“I was doin’ Rathgar.”
“That’s a fair stretch.” It was two and a half miles from there to Meath Street.
Lorcan shrugged. “Sure I’m fit for it.”
“And I’m glad to hear it.” Fingal started to speed up. “It’s been good to see you, Lorcan. I’m delighted you’re feeling better. You take care.”
“Fair play to you, Big Fellah. And good luck to you wherever you’re goin’ next.” Lorcan waved as Fingal cycled away.
He rode along narrow streets lined with many-storied terraces of decaying Georgian houses. Alleys and lanes teemed with skinny, ragged, underfed children; more tuggers; street balladeers; cyclists; men smoking on street corners. When Phelim had told Fingal last week that he would have to let him go, he’d resolved to pop in to see John-Joe when he was in the neighbourhood and lend him the promised five pounds so he could buy his family some treats for Christmas. Fingal wished he could have some job prospects to offer as well. With only three weeks until the twenty-fifth, that would have been a real Christmas present.
A barrel organ player cranked his odd instrument that was known locally as a hurdy-gurdy. Its notes had to compete with the yells of children, the rumble of cartwheels on cobbles, the clop of horseshoes, the tinkling of bicycle bells. Several times Fingal was greeted, “How are you, Big Fellah,” and waved his reply. Overhead washing hung to dry. A cat ran by, carrying a dead rat almost as big as the tabby. Fingal’s nose was filled with the odours of the Liberties—dirt, offal from the butchers’ slaughterhouses, the Liffey—he was inured to them now. And most prominent of all, borne on a westerly breeze, came the rich smell of barley being roasted at the Guinness Brewery a mile away at Saint James’s Gate. The people, the sights, the sounds, the smells. Dear God, he still didn’t fully understand why, but he loved this place.
Fingal crossed Bridge Street and stopped on the corner of Bull Alley, where an urchin wearing an oversized, stiff-peaked, floppy cap tilted at an impossible angle stood touting his wares. “Get your Independent, get your Daily Mail, get your Irish Examiner.” He was in a thick pullover, short pants, and, Fingal was delighted to see, a stout pair of boots. “Back at work, Dermot?” Fingal said.
Dermot Finucane turned and grinned. “Ach, Jasus, it’s yourself, sir. And it’s the feckin’ trut’ I’m back at me work, Doctor. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Dermot, and are your da and mammy keeping well?”
“Grand altogether. Hang on.” He lifted an Irish Independent from a pile and turned to a well-dressed man in a camel-hair coat and Homburg hat with a neat dent in its gutter crown. “Here y’are, sir, dis mornin’s Indo. T’anks very much.” He pocketed a coin and turned back to Fingal. “It’s a good job. I buy the papers at eightpence a dozen and sell dem for a penny each. Dat’s fourpence profit, and five Woodbine only cost tuppence.” He produced a packet. “You like a fag, sir?”
Fingal shook his head. “No thanks.” He knew he’d be wasting his breath telling Dermot he shouldn’t be smoking.
The youngster lit up and puffed out smoke like a hardened smoker—which he was. “Aah, grand,” he said. “And t’anks again for making me foot better. Me ma said it was a miracle cure and dat you’re a feckin’ angel of mercy.”
Fingal laughed and shook his head. “It’s my job,” he said, heart swelling at the thought that now that Prontosil was a proven remedy, doctors would at last be able to cure the people here of the many infections that brought them down. But “my job”? Not for much longer. He was losing the job here he was growing to love. And it couldn’t be helped. He fished in his pocket. “If I remember, you like clove rock?”
Dermot nodded.
Fingal, despite his earlier thoughts about wasting his breath, decided it was worth a try. “Do you know what the big chimney said to the little chimney?”
Dermot shook his head. “Nah.”
“You’re far too wee to be smoking.”
Dermot laughed loudly. “Ah, you’re a gas man, Doctor. ‘Too wee to be smokin.’”
“And so are you, Dermot Finucane. I’ll swap you a bag of rock for your gaspers.”
Dermot frowned, took a deep drag, shook his head. “No t’anks,” he said, and Fingal felt sad for the lost childhoods of the hundreds of tenement kids like Dermot Finucane.
“Here. Take it anyway.”
“T’anks very much.”
“I’ve to be getting on,” Fingal said. “Give my best to your folks.”
“I’ll do dat, Doctor Big Fellah.”
And as Fingal rode away he heard Dermot’s on the verge of adulthood voice cracking, “Indo, get your Indo. Five t’ousand Germans land in Cadiz. Read all about it. A few more flamin’ feisty forces to fight ferociously for fearless feckin’ Franco.” Fingal chuckled. Twelve, and already the alliterative Dermot was displaying his native flair for the language. Dubliners. Fingal’s feet were lighter on the pedals.
In less than five minutes he was propping his bike up outside number ten High Street. He went into the lobby barely conscious of the all-pervasive tenement smell as he knocked on John-Joe Finnegan’s door. The man himself answered.
“Och, Doctor O’Reilly. Come in. Come in. W’at’s the craic? How the feck are you?”
“I’m well, John-Joe, and yourself?” Fingal walked into the dingy room. Nothing had changed since he’d last been here in October. “How’s the hind leg?”
“Sit down. Sit down.” John-Joe pulled a chair in front of the turf fire and waited until O’Reilly was seated before sitting himself. “My ankle? The feckin’ t’ing’s still stiff and swollen, but I’m gettin’ about all right. Can I make you a cup of tea, sir? I was just goin’ to have one meself.”
“Please. I’d like that.”
John-Joe rose and went to work. A kettle was already boiling on a gallows over the fire. It wouldn’t take long.
Fingal vividly remembered the last time he’d been here and he’d made the tea for a weeping John-Joe. Clearly as he was at home mid-week he still hadn’t got a job. Fingal knew he’d nothing to blame himself for, but he was disappointed that despite his best efforts he’d been unable to help. He decided that he’d simply not raise the subject. It would probably embarrass the man.
“Here we are.” John-Joe set a teapot with a couple of chipped mugs on the hearth tiles. “We’ll let it stew for a minute.”
“Fair enough.”
“Now, Doc, I know you’re a busy man, and it’s a pleasure til see you, but what brings you here?”
O’Reilly hesitated, but a promise was a promise. He produced his wallet. “I believe,” he said, “we have an agreement about Christmas?” He opened the wallet.
“We do, sir,” and to Fingal’s surprise John-Joe seemed not the least bit put out, in fact he was smiling.
Fingal frowned. This wasn’t the fiercely proud man who eight weeks ago had refused charity and had been reduced to tears at the thought of accepting even a loan.
Fingal withdrew a blue-on-white five-pound note on which was inscribed, “The Governor and Company of the Bank of Ireland, Belfast, Donegall Place, promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Five Pounds Sterling.” The currencies circulated easily on both sides of the border. “Here. Get your kids and your wife—”
John-Joe took the note. “I will, sir, and t’ank you.” He smiled widely. “I believe the interest was to be a pint in the pub of my choice?”
“Well—yes, but only after you’ve got a job.” Fingal was confused.
“If you would meet me, sir, in The Blue Lion on Parnell Street.”
“That’s where Sean O’Casey wrote The Plough and the Stars.”
“I didn’t know dat, but it’s a bit feckin’ fancier than places round here like Swift’s on Francis Street or Kennedy and Lalor’s on York. The Lion’s more suitable for a gent like yourself. Anyroad, if you’ll meet me there on the first Saturday in February at six o’clock.”
Fingal did a quick calculation. The first Irish rugby international against Engl
and at their home ground at Twickenham wasn’t until the 13th of Februrary—if he was good enough to be selected in the trial this Saturday. “I can do that, but I don’t understand. Have you fallen into a fortune?”
“Like Paddy McGinty?” John-Joe laughed, and sang,
Mister Patrick McGinty an Irishman of note
Fell into a fortune and bought himself a goat …
“Do you know, sir, that Irish song was written by a couple of feckin’ Englishmen who’d come to Dublin to work in the music halls? The nerve of the fellahs pretendin’ to be Irish.”
“I did not,” O’Reilly said, laughing, “and you haven’t answered my question. Where are you going to get the money?”
John-Joe stopped grinning. “You’ll not believe this, sir. There’s a fellah called Casey Dempsey—”
“His wife’s Dympna and they have a lad called Jack?” The boy whose rickets Fingal had treated.
“Dat’s right. Casey’s the one who looked after my allotment at Dolphin’s Barn when I was in the hospital. Anyroad, Casey knows a man from Swift’s Alley, Brendan Kilmartin.”
“I delivered his wife last year,” Fingal said, well remembering Roisín and her baby boy, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly Kilmartin.
“Brendan got Casey work on a building site two weeks ago. The pay’s feckin’ brilliant.”
Fingal felt the hairs on his forearms stand on end. This was eerie.
“His foreman’s a lad wit’ only one arm—”
“Sergeant Paddy Keogh,” Fingal said. “He was a patient of mine once.”
“Well, Brendan fixed it for me to see Mister Keogh last week. He said a cooper should know how to use a feckin’ saw and hammer and adzes and bradawls, but he was a little hesitant. I was honest with him about my ankle, how I’d lost the job with Guinness, and how you’d helped me that day and come to see me in hospital. He said you’d treated him at Patrick Dun’s, he owed you a favour, and dat any old patient of yours was all right in Mister Keogh’s book, and then he offered me work startin’ January the second, praise be.”
Fingal leapt to his feet and clapped the man on the shoulder. “Bloody marvellous, John-Joe. Bloody wonderful.”
“Aye, sir, it is. In a way, I feel like you helped me get this job. So t’ank you.” Fingal could hear the relief in John-Joe’s voice. “I’ll have your money and if you don’t mind I’ll pay interest of not one but two feckin’ pints for you by February. It’s the least I can do.”
“Mind?” said O’Reilly. “Mind? I’ll be happy to drink your health. Indeed,” he said, “there’s a pub on the corner of Back Lane.” He rose. “With all due respect, tea be damned. Come on, John-Joe Finnegan. I’ll buy you a pint right now.”
He may be losing his job here by March, but he’d still be working in Dublin. He wouldn’t abandon his friends here in the Liberties. The fabric of his life here was woven too tightly for that. John-Joe’s story proved it. In some ways, he had helped his friend get this job. And, damn it all, didn’t the Liberties’ women who didn’t go to the Coombe Lying-in Hospital all end up in the Rotunda where he’d be working? ’Course they did.
52
Keep Right on to the End of the Road
“Nice little crowd,” said O’Reilly to Kitty as he started to unload the tray of canapés onto the upstairs lounge sideboard. The drone of conversation and laughter rose and fell above the strains of a softly played recording of Glenn Gould’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier by J. S. Bach.
“And a great spread,” O’Reilly said, piling a plate and handing it to Kitty, who had picked up her previously poured G&T. There were plenty of sandwiches, cheeses on sticks, chicken liver paté on toast, and stuffed olives to choose from as well as the newly arrived hot hors d’oevres.
“Thank you,” she said. “Don’t forget about yourself.”
He didn’t, and soon his own plate was piled high. He lifted his Jameson. “I think it has the makings of a very good hooley. We should circulate.”
The lounge was warm, cheery. Slack banked the fire and crackled as it burnt slowly enough for the room to stay comfortable without becoming intolerably hot. Kinky wore her best blue outfit, the one she’d worn at O’Reilly and Kitty’s wedding. She sat in an armchair, chignon immaculate, a smile perpetually on her lips as she chatted with Cissie Sloan and Aggie Arbuthnot, a small glass of sherry in one hand.
O’Reilly watched Aggie finish a sausage roll and delicately brush the pastry flakes from her fingers. “That was dead nummy, so it was,” he heard her say to her friend, “but not a patch on one of yours, so it’s not, Kinky.”
Kinky’s smile grew even wider.
“Excuse me, sir,” Donal Donnelly said, wriggling past O’Reilly, “but you said, and you were dead pacific—”
Donal suddenly turned to Julie, who was mouthing the word “specific” to her husband.
“Right, that’s what I said. Dead specific, that we was to help ourselves if we wanted another drink. Can I have one of them Babychams for Julie, please?” He pointed to where his wife, her long blond hair shining, continued to watch them.
“Pacific or specific, of course you can. Help yourself.” O’Reilly had no difficulty remembering exactly what he’d said fifteen minutes ago. He’d rattled a spoon on a glass and when enough folks were paying attention had announced, “Now, listen. I’ve got everyone their first jar, but after that I want you all to pour your own. I learnt from my father that if all guests do, no one can ever accuse their host of sending them home stocious. Any lack of sobriety on your part would have been regarded in the navy back in the ’40s and today will still be considered a ‘self-inflicted injury.’”
“And will you court-martial us, Doctor, if we get one?” Archie’s son, the recently promoted Sergeant Rory Auchinleck had enquired, to a general wave of laughter. Today he was in mufti. His batallion was stationed at Palace Barracks near Holywood.
“As the naval equivalent, retired, of a lieutenant-colonel in the army I do outrank you, Sergeant, so what I will do—” O’Reilly let a long pause hang, sufficient for Rory reflexively to come to attention. “—is remark that your dad and Kinky, his fiancée, must be very proud of your extra stripe, and so am I, lad. And even if you’re not in uniform tonight—so stand at ease—I’ll ask everyone to raise their glass in your honour and drink to the health of our new sergeant.”
The room had rung with the toast and a round of applause.
O’Reilly had glanced at Kinky to see both she and Archie beaming. Good. It was their night and O’Reilly knew how Archie doted on his only son.
Now Rory was standing beside his father. O’Reilly overheard Archie say, “I don’t agree. I think England’ll win the soccer World Cup next year.”
“It’ll be Germany,” Rory said. “I watched their team play when I was stationed at Wuppertal. Bet you they win.”
O’Reilly remembered how, long after he’d first tried red prontosil, he’d discovered that Wuppertal-Elberfelt was where a German doctor had done the very first clinical trials on the drug that had been so much bound up with Dermot Finucane and young Fingal’s life in the ’30s. Funny that the place should crop up in conversation tonight.
Donal Donnelly must have overheard Rory. “Who’s betting what?” he asked, and Julie, fresh drink in hand, sang out, “I thought, Donal Donnelly, you were giving up the betting.”
His reply was drowned by a gale of laughter from a group that included Sonny and Maggie Houston née MacCorkle, whose yellow felt hat had a scarlet poinsettia in its band. Kitty had joined them as they surrounded, of all people, Bertie and Flo Bishop. Bertie was repeating the punch line of a joke O’Reilly recognised as one of Dublin comedian Dave Allen’s. “If you don’t get his arse out of the Grand Canal you’ll be at that all day.” More laughter. Bertie? Telling jokes? Good Lord.
O’Reilly’s glass was empty and he moved to the sideboard. As he passed the front of the fireplace he jerked back, hardly believing his eyes. Arthur Guinness, who was allowed indoors in inclement w
eather, lay on his side in front of the fire, and curled against his tummy Lady Macbeth slept soundly, her body swaying back and forth as Arthur breathed. The dog raised his large brown eyes to O’Reilly as if to say, “Och, sir, she’s only little. I’ll let her off with it—this once.”
“And the lion shall lie down with the lamb,” O’Reilly heard, and turned to see Barry Laverty standing at his shoulder and watching the animals in front of the fire.
“No, Barry, it’s a wolf cosying up to a lamb and ‘the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.’ Isaiah eleven verse six, King James Version.” O’Reilly glanced at the still-rotund Councillor Bishop.
“I stand corrected,” Barry said, raising his empty glass.
O’Reilly clapped Barry on the shoulder. “I’m getting another jar. Coming?”
“I,” he said, “am your man. I’ll not have far to drive. I’m staying at Sue’s tonight.” He leant over and whispered in O’Reilly’s ear, “I think I’ll have enough saved to pop the question soon.”
“Fair play, Barry. I’m delighted,” O’Reilly said, and glanced over to where Sue, who was looking stunning in a lime green mini-dress that complemented her copper plait, was deep in conversation with Kitty. “My offer stands about letting you have Kinky’s quarters after she gets wed and moves in with Archie. Plenty of room for Sue too.”
“That would be grand, Fingal. Thanks.”
“We’ll say no more tonight. It’s Kinky and Archie’s do.” He handed Barry a Jameson, lifted his own, popped two sausage rolls on his plate, and said, “Let’s go and say hello to them.”
O’Reilly stopped in front of Kinky and Archie. “Enjoying yourself, Mrs. Maureen Kincaid, soon-to-be Mrs. Auchinleck?” he said.
Archie dropped a hand on her shoulder and smiled. “The whole thing’s dead on, so it is. Thank you and Mrs. O’Reilly, sir, very, very much.”
Before O’Reilly could reply, Kinky said, “I’m so pleased you and Miss Nolan could make it tonight, Doctor Laverty. And Doctor O’Reilly, dear, you and Mrs. O’Reilly have done this old Cork woman proud and Archie and I are so content in our own way, aren’t we, dear?” She hesitated. “And I want to say, nobody could have asked for a better employer these near on twenty years, so, and only for how much I care for this old goat,” she looked adoringly at Archie, “I’d be glad to stay here full time for another twenty.”