An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

by Patrick Taylor

  “Divil the one,” Barry said. “What we think it could be is bad enough.” His shudder was obvious, and O’Reilly understood why. “He must be stark-raving bonkers to refuse help from his friends—especially when one of them is an eminent neurosurgeon like Charlie Greer.”

  “Calling us friends might be pushing it. Ronald never really had friends at medical school. I think he’s just scared silly and won’t or can’t face the facts.” O’Reilly rang the bell under Fitzpatrick’s brass plate, which was affixed to the wall beside a brown-painted front door.

  The door was opened. “Fingal. Young Laverty. Do come in. We’ll go through to my surgery.” Fitzpatrick’s smile was, like his chin, weak. He stood with his hands behind his back, leaning forward, looking like one of those African secretary birds. Fitzpatrick led the way along a hall still floored with faded brown linoleum. The same Landseer print, Monarch of the Glen, hung askew on one wall.

  Nor had he changed the paisley-patterned wallpaper in his surgery. Perhaps, O’Reilly thought, Fitzpatrick feels about paisley the way I do about roses.

  “Please sit, gentlemen,” Fitzpatrick said, and indicated several kitchen chairs. He himself retired behind his desk, which was on a raised dais. “Now, Fingal,” he said, “you were not at all clear on the phone this morning about why you wanted this meeting, but apart from the unfortunate incident when you and Greer tried to intrude on my private life—”

  O’Reilly saw Barry flinch. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Apart from that, I must say your attitude and that of your lovely wife at the reunion was most collegial. Most. I enjoyed our lunch in Davy Byrnes enormously.”

  “Thank you,” O’Reilly said.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  O’Reilly took a deep breath and made a tactical decision before saying, “Ronald, I came to say sorry. It was out of place for Charlie and me to try to interfere.”

  Fitzpatrick’s sniff and Barry’s raised eyebrows came as one. I know, O’Reilly thought, that young Laverty doesn’t believe I’ve ever known how to apologise, but honey catches more flies than vinegar.

  “Thank you, Fingal. I am a very private man. I’m sure your concern was well meant, but…” He held up his right hand and O’Reilly saw the bandages round the thumb and index finger. “I have always had a very high tolerance for pain. To this day I refuse local anaesthesia for dental fillings. As regards the blisters, I have everything under control. I always keep specially prepared dressings for burns. It’s a County Leitrim cure. One part beeswax to four of mutton fat are melted, camomile flowers are added, and linen bandages soaked while the mixture is still liquid, then allowed to solidify. When applied, the body’s heat melts the fats, the plaster adheres tightly, and keeps air and infection out. In ten days I shall be as right as rain. Never fear.” His smile was condescending.

  “I’ve heard of that before,” said Barry, “and of camomile, butter, and goose dung for treating scalds.”

  “I’m a firm believer in country remedies, Laverty,” Fitzpatrick said, “but even I might draw the line at goose dung.” Back on his home territory, Fitzpatrick seemed to have reverted to the supercilious air that had neither won him friends nor influenced people when he was a student at Trinity College in Dublin. O’Reilly scanned the small shelf of books behind Fitzpatrick’s desk but didn’t find a copy of the classic he had been reading at Davy Byrnes.

  O’Reilly thought fast. Regardless of what might ail Fitzpatrick, neurological disorders rarely had the urgency of acute conditions such as bleeding or fainting. Unless, of course, there had been bleeding into the skull. But that clearly wasn’t the case here. A diagnosis didn’t have to be made instantly, and when—not if, but when—Fitzpatrick did agree to see Charlie, the surgeon would not put Fitzpatrick on any waiting list. He’d be seen at once as a professional courtesy. O’Reilly had a little leeway. Today, when Fitzpatrick was so convinced of the rightness of his own treatment, any insistence on him going to see Charlie might close the doors forever to getting him looked after properly until it was too late.

  Perhaps a more subtle method would be to feign all sweetness and light today and make another approach after some time had passed? “I’m delighted you’re taking care of yourself,” O’Reilly said. “Charlie and I only spoke to you because Kitty was really worried and persuaded us to. You know she’s a neurosurgery nurse.” He ignored Barry’s wide-eyed stare. He’d have to remind the young pup to think twice before playing poker. He’d never be able to bluff.

  “Your wife, Fingal, is a very handsome and caring woman, and you are a very lucky man.”

  O’Reilly was convinced Fitzpatrick had harboured an unrequited attraction to Kitty, perhaps even love, since their student days. “She even asked Barry and me to come round today to make sure you were all right and to ask—ask, mind you—” O’Reilly debated for a second and concluded it was worth going ahead. “—if you’d not reconsider seeing Charlie, let him give you the once-over? Just to be on the safe side. She says it would set her mind at rest.”

  “Shan’t be necessary,” Fitzpatrick said, “not one bit, I can assure you both, but I can understand her concern. Please thank her for me. I am touched.”

  All the flags were up in O’Reilly’s assessment of Fitzpatrick’s frame of mind. At this moment, trying to bully the man into doing what was the right thing for him would have about as much chance of success as a heifer on roller skates dancing Swan Lake. There was much to be said for letting time elapse, although eventually getting the right diagnosis was imperative. “Why not thank her yourself?” O’Reilly wondered why he had a mental image of a wet and wrinkled Archimedes leaping out of his bath yelling, “Eureka!” “She and I are going to Barcelona on Friday for a week to see an old friend.” And to lay a ghost to rest from Kitty’s past. “But when we get back, why not come for tea?” And she and I can gang up on you.

  There was a glint in the man’s eyes when he said, “Thank you, Fingal. I’d like that very much.”

  O’Reilly rose and nodded to Barry, who joined him.

  “Thank you for coming,” Fitzpatrick said. “Bon voyage, Fingal. I’ll look forward very much to seeing you and Kitty in a week or so.” He smiled at Barry. “You are a very lucky young man to have Fingal as your principal.”

  “I know,” Barry said, “even if sometimes I can’t always follow his methods.”

  “Ah,” said Fitzpatrick, “you’ll learn, young man, that all doctors have their own little ways, but it has been my experience with your senior that when he sets his mind on something he seems always to get it.”

  “Och,” said O’Reilly, “if we weren’t all of the same stock I’d say it was only the luck of the Irish.” He turned and began to walk away. “We’ll see ourselves out, Ronald. Come on, Barry, and we’ll give Arthur his run.”

  * * *

  O’Reilly took a stick from Arthur’s mouth and stepped aside as the big dog shook himself dry. “Begod,” said O’Reilly, relishing the late-September sun’s warmth on his face and the sparkly evening shimmer of the lough between the beach and the softening Antrim Hills on the far shore. In the distance, a V of geese cut diagonally across the sky and the two men stopped to watch them. “I’ve always had a soft spot for September. Start of rugby season, opening of wildfowling, gentle evenings like this.”

  “Soft spot? Soft in the head, more likely,” Barry said, sotto voce.

  “Huh,” said O’Reilly, beginning to head for home. “Heel … and that applies to Arthur and impertinent young partners.” But he was smiling. Now that he felt he’d done his best for Ronald Fitzpatrick, even if the outcome wasn’t immediately satisfactory, O’Reilly’s mood was much lighter. He was happy to be teased by young Barry Laverty, physician and surgeon, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O. The boy made him as proud as if he’d been his own son.

  “Away,” said Barry with a grin, “off and chase yourself, revered senior partner,” and fell into step at O’Reilly’s shoulder.

  They strode in th
e companionable silence of two men between whom a solid friendship, based not a little on mutual respect, was growing. Underfoot the sand was damp and firm where half an hour before the ebbing tide had been carrying bladder wrack and kelp fronds, flotsam and jetsam back out to sea.

  “How’s about ye, Doctors?” A perspiring, barefoot man in an open-necked collarless shirt with his corduroy trousers rolled up above his knees straightened up from bending to use a sand rake.

  “Grand altogether, Leo,” O’Reilly said. The man had been a patient for fifteen years, ever since first having to see Cromie for a case of genu valgum—knock-knees. Leo held up a burlap sack. “I’ve done very good, Doc, so I have,” he said. “Would you like a few cockles for your tea, like?”

  Boiled, the bivalve molluscs were delicious with salt and vinegar. “Pop some in here,” O’Reilly said, and held out an oversized hanky, which Leo filled with the shellfish, each grooved with a fan-shaped pattern on its shell. “Thank you very much.” O’Reilly knotted the hanky at the corners. “Don’t let us hold you up, Leo. Good to see you.”

  “Enjoy your tea, sirs,” Leo said, and bent back to his work singing to himself,

  … sweet Molly Malone,

  as she wheels her wheelbarrow

  through streets broad and narrow

  crying cockles and mussels alive, alive oh …

  “I miss not having Kinky after five in her kitchen,” O’Reilly said as he and Barry resumed their walk and Arthur bounded ahead, “but I’ve known how to cook these fellahs,” he held up the bulging hanky, savouring its fresh, fishy smell, “since I was a wee lad in Holywood. You soak them for a few hours in cold salt water and they spit out any sand they may have ingested, then you boil them. If they don’t open then, don’t eat them. Those ones are dead already and may be toxic. We’ll have the good ones tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be out,” Barry said. “Having dinner with Dad and Mum in Bangor. But you and Kitty enjoy.”

  Tom Laverty, O’Reilly thought, navigating officer on Warspite. He glanced out to sea, and as if he needed a further reminder of the Royal Navy, saw the RNR coastal minesweeper HMS Kilmorey heading down the lough. As always, seeing the grey Kilmorey, tender to HMS Caroline, a veteran of Jutland and moored in Belfast as a training facility, brought back ghosts from his past. Kitty wasn’t the only member of the family with one of those.

  And as always he chased the phantasms back to their lairs by concentrating on the present. Another denizen of these familiar beaches was heading their way. Donal Donnelly, carroty hair sticking out from beneath his duncher, was walking on the sand dunes with his purebred racing greyhound Bluebird by his side. “Hello, Doctors,” said Donal. “Out for a wee dander?” Somehow, O’Reilly thought, the tone of the man’s voice did not have its usual cheerful innocence, and Donal was not smiling.

  As Arthur and Bluebird, old friends, exchanged mutual bottom sniffs and a lot of tail wagging, Barry said, “Hello, Donal. How are Julie and Tori?”

  Donal sighed. “They’re grand, fit as fleas, and Tori never shuts up. I think her mammy, when she was carrying the wee dote, was scared by Cissie Sloan.”

  O’Reilly had to chuckle. It was an ancient Ulster superstition that exposure to external influences while still in the womb could produce lasting effects after a baby’s birth. He could understand why Donal might think that proximity to the biggest chatterbox in the village and townland could lead to his daughter’s loquaciousness. And yet there was still no smile and O’Reilly knew Donal was daft about his wife and daughter. “Something the matter, Donal?”

  Donal sighed mightily, but said nothing.

  “Donal?” O’Reilly said. “Is there something we can do for you?”

  “It’s Bluebird, Doc,” Donal said. “I think she’s pregnant. And I’m dead worried, so I am. I paid Dapper Frew a quare clatter of the oul’ do-re-mi for his Athlone Racer—he’s by Breckonhill Brave out of Loughbrickland Lass—for til stand at stud. That’s quite a pedigree, you know.”

  “So why are you worried? The pups’ll be worth a fortune, surely?” Barry said.

  Another great inhalation. “I dunno. You see, she come on heat eight weeks ago. I’ve had her in her dog run ever since. The local doggy Romeos have been round, but I didn’t think they could get near her. I started putting Dapper’s dog with her every other day from six days after she started, but she’d not accept him for another six days after that.”

  “But,” Barry said, “I thought when a bitch was on heat she was receptive to dogs?”

  Donal shook his head. “Nah. Early on it’s just to signal she’s getting ready til ovulate. If a dog goes near a bitch that’s getting going, she’ll simply plant her arse on the ground and snap at the fellah.”

  “Like ‘Not tonight, dear, I have a headache’?” Barry said.

  “You’re dead on, sir,” Donal said, “but once the bitch has ovulated she’ll let a male serve her.”

  O’Reilly was impressed. Donal sounded like a professional canine reproductive specialist. “So how do you know when she’s ready?”

  “You don’t, because heat can last anywhere from five til twenty-one days. What we do is put the sire in with her every other day after six days since she started showing signs. She’d no interest in the Racer until twelve days from when she started.”

  “Well, everything should be all right,” Barry said with a smile.

  “Aye. Mebbe,” said Donal. “I dunno.”

  O’Reilly was distracted by the plaintive cry of a curlew as the brown, curve-billed bird glided overhead. He always wondered if they were in permanent mourning.

  “Why don’t you know, Donal?” Barry asked.

  Donal glanced all around as if fearing to be overheard and then lowered his voice so that Barry and O’Reilly had to crane forward to hear his next words. “See that there Mary Dunleavy? See her? No harm til her, but…”

  From that line alone, O’Reilly knew the publican’s daughter was about to come in for criticism.

  “See thon Brian Boru of hers, that Mexican mariachi dog? She lets him wander. The wee bugger.”

  O’Reilly’s mouth opened. He glanced at Barry. Both his eyebrows had shot up. “You don’t mean—?”

  “I do. In soul I do. I caught the wee rodent wriggling out from under the wire of Bluebird’s pen the day before she stood for Dapper’s Athlone Racer. I’d swear the randy wee bollix had a grin from one sticky-up ear til the other. And them innocent big brown eyes don’t fool me.”

  “And you’re worried—”

  “I am that, so I am.”

  “But surely a wee Chihuahua couldn’t—?”

  “Could he not? Could he not? He’s a feisty wee weasel. I’ve seen how he used to browbeat poor ol’ Arthur Guinness there, drinking his Smithwick’s right out from under his nose…”

  “Actually,” said O’Reilly, “they’re quite good friends now.”

  “Is that fact?” The intelligence didn’t seem to interest Donal.

  O’Reilly, picturing the coupling and the look, as described by Donal, on Brian Boru’s face, had very great difficulty controlling his laughter.

  Donal’s features adopted the screwed-up set of contortions they always assumed when he was wrestling with a thorny intellectual problem. “And there’s no way til tell until she’s pupped, and that’ll be about the week of October the sixteenth.”

  O’Reilly frowned. “I understand. If she has greyhound whelps—”

  “I’m in like Flynn.” Donal rubbed his hands and smiled. “Grues can have as many as twelve pups.”

  O’Reilly had never understood why Ulsterfolk called greyhounds “grues.”

  “Dapper gets pick of the litter—that’s always part of the stud fee, and wait til youse see what I’ll get for Julie and Tori for Christmas when I’ve sold the others. There’ll be grue-men queuing up from my house at Dun Bwee til Crawfordsburn Village making offers, so there will.” He rubbed his hands together, much as O’Reilly pictured Ebenezer Scrooge doing a
s he gloated over his pile of gold.

  “But if thon wee bugger has got til her first.” Donal’s indrawing of breath was vast. “After paying Dapper, I’ll not have two stivers to rub together. I’ll have to do something, because who the hell’s going to want to buy—I don’t know what they’d be. Greyhuahuas? Chihuahounds? I don’t suppose either one of youse would have any notions?”

  Barry frowned before saying, “Not right off the top of my head, Donal. Canine fertility wasn’t one of the subjects I studied in zoölogy in first year at Queens. Any ideas, Doctor O’Reilly?”

  “Leave it with us, Donal. Maybe a notion will occur, but for now I think you’re just going to have to be patient.”

  “Och, thanks for listening, Docs.”

  “Let’s hope you’ve nothing to worry about and we’ll soon hear that mother and children, of the right breed, are doing well,” O’Reilly said. “You’ll let us know, won’t you?”

  “Aye, I will,” said Donal. “Come on, girl.” And he and the enceinte Bluebird, who might well soon be the mother of the strangest-looking puppies ever seen in Ballybucklebo, headed off along the beach.

  “Heel, Arthur,” O’Reilly said. “Home, Barry.” And started to walk.

  “Have you any ideas what Donal could do if he’s stuck with a bunch of hybrids?” Barry asked.

  “Not one iota of a notion,” O’Reilly said, “but I don’t think we need worry.”

  “Why not? Without the money from the sale of the pups, he’s lost the cash he paid to Dapper.”

  O’Reilly shook his head and laughed out loud before saying, “I’ll bet you a pound that if the worst does happen, Donal Donnelly, probably as good a con man as Ferdinand Demara, the Great Imposter, will come up with a solution himself, and probably have more money at the heels of the hunt than if Bluebird has purebred whelps.”

  Barry tilted his head, closed one eye, and scrutinised O’Reilly. “All right,” he said at last, “you’re on.” He held out a hand to seal the bargain, but withheld a shake until he’d said, “But knowing Donal, I want odds of two to one.”