An Irish Country Village Read online

  For no apparent reason the answer to the crossword clue he hadn’t been able to solve came to him with great clarity. “Ran amok in prison causing great loss of life”? The answer was “carnage.”

  Confidence Is a

  Plant of Slow Growth

  “Here.” O’Reilly handed Barry a half-full Waterford glass that, judging by the peaty smell, contained Irish whiskey. “Park yourself.”

  Barry took the glass, although he would have preferred a small sherry, and sat on the edge of an armchair in the upstairs lounge. Through the window he could see past the steeple and over the roofs to Belfast Lough. He sighed when he realized how much he was going to miss Ballybucklebo.

  “Get to hell out of that.” O’Reilly shooed the kitten from his usual chair and sat. She jumped onto the nearby coffee table. “Slainte.” He took a pull on his drink.

  Barry hunched forwards, nursed his glass between both hands, and waited. O’Reilly fumbled for his pipe, filled it from a tobacco pouch, and took great care lighting it. Barry fidgeted in his chair. He recognized that this was O’Reilly’s way of playing for time before he said something difficult.

  O’Reilly exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and said, “So? What are we going to do about this?”

  Barry saw tiny ripples in his whiskey. His hand trembled, so he set the glass on the coffee table. “I’m sorry.”

  “Aye, no doubt, but ‘sorry’ won’t butter any parsnips.”

  Just get it over with, Barry thought. Tell me you’ve changed your mind about the offer. “It’s my fault. If I’d sent the major to hospital sooner—”

  “Jesus Christ,” said O’Reilly. “If. If boars had tits they’d be sows. What’s done’s done. There’s no profit ploughing the same furrow twice.” He stood. “I told you when it happened there was no point blaming yourself.” O’Reilly moved closer and dropped a hand on Barry’s shoulder.

  “But—”

  “No bloody ‘buts.’ In the first place, anyone could have missed the diagnosis, particularly in a man with the major’s history of screaming for intensive care every time he had a runny nose. In the second, aneurysms hardly ever bleed again once they’ve been treated, unless the neurosurgeon made a bollocks of the surgery.”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “You never know, and anyway, something else could have killed the man.”

  “I doubt it,” Barry said. “How often does one patient have two lethal diseases at the same time?”

  “True,” said O’Reilly, looking Barry straight in the eye. “But we won’t know that until after the postmortem.”

  “Postmortem?” Barry frowned. “Why a postmortem?”

  “There’ll have to be one.” O’Reilly’s gaze never wavered. “I couldn’t sign a death certificate. I hadn’t seen the man as a patient recently enough. You know the rules.”

  Barry did, but he was sure O’Reilly was wrong. Given the major’s recent history of brain surgery, certainly the government department responsible for registering births and deaths would have had no trouble accepting O’Reilly’s word if he had chosen to write, “Aneurysm of a cerebral artery.” Had he withheld his signature so that the case would be referred to the Home Office? Was there a remote chance the statutory coroner’s autopsy would turn up something to exonerate Barry? Not that it mattered. The damage was done, and not only to the Fotheringham family. If Barry stayed, O’Reilly’s practice could lose patients—a lot of patients—once the word was out in the village. He took a deep breath and said levelly, “Doctor O’Reilly, perhaps . . . perhaps it’s not such a good idea for me to stay here. Perhaps I should look elsewhere?”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, shaking his head. “Or you could borrow a carving knife from Kinky and commit seppuku while you’re at it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Hara-kiri. Ritually disembowel yourself like a disgraced Japanese samurai . . . and we agreed, it’s Fingal, not Doctor O’Reilly.” He took another drink. “Do you really want to leave?”

  “Do I have any choice?” Barry glanced at O’Reilly and saw that the man’s face was puce, his nose tip turning pallid, as he roared, “Of course you have a bloody choice, Laverty.”

  “You mean you’d keep me on?”

  “Only if you want to stay.” Colour was returning to O’Reilly’s nose. “It’s up to you.”

  Barry hesitated. He knew it was only a matter of time before tongues started to wag, before people who had been prepared to forgive him his youth and obvious lack of experience would refuse to see him. “Well, I—”

  “Good,” said O’Reilly. “That’s settled then.” He smiled at Barry. “You’ll stay. We’ll wait for the postmortem results; they could take a couple of weeks, and even if it was the bloody aneurysm, two weeks’ll give you time to get your feet back under you.”

  Barry swallowed the little lump in his throat. “That’s very generous of you, Fingal.”

  “Away off and feel your head . . .” Barry had learnt that to suggest openly that O’Reilly might be well motivated was something the big man could not bear. “Nothing generous about it. I’d be an eejit to let a man go who can put in stitches for wee Colin Brown the way you just did. That was a clever business, pouring the local directly into the wound. Strange as it might seem, medicine’s changed since I graduated. Maybe, just maybe, I might learn a thing or two from you.” O’Reilly sat and idly shoved the cat off the table. He handed Barry his glass and raised his own. “Slainte.”

  “Slainte mHath, Fingal.” Barry sipped his neat whiskey, tasting the peat, feeling the warmth of it. “And thank you.”

  “Bollocks,” said O’Reilly, but Barry could see the big man’s grin. “Right. Now that’s decided, we need a plan of attack.”

  The “we” pleased Barry.

  “I think,” O’Reilly said slowly. “I think we’ve a bit of rebuilding to do. The divil of it is you were getting yourself accepted here by the locals.”

  “I know.”

  “Ah, sure,” said O’Reilly, “there was a while there when the Israelites gave up on Jehovah and put their bets on a golden calf—”

  “Fingal, I’m hardly the Deity.”

  “No, you’re not. Neither was Moses, and as soon as he turned his back the Israelites started having ideas of their own. It’ll be the same here. Tongues are going to wag.”

  Barry felt his newfound pleasure at being asked to stay ebbing. “Do you think I’m up to it?”

  “Come here,” said O’Reilly, rising and heading for the door.

  Barry followed him to the landing, where O’Reilly stood staring at a photograph of a dazzle-painted dreadnought. “Do you know what ship that is?”

  “HMS Warspite. You and my dad served on her in the war.”

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “She was launched in 1913. Took a powerful battering at the battle of Jutland in the Kaiser’s war, but . . .” He jabbed Barry with his pipe stem. “But she came back. The navy didn’t write her off because she was badly wounded.”

  “Fingal, I’m not Jehovah, and I’m certainly not a battleship.”

  “No, but when I told you the major was dead, it hit you like a twelve-inch shell. You should have seen your face.”

  Barry let his head droop.

  “You’re wounded, but if you’re half the man I think you are, Barry Laverty, you’ll get over it, just like my old Warspite. When she was refitted, she came back as Admiral Cunningham’s flagship in the Mediterranean in the Second World War. She was the most successful battleship in the British navy. You’d have been proud of her. Your dad and I were.”

  And Barry wanted the senior man to be proud of his assistant.

  “So,” said O’Reilly, “you’re going to need a bit of repair work to get your confidence in yourself back. It’ll take time.”

  “I know.”

  “And we’ll have to get the customers back to trusting you.”

  “How?”

  O’Reilly let go a blast of tobacco smoke. Barry thoug
ht he looked as his old ship must have when she vented her furnaces.

  “Pianissimo, pianissimo,” O’Reilly said. “Very, very softly. And damn it, it’s going to slow things up.”

  “How?”

  “I’d hoped to let you off the leash a bit.” O’Reilly turned back to the lounge. “It’s not very efficient having the pair of us working together all the time.” He planted himself back in his armchair.

  Barry followed.

  “I’d hoped that now you know your way around, I’d be able to run the surgery while you were making home visits and vice versa.”

  “I’d been expecting it,” Barry said, thinking of the free-flying gulls he’d seen that morning.

  “Huh,” said O’Reilly, “you shouldn’t buy a dog and bark yourself, but I don’t see we’ve any choice.”

  “So you can keep an eye on me? Be my Moses?”

  “Not at all. I’m only fifty-six,” O’Reilly said. “I’d not suit a long grey beard, and the only tablets I’m going to be handing out’ll come from the chemist.”

  Barry smiled at the thought of O’Reilly in a long robe, solemnly pronouncing the Ten Commandments, and yet he recognized that in many ways that was exactly how O’Reilly behaved with his patients.

  “If we stick together and the patients see that I trust you, it’ll work wonders. You wait and see.”

  “I suppose,” Barry said doubtfully. For six years as a student and one as a house officer, he’d always had someone more senior keeping an eye on him. He’d thought those days were over for good.

  “Have you a better idea? Or should we ask Kinky for the carving knife right away?”

  “No. I don’t fancy seppuku. So . . . it’ll be like my first month here?”

  “That’s right,” said O’Reilly, pulling on his drink. “There’s only the two of us, but we’ll be like the Three Musketeers. ‘All for one . . .’ ”

  “ ‘And one for all.’ ” Given O’Reilly’s girth, Barry had no difficulty casting him as Porthos.

  Barry moved to take his own seat, failing to notice that Lady Macbeth had fallen asleep near his chair. His foot landed on the tip of her tail. He was almost deafened by her screech, and he stood, mouth open, as a white blur shot across the room and up the curtains at what seemed to him a speed approaching that of light.

  “Jesus,” said O’Reilly, staring at where the cat perched on the pelmet, looking to Barry like a gargoyle on some mediaeval cathedral. “Would you come down out of that, Your Ladyship?”

  The cat spat, and Barry wasn’t sure if her vituperation was meant for him or O’Reilly. “Sorry, Lady Macbeth,” he said.

  “Push-wush,” said O’Reilly coaxingly. “Pushy-wushy-wushy.”

  The cat hissed and flattened her ears. Barry thought he could see red lights flashing from her green eyes.

  “Come down this instant, you cat fiáin.” He set his glass on the table.

  “You what?”

  “Cat fiáin. Wildcat,” said O’Reilly, pushing a chair in beneath the curtains. “If you don’t, I’ll come up after you.” He started to climb on the chair. “Will you steady me, Barry?”

  Barry hesitated, watching O’Reilly standing on the chair, teetering as he reached up towards the cat. “Perhaps if you left her alone, she’d find her own way down?”

  O’Reilly ignored the advice and made a grab for the animal. She bit his finger. He roared, the chair tottered, and he whirled his arms trying to regain his balance.

  Barry set his drink down, strode forward, and grabbed O’Reilly’s thighs, steadying the big man. “Hang on, Fingal.” Barry peered up in time to see O’Reilly take the animal between both his hands and, after a short struggle to loosen her claws from the material, pull her to his chest. “Right,” he said. “Got her. You can let go.”

  Barry stepped back out of range as O’Reilly jumped to the carpet, bent, and released the squirming animal. “Off you go, you.” He sucked his bitten finger. “Only a love bite,” he said.

  “I think,” said Barry, “you might have been better leaving her to come down on her own.”

  “Och, she’s only young,” said O’Reilly, reaching for his whiskey. “Sometimes youngsters do need someone a bit older to help them out.”

  For a moment Barry wondered if O’Reilly was referring to kittens—or young doctors.

  “Thanks for the hand with Her Ladyship. I couldn’t have done it without you, Barry,” O’Reilly remarked, studying his drink. “Here’s to us,” he said, finishing the whiskey.

  Barry took a sip and nodded.

  “So it all starts again tomorrow at nine, in the surgery. It’s Monday and we’re going to be busy.”

  Barry Laverty surprised himself by realizing that, despite the present crisis, he was looking forward to working in close harness with O’Reilly once more.

  Reflections in a Golden Eye

  “Salt-mine time for the pair of us,” said O’Reilly, rising and dumping his napkin on the table.

  Monday’s breakfast was over. Barry had eaten little. Despite O’Reilly’s reassurances the day before, he was nervous. He pushed his chair back.

  O’Reilly strode through the open dining-room door. “Come on. Time, tide, and the weary, walking wounded wait for no man.”

  Barry followed. He heard a murmur of voices coming from the waiting room. By their volume he knew it was going to be a busy morning. At least some patients had shown up. He straightened his tie and went into the surgery.

  O’Reilly had taken his customary place in the swivel chair, pulled out his half-moon glasses, and stuck them on the bridge of his bent nose. So, Barry thought, it was clear who was going to be in charge. Well, it was what they’d agreed on yesterday.

  “Nip along, Barry . . .”

  “I know, and see who’s first.” Why couldn’t Kinky do it? He’d been anticipating working medically, not as a glorified receptionist. He walked along the hall and opened the waiting-room door. Every seat was taken. He recognized most of the patients. Julie MacAteer smiled at him. Usually there would be a chorus of “Good morning, Doctor Laverty.” But apart from Julie’s voice there was silence.

  He swallowed. “Good morning,” he said. “Who’s first?”

  A man he did not recognize stood. “Is himself in?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right, then. I’m your man.” The questioner, who looked to Barry to be about forty, was dressed in jodhpurs, a collarless shirt, and an old black waistcoat with a gold chain leading to the fob pocket. He was tiny—Barry reckoned about four foot nine—and had bowlegs. He sported a camel-hair cap and held one hand over his left eye.

  “Come with me, please, Mr. . . . ?”

  The patient did not give his name and did not remove his cap.

  So that’s the way it’s going to be, Barry thought. I’ll bet the hat comes off the minute he sees O’Reilly.

  “Good morning, Doctor O’Reilly, sir,” the man said, clutching his cap in his right hand.

  “Morning, Fergus Finnegan. Sit down on a chair.”

  Barry hoisted himself onto the edge of the examining table and sat swinging his legs.

  “Mr. Finnegan here’s a jockey,” O’Reilly remarked. Then he asked the now seated patient, “And what can we do for you today, Fergus?”

  Barry heard the “we” again, just like last night. At least O’Reilly was trying to include him in the consultation.

  “My eye feels like it’s full of all the sand on Ballyholme beach. It’s been like that for two days.”

  “Did you hurt it? Get anything in it? Horse dander maybe?” O’Reilly leant forward.

  “No, sir.”

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “Let’s have a look.”

  Finnegan took his hand away. “I can’t look at the light. It hurts, so it does.”

  Barry stopped swinging his legs and listened. The man’s symptoms suggested inflammation of the conjunctiva, the thin membrane that covers the front of the eyeball.

  O’Reilly peered through h
is half-moons at the eye, sat back, and said to Barry, “Take a look at this, Doctor Laverty.”

  Barry slipped off the couch to stand beside O’Reilly. Finnegan’s eye was flaming red. All the small blood vessels stood out. The inside edges of the eyelids were swollen and scarlet. The eyeball looked dry.

  “What do you reckon?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Acute bacterial conjunctivitis.”

  “It is not. It’s pinkeye, so it is, and it’s been hurting something chronic.” Finnegan stared at Barry. “Acute conjunctivitis, my Aunt Fanny Jane.” His good eye was wide. His infected one kept blinking. “I don’t believe a word of it. What do you think it is, sir?”

  “I don’t think,” said O’Reilly. “I don’t have to. You’re right, Fergus, but Doctor Laverty’s right on the money too.”

  “Makes a change,” Finnegan muttered.

  Barry clenched his teeth. He might have suspected it from the way the patients in the waiting room had behaved towards him. Now he knew. He glanced at O’Reilly, who peered at Barry over his spectacles.

  “Remember the Warspite,” said O’Reilly quietly.

  Barry took a deep breath. “There’s a germ in your eye, Mr. Finnegan. It’s infected.”

  “Are you absolutely certain?”

  Barry came close to snapping, “Of course I’m bloody well certain!” O’Reilly would have, but instead he said calmly, “No, Mr. Finnegan. Nothing’s absolutely certain in medicine, but . . . you’re a horsey man?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’d give a hundred to one on that I’m right.”

  Finnegan whistled. “I’d not like to bet against them odds, so I wouldn’t. A hundred pounds down just to win one?”

  “Nor,” said O’Reilly, “would I. Have you not heard how smart Doctor Laverty is, Fergus?”

  “I heard different,” the man muttered.

  Barry clenched his fists, tightened his lips.

  “Did you now?” O’Reilly said calmly. “There’s a thing. And do you believe everything you hear? Would you believe it if I told you there was a plague of frogs in Ballybucklebo last night?”