An Irish Country Doctor

by Patrick Taylor

  "Thanks again, Doctor," said Maureen. "He'll make a grand wee American, won't he?"

  "Indeed," said O'Reilly, "a regular Abraham Lincoln."

  Barry remembered that the Galvins intended to emigrate once the baby was born.

  "Miss Hagerty'll be in tomorrow. She'll make sure you and the wee one are all right, and Maureen, if you're worried about anything, give us a call."

  "I will."

  "Now," said O'Reilly, "we'd better be going. Doctor Laverty could use a bath and a change of shirt. He's off somewhere tonight." Barry nearly dropped the bag he was carrying. In the excitement of the delivery, the terror that things could go wrong in his inexperienced hands, and the jubilation that everything had turned out perfectly, he had completely forgotten about Patricia. "You run on, Doctor Laverty," said Maureen. "You did grand, so you did, and Doctor O'Reilly, I don't know how you fixed it, but Seamus'll be tickled pink that it is the wee boy you promised us." How in hell, Barry wondered, could O'Reilly promise anybody what the sex of an unborn baby would be?

  As soon as they were back in the car, Barry asked. O'Reilly grinned. "That's one of the few useful things my predecessor taught me. The first time they come in to find out if they're pregnant, you ask them what they want."

  "But we can't do anything about it."

  "I know that, so you write down the opposite in the record."

  "I don't understand."

  "Look, say Mrs. Hucklebottom comes in in her third month and tells you she wants a boy. You write 'girl' in the record." Barry frowned.

  "Six months later if baby Hucklebottom is a bouncing boy, Mrs. H. is delighted."

  "But what if she has a girl?"

  "You show her the six-month-old record. What's written in it?"

  "Girl."

  "Exactly. You tell Mrs. H. you're very sorry, but she must have forgotten what she asked for when she saw you first."

  "But that's dishonest."

  "Indeed it is, but I've yet to meet a new mother who really cared about the sex of the child as long as it had all its fingers and toes, and it works wonders for your reputation."

  Barry sniffed.

  "Sniff away, son, but half of curing folks is getting them to have faith in their healer. . . . Sometimes we doctors aren't much better than a bunch of Druids. We might as well be casting the runes and chanting incantations to Lugh or Morrigan or any of the other old Celtic gods."

  Barry recognized the truth of what O'Reilly had said, but every year new discoveries were made. If Jonas Salk had discovered his vaccine just three years sooner, Patricia and all the other victims of the 1951 polio epidemic need not have suffered. Since 1953 they'd known about the link between smoking and lung cancer. New antibiotics appeared regularly. O'Reilly must surely see that. "But there is so much we can do that works," Barry countered.

  "Thank God for that. But the whole thing still hangs on having the customers believe we know what we're doing . . . And if they think you're special, they're more likely to heed your advice, and anyway, unless it's something really serious, time cures most of them. Ambroise Pare had it right four hundred years ago. He said, 'I dressed the wound, but God cured the patient.'" When O'Reilly said, "cured the patient,"

  Barry remembered something that had been bothering him. Jeannie Kennedy. Jack had been going to Children's Hospital to re-operate on an appendix abscess. "Fingal?"

  "What?"

  "Is Jeannie Kennedy home from the hospital yet?"

  "No. She blew up an abscess. They opened her again yesterday, but she's on the mend now."

  So Jack had been going to assist in Jeannie's reoperation.

  "Aye," said O'Reilly, pulling into the lane at the back of his house. "I always phone the hospital to see how any of my lot are getting on. Sir Donald spoke to me this morning . . . when you were still asleep ... so I was able to let the Kennedys know they mustn't be too worried."

  "Decent of you."

  "Rubbish." The car stopped. "I'll take Arthur for his walk, and you go and get cleaned up, make your phone call, and tell your lassie you'll not be able to see her until after supper."

  "But-"

  "No buts. You still have to go and tell the proud father."

  "Could you not do that?"

  "I didn't deliver the wean, you did, and son, you did well."

  "I was scared stiff."

  "Didn't look like it to me. Now bugger off, get organized, and walk down and meet me in the Mucky Duck."

  "The what?"

  "The Black Swan, known to all and sundry as the Dirty Bird or the Mucky Duck."

  God's Holy Trousers

  Barry undressed. His trousers as well as his shirt were bloodstained. He bathed, changed, and gratefully gave his splattered clothes to Mrs. Kincaid to be washed. Then he phoned Patricia. His hand shook just a little when he heard her voice, and he mouthed a silent, "Oh, yes," when she said she'd be happy to be picked up at seven. Where they'd go after that was anyone's guess, but he didn't care as long as she'd be with him.

  He walked with light steps past the church and the row of thatched cottages. What a day. The sun shone; he'd delivered Barry Fingal Galvin and to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's satisfaction. Now he'd drop into the pub to congratulate the father, go home for a quick supper, and then . . . He skipped like a ten-year old leaving school at the end of the summer term.

  He paused at the maypole and waited for the light to change. He could see The Black Swan ahead. He didn't want to stay there long. It wouldn't do to show up at Patricia's the worse for drink. He crossed the road and went into--what did the locals call it?-- the Mucky Duck?

  The bar, loud with competing voices and hoarse laughter, was a single timber-beamed, low-ceilinged room. To his left, bottles stood on shelves behind a counter where a bald-headed man, wearing a floral waistcoat over a striped shirt, pulled pints. Barry counted six half-filled straight glasses of Guinness on the marble bar top. The place was packed. Men in shirtsleeves and collarless shirts, pints in hand, crowded round the bar. Seamus Galvin, left ankle strapped, stood swaying in the centre of the crowd. He had one arm round the shoulders of a ginger-haired youth. Donal. . . ? Donal Donnelly, that was it. Barry grinned. Already he could recognize some of O'Reilly's patients by name.

  Through the fug of pipe tobacco smoke that made his eyes sting, Barry could see tables and occupied chairs crammed cheek by jowl in the small space. Either the Ballybucklebo natives took their drinking seriously, or news of the Galvins' baby had gone through the place with the speed of light. Barry suspected the latter. He peered through the throng but saw no sign of O'Reilly. Councillor Bishop, seated at a table, beckoned with a crooked bandaged finger. The gesture reminded Barry of a patron summoning a tardy waiter. "Laverty, hey, you. Laverty, where the hell's O'Reilly?" Barry, too content to let the councillor's dictatorial manner bother him, shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. "When you see O'Reilly, Laverty, you tell the old goat it's time he had a look at my finger."

  "It's Doctor O'Reilly, Bishop," Barry said civilly, "and you know when the surgery's open."

  "It's Councillor Bishop to you, you young puppy." Bishop started to rise.

  A man sitting at the table put a hand on the councillor's shoulder. Don't you be getting your knickers in a twist, Bertie. Have another pint." The man winked at Barry. "Pay no heed, Doc. He's half-cut."

  Barry turned away as the door opened and O'Reilly appeared, followed by a panting, tongue-lolling, sand-covered Arthur Guinness. Barry glanced anxiously at his corduroys, his last clean pair of pants. "Good afternoon to this house," O'Reilly bellowed.

  Conversation died. Every eye turned toward the door. The men who sat at the table nearest the door rose and joined those standing at the bar. Without a word of thanks O'Reilly took one of the chairs. "Under and lie down."

  Arthur obeyed, much to Barry's relief.

  "Take the weight off your feet, Barry."

  Barry sat, carefully tucking his legs under the chair out of the way of the drooling dog
. "The usual, Doctor?" he heard the barman ask.

  "Aye, and a pint for Doctor Laverty."

  In moments, two pints of Guinness were delivered to the table. "Sláinte," said O'Reilly, sinking half of the contents of his glass in one swallow. "It's warm out there."

  "Sláinte mhaith." Barry sipped the bitter stout. The barman reappeared carrying a bowl. He bent and shoved it under the table.

  "Arthur likes his pint," O'Reilly remarked, "but he only drinks Smithwick's bitter."

  Barry heard lapping noises under the table. The buzz of conversation rose.

  "Doctor Laverty's round," O'Reilly said.

  Barry tightened his lips, but paid.

  "Lovely," said O'Reilly, finishing his glass. "Come on, boy. Don't let yours go flat."

  Barry swallowed more Guinness but was determined to restrict his intake to one pint. Someone was standing at his shoulder. He turned to see Seamus Galvin, a lopsided grin pasted to his narrow face. He bore a striking resemblance to a tipsy weasel. "So's a boy, Doctors? S'a wee boy?"

  O'Reilly nodded.

  Galvin hiccupped. " 'Nother round here, Willy," he shouted to the barman. "On me."

  "Easy, Seamus," O'Reilly said quietly, "you'll need your money now there's another mouth to feed."

  Seamus tried to lay one index finger alongside his nose but managed to stick it into his nostril. "Ah, sure, I'm like Paddy Maginty; I'm going to fall into a fortune." He favoured O'Reilly with a drooping wink.

  "Oh?" said O'Reilly, glancing at Barry. "And where would that come from, Seamus?"

  "Least said, soonest mended." Seamus extracted his finger and squinted at the tip.

  Two more pints appeared. Barry felt something stirring at his feet, and Arthur Guinness's square head appeared. "One for Arthur," Seamus ordered.

  The barman collected Arthur's bowl.

  Barry drank from his first pint and eyed the second. Seamus Galvin climbed onto a chair and stood, swaying like a willow in a high wind. He whistled, a piercing shriek like the blast from a tugboat's siren.

  Silence.

  "Just wanna say . . . just wanna say ... to say." He wobbled and grabbed the chair back. "I just wanna--"

  "Get on with it, Seamus," someone roared.

  "Just wanna say . . . best two doctors in Ulster . . . in all of Ireland."

  "Hear, hear."

  Barry looked up. The last remark had come from Donal Donnelly, who was staring at O'Reilly. The ginger-haired youth had a look on his face that seemed to be a cross between adulation and terror.

  "Balls," Councillor Bishop yelled. "That bloody O'Reilly couldn't cure a sick cat."

  "Wheest, Bertie," his friend said.

  Barry looked at O'Reilly, who lifted his glass to Bishop and smiled. There was enough ice in the smile, Barry thought, to put a hole in the Titanic.

  "Are you not going to say something, Fingal?"

  O'Reilly shook his head. " 'Revenge,'" he said, " 'is a dish best eaten cold.' I'll say no more today."

  Barry stared at the corpulent councillor and thought, I'd rather not be in Bishop's boots when O'Reilly makes good on that promise. The barman came back with Arthur's bowl. His subtable slurping was drowned out as Seamus Galvin roared, "Just wanna say . . . best doctors in Ireland. They got me a wee boy, so they did. Everybody have a drink to Farry . . . Bingal. . . Gavlin." He finished his pint to the cheers of the crowd.

  Barry felt duty-bound to join in the toast. He regarded his empty glass with surprise. That stout had vanished quickly. "A wee boy," Galvin continued when at last there was a semblance of silence. "And I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you, that's very smart because," he inhaled deeply and swept his gaze over the entire room, "any ould tinker can put a hole in the bottom of a bucket. . . but. . . but it takes a craftsman to put a spout on a teapot." He clapped O'Reilly on the shoulder and, to the renewed cheers of the patrons, waved both arms over his head, hands clasped like a boxer who had just KOed his opponent. Then with great solemnity he fell off the chair.

  "Jesus," said O'Reilly. "Drink. It's the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbour. It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss." He looked round. "Donal Donnelly, see if you can get the proud but paralytically pissed papa home."

  "I will, Doctor, I will, so I will." Donal nudged a man beside him. "We'll need to oxter-cog him." Together they took the limp Galvin by his armpits and dragged him towards the door.

  "'Not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come,'" O'Reilly remarked to the passing group. He turned to Barry. "Drink up."

  "Wordsworth, 'Intimations of Immortality,'" Barry said, taking a goodly swallow from his second pint, surprised by how much better than the first it tasted.

  "Willy. My shout, and don't forget Arthur," O'Reilly roared. Barry shook his head. "Fingal I have to--"

  "See a certain young lady tonight. You have, haven't you?"

  "Yes," said Barry, smiling like a mooncalf.

  "Well. One more won't hurt you."

  Someone started to sing.

  "As I went out a-roving and a-rambling one day,

  I spied a young couple who so fondly did stray.

  And one was a young maid at the turn of her year,

  And the other was a soldier and a bold Grenadier."

  Barry, off-key, joined in the chorus:

  "And they kissed so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other."

  And, by God he was going to kiss Patricia tonight. By God, the stout tasted good, and by God, wasn't Ballybucklebo the nearest thing to heaven on earth?

  It had been a wonderful afternoon, Barry thought, as he accompanied O'Reilly and Arthur on the short walk back to O'Reilly's house. Wonderful. He giggled as he watched Arthur tacking along the pavement, the dog's forward progress being intermittently interrupted when he crossed his front legs like a show jumper in a dressage competition. You, Arthur Guinness, Barry thought, you are stocious. At least it's dampened your ardour, and my pants are safe. Barry stumbled and grabbed O'Reilly's arm.

  " 'Steady the Buffs!'" said O'Reilly.

  "The Duke of . . . ?" Barry struggled to remember.

  "Wellington," said O'Reilly. "At Waterloo."

  It dawned on Barry that he was not entirely sober. He'd better pull himself together. Nothing was going to spoil his evening. "I wonder . . . ," said O'Reilly as he opened the back gate, "I wonder how Galvin's going to 'fall into his fortune'?"

  "Why?" Barry closed the gate.

  "I'd not like to think it'll be the cash Maureen's been saving for their emigration."

  Barry might have been concerned too if Arthur Guinness had not begun to make a strange ululation as he sat on the grass, head thrown back, trying and failing to scratch his ear with a hind paw that flapped in the air like a flag with a broken halyard. "Daft dog," said O'Reilly. "Come here."

  Arthur wobbled to his feet, staggered over, and stood between O'Reilly and Barry. He cocked one leg, and with the unerring accuracy of a marksman at the army's rifle range at Bisley, he pissed all over Barry's trousers.

  _________

  Barry left the parked Brunhilde, smoothed the tuft of hair on his crown, and looked down. He was a sight. Bloody dog. With one pair of pants still wet from the wash and his only others reeking of dog piss, he'd had to accept O'Reilly's offer of the loan of a pair. Wearing brightly checked trousers cut for a man of six foot two, even with the cuffs rolled up and the waistband cinched with a belt, he knew he looked like an escapee from Duffy's one-tent, touring circus. Nor was he convinced that a short nap, Mrs. Kincaid's liberal doses of black coffee, and the greasy fry she'd made him eat had restored him to complete sobriety. If they had, he probably wouldn't be standing here outside Number 9, the Esplanade, Kinnegar, giving a fair impression of Pantaloon. He looked at the row of bell pushes, each accompanied by a hand lettered card. Patricia Spence. Flat 4. He rang the bell and waited.

  The door opened and Patricia came out.

  "Hello, Barry Laverty." She tur
ned to close the door, and her high ponytail danced impertinently as she turned back to him, her dark eyes wide, lips full, her dimple deep as she smiled. She wore a white silk blouse open at the neck, and a mid-calf green skirt above tiny, low-heeled black shoes. His breath caught in his throat.

  "What in the world?" She stared at his trousers.

  "It's a long story." He felt the heat in his cheeks. "I'll tell you in the car."

  "I can hardly wait."

  He walked beside her as she limped along; then he held Brunhilde's door and waited until she was seated. He closed the door, rushed to the driver's side, climbed in, started the engine, and drove off. "Now," she said, "tell me about those pants, Mr. Laverty."

  "Mr. Laverty." He hadn't told her last night he was a doctor, hadn't wanted her to think he was trying too hard to impress her. "I only own two pairs. I got both of them dirty today, so I had to borrow these from a friend."

  "A stilt-walker?"

  Barry laughed. "No, but he's big."

  "So's the Atlantic Ocean, and you're drowning in those." She 'put one hand on his arm. "Don't worry about it. Clothes don't all ways make the man."

  He wanted to kiss her, but had to concentrate on his driving. "Where are we going?"

  "I thought we'd go to Strickland's Glen. Walk down to the shore."

  "You'd ask a girl with a game leg to go for a walk?"

  Was she teasing him? Was she being caustic? He couldn't tell from the tone of her voice.

  "Patricia," he said levelly, "if you'd rather not go for a walk, say so."

  She leant over and kissed his cheek. "I like you, Barry Laverty."

  For the rest of the drive they chatted about the weather, about Maria Bueno's victory over Margaret Smith at Wimbledon (although she couldn't play herself, Patricia was a keen tennis fan), and about pop music. She liked the Beatles but wasn't sure about the new lot, the Rolling Stones.

  We're like two strange dogs, Barry thought, stiff-legged, circling, sniffing each other out. Yet even with the confidence given to him by the remaining effects of the afternoon pints, he couldn't bring himself to take the conversation to a more personal level, and he wanted to so much. He wanted to know everything about her.