An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  “You may jest, Fingal, but I have had some quite spectacular successes with old country remedies.”

  “Have you, Ronald? Would you like to give us a for instance?” O’Reilly made sure he wore an expression of rapt interest. “I’m always up for learning something new.” It was annoying, he thought, that just at that moment his throat tickled and he was forced to cough.

  Fitzpatrick pointed his bony index finger at O’Reilly. “You yourself are a case in point.”

  O’Reilly coughed once more, then said, “And how would that be?”

  “You have tracheobronchitis. How are you treating it? No, I can guess. Antibiotics. Modern medicine is hopelessly wedded to them.”

  “Actually, I’m not—”

  “Don’t interrupt.” The finger wagging increased. “I have very little use for them, but I find a home-prepared tincture very effective.”

  O’Reilly found the man’s stressing of “I” irritating. “Would you like to tell us about it?”

  “It would be my pleasure. Take primrose roots, crush them up, and put them in the whey of goat’s milk.”

  “Interesting,” said Barry. “And are primrose roots easy to come by in December?”

  O’Reilly couldn’t tell whether Barry was genuinely interested or was having Fitzpatrick on.

  “The plant doesn’t flower, but its roots are still in the ground.”

  “Oh,” said Barry. “Thank you.”

  “Primrose roots in the whey of goat’s milk?” O’Reilly frowned. “Sounds simple enough. And does the patient drink the mixture?”

  Fitzpatrick leant forward. In his eyes, O’Reilly saw an evangelical gleam. “No. The next step is the clever one because it gets right to the root of the disease.” He tittered. “That’s rather good, using roots to get to the root.”

  “Go on,” said O’Reilly, thinking that once in a while the old adage “Laugh and the world laughs with you” could be wrong. “I’m all agog.”

  “You stick the mixture up the patient’s nose.” Fitzpatrick smiled smugly. “What do you think of that?”

  O’Reilly guffawed. For a while he couldn’t stop. When he finally gained control, he said, “Sorry, Ronald, but I just got what you said earlier: ‘Using roots to get to the root.’ Very good. Very good.”

  “Well, that’s all right then. For a moment, I thought you were mocking my therapy. Worse, that you were laughing at me. I hate it when people laugh at me. I always did. I hate it.” He actually stamped one foot.

  “Me?” said O’Reilly, all injured innocence. “Laugh at you, Ronald?” He glanced at Barry, who was also struggling to keep a straight face. “I’d never do such a thing. I remember how it used to upset you.”

  “Thank you.” Fitzpatrick seemed to be mollified.

  “It’s not every day I hear such an incredible approach,” O’Reilly said.

  “Well, thank you, Fingal.” The man actually simpered.

  O’Reilly looked at Barry, who inaudibly mouthed, “Incredible,” and grinned broadly. Oxford English Dictionary, O’Reilly thought. More people should read it. If they did, they would find “incredible: that cannot be believed.” But if it made old Fitzpatrick happy, who was O’Reilly to spoil his morning? O’Reilly’s stomach grumbled. He realized he was hungry. Barry must be too. It would be close to lunchtime, and that meant it was time to get rid of their colleague.

  “I’m pleased you’re settling in so well, Ronald.” O’Reilly moved toward the door. “And Doctor Laverty and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work for too long, would we, Barry?”

  Barry rose. “Certainly not.”

  Fitzpatrick stood, made a half bow to Barry, and said, “Young Laverty.” Then he strode to O’Reilly, paused, offered his hand, accepted the handshake, and said, “I’ve enjoyed our little meeting, Fingal. I do hope we can do it again.”

  I’d rather sit through a two-hour sermon by the Presbyterian minister, O’Reilly thought. But he said, “I don’t see why we can’t. Perhaps we can do a bit of catching up on what the pair of us have been up to since medical school?” And I’ll bet your story, Hercules, will be as fascinating as the manual that came with the washing machine I bought for Kinky last year.

  “I might quite enjoy that, Fingal, but for the moment I’d prefer to keep things on a professional basis.” He cleared his throat. “I think we might find we’re going to be in competition.”

  “Suits me,” said O’Reilly, standing clear of the mantel and adopting his old familiar boxer’s attacking stance, with one foot in advance of the other. He hadn’t boxed since he’d left the navy, but old habits died hard.

  “I hesitate to be the ghost at the feast,” Fitzpatrick continued, looking particularly cheerful, “especially at this festive season, but I have wondered if the region is big enough to keep three doctors busy.”

  O’Reilly saw Barry flinch. The lad would be worried. O’Reilly shared his concern, but if Fitzpatrick was throwing down a professional gauntlet, Fingal O’Reilly was the man to accept the challenge. “Probably not, Ronald,” he said blandly. “I’m sure Doctor Laverty and I will miss you when you leave.” He moved across the room and opened the door. “Now let me show you out.” He glanced at Barry. “Doctor Laverty and I are on our way down to our lunch. Sorry we can’t invite you to stay and join us.”

  A Primrose by a River’s Brim

  O’Reilly knocked the dottle out of his briar into a huge ashtray that Kinky had this Thursday morning, under some protest, placed in its habitual spot on the dining room table. It was beyond him why she’d been under the impression he’d given up smoking forever, just because he’d not picked up his pipe for the few days his chest had been afflicted. He’d missed his tobacco as a man might miss an old and dear friend.

  He crammed the pipe into his jacket pocket, finished his tea, and rose. Time for him to be in the trenches. He’d promised Barry he’d take care of the surgery this morning, and by God, he would, and he’d be well enough by Saturday to cover the weekend too.

  O’Reilly shoved his chair away from the table, rose, glanced up, and hoped Barry was still asleep. The lad had worked hard for the last few days. O’Reilly had not heard Barry leave this morning, but he had heard him return just after dawn had broken. Let him sleep. He’d earned it.

  O’Reilly passed the big table, went into the hall, and opened the waiting room door. Jesus Murphy, he thought. It was like Paddy’s market in there, standing room only. Barry would be pleased to hear the place was packed. O’Reilly ignored the chorus of “Good morning, Doctor,” and roared, “Right, who’s first?”

  Cissie Sloan, blue beret on her untidy mop of hair, woolly scarf wrapped around her neck, the rest of her bundled up in an army surplus great coat that O’Reilly knew would have been purchased at the Army and Navy Store in Belfast, lumbered to her Wellington-booted feet. “Right, Cissie,” he said, “you know your way.”

  As he followed her to the surgery he remembered yesterday’s lunch when, try as he might, O’Reilly did not seem to be able to reassure Barry that Doctor Fitzpatrick probably did not present a real threat. Once his novelty had worn off, the Ballybucklebo patients would be quite happy to return to Number 1 Main Street. Some of them, he thought, watching Cissie process along the hall and into the surgery, didn’t even seem to have any notion of leaving at all. He heard the chair creak as Cissie settled herself. Passing her, he parked himself in his swivel chair.

  “Doctor Laverty not in the day?”

  “My turn, Cissie. He was up half the night.”

  “Right enough? He works very hard, so he does.” She made a sympathetic clucking noise and leant forward. “And I hear you’ve been a bit under the weather yourself, sir.”

  “Och, sure it was only a slight touch of the bubonic plague and leprosy, and I shook them both off in no time.” He looked at her over his half-moon glasses. “I’ve the constitution of a Clydesdale horse.”

  Cissie’s laugh was throaty, though whether from her earlier thyroid deficiency
or her recent sore throat he couldn’t be sure.

  “You’re the terrible man, Doctor dear, so you are, teasing a poor countrywoman like me. Leprosy, my aunt Fanny Jane. You only get that in darkest Africa. Wasn’t I just telling my cousin Aggie, you know the one with the six toes, her and me was working in the parish hall getting it ready for the pageant, we’d just hung up another red paper chain, and Aggie says—”

  “Cissie,” O’Reilly said forcibly, “what ails you today? Doctor Laverty told me you’d a sore throat.”

  “Would you like to have a wee look? It’s not better. I think maybe you should look at it. My cousin—”

  “Right.” He grabbed a tongue depressor from a jar that stood on his desk and pulled a clip-on pencil torch from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Open big and stick out your tongue.” If nothing else, that would stem the verbal torrent. The back of her throat was red, but it looked to him pretty much as he would anticipate pharyngitis to appear after a couple of days of treatment. “Doesn’t look too bad—” he started to say, as he removed the wooden spatula.

  “Aggie says that maybe the Saint Brigid’s cotton isn’t working, that maybe the penicillin the young doctor, no harm to him . . .” She hesitated and looked at O’Reilly, who knew very well that “no harm to him” inevitably presaged a criticism. “Well, maybe what he prescribed me isn’t the right thing, she says—”

  “What?” O’Reilly pulled off his half-moons and dangled them by one leg from between his finger and thumb, resisting the temptation to enquire which of the five Irish medical schools was Aggie’s alma mater.

  “She says what I need is to buck them pills down the sink and get goat’s milk whey and stick a wheen of ground-up primrose roots—”

  O’Reilly dropped his glasses, silencing Cissie for a moment, and sat bolt upright. “And does she recommend shoving the mixture up your nose?”

  Cissie beamed. “Aren’t you the quare smart one, Doctor O’Reilly? That’s exactly, exactly, what she said. And do you think I should?” She frowned. “I’m never quite sure about our Aggie . . .”

  O’Reilly bent, retrieved his spectacles, took out his pipe, and filled it, quite happy to let Cissie prattle on while he thought rapidly. For starters, either because she had a sore throat herself or on behalf of her cousin Cissie, Aggie had almost certainly consulted Fitzpatrick. Until yesterday, in all his years here, O’Reilly had never heard of that particular nostrum being popular among the local citizens, and he was sure he was familiar with all the local folk remedies.

  “I always think she needs an anenema.”

  O’Reilly ignored the mispronunciation. He was more worried that the suggested cure, which he was certain had come from Fitzpatrick and which was blatant quackery, could harm one of Barry’s patients. As far as O’Reilly was concerned, Fitzpatrick could prescribe boiled water to those he treated. But when his advice started to affect the customers of Number 1 Main Street, it was time to start paying attention. In O’Reilly’s opinion, Cissie needed the penicillin Barry had prescribed.

  “Aggie needs an anenema because I think she’s usually full of shite, but I thought I’d come and get a second opinion just to be sure.”

  O’Reilly stifled his irritation at being considered a backup to cousin Aggie. The main thing was to make sure Cissie kept on taking her tablets.

  He stuck his filled pipe in a side pocket, leant forward, and said, “I made a mistake about you in July, didn’t I, Cissie?”

  “Aye. You didn’t know I’d the thyroid thingy.” She smiled. “But sure a bishop can be wrong too sometimes. Only your man in Rome’s infallybubble.”

  “True, Cissie, I’m not infallible, but who found out your thyroid was out of whack?”

  “Doctor Laverty.”

  “And now did he suggest crushed primrose roots or penicillin for your throat?”

  “Penicillin.” She looked puzzled, then said, “Aye, and he told me to go on using the Saint Brigid’s cotton too.”

  “Powerful stuff, the cotton,” O’Reilly said. “Now, Cissie, if you’d to bet money on it, where would you put your cash? Penicillin or primrose roots?”

  “Doctor Laverty—and I’d give him odds on, so I would.”

  “Good for you, Cissie.” O’Reilly rose and helped her to her feet. “Doctor Laverty wouldn’t see you wrong, you know that. So you keep taking that penicillin as Doctor Laverty prescribed, and you’ll be right as rain in another few days.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “I’d not fancy sticking that stuff up my nose,” she giggled. “Maybe Aggie could use it for her anenema. I think I’ll tell her—”

  “I’m sure you will, Cissie.” He manoeuvered her toward the door, opened it, and guided her out. “And come in anytime you’re worried.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. And I’ll—”

  She was still talking as he closed the surgery door, and through it he could hear her chuntering on in the hall. He fished out his pipe, lit up, and relished a few good puffs until he heard the front door close. Then satisfied that she had left, he wandered back to the waiting room. He opened the door a crack and listened. He could overhear the tail end of a conversation between two of his regulars, two older folks who regarded their weekly trip to their medical advisor more as a social outing than a therapeutic endeavour.

  “I didn’t see you here last week, Bertha.”

  “I wasn’t in, Jimmy.”

  “Oh. Why not?”

  “You know bloody well there’s only one thing would keep me away. I was sick, so I was.”

  O’Reilly chuckled. He was just a tiny bit humbled when she said, in tones so serious as to underline the absolute truth of her sentiments, “And I didn’t want to trouble the doctors. Not when I was poorly.”

  He opened the door wide. “Who’s the next—”

  The door to the outside was opened, and the marquis came in. Everyone rose, the men knuckling their foreheads, the women dropping small curtsies. All stood aside so the presence could go first. Rank has its privileges, O’Reilly thought, as he often did when he pulled it to get to the head of a queue. “Morning, my lord,” he said.

  “Good morning, Doctor, and everyone, please be seated.” The man exuded a natural graciousness. “I’ll only keep Doctor O’Reilly for a very few minutes.”

  O’Reilly stood aside, then followed the marquis to the surgery and closed the door. He waited as with familiar ease the man took off his camel hair overcoat with the black velvet lapels and his blazer with the crest of the Irish Guards on the breast pocket, rolled up his shirtsleeve, and climbed up to lie on the examining couch.

  “You’ve not noticed any changes since you were in a couple of months ago?” O’Reilly asked, as he wrapped the blood pressure cuff around the upper arm and inflated it.

  “Not a thing, except those ruddy pills make me pee too much.” He grinned. “Small price to pay, I suppose.”

  “Very small. At your age, untreated high blood pressure can cause a stroke.” O’Reilly stuck his stethoscope in his ears and put the bell into the front of the elbow beneath the cuff. Then he slowly deflated the cuff and watched as the column of mercury fell, noting the pressure of 150 when the first sounds of the blood coursing in the radial artery could be heard and noting the pressure of 85 when they disappeared. Not much above the normal 120 and 80 for a younger man. “Same as before,” he said, removing the cuff. “Sit up, please.”

  The marquis swung his legs over the edge of the couch and sat up.

  O’Reilly lifted an ophthalmoscope from the instrument table and turned on its light. “Just stare at the wall over my shoulder, please.” He shone the light into the lens of the left eye. All he could see was a red blur until he had fiddled with the focusing wheel. The optic disc, the bright red retina, swam into view. There was a small light-coloured circular area in the middle of this field. That was the macula, the place where the optic nerve left the back of the eyeball; running from it were the tiny arteries and veins that supplied and drained the retina
. There were no blurring of the macular margins, no constrictions in any of the blood vessels, nor any signs of those small areas of bleeding described graphically as “flame haemorrhages.” Presence of any or all would be evidence that the hypertension was worsening. “Good, that disc’s fine,” he said, turning his attention to the right eye. “Now as our record-playing friends would say, let’s have a look at the flip side.” In a few moments he confirmed that the right retina too was healthy. “You’ll do for another couple of months.”

  O’Reilly went to his desk and sat in his swivel chair, as the marquis put his clothes back on. “Here you are.” O’Reilly half turned and handed his patient a prescription for chlorothiazide, five hundred milligrams, to be taken daily. “That’ll keep you right, John.”

  “Thank you, Fingal. Now I’ll just keep you for another minute. I’m pleased to see you are better.”

  “I’m grand.”

  “Good, because the executive of the Rugby Club would like you to attend an extraordinary meeting on Saturday evening after the game.”

  O’Reilly spun to face the marquis. “Did the daft buggers vote down the one-pound rise in dues on Wednesday night?”

  “Not at all. They passed it with barely a murmur. I hinted when I came to visit you on Tuesday morning that I thought Councillor Bishop would object. He did, but we all know he’d wrestle a bear for a halfpenny, so we soon shut him up. No, Fingal, they want to make the final arrangements for this year’s Christmas party, and if you’re up to it they’d quite like you to be in attendance.”

  “Saturday?” O’Reilly frowned, then said, “I should be able to make that. I’ll be on call, but I’m sure I’ll be able to work round it.”

  “Good,” said the marquis, heading for the door. He held one finger beside his nose. “I think they may be preparing a little surprise for you, but I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything.”

  “Surprise?” O’Reilly’s frown deepened. “What sort?”