Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor (13 page)

He nodded to a well-dressed couple coming in the opposite direction, silently thanking Kitty for brushing aside his assertions that in a country town like Ballymena his shooting gear would do rightly. She’d ever so tactfully insisted that he bring a jacket, shirt, tie, pants, and dress boots. He would have been horribly out of place here if he hadn’t listened to her. They’d changed in a secluded spot where the road from Loughareena passed through Glenariff (Glen of the arable land) Forest Park, laughing like guilty teenagers when an unexpected farm lorry had appeared and a half-dressed Kitty had had to hide behind a tree until the vehicle passed.

Beside a pair of doors, a polished brass sign read
LOUNGE BAR
. Dinner guests, while consulting the menu, usually had their pre-prandial drinks in the bar. He made a small bow, opened one door, and said, “Madam?” As she passed him, he marvelled at how, by exchanging her waterproof jacket for a well-cut tweed one, removing her silk headscarf and arranging it around her neck, and substituting sheer nylons and high heels for her woollen stockings and brogues, Kitty had transformed herself from an outdoors woman to this elegant creature.

“You’re looking lovely,” he said quietly.

“Thank you.”

Muted conversations came from several occupied tables. He spotted Barry and Sue sitting on a sofa, facing two armchairs. The furniture was grouped round a massive stone fireplace large enough for a lord of the manor to roast a stag. Although laid, the fire had not been lit. How cosy, O’Reilly thought, it would make this room on a winter’s night.

Barry, who, O’Reilly noted with pleasure, was holding Sue’s hand, must have spotted them because he let go of it and started to rise as was proper for a gentleman when a lady joined the company. O’Reilly, who couldn’t ignore more than thirty years’ training and experience observing people, was concerned to notice dark circles under Barry’s eyes.

“Please sit down, Barry,” Kitty said, and took her place on the sofa, crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt.

Once the introductory pleasantries were concluded, O’Reilly said, “I see you two have drinks and menus. Kitty, what’ll it be?”

Her answer of “Gin and tonic, please” coincided with the arrival of a dinner-suited waiter who, with a small bow, offered O’Reilly two leather-bound menus and the wine list.

“Are your pints in good order?” O’Reilly asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Pint and a G and T for the lady.”

“Certainly, sir.” He left.

“Now,” O’Reilly said, sitting beside Kitty and giving her the
carte des vins,
“you pick the wine, please, and before we go any further, Barry, Sue, tonight’s our treat—”

“But—” was as far as O’Reilly let Barry go before fixing the young man with his “quell a mutiny” gaze. “Ours.”

“Thank you, Fingal,” Barry said.

“Very much,” Sue said, and she lifted her copper plait from behind her back and rearranged it to fall over one shoulder of her bottle-green mini-dress. Despite himself, O’Reilly couldn’t stop making a quick comparison, and in his unbiased opinion Kitty had better legs. He rubbed his own calf and hoped hers weren’t aching as much after all that earlier scrambling over the grouse moor.

“So how’re things at—”

“How was Rhodes—?” Barry said, having started to speak at the same time as O’Reilly.

All four laughed. “Right,” said O’Reilly, “Kitty and I had a wonderful time in the Med.” He smiled at her. “I didn’t know she could swim like a fish, and,” he spoke to Barry and Sue, “if it wasn’t for Kitty, bless her, I’d have starved before I could work out which Greek dishes were half-edible. I simply cannot get excited about vine leaves or feta cheese.”

“Can’t you imagine him, Barry?” Kitty knotted her brows, scowled, and said gruffly in her deepest voice, “What the hell do you mean I can’t have a Guinness and you’ve no John Jameson? Jasus Murphy. Cradle of civilization, my”—She dropped her voice so it wouldn’t carry. —“cradle of civilization, my arse.”

Sue laughed. It was a melodious sound. “Oh dear,” she said between chuckles. “Oh dear.”

Barry glanced at O’Reilly, then started to laugh too. “I seem to remember you, Fingal, saying something about not poking alligators in the eye with blunt sticks. Seems to me, Kitty, not having a decent pint or a half-un available would have the same effect.”

She sucked in her cheeks and nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“But have you ever tried that God-awful retsina? And ouzo?” O’Reilly feigned gruffness. “Like drinking bloody tar.”

“Do you drink tar often, Fingal?” Kitty asked in her most innocent voice. “I didn’t know that. I do know you can be a fire-eater sometimes.”

O’Reilly was pleased to see how Sue’s hand had crept back into Barry’s. “Wait ’til I get you home, Mrs. O’Reilly.” Dear God, he thought, Kitty did make him laugh, and he loved her for it.

“Excuse me, sir, your drinks.” The waiter had reappeared.

“Thank you,” O’Reilly said. “We just need a little longer.”

“Sir.”

“
Sláinte,
” O’Reilly said, and took a deep pull on his Guinness. Kitty could say what she liked. This stuff beat retsina into a cocked hat.

“Anyway,” Kitty said, sipping her gin and tonic, “apart from some culinary difficulties—and come on, Fingal, you took a real shine to calamari and
tiramisu
—we’ve had a wonderful honeymoon.”

And for a moment, Fingal O’Reilly could picture himself standing, holding her hand, and dropping a kiss on her lips as a full moon shyly slipped from a burnished silver sea and rose over the acropolis at Lindos. The moon had seemed particularly bright that night, dimming the stars that had burned and danced like fireflies on a polished ebony sky.

He knew he was grinning and didn’t care. “We did,” he said. “Wonderful, but it’s back to porridge now. The weary walking wounded of Ballybucklebo still need attention.” He looked at Barry. “Young Jenny is doing extremely well.” Let’s see if Barry rises to that. “But I want to know, even if it has only been six weeks, how are you enjoying obstetrics?”

Barry yawned and covered his mouth with his hand. “Very much,” he said, “and I’m not complaining, but I’m on call every other night. It can be a bit hectic—but very satisfying.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” O’Reilly said. And he was. Primarily for Barry’s sake, much as O’Reilly would like to have him back. But perhaps too, there might be no need to have to disappoint Jenny Bradley if she did work out as a potential partner and wanted to stay. Time would tell.

He became aware that Kitty and Sue were pursuing their own line of conversation. “You know,” he said to Barry, “I flirted with specialising and spent time as a junior at the Rotunda in Dublin in 1937. Doesn’t seem so very long ago. I really enjoyed obstetrics but—”

Barry lowered his voice. “You weren’t so excited about gynaecology?”

It was O’Reilly’s turn to nod as Barry said, “The difficult cases are interesting, very interesting, and I’m starting to learn surgery—and I like that—but the outpatient clinics are a bit—a bit dull.”

O’Reilly understood. The routine complaints, although critical to each woman, were not medically very challenging, and worse, as far as he was concerned, you never got to know your patients as people, hardly ever. “Painful periods? Discharges? Itches? Contraceptive advice for Protestants?”

“Fingal, it’s 1965,” Barry said. “A lot of Catholic women are ignoring their priests. They’re too shy to go to their G.P.s, it’s a sensitive subject, but they come to our outpatient clinics asking for help. Ulster is part of the United Kingdom. It’s not like the Republic.”

O’Reilly sighed. “I know. I saw them in the Liberties in Dublin, fourteen to a room, the married women dropping babies once a year like farrowing sows. Poor creatures.” He shuddered. “You keep up the good work.” He swallowed a mouthful of Guinness.

“I will.” Barry leant forward. “And never mind my work, how are things in Ballybucklebo?”

So he hadn’t lost interest in the place. O’Reilly laughed. “A patient from the village even followed me to the grouse moor today.” He explained about Bertie’s apian attack. “He was lucky enough to get away with only about a dozen stings. I got the stingers out of him in no time. Bit of blue bag, a few aspirin, and, fair play to Bertie, he reckoned he could carry on. Most of the stings had worn off by the end of the shoot.”

“If he had arthritis, it might even have been a good thing,” Barry said. “The rheumatologists still use beestings for pain relief.”

“True.” O’Reilly pursed his lips. “I could kick myself for letting an opportunity go for teaching Bertie an object lesson, though. Earlier he’d been less than flattering about female doctors. I’m sure he’d have been delighted to know that male bees don’t have stingers and that every one that nailed him today was a worker bee—a female.”

“Pity you missed the chance. I’d love to have seen the look on his face,” Barry said. “I miss Ballybucklebo, you know, even our having to interfere with Bertie’s schemes.” He looked down then, back at O’Reilly. “And what about the other folks there?”

“Kinky sends her love. She and Archie Auchinleck are becoming an item. Sometimes I wonder if I might lose her.”

“Good God. I hope not,” Barry said. “She’s as much a fixture at Number One and in the village as you are, Fingal.”

“You, young man, make me sound like my rolltop desk. Fixture indeed.”

“I’d have thought it’s a pretty comfortable feeling, being well known and respected. Knowing everyone.”

And are you missing it, Barry? O’Reilly wondered. “You’re right,” he said. “And you know Donal and Julie had a wee girl? She’s thriving. Donal’s up to no good with a greyhound, and he’s roped young Colin Brown in to help. That pup you got him is growing like a marrow in August. And Aggie Arbuthnot’s getting on well in her new job as a stitcher.” He patted Barry’s knee. “You left your mark, Barry.”

There was something wistful when Barry said, “I know.”

O’Reilly carried on. “Helen Hewitt’s bursting at the seams ready to start her studies in September…”

“And how are the folks in the Duck? Willie and Mary and Helen’s dad and…?”

“No idea.” O’Reilly shook his head. “The public bar’s men only so I haven’t been in since we got back. Some night when Kitty’s out with her friends I’ll nip over. I’ve been missing the
craic
there.”

“I do too. Tell you what,” Barry said. “I’m still racing yachts and Sue’s switched allegiance. She’s crewing with us now.”

O’Reilly saw how their eyes met and Barry squeezed Sue’s hand.

“Next time we’re at Ballyholme why don’t we pop in at Number One? You and I could—”

“Nip across for a quick pint? Brilliant.”

“Is sir ready to order?” The waiter had reappeared.

“I’m sorry,” O’Reilly said, “but,” he took another pull on his stout, “Doctor Laverty and I could use another. Ladies?”

“I’m fine,” Kitty said.

“Thank you, no.” Sue shook her head.

“And we’ll be ready to order the minute you come back.”

“There’s no rush, sir. The kitchen’s not too busy tonight.” The waiter left.

“Not like a chef, do you remember, Kitty, in a restaurant on O’Connell Street who was in a rush and according to our waitress thought he was a philosopher?”

“I’ll never forget what the lass said, ‘He’s about as deep as a frying pan—and twice as thick.’”

Everyone laughed.

“Och,” said O’Reilly, “that was back in Dublin City, dear old Dirty Dublin on the banks of the Liffey. Sometimes it seemed like everyone in Dublin had a way with words. I think it was Brendan Behan who said, ‘James Joyce made of this river the Ganges of the literary world.’”

12

Any Man’s Death Diminishes Me

The Liffey at low tide on July 17, 1936, stank as badly, Fingal reckoned, as the Ganges must. He’d experienced the noisome Hoogli, one of the distributaries of the great Indian river, when his freighter had called at Calcutta back in 1928.

Here in Dublin, the light summer northeasterly wafted the whiff of drying mud flats through the open windows of the Aungier Street Dispensary.

He and Charlie were into their second week as dispensary doctors. Charlie was out making calls, Phelim Corrigan was working next door, and at almost one o’clock the waiting room was practically empty.

Fingal could see one man sitting there. His arm was in a sling, his index finger was strapped with adhesive tape to his middle finger, and they stuck out past the sling’s end. His head was swathed in bandages. Phelim must have patched him up, and Fingal wondered, only for a moment, why the man hadn’t gone home.

A woman in a shawl had a grubby boy by the hand. She stood. “I’m next,” she said.

Fingal took the pair into his surgery. It was the work of moments to determine that both mother and child had scabies; the symptoms of constant burning itching and the dark lines under the skin creases between the fingers where the itch mites had burrowed were diagnostic. The couple were the eighth, or was it the tenth case this week? He’d lost count.

“The pair of you have scabies, mother,” he said.

“And me udder four chisslers, too. Can you fix us?”

“Your best bet is to take the whole family to the Iveagh Public Baths where the sulphur in the water will kill the mites,” he said, “and if you can wash all your bedclothes with boiling water, and not let your family share towels, combs, or brushes.” He sighed. For all the likelihood she’d be able to comply, he reckoned he might as well advise her to walk across the surface of the Liffey for good measure, but she surprised him.

“I’ll see to it,” she said. “Believe it, sir, I feckin’ well will.”

Fingal was impressed with her determination.

“T’anks very much, sir. Come on, Donnacha.”

As Fingal followed them into the hall, Phelim’s surgery door opened and a patient came out. Beneath his greasy duncher a bandage held a patch over one eye, a bruise extended down over his cheekbone, and a sticking plaster on his cheek probably covered sutures.

He ignored Fingal, went into the waiting room, and growled at the man there, the only one there, “Come on, Joseph Mary Callaghan, you great bowsie, let’s get the feck out of here. I’ve enough to buy us a couple of jars.”