An Irish Country Doctor Read online

  Galvin hung his head.

  "Maybe we should be putting you up for an Oscar? Best actor in a nonsupporting role?"

  "But it hurts, sir. If I try to stand on it, I get a terrible stoon all the way up to my knee."

  'Seemed to hold you up at the bar on Sunday when you were spending your fortune."

  Galvin smiled an ingratiating grin that made Barry think of Charles Dickens's Uriah Heep. "Ah, but sure you know, Doctor sir, that alcohol kills pain." For a moment Galvin's dull eyes sparkled. Barry's mental image was of Wile E. Coyote with a light bulb flashing on above his cartoon head. "I know I had one or two. That must have been when I hurt the other side."

  ''Ecce Galvinus. Homo plumbum oscillandat" O'Reilly remarked to Barry, who immediately understood. "Behold Galvin. The man's swinging the lead."

  "Is that plumbum stuff bad, sir?" Galvin hobbled back across the room and sat heavily, his narrow face contorted into a rictus.

  "All depends," said O'Reilly. "Put up your foot again." Galvin obeyed, and O'Reilly rapidly reapplied the bandage. "You want me to give you a line?"

  Galvin brightened. "Yes, please, sir. For two weeks if that's all right?"

  "I might," said O'Reilly, "but. . ."

  "But what, sir?"

  "But I'd need to know about the fortune you said you'd be falling into."

  Galvin sat back in the forward-tilting chair. "Ach, you don't, sir. Ach, no."

  "Ach, yes, Seamus, I do. Or it's no line."

  By the wrinkling of Galvin's brow and the clenching of his teeth, Barry could tell that the man was having a gargantuan struggle with himself.

  "No tickee, no laundry, Seamus."

  Galvin took a deep breath. "Maureen gave me the money." O'Reilly's nose tip blanched. "She what? The money for California?" Galvin hung his head.

  "You skiver. You unmitigated gobshite. Give it back to her, do you hear?"

  "I can't, sir. It's spent. On ducks."

  "In the Mucky Duck?" O'Reilly rose and towered over Galvin. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you dead."

  Galvin held both arms against the side of his head nearest to O'Reilly and leant his body in the opposite direction. "No not in the Duck. Well, only a couple of quid. The rest of the money went on ducks. Rocking ducks." One of O'Reilly's shaggy eyebrows rose. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Galvin slowly lowered his arms. "Rocking ducks, sir. I'm going to make rocking ducks. Just like rocking horses. There'll not be a kiddie in Ballybucklebo won't go daft to have one. The lumber and paint's all bought. I can sell them for twice what they'll cost to make. That's why I want two weeks off, so I can finish making them and get them sold. Then Maureen and me and the chiseller can go to America with a bit of the out' do-ray-mi."

  "And Maureen agreed to this half-witted notion?"

  "Lord, aye, sir."

  Barry was pretty sure from the way Galvin refused to meet O'Reilly's glare that the man was lying.

  "How many will you make?"

  "About a hundred, sir."

  "Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch. And how many kiddies that would want a rocking duck do you think live in Ballybucklebo?"

  "I don't know, sir." Galvin's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

  "Forty, maybe fifty. Do you reckon they'll buy them in pairs? Matched sets?"

  "I never thought of that, sir. But it will all work out. You'll see." O'Reilly said, "I doubt it."

  Galvin pushed himself back up the chair, using, Barry noticed, a hearty thrust from his reputedly damaged ankle. "So you'll give me the line, Doctor sir?"

  Barry was surprised when O'Reilly said, "A promise is a promise," and returned to the desk to scribble on a government form. Doctors were meant to be honest when supporting genuine claims for disability money.

  "Here," said O'Reilly, handing Galvin the form. "Two weeks.

  But you build those damn ducks. I might know a business in Belfast that'll take the lot."

  Galvin tugged his forelock and rose. "Bless you, Doctor, and I will build them, so I will." He struggled to the door, accompanying himself with a lamentation of oohs and aahs.

  "And Seamus," O'Reilly said softly.

  "Yes, Doctor?"

  "Get out of your bloody bed and give that wife of yours a hand. Do you hear me?"

  "I do, sir. I will." Galvin left.

  "Useless bugger," said O'Reilly. "I told you he was a skiver when you were going on about me chucking him into the bushes."

  "So why did you give him a disability certificate when we both know he's faking it?"

  O'Reilly sat in the swivel chair. "I was getting into too many fights with my patients when I wouldn't give them their lines."

  "But that's part of our job."

  "Balls. Our job's to look after them when they're sick, not behave like some bloody civil servant."

  "I know, but--"

  "What do you know about the medical referee?"

  "Not much."

  "The politicos aren't altogether useless. A few years ago they had the bright idea that maybe an independent doctor, a referee employed by the ministry, could examine anyone their local GP thought was working the system. Take some of the load off the GP. Sometimes the referee'd pull a certificate at random and invite the customer up for a visit. Kept a lot of people honest. Let the ministry doctor be the villain. He's never going to see the patient again."

  "That makes sense."

  "Didn't work. You were still the villain as soon as you told someone you were going to send them to the referee. They call him 'The Big Doctor.' They're scared stiff of him. It was as good as telling them to their faces that you thought they were pulling your chain."

  "So what do you do?"

  O'Reilly chuckled. "The Big Doctor is a classmate of mine. We worked out a code. Here." He handed Barry a blank certificate. "See where it says Signature of Referring Doctor?"

  "Yes."

  "If I sign it F. F. O'Reilly, my friend knows I believe the complaint I is genuine. It saves him and the customers a lot of trouble. He doesn't have to send for really sick folks. But..." O'Reilly's chuckle became a full laugh. "If I sign it F. F. O'Reilly, M. B., B.Ch., B.A.O., the lead swinger's up in the ministry office before the ink's dry on the paper."

  "You wily bugger."

  "The customer doesn't know I blew the whistle. No more fights in here. Works like a charm."

  "And how, may I ask, did you sign Galvin's line?"

  "Ah," said O'Reilly, "let's just say my recommendation was unqualified. Now, be a good lad and see who's next."

  "Might be a bit difficult to park the car on Main Street. They'll be getting it ready for Thursday," said O'Reilly, finishing his lunch. "We've to nip round to Declan Finnegan's. He lives over the grocer's. It's not a bad day. Let's walk. We'll pick up the car later."

  "Fine." Barry would be glad of the exercise. He seemed to have done little recently but sit in O'Reilly's surgery or in the big Rover. He thought wistfully of his fly rod, propped up, unused in his attic. A couple of lines from the old song "The Convict of Clonmel" popped into his mind:

  At my bed foot decaying,

  My hurley is lying;

  Through the boys of the village

  My gold-ball is flying.

  He was hardly in gaol here in the practice, but never mind time off to go fishing--Friday and dinner with Patricia seemed to be such a long way away.

  "Is it nice in there?" O'Reilly asked.

  "Where?"

  "Wherever the hell you've gone off to in your head. It's not spring, but I suppose your young man's fancy is lightly turning to thoughts of love?"

  "Not quite how Tennyson put it, and if it's any of your business, I was thinking about fishing."

  "Were you? I noticed you've a rod. You like to fish?"

  "Very much."

  "I'll have a word with His Lordship."

  "Who?"

  "The Marquis of Ballybucklebo. Nice old bugger. He owns a beat on the Bucklebo River. He'd probably let you on his water if I asked hi
m."

  "Would you?"

  "Next time I see him."

  "I'd love a day on a good trout stream."

  "I'll see to it." O'Reilly rose. "But sitting here blethering won't get the baby a new coat. Come on."

  At least, Barry thought, as he closed the green front door, going out this way avoids having to run the gauntlet past the canine world's answer to Casanova. "It's a great day, Fingal."

  "It's too muggy. There could be a bit of thunder about," said O'Reilly, as he strode along the footpath, elbowing his way through knots of passersby. "Afternoon, Aggie. Afternoon, Cecil." Barry kept pace, nodding at those who greeted him. The town was busy. Shoppers and children on their school holidays filled the narrow footpaths and spilled into the roadway to jostle with a farmer and the small herd of Aberdeen Angus bullocks he was driving along Main Street, seemingly oblivious to the horns of the cars stalled behind them.

  A gang of men bent to their work, painting the kerbstones in bands of glistening red, white, and blue. The maypole had been touched up in the same Loyalist colours, and from its peak, drifting lazily in a sea breeze, hung a large flag: the Red Hand of Ulster centred on the red cross of Saint George set against a white background. It kept company with its smaller brothers and the Union Jacks that dangled from upstairs windows.

  Other men struggled to erect an arch across the road. "Would you look at that?" said O'Reilly.

  Barry gazed at the structure. Plywood-covered posts supported a slim, quarter circle of the same material that curved across the street. In its centre was a picture of a man in seventeenth-century costume, feather drooping from his cocked hat, riding boots black and polished. He was mounted on a rearing white horse. One hand held the reins; the other waved a sabre over the rider's head. "Pity," said O'Reilly, "that William of Orange's charger has a squint."

  Barry looked more closely. O'Reilly was right. The artist had managed to have each glaring eye focus at a spot just in front of its flaring nostrils.

  "Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen, and the Boyne." O'Reilly read the names of battles that were lettered on painted scrolls on either side of the mounted man. "In 1690 or thereabouts. Old battles that should be forgotten, but the way some of the locals go on, you'd think they'd been fought yesterday."

  "You said it was all sweetness and light between the Protestants and the Catholics in Ballybucklebo."

  "There's nothing overt. Not like the taunting and ranting and roaring that go on in Belfast. But I don't like it," said O'Reilly. "I saw a newsreel once. Alabama or Mississippi. Bunch of eejits in pointy hoods and white robes burning a cross, just to remind the blacks that they are second-class citizens. It gave me the shivers."

  "Surely a bit of decoration, a few flags, and a parade aren't the same as a Ku Klux Klan rally?"

  "I was a boy during the Troubles . . . the Black and Tans and the Civil War . . . back in the nineteen twenties. I'd hate to see the Troubles come back, and when you keep on rubbing folks' noses in it with flags and parades . . ."

  "I'm sure there'll never be anything like the Troubles again. Not here."

  "I hope you're right," said O'Reilly thoughtfully, "but long memories are the curse of Ireland. The Twelfth's just a holiday to most folks, but there's a bunch of bigots that do go on stirring the pot, keeping the old hatred alive . . . like our worthy councillor. When he can spare the time from trying to drive a decent old man off his property, he'd be happy to string up the odd Fenian from a lamp-post."

  "He really is a miserable man, isn't he?"

  "He's a pure and unadulterated gobshite," said O'Reilly. "I don't know about you, but I'm no closer to sorting out how we can help Sonny, and now I have to find a way to get Maureen Galvin's money back for her."

  "I thought you knew a company in Belfast that would buy the rocking ducks."

  "I can phone a fellow I played rugby with, but would you want to try to sell the things?"

  Barry shook his head.

  O'Reilly started to cross the road. "Something will turn up," he said, stepping back up onto the footpath. "Just what the dickens do you think this is all about?"

  Barry saw the ginger-haired Donal Donnelly waving at them as he forced his way across the street past the cow clap-splattered rump of one of the bullocks. He was accompanied by a grey dog. He and his companion stepped up onto the footpath. "Doctor. Doctor O'Reilly, sir. Could I have a wee word?" Donal's buckteeth trembled against his long lower lip.

  "Of course."

  "This here's Bluebird." He tugged on a thin piece of rope. The dog raised its narrow muzzle and fixed Donal with a look of pure adoration from its liquid brown eyes.

  "Bluebird?"

  "Yes, sir. After your man's speedboat." Barry looked more closely at the beast. It had long thin legs, and carried its skinny tail in an arc curved in underneath its belly. Every rib was as visible as the bones of an anatomic display specimen.

  "Donald Campbell?"

  "Himself. The very fellah."

  "He's in Australia," said Barry. "He's going to have a go at the world water-speed record later this month."

  "Races, does she?" O'Reilly asked, bending and examining the dog's flanks.

  "She does, sir, but she hasn't won yet."

  "So if she's slow, why do you call her Bluebird?" O'Reilly's brow wrinkled.

  "Because, sir"--Donal's left upper eyelid drooped in a slow wink--"she runs on water."

  O'Reilly started. "Water?"

  Barry was baffled.

  "But on Friday at Dunmore Park she'll be running dry."

  "Will she, by God?" O'Reilly's eyes widened. What the hell were they talking about?

  'I thought you'd like to know, sir." Donal peered furtively around. "Not a word now."

  "A wink's as good as a nod to a blind horse. Thanks, Donal. I'll keep it in mind. I might just take a trip up to Dunmore. Doctor Laverty could look after the practice."

  Barry flinched. Oh, no. Friday was to be his night off. "We'll be running on," said Donal, tugging at the rope. "Got to get you fit, girl."

  "Fingal," said Barry. All his questions about the recent strange conversation had been driven away by the thought that he might not be able to see Patricia after all. "Fingal, you said I could have Friday night off."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  "Must have forgotten."

  Barry steeled himself. "Look, Fingal--"

  "Don't worry. We'll both get away. You just hold the fort 'til it's time for you to go."

  "But who'll look after things when we're both out?"

  "Kinky. I don't do it very often, but if no one's baby's due and the shop seems reasonably quiet, Kinky takes the calls. Either she asks the customer to wait until the morning, or if she thinks it is urgent, she arranges for an ambulance to take the patient up to the Royal."

  "Oh."

  "So you can see the light of your life, and I can have a bit of fun myself." O'Reilly chuckled. "The Lord might just move in a mysterious way his wonders to perform."

  "You've utterly lost me."

  "I do that sometimes," said O'Reilly, "and I've no time to explain now. We're running behind. Come on and we'll get Declan Finnegan looked at."

  Declan Finnegan was a man in his fifties. He was sorely afflicted with Parkinson's disease. The diagnosis was instantly apparent the moment Barry walked into the small flat above the grocer's shop. The man's face was a mask, expressionless, immobile. A string of spittle hung from the corner of his mouth. His eyes held no questions for the doctors. Any hope he might have treasured of a cure must have been long gone. He held out one hand in greeting, and Barry saw the telltale rubbing of thumb against fingers, the uncontrollable pill-rolling movements.

  His wife, a worried-looking woman who bore herself like a Victorian dowager, wore her hair, glossy as black Italian marble, pulled back into a severe bun in the style favoured by Spanish duennas. "Bonjour, monsieur le docteur."

  "Bonjour, Madame Finnegan. Comme il faut aujourd'hui? O'Reilly replied in barely accented
French. "Je crois qu'il est encore plus mal. C'est tres triste,ça." Barry saw sadness in her eyes. He listened and watched, his schoolboy French barely sufficient to allow him to follow the questions and answers. It would appear that indeed the man's condition had worsened since O'Reilly's last visit. The pill rolling was increasing, and when O'Reilly asked Declan to walk for a few paces, he did so in tiny shuffling steps.

  O'Reilly offered what little comfort he could, agreed that, yes, it would be a good thing to keep the appointment that had been made for several weeks hence with a neurosurgeon at the Royal. Perhaps indeed it might be time for stereotactic surgery to destroy the part of the brain with a mind of its own that caused the muscles to rebel. "Au revoir, Madame. Nous vous verrions un jour pendant la semaine prochaine," O'Reilly said as they left.

  "I didn't know you spoke French," Barry said, as they walked back to the house to collect the car.

  "Oh, aye," said O'Reilly, "and I used to have a bit of Italian. I picked them up when I was in the Med. On the Warspite. Comes in handy once in a while. Mind you, she's the only Frenchwoman I know of in Ballybucklebo. Declan was in the Tank Regiment. Met her somewhere in Normandy in forty-four."

  "Poor bugger. It's a horrible disease."

  "There are some really sick ones here. It's not all cuts and bruises. I just wish to Christ there was more we could do for folks like Declan." His voice had an edge like a new scalpel. Barry had no chance to reply as O'Reilly put his head down, lengthened his stride, and ploughed like an angry bull through the pedestrians.

  In local parlance O'Reilly went through Tuesday's afternoon calls--and most of the patients who had come to the surgery on Wednesday morning--like grease through a duckling. Barry could barely keep pace. He was glad of the respite when Mrs. Kincaid set his lunch plate on the table.

  "Your list, Doctor. It's not too bad." She handed O'Reilly the sheet of paper.

  "Thanks, Kinky." O'Reilly consulted it quickly. "Not bad at all. I don't know about you, Barry, but I'm feeling a bit ragged."