An Irish Country Wedding

by Patrick Taylor

  No one noticed him come in because Helen Hewitt’s da was singing. Although it was technically against the law in Ulster to sing in public houses, Willie Dunleavy, the proprietor and barman, let men with good voices perform, provided that they sang no sectarian songs. Constable Mulligan always turned a blind eye to a bit of music; indeed after he’d had a few, he could often be persuaded to recite “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God” or “Cassabianca,” stolidly declaiming, “The boy stood on the burning deck…”

  The singer, middle-aged, stocky, blessed with a head of black hair and piercing mahogany eyes, stood with his thumbs hooked into the arm holes of his waistcoat. He was a fine baritone.

  One morning fair as I chanced the air down by Black Water side

  In gazing all around me that Irish lad I spied …

  Barry knew the folk song, a classic girl’s lament for a lover’s broken promise of marriage. The tune was haunting and its rendition deserved respect from its audience. As Barry listened, he glanced round the room and recognised most of the people. Councillor Bishop sat at the far end, loudly haranguing a man who was a stranger to Barry. Bertie Bishop was pointedly ignoring the singer. The councillor had never been known for his polished manners.

  O’Reilly beckoned from a table near the front of the room then turned to the bar and signalled to Willie, who leant across the counter polishing a glass. O’Reilly pointed to his empty pint glass and held up two fingers.

  Willie gave a thumbs-up, and started to pour.

  Barry nodded a greeting to O’Reilly, sat, and the nod was returned accompanied by a smile. Arthur was under the table, happily lapping from a bowl that Barry knew contained Smithwick’s Irish ale. Barry had come to love this place—the rough plaster walls and oak beams, the easy smiles from folks he knew, and Willie’s relaxed nature. And Helen’s da wasn’t the only one who could make soft music and enchant an evening. Barry set the beef pudding on the table and waited until the singing had finished.

  And when fishes do fly and the seas run dry

  It’s then that you’ll marry I.

  He and O’Reilly joined in the applause.

  “Jasus,” said O’Reilly, “aren’t us men terrible beasts? Leaving a poor girl like that? Who’d do such a thing?”

  Not you, Fingal, Barry thought, as he reflected on his boss’s imminent wedding. It may have taken him a while, but Fingal Flaherty O’Reilly was going to marry the girl he’d walked out with more than thirty years before. Now, in Barry’s own case, it was usually the girls who left him, but after four months, the ache of the departure of a certain Patricia Spence was dimming, only surfacing when something like being in the dunes last evening brought back a particular memory. He shrugged.

  “You’ll recognise Helen Hewitt’s da, Alan,” O’Reilly said. He inhaled. “She got the hair and her eyes from her late mother. Lovely woman, Morna Hewitt. Shame about her. God Almighty, but I hate cancer.” He curled his lip.

  “Your pints, Doctors.” Willie set the straight glasses on the table and collected O’Reilly’s empty one. “Settle up when you’re leaving, sir.”

  “Thanks, Willie. Sláinte.”

  “Sláinte.” Barry savoured the Guinness. To change the subject he said, “Connie gave me a beef pudding.”

  “Sainted Jasus and half the apostles,” said O’Reilly, his great eyebrows meeting above the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to be ungracious, Barry, but where in the hell are we going to put it? The fridge is full, the larder’s overflowing, and we can’t give things away. The donors would be mortified.”

  “True enough.” The hurt taken would be irreparable. Barry had a notion. “Kitty’s coming down tomorrow. I don’t suppose she could take some things up to the Royal … dishes that aren’t in anything that needs to be returned like this bowl.” He indicated the tea-towel-wrapped bundle. “I’m sure the hospital could distribute the food to people who need it? That’s one of the almoner’s jobs, isn’t it?”

  O’Reilly brightened. “Bloody brilliant,” he said. “Right you are, Barry. Kitty can take them to the almoner.” His smile faded. “And, God knows there are plenty of folks in need in Belfast.”

  “And in Ballybucklebo. Helen’s not the only one laid off by the mill.”

  “Another bloody shame,” said O’Reilly, “but we can’t help them all. Helen’s different, though. Did you know she has all the marks in Senior that she needs to go to university?”

  Barry whistled. “I did not. I’ve got the impression she’s one smart girl, but I didn’t know that. She could get entrance to Queen’s?”

  “Any university she chooses. I wonder,” said O’Reilly, “if we could do anything about it. Maybe find a bursary or something.”

  There was such longing in Fingal’s voice that for a moment Barry wondered if O’Reilly himself might establish one, but secretly generous as Barry knew his senior to be, he wasn’t as wealthy as that.

  O’Reilly had finished half his pint. “We can’t do it here and now, but we can think about it.” He pointed to Barry’s, which was down by a third, but he shook his head. O’Reilly waved one finger and nodded at Willie and said to Barry, “How’s your patient?”

  “Colin?” Barry sipped. “His fracture’s set and his arm’s in a cast. Simple enough procedure for the orthopods in the Royal. Be easy enough to do here if we could give an anaesthetic, but I know these days that’s considered too risky outside of a hospital.”

  “I set broken bones in my navy days, and sometimes, because we’d run out, not always with the benefit of any anaesthetic more powerful than rum.” O’Reilly chuckled. “Knowing Colin, he’d probably have been happy to give a few tots a try, but I don’t think Connie would have been impressed.”

  Willie set a new pint in front of O’Reilly.

  “Cheers,” he said, and took a long pull. “There’ve been a hell of a lot of changes since I started as a dispensary doctor in the Liberties of Dublin in the ’30s. Before I came north here to work for Doctor Flanagan.”

  Barry knew O’Reilly’s history since he’d come to Ballybucklebo in 1939, but this was new and interesting. “Dispensary doctor?”

  He took another drink. “Aye. Before the war, the Irish government employed GPs to work in the slums of Dublin and in the poorer country districts to provide a kind of basic medical care for the indigent. The system paid me a salary and the patients didn’t have to cough up unless they had a job and could afford to.” He took another drink. “I tell you, Barry, I was getting pretty expert at treating fleas, bedbugs, lice, scabies, and not always for the patients.” Barry watched as O’Reilly suddenly began scratching his left side under his arm. “You’ve no idea how much DDT improved the lives of our troops in the war. Killed lice, fleas, mosquitoes. Cut down the numbers of cases of typhus, plague, malaria—”

  “But have you read Silent Spring?”

  “Rachel Carson? I have. I don’t think we’ll be using much DDT in the future. It’s—”

  Barry was aware of a figure standing at the table. He looked up to see Bertie Bishop, beer-barrel squat, legs braced apart. One thumb was hooked under the jacket lapels of his blue chalk-stripe suit, the other hand clutched a paper bag.

  “A word, O’Reilly,” Bertie said.

  O’Reilly said, “Won’t you have a seat, Councillor?”

  “I’ll stand, so I will. I told my friend I’d not be long.”

  Judging by the look on Bertie’s face, Barry thought, the man was not a harbinger of comfort and joy.

  “First Flo telt me if I seen youse to say she’s very upset about Mrs. Kincaid and she’s sent her a get-well card on behalf of the whole Women’s Union, and a wheen of flowers. I’m sorry myself. We all hope she gets better soon.”

  “Generous, Bertie. Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell Kinky. And please do thank your wife.”

  “Flo? That one? Do you know she wanted me to ask if youse two needed any laundry doing? No wife of mine’s going to be like a common washerwoman, so she’s not. I told
her youse was big enough and ugly enough to look after yourselves and if youse wasn’t yiz could use Lilliput Laundry.”

  “Indeed we could,” O’Reilly said mildly. “Now if that’s all?” He started to turn away.

  “It’s not. I’ve more, so I have. A whole lot more.”

  “Oh?” O’Reilly turned back. “Do go on.”

  Barry kept his counsel, but leant forward, drink forgotten.

  Bertie’s voice was harsh, belligerent. “Youse’ve a white cat?” he demanded.

  “Lady Macbeth,” O’Reilly said.

  “I don’t give a toss if you call her Queen Elizabeth II of the House of bloody Windsor. Keep the thing in your house.” Bertie thrust his face forward.

  “Whatever for?” O’Reilly leant back in his chair.

  “You know I have racing pigeons? I’ve a loft over Steve Wallace’s garage, like. Across the road from here.”

  “Everybody knows about your birds, Bertie, especially the ladies who have to redo their washing when your flock’s gone overhead.”

  Barry saw the colour of Bertie’s cheeks deepen. An artery throbbed at his temple. He spluttered.

  “And I hear they’ve been doing very well. Won a couple of races recently,” O’Reilly said.

  Barry listened.

  O’Reilly continued, “It must be very satisfying when they start coming back into the loft from a long way away. I’d think so anyway.”

  Barry recognised that O’Reilly was giving Bertie a chance to simmer down.

  “Aye, well, there’s two of mine won’t be doing that no more. Your bloody cat got them, so it did.” Little drops of spittle flew. “They’re dead as feckin’ dodos.”

  Barry sat straight up. Lady Macbeth certainly was never confined to barracks and cats did roam.

  “Are you sure, Bertie?” O’Reilly asked, drinking slowly.

  “Bloody right I am. Your man Steve Wallace, him that owns the garage, he seen her going in there this afternoon and by the time he got up the stairs, two of my champion birds was dead and your bloody cat had done a runner.”

  O’Reilly sighed. “But how can you be sure it was my cat? You didn’t catch her in flagrante delicto.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, O’Reilly, but if I see her again near my loft I’ll catch her in the backside with the toe of my feckin’ boot. She’ll be wearing her arsehole for a necklace.” He pounded a fist on the tabletop. “You keep your white cat to hell away from my pigeons. Do you hear, O’Reilly?”

  “Unless I was stone deaf, Councillor, it would be difficult not to. I imagine they probably caught a word or two across the lough in Carrickfergus.”

  Barry noticed that although his words were measured, O’Reilly’s nose tip was alabaster.

  “If I get my hands on it—”

  “I think you’ve made your point.”

  “Good night then to yiz.” Bishop stumped away, turned, and came back. He slammed the paper bag on the table. “I near forgot. Flo baked these here gingersnaps. Said if I seen youse in here the night to give yiz them. She hopes youse enjoy them. I don’t give a tinker’s curse if you choke on them.” He stormed off.

  “Do thank her for me, Bertie,” O’Reilly said to the man’s departing back.

  Barry’d seen colour photos of Antarctica where the ice was so white it had a blue tinge. So, it seemed, did the tip of O’Reilly’s nose.

  Willie Dunleavy stood by the table. “Excuse me, but I’ve just had Helen Hewitt on the phone. She says come home at once. It’s urgent.”

  “Come on, Barry. Forget about Bertie. Leave that.” O’Reilly didn’t finish his pint either. “I’ll settle up next time, Willie,” he said, and charged for the door with Barry and Arthur Guinness in close pursuit.

  12

  Why Did You Answer the Phone?

  “Sorry to drag you from the Duck,” Helen said, “but when Jack … I mean Doctor Mills called—”

  “Barry, get Mills on the phone. Now,” O’Reilly said.

  Barry dialled.

  “Did he say why he was calling, Helen?” O’Reilly asked. He knew Jack couldn’t tell her anything in detail about Kinky’s condition. Even if young Mills had been seeing Helen for a month or two after Sonny and Maggie’s wedding, she wasn’t part of the medical fraternity. But perhaps Jack had given some hint, anything to let them know what this was about.

  “No, sir. He sounded in a big hurry, and just told me to have you get hold of him as soon as possible.”

  Damnation. It must mean Kinky had taken a turn for the worse. “Sit, Arthur, and there’s no need to apologise for sending for us, Helen. You did exactly the right thing.”

  Helen smiled. “Thank you, sir.” She moved to the pegs and took down her coat.

  O’Reilly fidgeted, tapped his foot, and frowned at the inevitable delay before one of the hospital operators on the understaffed switchboard could answer. Then Jack would probably have to be bleeped. “Give me the phone,” he said gruffly, as if being on one end would speed things up. He couldn’t bear the waiting. Barry relinquished the phone, and O’Reilly took it in time to hear, “Hello? Doctor Mills here.”

  “Mills? Fingal O’Reilly.”

  Jack Mills sounded calm. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your Mrs. Kincaid’s gone downhill.”

  “Damn.” He turned to Barry. “It’s Kinky. She’s had a setback. Mills, what’s exactly wrong with her?”

  “She developed a fever midmorning. The wound was a bit inflamed, but nothing else was obvious. Sir Donald didn’t think it was serious enough for us to bother you and that we should simply watch her. Unfortunately, her temperature spiked a couple of hours ago and she’s wheezy in her left lung base. We were pretty sure she’d got a postop bronchial pneumonia.”

  Or it could be an abscess under the diaphragm, lung collapse, or a pulmonary embolism, O’Reilly thought. Postoperative complications in the lungs did occur, but infrequently. And why Kinky Kincaid of all people? The woman had always seemed indestructible. On a number of occasions she’d had to nurse him through bad bouts of flu and a recent attack of acute bronchitis. It was unfair she’d been taken ill at all and doubly so that complications should set in.

  Mills was saying, “We took a portable X-ray here on the ward.” O’Reilly read between the lines. Either Kinky wasn’t well enough to be taken to the X-ray department, or bless her, a bit on the heavy side for nurses to wrestle on and off trolleys. He hoped it was the latter.

  “There’s involvement of the left lower lobe. Sir Donald started her on pen and strep.”

  Penicillin and streptomycin were the first line of defence against infection. Only if they failed were the newer antibiotics like tetracycline used.

  “At least,” Jack said, “her bowel sounds are normal, so we’ve taken her naso-gastric tube out and she’s getting a liquid diet. She’s still on a drip and getting plenty of painkillers. I’ll give you an update if anything changes, but I’m sure she’ll be grand. Unless you really want to, there’s no need to come charging up here tonight.”

  “Thanks, Mills. We appreciate you letting us know.” O’Reilly hung up. “I’m sure she’ll be grand,” those were Jack Mills’s words, O’Reilly thought. Not a year into his training and already the young man was developing the confidence so characteristic of surgeons that armoured them to slice into their fellow beings—and lose some of them intra- or postoperatively without the doctor going into a decline. He glanced at Barry. There was another young man whose self-confidence had come on remarkably. “Looks like she has left lower lobe broncho-pneumonia, Barry. She’s on the right antibiotics and Jack Mills says she needs a good night’s sleep. Says there’s no reason for us to race up there.” Which of course was an unspoken message that Mills did not think Kinky was in any danger of dying. O’Reilly then realised that in his hurry to brief Barry he’d forgotten that Helen was standing there. “Helen—”

  “I never heard nothing. Mum’s the word,” she said, and mimed pulling a zip acros
s her lips, “but I hope Mrs. Kincaid gets better soon.”

  “Thank you, on both counts,” O’Reilly said. “I know you’ll keep it to yourself.” He said to Barry, “Do me a favour?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take Arthur to the back garden and on your way put the grub we were given in the kitchen.”

  “Come on, Arthur.” Barry started to do as he’d been asked, then frowned as if remembering something and said, “I’d like to make a phone call when I’ve finished. I need to discuss something with Miss Nolan from the school.”

  “Go right ahead,” O’Reilly said, and thought, And I hope it’s nothing to do with professional matters. She’s a pretty girl, that Sue Nolan, and it’s time Barry started seeing young women again. O’Reilly rummaged in his pocket and turned to Helen. “Helen. Home. Thank you for sending for us. By just fielding that one call you’ve earned your keep this week.” He gave her a pound note.

  “Thank you, sir.” She put the money in her handbag. “And I do hope Mrs. Kincaid does get well very soon.”

  “We all do. Let me help you on with your coat,” O’Reilly said, and as he held it Lady Macbeth appeared from the dining room and began weaving against Helen’s legs.

  “The wee craythur hasn’t left me alone all afternoon,” Helen said. She bent and stroked the cat’s head. “Night-night, your ladyship. Night, Doctor O’Reilly. And that Oliver Twist was great, so it was. I left it on the shelf. ‘Please, sir. I want some more.’” Helen shook her head. “At least we don’t have parish workhouses anymore.”

  “You’re right.” He opened the door. “Good night, Helen. See you on Monday, and don’t worry about Kinky. She’ll be fine.” I hope. And before he realised it, he’d crossed his fingers.

  As soon as he was in the lounge, O’Reilly poured a Jameson, plumped himself down in an armchair, set his booted feet on a footstool, and yawned. He rolled his shoulders, yawned again, and drank. Admit it, O’Reilly, you’re no spring chicken anymore. You’re tired. It was the worry about Kinky, he supposed. He was perfectly able, thank you, to deal with the day-to-day running of the practice. He sipped. Damn it all, he still felt twenty inside—well, twenty-four. That was how old he’d been when he met Kitty O’Hallorhan for the first time. Kitty. He glanced at the other armchair. Not long now until she’d be sitting there at his side, of an evening, after work. Him with his pipe and whiskey and her with a gin and tonic. He smiled, relished the thought, and recalled vividly a day when he’d walked with her down Dublin’s O’Connell Street and a beggar had sold him the sheet music for “Star of the County Down.” He sang,