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

by Taylor, Patrick

  “Wowser and me’ll put out the word you’re no bloody good.” He leant back, smiled, and folded his arms across his chest.

  To give himself a moment to consider his reply O’Reilly fished out a pair of half-moon spectacles and perched them on his nose. Decision time. Could he afford to tell Bishop to go to hell, behave like that Anglo-Dubliner the Duke of Wellington and his famous, “Publish and be damned”? That would alienate this man when the practice was in an embryonic state. And how much harm could he and Wowser Ward do? Probably quite a lot. On the other hand, if O’Reilly simply ignored Bishop’s rudeness and threats, he had no doubt that the man would proudly spread the word around that O’Reilly was so weak he couldn’t beat the skin off a rice pudding, and he couldn’t afford that either. Half a doctor’s ability to treat lay in the esteem in which he was held by his patients. O’Reilly recognised that he was on the horns of what one of his naval patients had called a dilly-ma-ma.

  But—but—he had to struggle to conceal a grin. There was a way to appear to acquiesce but give Bishop a not-so-subtle message that Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, once called by an old Dublin friend The Wily O’Reilly, was not a man to be threatened—ever. “I see,” he said levelly. “Then I’ll have to make sure you are treated properly, won’t I?”

  “That’s more like it,” Bishop said.

  O’Reilly steepled his fingers. He’d learnt long ago that the makers of patent laxatives had taught the great public that their bowels must move once a day. It wasn’t true, but such was the power of advertising. “When was the last time you went?”

  “Saturday morning, and that’s three whole days.”

  “I see, and has this kind of thing happened before?”

  “Aye, and Robbins gives me castor oil.” He screwed up his face. “Tastes like shite. I thought you being younger—”

  “I’m sure I do have something better for you, but I need to make sure there’s no underlying disease. Have you any belly pains?”

  “Nah.”

  “No vomiting?”

  “No, I’ve not boked. I’m rightly otherwise, so I am. It’s just I’m bound.”

  No pain, no vomiting, so no suggestion of anything obstructing the bowel. “Anything else bothering you?” Constipation if a symptom of something serious was invariably accompanied by other symptoms of distress, and Bishop looked the picture of overweight health.

  “Are you deaf? I just told you. Not at all.”

  “I see,” said O’Reilly, gritting his teeth and remembering Ward’s anger at not having been examined … “I’d still better take a look.”

  It was a simple matter to examine Bishop’s tubby belly, which O’Reilly did, finding nothing amiss. “All right,” he said. “Get dressed.” He went to his desk and found a prescription pad. His old teacher Doctor Micks had preached, It may be dangerous to give a purgative but never to withold one. Not in this case. Bishop appeared to have nothing physically wrong with him. There was nothing to worry about, O’Reilly was quite sure. He removed a fountain pen from an inside pocket, scribbled, and handed the prescription to Bishop. “Take that to the chemist. It’ll do the trick.”

  Bishop took the scrip, scowled, and said, “Thank you. It had better work.”

  “It will,” said O’Reilly. “I promise. Now,” said O’Reilly, rising. “I’m sure you’re a very busy man and in a rush.” Not half the hurry you’re going to be in after you’ve taken your medicine, he thought, hiding a grin.

  “Aye. I am.”

  He took Bishop by the elbow, helped him stand, and began propelling him to the door.

  “Take a teaspoonful of that as soon as you get home—and don’t go out.”

  “Right.”

  “Good,” said O’Reilly, letting Bishop out of the surgery. Only when the door was shut did he allow himself to chuckle. His prescription of Tinct. Crotonis Oleum, tincture of croton oil, was for the strongest purgative available. During the war, the U.S. Navy had added it to the alcohol fuel used in their torpedoes. The violent laxative effects were meant to discourage sailors from draining and drinking the fuel. It was also believed that a number of U-boat patrols from French ports had been abandoned because the French fishermen who supplied the German fleet had packed sardines in croton rather than olive oil. The effects on a U-boat’s crew in a vessel with only two heads hardly bore imagining.

  The self-important Mister Bishop was not going to enjoy himself today. He’d be spending a fair bit of it all alone in a small room. But he’d be hard-pressed to complain. He’d explicitly asked for a “strong” laxative and had demanded effective treatment. And he probably would have sufficient insight to recognise that messing about with Doctor O’Reilly was a less than smart thing to do.

  He opened the ledger, noted, B. Bishop. Consultation, then headed for the waiting room where another patient, a young woman, had joined the Finnegans.

  “Your turn, Mister and Mrs. Finnegan.” He smiled at the newcomer. “I’ll not be long.”

  Once in the surgery and with Declan sitting on one chair, his wife on the other, Declan said, “Good morning, Doctor O’Reilly. This here’s Melanie, so it is.”

  O’Reilly made a little bow. “Enchanté, Madame Finnegan.”

  She smiled, but her torrent of heavily Norman-accented French overwhelmed O’Reilly. “Je m’excuse,” he said, “mais moi, je parle Français comme une vache Espagnole. If faut que vous parleriez tres lentement, madame, s’il vous plaît.”

  She laughed and said, “D’accord, monsieur. Je comprend.”

  “No harm til you, Doctor, but you done very good. And you do not speak French ‘like a Spanish cow,’” said Declan, chuckling at the way native French speakers referred to those who hadn’t mastered the language. “Not one bit. What you just done was set her at her ease that she can talk to you even if she does have to speak more slowly—and I’ll help too.” He turned to his wife, rapidly translated, and was rewarded with a beaming smile that lit up her ebony eyes.

  “I’m sorry you got bumped,” O’Reilly said.

  “See that there Bishop?” Declan said. “He thinks he’s no goat’s toe, but he puts his trousers on one leg at a time just like ordinary people.” He lowered his voice. “If you ask me, he’s full of shite.”

  Not for much longer, O’Reilly thought, but said, “I am sorry you had to wait, and please explain that to Melanie and help me to ask her some questions.”

  With some of his own French and with Declan translating where needed, O’Reilly soon finished his history-taking and, after Melanie had climbed upon the couch, her physical examination. He’d noted that he was going to be looking after a twenty-three-year-old with no history of serious illness, who was today at about the twenty-sixth week of her first pregnancy and thus was due to deliver in late May. When he’d worked at the Rotunda in Dublin in the late 1930s, the master had begun to institute routine antenatal care aimed at trying to prevent stillbirth and foetal abnormality and screen women for high blood pressure. O’Reilly intended—when more started showing up—to follow that protocol with his patients. At least since 1936, with the advent of Red Prontosil, the first antibiotic, and since the war much better blood transfusion services, the risks of the two great killers of pregnant women, infection and haemorrhage, were being brought under better control.

  In his very best French, O’Reilly, with Declan helping, explained that everything seemed to be fine, that he’d like to see her in a month, and to get hold of him if she was worried about anything.

  “Merci, monsieur le medeçin. Je suis très content.” And those deep eyes smiled at him again.

  O’Reilly cleared his throat, then said, “There is one thing.” Full obstetrical care was expensive and O’Reilly felt he had an obligation to warn Declan.

  “Aye?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you eight guineas,” he rushed on, “but that includes antenatal visits, delivery, and postpartum care.” O’Reilly looked at his desktop. “I�
�m sorry.”

  “What the hell for?” Declan said. “For God’s sakes, Doctor dear, the workman’s worth his hire. I don’t work for free. How much on account?”

  “Four guineas, but we’ll be sending out the bills at the end of the month.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Thank you,” O’Reilly said, and made an entry in the ledger. Not only did it allow him to keep his accounts straight, it would enable him when the time came to apportion to HM Inspector of Taxes his statutory thirty percent. And with the imminent introduction of Pay as You Earn, PAYE, this would, in O’Reilly’s case, have to be paid monthly.

  “We’ll be running along, sir,” Declan said, then, “Viens, Melanie, and she’ll see you in a month, sir. And your Mrs. Kincaid told the ladies at the Woman’s Union last night that you took special training in midwifery in Dublin too.” He winked. “Never mind that ould git Bishop. I’ll give you five til one Melanie isn’t the only pregnant woman you’ll be seeing soon, sir. You’ll be sucking diesel before you know it, so you will.”

  O’Reilly accompanied the couple to the front door and let them out, turned, and went back toward the the waiting room. “Sucking diesel?” That was a new one, but by the inflexion in Declan’s voice O’Reilly reckoned it was akin to being on the pig’s back or in clover. It was comforting for Declan to say so.

  He headed back to the waiting room where another patient awaited. Perhaps things were looking up.

  6

  There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio

  O’Reilly finished his roast pheasant and pushed his plate away. Somehow, despite Kinky’s magic way with game birds, he had not relished his dinner. On Tuesday he’d hoped that things were looking up, but they were not. To be sure Tuesday had yielded two more patients after the Finnegans, but from Wednesday until today, Friday, he’d seen only another three, four if he counted a home visit yesterday to Mary Dunleavy. She and her family lived over the Duck, and after he’d reassured himself and her mother that Mary was well mended, he’d not been hard to persuade to have another pint with mine host. Willie had been more reserved than usual and had obviously had to steel himself before he’d been able to ask in a low voice, “Seeing lots of patients, Doc?”

  O’Reilly had shaken his head. Willie’s next words were indelibly imprinted.

  “Aye, well no harm til you, sir, but thon Mister Ward was in here a couple of nights ago. He was telling everybody that you’d refused til treat him right, and that you’d near killed Mister Bishop. I telt him to shut his yap or I’d bar him.”

  O’Reilly had thanked Willie. And finished his pint.

  It looked as if the damage had been done, and although O’Reilly’s main reason for wanting the practice to expand was because he really enjoyed his work, there was no escaping the fact that the bank would be expecting his first loan repayment soon.

  There was talk that the government was going to introduce a National Health Service by which all citizens would be insured and GPs would be paid monthly by a government agency so there would be no need for money to come between doctors and their patients. It couldn’t be implemented fast enough for O’Reilly. He disliked the need to send bills, particularly to poorer patients, and was sure many of them avoided visiting a doctor because they simply could not afford to. Some found other ways round the difficulty.

  He managed a smile. And once the practice did grow—if it did grow—he’d not object to gifts in lieu of cash. The chicken in return for a linament for a sore back, the brace of mallard instead of the surgery visit fee for a patient with acute conjunctivitis, and the lobster for strapping a sprained wrist he’d been given when he’d worked here before had been most acceptable.

  On Wednesday, the father of a young, carotty-haired buck-toothed lad, Donal Donnelly, had offered O’Reilly a brace of pheasants to pay for his treatment of the boy’s middle ear infection. The birds had almost certainly been “borrowed” from the marquis’s estate, but taking a leaf from another sailor’s book, O’Reilly had turned a blind eye. Slices of one of them with roast potatoes, seasonal brussels sprouts, and carrots had been his dinner that night.

  The barter system appealed to O’Reilly and wasn’t taxable, and as far as he was concerned what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve over. But until his debt was fully discharged, he did need hard currency too, and that would only come when he had full surgeries.

  Kinky had used her best endeavours to bolster his reputation. The kind words of Declan Finnegan had been comforting, but his French-speaking wife was hardly in a position to shout O’Reilly’s praises from the rooftops, at least in words comprehensible to the average villager. And he couldn’t advertise. The General Medical Council, the disciplinary body of his profession, regarded that as unethical and could take away his licence if he tried to.

  Bertie Bishop and Wowser Ward must have succeeded in blackening O’Reilly’s name, of that he had no doubt, none whatsoever. Did he regret having given Bishop a laxative that if compared to usually prescribed ones was the atomic bomb of purgatives? Not one bloody bit. It might have been foolhardy, but O’Reilly had consciously decided to accept the risk. Bullies were bullies and had to be checked.

  He rose, went to the sideboard, and poured himself a John Jameson. Sipping the Irish whiskey, he headed for the door, intending to go upstairs to the lounge and finish reading The Captain from Castille, one of last year’s bestsellers.

  The door opened and Kinky came in carrying a tray of polished silver. “Doctor O’Reilly,” she said, “you do have a face on you like a Lurgan spade, as I’ve heard the locals say—although it would mean nothing in County Cork, so.”

  He shrugged and exhaled.

  “Would you take it ill, sir, if your housekeeper was to ask you if everything is all right?”

  He hesitated. O’Reilly was not one to cry on other people’s shoulders, but tonight … “I’d not take it that way at all, Kinky,” he said, and in truth he’d welcome a friendly person to tell his troubles to. His closest friends, Doctors Charlie Greer and Donald Cromie, both surgeons, were up in Belfast. His best naval friend from Warspite days, Tom Laverty, was a career naval officer and was God knew where, still on active service. “Will you sit down?”

  She frowned. It wasn’t commonplace for servants to sit down with their employers.

  “Kinky,” he said, “if I’m going to talk to you like a friend I’m going to treat you like one.”

  She blushed and said, “That does be greatly appreciated, so.” She sat and put the tray on the table.

  “Another thing,” he said as he sat, “I got used to calling you Kinky when I was first here because that’s what Doctor Flanagan called you. Would you prefer to be Maureen, or Mrs. Kincaid?”

  “Lord bless you, sir, Kinky’s just grand. My late husband, Paudeen Kincaid, God rest him, gave it to me as a nickname because of how I used irons back then to curl my hair. It has a nice familiar sound, so. Kinky it is—but I appreciate your asking. It does be the act of a real gentleman. Now,” she smoothed her apron, “can I offer a guess why you are upset?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I knew from when you were here before the war that it wasn’t the money you worked for. You were simply happy at your work.”

  “I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was thirteen.” O’Reilly shrugged. “Doctor Flanagan paid me well enough, I had my room here, and…” He grinned at her. “I had the best cook in all of Ireland feeding me.”

  “Go ’way out of that, sir,” but her grin was one of enormous pleasure, “and be serious now. You are worried because not enough people are coming to see you, isn’t that so?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “True.”

  “And there are one or two who I’ll not name who are blackguarding you round the village.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Huh,” she said, “there’s precious little goes on here I don’t know. Haven’t I been here nearly twenty years and isn’t everyone under
that age one of Doctor Flanagan’s babies except for the ones delivered by yourself when first you were here?”

  “Of course.”

  “And don’t I know their mammies and daddies and grannies and grandpas?”

  O’Reilly realised what an important source of information Kinky would be. “I don’t suppose there is much goes on without you knowing.”

  “There is not. Now, would it help if I told you not to worry?”

  He shook his head. “It would be a kindness, but how would you know? Have you heard something?”

  “More seen.” She leant forward and said very quietly, “Now, sir, it does be said in the village that I am a wise woman.”

  “And are you?” O’Reilly felt the hairs on his forearms bristle.

  “From time to time I do find myself in a thin place.”

  “A what?”

  “The old Celts believed that for some people in some places or times the gap between this earth and the other world becomes very thin and things can pass between. That is called a thin place. It can give some people, like my ma, it can give them the gift.”

  “Are you telling me you’re fey, Kinky?”

  She stared at a spot near infinity off to the left of the cut-glass chandelier, and her face became expressionless, her voice far away. “I was there last night, so.”

  The hackles rose on the back of his neck.

  “I saw you in church. I saw people amazed. I felt—” She closed and reopened her eyes. “I knew all was well.”

  O’Reilly shivered as if a goose had walked on his grave. What was she trying to tell him?

  “So, sir,” she said in her usual voice, “it would give me great pleasure if you’d come to morning service with me on Sunday. It would not hurt for the villagers to see that you are a Christian gentleman.”

  * * *

  With the cross of Jesus going on before.

  O’Reilly bellowed out the last line of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” a cheerful hymn with which the congregation had filled the barrel-vaulted nave of First Ballybucklebo Presbyterian Church. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows. He inhaled the mustiness of two hundred years and the overpowering perfume of Old Spice aftershave coming from a man in the pew behind. Cissie Sloan, whom O’Reilly had seen for acne in 1938, finished with triumphal chords on the harmonium. She and her cousin Aggie Arbuthnot were two of Kinky’s friends.