An Irish Country Practice Read online

  She nodded, her eyes never leaving her husband. “The kettle’s full. There’s matches by the stove.”

  The coal-gas burner lit with a pop. He put the kettle over the light blue flames. “Gracie,” he said, “I’m pretty sure Lewis has had a stroke.”

  She wailed suddenly, a high-pitched keening, then collected herself, and said, her voice cracking, “Och, no. Och, please no.”

  Barry moved to her side, putting his arm round her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She shuddered as she inhaled. “I’m going to lose him, so I am.”

  “We don’t know that,” Barry said.

  The kettle whistled.

  “I’ll make the tea,” he said.

  As he warmed the pot, spooned in the leaves, poured in the boiling water and let it sit, he heard her gentle sobbing.

  Barry knelt beside Lewis. He was still breathing and his pulse was steady. His right eye responded to light, but the left did not. This was no simple repeat of his last episode.

  “I’m afraid he’s no better, but he’s no worse.”

  Gracie cried quietly.

  Barry stood and returned to the stove. “Milk and sugar?” It seemed incongruous that mere feet away an old man lay close to death and here Barry was making tea, but in Ulster, tea was the universal comforter.

  “Just milk.”

  Barry took the cup to Gracie. “Here you are, love.”

  “Thank you.” She sipped. “And thank you for coming so quick. I-I know there’s not much you can do.”

  Or anyone else, Barry thought, but kept that thought to himself. “Would you like me to phone your daughter, Joy? Isn’t she in Portrush?”

  Gracie sniffed. “It’s all right,” she said, “I’ll call her in a wee minute. I’m sure you must be busy and if you want to run along, sir…”

  Barry shook his head. “I’ll stay until the ambulance comes.”

  “Thank you.” Gracie pulled in a deep breath, and glanced at Lewis, who was snoring gently. “He looks like he’s asleep. So peaceful.” And she managed the ghost of a smile. Her gaze took in the whole kitchen. She must have noticed the way the storm was hurling the rain against the window. “Boys-a-dear,” she said, “thon’s a powerful blow.” She looked straight back at Barry. “Manys the gale him and me’ve sat through in this house, all cosy in the wee lounge by the fire. Maybe a wee hot-half to keep away the dew.” There was a dreamy tone to her voice.

  Barry recognised the thought as selfish, but that was the scene, starring Barry and Sue Laverty in this bungalow, that he’d pictured ever since Dapper Frew had shown him the house. Which should be coming up for sale this month. Should be. But now? He banished the thought and knelt beside Lewis. He could detect no change. Barry sighed. “He’s no worse,” he said.

  Gracie nodded. Sipped her tea. “And the summers, with wee Joy in her pram in the garden. When she was seven, she had a pet tortoise…”

  Barry reckoned if it was comforting Gracie to remember happy days, he’d not interfere.

  “D’yiz know, Doctor, and I’ll have to get Lewis’s say-so when he’s all better, like, but I don’t think I could bear to move away. I think him and me should see out our days where we started. What do you think?”

  Barry flinched. He wasn’t going to be able to buy his dream home for Sue. And he certainly was not going to try to dissuade Gracie. “I think that’s—”

  He was interrupted by a hammering on the kitchen door. The ambulance had arrived.

  “Excuse me,” he said, crossing the floor to open the door to two blue-uniformed Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority attendants.

  “This the Mill—? Course it is. How’s about ye, Doctor Laverty? The dispatcher said it was one of your patients.”

  “Come in, Tommy.” He recognised the man. They’d gone out together on an obstetrical flying squad case when Barry had been a student. “And shut the door behind you.” Barry stood aside and let the attendants place Lewis on a stretcher. They lifted him. “Get the door, Doc?”

  Barry hesitated. Gracie had risen. She stood by the stretcher, bent, and kissed Lewis’s forehead. “I love you, husband,” she said. “And I always will. Please don’t go and die on me. Please.” The yearning tore at Barry. He turned his back and opened the door, unsure whether it was rain or tears that coursed down his cheeks.

  13

  The Warmest Welcome, at an Inn

  The elderly black-and-white Vauxhall Victor in front of him was creeping along the narrow road, and for once O’Reilly was in no hurry. Barry was driving and the pace allowed O’Reilly to appreciate how the late-evening sun limned the little hedged fields, some dotted with white sheep, some green and fallow, others scattered with small herds of cows. The long right-hand corner was on an escarpment above a valley leading back toward Helen’s Bay. A garage with three petrol pumps and a mini-mart stood at the crown of the bend. The road then veered to the left, running straight and narrow for a quarter of a mile through the little village of Crawfordsburn.

  He’d always had a soft spot for the village. In those early years in Ballybucklebo after the war, desperate to get away from the empty house, he’d gone for drives when petrol rationing allowed and had sometimes ended up here, having a quiet drink at The Old Inn.

  The grey, two-storey building housing the Orange Order’s “Crawfordsburn Chosen Few Temperance Lodge 1091” wasn’t exactly welcoming for a man who enjoyed his pint. But next door stood a terrace of low cottages, some grey stucco, some whitewashed, all with slate roofs. For some reason, despite being in a village, they had reminded him of happier times as a young doctor in Dublin with their scrubbed front steps and gleaming windows. Outside one hung a sign, “Irish Cottage Crafts,” where O’Reilly had bought his first paddy hat.

  The inn had been a welcome respite for him. No one here knew him as the local doctor, a far cry from the Duck back in Ballybucklebo. There it had taken a couple of years for the locals to accept him as one of their own. Here the staff had been cheerful and kind, and even during the worst of the rationing had managed to serve up decent meals.

  Tonight a middle-aged couple strolled along the narrow footpath that separated the original one-storey whitewashed inn building from the road. A row of tall bay windows with shiny black-enamelled frames was overhung by the reed thatch eaves.

  Adjoining the low building was a much more recent addition, an Irish-Georgian two-storey structure topped with twin steeply pitched roofs. The inn had been an integral part of the area since 1614. Donaghadee, eight miles to the east, had been an important cross-channel port, and what had then been called The Old Ship Inn was where coaches running between Belfast to the west and Donaghadee to the east had changed horses.

  Barry indicated for a left turn into the inn’s car park. Past it stood the village post office facing the gardens and the low pavilion of the exclusive Crawfordsburn Country Club, its façade pseudo-Tudor with black beams against whitewash.

  They got out to listen to the happy burbling of the burn that ran through a ravine behind the inn. That burn and an early Scottish lowland settler named Crawford had given the village its name.

  From a hedge bordering the stream, the falsetto notes of a song thrush, each phrase repeated three times, welcomed the soft evening. April was drawing to a close, the buds would soon be bursting, the sticky horse chestnut ones first. Spring was well on its way. The month and the chestnut trees struck a chord and O’Reilly sang, a low rumbling sound,

  April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom …

  He had resolved to take Kitty for a fortnight to Paris sometime soon, but not until the new trainee, if he passed scrutiny this evening, had become settled in.

  “You’re in good form, Fingal.”

  O’Reilly turned to see Barry swinging the door shut on Brunhilde. “And why not? It’s Friday. We both have the night off. The inn always serves a great dinner, and we’re going to meet our potential junior colleague, Doctor Connor Nelson.”

  “Do you know muc
h about him?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Charlie Greer and Cromie speak highly of the man. They both had him as a student. I had lunch with them after I met with George Irwin ten days ago.”

  “So we’re sussing him out, seeing if we’ll feel comfortable working with him?”

  O’Reilly nodded. “George has recommended him, so our job tonight isn’t to grill him on his technical ability or how he feels about taking night call. He’s a trainee after all and until I say so, he’ll be working under supervision. We just want to know how easy he’ll be to get along with. Nelson was a few years behind you. Know anything about him?”

  “Can’t say I do, but you know the structure at Queens. Third years don’t speak to second years, who don’t mix with first years.”

  O’Reilly nodded. There were class distinctions as rigidly marked as the Hindu caste system in all walks of Ulster life.

  Barry shrugged. “Anyway, you want us to form our own first impression.”

  “Right. The one thing you don’t get a second chance to make.” O’Reilly stopped outside the inn’s front door. “Do you know,” he said, “this old place has lodged Peter the Great, Tsar of all the Russias, Dick Turpin the highwayman, Dean Swift, Charles Dickens, and C. S. Lewis.”

  “And the wise and eminent Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly,” Barry said with a bow, letting O’Reilly go first.

  O’Reilly laughed and thought about himself as he had been when he’d first started coming here, a widower, married only six months. Grieving and weary after six long years of war. The new young doctor in Ballybucklebo, desperate for acceptance. Barry too, had lacked self-confidence when first he’d come. Changed days now.

  O’Reilly went down the three steps into the inn’s carpeted hall before the reception desk. Hanging on the back wall was a fine pastel portrait of a previous owner, a woman known to all her regulars as “Mrs. White.”

  “Evening, Doctors.” Peter, the night manager, a tall, solemn man wearing a dark business suit, greeted them from behind the reception desk. “We’ve a table for three in the dining room for you, but would you like to go through to the bar first? There’s a table there for you too. Kelly the barman will give you menus.”

  “Thank you,” O’Reilly said. “Our guest is a Doctor Nelson. He’ll be here any minute.”

  “I’ll bring him through, sir.”

  O’Reilly led the way along a narrow hall and through a swing door to a crowded room with a low, dark-beamed ceiling. Although the air was heavy with tobacco smoke, it was a very different crowd from the locals at the Duck. No dunchers and frayed collarless shirts. Business-suited men in white shirts, old school ties, and highly polished shoes would duck in here on their way home to Bangor from their offices in Belfast for a quick one. Of the couples, the well-coiffed ladies wore cocktail dresses, sipping aperitifs before going through to dinner. The hum of conversation was muted and overheard snatches dealt more with holidays in Spain, business matters, the stock market, or cricket than racing greyhounds or the prospects of Linfield or Glentoran Football Clubs. A well-occupied long bar was immediately to his right.

  “Bout ye, Doctor. How’s it going?” Kelly the barman said from behind a row of four shining brass pump handles.

  O’Reilly smiled. “Pretty much the way it’s been going for the last twenty-one years that you’ve been pouring me drinks.”

  “That long? My God.” Kelly laughed. “I’ll be ready for my pension soon, so I will.” He pointed to a table set in the bow of a mullioned bay window. “That one there’s for youse.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And what would youse like?”

  “Barry?”

  “Pint, please.”

  Kelly nodded. “And the usual for yourself, sir?”

  “Please.” O’Reilly followed Barry and they took their seats. Before Kelly could deliver their order, Peter appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a younger man. Medium height, receding ginger hair, a high forehead. A sharp nose separated two lively eyes. O’Reilly guessed the man to be in his late twenties. Old for a recent graduate? As he walked across the bar toward their table, O’Reilly noticed the newcomer was dragging his left leg. His lips were set in firm resolution, and there was a determined thrust to his chin despite his difficulty.

  O’Reilly and Barry rose and O’Reilly offered his hand. “Doctor Nelson?”

  The man nodded.

  “Fingal O’Reilly, and this is my partner, Barry Laverty. Have a pew.”

  Barry and he shook hands.

  “Thank you,” the man sat, “and thank you for inviting me to dinner.” His gaze wandered round the room. “Very swanky,” he said. “Very p-posh.”

  Just a tinge of working class in the man’s accent, O’Reilly noticed, a certain hesitation in his speech. “Good of you to come down from Dundonald. Would you like a drink?”

  Doctor Nelson smiled. “Ordinarily I’d go a pint, but I’m here because I really want the job. I’ll have a white lemonade, please.”

  O’Reilly glanced at Barry, who was nodding and, O’Reilly was sure, drawing the same conclusion. This was a serious young man who was too astute to be caught out by the in vino veritas school of job interviews. Good.

  Kelly arrived with three menus, a pint, and O’Reilly’s Jameson.

  “Thanks,” O’Reilly said, “and a white lemonade for Doctor Nelson.”

  Kelly withdrew.

  “Now, sir,” Doctor Nelson said, “you introduced yourself and your partner as Fingal and Barry. I-I don’t make much of a fuss about titles…” That hesitation again. “M-my friends call me Connor or Con.”

  “Good man, Con,” Barry said. “Except in front of the customers, we’re pretty informal.”

  O’Reilly nodded approval. “Tell us a bit about yourself.”

  The man shrugged. “Not much to tell, really. I was b-born in 1938 in the Royal Maternity…”

  That made him twenty-nine now. He’d qualified in 1965, so he’d have been twenty-seven then, at a time when most medical students graduated at twenty-two or -three. O’Reilly wondered what had delayed the man’s progress, but he wasn’t going to ask outright. He’d wait to see what came out as the conversation progressed.

  Con Nelson pursed his lips. “I’m sure you saw me limping. I had polio in 1943. I was in Purdysburn Fever Hospital for six months.” Nelson inhaled. “I still remember a Doctor Drew there. He was the kindest man I ever met.” He sighed. “I really looked up to him.”

  O’Reilly nodded. Perhaps some seeds had been sown then?

  “Then I was laid up in a plaster of Paris for a year. The polio held up my schooling for a while.”

  And that, O’Reilly thought, accounted for some but not all of the delay in Nelson’s going to Queens. O’Reilly remembered the bitter struggles with his father, who had wanted his son to be a nuclear physicist and refused to pay for his education. That had held O’Reilly back four years before he could start at Trinity College School of Physic in 1931. It had been a five-year course back then. Now it was six. He’d been twenty-eight when he’d graduated. He felt a certain sympathy for Connor Nelson.

  “Your lemonade, sir,” said Kelly, appearing with the drink and disappearing as discreetly.

  “Cheers,” said O’Reilly, and drank, accompanied by the others.

  “So why general practice?” Barry asked.

  Con Nelson looked thoughtful, inhaled, then said, “I’d to take a wee bit of time g-getting into Queens, so now that I’m qualified, I want to practice.” He stared at the tabletop for a moment then looked up first at Barry then at O’Reilly. “I’m from a kitchen house on Rydalmere Street…”

  O’Reilly nodded. Working-class housing in Belfast was only a step up from the tenements in the Liberties of Dublin where he’d started in general practice in ’36. Even among the working class, there was a kind of stratification. A parlour house had an extra room and was regarded as superior to a kitchen house. It spoke volumes for this man’s honesty that he didn’t try t
o conceal his roots. And very few children from those neighbourhoods stayed in school past sixteen. Boys either got a job or started an apprenticeship, and it was received wisdom that it was a waste of time educating girls, who’d only get married anyway. Polio. Poverty. Connor Nelson had certainly overcome a lot of obstacles. O’Reilly was warming to this man.

  “Rydalmere Street is a long way from medical school,” O’Reilly prompted when Connor’s silence continued.

  The young man nodded slowly. “I’ll not tell a lie. It was tough. Daddy didn’t have a job for a b-brave while, we lived with my grampa on a wee three-quarters-of-an-acre farm at Stockdam.” His smile was of fond reminiscence. “We had pigs and goats, chickens, dogs and cats. Then Daddy got taken on at Maguire and Patterson’s match factory working five and a half days a week for ten pounds six shillings. Not bad money.” Connor Nelson’s face clouded. “Daddy died. They said it was generalised atherosclerosis, but I think it was overwork. He was laid up for six months, then took pneumonia and was admitted to Purdysburn hospital. Doctor Drew was still there. He remembered me, comforted me when … I was with Daddy when he died the next day. I was sixteen.”

  “Most young men in your position would have left school by then,” O’Reilly said.

  Con nodded. “M-Mammy pushed me on. Made me stay in Grosvenor High School until I was seventeen. To get my senior certificate.” He sipped his lemonade. “Although, to tell you the truth I didn’t work very hard that last year at school, after Daddy died. The heart had gone out of me.”

  O’Reilly said, “It’s hard to lose a father when you’re young. I know.”

  “Thank you, Fingal.”

  “And grieving takes time,” Barry said. He paused, looked about to say something, and stopped. Then, squaring his shoulders, he said, “If I’ve got this right, you left school in 1955, but you started Queens in ’59, right?” O’Reilly noticed the question “why?” was left unsaid.

  Connor Nelson nodded. “I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school. Ever since I was in Purdysburn hospital with the polio and watched Doctor Drew, I thought maybe that’s what I would do, but—och…”