The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories (Irish Country Books)

by Taylor, Patrick

  “Och, I’m grand, so, and it’s better late than never, and I’m all the better for seeing yourself back here, sir.” She beamed at him.

  “It’s good to be home.” O’Reilly was very glad that she was now going to assume the same housekeeping role for him. He had, while the ship was still in Portsmouth, through his solicitor brother Lars, completed the purchase of the practice and the house and its contents from Doctor Flanagan’s estate. It had taken every penny of O’Reilly’s demobilisation gratuity and a sizable loan from the Bank of Ireland. It was, he thought, a blessing that Kinky had agreed to stay. With her knowledge of the locals she’d help him rebuild the practice, the patients of which must now be seeking their medical advice elsewhere. Doctor Flanagan had had no assistant before or after O’Reilly.

  And neither would he, not for many years anyway. Apart from the need to pay off the loan, O’Reilly was looking forward to running a busy, single-handed practice and seeing a variety of patients and their ailments. He’d not delivered a baby for years and he’d always enjoyed midwifery. He wondered if he’d forgotten all he’d ever learned about diseases of women. Medicine on a battleship with a crew of more than twelve hundred healthy young men had largely been confined to treating accidental injuries—when in port the results of barroom brawls, hangovers, and venereal disease, and when in action, war wounds. He shuddered. He’d rather not think of those.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s been quite some time, Kinky,” he said.

  “A donkey’s age, sir, but you do be back so leave your suitcase and overcoat in the hall.”

  He took off his navy greatcoat, they’d allowed him to keep it, and hung it on the hall coat stand. He felt lucky to have been demobbed at last. British airmen in Ceylon had gone on strike this month to protest against the slow rate of their release from the armed forces.

  “It’s a grand tweed suit the navy did give you,” she said. “Makes a change from a uniform. Now go you into the dining room, sir, and I’ll only be a shmall-little minute, so.” She left.

  O’Reilly looked to what he automatically thought of as the port side of the house, then reminded himself he was on dry land now. This was the front parlour but had served old Doctor Flanagan as his surgery, what North American doctors would call their office. It didn’t seem as if much had changed in there. Perhaps not, but he had. Six years of war service would change any man.

  He went into the dining room. The furniture had come with the purchase of the house.

  Same old high-backed chairs, long bog oak table, cut-glass chandelier, sideboard. Even the decanters were still there. He’d get a bottle of John Jameson’s Irish whiskey tomorrow. He’d much prefer that to the navy’s traditional tipple of Plymouth gin and Angostura bitters—pink gin.

  The front doorbell rang. When he’d been an assistant here, it had been Kinky’s job to answer. Business already? He hoped so. He waited, heard voices, one soft, Cork, female, the other male, raised, harsh, Ulster. “I don’t give a tinker’s toss if he’s only arrived five minutes ago and he’s getting his afternoon tea. His tea can wait. I want til see a doctor and I want til see him right now. Right now. It was in the County Down Spectator last week that a new quack was taking over here and I need til see him, so I do. Now. I’m a very busy man.”

  O’Reilly rose. He felt the tip of his boxer’s bent nose grow cold, an indication that it was blanching, which was itself a sure sign that his temper was rising. He needed patients but not rude and demanding ones. He peered through the slightly open door.

  Kinky, jaw set, arms folded across the top of her pinafore, stood four square in the front doorway. “I’ve told you, sir, the doctor—”

  “I want him and I want him now. Now.”

  O’Reilly frowned. How dare this rotund little man in a three-piece blue serge suit and bowler hat speak like that to a woman? O’Reilly took a deep breath. Calm down, he told himself. You’re dealing with civilians. You need to build up a practice. You can’t treat them like naval ratings. And yet echoing in his head was the admonition of Warspite’s senior medical officer, Surgeon-Commander Wilcoxson, R.N., to a young Surgeon-Lieutenant O’Reilly, R.N.R., in 1939. Never, never let the patients get the upper hand. He opened the dining room door. “Can I help you, Mister…?”

  The man pushed past Kinky and came into the hall. “I dunno. Can you? Who the hell are you, anyroad?” The man squinted at O’Reilly. “Aren’t you the young pup that worked with Flanagan before the war? O’Rourke or O’Rafferty or something like that?”

  Struggling to keep his voice level, O’Reilly said, “I’m Doctor O’Reilly. Yes.”

  “Right. I’m Mister Albert Bishop. I’m a very important man round here, so I am.”

  “I’m sure you are,” O’Reilly said in his most placatory voice while thinking about large fish, ugly ones at that, in small if not puddle-sized ponds. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to talk to you, and in private.” He flicked his head dismissively at Kinky, who frowned, sniffed, and turned on her heel.

  “Come into the surgery,” O’Reilly said, overriding his intense desire to throw the man out. Some philosopher had made a crack about a long journey starting with the first step, and O’Reilly had a practice to build. He led the way. He pushed the door closed behind the man.

  A swivel chair stood in front of a flat table that had served Doctor Flanagan as a desk. O’Reilly sat in the swivel, stuck a pair of half-moon spectacles on his nose, and waved at one of two simple, hard wooden chairs. “Have a seat.”

  Mister Bishop plumped himself down.

  “And what seems to be the trouble?”

  “I’m not sick nor nothing.”

  And you insisted on seeing me and you were rude to Kinky? O’Reilly told himself again to calm down. “Then what can I do for you?”

  “You mind in 1939 we all had til get National Identity Cards?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve lost mine, and I need one to prove who I am,” he shook his head, “as if everyone round here didn’t know, so I can complete a big contract with the army at Palace Barracks outside Holywood. The stupid buggers that issue the cards say I’ve til fill out this here thing.” He slammed a government form on the table. “And I need a doctor’s signature, so I do. Like on a passport application.”

  O’Reilly shook his head and said levelly, but with a touch of steel in his tones, “And for that you barged in here, were rude to Mrs. Kincaid…” Never mind not treating a physician with the courtesy custom demanded.

  “I’m in a hurry, so I am.” Clearly O’Reilly’s attempted admonition had had no effect.

  For a moment he ached to be back on Warspite. A naval rating who’d behaved like this man might have been up before the executive officer, before his feet had touched the deck, on a charge of insolence to a superior officer. Might have. O’Reilly prided himself that he’d never had to invoke naval law. A few well-chosen words roared in what O’Reilly thought of as his quarterdeck voice and an icy stare over half-moon spectacles had always quelled the most intransigent rating. But this Bishop was a civilian, and, O’Reilly reminded himself, he needed patients, and lots of them, if he was going to make a success of this practice. He took a deep breath. “Give it to me.”

  “Sign there.” Bishop pointed.

  O’Reilly did, recognising that he had lost the “upper hand.” One day, Mister Bishop, he thought, either you are going to have to find a new medical advisor or you and I are going to rethink our doctor-patient relationship. “Here.” He wondered what the fee was for signing forms. Perhaps Kinky would know. Doctor Flanagan, as far as O’Reilly knew, had handled the practice finances and had paid O’Reilly a salary.

  “Right.” Bishop rose and headed for the door.

  “I beg your pardon,” O’Reilly called at the departing back.

  Bishop stopped, turned. “I never said nothing.”

  “Sorry. I thought I distinctly heard you say, ‘Thank you, Doctor.’”

  There w
as a small smile on O’Reilly’s face as Bishop snorted, let himself out, and slammed the door.

  O’Reilly headed back to the dining room to be met by Kinky, who had just delivered a tray of tea and hot buttered barmbrack. The scent of its spices was mouth-watering.

  “There you are, sir,” she said. “Eat up however little much is in it.”

  “Thank you, and Kinky?” He went to the tray and lifted a warm triangle of ’brack.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What do I charge for filling in a form?” He bit into the wedge. Delicious.

  “Lord bless you, sir, do not worry your head. Next time you see a patient there’s a ledger on the table. Fill in the name and what you did. I send out the accounts every month.”

  “Really?”

  She must have interpreted his relieved surprise as disbelief because she stiffened and said, “I have my School Leavers Certificate, so. I am not an unlettered woman.”

  O’Reilly swallowed his mouthful. “I never thought for one minute you were, Kinky.”

  “That’s all right then.” She smiled. “It’s my job to leave you free for the doctoring.”

  “I appreciate that.” Another mouthful. He’d missed Irish cooking.

  “And will you be starting on Monday?”

  “I will. I’m going up to Charles Hurst in Belfast tomorrow to buy a car, then I’m going down to Portaferry to see my mother and brother.”

  “Family does be important, so. Most of mine are still in County Cork near Beal na mBláth,” she said wistfully.

  “And you’ll want to see them, I’m sure. I’ll be able to give you time off soon, but I’ll need you for a week or two first, Kinky. My mother has arranged for bits and pieces she’s been storing for me to be brought up here tomorrow. You’ll need to let the movers in—I’ll tell you where things are to go.”

  “That will not be any trouble, sir.”

  “And I’ll certainly need you here on Monday on my first day as the principal here.”

  She smiled. “And I do hope you’ll soon be busy for I remember how much you enjoyed your work when you were last here, so.”

  “I hope so too—and I do have to pay the bank.”

  “I’ll be here to help, and the patients will come back and bring the fees with them, you’ll see.”

  “I just hope they’re more pleasant than that Bishop. I don’t remember seeing him when I was here before, but he is a thoroughly unpleasant man.”

  She frowned. “Mister Bertie Bishop is an influential man here and he is a terrible one for bearing a grudge, so.”

  O’Reilly wondered if his parting shot had been altogether wise, but damn it all he was going to be the local GP and he’d be damned if anybody was going to ride roughshod over Kinky—or him. He’d never tolerated that kind of thing since the day he used his newly discovered wicked right cross to flatten the school persecutor. O’Reilly had spent the last six years fighting one of the biggest bullies the world had ever known, and he’d be damned if he was going to let anyone get away with it here.

  2

  Home They Brought Her Warrior

  O’Reilly drove his black long-bonnetted Rover 16 with all the flair of the pilot of Warspite’s Walrus observation seaplane. The car was a secondhand 1945 model he’d bought on the never-never, as hire-purchase was called. He’d been lucky to get it. New cars could take as long as a year to be delivered and even used models were rare, but those in some occupations, including doctors, were given priority. The motor industry was only now switching back to peacetime production. “Poop-poop,” he shouted in what he thought might be a fair imitation of Mister Toad from one of O’Reilly’s favourite books, The Wind in the Willows. And he drove like Mister Toad. Heavy on the accelerator and brake.

  He passed elms and sycamores growing in hedgerows. The great gaunt trees were leafless, reaching with bony fingers for a cold blue sky from which an occasional snowflake drifted. Black-faced ewes heavy with winter fleeces huddled in the corners of little fields bordered in drystone walls or blackthorn hedges while the lambs, seemingly oblivious to the cold, ran and bounced, full of the joys of spring. Lord, even if real spring was still some weeks away it was good to be back home in Ulster. There had been times in the last six years when it had seemed to him that, like the crew of the Flying Dutchman, he and his shipmates were doomed eternally to sail their great gallant ship through endless growling seas. But he was home. At last. He roared out,

  And it’s home boys home, home I’d like to be

  Home for a while in the old counteree

  Where the oak and the ash and the bonny rowan tree

  Are all growin’ greener in the old counteree.

  And in all of Ireland, his own old counteree, here on the shores of Strangford Lough, was the place he loved the best.

  Overhead a skein of metallically honking Greylag geese drifted down a gentle wind heading for the islands of the lough that lay to his right. The peace washed round him and if he did hear gunfire, it would only be the report of a wildfowler’s shotgun. A far cry from the islands of the Mediterranean Sea where he’d spent tumultuous parts of 1940, ’41, and ’43, or those of Puget Sound in Washington State where his old ship had gone because a German bomb had blown a great hole in her during the Battle of Crete. After being patched up as best the dockyard could in Alexandria Harbour she had passed through the Suez Canal for her long trip for extensive repairs and modifications in Bremerton Navy Yard and replacement of her worn-out main armament.

  O’Reilly had mixed memories, some sad, some grateful, of Bremerton and the kindness of the Americans.

  He sighed. He’d needed kindness, wounded as he’d been, still was, by the death of his wife, Deirdre, in the Belfast Blitz in April 1941. He must try to put it all behind him. Start a new life back here in Ulster. But it hurt. It hurt sore.

  “Damnation.” He stamped on the brake pedal. A rusty Massey Ferguson tractor was trundling toward him coming the other way. The horse trailer behind took up more than its share of the road and O’Reilly had to pull onto the verge. As soon as he was past he sank his foot and tore off, hardly noticing the lone cyclist who on the Rover’s approach hurled himself and his bike into the ditch.

  He turned on the car radio, fiddled with the dial, and found a BBC man’s Oxbridge voice saying, “And finally in sports news; on Thursday in Paris the International Olympics Committee announced that the 1948 Games will be held in London.” More fiddling before O’Reilly found the classical music he was looking for. He recognised Mozart’s Magic Flute and let the cheerful sounds soothe him. He was able to manage a smile by the time he’d turned into the short drive up to Lars’s home. O’Reilly’d been singing along with Papageno’s “Der vogelfänger bin ich ja” and accompanying the performer’s reed flute with a series of rising “tiddle-iddle-eyes—” and falling “pom-poms.” He noticed a big Armstrong Siddeley near the house. Lars had warned Fingal of Ma’s taste in motorcars. He parked to the final “pom-pom,” got out, and crunched across the gravel to the front door where Lars and Ma stood smiling at him.

  “Fingal, welcome home, son,” Ma said, letting herself be engulfed in his hug. “Thank God you’re safe.”

  “And sound,” he said. “You’re looking well.” And she was, in her short tweed jacket and knee-length skirt.

  “I do my best,” she said, “but I’m afraid these wartime austerity fashions leave a certain amount to be desired.” She laughed. “I think us ladies complaining about clothes rationing hardly compares with what our troops had to face.”

  He picked her up and spun her round. “God, it’s good to see you, Ma.”

  “Put me down, Fingal.” Her laughter filled the hall.

  “I’m home, Ma. And it’ll be a long time before I leave again.” He set her down.

  “Home is the sailor, home from the sea,” Lars said.

  “And the hunter home from the hill. ‘Requiem.’ Robert Louis Stevenson,” O’Reilly said, and shook Lars’s hand. “And how are you, big br
other?”

  “I’m grand, Finn, and very glad to see you. Come in.”

  He followed them into the hall. Something giving off a tantalising aroma was cooking somewhere. A large liver and white springer spaniel rushed up to greet him.

  “Sit, Barney,” Lars said, and the dog obeyed.

  “Old Barney’s still going strong,” Fingal said, noticing grey in the dog’s muzzle.

  “Remember when we used to go wildfowling with him? He was a great retriever.”

  “Still is,” Lars said.

  “Let me look at you again,” Ma said. She frowned. “You’ve got older, Fingal,” she said, “but you’re still my handsome young son.”

  “It’s been nearly six years and I think you need specs, Ma,” he said, “but thank you.” He was expecting to be ushered into Lars’s spacious sitting room overlooking the narrows where the ripping tides had given the lough its Viking name, Strangfjorthr, the turbulent fjord.

  Ma said, “That’s a goose you can smell roasting.” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll be ready in about an hour. I’ve things to do in the kitchen. I know how long you’ve been gone, Fingal. There’s so much to talk about, but why don’t you boys give Barney a walk, go down to the Portaferrry Arms, and have a pint before lunch?”

  “You sure, Ma?” Fingal said.

  “Of course I am. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a bit longer. We can blether away to our hearts’ content over lunch and in the afternoon. I’ve a feeling it might snow more heavily later so go on and enjoy yourselves before it does.”

  “Let me get my coat,” Lars said.