Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor

  “Helen Hewitt,” O’Reilly said, and pretended to glower at her, “I’m much better at granting favours when I’m sitting down, preferably with a Jameson’s in my hand. It’s that time of the day.” He glanced at his watch, quarter to six. “Come along.” O’Reilly started to climb the stairs. “Kitty’ll be home soon. I’m sure she’d like to see you too. Jenny’s off tonight. She’s up in Belfast seeing her beau, a Terry Baird. Have you met him?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “Just wondered.”

  “I don’t mean to impose—”

  “Helen.” He shook his head. “You are not imposing in the least and I’m delighted to see you. Let me explain something. You don’t work for me anymore. We’re practically colleagues, or will be soon. You’re not coming to see me as your doctor, are you?”

  She frowned, looked dubious for a moment, then smiled and said, “No, sir, I’m not sick nor nothing, and I suppose I am going to be a doctor.”

  “Damn right you are. Just like me.”

  “Thank you.” She gave a contented little sigh then said, “Now the reason I came about—”

  “Tell me—” He turned, climbed down, took her elbow in his hand, and pulling her along with him said, “Upstairs.”

  She laughed. “Fair enough.”

  Once in the lounge he said, “Have a pew. What would you like?” and headed for the sideboard. He poured himself a whiskey.

  Helen took one of the armchairs in front of the fire Kinky had lit. “Would you have anything like a Babycham?”

  O’Reilly frowned. He’d seen the “genuine champagne perry” advertised on TV in a campaign specifically targeting women. “I’m sorry. Kitty usually drinks gin and tonic. Would that do?”

  “Lovely,” she said, “and hello, Lady Macbeth.” She fondled the white cat’s head as the animal purred and made herself comfortable on Helen’s lap.

  O’Reilly gave her her drink and settled in his chair. “Sláinte.” He drank. A whiskey by the fire after a long day. Lovely.

  “Cheers,” she said. “How’s Doctor, I mean Jenny, how’s Jenny getting on?”

  “Splendidly,” O’Reilly said. “Bit of trouble at first.”

  “Because she’s a woman doctor?”

  He nodded, then fished out and lit his pipe. “At first, but folks are getting used to her. There are one or two of my women patients who are asking for her specifically now.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “And I’m sure it’ll be even easier by the time I’m qualified.” She leant forward and said seriously, “A couple of the girls in the class have been reading a book by Betty Friedan.”

  “The Feminine Mystique,” he said. “If that stuff interests you, you should try The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. I read it when it first came out in 1949. Interesting ideas. I reckon, judging by reports from America, there are changes coming for women.” He half-smiled. “And I’m not convinced us men are necessarily going to like them.” He wandered over to the bookshelf, took down the volume, and gave it to her. “See what you think.”

  “Thanks very much,” she said, studying the book’s cover photo of de Beauvoir. “But she wasn’t the first one going on about women’s rights. I’ve read about the suffragettes.”

  “I think you’d have to go farther back than that. Mary Wollstonecraft was agitating back in the eighteenth century.” He blew a smoke ring. “You still smoking?”

  “Aye, certainly.”

  “Feel free.”

  She lit up.

  He noticed that she was now smoking Gallagher’s Greens, a step up from her earlier cheap brand.

  “I came to ask you if—”

  “Later, Helen. I want to hear how you’re getting on.”

  “I love it,” she said, “and a lot of the work’s just like what we did for our school exams. Physics, chemistry, botany, and zoölogy.” She exhaled, the smoke curling up. “But it’s a whole new experience,” she said. “There’s fifteen of us girls and about a hundred men, and in first year the dental students take the same classes as us so the lectures’re always filled.” Her eyes widened. “The teachers treat us like grown-ups.”

  “You are one,” he said.

  She laughed. “Some of the boys don’t behave like it.”

  “Ragging the teachers, are they? We once had a skeleton called Gladys that could be lowered on a rope from the rafters. Three of my class dressed her in ladies’ undies and put an alarm clock in the hollow of her pelvis. It went off in the middle of the class. Great fun.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d have been one of the three?”

  He chuckled, winked, and blew another smoke ring.

  “Bad divil,” she said, and laughed. “I don’t think it’s changed much. When we started, the professor of physics, Doctor Emelaeus, told us that he was conducting very important experiments in a sonics laboratory under the lecture theatre and that loud noises from overhead could ruin years of work.” She sipped her gin. “We were quiet as mice for six weeks, definitely not normal for medical students now, or in your day either, Doctor O’Reilly, I’m sure.”

  “We could be a pretty rowdy lot,” O’Reilly said, “but what the hell? People used to give students fools’ pardons for a bit of high spirits.”

  “They still do. Anyroad, one day one of the boys took a look. There was nothing down there but old storerooms.”

  “So Doctor Emelaeus had pulled off his own con trick?” For a second O’Reilly wondered if the learnèd professor had taken a post-graduate class from Donal Donnelly.

  “Aye, but about a week later, in the middle of his lecture about the Van der Graaf generator, there was a crash from the back row. You know those tiers of benches in lecture halls? ‘What was that?’ he says. Another crash from the next tier down. Then a crash from the third tier.” She laughed. “It would have made a cat laugh to see the prof’s face. Crash from tier four. We found out later one of the lads in the front row had half-filled a tin can with marbles, set it on the floor on the top tier and run a string down to where he sat. Every time he pulled the string—”

  “Crash,” yelled O’Reilly, startling Lady Macbeth. “Och, that’s brilliant. Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “By now everyone was laughing, clapping, stamping their feet.” Her grin faded. “I’d started feeling sorry for the wee prof. He gave up. Slammed his textbook, gathered up his notes, and stamped out. We never got to hear the rest of the lecture, but the next time he lectured he did say all was forgiven.”

  “Mmmm,” said O’Reilly. “When’s your physics exam?”

  “December.”

  “Elephants aren’t the only ones with long memories. If I was you, Helen Hewitt, I’d make sure I knew all about the Van der Graaf generator.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” O’Reilly said.

  “I’ll do that, sir.” She took a drink. “Now, I didn’t want to disturb you, but I did come to ask a wee favour.”

  “Fire away. It’ll be yours if I can do it.”

  “Cooo-ee, Fingal.” Kitty’s voice from below immediately preceded the slamming of the back door. “I’m home.”

  “Upstairs,” he called, and rose. “Excuse me, Helen. It’s been a long week for her. She’ll need her, um, medicine.” He went to the sideboard and started to pour a gin.

  Kitty came in. She carried something in her hand. It looked like a peculiarly shaped large book. “Helen. Lovely to see you. Don’t get up.”

  Helen, who had started to rise, subsided back into her chair, along with a somewhat chagrined-looking Lady Macbeth. “Mrs. O’Reilly.”

  “It’s Kitty,” she said. She accepted her gin and tonic. “Thanks, darling. Lifesaver.”

  “Sit here,” O’Reilly said.

  “Thanks again. My feet are killing me.” Kitty took the armchair.

  “Helen popped in,” he said, moving to lean against the mantel, “to let us know how she’s getting on at medical school, and it sounds as if she’s d
oing very well, and she wanted to ask me a favour. Go ahead, Helen.”

  Helen looked from Kitty and then to O’Reilly. “It’s about money, and I hate asking for any more favours because the scholarship takes care of all I need, but it would help at home…”

  O’Reilly was surprised. Was Helen going to ask for a loan?

  “… if I could earn a few bob in the summer holidays next year. A lot of the boys go to England and freeze peas and other vegetables in season. They can make as much as a hundred pounds, but it’s heavy physical work.”

  “I’m sure it is.” O’Reilly was relieved that the question of borrowing was not to be raised.

  “I came to you, sir, because a girl in the year ahead told me that sometimes country hospitals would take on medical students in the summer as orderlies. Pays thirty pounds a month. But she said you had to be recommended by someone who knows the staff at the hospital.”

  O’Reilly frowned. “My contacts are at the Royal.”

  Helen’s face fell.

  “But,” said Kitty, “your friend Cromie’s great pals with Mister Walter Braidwood, the consultant surgeon at Newtownards Hospital. We could ask Cromie to ask him.”

  “Begod we could,” said O’Reilly, “and begod, we will.” He grinned at Helen. “I can’t make you any promises, but we’ll try.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Helen said. “It would be a great help.”

  “Grand,” said Kitty. “That’s settled. Now, how’d you like to help us, Helen?”

  Fingal frowned. “What with?”

  “Come and see this, Fingal.” She set the book on a coffee table and opened it. “We need to look at these samples of wallpaper. I’m sure you could help us pick one, couldn’t you, Helen?”

  Helen was leaning over already, turning pages. “I like that light turquoise one with the pinstripe,” she said. “What’s it for?”

  O’Reilly choked on his drink when Kitty looked him straight in the eye, smiled her most beatific smile, and said, “The waiting room. Those God-awful roses really have to go.”

  27

  Do Not Trust the Horse

  “That’s some motorcar, Bob,” Fingal said, admiring a red four-door saloon with a long nose and huge headlights parked outside Bob’s flat on Merrion Street. “New, is it?”

  “It’s well for the wealthy,” Charlie said. “What make is it?”

  “I got it three weeks ago from a new company,” Bob said. “Jensen. It’s their 1936 S-Type. Hop in.” He held a back door open for Charlie.

  Fingal got in the front passenger seat and inhaled that new car smell.

  “Won’t take long to get there,” Bob said, driving away from the kerb. He made a right turn onto Fitzwilliam Place, the same street Fingal and Kitty had walked along in August when they stumbled upon the Blueshirt rally. She’d not been as vocal about the plight of Spanish orphans since that day, but the damn war kept cropping up in their conversations. He hoped she’d let that hare sit tonight. It had been an intense week at the dispensary, and he wanted to forget about it for today. He had to be back at work tomorrow.

  “How’s life abusing you both?” Bob asked.

  “It’s good to be off work and heading to play rugby at Donnybrook, I can tell you that for free,” Fingal said.

  “Big game for Fingal,” Charlie said.

  “I know,” Bob said. “Seeing Kitty tonight, Fingal?”

  “I am.”

  “Give her my best,” Bob said.

  “And mine,” Charlie said.

  “And how’s the job going?” Bob asked. “Still having fun?”

  Fingal hesitated. “I love the clinical work with the patients, but once in a while not being able to offer much treatment and not being able to do anything about the poverty can get you down. I’d a rough week. Two patients I’d got to know died of tuberculosis, there’s a fellah I’ve come to like who’s lost his job … Och, the blazes. I’m trying to put that behind me and enjoy today.”

  “Having second thoughts?” Bob asked.

  Fingal detected no “I told you so” tone to Bob’s voice but remembered his disapproval the afternoon in Davy Byrnes pub when Fingal had announced his intention to join a dispensary practice. “No. I keep watching Phelim Corrigan and telling myself, if he can still be happy at his work after twenty-nine years, so can I.” And yet, he had wondered in John-Joe’s tenement room, and had worried about it since. Of course he could be like Phelim, Fingal reassured himself. “Charlie, what do you reckon?” Fingal didn’t see a lot of Charlie in the day-to-day working of the practice but had assumed that because he’d said nothing to the contrary he was enjoying his work. He certainly hadn’t mentioned it at lunch, but they’d had other things to talk about on their day off, like what Charlie thought of Fingal’s prospects for an Irish cap, the opening of a brand-new film studio by J. Arthur Rank at a place called Pinewood in England, and Charlie’s love life with a country lass from near Maynooth, which seemed to be getting a bit rocky.

  “It’s a job,” Charlie said as Bob passed the intersection with Mount Street Upper.

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic, Charlie,” Bob said. There was still no hint of smugness. Sound man, Bob Beresford. Fingal frowned and turned in his seat. “Are you not enjoying it? I thought you were.”

  “It’s all right. After three months I’ve got a feel for the work. You know how much I enjoyed working with my hands when we were students. But apart from lancing a couple of carbuncles and putting in a few stitches now and then, there’re no real surgical opportunities. I miss that. And I hear what you’re saying about being so bloody helpless most of the time, Fingal. At least if you take out an appendix or sew up a bleeding stomach ulcer you’re really curing the patient. I miss that too.”

  “So are you thinking of moving on?” If Charlie said yes, Fingal would be disappointed, but he would not try to influence his friend.

  “I honestly don’t know, but I may well be,” Charlie said. “I went up to Belfast on my last weekend off and stayed with Cromie. Now there’s a man who’s happy at his work. Sends his best, by the way. Made me wonder, but don’t worry, Fingal. Please. If I do decide to specialise in surgery, I’ll let you know long before I say anything to Doctor Corrigan. Anyway, we agreed to stay for six months and then give three months’ notice. I’ve lots of time.”

  “It’s your decision, Charlie,” Fingal said. “Of course I’ll not say anything to Phelim.” But Fingal sensed that his friend would be moving on. He turned back to stare through the windscreen and recognised the corner of Leeson Street, where Kitty had her flat.

  “Thanks, Fingal,” Charlie said. “I appreciate that, and I will let you know one way or the other in good time. I don’t want you working one in two weekends, so I’d give Phelim lots of time to get someone else.”

  “Fair enough. One other thing. Ma’s moving to Portaferry in December. I’ll be a homeless waif. Any chance of taking you up on the offer—”

  “Of sharing my flat on Adelaide Road? Of course. Any time, Fingal. Less rent to pay, more for a pint or two.”

  All three men laughed.

  Fingal watched the houses go by and frowned. Charlie was having serious second thoughts and, come on, Fingal, he told himself, so are you. Admit it. It hadn’t concerned him back in July that Bob had picked research and Cromie surgery. He’d been perfectly confident in his choice of general practice with its opportunities to do some medical good and be accepted by the patients and the community as they got to know and trust him. Now he was questioning just how much good he was actually doing. With Charlie now considering surgery as well, was Fingal going to end up like that old joke about the boy marching in Belfast where one woman says to another, “That’s desperate, so it is. Everybody’s out of step—except our wee Willie”?

  And yet Fingal knew he’d always marched to his own drummer, was always confident in his decisions. Hadn’t he stood up to his own father and realised the dream of becoming a doctor? Why the hell now was he challenging his ow
n choice about the kind of doctor he wanted to be?

  He jerked forward in his seat when Bob braked suddenly. A Clydesdale horse hauling a Guinness dray coming from Dartmouth Walk had, for reasons best known only to the beast, stopped dead in the middle of the intersection. He could hear the driver yelling, “Och, for God’s sakes, Rosebud. Get a move on. I’ll give you yer feckin’ nosebag when we get til Lannigan’s pub and we’re unloading the barrels.”

  The horse whinnied and shook her head, making the polished horse brasses on the heavy collar sparkle in the sunlight.

  The driver must have seen Bob looking at him because he touched the brim of his bowler hat—all Guinness drivers wore them, and white aprons—and yelled, “Sorry about dat, sir. Me feckin’ horse is working to rule today.” He lightly flicked his whip on the beast’s large rump. “Now get on up, girl.” She snorted, lifted her tail, deposited a heap of horse apples, as much as to say, “Stuff you, mate,” then the dray rumbled forward.

  Bob Beresford, who earlier in his student career had been pathologically work-shy, laughed and said, “That was living proof of what I used to say, ‘The only animal that works is the horse—and it thinks so little of it you know what part of its anatomy it turns to its task. Its arse.’”

  Charlie and Fingal laughed. “I know I don’t want to be like that horse when it comes to my job,” said Fingal, “plodding along until I can put on the nosebag. It’s critical that whatever we finally choose we enjoy. We could be doing it for another forty years.”

  “Not me,” said Bob, steering with one hand and lighting a cigarette with the other. “I intend to marry a beautiful heiress who’s too proud to let her husband work.”

  Fingal turned to Bob and studied his face, but couldn’t decide if he was serious or not. It was hard to tell with Bob.

  “That’s one approach,” Fingal said with a laugh. “But medicine isn’t like laying bricks or—or making barrels like a cooper.” He searched for what he was trying to express. “It’s getting up in the morning with a smile on your face knowing that you aren’t really going to work. I agree entirely with something Phelim Corrigan said after he’d had a long night on call. I suggested the man was pushing himself too hard. ‘Rubbish, lad,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t working. Work is what ye do for money when ye’d infinitely rather be doing something else, and what the hell else would I rather be at?’” And that’s how I want to feel too, so why these nagging doubts? He wondered how Bob’s research was going. “So,” Fingal said, “that’s two of us. How are things with you, Bob? How are you getting on with Professor Bigger?”