An Irish Country Practice

by Patrick Taylor

  Lars gave them their drinks and took another armchair. He raised his glass. “Welcome to Portaferry.”

  “Cheers,” O’Reilly and Kitty said in unison.

  “Now, Finn,” said Lars, “you sounded pretty frantic on the phone, so apart from enquiring about Kenny—”

  “Growing and learning fast,” O’Reilly said. “Arthur Guinness and I are training him.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I’m going to dispense with the usual pleasantries, tell you I’m fine…”

  Which O’Reilly doubted, considering Myrna and Lars had parted, but they’d come to that later.

  “… and assume you are both well. But it must be said that, Kitty, you are looking particularly lovely.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, I’ll get on with trying to answer your telephone query, Finn. Both of you, please feel free to interrupt if you have questions.” He managed a small smile. “Lawyers can be a bit dry sometimes.”

  O’Reilly chuckled and sipped his whiskey.

  “In a nutshell, Finn, you believe a man is beating his wife?”

  “I don’t believe it anymore, I damn well know it,” O’Reilly said. “After I spoke to you on Monday I went back and she broke down and admitted it. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of. The unmitigated bastard is beating the living daylights out of the poor woman, and I want to try to understand what the law can do to protect her.”

  “I see. Do you think she’d go to the police? Lodge a complaint?”

  Hester’s words came back verbatim: “No, sir. This is to stay between you and me. I’ll not shame myself and I’ll not have Hubert shamed. Let us be. It’s between a man and his wife.” O’Reilly held up his hand. “No, I don’t. I explained I’d have to tell my colleagues, and why. Kitty has been told. She is a colleague, and so are you, big brother, although I’d prefer that Hester doesn’t know that.”

  “No reason why she should, Finn. I don’t appear in court. I’m useless as a public speaker. She’d need a barrister in a criminal case anyway.” He sipped his drink. “All I can do is advise you what the law says.” He shook his head. “And that’s precious little in this country. I’m afraid there are only three options. I’ll explain.” He took a mouthful and continued, “English common law, even before the rule of Charles II, allowed a husband to give his wife ‘moderate correction,’ but specifically forbade beatings. Historically, the U.S. was ahead of Britain in that. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties ruled in 1641 that ‘Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband, unless it be in his own defence from her assault.’ In 1878, under the Matrimonial Causes Act of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, a woman could use wife beating as grounds for divorce.”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. You know how country folk feel about divorce.”

  Lars’s smile was faint. “I’d starve if it was my only practice.” Lars glanced at Kitty. “You look puzzled.”

  Kitty set her glass on a small round wine table on tripod feet. “What about the ‘rule of thumb’? I thought a man could beat his wife with a stick, provided it was no thicker than his thumb.”

  Lars chuckled. “That canard arose because in 1782, James Gillray, the English satirist who succeeded Hogarth, published a cartoon lampooning a judge, Sir Francis Buller, for reputedly ruling that. But there’s no written record of Sir Francis or any other judge making such a statement. Not one word.”

  Despite the seriousness of the matter, O’Reilly couldn’t resist teasing Kitty. “Damn,” he said with a grin. “I’ll never get Kitty to behave now.”

  She smiled back. “This from a man who asked me to drop the word ‘obey’ from our wedding vows because, and I quote, ‘No wife of mine is going to be subservient.’ Sometimes, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, I don’t think you trying to hide the fact that you are a pussycat under that fake carapace always works.”

  O’Reilly snorted. “There’s nothing fake about my wanting to stop Hubert Doran in his tracks.” He turned to his brother. “What else can you tell us, Lars?”

  “You, or at least Hester, has three possible lines of defence. Two in civil and one in criminal court. She can apply for a nonmolestation order and, if necessary, an occupation order. The first is self-explanatory, the second means a judge can turn Mister Doran out of the family home. Order him to stay away from her. And she can even apply ex parte so the defendant does not have to be in court so she won’t have to face him. He’ll be notified in person by the RUC. That will only be a temporary measure until he can appear. It’s used in emergencies. And depending on her personal income, she may be eligible for legal aid provided she’d be willing to initiate proceedings.”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Fat chance.”

  “Theoretically she still has recourse to the criminal courts. Wives aren’t specifically included, but the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 is the foundation of all criminal prosecutions for anyone’s personal injury short of homicide. To use that, she’d need to report it to the police. Show the police doctor her injuries. Bring witnesses if possible.”

  “That would be me and Doctor Nelson, but only if she’ll go, there’s the rub.” O’Reilly frowned. “And that’s it?”

  Lars nodded. “’Fraid so. Sometimes I don’t think our society, sorry Kitty, takes women too seriously. Do you know it’s only thirty-eight years since the Privy Council, the highest legislative body in the British Empire, recognised five Canadian women as ‘persons’ in their own right and not mere chattels of their husbands?”

  “Huh,” said O’Reilly. “Pretty pathetic if you ask me.” He inhaled deeply. “There should be more we can do, but I’m not exactly sure what. Somewhere women could go to be protected, maybe? Some kind of mandatory treatment for battering husbands? Laws explicitly dealing with wife beating.” He stared at the floor, then said, “I suppose it’s folks like you and me, Lars, who are to blame for the lack of facilities, special laws. I certainly wasn’t aware of wife beating in Ulster. It wasn’t a subject covered at medical school.”

  “And I’ve just explained that what law there is, is pretty sketchy,” Lars said.

  “I don’t want to start a battle between the sexes here,” said Kitty, “but it is mostly men who sit in Parliament. Make the laws. I’m a traditionalist. I don’t agree with everything she says, but there’s that American woman Betty Friedan who published The Feminine Mystique in ’63. She identified this great gap between the rights of men and women. We can’t forget that it was only forty years ago in this country that all women were even allowed to vote. Mrs. Friedan, and more and more women like her, are beginning to agitate for better treatment. Equality.”

  “And,” said Fingal, “I’ll wager when they get it, there’ll be a great deal more attention paid to wife beating. Better laws. More facilities. But for the moment, I’m powerless to use the law as it exists to help Hester unless she cooperates?”

  “Certainly within the current legal framework,” Lars said.

  O’Reilly took a healthy swig, swallowed, frowned, and said, “There was an old RAF expression during the war, ‘Bullshit baffles brains.’ Is there no way I can scare him enough with some legal gobbledegook?”

  Lars managed a tiny smile. “I don’t know one, and what little I do know of the subject, even court orders to cease and desist are more often broken than not. From what you say, they’re not likely to go to a marriage-guidance counsellor, and I wonder if that would even be of any use in cases like this. I know of colleagues who have obtained nonmolestation orders for their clients, the wife has moved back to her family, only to have the order ignored and the wife dragged, for want of a better word, ‘home,’ anyway.”

  “That really is appalling,” Kitty said. “Poor Hester. Fingal, you’ve simply got to do something.”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, shaking his shaggy head, “but what?” He took a thoughtful sip of his drink and turned to Lars. “Thank you. I’ll have a w
ord with her before Hubert gets back from Scotland, and if she won’t talk to a lawyer or the police…”

  “It seems,” Lars said, “your efforts may all be for naught.”

  O’Reilly shrugged. For “naught”? His mouth opened. His eyes widened. A glimmer of an idea was taking shape. He looked out to the Narrows. He’d need to consult Connor on the most recent medical jurisprudence he would have learned in his forensic medicine lectures. The kind of stuff only doctors, not lawyers, would have to know. He’d say nothing, but there might just be a way to put the fear of God so deeply into Hubert Doran that he would behave—and go on behaving.

  O’Reilly had finished his whiskey. He looked at Lars, down at the empty glass, and back to his brother.

  Lars stood. “Sorry, Finn. Let me refill that.” He did so and gave the glass back to O’Reilly, who said, “Go raibh mile maith agat, deartháir, and thanks for the legal advice.” He hesitated, glanced at Kitty. “And you, Kitty, for a woman’s perspective.”

  She inclined her head.

  “Lars, there is one more thing, and you are perfectly free to tell Kitty and me to mind our own business, but we had dinner with John MacNeill and Myrna a week ago.”

  Lars sat heavily. “It’s perfectly all right,” he said. “I know I’ve been keeping you in the dark, Finn, but I didn’t want to admit,” he sighed deeply, “that Myrna and I are not seeing each other anymore. I don’t think we will be. Not for some time.”

  “We are so sorry, Lars,” Kitty said, and leant over and patted his knee. “Is there anything Fingal and I can do?”

  Lars shook his head. “I don’t really think so.” He sipped his drink. “I was always awkward with women. I don’t think I ever got over a girl called Jeannie Neely.” He looked at O’Reilly as if asking him to continue the story.

  “Kitty knows that you proposed to her on Christmas Eve 1933 and she turned you down.”

  “Said she couldn’t bear to leave Dublin and live the life of the wife of a country solicitor,” said Lars, staring into his drink.

  “I do remember, Lars,” Kitty said. “Miss Neely’s father was a judge, wasn’t he? I was walking out with Fingal then. He was very cut up about it too. He felt he should be doing more for you, but didn’t know how.”

  “Finn did the only thing that could be done. He listened. Finn has always been there when I needed him,” Lars said.

  “And Lars for me,” O’Reilly hastened to add. “It was Kitty and I who talked you into telling Myrna that you were worried she wouldn’t want to be wooed by a commoner. I thought it took courage for you to approach her, not wanting to be rebuffed again. That was in February. Were we wrong?”

  Lars sighed. “Not at all. I did think I was in love with her. I was over the moon when she said she had feelings for me. And we seemed to be able to work comfortably together when we were getting things organised about giving the estate to the National Trust once John’s gone.” He stared out the window.

  “Fingal and I were very happy for you both,” Kitty said. “We thought wedding bells were in the offing.”

  Lars inhaled. “I thought … well, I had hopes. We had our differences about my work for wildfowl preservation and her huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’, but we agreed to disagree on that. We mostly had a wonderful two weeks in Villefranche, but every so often there’d be friction. Usually over trivial things. Like which restaurant to go to. I can’t stand Italian cooking. She loves it. My musical tastes run to the classical. She thinks the Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ and the Hollies’ ‘Bus Stop,’ of all things, are two of the greatest songs ever written. Things like that. And Myrna’s never wrong—about anything. Anything. Ever.” He glanced down at his highly polished brogues.

  O’Reilly remembered her at Kirkistown a fortnight ago falling out with Lars about motorcars and whispering in Fingal’s ear, “Sometimes, Fingal, I think your brother and I are more different than I originally believed.”

  “I can’t remember who said it, but I once heard an adage that every partnership, and marriage is a partnership, has to have a sun and a moon. Myrna is a sun.” Lars sucked in a very deep breath. “You remember the way it was with Father and Ma, Fingal? Father, very Victorian. Very much the head of the household. The paterfamilias. That’s always been my idea of what a marriage should be like.”

  “Maybe.” O’Reilly smiled. “I’m not so sure Father was the boss, even if Ma let him think he was. A very astute woman, Ma. But it seemed to work for them all right.”

  Lars managed a weak smile himself. “You and Kitty seem very happy together.”

  “We are,” Kitty said, “even if I didn’t have to promise to obey the old bear.”

  O’Reilly knew he was grinning like a mooncalf.

  Lars’s smile faded. “The trouble is, I’ve been a bachelor man all my life. I was worried that I might be a bit too set in my ways. The law is very precise. I am very precise and I, well, as much as I hate to admit it, I hate being wrong too.” He looked directly at Kitty, then at O’Reilly. “It seems that I am set in my ways, and I want to be a sun too. And frankly, I’m too old to change.” There was a tone of finality in Lars’s last statement. “For the rest of the weekend after Kirkistown we seemed to be rowing over everything. We decided to call it quits, and Myrna not so much walked as stormed out.”

  “Blue blazes,” said O’Reilly. This did not sound good at all.

  “But,” Kitty said in her most reasonable voice, “that was only twelve days ago. Is it not worth trying to talk it over? See if you can patch things up?”

  Lars shook his head. “I’m no great believer in predestination, but somehow I feel I was never really cut out for marriage. You, Fingal, you love people.”

  And with a few exceptions like Hubert Doran, and Bertie Bishop before his recent reformation, O’Reilly knew it was true.

  “You have to do what you do day and daily. I think you got that from Ma. Father, except for his family and tight circle of friends, preferred the world of his work, the great writers in the English language. I take after him. I like ferretting out obscure legal documents, pottering with my orchids, working for the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, the National Trust. I’m sorry I had to let Kenny go, but I don’t miss him the way I miss old Barney. I think the single life suits me fine. And honestly, I don’t seem to be missing Myrna as much as I had anticipated.” He managed a smile. “I think I can face approaching old age with a certain amount of equanimity. Honestly.”

  O’Reilly glanced at Kitty. She was frowning. “Are you sure, Lars?”

  “Pretty much,” he said. “I think in a few more weeks, Myrna will have calmed down enough that we might still become friends, but I’m not in a rush.”

  O’Reilly shook his head. He was not as concerned for his brother as he had been when they walked in. How Lars controlled himself, O’Reilly did not know. He looked again at Kitty. Dear God, if he lost her he didn’t know what he’d do. He said, “We don’t want to interfere, do we, Kitty?”

  She shook her head.

  “We only wanted to see if we could help.”

  “And it’s greatly appreciated. I’ve always known I could call on you both, and I still do. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  O’Reilly, who had been nipping at his drink as Lars unburdened himself, finished it. He was aware of how much the atmosphere in the room had lightened. He noticed too, that his companions’ glasses were empty. He rose. “I don’t know about anyone else,” he said, “but I’d not mind stretching my legs with a stroll along Lough Shore Road.”

  “Not by any chance in the direction of the Portaferry Arms?” Kitty asked.

  “Mind reader,” said O’Reilly, “and, Lars, I know you are feeling grateful—so I’ll let you buy the drinks.”

  31

  Patience Under Their Sufferings

  “Good luck, Anne. You’ll be going off to sleep soon.” Barry stood by her side, gowned and masked, holding Anne Galvin’s left hand. Alan Strachan had been true t
o his word. He’d managed to squeeze her in at the end of Thursday’s operating list only two days after her admission on Tuesday. She lay under a blanket on the operating table gazing up at him, drowsy from the pethidine and atropine she’d been given as premedication. The narcotic would calm her, and the atropine would dry up secretions in her respiratory passage that might hinder the procedure. An intravenous drip of saline ran into a vein on the back of her right hand. Doctor Richard Clarke, the consultant anaesthetist, was injecting sodium pentothal into the drip’s tubing.

  Alan was wearing a tube-gauze surgical cap and was masked, gowned, and gloved, and the theatre sister, similarly clad, stood on the opposite side of the table’s head. A rigid bronchoscope and long biopsy forceps lay on a sterile towel on a trolley at the head of the bed. The scope was attached by rubber hoses to the anaesthetic machine. It was too large to permit any other tubing in the trachea but would itself conduct the gases and oxygen.

  “First bronchoscopy was in 1897, Barry,” Alan said. “A German doctor, Gustav Killian, used one to remove a piece of pork bone from a patient’s right bronchus. A British doctor, Negus was his name, improved on Killian’s design and it’s a Negus instrument I’ll be using today.”

  Anne’s eyes fluttered and closed.

  “Right,” said Doctor Clarke. He lifted a laryngoscope and deftly exposed her larynx. “Pop it in, Alan.”

  Barry inhaled the antiseptic odours of the operating theatre, listened to the rhythmic pumping of the bellows on the anaesthetic machine.

  Alan Strachan, bending to put his eye to the eyepiece, guided the bronchoscope with its built-in lighting system into Anne’s mouth. He gave a running commentary. “Vocal cords look good, I’m past them. Trachea. Nothing wrong there. I’m at the carina.”

  The ridge where the right and left main bronchi diverged, Barry thought.

  “Looking to the right into the upper lobe bronchus…”