Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor

  Father couldn’t have a better specialist than Fingal’s old mentor from Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital. He attended Father at least once a week.

  “He spoke to me in private.” There was a catch in her voice. “He doesn’t think—He’s not confident that Connan is going to live much longer. Doctor Micks offered your father another blood transfusion, but he declined. I think it was the right decision.” Her gaze was fixed on Fingal’s eyes.

  The worry that was never far from the front of Fingal’s mind gnawed at him. He was no stranger to death, but watching his own father being wasted by acute myelogenous leukemia was harder than anything he’d done in his twenty-seven years. It was typical of Father’s iron will to refuse a transfusion that could only delay the inevitable. Fingal would like to have touched his mother’s hands but both were occupied. All he could do was say, “It was the right one. And Father’s not in any pain and has all of his wits about him.” It was the only comfort he had to offer.

  She smiled and braced her shoulders as rigidly as he’d seen old Queen Mary doing in a Pathé newsreel of her husband King George V’s funeral in January. Mary O’Reilly née Nixon, was like Her Majesty, a woman of the Victorian age. Sometimes Fingal wondered what went on behind those seemingly reserved façades. He was aware of the door opening behind him.

  Ma smiled and said, “Connan. You’re awake. Fingal’s home.”

  Father was leaning on a blackthorn walking stick.

  Fingal crossed the floor. “Take my arm.” He felt his father’s hand on his forearm and together they walked slowly. Fingal helped him onto the other folding chair.

  It took Father a while to catch his breath before he could say, “Thank you, son.” He’d been a tall man, but now he was stooped. His once black hair was thinning and silver. The tartan dressing gown he wore seemed to have been made for a man twice his size. The skin of the hands folded in his lap was alabaster white and onion-skin thin. Veins coursed beneath. A bruise the size of a half crown disfigured the back of the left hand. “Good to see you home.” He looked at the canvas. “Please don’t stop, Mary. You know how much I like to watch you work.”

  With the edge of the palette knife she started applying paint a third of the way up from the bottom of the canvas, drawing it across in a gently ascending thin line.

  Fingal knew that as a boat builder begins with the keel on which the skeleton of the vessel is laid, so Ma started her ’scape pictures with the horizon. With so much space left above it, this one was going to be a skyscape. She had a knack for capturing those moments when nature wrought a summer sky of such perfection that the viewer half-expected to see angels in one corner, or those of agony when Boreas the north wind piled up the thunderheads of Armageddon and made mortal man feel tiny and afraid.

  “Fingal’s just come in. Would you like a cup of tea, Connan?” Ma asked as if it were just another workaday afternoon.

  “No, thank you, dear.” He turned to Fingal. “Do please sit. How did the interview go? Are you going to take the job?” There was no hint of approval in his voice.

  Fingal frowned. His father had a deeply held belief that his younger son should specialize, a desire fostered by his friends Doctor Victor Millington Synge, nephew of the playwright, and Mister Oliver St. John Gogarty.

  “Doctor Corrigan, the principal, seems like an interesting man.” Fingal smiled. “I must say initially he put me off. Seemed arrogant and bullying, but we had a tête-à-tête. I could grow to like that man a lot, I think. You would, M—Mother.” Father hated Fingal calling her “Ma.” He had told him often that it was “common,” and perhaps he was right. Still, he always thought of her as Ma. “He worried a lot about the poor when he was about my age and is still committed to helping the underprivileged.”

  She stopped in the middle of softening the edge of part of the horizon. “Good for him. I’ve seen the living conditions in the Liberties. The sooner they’re razed the better. The city fathers have plans to pull down whole streets and put up seven thousand four hundred new dwellings by ’38, but that’s still a long time away. They should be moving faster.”

  “I’m sure Doctor Corrigan would agree. He has a more direct approach, looking after the people despite their surroundings, trying to help them one case at a time,” Fingal said, thinking of the little doctor and Manus Foster, his skin pink from coal gas poisoning. “He is very committed to his work. I could learn a lot from him.”

  “Corrigan graduated in the same year as Doctor Micks,” Father said, then a cough clutched him and he bent over but soon righted himself and continued. “They attended Doctor Steevens’ Hospital together for some of their training. Doctor Micks says the man’s a very good doctor.” Father coughed again. “For a G.P.”

  “I can have the job if I want it.”

  “And do you?” Father asked, and coughed, this time deep in his chest, a moist sound. He gasped twice. “I’m sorry,” he said, and worked at getting his breath back.

  The disease had spread to Father’s lungs. Fingal gritted his teeth. He’d been seeing patients for long enough not to be surprised by the random unfairness of how illnesses struck, but it was unjust how this abomination had afflicted Father—bloody unjust. He was still a relatively young man—only fifty-seven. Fingal clenched his fists, then let them relax, waiting for him to speak.

  “I’m all right now,” Father said. “I asked if you were going to take the job, Fingal.”

  “I want to discuss it with Charlie Greer. See if I can persuade him to come and work there too. There are two vacant positions. I’m hoping to see him tomorrow afternoon, and,” he hesitated, torn between a feeling of filial duty and a selfish wish to see Kitty O’Hallorhan, “then I’m taking Kitty out afterwards.”

  “The lovely nurse with the grey eyes that you brought here for dinner on the night you got your Finals results?” Ma said. She had finished the preliminary sketch of the horizon and was blocking out cloud shapes and patterns above using a broad brush loaded with purple-grey paint. Already the sketches were giving Fingal a sense of foreboding, but thinking of Kitty banished it.

  “That’s her. I’m looking forward to seeing her.” Kitty was indeed lovely, soft and very kissable. She was also good fun to be with, and God knew Fingal would appreciate that right now. But despite a longing to see Kitty, he turned to his Father and added, “If it’s all right with you.”

  “You must do both, son,” Father said. “There’s absolutely no need for you to haunt this place like Banquo’s ghost. Mother and I will be perfectly all right.”

  “Thank you both,” Fingal said, “and about my decision. I didn’t accept on the spot. Said I’d like a bit of time to think about it. If Charlie says no, the hours will be pretty brutal and I hadn’t realised there was going to be a fair bit of paperwork.”

  Father smiled. “There always is. I should know.” He nodded. “I’m glad you’re taking your time, son. There’s a lot of truth in the adage, ‘Accept in haste. Regret at leisure.’”

  Father and his words to live by. “The clinical work would be in the Liberties, the Coombe. I know my way around a lot of the district already. I was out there often when I did my midwifery.” He smiled. “There’s even a chissler named Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly Kilmartin, poor child. If he learns to write he’ll have a time of it filling in forms.” He remembered how flattered he’d been when the baby’s parents had told him they were going to name the wee one in Fingal’s honour. “I do like working with the people there. You feel that you’re making a difference. Doctor Corrigan said much the same, and if Charlie would agree to come too, the workload wouldn’t be so very heavy. I’ll not decide until I see what he says.”

  “Sensible,” she said. “Very sensible.” She smiled. “I know from the stories you told us about your time at Sir Patrick Dun’s you’ll enjoy working with the less privileged. If you do decide to accept, I’m sure it will be rewarding work. I’m so very proud of you, son.”

  Father remained expressionless.

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bsp; “And, if it’s not out of place to say it, so’s Cook and me.” Bridgit had come in pushing a tea trolley. “Where will I put this, ma’am?”

  “Just leave it there, please. Fingal can eat off his lap and we can talk more about the job when you’ve finished.”

  Father seemed to be content to sit quietly as Ma worked while Fingal polished off his lunch. “That,” said Fingal, holding on to his second cup of tea, “was just what the doctor ordered.”

  Father smiled and started to say something, but his words were strangled by more coughing. Ma transferred the palette knife into her left hand, leant forward and patted Father’s hand. “It’s all right, dear. Don’t try to talk. You’ll tire yourself out.”

  Fingal watched his father struggle for breath, knowing exactly what the leukaemia was doing to his body. The proliferation of the blood’s white cells was suppressing the production of red cells that carried oxygen. It wasn’t the same mechanism that had made Manus Foster unconscious, but the result was the same. Oxygen starvation of the tissues. The disease, now having invaded his lungs, accounted for Father’s breathlessness and his cough.

  “You know my feelings, son. I’d like to see you specialize, but…” He managed a weak smile. “Once I thought you should be a nuclear physicist.”

  “You may have been right, Father,” Fingal said. “I’m not going to become a Rockefeller working in the dispensary system.”

  “No,” said Father, “no you’re not, but I believe you could be a contented man, and you have your health.” Fingal detected no hint of bitterness or envy in his father’s words, then he was wracked again. Ma looked at Fingal, who rose and cradled his father’s head, as Professor Connan O’Reilly must have cradled his infant sons’. Fingal held on until the coughing stopped, released his father, and said, “All right now, Dad?” The time for the formal “Father,” which had until very recently been the only way Fingal and his brother Lars had addressed the man, was over, although Fingal would always think of him as Father. “All right?”

  Father nodded. “You have the Gailege, the Irish, Fingal.” He swallowed. “Is fearr an tsláinte ná na táinte.”

  “Health is better than riches,” Fingal said, and thought, how true. Father and Ma had never been attracted to extravagance, seemed to have everything they needed. He glanced at Ma’s canvas. Already the cloud outlines had been formed and she was using a thick impasto to give one a foreboding body. He felt a goose walk over his grave and thought, No wonder the ancient Norse believed that the Valkyries, the goddesses who decided who would die in battle, careered on wild horses through the Heavenly maëlstroms.

  Father reached for Fingal’s hand. “I may have my opinions.” His voice had a feathery quality, but then he pulled himself upright in his chair and said, as firmly as ever Fingal remembered, “I may think specialisation is right for you—but I’ve always taught you and Lars, ‘To thine own self be true.’”

  Fingal smiled and cleared his throat. “Unless it was in conflict with what you thought was best for us. As you said a few moments ago, you initially thought I should go in for nuclear physics. But you’ve softened a lot—” He hesitated. “—Dad.”

  “I was wrong. Then.” Father smiled. “Apparently on occasions some old dogs can be taught new tricks. Do it, son. Try general practice, even if Charlie doesn’t. If it’s what you want, stick at it. If it’s not, think about my opinion, after I’m gone.”

  If Fingal had any remaining reservations about taking the job, Father had put them to rest. The lump in Fingal’s throat was threatening to strangle him. He stared at the floor, then at his father’s pallid, wasted, but smiling face. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Dad.” And as he poured more tea for himself, Fingal O’Reilly wished he could ignore the social convention that prohibited grown men from embracing. “And I will remember.”

  “Good,” said Professor O’Reilly. “And now, if it’s still warm, I think I will have that cup of tea.”

  8

  With Aching Hands and Bleeding Feet

  O’Reilly listened to the rain hammering against the surgery windows at Number One Main Street. Bloody Ulster summer squalls. He headed for the waiting room, but Kinky, holding the hall telephone, stopped him. “Before you see your next patient, sir, his lordship’s on the line.”

  “Fine. Thanks, Kinky.” He took the receiver. “John?”

  “Fingal. Glad I caught you. I’ve just discovered I’d made a ghastly oversight. I do apologise.”

  O’Reilly frowned. “Oversight?”

  “Yes. Myrna’s accident and all that. I muddled up the guest list for tomorrow. You and Kitty should have been invited. It’s the opening day of grouse season.”

  Indeed it was. O’Reilly, who frequently was invited to shoot on the marquis’s moor in County Antrim, had been disappointed not to have been asked this year, but understood how his lordship had to share his favours throughout that county too. “Don’t worry about it, John.”

  “Myrna usually handles these things. I’m glad we got her home yesterday…”

  Despite his good intentions O’Reilly had not been able to make time to visit her in hospital, but Cromie had kept O’Reilly up to date on her progress.

  “I found your invitation wedged under a pile of tack catalogues this morning, so needless to say it didn’t get posted,” he said with a laugh. “Any chance you two could still come? I’d love to have you both there, and Arthur’s such a help with pushing up birds and the retrieving.”

  “I think so. I’ll have to arrange cover, but I’m sure Doctor Bradley will oblige. She’s out now. I’m not sure about Kitty. She’s off today, but I think she’s on duty tomorrow. I’ll phone you after lunch.”

  “I’ll look forward to hearing.”

  O’Reilly replaced the receiver. It would be a splendid day out on the moors near Loughareena, County Antrim, and, he thought as he marched along the hall, no distance from Ballymena. He wondered if Barry might be free for dinner that evening. It would be good to catch up with how he was getting on.

  O’Reilly opened the door to his waiting room and admired the roses on the wallpaper. Their bright hues always managed to make him feel cheerful even on the greyest day, like today. He said to the remaining patients, “Is it Colin or yourself, Lenny?” as he bent and scratched the droopy ear of Murphy, Colin’s new puppy.

  Lenny Brown pointed at Colin’s bare and grubby left foot. “Colin again. Sorry, Doc. He cut his foot a few days ago, but it’s getting worser, so it is. It was all right this morning when he went over to Gerry Shanks’s place so Mairead could mind him. The missus had til go til Belfast and I’ve my work. Mairead brung him til the building site half an hour ago because he said it had started to hurt like bedamned. I took one look at his foot and brung him right here, so I did.”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “In the wars again, eh?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Colin said, and sniffed.

  “Come on then, let’s have a look at you, but leave Murphy here. He’ll be all right if we shut the door.”

  “Be a good dog, Murphy,” Colin said.

  Lenny bent, then lifted and carried Colin. “He was getting about rightly at brekky time, but he can’t walk on it now.” As O’Reilly led them to his surgery he remembered how the last year had gone for Colin Brown. Cut hand Barry’d sutured last summer, ringworm of his scalp, greenstick fracture of his ulna and radius this year, and now this? The little lad was accident-prone. “Pop him up on the couch, Lenny”—Mister Brown deposited his son—“and have a pew.”

  Lenny took one of the hard-backed chairs and adopted the splay-legged posture common to all who sat there and on its twin. Patients had to brace themselves because years ago O’Reilly had sawn off a couple of inches from the front legs so patients would slide forward, be uncomfortable, and not be tempted to stay too long.

  “How’d you do your hoof, Colin?” O’Reilly asked.

  “You knows Donal Donnelly? Him that has the gru-dog Bluebird, like?”

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p; O’Reilly laughed. “Indeed I do. And I know his greyhound. I’ve made a few bob on her.”

  “Well, I was out at his place three days ago with Murphy, my new wee pup. We’d went out on the bus. Donal—” He glanced at his father as if expecting a reprimand. Small boys did not call adults by their Christian names. “He likes me to call him Donal, Daddy, honest to God.”

  “I’d call that impertinence. Weans should respect their bloody elders and betters, so they should.”

  “Och, come on, Daddy. Donal says it’s all right and he’s helping me train Murphy.”

  “I suppose.” Lenny shrugged. “All right, but you try calling me or your mammy that way.” He turned to O’Reilly. “I blame it all on that there American TV.”

  “Train Murphy? That’s very decent of him,” O’Reilly said. “Donal’s a good man with dogs.”

  “Aye, he is that, and I’m helping him with his dog too, so I am.” O’Reilly heard the pride in the boy’s voice. “He’s got all kinds of plans for her.” Colin dropped a wink and for a moment O’Reilly could have sworn he was looking at Donal Donnelly. He knew Donal was planning on doing a bit of “flapping” at an unregistered track, and as O’Reilly remembered it, Donal had said owners’ kids often presented the dogs to the stewards. Since Donal’s own child was far too young to help him with his schemes, it looked as if Donal had found a suitable kid for whatever he was planning. “And he says he’s mentioned it til youse, Doctor, but I’ve to keep my trap shut with everyone else.” The wink again. “There’s never nobody out at Dun Bwee to see me and him together with the dog.”

  O’Reilly chuckled and said, “Crafty bugg—” and cut himself off. Not in front of children. He wondered how much Lenny and Connie Brown knew about the dog scheme? “And you and Connie don’t mind, Lenny? Colin’s not a bit young to be working with racing greyhounds?”