilly, and took a drink from his pint.

“Cheers.” Everyone else raised their glasses.

“Mother's milk,” he said, wiping the white froth from his upper lip. “There's no Guinness in the world, not even ones poured up north, to compare with a well-pulled Dublin pint. Mind you, it only cost ten pence in 1931.”

“Fingal,” said Kitty, and he heard a serious tone to her voice. “May I ask you a favour?”

“Anything.”

“You probably didn't notice when you came in, but Doctor Fitzpatrick's here. He's sitting all by himself and he looks forlorn. He's over there to your right, but don't look now.”

“Serves the gobsh—” The way Kitty frowned and slitted her eyes cut O'Reilly off short.

“He was in your year. And he practises in the Kinnegar, very near us.”

“And you think we should ask him to join us?”

“Wellllll…” She inclined her head.

When Kitty had that tone in her voice, O'Reilly would have handed her his heart on a silver platter—and asked if she'd like salt and pepper with it.

“All right,” he said. “I'll go and invite him, if that's all right with everyone else…?”

“Go ahead,” said Pixie and Charlie together.

“But if Diarmud comes back I'd like steak and kidney and chips.” O'Reilly rose, glanced right, and saw the man. He had a book in one hand, his pince-nez on the tip of his nose and a small sherry on his table for two.

O'Reilly walked over to the table. “Hello, Ronald,” he said. He knew the man hated to be called by his second name, Hercules, which, considering his aesthenic build, was rather overstating the case.

“O'Reilly?” By the way he was frowning it seemed as if the man were perplexed.

“We saw you were all alone and wondered if you'd care to join us?” O'Reilly noticed that the book was a well-thumbed
How to Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie.

“Gosh,” said Fitzpatrick, picking up the book quickly and tucking it into the side pocket of his blazer. He whipped off his pince-nez and looked up at O'Reilly. “Golly. That would be quite lovely.” His weak pale eyes looked down and then up again when he said in a whisper, “I was feeling a bit, well, a bit—”

O'Reilly sensed the next word was going to be “lonely” and that the man was having trouble spitting it out. So he forestalled him by saying, “Come on then, and bring your drink.”

*   *   *

“That hit the spot,” O'Reilly said, looking wistfully at his now empty plate, save for a few flakes of pastry and streaks of gravy. The steak and kidney, which had been made with a pastry shell instead of a ceramic pie dish, was very nearly up to the standard of his housekeeper's. The cooking of Kinky Auchinleck, who had been Kinkaid, was the yardstick by which he measured every other chef.

“I think,” said Kitty, “it's a good thing it wasn't a Willow pattern plate. You'd have scoffed the weeping willows and pagodas too.”

Everyone laughed. And he knew it was because she and Fitzpatrick had been discussing matters Oriental that she had come up with that image. “Would anybody like tea? Coffee? Dessert?”

“Tea would be nice,” Fitzpatrick said. “If that's all right?”

Charlie and the two women nodded.

“I'll go and ask for a pot and five cups,” Charlie said, rose, and headed for the bar.

O'Reilly sat back contentedly and looked at the little company. Perhaps the book Ronald Hercules Fitzpatrick had been studying had influenced its reader. He had been quite reasonable company, and Kitty had played and was still playing a superb part in drawing the man out. When she'd asked, “And do you have any hobbies, Ronald?”—titles having been dispensed with very early in the meal—he had blushed and said, “I collect
netsuke
.”

O'Reilly had no idea what Fitzpatrick was talking about. He had a recollection of the P. G. Wodehouse character Gussie Fink-Nottle, whose hobby was collecting newts. O'Reilly was choking back a laugh at the resemblance between Ronald and Gussie and wondering if
netsuke
was also some kind of amphibian, when Kitty said, “Which do you prefer,
katabori
or
men-netsuke
?”

“I have a collection of
anabori
and
obihasami, katabori.
” To which O'Reilly had to ask, “I had two—but the wheels fell off. Do you know what these two are blethering on about, Pixie?”

She shook her head.

“Please explain, Ronald,” Kitty said.

Deftly done, O'Reilly thought.