An Irish Country Courtship

  Barry muttered, “Suppository.”

  “I heard that,” said O’Reilly. “I’ll let it pass.”

  “There’s another thing,” Barry said. “I didn’t know about a public health fund to reimburse parents.”

  “Because there isn’t one,” O’Reilly said, “but you’re the one who said she’s not a Rothschild.”

  Barry shook his head. He knew it would be a waste of time trying to compliment O’Reilly on his generosity. The big man would merely growl, and there was another matter to be resolved. “Fingal,” Barry said, “you said you’d tell me who was involved in 1956.”

  “’56?” O’Reilly said, and his grin was huge. “Even back then his hair was bright carroty and his buckteeth—”

  Barry stopped in his tracks. “Donal? Donal Donnelly? Go away. I don’t believe it.” But he did.

  “Who else?” said O’Reilly, who had stopped to wait for Barry. “I just hope young Colin doesn’t grow up with an interest in racehorses and greyhounds. I’m not sure Ballybucklebo’s big enough for both of them.”

  Barry, who was laughing so much he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees, couldn’t speak. But he thought and if that did happen, you, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, would still have the measure of them both.

  38

  You Have Sown Much, and Bring in Little

  Barry answered a chorus of “Good morning, Doctor Laverty” with “Good morning, everybody.” The surgery’s waiting room was half full, not too busy for a Tuesday morning. Those god-awful roses on the wallpaper still made him cringe.

  Elaine Kearney’s young Kevin was down on his hands and knees on the carpet, pushing a red Dinky Toys car along and making broooom-broooom noises. Was it really a month since the boy had been admitted to Purdysburn Fever Hospital with croup? The boy looked up and piped, “Hello, Doctor Laverty. I’m all better, so I am.” He certainly sounded as if he was completely recovered. It was satisfying, Barry thought, to know he’d helped the lad, even if only by making the diagnosis and arranging hospital admission.

  “I’ll have you and your mammy in in a minute,” Barry said and smiled at Elaine. Then instead of announcing, “Who’s first?” as the patients would be expecting, he said, “Doctor O’Reilly needs a favour from the Donnellys today and wants to see them at once before he starts his home visits. Sorry about that.”

  “Come on,” Barry said, as the couple rose from their seats. Then he stood aside to let them precede him. He was as impatient as Fingal was to hear what Donal had to say.

  There were a few mutterings and one voice said distinctly, “It’s not right, so it’s not.”

  “I’ll be back soon, and I’ll take you all in order.” If he didn’t quickly revert to the age-old practice of seeing patients in the sequence in which they had arrived, he knew the ensuing ructions would make the upheaval that spoiled Lieutenant William Bligh’s afternoon on HMS Bounty look like a storm in a teacup.

  He followed the Donnellys into the surgery. Fingal, half-moon spectacles on his bent nose, was in the swivel chair. “Morning to you both,” he said. “Have a pew, Donal.”

  “Over here, please, Julie,” Barry said, indicating the examining couch. Her raincoat front was open and she was starting to show. Her stomach under a navy-blue skirt was visibly swollen.

  She handed him a small glass bottle. “My sample.”

  “Doctor O’Reilly,” Barry asked, “could you do the dipstick tests? Speed things up a bit?”

  “Sure. Just be a minute, Donal; then we’ll get down to business.”

  And that, Barry thought, was proper. Looking after patients must take precedence over sorting out other matters. Barry gave O’Reilly the bottle, followed Julie to the couch, and waited for her to climb up, lie down, and expose her lower belly. As he wound the sphygmomanometer cuff round her arm, he told her, “Your blood tests are back. They’re all normal.”

  “That’s great,” she said, “and I’m taking the tablets like you told me, sir.”

  Iron and folic acid supplements. He popped the stethoscope in his ears, blew up the cuff, and listened as he let it deflate. “Blood pressure’s normal,” he said.

  She smiled.

  Barry carried on with the routine of making sure her ankles weren’t swollen, confirming that the top of her uterus was palpable at the level of her belly button—exactly where it should be at twenty weeks.

  “Aye,” she said, “and I felt the wee one kicking me last night, so I did. I was dead excited. I made Donal feel it too.”

  “The kicks of him?” Donal said. “He’ll be playing centre forward for Linfield in no time.”

  “And if it’s a girl, Donal?” Julie asked.

  By the look on Donal’s face it was clear he hadn’t considered that eventuality.

  “Don’t worry,” Barry said. “What’s important right now is that by twenty weeks, and that’s where Julie’s at, she should be noticing movements, what we call quickening. I should be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat.” A moment bent over with the Pinard stethoscope confirmed that he could. “It’s going like a steam engine,” he said, as he straightened up.

  “Urine’s okay,” O’Reilly called from beside the sink.

  “So everything’s fine,” Barry said. “Just have to weigh you.”

  Donal’s, “Sticking out a mile,” was reflected by Julie’s wide smile.

  “You can fix your clothes and get down, Julie,” Barry said and waited.

  She was, he thought, a perfect example of what was so attractive to him about obstetrics. Nearly all of the time it meant dealing with happy events. The patients were young and usually healthy. Pregnancy was not a disease, and in the hospital the midwives, working under medical supervision, took care of all of the normal deliveries, freeing up the specialists to deal with more technically taxing cases.

  His job as an obstetrician would be to know how to act when a complication did occur antenatally or during delivery or postpartum, and even more importantly to do everything possible to try to stop anything going wrong by detecting potential difficulties.

  He was doing that preventative supervision today for Julie, who was now sitting up. Barry gave her his arm to lean on as she hopped down. “Come on over to the scales when you’re ready,” he said and then waited for her to finish rearranging her clothing.

  It was at these routine antenatal visits that so much could be detected in the early stages and managed effectively—but by specialists, not GPs. GPs certainly weren’t trained in, nor did they have the equipment to deal with, complicated deliveries. He remembered with satisfaction Hester Patton’s twins, babies who really should not have been under his care at all and who would not have been but for Hester’s decision to leave hospital.

  Barry helped Julie onto the scales and was pleased to note she’d gained only four pounds since her last visit, well within the recommended limit of five pounds per month. “So,” he said, “everything’s going exactly as planned.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Julie said and beamed. “Will I come back in a month?”

  “Please. Unless you’re worried about anything in the meantime.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be concerned, Doctor Laverty,” Julie said. “Donal’s the one who’s sore worried, and it’s not about our wee one neither.”

  Donal glanced at Julie.

  She nodded to him and said to O’Reilly, “I know about Flo’s Fancy.” Julie sat on the other wooden chair and took Donal’s hand. “He told me on Saturday.” She looked directly at O’Reilly and shook her head. “Thick as a couple of short planks sometimes this husband of mine, but he’s a heart of corn, so he has.” She turned to Donal. “I know you did it for me and the child, didn’t you, honey?”

  Barry smiled. Donal could be stupid, no question, and Barry wasn’t fully convinced that Donal’s motives were ever entirely unselfish when it came to wagering on horses or dogs, but if Julie chose to believe it were so, Barry’d not interfere.

  Julie looked Don
al straight in the eye. “And you’re very sorry, aren’t you?”

  Donal hung his head. “Yes, love. I am, so I am.”

  “You’ll not do nothing as daft as that again, will you, Donal Donnelly? Not without talking to me first?”

  “I promise,” Donal said.

  “And anyway,” Julie said, “thanks to Mr. Bishop’s cousin, even if Donal loses his whole hundred pounds in the horse, we’ll still be one hundred and fifty pounds better off. I heard on Saturday I’m in the last two for the hair model’s job, so I’m guaranteed two hundred and fifty pounds if I only come second.”

  “That’s wonderful,” O’Reilly said. “Bloody marvellous.”

  And very generous of her, Barry thought, to forgive Donal so readily.

  “They’ll announce the winner next Friday,” Donal said. “Julie’ll knock their socks off, so she will. That money’ll get us a start in a wee house.”

  It would be a tremendous boost for them, Barry thought. Patricia had been right encouraging Julie to go ahead, just before she’d said to Kitty, “It’s over.” Eight weeks ago. He inhaled. Oh, well, one day, maybe one day, God knows when, I’ll be house-hunting too. He looked at Julie. She did look radiant. “The very best of luck,” he said.

  “Och,” she said, and Barry saw her squeeze Donal’s hand. “I had that when this eejit married me.” Her eyes shone.

  Barry looked at Donal’s carroty thatch, the buckteeth exposed by his wide grin. Love might not be blind, Barry thought, but in Julie’s case it probably needed pretty strong spectacles.

  “Does that mean, Donal,” O’Reilly asked, “that as the Donnelly finances are going to be restored, there is less urgency in the matter of Bertie Bishop?”

  “It does not indeed, sir. There’s my mates to consider and all. And this next race is make-or-break. Each one of us has only ten pounds left in the wee filly. If Mr. Bishop bets that and she loses—”

  “You lads are out a hundred pounds each and he owns the whole bloody horse,” said O’Reilly, and Barry saw those hellish lights burning deep in O’Reilly’s eyes. “We can’t be having that, can we, Barry?” O’Reilly rubbed his hands together. “So what can you tell me, Donal?”

  “Your man Willy MacArdle kept his word, you know. It’s took him a while, but he has asked all about. Not a one, not a single one of the local bookies has seen hide nor hair of Mr. Bishop nor his money. Willy was dead pacific about that, so he was.”

  “Specific,” O’Reilly muttered. Then he added, “So Bishop’s been lying. He’s simply not betting. He’s a gobshite of the first magnitude.” He glanced at Julie. “Sorry, Julie.”

  “It’s all right.” She smiled and shook her head. “You should hear Donal and his friends after a few jars.”

  “Bishop does that to me,” O’Reilly said. “And he is what I called him.”

  “I know,” Donal said. “So can you get our shares in the wee horse back, sir?” Barry saw hope in his eyes.

  “I can surely try, Donal,” O’Reilly said. He turned to Barry. “We can surely try, can’t we, Doctor Laverty?”

  Donal grinned and said, “I’ll bet when you and Doctor Laverty here have a go at him, sir, after what I told youse Willy told me, like … well, I’ll bet Mr. Bishop’ll cave in the way a sandcastle does when the sea comes in.”

  Barry was flattered to be included in Donal’s obviously sincere belief that O’Reilly and he were miracle workers. He could certainly picture Fingal as an irresistible tide.

  “He might, but when it comes to money,” O’Reilly said, “Bertie Bishop and the Rock of Gibraltar have a lot in common. Both are big, both are thick, and both are very hard to budge.”

  “Even for you and Doctor Laverty?” Julie asked.

  “’Fraid so, Julie,” O’Reilly said, “but by God, we’re going to try, aren’t we, Dr. Laverty?”

  “Indeed we are,” Barry said, and he felt a lot more optimistic than O’Reilly seemed to be. Of course, O’Reilly’d had years of experience in dealing with the councillor. Barry was glad to be involved once more in the affairs of the village.

  “Good,” O’Reilly said. His grin was vast. “This evening, barring acts of God, nuclear war, or a patient who really needs us, Doctor Laverty and I will have a word with Bertie Bishop.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And I want your help, Donal.”

  What was O’Reilly planning now? Barry asked himself.

  “Aye, surely, Doctor.”

  “Does Bertie still go into the Duck after work on a Tuesday to have a jar with that fellah from Belfast?”

  “Ernie MacLoughlin? Him who supplies Mr. Bishop with bricks and cement? Five thirty,” Donal said. “Like clockwork.”

  “Good,” said O’Reilly. “So, Donal, I want you to be in the Duck too today, along with as many of the lads from your syndicate as you can round up. But I don’t want you to come anywhere near the councillor, Doctor Laverty, and me until I call you over.”

  “Fair enough, sir.”

  Barry thought Donal sounded more cheerful.

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “Off you two trot; Doctor Laverty will finish the surgery this morning, and I’ll do the home visits.”

  “Time for work,” O’Reilly said, as the couple left, “but if we get finished early we’ll take Arthur for a run and then …” He grinned. “I’m really looking forward to my pint tonight.”

  39

  On the Kingdom of the Shore

  O’Reilly stood at the edge of Belfast Lough and hurled a stick out to sea. “Fetch.”

  Arthur shot off, tearing through the shallows, then swimming strongly until he grabbed the wood, turned, and, snorting mightily, returned, ran to O’Reilly, sat, and presented his retrieve.

  “Good dog.” O’Reilly took the stick, and the sodden animal stood and ambled to where Barry waited further back up the beach.

  “No, Arthur,” O’Reilly bellowed, but it was too late. He heard Barry yell, “Gerroff,” saw him lean sideways like a matador evading a bull’s charge as the big Labrador shook himself. The spray glittered in the rays of the setting sun, and Barry’s pants visibly darkened.

  “Come here, Lummox,” O’Reilly called. “Sorry about that, Barry.”

  “I’ll let you explain about my pants to Kinky,” Barry said. “Bloody dog.” But there was affection in his voice as he patted Arthur’s flank.

  “And bloody Bertie,” O’Reilly said. “Let’s head up to the Duck. His Exaltedness should be settled in with his supplier friend by now.” Fingal strode across the beach. “Time for the councillor and me to have a little tête-à-tête.”

  Barry fell in step.

  Arthur, who had not been called to heel, ranged ahead across the rippled sand and chased a group of dunlin into flight. The little brown waders flew in tight formation, jinking and weaving as one, so the flock looked like a puff of wind-driven smoke.

  “Fingal?” Barry asked. “You know and I know that Bertie’s diddling the lads out of their shares. Do you think telling him you’re positive he’s not betting at all will be enough to stop him?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “I doubt it. It’s a puzzle to me how he’s managed to go on betting and losing for as long as he has, and only betting to win. I know he’s got the right to, because Donal and his friends all signed a contract. I think he’s gambling on their being too ashamed to tell anybody, because they don’t want to look like a bunch of buck eejits, but … the brass neck of the man. It’s as plain as the nose on your face that he wants to own the whole horse. The bloody arrogance of him.” O’Reilly kicked a float that must have broken loose from a fishing net. The cork soared over a dune’s crest like a well-struck rugby ball over the crossbar.

  “What I don’t understand, Fingal—and I don’t know a quarter as much about racehorses as you do—is why he would want to own the animal. If I were looking for a horse, I’d certainly not buy one that never wins.”

  Barry was right. “Nor me,” said O’Reilly, “but I’ve a half-
notion about what he’s up to.”

  “What?”

  “I know she’s not winning now, but what if she does once he owns her outright? Donal tells me she’s a flyer.” And after Kinky’s news from Cork about Flo’s Fancy’s jockey pulling the horse, having her start to win once Bishop gave the order was entirely feasible. “He’s determined to get that filly,” O’Reilly said. “And by God, I’m going to stop him, Barry.”

  “How, Fingal?”

  O’Reilly grunted, then said, “First of all, I want some answers, and I’m damn sure the syndicate will want some too. Donal should have the lads at the Duck by now. They’ll all be too scared to ask him as individuals. He’s their boss. But if they go at him together, he can’t fire half his workers, and …” O’Reilly scratched his head. “I might even get him to say publicly he’ll answer questions without any risk of retribution.”

  They crested the first dune, the sand rasping underfoot as the breeze whispered through the marram grass.

  “Do you know about jujitsu, Barry?” O’Reilly asked. He had to skirt a part of the path where the sand had crumbled.

  Barry frowned. “Japanese kind of fighting? I thought it was a bit passé now that anyone who’s read James Bond knows about karate.”

  “Karate’s probably more lethal, but jujitsu has its points. It’s more subtle than boxing. The object isn’t to belt your opponent harder than he belts you.” He tugged at one cauliflower ear. “You turn your opponent’s strength back on him. And that’s what I want to do to Bertie.”

  “How?”

  O’Reilly stopped. “First, I’ll accuse him of not betting locally—and we know that for a fact, thanks to Donal and his friend McArdle. If I keep at him, suggest he’s never bet and has lied about it, I should be able to get him to lose his temper so that he won’t be thinking straight.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m sure Bertie’s one step ahead,” O’Reilly said. “I’ll almost guarantee he’ll say he’s betting offtrack.”

  Barry frowned. “Betting offtrack. What’s that?”

  Sometimes, O’Reilly thought, it was hard to believe Barry was Irish. He must be the only one in the country over the age of sixteen who knew virtually nothing about horses or horse racing. O’Reilly said, “It’s been legal here since 1961. You don’t have to go to the races to wager anymore. You can bet by phone or at a betting shop, known rather quaintly as a turf accountant’s. Ladbrokes has been around since 1886. They’re the biggest bookies in the U.K., and they’ve set up premises all over the place. If Bishop swears blind he’s betting with Ladbrokes …” He let his words hang.