An Irish Country Practice

by Patrick Taylor

  “That’s it. It will get easier every day until you can do without cigarettes—for the rest of your life.”

  “But why would you take time to help me? It’s not like I was sick nor nothing.”

  Barry smiled. “A doctor’s job is to help prevent people getting sick too, and if I can get you off the fags…” He didn’t finish the sentence. “And there’s another thing. How many do you smoke a day?”

  “Twenty.”

  “And what do twenty cost?”

  Kenny turned round on her lap.

  “Two and six.”

  “So every day you don’t smoke, put two and six away. It took me about six weeks to be able to say ‘I don’t want a cigarette.’ That’s forty-two days. You’d have saved more than five pounds.”

  “Right enough. I would, so I would.” She glanced at the window. “That’s a brave bit, so it is. I could get a wheen of new material and get Miss Moloney til run me up new curtains.”

  “And every time you look at them it’ll help remind you how much smoking costs. Discourage you from starting again.” Barry rose, sucking in a short breath. “Do we have a bargain?”

  She put the pup on the floor, stood, reached into the pocket of her pinafore, and handed Barry a packet of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes. The front of the package was a seascape with a sailor’s head inside a life ring. Barry knew from experience that inside the flap it would bear the motto It’s the tobacco that counts. “Take you them, sir, and throw them out,” she said, offering her hand. “It’s a bargain.”

  Barry shook. “I’ll keep you to it if I can. I’ll run along now, but I’ll pop round soon. Could you help me get Kenny into the car?”

  “Aye, certainly.” She followed him out and helped put Kenny and Barry’s bag in the back of the car.

  “You look after yourself, now, Doctor Laverty,” she said. “And thank you. I’ll be off to finish getting the cobwebs off the landing ceiling.”

  Barry put the car in gear, feeling pleased. Not only was Anne Galvin on the mend, she was going to try to quit smoking. “Home for you now, Kenny,” he said, “and then I’ll nip over and see how Gracie Miller is managing.” At the thought of the little pebbledash bungalow on the bay and its unhappy inhabitant, Barry felt a pang in his heart as well as in his rib. He wondered what Sue would be doing right now. He looked at this watch. Two thirty on Monday? She’d be teaching an English class. He was none too sanguine about things being as promising as the call he had just made. Still, cracked rib and Sue Nolan notwithstanding, there was a pint of Guinness and some craic with Fingal at the Duck later to look forward to.

  22

  Send Not to Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls

  Barry left Kenny romping with Arthur Guinness in the back garden at Number One and, deep in thought, made the short drive to the Millers’ bungalow on the little peninsula. Anne Galvin’s obvious concern for her husband and sons had given him food for thought.

  The last hundred yards were across bumpy ground and he drove slowly to avoid jolting his rib. As he neared the place, he noticed a maroon Hillman Minx parked outside the back garden wall. When he reached the back door, he stood for a minute until the ache in his side became tolerable, then the door was opened to his knock by an unfamiliar woman in her midthirties. She wore black and her eyes were red-rimmed. A shiver of apprehension ran up his spine.

  “Good afternoon. Who’re you?”

  “I’m Doctor Laverty,” he said. “The Millers’ doctor. I know Lewis has been very ill and in the Royal. I came to see how Mrs. Miller is.”

  There was a catch in the woman’s voice. “I’m afraid my daddy passed away at about three this morning. I’m Joy Graham. Please come in.”

  Barry inhaled deeply, and regretted it. An electric shock of pain shot through his side and he winced, trying not to show his discomfort. “I didn’t know. I’m very sorry.” A letter of notification would have been sent to the practice this morning but hadn’t arrived by the time Barry had left. Barry stepped into the dimly lit kitchen. It was then he realised that all the curtains and blinds were drawn. “How is your mother?” he asked.

  “The doctors at the hospital warned us it might be coming, but it’s hard to accept that he’s really gone. Mammy’s trying to bear up, but she’s pretty shattered. She’s in the lounge.”

  They made their way there along the dimly lit hall illuminated by two wall sconces. Here too, the curtains were closed, hiding the front room’s spectacular view. With the sun’s spring warmth blocked, the place was chilly. A wall mirror had also been covered. In this the Irish shared a custom with the Jews, who masked mirrors during the seven days of shiva, the ritual following a burial. He crossed the room to where the seventy-year-old Gracie Miller, also wearing black as custom demanded, sat in an armchair, staring into an empty fireplace. Her wavy, iron-grey hair was down, not up in its usual bun. She held something in both hands, but in the dim light he couldn’t make it out.

  “Doctor Laverty’s here to see you, Mammy.”

  She turned and looked up. Like her daughter’s, Gracie’s eyes behind her tortoiseshell-framed spectacles were red, with dark circles beneath. She wore a small gold crucifix on a chain around her neck. “Doctor. You—you’ve heard our news then? Thank you for coming. Will you have a seat?”

  “Thank you.” Barry lowered himself carefully into another armchair while Mrs. Graham took a third. He said, looking from one to the other, “Gracie, Mrs. Graham, please accept my deepest condolences.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Gracie said, and sniffed. “My Lewis was a grand man. A fine husband. A great daddy. I’m missing him sore already, but I can’t believe he’s really gone.” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks and she lifted her glasses and dabbed her eyes with a lace-edged hanky. “I’m sorry.” She swallowed, trying to brighten. “The Good Book says in Job, ‘Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.’ Lewis has no more troubles now. He’s at peace, God love him.”

  Barry was no stranger to death and yet he never knew the best words to say. The usual “My thoughts and prayers are with you at this time” or “I’m sorry for your troubles” struck him as clichéd platitudes. He saw Gracie shiver. “Are you cold, Gracie?”

  “I dunno. I don’t feel much at all. I’m numb all over.”

  Perhaps, Barry thought, he could offer comfort in a more tangible way. “Would you like me to light the fire?”

  Gracie looked at her daughter, then at Barry. “Aye,” she said. “That would be nice.” She pointed to a wicker basket beside the hearth. “The makings is in thon basket.” She sighed. “My Lewis always looked after the fire, so he did, so he did.”

  Barry said to Mrs. Graham, “I think your mother might have a bit of a chill. Perhaps a cup of tea too?”

  “Right enough. I’ll get the kettle on.” She rose and headed for the kitchen.

  Barry stood, went across, and knelt by the basket. He pulled out sheets of old newspaper, crumpled them up, and stuffed them into the grate.

  “It is good of you to come round,” Gracie said, “and Father O’Toole’s already been here til comfort us. He remembered Joy from her confirmation when she was a wee girl.” Gracie looked into the middle distance. “I remember that day too. August the twenty-seventh, 1944. Lewis and me was so proud we hardly paid any attention to the news that the Germans in Paris had surrendered two days earlier.” A tiny smile flickered across her face. Her voice was far away. “Our Joy looking like a beautiful wee bride in her white dress and veil. She was so happy.”

  Barry paused from laying kindling on top of the paper. Gracie, all unknown, was showing Barry the truth of Jack’s words of yesterday. She had shared in her daughter’s joy at that moment and now, thirty years later, she was reliving it.

  “The father read thon bit from the Psalms before he left today about ‘The days of our years are but three score years and ten.’ Lewis was seventy-five.”

  “Father O’Toole’s a good man.” Barry used tongs to put lumps of coa
l on top of the kindling, then topped off the pile with a Bord na Móna peat briquette. He turned back to the wicker basket for a second one and flinched and grimaced as his rib complained.

  “Are you all right, Doctor?” Gracie asked. There was concern in her voice.

  Barry shook his head. “I hurt a rib yesterday. Nothing serious.” He put the second briquette beside the first, laid one more piece crosswise on the first two, and stood slowly.

  “You take care of yourself, Doctor dear,” Gracie said. “We need our doctors, so we do. I could make you up a linseed poultice if you’d like. My granny swore by it, and one time when Lewis ricked his chest muscles picking up a post bag too full of letters, a poultice seen him right in no time.”

  “Thank you very much, Gracie,” Barry said, marvelling at how in the midst of her own grief, Gracie Miller could find it in her to be worried for him. “My doctor strapped it up for me. I should be fine.” He stood. “Let’s get this lit. Where do you keep the matches?”

  “There,” she said. “Fornenst the clock on the mantel.”

  Barry picked up a box of Swift safety matches in their blue box with the bird flying across its front. He crouched, took out a match, and scratched the head along the sandpaper on the box’s side. His nose was filled with the smell of phosphorous as the head burst into flame. He put the match to the newspaper and remembered winning his fire-lighting badge as a wolf cub. He’d had to lay, then successfully light a fire using no more than two matches. At the time it had been the most important thing in his young life. Dad and Mum had been proud too.

  The paper took and the kindling started crackling.

  Mrs. Graham came in with a tea tray, which she set on a table. “Cup of tea, Mammy?”

  “Aye. Please.”

  She poured. “One for you, Doctor?”

  Barry shook his head. “No thank you, Mrs. Graham. I had mine at home.” He stood.

  “Please call me Joy, Doctor.”

  “I will.”

  She gave her mother a cup and poured one for herself.

  Gracie looked up and patted Joy’s hand. “You’re a great comfort til me, Joy.”

  Barry recalled that the Millers had suffered from unexplained infertility and Joy was an only child, unusual in Catholic families in Ireland. Barry himself, though nominally Protestant, was an only child too. His father had been away at sea during the war. Barry had later learned from his mother that she and his dad had decided that as Barry had been nearly six by the time Dad had come home for good, it was too late to have more children. Perhaps he’d feel less insecure about having kids of his own if he’d had brothers and sisters?

  He was aware of the gentle smell of burning turf and glanced at the fire. The briquettes were starting to catch, but only a small piece was burning well. “Excuse me,” he said, then bent and picked up a new sheet of newspaper, opened it, and held it across the front of the fireplace, leaving a gap at the bottom of the grate so that air was sucked in through the opening. The effect was similar to that of a bellows, increasing the oxygen supply and fanning the flames. He heard a low roaring, saw flames flickering behind the paper.

  Barry removed the paper before it caught fire. The coal and the compressed turf were well alight now and already the room was starting to warm up. He folded the paper, replaced it in the wicker basket, and went back to his chair.

  “I’ve seen Lewis doing that with the paper too,” Gracie said. There was a catch in her voice, but she sat up straighter and braced her shoulders. “He was a good man, and good-looking too. See.” She handed Barry what he now recognised was a wedding photo. A beaming Gracie, who had been a beauty at twenty, was standing in the picture, her white wedding dress high collared and long sleeved, nipped tight at the waist and dropping to a narrow, ankle-length skirt from under which peeped white shoes. There was a huge bow on her left hip. The whole was topped by a now thrown-back veil. Her left elbow rested on the back of a carved wooden chair and she held a bouquet in her right hand. Young Lewis sat in a chair. His dark hair was oiled and parted in the centre. Dark suit over a white shirt. Trousers severely creased. A floral buttonhole in his left lapel. Both hands on his knees. Whereas Gracie was looking directly into the camera, Lewis for some inexplicable reason was glancing off to his left. Barry handed the picture back. “You…” He hesitated. Made or make? “Make a very handsome couple,” he said.

  Gracie set the picture in her lap again. She managed a weak smile. “Aye,” she said, “we did. And now I have my memories.” She reached out and took Joy’s hand. “And I have my family. My grandson Rory’s a great lad and wee Betty’s as lovely as her mother.”

  “Mammy,” Joy said, and blushed. She moved back to her chair.

  “Memories can be good, very good,” Barry said, suddenly remembering a day in 1953, the day before he’d gone off to boarding school for the first time. He was thirteen. He and his father passing a rugby ball back and forth. And then, six weeks later, after being confined to the school with no family visits, barely being able to control his excitement when Dad and Mum had picked him up and taken him home to Ballyholme for the half-term holidays. Three whole days with no prefects, no school rules, no algebra, and best of all, Mum’s home cooking.

  Gracie nodded. “And when there’s trouble, family and friends is the most important things of all, so they are. You—and your Miss Nolan—remember that, sir.”

  “I will,” he said. “We will.” He swallowed and felt the beginning of a lump in his throat. The fire was well alight now and he remembered his vision of sitting here with Sue, a cosy fire burning in the grate, a storm raging outside. The storm was inside today.

  “I’m going til stay here with Mammy,” Joy said, “until the lying-in, the wake, the removal, and the funeral’s all over. My Des and our children are coming for the wake and funeral.”

  Barry barely suppressed a shudder. The custom in the Catholic community called for the embalmed departed to lie at home in an open coffin, there to be visited by friends and relations who would pay their last respects and offer comfort to the widow. Keep her company. The wake, attended by Lewis, would be a social gathering, and food and drink would be served prior to the sealing of the coffin and its “removal” from house to hearse to be carried to the chapel for the service and thence to the graveyard. He knew it was all to offer immediate and constant support to the bereaved, but Barry found the whole idea of an open coffin with Lewis Miller’s face in full view macabre. Would that indeed be a comfort to his widow? To each his own. “That’s good,” Barry said. “It’s important you’re not on your own, Gracie.”

  “She’ll not be, Doctor. And when all the formal things is over here, Mammy’s coming til live with us in Portrush until she’s back on her feet, so she is.” Joy looked fondly at her mother. “We’d already built a granny flat for her and Daddy, and all.”

  Gracie turned to her daughter. “Doctor Laverty and his fiancée came to look at the house, Joy. As you know, Doctor, Lewis and me, we were planning to sell here and move in with Des and Joy. But och.” She glanced at the photo in her hands. “Now … now all my memories is here. I want to live out my days here. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Doctor. I know you and Miss Nolan liked the wee house.”

  “We did, but I understand.” And unless Barry could mend fences with Sue, Gracie’s decision might now, from his point of view, be of academic interest only. If things did work out, though, getting another house would not be impossible. Finding another Sue would.

  “Could you not persuade Mammy til move in with us permanently, sir? We’d love to have her,” Joy said.

  Barry shook his head. “I’m sorry, Joy, and I can understand how you’d feel. But I can see how you want your familiar things round you too, Gracie. I’d suggest you do move in with Joy for a while, see how you like it, then decide what’s best.”

  Gracie nodded, brushing away a tear. “Aye.” She sipped her tea. “That makes good sense.”

  Barry read Joy’s smile as one of thanks.
>
  He rose with care, returned the photo to Gracie, and put another briquette on the fire. A spasm hit and he grimaced.

  “Poor Doctor Laverty has a sore rib,” Gracie said.

  “Och dear.” Joy tutted and said, “It was quare nor decent of you, sir, dropping in to see how Mammy was, like. But if you’re stiff and sore, run you away on home and put your feet up. We’ll be fine. Honest.”

  Barry nodded. “Thank you.” Two grieving women had time to be concerned about him. Humbling. He said, “Once again, my condolences to you both.” He put a hand on Gracie’s shoulder. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” He knew a lot of GPs would give recently bereaved people sleeping pills, but after his experience with Eileen Lindsay he was hesitant. There was chloral hydrate if Gracie really needed something.

  “No, Doctor. It was thoughtful of you to call. Thank you, but I’ll manage.”

  “Don’t hesitate to ring if you do need us.”

  “I don’t think I will, Doctor,” Gracie said. She smiled at Joy. “Sure amn’t I going til have my wee girl here and then my whole family about me? Like I told you. Family’s the most important of all, but you don’t have to live in each other’s pockets. When I get my feet under me, I’ll be right as rain on my own back here.”

  She looked fondly at her only daughter. “And sure doesn’t Des have a motorcar and isn’t it only about an hour and a half from Portrush to Ballybucklebo?”

  23

  Days When Work Was Scrappy

  “Is it the Duck you’re heading for, Doctor?” Barry had parked outside Number One, as it was usually the very divil to find a spot outside the pub. As he passed the front door, Kinky had appeared.

  “I am, Kinky. You for home?”

  “I am. It’s just a wee doddle and I thought the walk would do me good, so I didn’t get Archie to pick me up.” She fell into step beside him. “And how’s your chest, sir?”