Minty pursed his lips. “I heard a doctor say dat once before. When Dermot was born. Orla nearly feckin’ died. She bled after the delivery. The doctor came to me in the waiting room, said he’d packed her womb and that should stop the bleedin’ and we should wait a bit longer. The feck it stopped anything.” He hawked and made as if to spit before he clearly recognised where he was. “They took out her womb, and dat was all right. I’d rather have her alive with a bit missing than feckin’ dead.” He looked Fingal right in the eye. “And dat’s w’at I t’ink about Dermot, sir.”
“I understand,” Fingal said, feeling the worries of the world. “We are doing everything we can.”
“It was God w’at spared Orla back den as much as her operation.” Minty crossed himself.
“And,” said Fingal, “we must pray He’ll heal Dermot and his foot.” The good Lord and an aniline red dye. “Now, I’ll make up the next dose and dress the wound. I think,” he said, “it’s going to be a long day.”
Orla was soon up and dressed and Fingal found himself sharing the water she drew from the courtyard pump for her husband and heated over the fire. The two men used a sliver of soap, and cut-throat razor to shave, but Fingal had declined the offer of a share of the family’s mixture of soot and salt that universally substituted for toothpaste in the Liberties.
While Dermot slept on, Orla had fed them a watery gruel and cups of tea.
Fingal’s belly growled. He’d had nothing to eat since lunch yesterday, except cups of tea, but he didn’t want to leave the patient.
“I’ll just nip over and ask Skylark Brennan to tell dem at Clery’s I’ll not be in today,” Orla said, and left.
Even if it was a Saturday the big department store needed cleaning.
“It’s a feckin’ good t’ing she has regular work,” Minty said. “I’m lucky myself, I’ve a friend, a foreman on the docks, and he’s decent about gettin’ me a job unloading cargo now and again. Ordinarily I’d be out of dis place by now, linin’ up wit’ the rest of my mates to see if there was any oul’ chance today, but—” He inclined his head in the direction of the sleeping area and said no more.
Someone was knocking on the door.
“Who the hell would that be this time of the mornin’?” Minty strode to the door. “It’s yourself, Doctor Corrigan. Good morning to you.”
“And to yerself,” Doctor Corrigan said, “but there’s bugger all good about it. It’s bucketing down.” He pulled off a bowler hat, almost taking his toupee with it, and shook water from the brim.
Fingal rose. “Good morning, Doctor Corrigan.”
Phelim patted his hairpiece into place. “I was out on Swift’s Alley seeing a namesake of yers, a Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly Kilmartin.”
“How is he? I delivered him last April. And how are Roisín and Brendan, and their other son, Declan?” They were all part of his community now.
“The babe is teething, but he’ll be grand. His ma was asking for ye, and his da. Brendan’s still working with another of your ex-patients, a Paddy Keogh, and he’d come round on his motorbike and sidecar to take Brendan off to a hare coursing meet in the Wicklow Mountains. Paddy says hello.”
How the hell, Fingal wondered, did a one-armed man drive a motorbike? Still, he learned soon enough that there wasn’t much Paddy Keogh couldn’t do once he made up his mind to it.
“Do ye know, Doctor O’Reilly, I think half of my practice is yers already?”
“Thank you.” Fingal hesitated then said, “But you didn’t come round here just for that.”
“No. I did not. Yer friend Bob Beresford is a very persistent young man. He tracked me down at home at ten o’clock last night. Asked me on yer behalf if I’d look after emergencies today. Told me why. Told me about the red prontosil.” He cleared his throat and looked Fingal in the eye. “Would ye think it unprofessional if I asked to see yer patient?”
Technically it would be, unless Fingal asked for a second opinion. He hesitated. What if Doctor Corrigan disapproved, told Fingal to get the patient to hospital at once? What was in Dermot’s best interests? Phelim’s advice, that was what. “Mister Finucane, you’d not mind if I asked my senior colleague to consult?”
Minty, who Fingal had noticed had been following every word, nodded. “Sometimes,” he said, “two feckin’ heads are better than one.”
“Thank you.”
“And,” said Minty, “I know how youse medical gentlemen like to have your palavers in private, so I’ll nip across the hall to the Brennans. They’ll make Orla and me a cup of tea. Will you come for us when you’re done?”
“I will,” Fingal said.
He waited until Minty had pulled the blanket-curtain aside, kissed his son’s forehead, and left.
Fingal rapidly told Phelim the history, his physical findings, stressing that the lymphangitis seemed not to be progressing, and waited until the little doctor had finished his examination. He straightened up. “Aye,” Phelim said, “aye.”
Fingal waited. Behind his back he held his left hand in his right, squeezing the fingers in its grasp.
Phelim nodded and said levelly, “It’s a very grave chance ye’re taking, Fingal O’Reilly. The boy might die.”
Fingal tightened his grip. “I know, but if the drug can save the boy’s foot? Let him live a full life?”
“Say that again.”
Fingal frowned. “If the drug can save—”
“That’s what I thought ye said.” Phelim smiled. “If I thought for one minute ye were risking this boy’s life for yer personal glory I’d insist we get him to hospital right now. We’re G.P.s, not research scientists, for God’s sake. It’s not our job to bugger about with untested drugs.” He touched Fingal’s arm. “But ye didn’t say, ‘If I can save,’ you said, ‘If the drug can save.’ Fingal O’Reilly, I admire that. I’m proud of ye. It is only wee Dermot ye’re thinking of.”
Fingal’s hands relaxed. “Thank you.” And Phelim had helped Fingal answer the question he’d asked himself when Minty had asked if Dermot could die.
“So,” said Phelim, “ye carry on. I trust ye’ll do what’s right for the lad, whatever that is, as the case progresses.”
“I will. Thank you.” He crossed his arms and stroked his chin with his right hand.
Phelim clapped Fingal on the shoulder. “So, ye go and get the Finucanes. Explain to them that I concur. I’ll run on and I’ll look after the emergencies until Monday. Neither one of us can tell how long ye’ll be needed here.”
40
Upon the Walls of Thine House
“I don’t believe it. I simply don’t bloody well believe it,” O’Reilly roared as he stood glowering, arms akimbo, in the doorway. What the hell were Kitty and Kinky doing standing on short stepladders in his waiting room? “Holy thundering Mother of—” Control your tongue, O’Reilly, he thought. You’re with ladies, not sailors from the lower deck of HMS Warspite. But by Beëlzebub’s blistering braces, there’s a limit.
It was a Saturday morning and no patients were in the room. Nor was there any furniture, and the floor was covered in old newspapers. He looked down at the newspaper closest to him. It was last Thursday’s, November 11. Ian Smith Declares UDI, the headline screamed. O’Reilly at the time had thought it odd that the man should have chosen Remembrance Day to declare Southern Rhodesia’s independence from Britain. Now there’d been another unilateral decision taken—to redecorate a room in his own house without telling him. Without telling him. Sacrilege. Blasphemy. Was he master in his own home no more? Bloody hell. Calm down, he told himself.
Normally he would take pleasure from seeing Kinky and Kitty so obviously happy collaborating on a project, Kinky not one bit perturbed that Kitty was changing things at Number One. That would be the final indication that any residual feelings of Kinky being threatened by Kitty had vanished. At that moment, however, he felt as if two of the women in his house had ganged up on him. Made an unholy alliance. He made a growling noise in his throat as he watched
, then said, “And Jasus, Kinky Kincaid, I never, never in a month of bloody Sundays thought you’d collaborate in this travesty.”
“Come on, Fingal,” Kitty said with a grin. She pushed on the wide-bladed metal spatula she was using to scrape the rose-covered wallpaper off the wall. His rose-covered wallpaper. “Don’t growl at Kinky. She’s only doing it because I asked you what you thought, didn’t I, Kinky?”
“You did, and I’m sorry, sir, but I agreed and…”
“All right,” O’Reilly said. “I hear you.”
“And it’s not as if you and I haven’t discussed it,” Kitty said. A long curl of paper rolled up ahead of her scraper then tore free and floated down.
He stared down at the strip, lying lifeless on the ground. “Discussed it? When?”
Kitty started working on another strip. “Back in August, not long after our honeymoon, I said I thought the roses were gaudy, but told you there was no accounting for taste and I’d let the hare sit—for a while. Then I brought it up a second time.”
He frowned and tried to remember. “When?”
“The day Colin Brown cut his foot. I recall you telling me a bit of penicillin would soon put him right.”
O’Reilly’s frown deepened. “I remember Colin’s foot.” Aye, he thought, and I recall how it had made me think of a lad called Dermot Finucane too, and that, here and now, made O’Reilly realise that maybe there were more important things in life than a change of ancient wallpaper. And there might be a glimmer of hope. Maybe Kitty had bought new roses to replace these old ones?
The next strip whispered as it drifted to the newspaper-covered floor. The paper had been hung on a wall that had previously been painted a bright green.
“But I don’t have any recollection of saying you could redecorate. Not then, anyhow.”
Kitty stopped scraping and shook her head. Her hair was done up under a headscarf, and despite his irritation O’Reilly couldn’t help but notice that even wearing khaki dungarees she managed to look attractive.
“Now, don’t get into a tizzy, dear. You were there when Helen Hewitt helped me—us—choose the new paper. The week before Bertie Bishop’s coronary I brought home a sample book. We both liked the light turquoise one with the pinstripe.”
“Both liked.” Did she mean Kitty and Helen or Kitty and O’Reilly? He knew he’d not remarked on it.
“And when I said, ‘Those roses have to go,’ you didn’t object.”
Aha. Kitty was invoking “implied consent,” the doctrine that said if a doctor suggested treatment and the patient did not refuse it was all right to assume that they agreed and go ahead.
She turned back and assaulted the wall again. “By the way, I forgot to mention to you when I got home last night—you were so keen to tell me about the prospects for the Irish Rugby International side for next season—”
He smiled when he realised that she was putting up a smokescreen, giving him time to settle down.
“—but Cromie’s Mister Braidwood has called to say the management committee have approved his request and that there will be a job for Helen as a ward orderly at Newtownards Hospital in the summer. You’ll need to speak to her about it.”
“Wonderful,” O’Reilly said, and his smile broadened. “And I do remember you actually saying, ‘Those God-awful roses have to go,’ but I don’t seem to recall agreeing with you.”
She smiled at him as a mother might whose ten-year-old has come second in the egg-and-spoon race. “Well, you didn’t exactly, but I knew you’d approve.” She blew him a kiss.
Game, set, and match to Kitty O’Hallorhan O’Reilly. Either he could give in graciously to the inevitable or start a row. And how could he possibly fight with Kitty or glue the already removed strips back on the wall? Sometimes discretion was the better part of valour. And perhaps—an idea was beginning to crystallise—there might be a way to salvage something after all. The fact that the wall had been previously painted would be a great help. He grinned, took off his jacket, and set it on a chair in the hall. “Did I ever tell you about the night Linfield, the Blues, were playing at Windsor Park against Glentoran and leading two to nil when the floodlights failed? Absolute bedlam. Then a wee man, Jimmy Dalzell from Finaghy, gets ahold of the microphone. ‘On the count of th’ee I want everyone of youse til start clapping, so I do,’ he roars. Crowd thought yer man had lost his marleys.” O’Reilly’s accent was now broad Belfast. “They must have decided to humour wee Jimmy. ‘One, two, th’ee.’ And away they went clapping like billyoh, and begod didn’t the floodlights come straight on?” O’Reilly reverted to his normal speech. “Because,” he paused for effect, “many hands make light work.”
“Many hands make—? Fingal, that’s terrible.” Kitty said, but she was chuckling.
Kinky was doubled over. “The humour of the wee north,” she said, “it would make a cat laugh, so.”
“And I do mean it,” O’Reilly said, rolling up his sleeves. “Have you ladies another stripper and I’ll give you a hand?” He fell to work with brio, all the while accompanying himself by singing,
’Tis the last rose of summer left blooming all alone
All her lovely companions, are faded and gone …
“Ah,” Kinky, said, “’Tis powerful voice you are in today, sir, and seeing yourself is in good form I would like to ask you a shmall-little favour, so.”
“Fire away.”
“It would please me greatly if you and—Kitty—” Kinky smiled at her friend and O’Reilly thought back a few months to when Kinky had struggled over the proper form of address for her employer’s new wife. “When we have the old stuff off, if you would both join me in my kitchen for tea and hot buttered barmbrack, for I do think it will be about elevenses time and I’ve a matter I’d like to discuss, so, before we start hanging the new paper.”
And O’Reilly wondered if the fact that Archie Auchinleck had stayed at least an hour longer than usual in Kinky’s quarters yesterday evening could have anything to do with the “matter.” He could wait to find out, and bent to the task in hand.
* * *
“Hanging the new paper, Kinky? I think,” said O’Reilly, putting a hand into the small of his back, “that if you two ladies feel half as stiff as I do we may need to come up with a different tactic for doing that.” He’d had plenty of time to refine his salvage plan and now, before Kinky started her “discussion,” was the time to set the wheels in motion.
“At least the stripping job’s done,” Kinky said, climbing down from her stepladder into a sea of strips of tattered paper roses. “And in a minute you can rest your back, sir.”
Kitty brushed away stray wisps of hair that had escaped from under her headscarf with the back of her hand. “That tea and barmbrack you promised sounds wonderful, Kinky. I could certainly use a breather.”
“Come along then.” Kinky led them to her kitchen, which as usual was redolent of something wonderful cooking. “I did think that I’d make a nice Dublin coddle for dinner,” she said, “and although some recipes use water I prefer to make my own stock, so.”
O’Reilly relished the thought of the bacon, sausage, potato, and onion dish that would be coming later and said, “I can hardly wait, but let’s get the kettle on now.”
“Doctor O’Reilly, Kitty, will you both please take a chair?”
They did, and watched as Kinky fussed round boiling the kettle, preparing the teapot. She sliced the freshly made circular barmbrack horizontally and popped it under the grill.
O’Reilly said, “I suspect you two were going to hang the new paper today so the waiting room will be ready for Monday.”
“That’s right, dear,” Kitty said.
“I think not,” O’Reilly said. “I have plans to take you to Belfast, Kitty. There’s a Renoir exhibition on at the Ulster Museum Art Gallery I know you’d love.”
“But—”
“And it would hardly be fair to expect Kinky to do the job all by herself.”
Kinky had remov
ed the dark barmbrack from under the grill. She spread butter on the lower slice, replaced the upper half, and cut the loaf into pie-shaped wedges. “It would not be all by myself,” Kinky said, “Archie”—O’Reilly noticed how her voice softened—“would be pleased to help me, if that’s what you’d like.”
“Bless you, Kinky,” O’Reilly said, accepting a cup of tea and a plate with two slices of the warm loaf, “but I’ve a much better idea. When we’ve finished our elevenses and you’ve told us what you want to, I’ll nip out to Dun Bwee. Donal Donnelly’s always on the lookout for odd jobs, you know, especially now with little Tori on the scene. And he’s a damn fine paper-hanger…” Fine decorator of Halloween windows too, O’Reilly thought, “so if you have the rolls of the paper you want ready, Kitty, and the tools…”
“I have.”
“All we have to do is let Donal loose. If he’s left in peace the job’ll be done by the time we get home for dinner.” He bit into his first slice of ’brack, savouring its yeasty flavour and the sweetness of the dried fruit. Of course Donal could be easily persuaded to make some minor modifications, but he would need the privacy to do so.
Kitty sipped her tea. “Wellll,” she said, “I’d certainly like to see the Renoirs, and I’m sure Kinky could find better things to do.”
“I can.”
“Consider it arranged, then,” O’Reilly said, “and even if Donal’s not available today I’m sure he could do the job tomorrow.” He finished his first slice in one enormous bite, then said, “Now, Kinky, there was something you wanted to talk to us about?”
41
Exulting on Triumphant Wings
“Neither one of us knows how long you’ll be needed here.” Phelim Corrigan had spoken the truth. The whole day had gone by and all Fingal had been able to do was keep giving Dermot lots of water, examine him from time to time, and administer his four-hourly doses. The boy had slept.