An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  “Aye, so.”

  “Then let’s be at them. Will you pour, Kinky?”

  Barry heard Mrs. Kincaid sniff for the second time that night, and to his surprise he heard O’Reilly add an uncharacteristic “Please?”

  “I will,” she said, starting to pour. “And will I maybe get a kettle warmed to fix a bit of friar’s balsam for you to inhale?”

  O’Reilly seemed to consider the offer, then said, “All right, but just bring up the boiling water and the brown bottle.”

  Barry was surprised to see the big man cave in so readily to Kinky’s suggestion. It would be something to see, O’Reilly sitting at the table with a jug of boiling water and aromatic herbs, towel over his head like a primitive oxygen tent, inhaling the reputedly beneficial fumes.

  “Right,” said Mrs. Kincaid, bringing her tray with two cups of coffee and a plate with slabs of her cherry cake over to the coffee table. “I’ll go and see to it.” She left the room.

  Barry lifted his coffee cup.

  O’Reilly grabbed a slab of cherry cake, took a large bite, and coughed. “Bejesus,” he said. “I’ve a powerful tickle, so I have.” He winked. “But it’s not Kinky’s balsam that’ll be the cure of it.” He eyed the decanter on the sideboard, and Barry thought of the hot whiskey he’d had himself not so very long ago. You couldn’t make a hot Irish without boiling water.

  Arthur had stirred himself and now sat directly in front of O’Reilly, head tilted, black eyes fixed on every move of the hand that held the cherry cake, twin strings of saliva hanging from the corners of his mouth.

  “You should never feed a gun dog people food,” O’Reilly said quite seriously, as he shoved the last piece of his cake into Arthur’s mouth. “Now,” he said, “if my little bit of a hirstle is of no further interest, I suppose you’d like to hear about who I went to see?”

  “Yes, I would. I didn’t know we’d patients as far away as the Holy-wood Arches.”

  “We don’t. I went to see the Gillespies. They farm up in the Hills. When I saw Liam, I was pretty sure he had a ruptured spleen so I arranged for an ambulance—”

  “To meet you at the Holywood Arches, and you ran him up there in your car.” O’Reilly’s habit of transporting his patients no longer came as a shock to Barry; indeed he himself occasionally ran someone to the hospital if the urgency was great enough. Back in August he’d driven today’s bride, Julie, to the Royal when she’d been miscarrying.

  “Bloody good thing I did too,” O’Reilly said. “Liam was flat as a pancake when I got him there, but the ambulance was waiting and we were able to get him aboard and a blood transfusion started. His blood pressure came up after we’d got a couple of pints into him.”

  “And he’ll have his spleen out tonight?”

  “I would imagine—” Whatever he was about to imagine was interrupted by a crash.

  Barry jumped at the sudden sound and tried to understand what had happened. Lady Macbeth must have crept back into the room, jumped onto the tray to try to get at the milk jug, and tipped the whole shebang over. The tray had fallen from the coffee table, and the milk jug lay overturned on the carpet. Lady Macbeth, howling like a banshee, tail fluffed like an electrocuted lavatory brush, was halfway up a window curtain and heading north to the pelmet. Arthur Guinness, without a by-your-leave, was finishing the last slice of cherry cake.

  “Jesus,” said O’Reilly, shooing Arthur away. “It’s like feeding time at Whipsnade bloody Zoo.” He turned and stared at Lady Macbeth, where she now sat on the pelmet above the curtains, washing her paws. “And you, madam, can stay there. You clawed me the last time I had to get you down.”

  Barry, bending to recover the tray and its contents and then setting them on the table again, remembered the incident. He was making a mental note that he too was not going to volunteer to rescue O’Reilly’s cat when O’Reilly hacked loudly and said, as if the carnage of a moment ago simply had not happened, “Aye. Liam would have his spleen out tonight, I’m sure, and with a bit of luck he’ll be home and up and doing in time for Christmas.” He coughed and spluttered again, hauled a hanky from a trouser pocket, and dabbed his eyes.

  “And,” said Barry, as gently as he could, “I’d think by the sound of you that all that gallivanting around in a snowstorm in that old Rover car has given you a touch of tracheitis. Do you think we’ll have you up and doing in time for Christmas?”

  “Course we will,” O’Reilly said. “I’ll have to be. Christmas is only three weeks away. We could be busy in the surgery for the first two weeks; the customers’ll want to get their aches and pains sorted out before Christmas week. It’s flu and sniffles and coughs and colds season. It could take the pair of us to manage the practice.” He coughed and frowned.

  “I could cope by myself for a few days, you know.” Barry rather relished the thought of even more independence.

  “I don’t doubt it for one minute, son, but it’s not just the practice. The whole village goes daft.”

  “Oh?”

  “What with Rugby Club parties, the kiddies’ Christmas pageant, His Lordship’s open house . . . dear God, even the Bishops have a do on Boxing Day . . .”

  “Councillor Bertie Bishop has a party?” Barry’s eyebrows and the tone of his voice shot up. Bertie Bishop was the meanest man in all of the Six Counties.

  “I think,” said O’Reilly, “he must watch A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim on the telly every year. What happens to Scrooge probably bothers him for a day or two, so he tries to act like a Christian gentleman. He’s like most people. His Christmas spirit soon fades. It usually lasts until about Twelfth Night; then he reverts to his usual great gobshite self.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “I don’t want to miss out on the fun, and I don’t want you to miss out on it either, but I’m going to be bugger all use until this clears up.” O’Reilly strangled a small hack. “But that won’t take long.”

  “Fingal, I told you. I can manage.”

  “Well, that’s a mercy that one of you two gentlemen can.” Barry turned to see Kinky coming into the room. She carried a folded towel over one forearm the way a waiter would in a classy restaurant. She set a large tray on the sideboard. He could see a steaming kettle, an assortment of bowls, and a bottle of brown fluid. “I suppose you’ve a notion that spilled milk tidies itself up?” She glowered at the damp stain on the carpet.

  “Sorry, Kinky,” Barry said.

  “Men.” But she had a grin on her face. “All right,” she said, “we’ll get you seen to first, sir.” She lifted a small bowl off the tray, set it on the sideboard, and carried the rest over to a larger table in the bay of one of the windows. “Will you please come here, Doctor O’Reilly?” She busied herself spooning the brown, glutinous liquid into the bowl and then pouring boiling water over it. The room filled with dark, pungent fumes that made Barry’s eyes water. “Now, Doctor O’Reilly, dear, sit you here . . .” She indicated a chair beside the table.

  O’Reilly rose, wandered over, and sat.

  “Put your head over the bowl . . .”

  Barry could see how the rising steam enveloped O’Reilly’s bent head.

  “And get in under this.” She took the towel off her arm and draped the material over his head. Tendrils of the vapors escaped around the edges of the towel. He looked, Barry thought, like an Arabian sheik in a London pea souper. “Now,” she said, “that’ll loosen your chest, so. Mind you, my granny would have given you an infusion of carrageen and nasturtium seeds to drink with it.”

  O’Reilly muttered something that Barry missed, but Kinky must have heard. “All right, all right,” she said. “Don’t I know what you are after? And haven’t I brought the makings? You’ll get your hot whiskey. It’ll be just right for you to have one after you’ve been in there for fifteen minutes.” She wagged a finger at the crouched O’Reilly. “And not one minute less, do you hear, Doctor dear?”

  Barry heard a muffled “yes, Kinky” coming from under the towel.
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  “Now,” she said, taking her tray back to the sideboard, “Doctor Laverty, do you have it in you to make himself a wee hot half?”

  “I do.”

  “I’d be grateful if you would, sir, while I trot downstairs to get the things to clean up the stain on the carpet.” She tutted. “How you managed to spill it—”

  “Kinky, would you look up?” Barry pointed to the pelmet where Lady Macbeth was now scenting the air, her pink nose whiffling as the balsam’s fumes drifted in her direction. “There’s the culprit.”

  Kinky’s round face broke into an enormous grin. “Och, well then, she’s forgiven.” She called directly up to Lady Macbeth, “For you’re nothing but a wee dote, so. Y’are, y’are.” And with that she left.

  Barry rose and busied himself making a hot Irish for Fingal. He decided against having another drink himself. He really was getting sleepy. He spooned sugar into a mug.

  “Barry?” O’Reilly’s voice was muffled by the towel.

  “Yes, Fingal?”

  “About you managing on your own?”

  “Yes.” Barry added a measure of John Jameson’s from the decanter on the sideboard.

  “See if you think we’re maybe a tad less busy than we used to be.”

  Barry hesitated as he was about to squeeze some lemon juice into the mug. “Do you think we are? I’m not sure. I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “I just wondered,” O’Reilly said. “I hear we may have a bit of competition.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye. Some new doctor’s moved into the Kinnegar since Doctor Bowman retired in September.”

  “And you think he might be pinching some of our patients?”

  “Not if I’m on my feet he won’t.”

  Barry stiffened. “Do you not think the patients will stay for me too?” The lemon juice dripped into the whiskey. Christ, Barry thought, I sound as bitter as the bloody juice. “Forget I said that, Fingal. I understand what you’re saying. Of course the customers are more used to you. They bloody well ought to be after twenty-odd years.” He threw a couple of cloves into the mug. “Anyway,” he said, pouring in the almost boiling water from the kettle, “we will have you on your feet in no time. And I will be able to manage on my own for a few days. And Fingal? I’m on call tonight.” A gust buffeted against the windows. “You’re not going out again in that lot.”

  “Thanks, Barry.”

  “I’m glad you agree.” Barry was just about to carry the whiskey to O’Reilly when Kinky reappeared. “I believe,” she said, “it was to be a full fifteen minutes before we gave that to himself?”

  Barry replaced the mug on the tray and glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Kinky.”

  She was marching to the place where the milk had stained the carpet when Barry heard a plaintive mew drifting from above. He and Kinky both looked up to see Lady Macbeth huddled at the furthest end of the pelmet, clearly trying to escape the ever-increasing miasma of balsam fumes. “The poor wee craytur.” Mrs. Kincaid moved under the pelmet and stood close to O’Reilly. “Come on now, jump you down and Kinky’ll catch you. She will, so.”

  Lady Macbeth crouched, hunched, sprang—and missed Kinky completely, but the towel over O’Reilly’s head served as a safety net. The scene unfolded before Barry’s eyes like a slow-motion film loop. Lady Macbeth hitting the fabric and disappearing into its folds. The towel being pulled from O’Reilly’s head, allowing Barry to watch as his senior partner was bent forward by the combined weight of cat and towel until his nose was forced into the bowl of balsam. The film loop had a soundtrack: a cat’s eldritch screech, a doctor’s basso roar. O’Reilly rose to his feet, hand clutching his nose. Arthur trotted over, head thrown back, yodeling, tail going ninety to the dozen. Mrs. Kincaid clapped one hand over her opened mouth, and Barry Laverty, bent double with laughter, had to turn his back on the entire assembly.

  Oh dear, oh dear. He tried to collect himself. In such a household as this, where the unexpected was the norm, how could he possibly worry about O’Reilly’s cough, the new doctor in competition, or the fact that he was all alone right now to run the practice. And even if he wasn’t called out tonight, he’d be on his own in the surgery tomorrow. He would continue to be alone until O’Reilly, who he could see standing and using the towel to dry his nose, was figuratively as well as literally back on his feet again.

  The Daily Round, the Common Task

  O’Reilly was definitely not on his feet yet. Forty minutes earlier when Barry had walked softly past the big man’s bedroom door, he’d heard distinct rumbling snores, noises akin to the purring of a pride of lions he seen in a TV documentary by Armand and Michaela Denis. Now he was finishing his breakfast alone.

  “You’ve time for another cup of tea. It’s Twinings, so.” Mrs. Kincaid fussed with the teapot, pouring the tea through a silver strainer into Barry’s cup. “Here’s the milk.”

  Barry knew better than to refuse. “Thanks, Kinky.”

  “Now get that into you like a good lad, and I’ll trot upstairs in a minute and see how himself is doing.”

  Barry saw the twinkle in her agate eyes and the deepening of smile lines at their corners. Someone in Kinky’s ancestry, he thought, must have been a close relative of Florence Nightingale. Nothing seemed to make her happier than ministering unto her charges.

  He added milk to his tea as Kinky cleared his breakfast dishes and left. Barry yawned and sipped. Thank the Lord there’d been no emergencies after they’d gone to bed last night. Barry hadn’t minded taking call for O’Reilly, but he’d needed his night’s sleep. The weather probably explained why no one had summoned him last night. If they thought the roads were blocked, they’d not want to drag him out unless it was an absolute emergency. And perhaps, the thought nagged, if they lived closer to the Kinnegar they might be giving the new doctor a try.

  Between laughing at the mayhem caused by Lady Macbeth and plummeting into a deep and dreamless sleep there had been little time for worry, but the appearance of the competition O’Reilly had mentioned did have to be taken seriously. Barry was no health economist, but the question remained. Were there enough patients in the territory of Ballybucklebo and the Kinnegar to sustain three busy doctors who were paid an annual fee by the Ministry of Health for every patient who belonged to their practices? Old Doctor Bowman had been no threat, and his practice list had been small. He’d been semiretired. But a new man? Och, well, Barry thought, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” And Saint Luke should have known. He was a physician.

  Barry swallowed more tea. He looked through the window at six-inch-deep ridges of snow on the wall of the churchyard opposite. In Ulster snow was rare, and a fall like last night’s, which would be brushed aside as irrelevant by a North American prairie dweller, could paralyse rural Ireland.

  It had stopped falling sometime through the night, and this morning the sky was bright, eggshell blue. The sun was already making water drip from icicles hanging from the eaves of the Presbyterian church opposite O’Reilly’s house. One of the icy stalactites caught and refracted the sun’s rays, and Barry smiled to see the frozen water sparkle on one side and release a tiny perfect rainbow of colour on the other.

  Shiny black slates peeped wetly through the snow that clung to the roof. As he watched, a snow floe slithered off the north side of the tilted steeple.

  The boughs of old yews in the churchyard were bent, and from their white and dark green branches drops and drips pattered to the ground, digging small pits in the otherwise even carpet. Like a scene from a Christmas card, a single robin redbreast perched on a lower branch, its scarlet feathers in cheerful contrast to its wintry surroundings.

  Barry wondered why so many Christmas card publishers favoured scenes with a Dickensian flavour. Probably because when Dickens had been writing A Christmas Carol and Currier and Ives were producing their famous prints, all of Europe had been in the grip of what meteorologists refer to as the Little Ice Age. Lord alone knew the last time the Tha
mes had frozen over in modern times, but it certainly had back then.

  Barry glanced at his watch. He would be five minutes early, but with Doctor O’Reilly hors de combat, today was going to be the first time he would run the practice alone. And he wanted to get started. Barry rose, wiped his lips on his napkin, crumpled the Belfast linen square on the tabletop, and went into the hall.

  The door opposite lay open to what had been the downstairs lounge when Number 1 Main Street had been a private house. He knew that had O’Reilly been a specialist, the facility would be referred to as his “consulting rooms,” and had he been an American it would be his “office.” In Irish general practice, the time-hallowed term for the place was “the surgery,” and it was in the surgery he would be spending the morning dealing with the kind of patient O’Reilly often called the “worried well.” Few if any would have serious ailments, but all would be concerned enough to have taken the trouble to come here.

  He walked to the waiting room and opened the door a crack. Even though he had been here for five months, the god-awful roses on the wallpaper still had the power to make him wince. He could picture Oscar Wilde, for whom Barry’s senior partner Fingal Flahertie had been named, uttering his famous last words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

  He’d once heard of an incautious senior consultant at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast paraphrase the lines during a spat with the hospital’s senior nursing officer, the matron. “Either you go or I do.” Matron was still there.

  Barry opened the door fully.

  “Morning, Doctor Laverty,” several voices said. It was a muted greeting. Only about a dozen of the wooden chairs were occupied. Was it simply because the roads were bad and anyone with a relatively trivial complaint was waiting until the weather improved before coming in? Or was it that . . . ? Bugger it, he told himself. Stop worrying about the new doctor and get on with your job.

  “Right, who’s first?” he asked, wondering if one day somebody might think to introduce an appointments system.