An Irish Country Village

  A baby was crying somewhere in the house.

  “She’s in here,” Lucy said, opening a door for O’Reilly.

  It led to a ground-floor bedroom where thrown-back bedclothes lay on a double bed.

  Barry went in. Lucy stood in one corner, eyes wide, sucking her thumb. Three identical cots, two of them occupied by sleeping babies, were ranked along one wall. So, Barry thought, no wonder O’Reilly had said he’d understand why Myrtle MacVeigh couldn’t come to the surgery. She had four kids, three of them about six months old.

  “Thanks for coming, Doctor O’Reilly,” she said. She was sitting in an armchair, a dumpy woman with frazzled hair. “The ould trouble’s back again.”

  It was after two o’clock, but she still wore fluffy slippers, and a pink dressing gown half open over a flannel nightie. She was giving a bottle to a baby. The crying he’d heard earlier had stopped. She shivered and he could see a sheen of sweat on her brow.

  “Myrtle had a postpartum urinary infection after the triplets were born. I thought we’d got it cleared up,” O’Reilly said.

  “Who’s he?” she asked, nodding in Barry’s direction.

  “Myrtle, this is Doctor Laverty, my assistant.”

  “Aye,” she said. “I’ve heard all about him, so I have.” She refused to meet Barry’s eye.

  O’Reilly made no comment. Instead he asked, “So what seems to be the trouble?”

  “It’s my kiddleys, so it is.” She sounded certain.

  O’Reilly agreed. “It probably is,” he said. “Would you like to tell me how they’re bothering you?” As he spoke, he dropped a hand to her wrist.

  “It come on the night before last. I took the shivers something fierce. I feel dead rotten and . . .” She lowered her voice and spoke directly into O’Reilly’s cauliflower ear.

  “Mmm,” said O’Reilly, “dysuria and frequency.”

  Barry realized that O’Reilly, who usually avoided using medical jargon in front of patients, was letting Barry know that the patient was experiencing a burning pain every time she urinated and was passing water very often. They were both classic symptoms of infection of the bladder. She’d be embarrassed discussing such personal functions in front of a strange man, even if he was a doctor, and O’Reilly was trying to spare her that.

  O’Reilly leant over Myrtle, and Barry saw him put a hand in the small of the patient’s back. “That sore?”

  She gasped.

  So it was probable that her kidneys were affected as well as her bladder.

  “Your pulse is a bit quick too.” O’Reilly stood up. “What do you reckon, Doctor Laverty? I think Myrtle’s right.”

  So O’Reilly wasn’t going to pretend he was seeking Barry’s advice. Barry had to agree with his colleague’s diagnosis. “Kidney infection,” he said, deliberately avoiding using words like “acute pyelonephritis.”

  “And have you been treating yourself, Myrtle?” O’Reilly asked.

  “I have indeed,” she said. “My granny’s cure. Two ounces of sweet nitre, one ounce of oil of juniper, half an ounce of turpentine, and grated horseradish . . . mixed in a pint of good gin. One wineglass three times a day.”

  Barry eyes widened. It sounded like a pretty toxic concoction, but after a month here he was getting used to hearing about a lot of bizarre country remedies.

  “Powerful stuff,” O’Reilly said, “but I doubt if it’s working.” He rummaged in his bag. “Here.” He produced two bottles. “I think a bit of this sodium citrate and sodium bicarbonate will help.” He put the bottle on the night table beside her bed.

  The mixture was used to render the urine alkaline and inhibit the growth of coliform bacteria, the commonest cause of urinary infections.

  “And these are sulphamethizole.”

  She squinted at the second bottle. “Is them the same ones you give me last time?”

  O’Reilly nodded.

  “Great,” she said. “They done me a power of good.”

  Barry coughed. Not as well as they might have if, as seemed probable, the infection had recurred. He hesitated, then said, “I’ve some nitrofurantoin with me.” He waited to see how O’Reilly would respond to the unasked-for suggestion to use a more modern antibiotic.

  “Have you, by God?”

  “In my bag.”

  “Then give them here.”

  Barry handed the bottle to O’Reilly.

  “I want them sulphur-what-do-you-me-callums Doctor O’Reilly said,” Myrtle insisted.

  Barry bit his tongue.

  “No,” said O’Reilly levelly. “No, you don’t. Sulphas are old-fashioned. It’s a good thing Doctor Laverty’s here. He’s up on all the new stuff.”

  “I like the old stuff,” she said, taking the bottle from the baby’s mouth.

  “I know,” said O’Reilly, “like your granny’s cure . . . and it didn’t work, did it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “There you are then. You do like the pair of us say, and you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  She managed a weak smile. “I’ll need to be with my lot. It’s a good thing wee Peter’s out with his da today.”

  Good God, Barry thought, the poor woman has five children. It was a miracle she was coping at all. And typical of O’Reilly to visit her at home.

  “Where is Paddy, then ?” O’Reilly enquired.

  “Sure you know what farming’s like. The crop’s early, and he has to get the hay swathed. Him and Peter’ll be back when they’re finished, so they will.”

  “Fine,” said O’Reilly. “I’ll have a word with the district nurse. Have her pop round and give you a hand ’til you’re on your feet again.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She stood and laid the baby in the empty cot. She winced and put a hand in the small of her back as she straightened up. “I hope you’re right about them nighties-fer-aunties, young man,” she said, looking directly at Barry for the first time.

  “He is,” O’Reilly said. “I promise.”

  Barry waited as O’Reilly gave instructions about how the medication was to be taken. O’Reilly continued, “And remember, Myrtle, it’s not uncommon for a woman to get her kidneys infected during labour, or for the damn things to flare up again. I want you to drink lots of fluids, especially orange juice, and keep your kidneys well flushed out.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “One of us will pop round tomorrow, but don’t be scared to give Mrs. Kincaid a ring if you need us sooner.”

  “I will, Doctor O’Reilly,” she said, “and I hope it’ll be yourself that comes, so I do.”

  “We’ll see,” O’Reilly said. “Now we’d better be running along. We’ll let ourselves out.”

  Barry waited until the Rover was jolting back down the lane. “It doesn’t look as if anyone’s going to take me seriously.”

  “Rubbish. Just keep on sounding confident, and do your job as best you can.”

  Barry sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am,” said O’Reilly, turning left onto the tarmacadamed road. “Sure it hasn’t been that long since the MacVeighs have been back to trusting me. For a while I thought they’d never speak to me again.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Contraception,” said O’Reilly, putting two of the Rover’s wheels up on the verge to pass a hay wain drawn by a pair of Clydesdales. “Or rather failure thereof.”

  Barry waited.

  “Before Peter, their eldest, was born, Myrtle came to see me because she and Paddy wanted to space their family, didn’t want to start having kids too soon after they were married. There was none of your pill back then.”

  “I know.”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, “but other things were available. The Easter Rising in Dublin wasn’t the only thing that happened in nineteen sixteen.”

  “You’ve lost me, Fingal.”

  “Nineteen sixteen. That’s the year Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in New York. Bit before your ti
me.”

  Indeed, Barry thought, and you, Fingal, if I’ve done the math right were a ripe old eight-year-old.

  He had to grab the dashboard as O’Reilly suddenly braked for no apparent reason. As far as Barry could tell, there was nothing in the way, but then a cock pheasant appeared at his side of the car, strutting proudly across the road, followed by two dowdy hen birds.

  “Be a shame to hit that big fellah,” O’Reilly said, “at least with a motor car. But I’d not mind getting a shot at him when the season opens.”

  “You baffle me, Fingal. You pay no attention to cyclists, but you brake for game birds?”

  “Of course,” said O’Reilly. “There’s no sport in shooting cyclists.” He moved off. “Now about Myrtle. I suggested she and Paddy use condoms, and they did; and eleven months later Peter was born.”

  “Had you explained to her that condoms could leak?”

  “Of course, and her husband Paddy has a right sense of humour. He nicknamed the wee lad “Leaky.”

  Barry smiled.

  “So next time around I fitted her with a diaphragm.”

  Barry remembered the little girl, Lucy. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You’d better. I explained diaphragms could work loose—”

  “So they called the girl Lucy?”

  “Aye. So they wouldn’t trust barrier methods and asked me for advice again.”

  “So you told them about the rhythm method?”

  “Right.” O’Reilly made a left turn. “You saw the result. Triplets. That was the end of them trusting me.”

  “But it was hardly your fault.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. No matter what you do, some patients will be dissatisfied.”

  And some of them will be dead, Barry thought, suddenly remembering Major Fotheringham.

  “You have to learn to live with it,” O’Reilly said.

  Barry understood what O’Reilly was trying to say, but as the car narrowly missed a stray sheep, instead of agreeing, he yelled, “Look out, Fingal!”

  “Pay no heed,” said O’Reilly, “it’s only a sheep. And that’s the trouble with the human race. I think they’re all related to sheep. One takes the lead and the rest follow willy-nilly.”

  “So if Myrtle MacVeigh refuses to trust me, she’ll tell her friends?”

  “Probably. But by the same token, if she gets better on the drugs you suggested and if Fergus Finnegan’s eye gets better, who knows? You could have a whole new following.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I bloody well know so. Take the MacVeighs, for instance. They left the practice as soon as she knew she was having triplets.”

  “So why did they come back to you?”

  “Pure chance. She had to have the babies in the Royal Maternity Hospital. No GP in his right mind would confine a woman with triplets at home.”

  “True.”

  “Two days after they discharged her, she blew up the urinary infection. She phoned her new GP. Two o’clock on a Saturday morning. He said it wasn’t his problem, she’d have to go back to the hospital. He refused to go see her.”

  Barry felt the car slowing down.

  “Paddy phoned me.”

  “And you went?”

  O’Reilly turned and stared at Barry as if he were a simpleton. “Naturally. I got her sorted out, and I got her to a gynaecologist up at the Royal Victoria for a tubal ligation. He fixed her up, they’ve been with me since, and we get along grand.”

  “So sometimes they do forgive you?”

  “Of course. It’s trite but it is true: time is often a great healer.”

  “So you think I just need to be patient?”

  O’Reilly laughed. “Right. Patient with the patients. I like the ring of that.” He started to slow down. “It didn’t hurt that Paddy sees the funny side of almost anything. Do you know what he said to me last week?”

  “No.”

  “ ‘You know, Doc,’ says he, ‘we dote on our kiddies now, but we were annoyed with you. We thought you’d let us down. I’m sorry the missus took a scunner to you for a while, but you know, we’re the only parents who’ve five kids with great names for a rock-and-roll band . . . Leaky, Lucy, and the Three Rhythm Boys.’ ”

  As Barry laughed, O’Reilly pulled up at the side of the road. “Here we are,” he said. “Sonny’s. Let’s go and see how the great work’s progressing.”

  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

  As far as Barry could tell, not much had been happening to Sonny’s place. Ivy straggled up the walls of the roofless two-storey house. A spin dryer and television set squatted silently on the grassy verge. The front garden was overgrown with brambles and cluttered with old cars, motorcycles, farm machinery, and a yellow caravan.

  Ever since Sonny had taken ill, been admitted to the Royal Victoria, and subsequently discharged to a convalescent home in Bangor, Maggie MacCorkle had adopted Sonny’s five dogs. They usually lived in the caravan while Sonny slept in his car, because his house had been roofless since a dispute years ago about the installation of new slates.

  Councillor Bishop’s building firm had been engaged to repair the roof and had removed the slates. Bishop’s sudden demand at that point for payment in advance, contrary to the way things were usually done in Ulster, had riled Sonny, and he’d balked and refused to pay. According to O’Reilly, Bishop had told Sonny he could bloody well whistle if he thought the job would be finished without the cash, and Sonny, a normally reserved man, had suggested that Bishop do something O’Reilly described as physiologically impossible.

  There matters had stood until O’Reilly, with Barry’s help, had accused Bishop of being the father of Julie MacAteer’s unborn child, said he could prove it, and threatened to let the word slip out. This had proved sufficient coercion for Bishop to agree to rebuild the roof—at no cost to Sonny.

  Unfortunately, Donal Donnelly had come forward, confessed his sins, and asked Julie to marry him, leaving O’Reilly with no hold over Bishop. Since then he and Barry had been worried that Bishop might renege on his promise.

  Barry could see that scaffolding had been erected at the nearest gable end, and ladders ran from the ground to the highest level of the spidery structure of rusty iron tubing. A man stood on the upper platform holding an old, weathered roof beam, which he tossed off the edge to land with a thump in a nettle patch below.

  Barry walked round the car to stand beside O’Reilly. The rain had stopped. The land smelt fresh, and wisps of vapour drifted from the road’s tarmac as the sun warmed it. “So, what do you think’s going on up at the house, Fingal?”

  O’Reilly pushed at a black-painted iron gate in the low blackthorn hedge.

  Barry heard the gate’s hinges screech.

  “Wonders will never cease. Bertie Bishop’s keeping his word,” O’Reilly said. “Of course, he’d have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t he make a great public song and dance about doing it as an act of Christian charity when we told him the citizenry might put up a statue to him?”

  Barry laughed, remembering the conversation vividly.

  “A man like Bishop’s too bloody conceited to back down from a thing like that.” O’Reilly stared at the man on the roof. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Seamus Galvin up there.” O’Reilly shook his head. “Seamus Galvin, the greatest skiver unhung, is doing an honest day’s work. Can you believe it? I suppose he’s trying to get a few more quid together before he and Maureen head off to the States.”

  “Why don’t we go and ask him?” Barry went in through the gate, and O’Reilly followed. That makes a change, Barry thought. Usually I follow in his wake.

  They walked along a path of uneven concrete slabs where grass and clumps of black horehound had forced their way through the cracks. The horehound gave off an unpleasant, acrid smell when the leaves were crushed underfoot. A pair of cabbage white butterflies drifted over the tangled b
ramble bushes at the path’s edges.

  Barry halted at the foot of the scaffolding. Nearby a rusty brazier supported two fire-blackened soup cans sitting on top of a heap of cold ashes. Twisted strands of wire formed loops over the cans’ open mouths. The Ulster labouring man’s tea kettles. No job could be completed without liberal doses of stewed tea.

  “Is it yourself up there, Seamus Galvin?” O’Reilly roared.

  The man peered over the edge of the platform. “It is, Doctor O’Reilly, sir. Hang on. I’ll be right down.”

  Barry watched Galvin clamber onto the ladder and begin his descent, accompanied by flakes of rust from the wobbly structure.

  “Lo,” said O’Reilly, “in the words of an old hymn, ‘He comes with clouds descending.’ ”

  Galvin jumped off the last step. “Afternoon, Doctors,” he said, landing heavily.

  “The ankle’s all better now, is it, Seamus?” O’Reilly enquired.

  “Indeed, sir. Indeed. Right as rain.”

  “And how’s the job coming?”

  “It’s a bugger, Doctor O’Reilly.” Seamus said. “The roof beams is rotten from appetite to arsehole. Every one of them’ll have to be torn out and replaced, so they will. It’s going to cost Mr. Bishop a right wheen of do-re-mi.”

  “What a crying shame,” said O’Reilly, smiling broadly. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer man.”

  “How long,” Barry asked, “will the job take?”

  “Hard to say, sir, but I’ll tell you one wee thing. We’d get it done a damn sight quicker if Donal Donnelly didn’t keep going home for his lunch.”

  “Donal? We passed him on our way here,” Barry said, remembering Donal’s rapid dive into the ditch. “Seamus, do you happen to know what Donal’s done to his bike?”

  Seamus laughed. “Indeed I do, sir. He decided it needed painting before he gets married. There was a clatter of half-used pots of paint lying about his place. On Saturday night, after the party, he set to. He says it’s art.”

  “Art?” Barry laughed.

  “Aye. He says he seen a picture in a magazine by a Yankee fellah.” Seamus scratched his head. “The man was called for a fish.” He frowned, then his face lit up. “Haddock. That’s it. Jason Haddock.”