The service was progressing and so far none of the amazement Kinky had predicted had occurred.
As O’Reilly sat, his foot nudged the doctor’s bag he had set on the floor when he had taken this pew. It had been a habit of both Doctor Corrigan and Doctor Flanagan to go nowhere without their bag. One never knew when an emergency might occur. He patted the left pocket of his jacket to make sure his stethoscope was there too.
He paid attention to the service. Today Mister Wilson, the septuagenarian minister, was being assisted by a young cleric, a Mister Robinson who, Kinky had told O’Reilly, had recently received the call to be taking over the parish when the older man retired in August. This morning Mister Robinson was to preach the sermon.
He ascended into a carved pulpit and began, “The text for today is from the Gospel According to Saint Mark, 12:31. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’” He smiled down at Kinky. O’Reilly, who was sitting next to her, wondered if she’d persuaded Mister Robinson to use that text.
He half-listened and gazed ahead. When they’d arrived this morning, he had simply followed Kinky to her usual place three rows from the front, a place where, Kinky had solemnly assured him on their way to church, that when in good fettle preaching fire and brimstone, Mister Robinson’s spits could be felt.
Bertie Bishop must not mind the salivary showers. His place was in the very front pew immediately facing the pulpit. He was accompanied by a dumpy woman wearing a pink cloche hat, presumably Mrs. Bishop. There didn’t seem to be any little Bishops.
O’Reilly unobtrusively half-turned and stole another look over the congregation. Here and there were people he recognised, either from his previous time in the village or because he’d noticed them in the Duck, or, and he reckoned he could count them on one hand, because they’d recently been patients. There was Alfie Corry in a pew halfway down the nave adjacent to the aisle. The strapping unmarried farmer of, O’Reilly had to calculate—the man had been sixty-four in 1939 when he’d first consulted O’Reilly, so Mister Corry’d be seventy-one now. When O’Reilly and Kinky had arrived this morning to walk to their pew, Alfie’d greeted O’Reilly with a hushed “Nice til see you back, Doc.”
At least somebody thought so.
And there was no mistaking Mister and young Donal Donnelly’s carrotty hair. Archie Auchinleck sat farther down the nave beside an auburn-haired woman and a little boy of about Donal Donnelly’s age.
O’Reilly’d not been surprised that the Finnegans weren’t here. Finnegan was a Catholic name and the odds of finding a Protestant bride in rural Normandy would be pretty long indeed.
O’Reilly decided he’d better pay attention to the sermon.
“And where else better to love our neighbours than a little place like our own dear Ballybucklebo?”
Where else indeed, thought O’Reilly. Yet it is such a little place. Perhaps I should have found a practice in Belfast?
“Sweet Jesus, what’s happened?” A woman’s startled voice behind O’Reilly had stopped the sermon.
Another voice, “It’s Alfie Corry. He’s taken a wee turn. I’ll run til get the doctor.”
That was enough for O’Reilly. He leapt to his feet. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he said, and forced his way along the pew and down the aisle. Fainted? The man had had a series of anginal attacks when he’d been here in 1939. O’Reilly shook his head.
As he pushed forward a man’s voice said, “The doctor’s already here, you eejit. Bide where you’re at.”
The crowd parted to let O’Reilly get at Alfie Corry, who must have pitched sideways out of the pew to land on his back in the aisle. His face was dusky, his eyes open, but glazed, with their pupils dilated, and he was not breathing. Almost certainly the man had just had a fatal coronary thrombosis.
“Excuse me,” O’Reilly said to a heavyset woman who wore a hat with pheasant tail feathers and who was taking the victim’s pulse.
“I’m a first-aider,” she said. “He’s no pulse, you know. Could you try Holger-Neilsen artificial respiration, sir?”
“I’m sorry,” O’Reilly said, “that’s only for people who are nearly drowned. Now if you’d just—?”
She needed no further bidding to move aside.
He unbuttoned the man’s shirt and saw a farmer’s chest, chalky white save for a tanned vee at the throat and upper chest. It was not moving. If he was right and the man had had a heart attack, there were no means of resuscitating such a patient nor any wonder drug to inject. Despite the accelerated progress of medicine brought about by the war, doctors were still helpless when it came to lethal heart attacks, and O’Reilly stifled a curse of frustration.
News of what had happened seemed to be spreading throughout the congregation by a series of loud whispers punctuated by, “Och, dears,” and a, “Dear love, Alfie. Sound man. Sound man, so he is.”
O’Reilly fished out his stethoscope, put the earpieces in, and clapped the bell over the left chest.
“Everybody wheest now,” the first-aid lady said. “The doctor’s trying til listen in, so he is.”
Meanwhile, O’Reilly had felt in the angle of the jaw for the pulse of the carotid artery. There were no audible heart sounds and no pulse. O’Reilly fished out his pencil torch and shone it into each of the victim’s eyes. Neither pupil contracted nor, he bent his head to Alfie’s mouth, was there any evidence of breathing. Poor Alfie Corry, looking like a stunned mullet, was dead. Dead as mutton. And there was no treatment. None at all.
O’Reilly blew out a long breath against pursed lips. It wasn’t as if he was a stranger to death—by disease, natural causes, and accident in peacetime, of the young, but mostly of the old. And death by fire, scalding, drowning, hypothermia, bullets, and explosives in wartime. Senseless, bloody senseless, and the victims so pathetically young. And while O’Reilly had tried to steel himself, had become inured by familiarity, there was always regret when a fellow human died in his hands, a sense of failure.
He started to rise and heard a familiar voice saying, “I think poor oul Alfie’s gone, so I do.” Bertie Bishop, not to O’Reilly’s surprise, had forced his way to the front of the rubbernecking crowd. His wife stood just behind him. Bertie was a man who had to be at the centre of everything. He’d not have been satisfied at a wake if he wasn’t the corpse. “But then, you’d not expect O’Reilly to have saved him, would youse?”
No one else in the congregation spoke. O’Reilly stiffened, and for a moment wondered, was the lack of response in his favour or against him? He took a deep breath, and like the navy he’d served in when attacked, prepared to defend himself with every weapon he possessed. But then an idea pushed into his mind. “Kinky, bring my bag,” he roared. “Your man’s gone.” And nothing, nothing O’Reilly could do could bring him back. And yet … He heard shuffling of feet as a passage was cleared for her.
“Here, sir.” Kinky gave him the leather bag.
“Requiescat in pace,” O’Reilly muttered, “and please forgive me for what I’m going to do.” He hoped his conscience would forgive him too, but the late Alfie might just perform a vital service for the living Fingal O’Reilly. He ripped open the bag, found a hypodermic syringe, filled it from a bottle of whatever was nearest to hand—the label said “sterile water”—plunged the needle into Alfie’s left breast over the heart, and injected one third of the contents of the syringe.
The stethoscope was still in O’Reilly’s ears so he put the bell over Alfie’s chest. O’Reilly put an entirely forced look of awe on his face. “Praise be. He’s got a heartbeat.” No one could gainsay that.
O’Reilly looked up at a sea of faces, many with hands over their mouths, all of the people with wide, staring eyes. He smiled, put the stethoscope back on the chest. “Och, no,” he said, letting his feigned anguish show. “No. He’s going again.” Another third of the syringe was injected like the first and the bell reapplied. O’Reilly took a long count before he whispered, loudly enough for the nearest of his audience to hear, “It’s be
ating again.”
Even with the earpieces in place he heard a voice yell, “Somebody send for an ambulance.” That was no bad thing. Unless Alfie had recently been under a doctor’s care it was a statutory requirement that a postmortem examination had to be performed to establish the cause of death, so the departed would have to go to the hospital mortuary anyway.
O’Reilly listened again, and knowing the effect his next utterance would have in here loudly said, “Damnation,” and injected the remaining sterile water. There was no need for any further explanation and by the loud “tch, tching” and “tut-tutting,” he could hear, even though his word was disapproved of, the message had got through.
He waited and this time made a display of taking the wrist pulse and letting a tired smile play on his face. Once more, judging by the communal indrawing of breath, the message of another success had been clearly received.
O’Reilly waited for what he considered to be a reasonable time, never letting go of Alfie’s wrist before frowning mightily, clapping the stethoscope back on the corpse’s chest, deepening his frown, and shining his torch into the nonresponding eyes. O’Reilly shook his head ponderously, stood slowly still shaking his head, before taking a very deep breath and saying, “I’m sorry. I did my best. I couldn’t save him.”
Now what?
“Och, dear,” and “God rest him,” and “At least he went easy” rose above the murmuring.
“May I speak, your reverence?”
O’Reilly recognised Kinky’s voice.
“Certainly, Mrs. Kincaid.” Mister Robinson was now standing behind Bertie Bishop.
She climbed up on a pew and was facing the crowd. “You said some powerful things, Reverend Robinson, about loving your neighbour. I think there’s nobody here—” She glanced at Bertie Bishop. “—who would disagree.”
There was a murmuring of agreement.
“But I know some malicious things have been said about Doctor O’Reilly here. You heard one now about not expecting Doctor O’Reilly to have done any good, so.” She fixed Bertie Bishop with a stare O’Reilly thought would have done justice to Balor the one-eyed Fomorian, whose gaze could turn men to stone.
O’Reilly saw Bishop’s wife give him a ferocious dig in the ribs.
Kinky continued, “And you all know the saying about giving a dog a bad name. Now I mean no irreverence, your reverences, but we all know the story of how our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead.”
There was a loud muttering of agreement.
“And didn’t Doctor O’Reilly, who could have gone anywhere in the world such a good doctor is he, so.”
O’Reilly did something he didn’t do often. He blushed.
“Didn’t he choose to come back to us here?”
More muttering.
“And while Lazarus was brought back once, didn’t Doctor O’Reilly bring back poor old Alfie Corry three times?”
O’Reilly heard a number of “Ayes,” and “Right enoughs.”
“Not once, not once, but three times—three times? I think we do be very lucky and I think it’s about time when any of you need a doctor that you remember what you saw here this morning.” Kinky smiled at O’Reilly. “I’ll say no more, so,” she said, and clambered down.
“Thank you, Kinky,” he mouthed and was going to say it aloud when a woman’s harsh voice rang out, “See you, Bertie Bishop? See you, you great glipe?”
O’Reilly recognised Mrs. Bishop by her hat.
“See you and your ‘That doctor what’s come back is only a quack?’ You were trying for til drive him away, so you were. You and that Wowser Ward. Pair of bollixes, so youse are.”
Bertie Bishop glared at his wife. “Hould your wheest, woman.” The man was blushing.
O’Reilly saw a number of the congregation look at Bishop and shake their heads before turning to smile at O’Reilly.
Bishop, dragging his wife by the hand, headed for the narthex and the way out.
O’Reilly took off his jacket and respectfully covered the dear departed’s face. “Perhaps,” he said, “some of you men could give me a hand to carry Mister Corry to the vestry to wait for the ambulance. Will that be all right, Reverend Robinson?”
“Please. I’ll come too. Say a few words. Reverend Wilson, will you please get everyone else back in their pews. Perhaps a hymn? ‘Amazing Grace’?”
There was no lack of volunteers to carry Alfie. His corpse was laid on a bench and covered with a minister’s robe that was hanging in the vestry so O’Reilly could recover his jacket.
Everyone there bowed their heads as the minister prayed for the soul of the departed.
All joined in the “Amen.”
From the church proper came
Twas grace that caused my heart to fear.
And grace my fears relieved …
And after a moment’s silence in the vestry Mister Robinson said, “Thank you for acting so quickly, Doctor.”
O’Reilly, knowing full well it had all been a charade for his own benefit, hung his head and muttered, “It’s my job.”
“Nevertheless…” The minister let the sentence hang and then said with a smile, “And I think under the circumstances,” he glanced up, “He will forgive your little indiscretion, and bless your continuing work here among us.”
“I’m sorry,” O’Reilly said, could have kissed the minister, and inside was grateful he’d only said “damnation.” He’d had a full naval repertoire to choose from.
“We’d best be getting back,” Mister Robinson said.
“Aye, but,” one of the men said, “that was quare nor quick thinking, Doc. Me and the rest of the lads here,” he glanced round at the other three ruddy-cheeked men, all probably farmers, “hope you’ll stay on like. Isn’t that right?”
“Aye,” said one, and held out a callused hand, which O’Reilly shook. “Thank you,” he said, and in his heart also said, “I’m sorry, Alfie Corry, but thank you. And bless you, Maureen Kinky Kincaid. Bless you. Bless you.” Things looked like they were going to be all right after all, and he remembered Lars’s recent quotation, “Home is the sailor, home from the sea.” For Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, recently Surgeon Commander, R.N.R., D.S.C., and now simply Doctor O’Reilly, this town and these people who would become his patients were his home—and always would be.
AFTERWORD
by Mrs. Maureen Kincaid,
Lately Housekeeper to Doctor Thomás Flanagan
Now in That Capacity to Doctor F. F. O’Reilly
We’re back from all that excitement at the church now. I thought Mister Wilson did a fine job of getting everyone calmed down after poor Alfie Corry passed. The Reverend Robinson even finished the service. I was pleased to see how many of the congreation said kindly things to Doctor O’Reilly after. I think he need not worry anymore about his future here, so I told him as much.
Says he, “Kinky, I think you are right about the future, I thank you, and I’m in your debt.” Then he surprised me when he went on, “And I want to be further in. I don’t want a part of the past to suffer either. I meant it when I said you were the best cook in Ireland…” the ould soft-soaper, “but I’d hate to think of your recipes getting lost to posterity.”
“So what would you like me to do?”
“Could you please start writing them down?”
“I will,” says I, and here I am, pen in fist, getting the recipe for the first dinner I made for him when he came back after serving on that big ship where he had only men cooking for him, the poor soul. I hope you’ll enjoy my roast rack of lamb too, so.
ROAST RACK OF LAMB WITH HERB STUFFING AND CAPER SAUCE
2 racks of trimmed lamb
Salt and pepper to season
1 teaspoon chopped rosemary
2 teaspoons of mild-tasting mustard (Dijon)
1 teaspoon of fresh herbs (mint, parsley, and thyme)
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
Preheat the oven to 200° C/400° F/gas mark 6.
Heat a large roasti
ng pan in the oven. Season the lamb and rub over with a little butter and some chopped rosemary. Place in the pan and cook for about 18–20 minutes or longer if you like it less rare.
Remove from the oven and coat the outside with a mixture of the mustard, crumbs, and herbs. Crisp under a hot grill for 2 to 3 minutes, making sure not to let it burn.
Stuffing
75 g/2½ oz./1/3 cup butter
2 shallots, chopped small
75 g mixed herbs (mint, parsley, and thyme)
50 g/2 oz./¼ cup chopped dried apricots
100 g/3½ oz./½ cup breadcrumbs
Melt the butter in a pan over a gentle heat. Add the shallots, herbs, and chopped apricots. Cook gently for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently so as not to let it burn. Then add the crumbs and keep warm till needed.
Caper Sauce
50 g/2 oz. butter
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup lamb stock
50 ml/¼ cup cream
Juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
Place the butter in a saucepan and cook gently until it browns slightly and smells slightly nutty. Remove from the heat and work in the flour. Cook for a minute and whisk in the lamb stock, cream, and lemon juice with the seasoning. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes and add the chopped parsley and capers.
Himself thinks this is a grand feast altogether, so, and likes me to serve it with buttery mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, and mashed and mixed carrots and parsnips.
GLOSSARY
In all the Irish Country books I have provided a glossary to help the reader who is unfamiliar with the vagaries of the Queen’s English as she may be spoken by the majority of people in Ulster. It is a regional dialect akin to English as spoken in Yorkshire or on Tyneside, American English used in Texas or the Bronx, or Canadian English in Newfoundland or the Ottawa Valley. It is not Gaeilge, the Irish language. It is not Ulster Scots, which is claimed to be a distinct language in its own right. I confess I am not a speaker.