An Irish Country Cottage Read online

  Bluebird immediately went to Kenny. Sniffs were exchanged, and in the dim glow from the nearby streetlight, O’Reilly watched as Kenny, his exquisitely sensitive sense of smell activated, wrinkled his nose and forehead. I’d swear he’s frowning, O’Reilly thought. He’s puzzled by the smell of singed fur. But after delivering a single “woof,” Kenny settled. Friends indeed.

  “Go to bed,” O’Reilly said.

  Kenny went into his doghouse. Bluebird looked at O’Reilly, who inclined his head and said, “Go on.”

  Bluebird, skinny as a rake, needed no further bidding. “Sleep well,” said O’Reilly. “They’ll be a comfort to each other.” He smiled and pointed to Barry’s car. Max was peering out the window. “Max is feeling left out, but he’ll be fine in the car a bit longer. Let’s see what’s happening inside.” He let Barry in through the back door, followed, and closed it.

  The Donnelly family were seated around the table in a toasty kitchen warmed by the Aga range. The aroma of the evening’s dinner, battered halibut and chips, lingered on the air and mingled with a strong smell of smoke.

  O’Reilly noticed that Donal’s eyes were looking into the distance, his filthy hands were shaking, and he kept swallowing. Tori, barefooted and wearing a nightie with little fairies on it, clung to him as he gave her Ribena blackcurrant juice. Her lips were stained deep red. Dolly was held tightly in Tori’s other hand.

  Kitty stood behind a seated Julie with one hand on each of her shoulders. The younger woman’s blond hair was smoke-streaked. Holes with black-charred edges were scattered over her tartan dressing gown. She had one twin on her knee. Neither Donal nor Julie acknowledged the arrival of O’Reilly and Barry.

  Sue was cradling the other twin, who had tear-streaked cheeks and occasionally snuffled, but if she had been fractious, Sue must have succeeded in calming the wee one. God, O’Reilly thought, but Barry’s wife with a bairn in her arms looked as broody as a mother hen. The sooner Barry did his husbandly duty the better. That girl’s profession might be a schoolmistress, but she was born to have children of her own.

  Sue sang “The Spinning Wheel” song softly in a sweet contralto.

  Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning

  Close by the window Eileen óg is spinning

  Bent oe’r the reel blind grandmother sitting

  Is moaning and crooning and drowsily knitting

  “Welcome to this house, Donnellys,” O’Reilly said. “We are all very sorry for your troubles, and before you ask, Donal, Bluebird’s tucked up with Kenny.”

  Donal struggled to focus. His head drooped. “Thank God we’re all safe. Nobody’s hurt. That’s what’s important.” He swallowed. “Nobody’s hurt. But all we owned’s gone, so it is. Gone up in smoke. House, furniture, the whole lot. Even my oul’ bike that I painted in all them colours is burnt til a cinder.” His giggle was high-pitched and O’Reilly knew the man was close to hysteria.

  He put a reassuring hand on Donal’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “You’re right, Donal. You and your family are all safe and sound, and at the heels of the hunt that’s all that really matters. And you’ll all be better after a cup of tea—”

  Kitty began to pour.

  “—a wash and brush-up, and a good night’s sleep. And we’ll get you out of your smoky nightclothes too. We’ll find things for you. Mrs. O’Reilly can lend you a nightie, Julie. One of my shirts will do you for a nightshirt, Donal.”

  “And we can wrap the wee ones in some of my vests,” Kitty said, “but first, here.” Kitty handed Donal a cup. “Put lots of sugar in it, now.”

  A smoke-stained Donal, his fringe grey where it had been singed, said, “Thank you, Mrs. O’Reilly, and thank you for taking us in, sir, and thank you, Doctor Laverty, for saying we could come.” His voice cracked. His eyes glistened.

  “No need for thanks, Donal. We’re neighbours. Tonight, all we’re going to do is get you and Julie and the little ones settled. Tomorrow we’ll start working out how to get you all back on your feet.”

  “Right enough,” Donal said, his voice more controlled. “That’s it. Get us settled for the night.” He managed a weak smile. “I’m sure it’s all going til be alright, sir—in the long run, but, och, there’s some things you can’t fix.”

  “Like?” Barry asked.

  Donal’s face twisted and he said, his voice cracking, “Them things that hold your memories. Things like photos. Julie and me on our honeymoon in Donegal in ’64, Tori, the day we brung her home from hospital, the twins’ first birthday party. That was tricky to time because they was born on different days. All my long-playing records, them thirty-three-and-a-third-revs-per-minute ones, I’ve had since I was a wee lad. I had The Mikado and The Gondoliers and some great pipe band music.”

  Donal’s pipe music didn’t surprise O’Reilly—the man was, after all, pipe major of the Ballybucklebo Highlanders—but his attachment to Gilbert and Sullivan was a surprise.

  Julie said, “True, but do you know what, Donal Donnelly?” She pointed to the left side of her chest. “We still have them in here, and we’ll just have to start making new memories for us and the wee ones.”

  “You’re right, love,” Donal said and, leaning over, he planted a soft kiss on Julie’s cheek.

  “There, that’s what’s important,” said O’Reilly. “Now, it’s late and we need to get you five settled.”

  “What can I do til help, sir?” Donal asked.

  He’s coming out of it, O’Reilly thought, and giving him a job will get his mind off the calamity too.

  Donal stood, setting Tori on her feet. “Sweetie, Daddy has til go for a wee minute. You go to Aunty Kitty, she’ll take care of you. And Mammy’s here too.”

  Tori planted her feet and crossed her hands over her chest. “Don’t want to go to Aunty Kitty. I’m a big girl now, so I am.”

  Kitty’s gentle laughter softened the tense atmosphere. Donal knelt down so he didn’t tower over the little girl and said, “You are too a big girl, Tori, so I want you to look after Aunty Kitty, and Mammy, and your wee sisters ’til Daddy gets back.”

  He stood and Tori’s rigid stance softened. Her lower lip quivered. “Don’t be gone long, now.” She sidled over to Kitty and took her hand.

  “I won’t,” Donal said, “but Doctor O’Reilly wants a wee hand.” He set his blanket aside.

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “Doctor Laverty, you know your way around, so nip up to the airing cupboard. Blankets, pillows.” Barry left.

  “Donal, come with me. Get cleaned up first and then we’ll grab a clatter of cushions from upstairs for the weans to sleep on.’”

  As Donal used the bathroom O’Reilly nipped up to his bedroom and returned with a shirt, which he chucked into the bathroom. He sighed. This was going to take some sorting out, and he hoped they could make a good start on it tomorrow.

  The bathroom door soon opened and a cleaner Donal appeared, drowning in O’Reilly’s blue-striped shirt, which was several sizes too big. “Jaysus,” he said, “it’s dead on getting clean, so it is. I’m a new man.” He offered a hand, which O’Reilly shook. “Thanks a million, sir. You and your missus’re a real gentleman and a proper lady.”

  “Thank you, Donal.” He led him to the upstairs lounge, shoved Lady Macbeth off an armchair, and received an indignant hiss from the little white cat. “Pay no heed to her ladyship. Grab cushions. We’ll need six, two for each kiddie, and—”

  The extension telephone’s insistent double ring interrupted.

  O’Reilly lifted the receiver. “O’Reilly. I see. Uh-uh. Keep her in bed, Brendan. I’m on my way.” He replaced the receiver. “Donal, I’ve an emergency. I’ll see you in the morning and we can talk about what we’re going to do. I’m off.”

  He charged down the stairs like a rugby winger heading for the goal line, went into the surgery and stuffed equipment into his bag, paused briefly in the kitchen to explain and ask Kitty to see to getting night things for the Donnellys to wear, then ran thro
ugh the back garden, fired up the big Rover, and roared out into the January night.

  * * *

  He drove like a liltie heading for the council estate. The first condition of the nurses’ old adage—you only ever ran for bleeding, fire, or a good-looking man—certainly applied here. Fiona MacNamee, twenty-six, at thirteen weeks of her fifth pregnancy, was bleeding.

  He’d be at her house in four minutes. He remembered her first antenatal visit last week. Physically all was well then, but despite an old Ulster saying that a baby brought its own welcome, Fiona had seemed less than excited at the prospect of a fifth child so soon after her fourth.

  Right turn onto Londonderry Gardens. He’d have to decide if this bleeding was unrelated to the pregnancy, was a threatened abortion (the medical term for miscarriage), which might settle down and the pregnancy continue, or an inevitable abortion, where the pregnancy would be lost. Miscarriage was not a condition to be taken lightly. He knew they had accounted for 18 percent of deaths of pregnant women in 1967, and the main causes of such deaths were haemorrhage and infection.

  O’Reilly parked on Londonderry Avenue, a narrow street of soulless terrace houses. Drawn roller-blinds kept house lights trapped inside small, dingy rooms. The glass was broken in two of the three lampposts, but in the dim light from the third he saw a scruffy mongrel, ribs showing, tail between legs, slinking away. O’Reilly grabbed his bag. A strong easterly wind had sprung up and he heard from the next street the crash of a roof’s slate hitting the road.

  He was soon knocking on the front door, where a tattered homemade holly wreath hung from the door knocker and swayed in the tempest.

  The door was opened by Brendan MacNamee, a man of medium build, in his late twenties. His left eye was artificial, the result of an accident on a trawler three years ago when a rope had snapped and struck his eye. “Thanks for coming, Doc,” he said. “Come on on in out of that. It would blow the shite back into a goose.”

  O’Reilly followed. There was a smell of boiled onion and stale tobacco.

  “Fiona’s upstairs.” Brendan led the way up a carpetless staircase that barely managed to accommodate O’Reilly’s girth. “In there.” Brendan pointed. “I’ll go and help Annie—Annie Duffy. She lives two doors down. She’s keeping an eye to the kiddies in their bedroom.”

  Four children, between the ages of four and one, all sharing one room. It reminded him of tenement life in Dublin in the 1930s. Brendan MacNamee was an unskilled labourer who drifted from deckhanding to unemployment insurance to road building, but at least his family had a roof over their heads—subsidised by the borough council.

  O’Reilly heard a moan. He let himself into a small bedroom lit by an overhead sixty-watt bulb dangling from a flex. The floral wallpaper was curling away from a damp patch in one corner. His nostrils were assailed by the coppery smell of blood. Fiona, charwoman by trade before the babies started, was wearing a green flannel nightie and lying on a double bed. Her back and head were propped up on a bolster and a pillow. A bloodstained towel was tucked under her buttocks. She groaned and said, “Do something, Doctor O’Reilly. Please. Them cramps is desperate. Worser nor giving birth.” Both hands were pressed against her lower belly. Her lined face was flushed, sweaty, her long auburn hair matted. She looked like a woman closer to forty than twenty.

  Severely painful contractions? That symptom alone was enough to tell O’Reilly that this miscarriage was unstoppable. The uterus was trying to rid itself of what was a tiny dead foetus. “As soon as I can, but first I need a few answers. When did it start, Fiona?”

  “I’d a bit of spotting yesterday. It stopped. It come on a wee bit red about two hours ago, so I went til bed with a towel under me. It started to get heavier—uh, there now—and after Brendan phoned you from the tobacconist’s, the cramps started and—aaah, jaysus.” Her face screwed up and she bit her lower lip.

  O’Reilly quickly assessed her pulse and blood pressure. She was not in shock—yet.

  Fiona stopped moaning and inhaled deeply.

  “Let’s see your tummy.”

  She pulled up her nightie.

  O’Reilly noted the blood on the inside of both thighs. It had spread out a good six inches from her on the towel. Mind you, it was a recognised adage that “a little bleeding went a long way” and often looked worse than it was. He laid a hand on her belly just above her pubic symphysis. The fundus of the enlarged uterus was just palpable, as it should be at thirteen weeks. He pushed harder. “That hurt?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.” No constant pain. Infection was unlikely, but was always a risk. He next must inspect the neck of the uterus, the cervix, to see if the tiny foetus or afterbirth were being extruded. If he could help them along to complete the miscarriage, the uterus could contract and stop the bleeding. “I need to wash my hands,” he said.

  “Aaaaaah.”

  He took one of her hands in his. God, the woman had a grip that could crush cannon balls. O’Reilly tholed the pressure and said, “It’s alright, Fiona. It’s alright.” He kept repeating this until she loosened her grip.

  She gasped, “Thank you, sir.”

  O’Reilly took his equipment from his bag and set up to perform a speculum examination. “Just be a minute. When I come back I’ll examine you.”

  He went to the bathroom to wash his hands. Before he scrubbed, he switched on a penlight and gripped it between his teeth. Back in the bedroom, scrubbed and gloved, and still holding his penlight in his teeth, he moved to stand on Fiona’s right.

  Fiona MacNamee, in her fifth pregnancy, knew the ritual as well as any physician. Without bidding she drew up and parted her knees. O’Reilly moved his head so he could shine the beam. In its light he saw red blood trickling out. The sooner that could be stopped the better. He took the loaded sponge holder, daubed Fiona’s outside and inside with antiseptic, and inserted the speculum, an instrument like a duck’s bill.

  Fiona gasped.

  He opened the blades and saw light reflected from a pool of blood in the vagina and more coming through the cervix. No foetus or placenta could be seen.

  He withdrew his speculum, wrapped it in a towel, stripped off his gloves, removed the light from his mouth, and turned it off. “I’m afraid you’re having a miscarriage, Fiona.” O’Reilly thought he saw a smile start at the corners of Fiona’s lips before another contraction hit and her face contorted in pain. “We’ll have to get you to the gynaecology ward at the Royal. You’ll probably need a D and C.”

  That hint of a smile wasn’t really puzzling. Fiona MacNamee had been overjoyed at the arrival of all her babies and was an excellent mother, but with four mouths to feed there might be a certain relief not to have another. He remembered a woman in Dublin in the ’30s saying she’d had twenty pregnancies, “But the Lord was good to me. He took fifteen to him early on.”

  “I’m going to give you two jags. One to cut the pain, the other to slow the bleeding.”

  “Thank God, and thank you, sir.”

  “Just be a jiffy.” He prepared the two injections, one of five units of oxytocin. It would make the uterus contract and might even expel its contents. The other was of morphine, 15 milligrams.

  “There,” he said, slipping the first, then the second needle in, “that should help with the pain. I’ll get Brendan to keep you company while I nip off and make a phone call.” The greatest risk to Fiona was the onset of heavy bleeding. But a special ambulance, the flying squad, would bring trained staff and the necessities for a blood transfusion on the spot.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  In the next room three children were fast asleep in a double bed. The youngest lay in a battered cot. “Mister MacNamee? Evening, Annie.” Annie Duffy had mild eczema and O’Reilly had been looking after her for years.

  Brendan MacNamee rose from a cane-backed chair and looked expectantly at O’Reilly but said nothing.

  “’Bout ye, Doctor,” Annie said. “Is Fiona going to be alright?”

  �
��She is, but she’ll have to go to hospital. Will you keep her company, Brendan, please, while I go to the nearest shop? I’ll have to get the owner to open up so I can use his phone. I’m afraid she’s miscarrying.”

  “Aye. I will.”

  Brendan and Annie exchanged glances before Brendan left.

  “Be back in a minute,” O’Reilly said as he headed for the door. “I’ll let myself out and back in.” Not that there was much more medically he could do but offer moral support until the flying squad arrived.

  He shook his head then hunched it into his coat collar and leant into the bitter wind. Some festive season this had turned out to be. Some merry bloody Christmas for some folk. The poor Donnellys burned out of house and home. Fiona MacNamee losing a baby—and not out of the woods yet. He managed a small smile. As usual, he had played Santa Claus at the Rugby Club Christmas party earlier this month. Looked like it would be his and Barry’s job to see there was something left in Santa’s sack for the Donnelly family.

  3

  Take All My Comfort

  “I’ll switch on the fire, love, and turn up the heating.” Barry clicked on a light as he led Sue into the little bungalow’s sitting room. “It’s cold as a stepmother’s breath outside.” His hands and nose had become chilled on the short walk from the car. Sue must be feeling the cold too. A stiff easterly had blown up and he could hear the waves crashing onto the rocks of the seashore beyond their front garden wall. It had been drizzling at Dun Bwee and now the wind was screeching, but the rain had stopped.

  They’d closed the curtains before they’d gone out, and the room had retained some heat. Usually they didn’t bother. The little pebbledash bungalow was completely private, the nearest houses at least a hundred yards away and hidden behind high brick walls. They both loved the ever-changing, uninterrupted vistas over Belfast Lough, the seabirds, seals, and ships by day, the scarlet sunsets sliding into moon-silvered or star-bright nights. Sue revelled in the winter gales that turned the sky battleship grey and the pewter-hued lough into a boiling maelstrom of wind-blown spume and thundering breakers where only storm petrels, “Mother Carey’s chicks,” dared take wing.