An Irish Country Cottage

by Patrick Taylor

  She started loading her tray. “Och, sure,” she said, “it is a worry, but we’ll not solve the problems of the world by ourselves this morning, sir. I’ve the silver to polish.”

  O’Reilly left her to clear up, walked down the hall, and stuck his head into the half-full waiting room. “Morning, all.”

  A chorus of “Morning, Doctor” was accompanied by the wail of a baby, a loud sneeze from one side, and a coughing fit from the other.

  “Who’s first?”

  Fiona MacNamee rose. “Me, sir.” Her long auburn hair was shiny and neatly brushed and covered with a green headscarf.

  “Come on then, Fiona,” he said, leading her back to the surgery. “Nice day out, is it?”

  “It’s sunny, sir, and a bit of heat in the day now. Before we know it the yellow daffs’ll be up to chase away the dreariness.”

  Once in the surgery with the door shut, O’Reilly seated Fiona on one of the patients’ chairs and took the swivel chair at the rolltop desk. He set his half-moon spectacles on his nose. “How have you been since your miscarriage?” he asked. “I saw Brendan last month and he said you’d had a D and C and were recovering well.”

  “I’m all recovered from that, sir.”

  “So what can I do for you today?”

  She sat fiddling with her handbag, looked down, up, chewed her thumbnail, and looked down again.

  He thought the lines on her forehead had deepened since last he’d seen her.

  O’Reilly waited. Something was troubling her and she didn’t know how to spit it out. He leant forward, pulled off his half-moons, put a hand under her chin, and lifted her head so he was looking directly at her. “Fiona,” he said, “I want to help, but I can’t if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

  Tears started to run down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, and hauled in a jagged breath.

  O’Reilly took his hand away and said nothing. The waiting room was probably filling up, but Fiona MacNamee needed his attention and she’d get to whatever was worrying her in her own good time.

  She sniffed. “After my D and C, the doctors at the Royal told me not til get pregnant again for six months and to expect my periods to come back four til six weeks after my miscarriage. Four weeks was last Friday, the twenty-fourth. It never come until last night. I was worried sick I might be pregnant again. Brendan’s out of work. He gets the burroo money from the government, but it’s not enough.” She stared at her shoes.

  “I’m doing charlady work again and he minds the weans while I’m out. It’s killing his pride not to be providing like a man should, so it is, and we’re only just making ends meet.”

  She held her arms out in front of her in supplication and shook her head. “Doctor O’Reilly, I mustn’t get pregnant again, but we were using the rhythm method when I got poulticed the last time. I know I shouldn’t say it, but—” She inhaled, then her words came out in a rush: “Having that miscarriage was a blessing, so it was.”

  That accounted for her smile on the night when he’d told her she was miscarrying. It had been a smile of guilty relief. He could not find it in him to disapprove.

  “I love my husband very much.” She lowered her voice until it was only a whisper. “We like sex, but it’s too risky. I don’t want to be like a nun for the rest of my life. I’m only twenty-six, but we have til obey our church. I don’t know where til go for corn.”

  The poor woman was at her wits’ end. “I understand, Fiona,” O’Reilly said, “and there may be a way to help you.” He replaced his half-moons.

  She sniffed. “Honest?”

  He nodded. Their faith, be it Catholic or Protestant, was deeply held by many in Ireland, and the teachings of their church had to be obeyed, but—but O’Reilly had a ploy worthy of Donal Donnelly had he been a doctor.

  The original “pill,” Enovid, had been first approved in the United States in 1957 as a treatment for irregular and painful periods. Its purely contraceptive use had had to wait for another three years for approval.

  O’Reilly peered over his glasses and said, “I’d like to know about your periods. Are they regular?”

  She nodded. “They certainly were, when I wasn’t pregnant or breastfeeding.”

  “Every twenty-eight days?”

  “On the button.”

  Damn. O’Reilly pursed his lips and tried again. “And did they always come at exactly the same time of day?”

  “Not at all.” She smiled. “No harm til you, sir, but it’s easy til see you’re not a woman, so you’re not.”

  He smiled. “That is fair to say,” he said, “but I am a doctor—” And this was where her faith in him as a physician was going to be put to the test. “—and I think that them coming at different times of the day would make your period medically irregular and suggest a degree of hormone imbalance.” He kept a straight face. A phrase he’d picked up from an RAF officer during the war came back to him: “Bullshit baffles brains.” But his white lie was in a good cause.

  She frowned. “Well, sir, you’re the learnèd man. I know nothing about them hormones, so if you say so I’ll have til take your word for it.”

  “Good,” said O’Reilly. “I just need to take a quick look at you to make sure it’ll be alright to give you a prescription.” He inclined his head to the screens that hid the examining couch. “You know what to do. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  While she got ready, he filled out a prescription for Ortho-Novum, went to examine her, and returned to his desk. There were no medical reasons she shouldn’t take the pill.

  O’Reilly handed her the prescription when she took her chair again. “This medicine will regulate your periods. Start taking one every morning the day after your period stops. It’s one a day for twenty-one days. Your next period will start soon. Then you repeat as before. It’ll take a month or two, but,” he crossed his fingers behind his back, “the hormones that control your periods will be perfectly balanced even if your periods still don’t come at exactly the same time. I promise.”

  “If you say so, Doctor. I know you’d not be having me on.”

  Inside O’Reilly flinched. Having Fiona MacNamee on was exactly what he was doing, but if it could help her, it would be worth it.

  “There is one small problem with the medicine.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m afraid very, very few women who take it correctly—to regulate their periods and hormones—ever get pregnant while they are taking it. That’s a risk you’ll have to take.” And as he spoke he made sure his words were sonorous and serious. “I’m sorry, but if that does happen, it’s not your fault. It’s mine for recommending the treatment. You do understand that, don’t you, Fiona?”

  Fiona MacNamee grinned. “I hear you loud and clear, Doctor. I don’t think Father O’Toole can object to that. I’ll just be doing what my doctor tells me to.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said O’Reilly. “Now, a wee question, Fiona.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Have you and Brendan plans for any more children after you’ve got over your miscarriage?”

  She shrugged. “Honest? Four’s plenty. My ma had thirteen. I’m number ten. She was wore out by the time she was forty. I don’t want that happening to me.”

  “I see,” O’Reilly said. “I just wondered. Thank you.” He rose. “Pop in and see me in about three months.”

  She stood and looked at the prescription, slipping it carefully into her handbag. “I will, Doctor, and thanks a million. It’s taken a load off my mind, knowing my hormones will be—um, regulated, like.”

  He led her across the surgery and opened the door. “Safe home,” he said, and he headed back to the waiting room. Didn’t Father O’Toole make a habit of dropping into the Ballybucklebo Sports Club on Tuesday nights for a pint? He might just pop in there himself tonight and engage the good father in one of their infrequent but always enjoyable philosophical debates.

  25

  Conspiring with Him
How to Load and Bless

  O’Reilly’s boots hitting the parquet floor of the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts Sporting Club echoed in the nearly deserted room and gave counterpoint to the clicking of ivory balls. It was early in the evening, and Father Hugh O’Toole was playing single-handed snooker, a half-finished pint of Guinness on a nearby table. Tuesday evening and the good father was in the club, as much a constant reminder of the history and permanence of Ulster as the pictures of bald, bearded, and bespectacled past presidents lining the oak-panelled hall.

  Fergus Finnegan, until recently the marquis’s jockey, now retired, stood behind the hatch in the far wall through which he would serve drinks to members and their guests. He leaned on the hatch’s counter at his ease on one elbow, drying a recently washed pint glass with a tea towel depicting Ulster scenes. Scrabo Tower looked decidedly soggy. He waved at O’Reilly, who waved back.

  Donal Donnelly and Dapper Frew, pints at their elbows, sat at a circular folding table playing cribbage, their cards and wooden board laid out on the baize surface.

  Donal looked up. “How’s about ye, Doctor?”

  “Evening, Donal. Dapper.” O’Reilly paused at their table. “What news of Dun Bwee?”

  “We got started two weeks ago,” Donal said. “It took us a good ten days til clean out all the damage, but, you know, them ould stonemasons built til last. The roof and rafters is gone, but all the walls inside and out and the brick chimney are still standing. They need work, but I’ve two stonemasons from Newtownards and a brickie hard at it. The old lead plumbing’s melted in places so we’re replacing it with copper pipes. The wiring’s gone to hell and all the wood’s burnt to cinders, but my crew,” he smiled, and O’Reilly heard the pride in the man’s voice, “my crew’s getting on like a house on fire.” Donal laughed. “Like a house on fire. Would you listen til me? Sometimes the things that come out of my own mouth amaze me.”

  Dapper laughed. “Never you worry, oul’ hand. A wee bit of humour always helps.”

  “They say it’s the best medicine,” O’Reilly said, “next to a pint. Enjoy yours, lads. I’m off for a word with Father O’Toole. Incidentally, Donal. How’s wee Tori?”

  Donal frowned. “She’s still having dreams. They’re not as bad, but I reckoned I’d take her out there at the weekend. Let her see how well the cottage is coming on. It might help her.”

  “Indeed, it might,” O’Reilly said. “I hope so, and remember. Call us if you need us.”

  “We will, sir. Enjoy your pint.”

  O’Reilly walked away but could not stop a low growl in his throat when he overheard Donal say, sotto voce, “Heart of corn, that doctor.”

  “Sound man,” agreed Dapper. “None better.”

  Fingal O’Reilly had always disliked being complimented, but tonight, in the quiet of the familiar surroundings, he could feel a gentle warmth fill his chest at the overheard words. He stood outside the hatch and smiled at Fergus Finnegan.

  “The usual, sir?”

  “Please, Fergus.” O’Reilly paid. As was standard at private clubs, it cost a few pennies less than in a pub.

  “I’ll bring her over when she’s settled.”

  “Thanks.”

  O’Reilly walked over to the snooker table where Father O’Toole, sleeves of his thirty-three-button black cassock rolled up, was bending over, addressing the white cue ball and trying to pot a red into the centre pocket. Cue on ball. Click. Cue ball on red, but not squarely. Bump. Red caroming off cushion. “Blast.”

  O’Reilly handed the priest a small cube of blue chalk. “I think some of this might help, Hugh.”

  The priest turned. “I didn’t notice you come in, Fingal. Good to see you.” He rubbed the leather cue tip, the chalk making a squeaky noise.

  “And you, Hugh. How are you?”

  The man smiled. “Physically? The arthritis in my fingers gives me the jabs on cold, damp days, but I’m not complaining. The aspirin helps.” He frowned. “On the other hand, I’d be better if our fellow countrymen could obey the Great Commandment, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’”

  O’Reilly nodded.

  “Other than that and a propensity for missing easy shots,” he inclined his head to the table, “I’m grand, so.” His Cork accent was a soft salve to the cribbage players’ harsher Ulster ones in the background.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Fergus gave O’Reilly his pint, was thanked, and withdrew.

  “Cheers,” O’Reilly said, and drank.

  “Sláinte.”

  “Would you like a game, Hugh?”

  “Delighted, so,” Father Hugh said.

  “I’ve a question or two,” O’Reilly said. “Business. Would you mind if we talked while we play?”

  “Not at all.” Father Hugh busied himself collecting balls he had already sunk from the table’s six pockets and putting them on the green baize. The black ball went on the centre line at the top of the table, halfway between its upper cushioned wall and the base of an inverted triangle of fifteen reds with a pink at its apex. He placed single blue, brown, green, and yellow balls in their places on the lower part of the table. “I’m feeling generous,” Father Hugh said when he straightened up. “You break, Fingal.”

  “Fine.” O’Reilly drank, set his pint beside Father Hugh’s, went to a wall rack of cues, selected one, chalked the tip, and put the white cue ball off-centre in the D. He bent, rested the cue on the bridge made by his left thumb and index finger, squinted along the cue’s length, drew it back, and thrust it sharply forward to strike the cue ball.

  It smashed into the red triangle, scattering the fifteen reds, like pellets from a shotgun, over the tabletop. One red dropped into the centre pocket. Now the object of the exercise was alternately to sink a colour, replace the colour, and sink another red then another colour until all the reds were gone. Then the colours must be sunk in ascending order of worth.

  “Nice shot, Fingal.”

  O’Reilly smiled. “Yellow in bottom left pocket.” He lined up his shot, hit the yellow—but failed to sink it. At least he’d scored one point for the red.

  The priest looked at the balls, pointed at one red with his cue. “Centre pocket.”

  Click. The red flew straight and true and dropped.

  O’Reilly used his cue to move a bead on an abacus-like contrivance on the wall. “One point,” he said.

  Father Hugh scanned the table. The white cue ball had ricocheted to a position directly behind the blue. “Blue. Bottom left.” Click. In it went.

  “Neat,” O’Reilly said. “Five points. Mind you, it is said that being a good snooker player is the sign of a misspent youth.”

  As Father Hugh replaced the blue on its spot, O’Reilly moved the scoring bead.

  Father Hugh grinned. “I spent my childhood in a Christian Brothers Orphanage in Cork and my youth at Saint Patrick’s College in Maynooth, County Kildare, studying for the priesthood. Snooker was frowned upon in both.” He chuckled. “It was the likes of you, Fingal, that led my feet from the paths of righteousness when we both joined the club here.”

  “True,” said O’Reilly.

  “And I bless you for it,” Father Hugh said. “It is a grand game, so.” He became more serious. “Before I go for another red, what do you need to know, old friend?”

  “I don’t think you’ll mind me asking. We’ve talked about the subject before, but could you bring me up to date on your church’s exact position on contraception? Wasn’t there some kind of recent Vatican pronouncement? I know it’s still prohibited, but I’d like to try to understand why.”

  Father Hugh grimaced. “I’d not mind. It’s very simple. In Genesis, God exhorted us to multiply and fill the earth. Early theologians interpreted that to mean no contraception. Mother Church didn’t feel the need to reconsider the matter until 1930.”

  “I’m curious. Why then?”

  “Ever since an American woman, Margaret Sanger, started agitating for women’s reproductive rights around 1915, the debate about c
ontraception had been growing louder and louder. The Anglicans relaxed their ban on contraception in 1930 at the Lambeth Conference. We had to respond. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Casti Connubii, ‘Of Chaste Marriage,’ called contraception a grave sin. The Bible doesn’t mention contraception, so we’re dealing with dogma, not the Holy Writ. We really haven’t changed since then.”

  “So, the church did respond to outside pressure?”

  Father Hugh said, “You could call it that. But it was a pretty obstructive response.”

  O’Reilly watched the priest studying the table and said nothing. Obstructive? He was beginning to suspect Hugh might be pro–birth control, at least in private. “I’m starting to understand, but I’ll need a minute to think on that. Take your shot.”

  Father Hugh bent and hit another red, but failed to sink it.

  Perhaps, O’Reilly thought, the discussion is putting Hugh off his game. O’Reilly chalked his cue and began looking for his next shot. “And you’re telling me that it hasn’t even been discussed by your hierarchy since then? They were happy to rest on the earlier encyclical?”

  Father Hugh shook his head. “No. Not at all. We’re not altogether hidebound. In 1951, Pope Pius XII approved the use of the safe period. It was a huge leap forward to acknowledge that sex wasn’t only for the purpose of procreation.”

  “After what? About eighteen hundred years?”

  “Ah, we can be slow learners,” Hugh said. “Take your shot.”

  Conversation lapsed until in quick succession O’Reilly sank a red, the yellow, another red, and the black before failing to sink a red.

  “Eleven points,” Father Hugh said, and moved O’Reilly’s scoring bead. “Actually,” he said, “we do pay attention to the times. In 1963, six years ago, Pope John XXIII established a commission, it’s a mouthful, the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth, to advise him, but he died before it had reported. Any action based on its recommendations would have to be taken by his successor.”