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

by Taylor, Patrick

  “Why? Hernia? Amn’t I a man? If it should be called anything, it should be a hisnia, and it’s not nothing like that anyroad. It’s a groin abscess and I want it fixed, Doctor.” He shook his head. “You call sitting there and getting a fellah to cough an examination? Jasus, a horse trader would look more carefully at a horse, so he would.”

  “Mister Ward, I really want to get a second opinion from a specialist at the Royal Victoria Hospital.” Two of O’Reilly’s friends from Trinity, Charlie Greer and Donald Cromie, were surgeons there.

  “Aye. Well. You can want. I’ve no time til be buggering about in Belfast, and them specialists cost a brave wheen of money, so they do. Why will you not do it here for me?”

  “I’m sorry,” said O’Reilly, realising that he was going to be sending away a dissatisfied customer. Better that than a dead one; although, oddly enough, if he acceded to the patient’s request and that gloomy outcome occurred he was more likely to be forgiven by the locals than if he turned the man down. Never mind. The patient’s health came first. “I wish you could under—”

  The man and the colour in his cheeks both rose. He pulled up his pants and began to close his fly.

  O’Reilly flinched.

  “I understand that you’re useless til me, Doctor.”

  “Lancing your hernia might kill you,” O’Reilly said.

  “Away off and feel your head.” He buckled his belt, grabbed his bowler, headed for and opened the door. “Hernia, my aunt Fanny Jane. If you won’t fix it, I’ll just thole it, so I will, but just you wait till I put out the word you never even examined me properly, never mind put me right.” Country patients had great faith in the powers of the examination—and of the X-ray. “I’m paying you nothing, neither. You don’t know your arse from your elbow.” He buckled his belt and slammed the door behind him as he left.

  O’Reilly fished out and lit his pipe. He needed a minute to think. He’d been consulted three times and had only sent one customer away satisfied, and although Kathy Dunleavy was a nice young woman she’d hardly be rushing round telling the world how wonderful the newly returned doctor was. What he’d done for her Mary was routine. What would Bishop and Ward be saying and to whom? That neither had paid was not his real concern. The damage they might be doing to his reputation—he blew out a cloud of smoke—hardly bore thinking about.

  Setting his pipe in an ashtray he walked back to the waiting room. Empty. No patients. Patience, he told himself and smiled. The words had the same Latin root, patiens, which meant “waiting” or “suffering,” and both described what he was doing right now. He could only hope that by waiting a bit longer his worry, which in fairness could hardly be called suffering, would be over and his surgeries full. He brightened, remembering Kathy Dunleavy’s parting remark. Maybe before supper he’d pop into the Black Swan, or Mucky Duck as the locals called their pub.

  4

  And Everything in Its Place

  The tips of O’Reilly’s ears tingled after his short walk from Number One, past the maypole, and across the Main Street to its junction with Station Road, the corner site of the Black Swan Pub. In the icy, darkening evening, the snow that had stopped falling on Saturday had returned. The flakes were large and damp and barely lay on the pavement.

  He heard the sounds of laughter and chatter even before he pushed through the pub’s doors. Once inside he felt as if he’d walked into a wall of warmth coming from a blazing turf fire and a web of tobacco smoke from pipes and cigarettes. As he brushed flakes from and then unbuttoned his coat he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dim lighting.

  The single, narrow room had not changed since his last visit almost seven years ago. There was still sawdust on the plank floor, still the low black ceiling beams, and a few tables and occupied chairs in front of a long bar counter. Bottles of spirits on shelves behind the bar kept company with two barrels of the product of Mister Arthur Guinness and Sons, Saint James’s Gate, Dublin, lying on their sides. Each had a brass spigot for drawing off the stout hammered into its bung hole near the bottom of the lower rim. A spile to regulate the release of carbon dioxide had been driven into the middle of each barrel at the top of its upper circumference.

  O’Reilly’s ears were assailed by a loud hum of men’s conversation. Women were not permitted in public bars in Ulster, and the Duck boasted neither a snug nor a lounge bar where women could go—if escorted. Dogs, however, were allowed in, and O’Reilly noticed a border collie under one table, a lurcher—a collie greyhound cross much favoured by poachers for its intelligence and speed in pursuit of game—under another. Its owner had bright carrotty hair. Maybe, O’Reilly thought, one day he’d get himself a Labrador—but not until the practice was busier.

  The rising and falling tides of noise stopped as if a sluice gate had been closed, and he was aware of every eye being fixed on him. “A very good evening to this house,” he said, but he might as well have been talking to a room full of deaf men for all the response he got. He’d seen Western films where a stranger comes to the town saloon and is ignored. It was often the setup for a fight scene—in Westerns and in the slums of Dublin where ruggy-ups, bare-knuckle fights, were commonplace, but not in a quiet little place like Ballybucklebo.

  There was space at this end of the bar so he moved there, smiled at a big man in an army greatcoat and duncher—probably recently demobbed like O’Reilly—and took his place leaning on the bar top and putting one foot up on a brass rail beneath. He looked more closely at his companion. “You’re Declan Finnegan,” O’Reilly said. “I set a broken arm for you in ’39. You were going to join the Tank Regiment when I left here for the navy.”

  The general level of conversation had risen to its previous levels.

  “That’s right, Doctor O’Reilly.” Declan smiled. “And my arm mended rightly. You done a great job. And I was a tanker. I fought in Sicily and I drove a Cromwell tank in Normandy, so I did, but I was demobbed in late ’45 and come home, you know. I heard you were coming back. It’s good to have you here, sir, so it is. I wonder,” he hesitated, “I wonder if I could ask you a wee doctoring favour, sir?”

  O’Reilly hesitated. He generally refused such requests on social occasions and had no intention of letting his pub become an annex to his surgery. After all, he was on his own time here, but for just this once said, “Fire away.” He’d get an opportunity sooner or later to make his position on pub consultations clear.

  “What’ll it be, Doctor O’Reilly?” a voice said from behind the bar counter.

  O’Reilly turned to see the barman. Willie Dunleavy had packed on the beef since his soccer-playing days. He’d be about thirty. He wore a flowery waistcoat and his shirt sleeves were held up by satin-covered elastic garters.

  “I mind my da, God rest him, who used to own this place, saying you were fond of your pint when you worked here before the war.” He held out his hand. “Welcome back, sir, and thanks for seeing our wee Mary.”

  O’Reilly shook hands. “Thank you. I was sorry to hear about your father.”

  Willie shrugged. “Aye,” he said. “Thon cancer’s not nice, but … och…” He took a deep breath. “And will it be a pint, sir?”

  “Please.”

  “You’re on,” said Willie, went to the two barrels, and started to pour.

  O’Reilly turned back to Declan Finnegan. “You were going to ask a favour, Declan?”

  “I wonder, maybe someday soon, if I could bring the missus til see you? We think she’s pregnant.”

  “Of course, of course. Send her round about nine tomorrow.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Fine.”

  Declan hesitated. “I’ll come too,” he said. “Melanie doesn’t speak much English yet. She’s learning, but—”

  “Melanie? She’s French?”

  Declan nodded. “Aye. I met her in 1944, near Mont Pinçon. She’d volunteered to help the army doctors. I’d been wounded, only a toty wee scratch, like. I was back on my feet in time to rejo
in my squadron and fight at Falaise and go the whole way to the Rhine River, but I never forgot Melanie Devereux, so I didn’t. Her and me got married last May, after the war in Europe was over.”

  “Good for you both. More power to your wheels. And the French won’t be a problem. Moi, je parle un tres petit peu.”

  “Merveilleux,” Declan said. “Moi aussi.”

  “And that’s enough of the oul parley-voo from you, Declan Finnegan, so it is,” Willie said with a grin. “Here’s your pint, Doctor O’Reilly, sir, and like Kathy said, it’s on the house. A wee welcome home. I hope you’ll take a brave wheen more in here over the years.”

  “I’m beginning to think I will,” O’Reilly said, hoping this and his easy conversation with Declan were more small steps to his gradual reacceptance in the village and townland. He lifted his pint, said, “Sláinte,” and took a hefty pull. “Mother’s milk,” he said, grinned, and fished out his pipe.

  The Murray’s Erinmore Flake tobacco was going well when it was time for his second pint and the one he bought for Declan Finnegan.

  “I mind you was quare nor keen on the rugby football, sir,” Declan was saying. “You should have a wee word with my younger brother, Fergus. He plays for the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts’ Junior Fifteen.”

  “So you’ve got the club going again?” Most athletic pursuits had been interrupted by the war.

  “Och aye. The marquis of Ballybucklebo’s their patron. He’s played for Ireland, you know.”

  O’Reilly felt a draught as someone opened the door, half-turned, and saw Bertie Bishop followed by Wowser Ward, of all people.

  O’Reilly ignored them and said to Declan, “I did know about his Lordship’s caps.” O’Reilly had three of his own for representing his country, but it would be boastful to say so. Joining the club would increase the circle of his acquaintances—and possible patients—and put him back in touch with a game he loved. “I will join, Declan. How’d I get ahold of your brother?”

  “He’s no phone in his house. He’s a jockey. Rides for the marquis. I’ll tell him to come and see you, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  O’Reilly glanced over. A table that he’d noticed upon arriving had been occupied by three obviously working-class men in dunchers and with mufflers wrapped round their necks, one man smoking a clay pipe. They now vacated their places in favour of the great Panjandrum and his friend. O’Reilly had a quick mental image of Mister Bertie Bishop saying, “I’m a very important man round here, so I am.”

  “’Scuse me.” A tall, narrow-faced patron pushed past O’Reilly to get to the bar and call an order. “Pint and a packet of crisps, please, Willie.”

  “Right, Archie.”

  O’Reilly had to think. Archie. Archie. Got it. “Hello, Mister Auchinleck,” he said. The man shared a surname with a famous British general of Ulster stock who’d taken over command of the British Army in the Middle East after Warspite had left for Bremerton.

  “Doctor O’Reilly. It’s yourself. I hardly noticed you there. It’s a bit dim in here. I heard you was coming back, so I did. Mrs. Kincaid’s been putting the word around. If me or the missus or our wee lad get sick we’ll come and see you, so we will.”

  Good for you, Kinky, O’Reilly thought. “The surgery’s open every morning at nine o’clock,” he said. He felt a tugging at his sleeve, turned, and saw Bishop. “Yes, Mister Bishop.”

  “I’ve not time for til come til your surgery. Bend you your head so I can whisper.”

  O’Reilly stooped to the shorter man, who said what he had to say.

  No. Bloody well no. Declan’s polite request had been one thing, this demand another entirely. This was a perfect opportunity to establish that unless someone was bleeding to death or having a heart attack, Doctor O’Reilly was off duty inside the Duck. “Certainly, Mister Bishop,” he bellowed in his quarterdeck voice, which could be heard above a howling Atlantic gale. He paused. The falling of a pin would have been as noisy as the eruption of Krakatoa, so silent had the Duck become. “Just slip off your trousers and climb up on the counter so I can examine you.” The falling of a single downy feather would probably have registered on the Richter scale. Silence hung until a clearly furious, puce-faced Bishop yelled, “My trousers? Here? Have you taken a fit of the headstaggers? Do you not know it’s a feckin’ pub!”

  “Well, Mister Bishop…” O’Reilly had deliberately lowered his voice so that his audience would have to strain to hear. “I thought you didn’t know. After all, you insisted on consulting me in here for something that can wait until the surgery opens tomorrow. I didn’t think you’d mind being examined in here. But if it upsets you, I’ll be happy to see you tomorrow. Tomorrow.”

  Bishop spluttered. “By God, O’Reilly, you’ve a quare brass neck, so you have. Telling a fellah til take off his pants in public.”

  “I think,” said O’Reilly, “the cervical alloy of copper and zinc is all yours.” He turned back to Archie and Declan as a wave of laughter swept through the room. I’ve not made a bosom buddy, O’Reilly thought, but there is a limit. And for the moment, and God bless Surgeon Commander Wilcoxson for his sage advice, the upper hand was back where it belonged. Nor would he be pestered in here in the future by other patients.

  He glanced over to where Bishop and Ward had their heads together. Ward looked over at O’Reilly. The man’s eyes were narrowed, his teeth clenched. He shook his fist and mouthed, “You wait, O’Reilly. Just you wait.”

  O’Reilly turned away. He had clearly offended two locals, but surely the laughter at Bishop’s discomfiture signified that there was support for the newly returned doctor too?

  “It’s my shout, Doctor,” Declan Finnegan said. “And well done putting Mister Bishop in his box. I’m sorry I asked you a medical question. I never thought—”

  “You didn’t ask me a question. You asked if you could bring your wife to see me. That’s entirely different.”

  “Thank you, sir. Now, would you like that pint, and maybe one for you, Archie?”

  O’Reilly shook his head and buttoned his coat. If Archie said yes, then the “my shout” circle would begin where everyone in the party had to buy a round. He smiled. “Maybe next time, Declan. It’s time I was home.”

  Declan nodded. “I understand, sir.” He lowered his voice. “See that there Bertie Bishop? His head’s full of hobbyhorse shite, so it is.” He spat into the sawdust. “Pay him no heed and never you worry, sir, me and Melanie’ll be in first thing tomorrow.”

  O’Reilly smiled and said, “I’ll expect you.” And to hell with Bertie Bishop and Wowser Ward. O’Reilly hoped that the Finnegans would be the start of a steadily growing trade. “Good night to this house,” he called, and was gratified by a few, although not everybody’s by any means, “Good night, Doctor.”

  5

  Have You No Bowel, No Tenderness?

  O’Reilly pushed away his plate, empty save for a squeezed lemon slice. Not long before a pair of famous Craster kippers had lain, blissfully brown and seductively, steamingly scented. Utterly delicious. While drinking his second cup of tea, he finished reading a story in Tuesday’s The Northern Whig. It seemed that fifteen alleged Soviet spies had been arrested in Canada. He wondered what they’d be spying on in that far cold country, tutted, put down the paper, rose, and crossed to the surgery.

  He opened his doctor’s bag, went to a cupboard, took out an ampoule of aminophylline, and put it into the bag to replace the one he’d used yesterday for a seven-year-old boy who was having a severe asthmatic attack. That home visit and a case of influenza had been the sum of the day’s caseload. What had Lars said? “Don’t be surprised if it’s slow at the beginning.” Slow? Glaciers moved more quickly. Still, O’Reilly thought, Declan Finnegan and his French wife were coming today. He headed for the surgery.

  Declan and a petite but obviously swollen-bellied woman with glossy brown hair sat side by side. And across the room, perched like a gargoyle on a cathedral on one of the hard-backed chair
s, was Albert Bishop. Before O’Reilly could even say good morning and invite them to come to his surgery, the man announced, “The Finnegans don’t mind if I go first, O’Reilly.” As Bishop strode past the couple, Declan raised his eyes to heaven and shook his head.

  O’Reilly was sure Bishop had bullied his way past the Finnegans, but did not want to make a fuss about it—yet. He followed him along to the surgery, where Bishop had already seated himself. O’Reilly closed the door. “Good morning, Mister Bishop. I wasn’t expecting to see you today.” To tell the truth I was not expecting to see you ever after last night, O’Reilly thought, as he took the swivel chair. This was something he’d learned from Doctor Corrigan, his senior in general practice in Dublin. That not every patient and their doctor would get along. Sometimes it was better to come to the parting of the ways and have them seek medical advice elsewhere. He recognised that may have been at the back of his mind when he’d deliberately embarrassed Bishop last night.

  “Aye, nor me you, but I’ve still not gone since I tried to have a wee quiet word with you. I’ve been seeing a Doctor Robbins in Bangor, but it’s far too far to drive just because I’m bound. My missus, Flo, says she til me, she says, ‘Go on, give O’Reilly a try.’ I says til her that I tried to tell you on Monday night that I needed a strong laxative, but, no, you were too high and mighty to do me a favour, so you were. Sometimes my Flo does talk sense, but. Says she til me, ‘O’Reilly worked here before. He never killed nobody then.’”

  Now there was a backhanded compliment.

  “‘And it’ll take you an hour til drive til Bangor, see Robbins, and drive back. Go on, try O’Reilly.’ So here I am. And it’s your last chance with me, so it is. I’ve already heard you wouldn’t treat Wowser Ward, so you’d better see me right or else.”

  O’Reilly frowned. “Or else what, Mister Bishop?” O’Reilly had been trained to understand that patients were not always as polite as they might be and to be prepared to make allowances, but this pompous little man didn’t seem to recognise how close he was to being thrown out—physically. “Or else what?”