Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor

  “Not at all, Doc,” he said with a laugh. “Kids do it all the time. And Donal’s a sound man. We all know he’s a bit of a schemer, but there’s no real harm in him. Him and me has a wee understanding about this. I’m helping a bit too—and if a bookie loses a few bob, you’ll hear no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth round here. Colin’s not going to get hurt and he has a new interest. He’s certainly doing a great job with Murphy—with Donal’s help. You should see the wee pup sit when he’s told to.”

  O’Reilly shrugged. It was true youngsters were often involved with the training of racing dogs and horses, and if it was all right with Lenny and Connie Brown then O’Reilly could wonder all he wanted about the exact nature of the upcoming plot, but for now could afford to turn a blind eye. “So what happened to your foot?” he said.

  “It was a dead brill day and there was dew on the grass so I took my shoes and socks off for til run through it.” He grinned. “Feels lovely on your bare feet, so it does.” His grin fled. “But there was something sharp and I cut my foot. Miss MacAteer, I mean Missus Donnelly, was wheeker, so she was. She cleaned it, put on some iodine—it stung like blue buggery—”

  O’Reilly glanced at Lenny but Colin’s language didn’t appear to upset the man, probably because Lenny’s own was hardly snow-white.

  “Then she put on a great big Elastoplast. It was a bit sore, but I could hirple about on it right enough until this morning when I was at the Shanks’s. Mrs. Shanks took off the plaster about half an hour ago and the whole thing was beelin’ so she brung me to my daddy and he brung me here.”

  “Let’s have a look.” Indeed it was “beeling.” Pus was coming from a two-inch-long cut in the middle of the sole. It was a nasty sight now, an eighth of an inch wide and showing no signs of healing. Julie Donnelly’s iodine clearly hadn’t been effective as a disinfectant, or perhaps Colin had got more dirt into it. The cut probably should have been sutured, but it was too late now because it was the same rule today as it had been when he was a student: “If there’s pus, drain it.” The wound would have to heal by what was called secondary intention, after the inflammation settled down, but that would be rapid in a healthy youngster like Colin and antibiotics would make short shrift of the infection.

  “All right,” said O’Reilly, “we’ll get that fixed soon enough for you, Colin.”

  In a very short time, O’Reilly had shown Lenny how to clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide and put on a gauze dressing. “Do that twice a day until it stops weeping, and keep a clean dressing on it until you bring him to see me this day week. Don’t let it get dirty or wet and no walking on it until the skin’s grown back. In a young fellah like Colin that should be two or three weeks. I’ll see if I can get crut—”

  “Buggeration. You mean we’ll have to lift and lay him for three whole weeks?” Lenny didn’t wait for O’Reilly to finish.

  “Buggeration’s right, Daddy,” Colin said, eliciting no response from Lenny and making O’Reilly wonder why he’d bothered to moderate his own language earlier. “It’s my summer holidays. All gone. Can youse do nothing, Daddy?”

  Lenny frowned. “If I made him a crutch, could he hop about, Doc? It’d be awful hard for a wee lad to have til sit around all day.”

  “No reason not to, Lenny. You’ll be going round like a bee on a hot brick, Colin, and you’ll be fit in September for—” O’Reilly remembered Colin’s antipathy to school so didn’t finish the sentence.

  It was mandatory for anyone who had cut themselves where there was soil in which the spores of the causative organism might lurk—even if their immunisation schedule was up to date—but Colin wasn’t impressed with the tetanus toxoid jab. He yelled at the top of his voice and was answered by a loud woof then whining from the waiting room.

  “We’ll get you back to your dog in just a minute,” O’Reilly said.

  Colin soon cheered up when O’Reilly gave him half a dozen jelly babies from a bag of sweeties in his jacket pocket. Carrying sweeties for young patients was a trick he’d developed back in his Sir Patrick Dun days.

  “Here you are, Lenny.” O’Reilly handed over a prescription for the cleanser, gauze pads and bandages, and penicillin V. “Give Colin four tablets as soon as you get home from the chemist, then 125 milligrams, that’s one tablet, four times a day for a week,” he said, “and count yourself lucky we’ve got antibiotics these days. They’re the greatest things since Noah ran the Ark aground.” He well remembered another infected foot back in 1936. He’d never ever forget a boy called Dermot Finucane.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Lenny said. “Connie’ll bring him in next week.”

  Colin piped up, “Thank you, Doctor O’Reilly—and don’t you never say nothing about Donal’s dog.”

  “I’ll not,” O’Reilly said, and chuckled. He wondered if Ballybucklebo was big enough for two tricksters.

  * * *

  Kitty was sitting in her usual chair to the right of his own at the dining room table. He sang in his soft baritone a snatch from the song “Have I Told You Lately that I Love You?” He’d first heard it twenty years ago. “Well, I bloody well do, even after being married to you for five whole weeks and four days today.” He inclined his head. “I could get very used to it.”

  “Me too,” she said, then stood, made sure no one was near, and kissed him so forcibly he was no longer aware of the pelting of early-August raindrops on the bow window.

  “And I wish I’d had the wit to do it back in ’36, but—”

  “Now, Fingal,” she said, “you’ve told me that regret is the most useless emotion. What’s done is done.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve always been sure we were meant to be more than a short romance, and God bless you, you great inarticulate bear, so did you, you just didn’t recognise it or know how to express it. You slipped up back then, boy, but there’s no need to plough the same furrow twice.” She held up her left hand with her solitaire diamond engagement and simple wedding ring on the third finger.

  “Thank you, love,” he said, “thank you,” and the growth of his heart in his chest nearly choked him.

  “By the way,” she said, “I was passing and heard a funny noise in the waiting room. Someone had left a pup there. Looked like Colin Brown’s dog.”

  “It was,” O’Reilly said. “Colin’d cut his foot, but a bit of penicillin’ll see him right.”

  “Poor wee lad.” She pursed her lips. “Fingal?”

  “Yes?”

  “When was the last time you decorated your waiting room?”

  He frowned. “Dunno. Why?”

  “I have never in all my days seen anything as gaudy as those roses.”

  “My roses? I like ’em.”

  She sat, cocked her head, and said, “Och well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste,” then glanced to the hall and clearly decided not to pursue matters with Jenny Bradley in the hall hanging up a sodden raincoat.

  “Hello, Jenny. Grab a pew,” O’Reilly said as she came in.

  “Fingal. Kitty.” She took off the jacket of the navy blue suit she often wore when working and put it on an empty chair. “It’s bucketing down out there.”

  At five foot six with blonde bangs, bright blue eyes, small nose, well-filled white silk blouse, and slim waist, Jenny Bradley was a most attractive twenty-six-year-old, Fingal thought. “Busy morning?” he asked.

  She parked herself on his left. “Not much,” she said. “Little lad up on the council estate with hay fever. It’s that time of year and the rain bringing pollen down doesn’t help. He settled down after I gave him nought point three milligrams of adrenaline, one in one thousand solution subcutaneously. I popped in with Mister Devine like you asked me to. He’s sad, but it’s six months since his wife died and he seems to be managing. I’ll be going out again after—”

  “Lunch,” said Kinky, appearing in the doorway. “Pea and mint soup with a shmall-little bit of fresh cream and finely chopped mint garnish, so.”

  “After lunch,” Jenny said. ?
??Youngster up in the hills. Sounds like out-of-season whooping cough, but,” she took a deep breath in through her nose, “that smells delicious, Mrs. Kincaid. I’m sure he can wait a little longer.”

  Jenny Bradley’s settling well into the routine and seems to have a well-honed sense of who can wait for a little while and who needs instant attention, O’Reilly thought. I’d have made the same decision of lunch before whooping cough. Even Kinky’s soup, though, would have had to wait for chest pain or bleeding.

  Kinky had set the steaming bowls in front of each diner. “I had planned to serve it cold, it being summer, but it does be coming down in stair-rods so I thought you’d all, especially Doctor Bradley, appreciate something warm, and it does be very, very—”

  “Jasus Murphy,” O’Reilly roared, spitting out soup and clapping his hands to his mouth, “I’m marmalized, scalded like a butchered pig.”

  Kinky sniffed as only she could and said distinctly, “Very hot, so.”

  “Thank you for warning us, Kinky,” Kitty said, clearly trying to stifle a smile. “Now, Fingal, there’s no need to shout. Try to remember what our mothers used to say. Blow on it and eat it round the edges like a little pussycat does.”

  O’Reilly guffawed. “And did your mother tell you that too, Jenny?”

  She nodded.

  “And it does be sound advice, sir,” Kinky said. “It stops a man burning his mouth and keeps his tie clean too.”

  “I don’t think,” Kitty said with a smile, “that pea green goes with Trinity College stripes.” She looked up. “If Doctor O’Reilly gives you his tie would you sponge it, please, Kinky?”

  “I will, so. I always do.”

  It was a matter-of-fact statement, O’Reilly recognised, not a hint that Kitty might mind her own business and leave Kinky’s doctor’s laundry and clothes cleaning arrangements up to Kinky.

  She held out her hand. “But ties do be the divil to wash. Maybe the dry cleaner’s?”

  “Please,” O’Reilly said, feeling like a chastised six-year-old as he undid the knot and handed her his tie. “Thank you, Kinky.” He smiled at Kitty.

  “Now,” said Kinky, “after all those shenanigans, please eat it up before it gets cold.” She left muttering to herself, “More haste, less speed.”

  Fingal didn’t blow on his plate, but was more circumspect as he took his first mouthful. “Nectar and ambrosia,” he said. “Food of the gods.”

  “And,” said Jenny, “if Homer is to be believed, used by Tethys to prevent Achilles’ recently deceased body going off.” She must have seen Kitty’s raised eyebrow because Jenny said, “I’d not have mentioned it in nonmedical company.”

  Kitty laughed and gave a dismissing wave with her left hand. “Good heavens, you won’t hear anyone saying ‘not while we’re eating’ around here, Jenny. We’ve about sixty years of medical experience between us.”

  Fingal’s second spoonful stopped halfway to his mouth. “Mirabile dictu,” he said, “wondrous things are spoken. The woman knows her Homer.” And without hesitation, Jenny replied, “Virgil. Aeneid.”

  Fingal ignored the ringing of the telephone, Kinky would answer it, and said, “I’ll be damned. You’re right. Twice. Well done.” He smiled inside. He’d thought he’d not be able to play his duelling trivia game now Barry had left, but this wasn’t the first time Jenny Bradley had matched him. In the nearly seven weeks she’d been here, four working in harness with him, she’d been willing, hardworking, clearly had a sense of fun, and so far medically had shown that she knew her stuff. “You’re fitting in nicely here,” he said.

  “Thank you, Fingal.” She hesitated, then said, “With most of your patients. At the beginning quite a few left the waiting room when they saw I was doing the surgery. Even after six weeks some still do.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Why do you think that is?”

  “There’s not many of us ‘lady doctors’ around. It just takes time to let people get used to seeing a woman who isn’t a nurse with a stethoscope.”

  “Does it not bother you?” Kitty asked.

  Jenny shook her head. “I had to get used to ‘But girls don’t do medicine’ from the time I was sixteen and announced I wanted to go to medical school. I’m sure that nice Helen Hewitt who got the marquis’s scholarship’ll find the same thing. You ignore it, shrug it off…” Her eyes hardened. “And if you want to get even, do better than everybody in the class.”

  “And did you?” Kitty said.

  Jenny coloured. “Only two of us out of a class of ninety-one graduated with first-class honours.”

  O’Reilly whistled. “First class? You never told me.”

  Jenny laughed and said, “You never asked me.”

  “Well done you,” O’Reilly said. He chuckled. “I was happy enough to pass.” He pushed his empty soup plate aside. “And you’d settle for G.P.? Most honours winners specialize.”

  “I wasn’t sure what to do,” she said, “so I decided to give G.P. a try. I love it, and,” her blue eyes lit up, “this is the best practice I’ve ever been in. So far anyway.”

  “Glad you like it here,” O’Reilly said. She’d told him at the wedding, and in no uncertain terms, that she’d be looking for a full-time position. O’Reilly had made a promise to Barry Laverty that if, within six months, he still wanted it, he could have his job back. Time would tell, O’Reilly thought, but to avoid any premature discussion of the future he said nothing of his thoughts. He hoped, because he was so impressed with the young woman, that he’d not find himself in a difficult position when it came to keeping his promises to young Laverty should the need arise. It would be good to see Barry tomorrow if it could be arranged. O’Reilly finished his soup, then remarked, “I wonder what culinary delights Kinky has in store for the next course?”

  “That soup, Kinky, was out of this world,” Kitty said when she appeared.

  “Thank you.” Kinky beamed and said, “And I do hope you will enjoy your Scotch eggs and salad, so.” She served, the women first, then O’Reilly. “And you needn’t worry about burning your mouth on these, sir. They do be cold.”

  O’Reilly laughed. “Fair play, Kinky, and the soup was lovely.” He waited for her to tell them who had been on the phone. Oh well, if it was a patient needing a home visit, Jenny would take care of it.

  Kinky stood stiffly and took a deep breath. “I wonder, sir, if I could ask a very great favour?”

  “Fire away!”

  “That was Mister Archie Auchinleck on the telephone.”

  O’Reilly smiled at Kitty. So the romance with the milkman that had started when Kinky had come home from hospital was still in full flower.

  “There does be a Saturday matinée at the Tonic cinema…”

  “The Sound of Music’s playing,” Kitty said. “We should go sometime, Fingal.”

  Over my dead body, he thought. He’d heard the songs on the radio. Saccharine rubbish. But O’Reilly said, “And Archie’s invited you?”

  Kinky blushed and nodded. “Someone will need to be here to answer the phone if Doctor Bradley is out on a call, so.”

  “We’d be happy to do that for you, Kinky,” Kitty said. “Wouldn’t we, Fingal? We’ve no special plans.”

  “Of course. You go and phone him right back, and there’s no need to rush home when it’s over.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” Kinky’s grin was vast. “I’ll phone at once, but I will be home to make tea, although I might invite Mister Auchinleck to dine with me in my kitchen if that would be all right?”

  “Of course, Kinky.”

  An even stronger gust hurled rain against the windowpane, rattling the glass and sending a flying column of draughty chargers through where the sash was ill-fitting.

  “And,” he said, “I hope by tomorrow it’ll be a better day, because ladies, do you know what tomorrow is?”

  Jenny frowned. “Thursday, the twelfth of August.”

  “And?” He saw Kinky, who certainly knew what he was driving at, grinning. r />
  “Beats me,” Jenny said.

  “The Glorious Twelfth.”

  Jenny’s frown grew deeper. “That’s in July.”

  “No,” said O’Reilly, and chuckled. “July the twelfth of ‘glorious and immortal memory’ is the day of the Orangemen parade, and the ‘immortal memory’ applies to Robbie Burns. August the twelfth is much more important than either. It’s the opening day of grouse, that’s Lagopus lagopus scotica, or possibly hibernica—some ornithologists think the Irish bird is a different species. First day of grouse season and the marquis phoned me this morning—”

  “And you want me to cover?” Jenny said. “Poor wee birds.”

  “I’ll do Friday,” he said, hoping she wasn’t going to refuse.

  She shrugged. “Fine by me, but I do feel sorry for the grouse.”

  He didn’t know how to answer that, so said, “Any chance you could get a day off, Kitty? The invitation is to you as well.”

  “I’ll ask Jane Hoey,” she said. “It’s my normal day off today and Jane’s working, but she’s pretty decent and I’ll make it up to her next week. I’ll give her a call.” She stood.

  “Better and better.” He rose. “Once you know, I’ll phone Waveney Hospital, see if Barry can get free tomorrow evening, and you, Doctor Bradley, you are now off duty until 0800 hours tomorrow. I’ll go and see your little fellow with whooping cough and look after the shop for the rest of the day.”

  9

  Come, My Lad, and Drink Some Beer

  “So, you’re going to take a job as a dispensary doctor, Fingal?” Bob Beresford said as they scurried through a rain shower. The smell of fresh coffee beans roasting at Bewley’s café on nearby Grafton Street was heavy on the air. They pushed through the door and into the front of the long room that was Davy Byrnes pub.

  Fingal thought he detected a faint note of condescension in his friend’s voice. Robert Saint John—pronounced “Sinjin” by his Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family—Beresford was his usual dapper self. His fedora was tipped at a rakish angle and Fingal was quite sure that under Bob’s Burberry raincoat was one of his bespoke drape-cut suits. Tapered trouser cuffs were obvious under the coat. “That’s my plan,” Fingal said as they walked through the bar. “It’d not be your cup of tea, Bob.”