An Irish Country Cottage Page 13

  The O’Reillys emerged from behind the laurels to see a scene of furious industry. Cissie, Flo Bishop, Kinky, Mairead Shanks, and some of the other wives were using stiff floor brushes dipped in steaming, soapy water to scrub the outside front wall. From this end to the second window the results of their efforts had transformed the dirty, moss-covered walls back to their pristine white. They might not even need whitewash, but the window frames would take a lick of paint.

  Bertie Bishop conferred with Donal Donnelly over a long sheet of paper held down by a couple of rocks on a trestle table—probably a list of jobs to be done. He knew Bertie liked to approach a project with the precision of a military campaign.

  Four campfires burned in circles of small rocks, and on each were several old soup cans with loops of wire twisted through holes in their rims for handles. Water was coming to the boil for the tea that was the lifeblood of the Ulster labouring man.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor.” Colin Brown, now wearing long pants as a sign of his increasing maturity, was feeding twigs under the fire of one set of cans. “I’m the tea boy. Daddy’s working inside cleaning up.”

  Kitty tousled the boy’s hair. “Good for you, Colin. How’s the studying going?”

  “Very well, missus. My biology teacher says if I keep it up, I’ll pass Junior Certificate—we sit it in June—with … it’s what he said … ‘flying colours.’ I was first in the class in biology and chemistry.”

  “I’m delighted,” she said.

  “And if you go on to university after the next hurdle after Junior?” O’Reilly asked.

  Colin grinned. “I’m going to be a vet.”

  A couple of years ago, Colin would have said, “I’m going til be a vet, so I am.” He was developing in more ways than sporting long pants. “More power to your wheel, Colin Brown,” O’Reilly said, then looked around. Ladders must have been propped against the back wall, because he could see, poking above the ridgeline, two men’s heads, each on what he guessed were opposite sides of the hole in the rear side of the roof.

  Father O’Toole, biretta firmly on his narrow head, sleeves of his black cassock rolled up, bent to his work at a saw horse. “God bless you, Doctor and Mrs.,” he said with a grin. “And in case you’re wondering, I just came after mass to say hello, see what was going on, and someone put a saw in my hand. I learnt a lot of carpentry in the orphanage in County Cork. The Christian Brothers said as Jesus was a carpenter, we might as well learn the trade too. But if Mrs. Callaghan, my housekeeper, could see me in my good Sunday cassock right now, she’d go up one side of me and down the other.”

  “Doctor O’Reilly and I won’t breathe a word, Father,” Kitty said.

  The priest laughed and returned to his sawing.

  “I suppose,” said Kitty as they walked on, “Mister Robinson will have Sunday school this afternoon for the little Presbyterians.”

  “Exactly. Otherwise you can bet he’d be here too.”

  “Afternoon, Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly.” Bertie Bishop straightened, put a hand to his back, and grunted. “Nice til see youse.”

  “Gentlemen,” O’Reilly said, “we’ve come to see how you’re getting on.”

  “Getting on? Like a house on fire,” Donal said with a smile, perhaps failing to recognise the irony. “The brickie’s finished repointing and the plumber’s fixed the water. Mister Bishop had a gas fitter check them fittings til be on the safe side. That’s why the scrubbing crew are getting on so well with hot water we’re heating in the kitchen.” His buck teeth shone in the sunlight when he beamed. “I only expected til get the roof patched the day, but so many folks is come…” He pointed to where an overall-wearing Gerry Shanks was trundling a wheelbarrow full of leaves and shattered roof slates out through the front door. “It’s just dead on, so it is.”

  “Aye,” said Bertie, “and we’ll have the roof patch on in no time.” He indicated four men nailing a sheet of canvas to two long, cylindrical poles. “That there’s the new top roof. We’ll put it on when it’s ready and the roofers have finished what they’re at right now.”

  “Come on.” Donal started to walk round the near gable end, with O’Reilly and Kitty in tow.

  As they passed the kitchen, O’Reilly saw Archie Auchinleck washing an open window. He waved and O’Reilly waved back. “‘Afternoon, Archie. Say hello to Kinky for us.”

  “Aye, certainly, sir.” He closed the now sparkling window.

  Round the back, two extending aluminium ladders leant against the wall.

  “Afternoon, Doctor and Mrs.,” Alan Hewitt said. “I’m no roofer. I’m the hander-upper.” He indicated a number of plywood sheets leaning against the wall. “Your men up there do all the skilled work.”

  The sound of nails being hammered home rang through the air.

  O’Reilly looked up. Two men, one on either side of the hole, lay facedown on roof ladders, peculiar contraptions with flat wooden rungs and flanges at their upper ends to hook onto the ridge of the roof.

  “They’re going like lilties,” Donal said. “They’ve put in horizontal laths across the rafters.”

  “Another sheet, Alan,” a roofer called down.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Donal said.

  Alan and Donal, carrying the plywood between them, each mounted a ladder and raised the sheet up to where the roofers could take over and hoist it the rest of the way.

  “I’ll need to go back and tell the lads working on the canvas top roof that we’re near ready. You stay here, Alan, and give a hand with this side.” He turned to the O’Reillys. “Come on ’til you see this, folks.” Donal started walking back to the front of the house, and O’Reilly and Kitty followed.

  No sign of Bertie Bishop. He’d probably gone back to his work yard for something.

  Ropes were being tied to each end of one of the cylindrical poles that was stapled to the sheet of canvas.

  From overhead came a shout of, “Right. We’re all set and raring to go,” and two heads popped over the ridgeline beside a couple of large pulleys that O’Reilly had not noticed before attached to the ridge beam.

  Lenny Brown appeared from the cottage. He held coils of light rope with a weight at one end. He bent the other end onto one of the heavier ropes attached to the pole. In naval terms, the light rope was a messenger. Lenny stood, legs apart and firmly planted, swinging the weight until he was satisfied, then hurled it up and over the roof, where one of the roofers grabbed the messenger and yelled “Got it!”

  “Now do you see, sir?” Donal said. “They’ll put the wee rope through the pulleys and pull the big one up and through. Do the same at the other end of the pole. They’ll haul the tarpaulin over the roof and nail that pole under the eaves on the back of the house. When it’s fixed, the men’ll roll this pole round and round until the tarp’s tight as a drumhead over the roof and fix it til this side. That there patch’ll be watertight as a duck’s feathers, so it will, for at least as long as we’ll need the place.”

  “When do you think you’ll be able to move in, Donal?” Kitty asked.

  “Likely about the end of this week.”

  “That’s wonderful,” O’Reilly said. He looked at Kitty. Her lips had a light blue tinge and she was shivering. “I think we’ve seen all we need to, love. Home?”

  “Please,” she said.

  “Will you say thanks and good-bye for us to Mister Bishop, Donal?”

  “Aye, certainly.”

  “Good. Come on, Kitty.” Together they headed for the path back to the stable yard.

  “I think,” said Kitty, “that what we’ve just watched is wonderful.”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, thinking of the mixed religious and political backgrounds of the crew helping out a neighbour. A couple of lines from “The Galway Races” seemed apt.

  There were half a million people there, of all denominations …

  … yet no animosity, no matter what persuasion.

  “And isn’t it grand,” said Kitty, “that the Donnellys
will be able to move in so soon?”

  “And thanks to our good neighbours, they’ll have all the furniture they need, too.” He winked at her. “We should think about getting them a housewarming present.”

  “Housewarming.” Kitty took his hand. “That’s hardly the right term, since it was a lot of heat that brought all of this about.” Together they turned to take a last look at the cottage, just as the crew started rolling out the new canvas patch over the front side of the roof. “Let’s call it a heart-warming present.”

  13

  Thy Throat Is Shut and Dried

  O’Reilly drew on his after-breakfast pipe and listened to the rain battering on the dining room window. January 1969 was into its second week, and today Ballybucklebo would not be giving an impression of a balmy tropical paradise. He and Emer were on duty for home visits and so far the phone at Number One Main had been silent, but it was early yet and no doubt they would soon be braving the elements. He shrugged and peered out at the gloom. If he and Kenny were down at Strangford Lough waiting for the dawn flight down the Blackstaff River, he’d be as happy as a sandboy.

  The dining room door was ajar and two voices were audible and increasing in volume as they neared the surgery.

  “Is that a fact, Cissie?” Barry’s patient, kind voice still betrayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

  “Fact? Doctor dear. Fact, is it? I have it from a very reliable source, very reliable, because Siobhán Gogarty told Aggie Arbuthnot that she—I mean Siobhán, not Aggie. Siobhán got it from Mary, Mary Dunleavy that is, you know Willie the publican’s daughter, well, actually Mary’s the daughter, not Willie, but…”

  The closing of the surgery door spared a grinning O’Reilly any more of Cissie Sloan’s interminable chatter.

  The strains of a Céilí band, probably from the Irish-language channel of Radio Éireann, were coming from the kitchen, interrupted by a “woof,” so Kinky must have taken pity on Kenny and brought him in from the gale. The scent of newly baked bread, as if riding on the waves of the jig, drifted into the dining room. O’Reilly knocked the dottle out of his pipe into an ashtray and headed for the source of the heavenly aroma. He entered just as Emer and Kinky, both in their stocking feet, finished dancing to the last bars of “The Irish Washerwoman,” Emer, arms stiff alongside her tailored navy blue suit with a slim above-knee skirt, Kinky flushed, a bit short of breath, a few strands escaping from her silver chignon.

  Kenny watched from where he lay in front of the range.

  Kinky clapped, bowed to Emer and said, “Go raibh mile maith agat, Dochtúir McCarthy.”

  Emer returned the bow, said, “Tá fáilte romhat,” then bent to put on her shoes.

  “I’ll be damned.” He had just heard Kinky thanking Emer and Emer saying “You’re welcome,” in Irish. “What in the name of the wee man’s going on here?”

  Kinky, still catching her breath, turned off the radio. “You did catch us unawares, Doctor O’Reilly. I was showing Doctor McCarthy how to bake wheaten bread”—she motioned to the two loaves cooling on a rack on the counter—“and we had the radio on.”

  “I see. You’ve worked with me since ’46 and I never knew jigging was part of the bread recipe.”

  “And then I was telling Kinky,” Emer’s tones were still those of one flushed from the exhilaration of the jig, “how my last boyfriend and I were both keen hard-shoe step dancers. Used to go to all the feiseanna, the festivals, and compete. But I don’t dance much these days.” The two women exchanged a glance.

  And who else would a young woman confide her sorrows in than big, motherly Kinky?

  “And I told Doctor McCarthy how I’d met my first husband, Paudeen Kincaid, at a Lughnasadh dance in County Cork when on came the very tune we’d danced to when I was sixteen, and sure weren’t the pair of us suddenly jigging away at it—”

  The hall telephone started to ring.

  “I’ll see to that,” Kinky said, charging off, still in her stocking feet and tucking the stray strands back into her chignon.

  When she reappeared she said, “That did be Eileen Lindsay. She says Willie has taken a turn for the worse and has a very sore throat, so. Here, sir.” She handed O’Reilly his hat and coat.

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “Come on, Emer. We’ve work to do.” He waited until Emer had thrown on her raincoat and a yellow plastic sou’wester, then opened the back door to be greeted by a howling wind and sheets of rain. “Slán agat, Kinky and Kenny,” he said, the good-bye of the one leaving.

  “Slán, leat, Dochtúir,” Kinky said, the good-bye of the one staying behind.

  * * *

  “Bloody monsoon,” O’Reilly yelled over a gust that was trying to wrench the car door from his hand.

  Emer, head bowed, holding her sou’wester on with one hand, struggled out.

  A white Ford Anglia was parked outside Number 31 Comber Gardens, requiring them to toil a little farther through the tempest to get to Eileen’s terrace house.

  “Go on. Knock on the door,” he yelled as he grabbed his bag, slammed the car door, and followed her.

  A man answered, took Emer in, and waited for O’Reilly.

  “Come on on in out of that, sir,” the man said. “It would cut you in two, so it would.”

  “Thanks,” O’Reilly said, hanging his hat and coat beside Emer’s.

  “She has Willie in bed. First right,” the man said, closing the door. “Gordon McNab, by the way. Eileen’s friend. You must be Doctor O’Reilly. I’ve met Doctor McCarthy. Sammy and Mary’s at school. I’ll wait down here. Go on up, Doctors.”

  O’Reilly nodded and headed for the stairs, thinking that Barry had suggested over lunch recently that there might be romance in the air here on the estate. O’Reilly hoped so, for Eileen’s sake.

  The staircase was the same as the one in Brendan and Fiona MacNamee’s house. All the houses on the estate were identical, and O’Reilly was never more aware of his somewhat expanding waistline as when he was heaving himself up one of these steep, narrow passageways. He went into the first bedroom on the right. Gusts of rain like probing light cavalry before a massed assault hurled themselves against the sash window. A chintz curtain fluttered in a draught. The shadeless overhead bulb lit the small room with a harsh light.

  “Thank God you’re here.” Eileen Lindsay stood on the far side of the bed where Willie lay still under an eiderdown. “I’m dead sorry til have brought youse out on such—”

  “Now, Eileen Lindsay, I do not want you apologising.” O’Reilly allowed a tinge of mock anger into his voice. “It happens to be our job, so please just answer Doctor McCarthy’s questions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that, O’Reilly had given the management of the case to Emer. As far as he was concerned, trainees learned by doing, not by watching. Besides, she had seen the boy before.

  “Eileen, Willie took sick nine days ago. Doctor Laverty and I saw him eight days ago and popped in on Monday this week, the day before he was to stop taking the penicillin. He seemed to be doing well. Is that right?”

  Eileen nodded.

  “So, what happened?”

  Eileen took a deep breath. “About half four this morning we heard this crying and me and Gordy got up…”

  O’Reilly saw Emer stifle a smile. Barry was right about romance, and Emer was in on the secret.

  “Willie was sitting up crying. ‘Mammy, my sore throat’s come back,’ he says to me. His poor wee voice was all hoarse.” She glanced at her son. “Gordy was all for ringing the surgery at once, but … och…” She blushed. “Him and me was nice and cosy and I said we’d wait a wee bit. I give Willie a gargle like the last time, and he seemed to settle, so we all went back to bed.” She looked at O’Reilly and he saw pleading in her eyes. “Did I do the right thing? Did I?”

  He waited for Emer’s response.

  “Mrs. Lindsay,” she said, “you did what you thought was best. A mother can do no more.”

  “Aye, well. Mebbe. You’re n
ot a mammy yet, are you, Doctor?”

  Emer shook her head. “No, not … yet.”

  “Well, no harm til you, but I-I still think I should have done more. It’s a mammy’s job til do everything that can be done, it is, so it is.” The words tumbled over each other. “And I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  Poor woman, O’Reilly thought. She’s feeling guilty as sin.

  “Eileen, honestly, Doctor Nelson was on call until nine and he’s not familiar with Willie’s case. Much better I’m here with Doctor O’Reilly.” There was authority in Emer’s voice. “You are not to blame yourself.”

  Well done, O’Reilly thought.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Eileen sighed, but seemed to brighten. She nodded and said, “Anyroad, when Gordy and me did get up I tried to get Willie til gargle with warm water and salt again, but by then he said it was too sore, and the left side of his neck and left ear are sore too, and he can’t stop dribbling and we did send for youse.” She glanced from O’Reilly to Emer and back. “That was right, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” O’Reilly said. He waited to see what Emer would do next.

  She spoke to Willie. “Willie, don’t try to speak. Alright? Just nod if you agree.”

  Willie made a tiny nod.

  “I need to try to get a look at the back of your mouth, and I’m going to ask Doctor O’Reilly to help me.” She turned to him. “Doctor O’Reilly, could you please shine the light?”

  O’Reilly fished out his pencil torch and moved along the bed across from Emer. “Whenever you are ready.”

  “Mammy, could you help Willie to sit up?”

  Eileen did, making room on the bed for Emer to get closer to the boy.

  “I want you to be very brave,” she said. “Open as wide as you can and stick out your tongue.”

  Willie struggled and O’Reilly admired the little lad. He’d known throat pain to be so severe in some patients that only a general anaesthetic could enable the doctor to examine the pharynx.