An Irish Country Village Read online

  In the middle of the first rank, two youngsters stood smiling at the camera. One had flaming ginger hair; the other was obviously O’Reilly. Sister had been right. He’d not been a bad-looking lad.

  “You’ll have the backing of the two best second-row forwards ever to come out of Ireland.”

  Barry forced a smile.

  “Good.” Greer opened the door. “I’d like to chat longer, but . . .” He nodded to a Dictaphone. “Bloody paperwork.”

  “I understand, and thanks for seeing me, sir.” Barry let himself out. He was pleased he’d been able to hurry things up for Declan Finnegan—or at least O’Reilly’s friendship with Professor Greer had.

  “Everything go all right?” Sister asked from behind her desk.

  “Fine.”

  “Good and . . . Doctor Laverty?”

  “Yes, Sister?”

  “When you see Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, tell him Caitlin O’Hallorhan said ‘hello.’ ”

  “I’ll do that.” Barry left the ward feeling a bit more cheerful after his chat with Professor Greer. He decided he might as well deal with a couple of other practice matters on his way to the pathology department. Ward 22 was next door. He’d not need to make an appointment for Mrs. Bishop now that he seemed to have her myasthenia under control. But it would be a courtesy to let Mandy know, and he was more than a little curious to discover how his friend Jack had fared.

  She was sitting at her usual post, one leg crossed over the other. If anything, her skirt was shorter than the one she’d been wearing last week. He couldn’t help notice a narrow strip of white thigh between the hem of her skirt and the top of her dark stocking. “Hi, Mandy.”

  “Not you again?” She smiled up at him. “What is it this time?”

  “I just popped in to tell you not to worry about making that appointment I asked you about.”

  “For our dinner out?”

  “No. For my patient with myasthenia.”

  “The one you wanted me to get Professor Faulkner to see in a hurry?”

  “Mrs. Bishop. That’s right.”

  She flipped the pages of a ledger. “I’d her pencilled in for next week. I can let somebody else have the spot. Thanks for letting me know.” She narrowed her eyes, and her lips smiled. “And here’s me all set to tell you to forget about taking me out.” She patted one side of her hair with the palm of her right hand. “The strangest thing happened just after you left here on Wednesday. That old mate of yours, Jack Mills, popped in. I hadn’t seen him for months.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, he did. He took me out on Saturday night.” She giggled. “He’s a very generous lad is Jack. He brought me an orchid before we went out for dinner at the Causerie.”

  Barry remembered the Causerie, a smart, little, and quite expensive restaurant on Church Lane.

  “And after dinner he bought me two brandies.”

  Despite his ever-present worry about Mrs. Fotheringham, Barry could barely suppress a smile as he remembered Jack’s take on the old song from White Christmas. “Sounds like Jack,” he said.

  “He’s dreamy, and I’m seeing him again this Saturday.”

  “I’m delighted,” he said. “Give him my regards.”

  “I will.” She pouted and narrowed her eyes. “I might give him more than that. If he brings me another orchid.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Barry said, “but I have to be running along.”

  “See you, Barry.” She dismissed him with a tiny wave.

  Barry left the neurosciences department and went down the main corridor. He called into the urology ward, where he was delighted to discover that the unit clerk had been as good as her word. She had found a place for Kieran O’Hagan on her chief’s surgical list. He’d have his prostatectomy next Monday and had already been notified.

  He sighed as he left and carried on along the main corridor. Somehow he felt as if he were a patient, waiting for the results of investigations, hoping the results were favourable but unable to escape the nagging worry they were not. He knew his pulse rate was increasing as he neared the pathology department.

  He tried to distract himself by thinking about what he had achieved today. He should be pleased. O’Reilly would be happy because matters had been speeded up for Declan, although it occurred to Barry that there probably had been no need for him to come to Belfast at all. O’Reilly, despite his reservations about the impersonality of telephone calls, could have called Professor Greer. Had he sent Barry so he’d have a chance to meet the professor himself?

  Greer certainly had been most helpful and would be a very valuable ally—if he were needed. Barry could imagine the big, ginger-haired man towering over the sides of the witness box, and over the prosecuting lawyer. He could hear the authority in the professor’s voice as he said, “The Good Lord himself couldn’t have diagnosed a cerebral artery aneurysm if the only symptom to go on was a stiff neck.”

  The trouble was, it wasn’t winning the case that mattered. It was keeping the whole sorry business out of court, and that wasn’t going to happen unless Harry Sloan had some new findings.

  Barry straightened his shoulders and lengthened his stride. He had to find Harry Sloan.

  Why Didst Thou Promise Such?

  The department of pathology was lodged in the Clinical Sciences Building. Barry was struck by how quiet the place was after the bustle of the clinical areas of the hospital. Of course there were no patients here, no visitors. The predominant smell was a mélange of floor polish and tissue preservatives, both almost overpowered by the peculiar animal scents coming from the vivarium where white mice and guinea pigs were housed.

  The same smells had been there the first time he’d walked through the front doors of the place in June 1959, with the first two and a half years of his studentship at Queen’s University behind him. He’d completed his studies of the basic sciences in the anatomy and physiology departments at the main campus on the far side of Belfast.

  Once he’d passed the examinations in those and related subjects, it was time to move on to the Royal. There the daunting prospect of three and a half more years of studying pathology, microbiology, pharmacology, and forensic medicine had at least been softened by the knowledge that he and his classmates would finally be allowed to see real live patients.

  He paused on the second-floor landing and walked across the tiles to peer, for old times’ sake, through the windows of the double doors that led to the main lecture theatre. Just as in his day, the tiered seats were filled with students bent over their notebooks. They were the reverent congregation hanging on every word of their priest, the white-coated lecturer who stood behind a floor-mounted desk and pointed out the salient features of a slide projected onto a large screen.

  Barry recognized the teacher, Doctor Lynette Fulton. She was what was known as a reader in haematological pathology. Blood diseases. She’d been regarded as something of a marvel by his class. The few women who graduated in medicine had usually chosen general practice or paediatrics, disciplines supposedly more suited to their gentler natures.

  There was nothing gentle about Lynette Fulton. Just looking down at her reminded him of the god-awful bollocking she’d given him when he’d failed a test about myeloid leukaemia, her particular interest. Then he’d been mortified, but from his current perspective he felt gratitude for the way she’d offered to give him a crash course in the subject. Her efforts had saved his bacon when, of all things, leukaemia had been the main question on the final pathology examination.

  He turned from the door and went up one more flight of marble-topped stairs. On the landing he stopped outside glass doors next to which a sign read DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY. NO ADMITTANCE.

  He pushed through the portals. On his right the doorway to an office stood open. Three secretaries, all busily typing, sat at three desks. They were preparing pathology reports, and unless matters had changed greatly since he’d been a houseman, the backlog would still frustrate the receiving clinicians. Th
ey constantly complained about how long it took to get the findings.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Yes?” A small, bespectacled woman looked over her typewriter at him.

  “I’m looking for Doctor Sloan.”

  He saw a frown starting.

  “It’s all right. I’m Doctor Laverty.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Harry’s down the hall. Third on your left.”

  “Thank you.” He left and walked along the linoleum, pursued by the staccato rattling of typewriter keys. Wooden doors, all closed, were marked with the name and rank of the occupants.

  On the third door a sign simply announced: Pathology Registrar. Harry wasn’t senior enough to justify the expense of a personal plate. Barry knocked and opened the door. The room stank of stale tobacco.

  Harry Sloan sat on a swivel chair in front of a flat workbench. He had a half-smoked cigarette stuck to his upper lip, and when he lifted his white-haired head from the eyepieces of a binocular microscope, he rubbed his eyes and said, “Nyeh. Hiya, Barry. Come on in. You want that aneurysm’s histology results, don’t you?” He frowned. “Shut the door behind you and park yourself.”

  Barry did. The office was tiny, but at least there was a grimy window at the far end. Two walls held full floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. He recognized two of the tomes, Muir’s Textbook of Pathology and Boyd’s Pathology, each more than a thousand pages long. Remembering the countless hours he’d spent trying to slog through their dry contents, he could barely suppress a shudder. If he’d helped Jack Mills with his anatomy studies, Jack had saved Barry’s professional life by discovering an abridged text, Lecture Notes on Pathology, that could be mastered in a fraction of the time it would have taken to digest Muir or Boyd.

  Harry stubbed out his cigarette in a tin full of butts and ash. He coughed. “Bloody coffin nails are killing me. Nyeh.”

  “Have you had a chance to take a look at those PM slides yet?” Barry saw Harry Sloan blush, a deep beetroot red.

  “Jesus, Barry, I’m dead sorry, so I am. I’ve not had a minute.”

  “Oh.” Why, Barry wondered, did he feel like a small boy who had been promised a special treat, only to be told he wasn’t getting it after all?

  “I’m really sorry. I did try, but two of the technicians have flu. Everything’s backed up. I don’t even know if the aneurysm’s slides are made yet. Everyone’s up to their arses just reading the Pap smears the techs were supposed to screen.”

  Barry tried not to let his disappointment show.

  “Aye. See, if there’re no techs somebody’s got to keep things moving. The women the smears come from are still alive.” He looked straight at Barry. “Your patient’s dead.”

  “I know.” Barry must have failed to hide his chagrin.

  “It’s important, isn’t it?”

  “When I asked you about it last week, it was mostly for my own satisfaction. Maybe help repair my reputation in the practice.” Barry hesitated. His fists tightened. “But I just heard at lunchtime today that if I can’t explain why her husband died, the widow’s going to sue me.”

  “What? She’s what?” Harry jerked back so forcibly his chair rolled away from the desk. “I’m sorry, Barry. I really am.”

  “Thanks, Harry, but you see why I’m anxious to get the results?”

  “Too bloody right. That’s desperate. I’ll see what I can do.” Harry fumbled in a pocket for his packet of smokes. “Hold on.” He picked up a telephone, dialed, and said to Barry, “It was one of the lads that got flu who was meant to prepare the PM slides. I’ll have a wee word with the head tech. See what I can do.”

  Barry listened as Harry spoke.

  “Hello? Hughey? It’s me, Doctor Sloan. Right. You remember the coroner’s PM? The one who’d had a subarachnoid? Aye. Look, I need the cardiac slides as quick as you can get ’em. Aye. I’ll hang on.” He shrugged at Barry. “Hello. Och, Jesus. What do you mean they’re still not done?” He ground his teeth, but said in a placatory tone, “I understand. It’s nobody’s fault. Look, Hughey, I need a wee favour. Christ, I know you’re busy, but a mate of mine could have a lawyer breathing down his neck unless I can get some answers for him . . . Right . . . Right . . . You’re a sound man. I owe you a pint.” Harry hung up and said to Barry. “That was Hughey McClements, the head tech. He says he’ll get on it right away, but it’ll take a day or two.” Harry set his cigarette packet on the desk and consulted a notebook he’d taken from an inside pocket. “I’ve still your phone number. I’ll give you a ring as soon as I’ve had a shufti.”

  “Thanks, Harry.” Barry turned to leave. “I don’t want to put you under more pressure but—”

  “No bloody buts. I’m glad it’s not me facing a lawyer.” He gave a half-smile. “But then my customers don’t have the get-up-and-go to sue anyone anymore.” He rubbed his eyes and bent back to his microscope. “I’ll be in touch the minute I have anything.”

  Barry left, glad to get away from the fug in Harry’s office, but still smelling the lab animals locked in their cages in the basement. He tried to stifle his impatience, and wanted more than anything to breathe the clean air of Ballybucklebo. It would be a while before he got there. He’d done all O’Reilly had asked him to do at the Royal, but he still wanted to buy some new trousers, and he remembered he was supposed to give Patricia a call to wish her luck for the next day. Call be damned. The Kinnegar was on his way home. He’d drop in and see her.

  A steady, chill drizzle blackened the seawall and the tarmac of the Esplanade. Barry heard the doleful moaning of a ship’s foghorn out in the lough. The vessel was there somewhere, but quite invisible from where he stood. He turned up the collar of his sports jacket, hurried across to number 9, rang the bell to flat 4, and waited.

  “Barry?” Patricia stood in the open doorway. “Come in out of that. You’re soaking.”

  He followed her into her flat, hearing a tenor’s voice soaring over the muted sounds of an orchestra. “Sorry to barge in like this. I just wanted to wish you good luck for tomorrow.” Her table was strewn with open engineering texts.

  “Sit down,” she said, bending and switching on two bars of a small electric fire. “You must be foundered.” She turned to her gramophone.

  He sat on the sofa.

  “I’ll turn this off.”

  “No,” he said. “Leave it on. It’s . . .” Somehow ‘lovely’ would sound trite. “What is it?”

  “Turandot. It’s the aria ‘Nessun Dorma.’ It’s a very old record my dad gave me. That’s Enrico Caruso singing.”

  Barry held his finger to his lips, waiting in silence until the song was finished and Patricia had lifted the tonearm from the record. “You really love opera, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “It lifts your mind, and I could do with a bit of that today.”

  “I know. Big day tomorrow.” He could see how she bit at her lower lip. “Have you got the pre-exam wobblies?”

  She nodded. “I thought I could do some last-minute cramming today, but I can’t concentrate.”

  He chuckled. “I shouldn’t laugh,” he said, “but it was exactly the same for me last year the day before finals started. I kept opening books, staring at the pages, and do you know, the bloody things might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense the words made.” He patted the sofa. “Come and sit down.”

  She sat beside him and took his hand.

  He bent and kissed her, gently. “Do you know what ‘fey’ means?”

  She nodded. “The gift. The second sight.” She looked into his eyes. “Surely you don’t believe in it? You’re a scientist.”

  “I honestly don’t know.” He remembered how last month Kinky, who in absolutely seriousness had told him she was fey, had said he needn’t worry because Patricia would come back into his life. And she had. “But I have the weirdest feeling that you’re going to ace the thing.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.” Liar, he told himself. He had had no such feeling, but it
was worth telling her to see the laugh lines deepen at the corners of her eyes. And if giving her a little extra confidence would help, it wasn’t much to ask. He just wished she could lend him some comfort, but this was not the time to burden her with his troubles.

  “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.” But she kissed him and he warmed to her kiss. “Thanks for saying it anyway.” She rose. “Look. I’m not going to do any more work tonight. I can’t concentrate. Would you like to stay for a while? I was going to make scrambled eggs.”

  He’d like nothing better, but he’d not arranged with O’Reilly to be away from the practice for any longer than it would take to run up to the Royal, try to sort things out, get back to Ballybucklebo, and tell O’Reilly what had happened. “I’d love to, but . . .”

  He’d already stretched his time by stopping in Belfast to buy those two new pairs of pants and by calling in on her.

  She sighed. “But duty calls . . . and your patients.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She bent and took his hand, looked up into his eyes, and said, her voice low, “It’s one of the things I love about you, Barry Laverty. I think I’d be lucky to be one of your patients.”

  He felt himself blush. “Och . . .”

  “I mean it.”

  Should he tell her he might be facing a lawsuit? That this and his concerns about losing her to Cambridge had given him a tight knot in his stomach? No. He’d already decided not to. “I love you, Patricia,” he said. He held her and kissed her. Then he said, “And that’s something we have to talk about—”

  “I love you, and I know what you want to talk—”