A Dublin Student Doctor

  Fingal thought Hilda was going to tear a strip off Fitzpatrick, but a commotion at the end of the ward attracted everyone’s attention.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” a deep voice boomed.

  That was Fingal’s cue. He lifted the arm, spun the windup crank, removed the record and replaced it with Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians’ “Winter Wonderland.”

  —In the lane snow is glistening—

  “Ho, ho, ho.” A red-suited, white-bearded Santa Claus bounded along the ward. If his red hair hadn’t been sticking out from under his white cotton-wool-trimmed hat Fingal wouldn’t have recognised Charlie Greer. He made a beeline for Sister Daly, stood in front of her, and from behind his back produced a sprig of mistletoe. He held it above Sister’s head.

  “Merry Christmas, Sister,” Santa yelled.

  Every eye was on the couple.

  Fingal stole a glance at Doctor Micks. The ordinarily reserved senior physician was smiling broadly and when Santa bent and planted a wet kiss on her forehead, Doctor Micks burst into laughter and began applauding. Soon everyone was joining in.

  —gone away is the bluebird—

  Sister Daly blushed to match Santa’s coat, but said, “It does be the festive season, Mister—”

  Fingal was sure she was going to say “Greer,” and perhaps demand retribution, but she continued, “—Claus, so little liberties are permitted, so.” She returned the kiss quite forcibly, it appeared to Fingal. The applause deafened him.

  “But,” Sister continued, as Santa tried to hug her, “only shmall little ones. You students—keep away from my nurses.” And yet, Fingal thought, as he watched Sister’s gaze flit from Kitty to himself, there was a kindness in the Cork woman’s eyes. She spoke to Charlie. “Go you now and have a sherry and give Doctor Micks’s helpers a hand with the presents.”

  Charlie joined the group at the tree and grabbed a handful of gifts.

  “Well done, Charlie,” Fingal said quietly.

  “Begod,” said Charlie, “that sister is a ferocious kisser. I wonder what she gets up to on her nights off?”

  Fingal laughed, ignored the question, and whispered, “Give me the mistletoe.”

  He’d accepted the sprig when he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned.

  Bob Beresford smiled and proffered a gift. “It’s for your sergeant pal in bed 65. I thought you’d like to deliver it.”

  “Thanks, Bob.” Fingal wondered what it was about Bob Beresford that intrigued him so. He made a point of seeming not to care and yet he was considerate, looked after his patients well, and had a quick mind. Surely he didn’t keep failing simply to hang on to his inheritance? That conversation they’d had in Neary’s about public health and research would be worth following up.

  Fingal took the gift, picked up the remaining few that were left on the table, and went to distribute them. When he passed Kitty he showed her the mistletoe, inclined his head toward the sluice, and grinned.

  He kept Paddy’s gift for last. “Merry Christmas, Sergeant Paddy,” he said, and handed over the parcel. “Glad you’re looking well.”

  The neat moustache went up as Paddy Keogh grinned and said, “T’anks, sir. T’anks a whole lot for the present and even more because I’m well because of you and your feckin’ great skewer. Jasus, I t’ought the first time I seed it, it was a French bayonet.”

  “Och, sure it’s only my job,” Fingal said, but he smiled. “Thank you too, Paddy. I’ve done another pleural tap since.” But I learned on you, he thought.

  “Ah well, fair play to you, sir. Merry Christmas.” Paddy pointed across the ward. “Jasus, Mary, and Joseph, would youse look at dat?” His eyes were wide.

  The kitchen staff were setting steaming platters on the table. Roast stuffed turkeys surrounded by roast potatoes and chipolata sausages. Hams, their skin studded with cloves, gave off tantalising scents. Tureens of carrots jostled with dishes of brussels sprouts and more dishes of mashed potatoes. There were sauceboats of gravy, bread sauce, cranberry sauce. From where he stood the aromas made Fingal’s mouth water.

  “Mother of God,” Paddy said, his eyes even wider. “I’ve niver seen the likes in me whole feckin’ life. Is it the five t’ousand you’re for feeding?” He shook his head and his smile vanished. “Here I am in dis place wit’ all you learnèd folks waiting on us hand and foot and serving us a feast. I’ll tell you, Mister O’Reilly, sir, it beats the bread and dripping pieces my two sisters and brother’ll be having in our wee room.”

  Three people in one room with nothing for Christmas but bread spread with bacon grease. Fingal felt a prickling behind his eyelids.

  “Mind you, we’ve a lot more space dan we had a couple of years back. Two of me sisters got married and left…” The man’s voice trailed off and Fingal waited. “I don’t mind telling you, sir, you’re feckin’ near family yourself, you know so much about me.” Paddy shrugged. “The ould ones passed along wi’ me baby brother, Aidan, not long after. Feckin’ fever. Daddy Nagle, the chemist on Meath Street, made them up powders but—och.”

  Fingal shuddered. “The fever” that had taken Paddy’s mother, father, and brother had probably been typhoid. It was endemic in the Dublin slums due to poor sanitation and contaminated drinking water or milk. The tenement dwellers had great faith in their pharmacists. Mister Nagle would have administered a “powder” of ground-up herbs, perhaps a bit of strychnine. Ipecacuanha was a popular ingredient because of its foul taste. Everyone knew that the worse a medicine tasted the stronger it was.

  “Is there no way you and your family could move out?”

  “Where to? Me sisters have work as charwomen. Barry’s a messenger boy. I beg to add to me British pensheen.”

  Fingal knew the addition of the Irish sin, pronounced “sheen,” was used to diminish something. It was Paddy’s way of saying “tiny pension.”

  “On what we make combined we’ll not be moving into Dublin Castle in a hurry, sir. We get by, but we’re like most people. You live where you get born unless you’re a girl and some fellah takes you off to his place.” Paddy pushed himself further up the bed. He managed a smile and lowered his voice. “At least my ones’ll have a couple of bottles of stout apiece. Sister, she’s a good skin, she give me an extra bottle every day I was here. For to take home for me family, like. We’ve saved dem wee bottles up for Christmas.”

  Fingal glanced over to Sister Daly. She was indeed a good skin. She had no authority to hand out extra Guinness. He admired anyone who clearly believed rules were for the obedience of idiots and merely for the guidance of wise folks.

  “Aye,” said Paddy, his smile returning, “and Dicey Duggan, her w’at has a fruit barrow at Mason’s Market on Horseman’s Row, her w’at the lads call, ‘the tart wit’ the cart,’ she give me half a dozen oranges for treats.”

  Fingal had heard how the people of the Dublin tenements pulled together. Even those who recently had been rehoused by the City Council’s new building program pined for their old neighbourhoods and wanted to return. It wasn’t that they missed their dilapidated surroundings, but vibrant communities had been torn apart. Neighbours of years’ standing had been separated by bureaucratic fiat. A family of fourteen might have shared one room across the staircase from their longtime friends. After rehousing, even the family might have been broken up and placed in separate, distant flats, with their former friends and neighbours a dozen streets away.

  Because of their friend Dicey Duggan, Sergeant Keogh’s family would each get two oranges as their Christmas treat. Fingal remembered that he and Lars would always find an orange at the bottom of the pillowcase full of Santa Claus presents. It had been one of Ma’s family traditions. He looked at Paddy. Damn it, Fingal, he told himself, you told Kitty a week ago you’d try to find the man a place. And what have you done? Sweet Fanny Adams.

  Sister said to the patients, “Now gentlemen, Doctor Micks will carve and my nurses and the medical staff and students, and Saint Nicholas himself, will serve you.” She grinned at Charli
e. “Hope you’re not too hot in there under all that red serge,” she said.

  Charlie grinned and wiped the back of his hand over his glistening forehead.

  She lifted a bottle of Jameson. “All of you who wish will get a glass of this after you’ve had your Christmas pudding and pulled your crackers.”

  The patients applauded.

  A voice yelled, “It’s a life of feckin’ Riley. Can we stay tomorrow too, Sister?” That provoked laughter and cheers.

  Fingal, wondering how he might get a glass of the Jemmy instead of this sticky sherry, crossed the ward and joined the line of students and nurses waiting to be handed loaded plates. Quite a reversal, he thought, for members of the upper class to be acting as servants for the workers. Maybe the fellah whose birthday they were celebrating today had it right when he washed the beggars’ feet.

  * * *

  Before the staff sat down to dine Doctor Micks opened his hold-all and distributed gifts. He coughed. “Seems a bit odd me giving you a present, Santa.”

  Charlie laughed. “It’s Greer, sir, and thank you.” He accepted a gift.

  “Here you are, O’Reilly,” Doctor Micks said. “Try this Murray’s Erinmore Flake. It doesn’t stink like that Crow Bar stuff you smoke.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Fingal did justice to the meal, finished the last of his Christmas pudding, got up to say good-bye to Kevin Doherty and Paddy Keogh. He caught Kitty’s eye where she sat at the nurses’ side of the table. This time it was her turn to nod toward the sluice.

  He showed her five fingers and hoped she understood. He needed a few minutes before he could be there.

  He went and sat on Kevin’s bed. “How’ve you been, Kevin?” he asked.

  Mister KD, the “heart failure because of rheumatic valvular disease” smiled. “Not so dusty, sir. I’m off quinidine now. Dat digitalis stuff—is it true it’s made from foxgloves? It’s doing its trick all right.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Fingal said, “and yes. From a foxglove called Digitalis purpurea. I hope it keeps up the good work. We don’t want to see you back in here, do we?”

  “I hope you’re right, sir, but it’s happened before.”

  And it probably will happen again, Fingal thought, but said, “We must hope for the best.” He rose. “You look after yourself, Kevin, and have a happy New Year.”

  “And to you, Doc—and t’anks for all you done. By the way.” Kevin Doherty raised one eyebrow. “You don’t mind my asking, sir? But how did t’ings go with dat pretty wee mott over dere?”

  “Ah,” said Fingal, glancing over to where Kitty was walking to the end of the ward. “I’m taking her out to bring in the New Year.”

  “Fair play to you, sir. Fair play.”

  Fingal could see that Kevin’s smile was one of pure pleasure. Although his own life had been limited by poverty and ill health, he wasn’t bitter about someone else’s happiness.

  “Thanks,” Fingal said, glancing at his watch. “You look after yourself, Kevin. I’d better be running. I’m expected at my folks’ for Christmas dinner.”

  He made sure Sister Daly was deep in conversation with Doctor Micks, then slipped into the sluice, where Kitty was waiting. He stood beside her, held the sprig over her head, encircled her with one arm, and kissed her long and hard. “Merry Christmas, Kitty O’Hallorhan,” he said. “A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.”

  16

  We’ll Keep Our Christmas Merry Still

  Ma asked, “Has everyone had enough? Are we finished?”

  Father, from his place at the top of the long mahogany dining table, said, “Marvellous, Mary.” The yellow silk cravat Lars had given him added a festive touch to his otherwise sober suit.

  Lars wiped his mouth and folded his napkin. “It was wonderful, Mother. Thank you.” His words were formal.

  Ma glanced at her son. “Are you sure you’re all right, Lars? You’ve eaten very little.”

  “I’m fine. Honestly.”

  Was Lars fine? Fingal pursed his lips. When he’d arrived, his brother had seemed subdued. The man wasn’t normally boisterous, but he usually exuded an air of rural contentment. They’d not had a moment alone, but the minute they did Fingal was going to find out why his big brother had fidgeted through the meal and barely eaten his turkey.

  Fingal hadn’t done Cook’s efforts justice either. He swallowed, stifled an urge to burp, and wondered if he might undo the button of his waistband. The answer was no. Ma and Cook would both be devastated if they thought he’d had to struggle to eat what they didn’t know was his second Christmas dinner of the day.

  The light from the chandelier glanced off the facets of a Waterford cut-glass bowl where the remnants of a sherry trifle clung to the sides and bottom. The Christmas pudding lay in ruins.

  “You may clear, Bridgit,” Ma said.

  “Thank you, Ma’am.” Bridgit moved from where she’d been standing and began piling plates onto her tray.

  “That meal,” Fingal said as she took away his dessert plate, “was the bee’s knees.” He knew his remark would be relayed to Cook.

  Father’s brow wrinkled and he asked, “The what?”

  “Bee’s knees,” Fingal said. “Just a step down from the cat’s pyjamas and much better than the eel’s ankles.”

  Ma chuckled. “Eels don’t have ankles, Fingal.”

  “Perhaps not, but bees do have knees. I’ve seen ’em,” Fingal said and was relieved to hear Lars’s dry laugh.

  Father shook his head. “I despair. American slang, I suppose?” He pursed his lips, and tutted. “Our American cousins will be the ruination of the English language.” He sipped a little wine. Surprisingly he was on his second glass of claret.

  Here we go, Fingal thought. Another of his sermons. Surely not on Christmas Day?

  “Bee’s knees indeed,” Father continued. “As your namesake remarked as long ago as 1882, ‘We have really everything in common with the Americans nowadays except, of course, language.’” He smiled broadly. Fingal’s mouth opened when Father laughed and said, “Who can identify the quotation?”

  Fingal beat Lars. “The Canterville Ghost,” he said, then realised that his brother didn’t look as if he’d tried to answer.

  “I’m glad you remembered,” Father said.

  Fingal said, “You made us act it out one Christmas. You and Mother took all the grown-up parts and Lars and I were the Otis twins, known as the ‘stars and stripes.’”

  Ma laughed, but Fingal heard a wistfulness when she said, “It was fun when you two were young. You were the show-off, Fingal. I often wondered if the stage might not have been in your stars.”

  He shook his head. “You know what I’ve always wanted.” I wish, he thought, I hadn’t said that, because I know I’ve given Father a cue to start a discussion I’d rather avoid.

  “As for your career, Fingal—”

  Here it comes. Fingal sat back and folded his arms.

  “I think after seven years,” Father leant forward, “I am becoming reconciled to your decision to study medicine.”

  What? Fingal’s eyes widened. Reconciled?

  “Father and I have talked about you a lot, son,” Ma said, and smiled at him.

  I’ll bet you have, Ma. “Thank you.”

  “We have,” Father said. “We only have one point of disagreement now.”

  Ma turned to Father. “I wonder if today is the right time, Connan?”

  “To discuss it? Of course it is. It’s for Fingal’s own good. It’s because we worry about him, Mary.”

  Fingal wondered what was coming but decided that he would not rear up no matter what Father might say.

  “We have some medical friends who move in literary circles. Doctor Victor Millington Synge is a nephew of the playwright the late J. M. Synge and Mister Oliver St. John Gogarty is a poet in his own right.”

  “Mister Gogarty is also an ear, nose, and throat surgeon and can charge as much as three hundred pounds fo
r one operation,” said Fingal. That was probably more than Father made in one year. He wondered what Father was coming to and continued, “Mister Gogarty has a primrose Rolls-Royce, his own aeroplane, and a mansion at Renvyle on the west coast.” He frowned. “I’m not quite sure what he and Doctor Synge have to do with me.”

  “They are specialists,” Ma said, “and Father, having met them both several times, is very impressed by them and how they do their medical work.”

  And he can’t quite bring himself to say it, Fingal thought, but he’s on the verge of telling me to specialise.

  “Your mother is absolutely right,” Father said. “I may just have been wrong forbidding you to go your own headstrong way about university, Fingal.”

  Glory Hallelujah, he may just have been wrong. He had been. Totally wrong. Then Fingal recognised the thought as ungenerous and said, “Thank you, Father. Thank you very much.”

  Father coughed. “Our Christmas present to you, Lars, is a trip to the French Riviera this coming February or March—”

  “Thank you. Thank you both,” Lars said. It looked forced to Fingal, but Lars finally did smile after having taken a deep breath. He stood, shook Father’s hand and hugged Mother. “That’s most generous. Thank you both. So much.” No wonder. Usually gifts from the folks were things like Fingal’s birthday lighter. And if Lars was getting such an expensive present what was coming next?

  “And yours, Fingal, is fifty pounds annually for the next two years. You should be qualified as a doctor in 1936.”

  Fingal pushed his chair back. Fifty pounds? Manna from Heaven. No more scrimping and saving, long walks instead of tram rides, no more fish-and-chips unless he really wanted them. And, the realisation dawned, a bridge had been thrown over the chasm between father and son.

  Fingal stood. He too shook Father’s hand. “Thank you, Father. Thank you very much, and not only for the money. I was pigheaded. I’m sorry.” That was as close to a complete apology as he could get without being hypocritical. If he’d not been stubborn he’d be a nuclear physicist by now, and hating it. He looked at Ma and saw her smiling, nodding, and with brightness at the corners of her eyes. Lord knew how hard she must have worked to bring this to pass. “Thank you, Mother,” Fingal said. “Bless you.” He enfolded her in a bear hug.