An Irish Country Courtship

  O’Reilly wasn’t prepared for Barry to stand up, shove his hands in his pockets, and say, “And every single time it does, we have to refer them on to a specialist.”

  O’Reilly pursed his lips. “That’s all part of general practice. Don’t forget, you sorted out Cissie Sloan’s thyroid and Flo Bishop’s myasthenia.”

  “I know. It’s just … I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired.” He looked Fingal straight in the eye. “Maybe I’m missing Patricia. Maybe I’m trying to puzzle out what I’m really looking for in a woman. In life.”

  “No maybe, son,” O’Reilly said, as softly as he could. He stood and put an arm round Barry’s shoulders. “No maybe about it.”

  “Thanks, Fingal.”

  “I tell you what. I know Kinky’s making a special supper for you tonight, but if you like I could ask her not to cook the steak and put the rest in the fridge until tomorrow. It’ll keep. You could come to the Culloden with Kitty and me.”

  Barry shook his head. “It’s very kind of you to offer, but I couldn’t intrude.”

  O’Reilly heard the finality in Barry’s words. He realised it would be useless to insist. “Fair enough,” he said. “And Barry?” He looked up as Kitty came in. “You will find the answers and it will get better with time.”

  21

  Thy Waves and Storms Are Gone Over Me

  Spray rattled off the Volkswagen’s windscreen and along with the downpour defeated the efforts of the wipers. Barry halted at the kerb and looked at his watch. Four o’clock and already it was almost dark. A gust from the northeasterly gale battering in from the Irish Sea rocked the car on her springs. He could hear the wind howling in the telegraph wires above the Shore Road. The thoroughfare itself was a shallow river, where rain in torrents mingled with seawater bursting over the seawall.

  Like the blood vessel that had burst in Sheilah Devine’s head.

  He’d just been to see the octogenarian—she’d been discharged from hospital the day before, and Fingal had asked Barry to pop in on his rounds today. It was more of a courtesy call and had saddened Barry. He’d felt so helpless. There was nothing he could do for a stroke victim. What practical attention Sheilah needed would come from the district nurse, Colleen Brennan.

  Two weeks had passed since Barry had had his heart-to-heart with Fingal. Two weeks of routine practice like this afternoon’s call, a trip to Belfast to see Doctor Zhivago, and three evenings spent at the Yacht Club. And it had been two weeks since he had received what he now thought of as “the letter.” He’d not replied nor had he heard any more from Patricia. Often sleep did not come until the small hours, and since the sunshine on the day of the marquis’ shooting party, the weather had been grey, dull, and damp.

  Perhaps if it were spring, or if the sun would only blink through for an hour or two, Barry’s mood might lift, even though a few minutes earlier he had stood helplessly beside an old woman’s wheelchair in the tidy living room of her cottage, trying to comfort her and her husband, Joseph, who waited at the other side of the chair.

  Barry had held her right hand in his own. It was limp and clammy, the blue veins tortuous under skin blotched with liver spots. “Can you squeeze my hand, Mrs. Devine?”

  He felt no pressure, no movement.

  Her head lolled on her shoulder. Her hair, thin grey wisps, had been neatly combed. Barry looked at a face where the left side was deeply wrinkled, the other side smooth and the skin thin as tissue paper. The right corner of her mouth drooped and a thin dribble of saliva ran from it. She tried to speak but only managed a garbled mumbling.

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” Joseph said, then bent forward and dabbed the drool away.

  Barry had finished examining the patient. She was completely paralysed on her right side and had lost the power of speech. That was exactly what the letter from the hospital had said before adding there was nothing more the neurologists could do. Nothing anyone could do, Barry knew, but the responsibility for her now rested with her GPs.

  He’d been at a loss for something to say. He’d patted Sheilah’s hand and smiled at her. “Doctor O’Reilly or I will come back and see you soon.” To do what? he asked himself. Curing the victim of a stroke was impossible. “The district nurse will be in tomorrow.”

  She’d mumbled and gestured with her left hand as if waving good-bye.

  “I’ll see you out, Doctor.” Joseph led the way, his tartan carpet slippers making a susurration as he shuffled along. He was stooped at the shoulders, the result, Barry assumed, of osteoporosis, a thinning of the vertebrae with age. It was another condition about which he could do absolutely nothing. In the hall, Joseph Devine said, “Thank you for coming. I understand youse doctors can’t help herself, but it’s a comfort to know you and Doctor O’Reilly care about us, so it is. Between me and the district nurse, and youse, we’ll keep Sheilah out of the home, so we will.”

  The old folks home, more dreaded than a prison sentence by the elderly of Ulster.

  “Call us anytime.” Barry put on his sodden raincoat.

  “It’s in the hands of the Lord, Doctor,” Joseph said. “Mr. Robinson, our minister, is very kind too.”

  Barry had never regretted his agnosticism, but he envied the comfort the old couple could take from their church in this time of distress. Being dumped by the woman he loved wasn’t as serious as a stroke, but he wished he could take solace like the Devines did. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Mr. Devine,” Barry said.

  “Take you care in that there gale, sir.”

  And that was exactly what he was doing, sitting here on the road while the rain came down in torrents and mingled with the spray.

  Another sheet of water was blown across the road. The waves had started building south of Aran Island up past Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre. They’d been heaped higher by the living gale until, like rank after rank of grey-uniformed storm troopers, they hurled themselves against the seawall’s granite blocks. Those bastions repelled the attacks, smashing their assailants into wind-driven spume or sending them reeling back.

  Barry’d grown up in Bangor, and the sea had been a lifetime companion. He’d swum and fished in it, kayaked, and sailed. He loved all its faces, not just its summer serenity. There was a primal majesty when the lough was in a destructive mood and trying to smash its way ashore.

  Barry sighed. His own frame of mind was more subdued, inward-looking. Since “the letter,” he’d been trying to puzzle out where he’d gone wrong. He’d been stupid to ignore the fact that she would always want a life of her own, would want a career. What the hell was there for a civil engineer to build in Ballybucklebo? A new local landmark like the red barn for Willy John McCoubrey’s black-and-white cow?

  He shook his head. Home, Barry, he told himself. For the moment the spray was less dense and it would be safe to drive again.

  He passed under the railway bridge and stopped at the village traffic light. Across the road the top of the Maypole bent like the topmast of a reefed-down square-rigger. He hoped the wood was strong. If the timber snapped and toppled, it would make a mess of the nearby Ballybucklebo Boutique.

  Alice Moloney would be working in there today, not that she’d be getting much custom in such a gale. Barry wished he’d been able to do more for her, but Sir Donald Cromie, whose waiting list for appointments was long, had felt that there was no urgency, and he was the expert. The surgeon had been most complimentary about Barry’s diagnostic acumen. Alice would be seen on the seventeenth of February, the week after next. In the meantime, she’d already had an X-ray, so the films and report would be ready for Sir Donald when he saw her.

  Barry drove ahead after the light flicked from amber to green. It was frustrating having to wait for answers, but Alice’d been most grateful when he’d popped in to explain his suspicions and ask her to go to Belfast for an X-ray. Her thank-yous that Monday and later, when he’d phoned to tell her that her X-ray was normal, had been heartfelt. O’Reilly was right about that too. It was pleasant to bask in the custo
mers’ thanks—but was it enough? He was still no closer to finding out what was wrong with Alice. Only a specialist could.

  Barry wondered if Jack Mills would see her too. Probably. Sir Donald was his boss. Jack and the specialist would be able to finish what Barry had started.

  He parked in front of Number 1, Main Street. He’d phone Jack tonight, see what he was up to tomorrow. It had been a while.

  Barry opened the car door and felt it nearly ripped from his hands. He got out, hauled the door shut, and started up the path. As he was about to go inside he saw a woman approaching, shoulder to the wind, dragging a small boy by the hand.

  “Come in.” He had to yell to make himself heard.

  Barry took off his Burberry. He recognised Colin Brown and his Pac-a-Mac–clad mother. “Mrs. Brown … Colin,” he said. “Take off your coats, then come into the surgery.”

  Barry sat in the swivel chair. He wondered if Colin’s back-to-schoolitis was playing up again. You never knew what divilment the boy could get up to.

  Mrs. Brown sat in one wooden chair, Colin in the other. His legs, one with a grazed knee, didn’t quite reach the ground.

  “Terrible day, Doctor,” Mrs. Brown said. “The wires are shaking, so they are.”

  “It is very windy,” Barry said. “I was driving along the Shore Road and had to pull over.”

  “I’m dead sorry, so I am, not to come when the surgery was open, but I didn’t want to take Colin out of school, you know.”

  “I think you should have, Mammy.” Young Colin looked straight at Barry. “It was math this morning. I hate math, so I do.” He squinted and pretended to stick a finger down his throat.

  Barry tried hard not to laugh. “What can I do for you?”

  “What with him cutting himself, and getting the cold, now he’s got an itch. I’m dead worried about it, so I am. Show the doctor, son.”

  Colin slid off his chair and walked over to Barry. “It’s me dome,” he said, pulling off his school cap and pointing to the centre of his head. “It’s terrible itchy, so it is.” He put on a serious face. “I think it’s the leprosy, so I do. Mrs. Aggie Arbuthnot, our Sunday-school teacher, was telling us all about it at Sunday school last week. I’ll not have to go to real school if it is.”

  Barry didn’t know if it was young Colin’s solemnity or the mention of Aggie Arbuthnot, the six-toed cousin Cissie Sloan seemed able to introduce into any conversation. He couldn’t keep a straight face and had a sudden desire to tease Colin. “If it is, it’s you for a leper colony, Colin Brown. And they have schools—and no summer holidays.”

  “What?” Colin took a pace back. His eyes widened, then he said disdainfully, “Away off and feel your head, Doctor Laverty. They do no such thing.”

  “Colin.” Mrs. Brown turned on her son. “Don’t you dare call the doctor stupid nor contradict him neither.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Brown,” Barry said. “No harm done. I don’t need to feel my head, but I want to have a look at Colin’s.”

  Barry leaned forward and saw a bald patch in the middle of Colin’s scalp. At first sight it looked as if he’d been making an attempt to create a miniature tonsure about two inches in diameter. But when Barry looked more closely, it was clear that no monk’s deliberately shaven bald spot would have looked like this.

  The central part of the lesion was covered in lustreless, broken-off stumps of hair and greyish-white scales. The rim was angry red. Barry was certain Colin had ringworm, a fungal infection. Diagnosis was usually aided by examination in a dark room using a Wood’s lamp to make the affected area glow blue. Damaged hairs could be pulled out, soaked in reagents, and examined under a microscope to identify the fungus. Naturally these latter tests would be done by a dermatologist, not a GP.

  Barry knew he was right by the look of the sore alone. “Colin’s got ringworm,” he said.

  “Aye. That’s what his granny thought. She said she could cure it with a mixture of turpentine and baking soda, and if that didn’t work she’d blend together gooseshite and pig lard and rub that on.”

  “Really?” Barry said. By now he was no longer shocked by the folk remedies the villagers told him about. He had learnt not to deride them.

  “I didn’t think he’d’ve been very popular at school stinking of either salve,” she said, “so I said I’d get your advice first, sir.”

  “You did right,” Barry said, “but I’m afraid Colin’s popularity at school isn’t going to matter for a while.”

  Colin’s head jerked up. “Why not?”

  Barry smiled at him, then turned to his mother. “Because your mammy’s going to have to keep you at home from MacNeill Primary for two weeks.”

  “Wheeker,” Colin said.

  “Until he stops being infectious. It can go through a class like wildfire.”

  Mrs. Brown nodded.

  “And he’ll need to take pills four times a day for a month.”

  Colin grimaced.

  “It’s all right. They don’t taste awful,” Barry said. He saw Mrs. Brown frowning. “And you’ll not need goose droppings. I’ll give you an ointment too.”

  She smiled.

  Ah, the power of the ointment, Barry thought. He explained to her how she’d need to boil Colin’s school cap because the fungus would be growing inside.

  That amused Colin enormously. “I’ve wee mushrooms in my cap, like?” He peered into it. “I don’t see none.”

  “They’re too small to see,” Barry said, “but the things that cause your itch have got into the lining, and if you leave it there it will reinfect you when you put your hat on again.”

  Colin’s eyes narrowed. He cocked his head. “So don’t boil it, Mammy, and I’ll never have to go back to school.”

  After Mrs. Brown and Barry stopped laughing, he explained that Colin’s sheets and pillowcase would have to be washed every day. “The fungus that causes ringworm is a persistent little devil and quite contagious,” he said. Then he swivelled back to the rolltop desk and wrote the prescription for the fungicide Griseofulvin, 250 milligrams to be taken four times daily, and an iodine-based ointment.

  “Excuse me, Doctor Laverty,” Mrs. Brown said, “could you give me a line for Colin’s teacher?”

  “Of course.” She’d need a doctor’s letter to keep the truant officer from calling to see why Colin was not in class. “Maybe the teacher could give Colin some homework too. I’ll ask.”

  Barry turned his head in time to see the boy withdrawing a recently stuck-out tongue. Better to pretend not to have noticed. “Whose class are you in, Colin?”

  “Miss Nolan’s. She’s a wee corker, so she is.” He smiled. “All the big boys is in love with her, like.”

  Barry smiled. For a moment he had a vivid picture of her conducting the children’s choir and of him remarking to himself on her very good legs, green eyes, and hair that shone like burnished copper. Barry sighed and started to write, Dear Miss Nolan …

  He finished the letter, rose, and handed it to Mrs. Brown along with the prescriptions. “Here you are,” he said, ushering Colin and her to the door. “And don’t forget about the bedclothes and boiling his cap.”

  “Thanks very much, Doctor,” she said. “You’ve took a great load off my mind, so you have.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. That’s something else O’Reilly would comment on, he thought. How a GP’s job was less about curing major diseases than alleviating patients’ worries. He waited for them to put on their coats; then he opened the front door and flinched as the draught made a picture on the wall rattle. “Off you go.”

  “Thanks a million, Doctor,” Mrs. Brown said.

  Barry closed the door. As he turned to head upstairs, he noticed the phone. After the usual, seemingly interminable, hospital switchboard delays, he heard a curt “Mills.”

  Not like Jack to answer the phone without putting on an accent. “Jack? Barry.”

  “Hi. Can’t talk long. I’m due in the operating theatre.”

/>   “Are you free tomorrow?”

  “Aye. Give me a bell in the morning.”

  “Sure.”

  “Great. Gotta go.” The line went dead.

  Barry replaced the receiver. From that snapped exchange he had no doubt that his friend was fully occupied. Barry unfortunately had time on his hands. He climbed the stairs and decided that as he was free the next day, he’d make the trip to Belfast, Jack or no Jack. He wanted to do some shopping for things he couldn’t buy locally.

  He shooed Lady Macbeth from an armchair, picked up his book, settled down, and tried to finish reading The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Sensible chap, he thought, as rain lashed against the bow windows and a tied-back curtain flapped where the seal of the window sash was none too tight.

  Barry rose to see if he could make the frame sit better. He looked through rain streaming down the pane. Over in the graveyard opposite, the old yews thrashed. What a miserable day. When Barry had gone out into the gale to see poor Sheilah Devine, he’d thought nothing could cheer him. Thank you, Colin Brown. Nobody, but nobody, could stay gloomy for long around young Colin. He’d put that sort of patient encounter on the positive side of the mental ledger he was creating about life as a GP.

  He shoved on the window sash and was gratified to feel it settle and the draught diminish. He had to smile, because at the exact moment the window settled more firmly against the sill, the streetlights came on. He knew it wasn’t cause and effect, but the coincidence amused him.

  22

  Have Seen a Glorious Light

  O’Reilly stepped over shattered roof slates, the wind flapping his wet trouser legs against his calves. On this, the second night of the gale, the light from the streetlamps was instantly swallowed up by driving raindrops that glowed like swarms of fireflies. Gusts of wind pushed him along Main Street almost as quickly as it hurled discarded fish-and-chip wrappers, cigarette packets, newspapers, and someone’s battered bowler hat.

  He regretted his decision to leave the warmth of his fire to give Arthur a walk. Despite being on call this evening while Barry was up in Belfast, O’Reilly had headed out into the weather. Kinky knew that his evening walks with Arthur inevitably ended at the Mucky Duck, so if he was needed, she’d know where to find him. This evening he was going to arrive there earlier than usual. It had been too miserable trying to walk into the wind.