An Irish Country Doctor

  "So you can change water into wine . . . well, beer." O'Reilly nodded. "And just to be on the safe side we'll invite Constable Mulligan. If there is a law being broken, and him at the hooley, he'd have to arrest himself."

  Barry laughed and his laughter woke young Barry Fingal, who let the world know of his presence in no uncertain tones. "I'd better see to the wean," said Maureen. "Saturday it is, Doctors."

  "Right," said O'Reilly. "Come on, Doctor Laverty. We've more calls to make."

  To Barry's great relief the lane to the Kennedys' farmhouse was dry. He still lacked a pair of Wellington boots. For all he knew the pair he'd bought on the day he'd met Patricia were still rattling up and down on the train between Bangor and Belfast. Jeannie was playing in the farmyard, throwing a stick for her Border collie.

  "Hello, Doctor O'Reilly." She took the stick from the dog, who immediately flopped to the ground, front paws stretched out before her, head between her legs, alert gaze never leaving the stick in her mistress's hand. "Stay, Tessie." The dog glanced once at the newcomers. "How are you, Jeannie?" O'Reilly walked over from the car. Barry followed.

  "Much better now, thank you."

  Barry could see that this was a different little girl from the one he'd met three weeks ago. She had colour in her cheeks, and her eyes were as bright as Tessie's porcelain blue ones. He thought she might have lost a little weight, but considering how sick she had been, that was to be expected.

  "She's really on the mend." Mrs. Kennedy appeared in the doorway of the farmhouse. Her grey hair was neatly tied up in a bun. Her apron was clean. She walked to where Jeannie stood and put a protective hand on the girl's shoulder. "We were main worried about her for a while, but them doctors at Sick Children's were smashing, so they were." She looked into O'Reilly's eyes. "There was a young one, a Doctor Mills. He said if you and Doctor Laverty hadn't been so quick of the mark . . ." She swallowed.

  " 'All's well that ends well,'" said O'Reilly. "And don't bother to tell me that's William Shakespeare, Doctor Laverty. I know." Barry grinned and thought how critical he had been of his senior colleague's seemingly slapdash methods of diagnosis. He recognized that when O'Reilly said that sometimes country GPs could make a difference, he had been absolutely right.

  O'Reilly said, "Lots of fresh air, plenty to eat, and she'll be fit as a flea in no time. Ready for school in September." Jeannie scowled. "I hate math."

  "So did I when I was your age," said O'Reilly. "Go on. Show me how you can throw the stick."

  Jeannie threw the small branch across the yard. Tessie, body pressed to the ground, gaze fixed on Jeannie's face, trembled but did not move one inch from where she had been told to lie down. "Smart dogs, collies," O'Reilly remarked.

  "Fetch," Jeannie said, and the dog took off like a whippet.

  "You'll not be needing us again," O'Reilly said to Bridget Kennedy.

  "Dermot'll be sorry he missed you, Doctor, but he's out combining."

  "A farmer's work's never done," said O'Reilly. "Just like a doctor's." He opened the car door. "If the three of you have nothing to do on Saturday afternoon, we're having a bit of a ta-ta-ta-ra in my back garden for Seamus and Maureen Galvin. They're off to America soon."

  "I'll ask himself," said Bridget. "I'll bring some barmbrack."

  "Great," said O'Reilly. He lowered himself into the driver's seat. "Hop in."

  Barry climbed aboard.

  "We were lucky with that one," said O'Reilly, as the car jolted down the rutted lane. "It would have been the death of Bridget if the wee lass hadn't pulled through."

  "Mrs. Kennedy must have been a fair age when Jeannie was born." O'Reilly pulled onto the main road and stamped on the accelerator. "Usual story. They couldn't afford to get married until old man Kennedy died and left his son the farm. I think Bridget was forty two then. Took her forever to get pregnant. That wee girl's the light of her life."

  O'Reilly leant on the horn and swerved across the centre fine. "Bloody bicycles. Move over."

  Barry's head swung round as he watched the unfortunate on the bike wobble, stop, and hurl himself and his conveyance into the ditch. "Have you ever hit one?" he asked.

  O'Reilly shook his head. "Not yet. They all know the car." And they all know you very well, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, Barry thought, and at least some of them are getting to know me. His pleasure at that idea was shattered when O'Reilly took both hands off the steering wheel to light his pipe and said, "Fotheringhams', next stop."

  "Would you like some tea and scones?" Mrs. Fotheringham asked when O'Reilly and Barry were seated in the antimacassar-draped armchairs. She wore her Heather Mixture two-piece and her pearls. Not a hair was out of place on her head.

  "No, thank you," said O'Reilly. "We can stay for only a minute. Doctor Laverty has something to tell you."

  She sat on the settee, knees together, hands clasped in an attitude of prayer resting on the lap made by her skirt. "Yes, Doctor?" she asked through thin lips.

  Barry swallowed. "I've had a word with the hospital about the major. He's doing as well as can be expected."

  "And how well would that be?"

  "He's fully conscious. Weak on his left side. His speech is a bit slurred. He's never going to be quite right, I'm afraid, but the speech therapists and physiotherapists can work wonders . . . with time."

  "I see." Her face was expressionless. "Perhaps if he'd gone to the hospital sooner?"

  Barry glanced at O'Reilly, who was examining his fingernails intently. No help would be forthcoming from that quarter. Barry inhaled. "Yes. He might be doing better if I'd recognized what was wrong when I came to see him on Friday." Barry wondered if someone at the hospital had sown these seeds of doubt in her mind. 'If only we'd seen him sooner' was a common complaint of the medical staff there. "What did they tell you at the Royal?" he asked. Her lips were so narrow they had almost disappeared. "They barely acknowledged my presence."

  Barry wondered if there was anything more he could say in self defence and decided that nothing short of total honesty would do. "I didn't think he'd done more than sprain his neck."

  "But you were wrong, weren't you?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Fotheringham. I was."

  "I'm glad you admit it, young man."

  Barry flinched.

  "Ahem," O'Reilly grumbled. "You know, Mrs. Fotheringham, I don't think I would have done any better. There wasn't a lot to go on on Friday."

  She sniffed haughtily. "Of course you medical men always stick together."

  "You could say that," said O'Reilly levelly, "but what I've told you is the truth as I see it."

  "I've had time to think this over," she said, rising, "and I have decided that my husband and I will be seeking our medical advice elsewhere in the future."

  "That is of course your choice, Mrs. Fotheringham. I hear Dr. Bowman in Kinnegar is very good." O'Reilly's tone was measured. Barry clenched his teeth. She was perfectly within her rights to change doctors, but he had hoped that by his being completely honest she might have understood.

  "In that case," she crossed the room and held the door open, "perhaps you would be good enough to transfer our records to him?"

  "With pleasure."

  Barry, his head held low, walked slowly to the hall. "I'm sorry. . . ."

  " 'Sorry' won't give me back a healthy husband." Barry looked at O'Reilly, who shook his head and said, "You're right."

  "I'm glad you admit that much," she said. "Now . . . ?"

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Fotheringham," O'Reilly said from the front step. "I hope the major makes the best recovery possible."

  "Huh," she said and closed the door.

  Barry walked slowly to the car. He felt the springs sag as O'Reilly joined him.

  "Don't let her get to you," said O'Reilly, starting the engine. "She's upset, angry."

  "And right," said Barry. "I might have--"

  "Don't start that again." O'Reilly braked. "Open the gate." Barry obeyed, waited for the car to pass, and closed the gate.
It was all very well for O'Reilly to be philosophical. He wasn't the one who'd missed the diagnosis.

  "Get in," said O'Reilly, "and for God's sake, buck up." O'Reilly accelerated. "You were spot-on about Cissie Sloan; between the pair of us we sorted out Jeannie Kennedy, and we got old Sonny put to rights." He made a screeching left turn onto the shore road. "You have to take the good with the bad. For the last time, I agree perhaps you could have done better with the major, but Mrs. Fotheringham's not just angry . . . she's feeling guilty."

  "What about?"

  "She's intelligent enough to recognize that maybe if the pair of them hadn't cried wolf so often you might have taken his stiff neck more seriously."

  "Yes. I might."

  "And when people are guilty . . . they often need someone to lash out at... to blame instead. You came in handy. Perfect scapegoat."

  Barry thought about that. Certainly there was some truth in what O'Reilly said.

  "Just remember," O'Reilly continued, "'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/ And treat those two impostors just the same . . .'"

  "Rudyard Kipling's 'If.' My dad gave me a framed copy when I was at school. 'If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; / If all men count with you, but none too much. . . .'"

  "Precisely," said O'Reilly, "'but none too much.' And that's another rule of practice besides 'Never let the customers get the upper hand.'"

  "Oh?"

  "Abraham Lincoln said something about fooling all of the people some of the time but not fooling all of them all of the time. It's the same with patients. No matter what you do for some of them, you'll never satisfy them."

  "I know," Barry said quietly.

  "So," said O'Reilly, "the sooner you come to the parting of the ways from those ones, the better."

  "Like Mrs. Fotheringham wanting to see Dr. Bowman in future?"

  "Exactly. She'll never trust us again. It's a pity, but that's the nature of the beast. But for every Mrs. Fotheringham, every Bertie Bishop, there are the Cissies and the Jeannies and the Maureen Galvins and . . . the Maggies that do make it all worthwhile." He pulled the car to the verge outside Maggie MacCorkle's cottage. "Come on. Let's tell Maggie about Sonny."

  Dogs spilled out of Maggie's front door and clustered round the car, tails wagging, the air full of the sounds of their happy yapping. Maggie thrust her way past them. Barry noticed the fresh pansies in her hatband.

  "You're just in time, Doctors dear. The kettle's boiled."

  "Great," said O'Reilly, "a cup of tea would hit the spot."

  "Yes, indeed," said Barry, following them both inside.

  "Bugger off, General Montgomery." Maggie shooed the ginger cat off one of her chairs. "Have a seat, Doctor O'Reilly. Light your pipe."

  She bustled round her stove, warming the teapot, dumping out the boiling water, spooning in tea leaves from a tin caddy with a picture of the coronation of Elizabeth II painted on the side, and adding more boiling water. "We'll let that stew a bit," she said.

  "Grand," said O'Reilly.

  "I'm glad you came," she said. "I've run out of them wee pills, and I'd another of those eggycentwhat-do-you-muhcallum headaches the other night, so I had. Would you have any more tablets with you?"

  O'Reilly shook his head. '"Fraid not, Maggie. Eccentric headaches can be funny things. Could you pop in tomorrow? I'd like to take another wee look at you before I give you any more pills. Just to be on the safe side."

  Barry smiled. He wasn't the only doctor in Ballybucklebo who would be taking a complaint of headaches more seriously in the future.

  "I'll be round," she said, pouring tea into three china mugs, one commemorating the Relief of Mafeking, one with a picture of Sir Winston Churchill, and the third carrying a portrait of John F. Kennedy surrounded by black flags.

  "Milk and sugar?"

  "Just milk," Barry said, as O'Reilly nodded.

  She gave each a cup. The tea was so strong that Barry wondered if it might dissolve the teaspoon. There was nowhere to dispose of the brew. He soldiered on, hoping that the tannic acid wouldn't turn his stomach to leather.

  "We just popped in to let you know about Sonny," O'Reilly said. Maggie cocked her head to one side like a thrush looking at the ground where it had just spotted a tasty worm. "So how is the out' eejit?"

  "He's getting out on Saturday," O'Reilly said.

  "Told you," said Maggie, "they'll have to shoot that one." She sipped her tea. "That means he can have his dogs back."

  "Not exactly," said O'Reilly. "He'll have to go to Bangor to convalesce for a while."

  "How long's a while?" Maggie asked.

  O'Reilly glanced at Barry before saying, "Until his roof's fixed." Barry watched Maggie closely.

  She sat bolt upright. "Until what?" Her eyes widened. "His roof's fixed. Councillor Bishop told me he's had a change of heart."

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That bugger Bertie Bishop? That man has a heart that would make Pharaoh's hard one look like a marshmallow, so he has."

  "It's true, Maggie," Barry said. "Honestly."

  "I'll believe it when I see it," Maggie grunted. "I've seen no stars in the east, and the last thing Bertie Bishop said to Sonny was that he'd only fix the roof after the Second Coming."

  O'Reilly laughed. "Keep your eyes peeled for a bunch of wise men on camels, Maggie. It's true."

  She squinted at him. "Cross your heart?" O'Reilly did.

  "Huh," she said primly, "and what has Sonny to say about that?"

  "He doesn't know," said O'Reilly, "but I've a bit of a notion."

  "Oh?" said Maggie.

  "Aye," said O'Reilly. "I'm going to go up to the Royal on Saturday." That was news to Barry, but it no longer came as a surprise that O'Reilly would be happy to ferry his patients about. "I'll run him down to Bangor, but first we're having a bit of a ceili at my place. To send the Galvins off to America. Sonny'll be fit enough to drop in for a wee while."

  "Go on," said Maggie.

  "How'd you like to pop by and tell him about the roof?" Barry watched as from somewhere deep under Maggie's leathery cheeks a glow rose and spread.

  "Away off and chase yourself," she said. "Him and me barely give each other the time of day."

  "I know," said O'Reilly, "but the last time I saw him, Sonny said he wanted to have a wee word ... to thank you for taking care of his dogs."

  "That would be civil of him, right enough."

  "So you'll come?"

  "I'll mull it over," she said. "If I do, I'll bring one of my plum cakes."

  "That," said O'Reilly, "would be great. Your plum cake, Maggie?" O'Reilly crossed his eyes at Barry. "It's as famous as your cups of tea."

  Now Is the Time for All Good Men to Come to the Aid of the Party

  O'Reilly had left for Belfast to collect Sonny. Barry yawned and toyed with a slice of toast. He looked through the dining-room window. The weather forecast had been right. Sunshine and a few low clouds. Perhaps the marquee that was being erected in O'Reilly's back garden might not be needed. Barry supposed he should be looking forward to today's going-away party for the Galvins, but he was tired and disappointed.

  He rolled his shoulders. God, but Thursday and Friday had been hectic. Droves of patients, and last night there had been a traffic accident. Two men--one with a broken arm, one with a fractured femur, both with minor lacerations--had needed to be given morphine, splinted, and sutured before being sent to the Royal. It had been four in the morning when he and O'Reilly got into their beds. A bit of a sleep-in wouldn't have gone amiss, but he had been woken by the sounds of Seamus Galvin and his team putting up the big tent. The steady pounding of wooden mauls on tent pegs accompanied by the barking of Arthur Guinness had made sleep impossible.

  Barry sighed, picked up his dirty plates and cutlery, and carried them through to the kitchen. Perhaps his tiredness somehow made his disappointment more real. It seemed that Jack's advice to wait for Patricia to phone had been well intentioned but wrong. Not a peep from her and it was eight
days now since. . . . Face it, he told himself, she doesn't want to know you.

  Kinky straightened up from the oven. "Pop the dishes in the sink," she said. "I'll see to them after I get the last of the sausage rolls done, so." She brushed stray hair from her forehead with the back of one arm. "Grand day for the hooley."

  "I suppose so." Barry put the plates in the sink.

  "You don't seem too pleased." She squinted at his face.

  "I'm not in much of a party mood."

  "And why would that be?"

  Barry shrugged.

  "You're looking down in the mouth, so. Would another cup of tea help?"

  "No thanks, Kinky." The pounding of mauls outside grew louder. "Lord, I wish they'd get a move on. Are you not nearly deafened with that racket?"

  "Me? Not one bit, but Lady Macbeth didn't like it at all. She's gone off to hide someplace."

  "Sensible cat."

  "May I ask you a question, Doctor Laverty?" Kinky stood solidly, feet planted on the kitchen's tiled floor. "Sure."

  "It's none of my business, but--"

  "But what, Kinky?"

  "Is it that wee girl that has you sore tried?"

  Barry wondered how she had seen through him so easily. He considered telling her that it was none of her business, but one look at her big open face told him that she was asking from concern, not idle curiosity. "A bit," he admitted.

  "I thought so. You went off last week like a liltie. Now I know she's not phoned here and you've not been out with her since."

  Barry sighed. "Things didn't work out. She told me she didn't want to get too involved."

  Kinky tutted. "Silly girl. If you don't give, you'll not get back. I know that for a fact, so."

  Barry had wondered what had happened to Mr. Kincaid. After all, Kinky wouldn't be Mrs. Kincaid if she hadn't been married. "You were married, Kinky, weren't you?"

  She nodded slowly. "I was and it was grand, so. But I lost himself."

  "I'm sorry."

  "There's no need for you to be, but it's nice of you to say it." Barry hesitated.

  Kinky put her hands into the pockets of her apron. "I was only eighteen. He was a Cork fisherman. He was lost at sea and I was lost on land. It was like half of myself gone," she said, moving to the counter where a bowl of sausage meat stood beside a wooden board on which was heaped a mound of pastry dough. "But life has to go on." She grabbed a rolling pin and with steady strong strokes began to flatten the dough. "I thought I'd see the world." She chuckled. "It was a brave step from Cork to County Down before the war, so I took a job with old Doctor Flanagan here in Ballybucklebo . . . just for a wee while . . . just 'til I found my way again. I told you I was lost when my Paudeen was drowned."