An Irish Country Doctor Page 22

  The notes filled the room, bittersweet, matching his mood. Perhaps he'd phone her tonight.

  "If that one would stop standing on the cat's tail, maybe it would stop howling."

  Barry turned to see Jack Mills standing in the doorway. "Your housekeeper let me in. Jesus, what a miserable day." Jack shook his head, scattering droplets from his dark hair. He ran his fingers through his mop, sat in a chair, crossed his legs, pulled out a cigarette, and lit up. "Good to see you, mate."

  "And you."

  "Could you turn that thing off?"

  "Sure." Barry pushed the button. The aria died. "It's a pretty piece."

  "Sounded like a sick cat to me."

  Barry laughed. "You've no culture, Mills."

  "Yes, I do . . . but it's agriculture." Jack glanced over to the sideboard. "Any chance of a jar?"

  "What would you like?"

  "That John Jameson's looks good."

  Barry poured. "Here."

  "You not having one?"

  Barry shook his head. "The customers take a dim view if you show up smelling of booze."

  "Just like back home in Cullybackey," Jack said, sipping his drink. "One whiff and they think you're a piss artist." He gazed round the room. "Looks like your boss knows how to look after himself."

  "He's a decent man. Damn good doctor."

  "That's the word at the Royal. The drill-the-dome boys reckon he was pretty quick off the mark getting that aneurysm in the other morning. Another couple of hours and . . ."Jack drew one finger across his throat.

  Barry pursed his lips. "Actually it was my fault. I misdiagnosed Major Fotheringham."

  "Who?"

  "The bloke with the aneurysm."

  "Don't be daft."

  "No, it's true. The night before I'd seen him for a stiff neck. I never even thought that he might be bleeding into his head. He could've died."

  "I wouldn't worry about it. We can't get them right every time."

  "That's what Fingal said."

  "Sensible chap." Jack rose and walked to the window.

  "Remember the day I walked through a packed waiting room with that book of medical humour in the pocket of my white coat? Caused no end of a fuss. All the silly buggers could read the title." Barry laughed. He remembered the incident clearly. Poor old Jack had ended up on the carpet with the professor of surgery, a Yorkshireman.

  Jack's accent changed. "Ah tell thee, Mills, thou'll not do ought as daft as that again, not to my patients you won't."

  "It was a bit careless."

  "It wouldn't have mattered if the damn thing had been A Surgeon's Handbook."

  "But it wasn't."

  "I suppose letting the customers see me wandering round in a white coat with Kill as Few Patients as Possible sticking out wasn't exactly tactful."

  "True."

  "But it's probably the best we can do. Kill as few as possible. I've had three or four pop their clogs in the last couple of weeks. I thought we were going to lose that appendix of yours."

  "Jeannie Kennedy?"

  "I'd never seen anything like the pus in that abscess. It's a bloody good thing somebody invented those new tetracycline antibiotics. Had her on her feet and out the door in no time."

  "Would it not have bothered you?"

  "If she'd died?" Jack swirled the whiskey round in his glass.

  "Honestly?"

  "Honestly."

  "I don't really think so. I'd have been annoyed that the surgery hadn't gone as planned, but when they're asleep under the sterile drapes you don't really think about them as people. You can't."

  "Why not?"

  "It would be too damn difficult to stick the scalpel in and rummage about in their innards as if you were gutting a fish."

  Barry had a vivid mental image of last night's trout's intestines, slippery gobs of tissue, being washed down the sink. "I don't think I'm cut out to be a surgeon."

  Jack groaned. "That's awful. 'Cut out to be a surgeon.'" His face wrinkled into a great smile, and Barry couldn't help smiling with his friend. He heard Kinky calling, "Lunch is ready, Doctors."

  "Coming, Kinky." He nodded toward the lounge door. "Bring your drink. Kinky can be a bit owly if we let her cooking get cold."

  "Can't have that." Jack rose. "I could use some decent grub. The hospital kitchen hasn't improved."

  "That there trout," said Jack in the accents of Belfast's dockland, "was cracker, so it was. Dead-on. Bloody wheeker."

  "I take it you approve?" Barry smiled. Jack Mills hadn't changed, not since they'd met eleven years before. Solid. Dependable. Never able to be serious for long. "Isn't that what I just said?"

  "I caught them yesterday."

  "So you get a bit of time off?"

  "A bit."

  Have you seen that bird you were telling me about?" Barry's smile faded. "Patricia?"

  "That her name?"

  "Yes, and I don't think she'd be too happy to hear you call her a bird."

  "Oh?"

  "She's an engineering student."

  "Good God. What's the world coming to? The next thing you know women'll be playing rugby."

  "I doubt it. Mind you, she's pretty single-minded about her engineering."

  "She'll grow out of it."

  Barry shook his head. "Not Patricia. She told me on Friday night that she didn't want to get serious. Her career was too important." He glanced over at Jack.

  "And you did? Want to get serious?" Barry nodded.

  "Oh, Jesus. Is it getting to you, mate?"

  "A bit."

  Jack rubbed the web of his left hand over his upper lip. "How many times have you seen her?"

  "Three."

  "And it's that bad?"

  "Yes."

  "Engineer or not, she must be something special."

  "Very."

  "You poor bugger." Jack stood. "So what are you going to do about it?"

  "I'm not sure. She asked me to phone her. I thought I might tonight."

  "I wouldn't."

  "No?"

  "Let the hare sit. Either she's giving you the brush-off--in which case you're stuffed, mate--or maybe she really does want you to I- phone. She's playing a bit hard to get."

  "So why wait?"

  "Do you remember when you tried to teach me about fly fishing?"

  "Yes."

  "You said that trout would be scared off if we rushed up to the riverbank, that we'd have to stalk them, move up quietly, take our time?"

  "So I should take my time with Patricia?"

  "Definitely. Let her stew for a while. If she's serious and doesn't want to see you again, you'll not hear from her. If she does want to see you again, she'll call."

  "Do you really think so?"

  "It worked for me with that blonde staff nurse. Remember?" Barry did remember. "Are you still seeing her?"

  "Not at all. I took her out for a couple of months. She was a hot wee number, but she started hinting about marriage, and you know me. Why buy a cow when you can get a pint of milk at the store?"

  "You don't get any better, Mills."

  Jack laughed. "I've nearly four more years training ahead. You know what they pay junior staff. I'll be buggered if I'm going to be some kind of celibate for the greater glory of the priesthood of surgery. And I'm certainly not ready to settle down yet. Can you see me with a pipe and slippers and a bunch of rug rats?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Not one bit. If you want to get your knickers in a knot over a girl, I can't stop you, but there's a lot to be said for not getting too involved."

  Barry said quietly, "Sometimes you can't help it. It just happens."

  "There's no hope for you, Laverty. First of all, you seem to think that you have to take every one of your patients to heart. Then you can't look at a girl sideways without deciding she's a cross between Venus de Milo and Raquel Welch."

  "Come on, Jack."

  "Come on, nothing. You're a hopeless romantic. That's why I like you." Jack rose and handed Barry a now empty
whiskey glass. "And I'd like you a lot better if you could find the other half of this. A bird can't fly on one wing."

  Marching to a Different Drummer

  "It's like Paddy's market." O'Reilly closed the door to the packed waiting room. "We'll have to do something about that. I'm not up to facing all the woes of the world this morning." Barry wasn't surprised. He'd gone to bed last night at ten-thirty, after a surprisingly call-free day, before O'Reilly had returned. Nor had Barry been graced with the big man's presence at breakfast. He didn't usually oversleep. No doubt the little red veins in the whites of his eyes, the bags underneath, bore silent testimony to the reason he'd not appeared until moments before the surgery was supposed to open.

  "What can we do? Ask some of them to go home?" O'Reilly grunted, opened the door wide, and asked, "Who's first?"

  "Me, Doctor sir." A short, cloth-capped man rose. He wore a red scarf round his throat and had a torso like a small beer barrel. He had a cough, dry and hacking.

  "Come on then, Francis Xavier."

  Barry led the way.

  "Your turn," said O'Reilly, hoisting himself up onto the couch, massaging his temple with one hand as he did so. "I've a bit of a strong weakness today."

  Barry took the swivel chair. "What can I do for you, Mr.--?"

  "Francis Xavier Mac Mhuireadhaigh."

  Barry looked helplessly at O'Reilly.

  "Francis Xavier Murdoch," O'Reilly translated.

  "Frankie it is, sir," said the little man, whipping off his cap to reveal a bald pate. "Frankie it is. But I've the blood of gods in my veins, so I have." He wheezed and rubbed his throat. Barry immediately wondered if this was to be another psychiatric consultation, but he remembered his first day when he had misjudged Maggie MacCorkle.

  "Gods? Which ones?"

  The stocky little man shoved himself back up the tilted seat. "My forbear, William Mac Mhuireadhaigh, invented gas lighting back in 1800 and something. The out' shah of Persia, a fellah called Nassred-din, reckoned Willie Murdoch was the reincarnation of Merodac, the Persian god of light."

  "It's a fact," said O'Reilly wearily. "I looked it up."

  "Very interesting," said Barry, pleased that he had not jumped to the wrong conclusion. "What brought you here today?"

  "I walked. My bike's broke, so it is."

  "Why have you come to see us?" Barry knew that some Ulster folk could be literal in their thinking.

  "I've a terrible wheezle in my thrapple." He coughed.

  "Sore throat?" Although Barry might not speak Irish, the local dialect posed no difficulties.

  "Aye. For about a se'nnight."

  "A week? Anything else bothering you?"

  "Just my nut. I tried rubbing it with salt herrings but it was no use."

  "I don't think there's much we can do for baldness, Frankie."

  "Aye, but if a storm's lifted the thatch, it lets the cold in and that goes to your thrapple." One knobby hand massaged his pate, the other his throat.

  "Let's have a look." Barry lifted a tongue depressor. "Open wide. Say aah."

  The man's throat was red, flecked with yellow spots. It looked like a ripe strawberry. Barry removed the tongue depressor. "It's a bit infected, Frankie."

  "It's suppuratin' like?"

  "Not as bad as that. There's no real pus. Here . . ." Barry scribbled on a prescription pad. "There's a script for penicillin. Take one four times a day for a week."

  The little man eyed the prescription dubiously and turned to O'Reilly. "Do I not get the black bottle, sir?"

  "Oh, indeed," said O'Reilly. "Put some mist, morph. and ipecac. on that, would you, Doctor Laverty?" Barry retrieved the slip of paper and added the orders for the famous black bottle. He should have thought of that. The morph-- morphine--was a good cough suppressant, and the ipecac-- ipecacuanha--had no medicinal qualities at all. It simply made the mixture taste horrible, and of course the fouler the taste, the more curative the potion. "Here you are, Frankie. Pop in in a week if you're no better."

  "I will, sir." Frankie rose.

  Barry hadn't noticed O'Reilly slip down from the couch. O'Reilly took Frankie by the elbow and steered him out of the surgery. Barry did not hear the front door closing, and when O'Reilly returned, he carefully shut the surgery door. He held a finger to his lips and grinned at Barry.

  The hairs on the nape of Barry's neck twitched when O'Reilly started howling, a moan that started low and ran through at least two octaves. The screeching was interrupted by O'Reilly's yells of "Jesus, Doctor, give over," and "You're murdering me, so you are," and "Jesus. Jesus, that's enough. Mercy. Mercy." O'Reilly strode out of the surgery. The front door slammed mightily, and there was no gentility in the way he closed the door to the surgery on his return.

  "What-?"

  O'Reilly's finger went back to his lips for a moment; then he pulled out his briar and lit up. "We'll just wait five minutes," he whispered. "Then when you go back to the waiting room, it'll be just like the 'Teddy Bears' Picnic' song."

  "Pardon?"

  "You'll be sure of a big surprise. Half the ones with nothing better to do and less wrong with them will have taken to their heels." He rubbed his forehead. "I told you I couldn't face those multitudes today." He walked to the door. "You'll have an easy morning of it now. I'm off for a while."

  Barry watched the big man go. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, he thought, two weeks ago I'd have considered you the greatest charlatan unhung. Now? Well, there's no doubt you're different, but it's certainly not dull working here.

  When he opened the door to the waiting room only a handful of patients remained, and all eyed him with looks of silent fear. He could tell that not one of them, not one, stood the remotest chance of getting the upper hand.

  O'Reilly's temper had improved somewhat by the time they left to make the afternoon's home visits, but he had been incommunicative during what for Barry had been a foreshortened lunch. Even though the number of patients to be seen in the morning had been drastically reduced by O'Reilly's histrionics, Barry had taken extra time with every one. He'd have no more Major Fotheringhams to burden his conscience.

  "Get a move on," O'Reilly growled. "We haven't got all day." Barry gulped down the last of his tea.

  "The car's at the front of the house."

  "Right."

  Their itinerary took them high into the Ballybucklebo Hills to see a farmer who was recuperating after being crushed several weeks previously when his tractor had rolled over; O'Reilly was satisfied with the man's recovery. Their route back down passed the Six Road Ends. Crops that had still been green when Barry sought directions from Donal Donnelly were golden now, whiskery barley bowing and shining in the afternoon sunlight. A magpie, white and black and long-tailed, swooped over the car.

  Barry saluted it. For all his book learning even he was not immune to the country superstitions. A rhyme about magpies went, "One for sorrow / Two for joy / Three for a girl / Four for a boy." The single bird could presage sorrow, but saluting it was guaranteed to ward off the evil eye--so it was said. He wished there had been three birds. There was only one girl that he wanted. O'Reilly slowed down as the car passed Sonny's junkyard. The roofless house looked forlorn, and weeds were higher among the scrap metal and aging cars. The purple heads of thistles had gone, to be replaced with fluffy seed cases that the wind scattered like tiny parasols among the brown-headed ben-weeds, nettles, and broadleaved dock.

  "Funny that," said O'Reilly, "how nettles that sting and dock that soothe the sting always seem to grow together. I wonder what the pharmacological agent is in those leaves?"

  "No idea." Barry stared at Sonny's washing machine standing mute at the roadside.

  "What we need," said O'Reilly, "is some sort of dock to soothe that old nettle, Councillor Bertie Bishop, worshipful master of the Orange Lodge . . . and all-around gobshite. Make him come to some accommodation with Sonny. He'll be discharged in a few more days." O'Reilly accelerated into a blind corner. "There's an old folks' home in Bango
r. We could try to get Sonny in there, but then Bishop would take over the property, and Sonny would go into a decline if he thought he was going to be there for the rest of his life. It would be the end of him."

  "Fingal! Look out for that cyclist."

  O'Reilly swerved.

  Barry lifted the foot that he had shoved against the floor in the unreasonable hope that it would brake the car. "You told me, not in as many words, that we can't fix all the troubles of the universe." The car came back on course.

  "You're right. But it's still a bugger about the old boy." O'Reilly lapsed into silence, and Barry decided to say no more until they reached their destination.

  Barry recognized the council housing estate as they drove through it. Two-storey terraces scowled at each other across streets so narrow that at three o'clock the sunlight had gone. Children had tied ropes to the top of a lamp-post and swung round it, laughing and chirping in high-pitched voices like a flock of starlings--which along with some dusty sparrows pecking in the gutters, and flocks of feral pigeons, were the only birds that frequented the slum. He remembered that Patricia was a bird-watcher, how she'd known the bird that was singing the evening they'd gone for a walk. She'd not get much joy bird-watching here.

  O'Reilly braked. "You'll not have seen what I'm going to show you next."

  "Oh?"

  "Come on."

  A woman wearing a calico apron and fluffy slippers let them in. Barry noticed that her bare shins were mottled with a network of brown lines, tangled like a fishing net on reefs of varicose veins. Reticularis ab igne, he thought, a network from the fire, a sure sign of poverty. With no other heating in the winter for their draughty, damp houses, the poor huddled in front of tiny, smoky coal fires that in some mysterious way provoked the mottling on the fronts of the legs.

  "How's Hughey today?" O'Reilly enquired.

  "He's out in the backyard, Doctor. There's still a wee taste of sunshine there, and he loves the warmth, so he does." Barry wondered as they passed through a small kitchen why the woman picked up a tin tray and a spoon.

  The backyard was typical: a cramped slab of cracked concrete hemmed in by low red-brick walls. Overhead a clothesline, washing hung out to dry, sagged and swayed. Although the shadow of the house darkened most of the concrete--a shadow that lengthened as Barry watched--the far end was still in light. A man in a frayed cardigan and moleskin trousers stood there, bent over a wooden box where impatiens bloomed, red and white and violet. He didn't turn as they approached, which surprised Barry because O'Reilly's boots clattered on the concrete.