An Irish Country Family--An Irish Country Novel

by Patrick Taylor

  “You, Doctor Emer McCarthy, are going to make a very fine GP.” Barry smiled.

  She sighed. “If I can find a job.”

  “Still no luck?”

  She shook her head as Barry parked at Number One Main Street. “Not yet, but Nonie’s still not mentioned what she may have up her sleeve, and it’s only eight days since we all had that lunch together. Fingal and Connor are working on it too.” The engine subsided, then ticked into silence.

  “You talk of feeling useless on these more specialized cases. Have you thought about specializing? You’re great with the kiddies.”

  “Thank you, Barry, and it might be an option, but I do love it here. I’d still like to find a rural practice if I can.” She chuckled. “Maybe I could start a new specialty. Two weeks ago, I went out to see Norman Devine. Colin Brown was there with his dog, Murphy. We brought Kenny today. Both patients seemed comforted. How about physician with canine comforter?”

  “Why not? But those two are taken. And you’d not want our Max. That eejit would give a nervous patient hysterics. You’ll have to find your own.” Barry laughed. “Now, enjoy your lunch. I’m heading home. I want to be there when Sue comes back from school for lunch. I’m off this afternoon and she has a half day.”

  “Thanks, Barry. Enjoy your afternoon.” Emer shut the door behind her.

  As he drove off he sighed. He’d been told twice today that he cared for his patients, and yes, he’d known since his houseman’s year that getting close to them could cause him grief. How much more so, he wondered, when someone who wasn’t his patient might at this moment be wrestling with enormous disappointment, and that someone was his wife?

  * * *

  Barry went through to their neat dining room/sitting room. Through the picture window, the panoramic view of Belfast Lough to the west and Whitehead and the Irish Sea to the east still startled him with its beauty two years after they’d moved in. Beautiful, and the weather of this morning had held. Blue skies. Plenty of sunshine. One of the side windows was open and through it Barry could hear the waves hitting the rocks, the cries of gulls. He inhaled the salty sea tang. A helicopter was landing on the foredeck of a twin-funnelled Royal Navy warship. The lough was always busy, always interesting, but today Barry had more on his mind.

  Their springer spaniel, Max, was fast asleep on the three-seat settee. He wasn’t meant to be there, but Barry couldn’t be bothered to chase him. Who said, “Let sleeping dogs lie?” Barry shook his head. It didn’t matter.

  He walked back to the kitchen and turned on the transistor radio. Barry sat at the table and began to work on the rigging of his model of Lieutenant William Bligh’s HMS Bounty. He’d done a bit after supper last night and they’d not needed the table at breakfast today. The three-masted square-rigger was already mounted on her stand and would be easy to move before lunch.

  He’d finished Victory nine months ago and she now kept Rattlesnake company in the living room. Barry was grateful to have something to do that required a high degree of concentration. It would keep his mind off his worries for her.

  He tied the knot attaching the port main backstay to the mast. “Got it,” he said to Tigger, the adopted stray tabby cat who was sleeping in her basket beside the stove. A well-modulated voice was coming from the radio. “Earlier today, explosions at Lough Neagh and in Belfast damaged the pipeline bringing water from the lough to the city. No one, as yet, has claimed responsibility, but it is now suspected similar attacks four days ago were carried out by militant Loyalists in the hope that the blame would fall on the Irish Republican Army. The British Home Secretary, Mister James Callaghan, has announced that five hundred more British troops will be arriving in Ulster tomorrow to take up peacekeeping duties.”

  Barry leant across from where he sat. He’d switch the bloody thing off and hope Sue hadn’t heard the news at school or on the car radio coming home. She was still as committed to her civil rights work as she had been when he’d met her, and her concern about the deteriorating political situation here in Ulster seemed to mount with her own concern about not falling pregnant.

  Max charged into the room and stood staring at the back door. He barked once.

  The dog’s hearing was so acute it bordered on the psychic. Only now could Barry hear Sue’s car coming. He stood, set aside the fine forceps and scissors he’d been using, and opened the kitchen door to hurry along the short path through the back garden. He and Max met her at the gate. Max, as usual, tried to put his forepaws on her tummy, but she brushed him away. The tear tracks down her cheeks made any question Barry might have superfluous.

  She nodded once and said, “Yes. It’s come.”

  “Damn,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” And he was, for both of them. He put his arm round her shoulders. “Come on inside and we’ll have lunch.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not hungry. Let’s walk. I need some fresh air. And no. We’ll leave this one at home. Sorry, Max.” She took the dog by his collar, put him in the kitchen, closed the door, and took Barry’s hand.

  They headed off east along the sea walk.

  For a while neither spoke. It was now four months since they had decided to consult Doctor Graham Harley, fifteen since Sue had stopped taking the pill. And so far, no tests had shown a reason why she still had not conceived. The last four months had been a roller coaster of raised and then dashed hopes. Barry knew it was the not knowing, the unspoken fears, the uncertainty above all that was getting to her. He’d had his own bout with that six years ago.

  “I’m sorry, Barry,” she said. “But I was so hoping it wouldn’t come.” She inhaled through her nose. “It started about an hour before classes finished for the morning, and I managed to bottle up how I felt until I was in the car, but then the dam burst.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, love. I know you’re disappointed. I’m disappointed too.” It had taken a while for Barry to become comfortable with the prospect of being a father, but now he wished for it as much as Sue wanted to be a mother.

  She made no reply, and Barry knew that sometimes it was better to say nothing. He kept pace with her as they walked along the coastal path, passing dog walkers, being passed in both directions by cyclists.

  Sue stopped once to let a young woman walk past pushing a pram. Barry watched as Sue deliberately looked out to sea, where eight snowy-white mute swans with black faces and red bills stretched out their black paddles and, like a team of water skiers, made successive landings, ploughing watery furrows in the stillness of Belfast Lough. They stretched their curved necks and twitched their feathers into position.

  Sue stopped and faced him. “All right. That’s it. No more self-pity.” She braced her shoulders back. “I have to keep reminding myself, it’s only been fifteen months since I went off the pill. I know you told me we didn’t really have to worry until two years had gone by. I never realized how impatient I can be until—” She gulped, and Barry knew she was swallowing back tears. “Until—until now. We’re not pregnant yet, I must accept that.” She even managed to smile at him. “I can accept it. I can.” She took a deep breath. “It’s—it’s not the end of the world. It’s not.” Her voice trembled. Barry’s heart wept for her, but he too managed a smile.

  “You’re very brave.” He wondered from where this well of courage sprang to sustain women like his Sue—and Anne Galvin. “And the important word is ‘yet.’ We know what’s going to happen next. I’ll phone the Royal when we get home. See if I can have a word with Graham.” As a colleague, he knew he would be put through, or at least Doctor Graham Harley would return Barry’s call. “He said he’d arrange the next step, your laparoscopy, for early May.”

  “Thank you, Barry,” Sue said. “Thank you for being so understanding. Thank you for attending to the practical details.” She shook her head, ignored the other folks around, and kissed him. “And thank you for being Barry Laverty. I do love you so, you know. I really do.”

  16

  Haunts of Horror and Fear
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br />   September 1 and 2, 1963

  Barry woke. Except for a glimmer of light creeping in under the closed door, the room was dark. His luminous watch face read three twenty. For a moment he was unsure of where he was. He listened to the noises coming from outside the thin-walled room. Snores, feet on linoleum. The mattress under him was lumpy, and its rubber undersheet, a routine precaution against a patient wetting the bed, creaked as he moved.

  Now he recognised where he was—the staff room off ward 22 where he’d been admitted on Thursday evening with an initial working diagnosis of pyrexia of unknown origin.

  Sister Lynch’s words crept into his mind, amplified by the silence in the room. “Luckily for you, the Royal has one of the finest haematologists in Doctor Gerald Nelson. We’ve asked him to consult.” Barry sat up, wide awake now. That consultation was still two days away. He could feel his stomach tense as he remembered desperately trying, and failing, to puzzle out his own possible diagnosis. Like a wasp attracted by a jam sandwich, he could not stop himself making another attempt now, despite one of his father’s pieces of advice: Never try to work important things out in the muddle of the night.

  Cough, fever, weakness, raised evening temperature, and—his left hand went to his neck—enlargement of the cervical lymph nodes. He could still feel the rubbery lumps. Flu to be sure could cause all of those things; so could other viruses. But now he did remember. So could Hodgkin’s lymphadenoma, a lethal cancer of the lymphatic system. The kind of condition that would require the attention of a haematologist. Barry felt the shock of that sudden knowledge vibrate through him.

  If that diagnosis was in the minds of the young houseman and Sister Lynch, he wouldn’t be told yet—it was received wisdom that, until the answer was crystal clear, suggesting a patient might have a potentially lethal disease would only cause needless worry for the victim. It was kindly meant.

  He still remembered a scene from The Pride of the Yankees. He’d seen it on TV when he’d been in first year. A dying Lou Gehrig asks his doctor, “Is it three strikes, Doc?” The physician didn’t answer his patient, but told Lou’s wife the truth. At that time Barry had thought keeping the patient in the dark was considerate. And maybe that was still the correct approach for the laity, but after six years of medical training, Doctor Barry Laverty had arrived at a very unpalatable conclusion on his own. He hoped he was wrong, he prayed he was wrong, but the possibility had suddenly concentrated his mind. The remembered words from A Short Textbook of Medicine, 1962 edition, now leapt from the page. “In Hodgkin’s disease, occasional patients survive for ten or more years, but the great majority are dead within four or five. In rapidly progressive cases, the total course may not exceed six months.”

  Barry shuddered. You are jumping to conclusions, he told himself. Don’t. What was the line one of his teachers used when there was a possibility of a poor outcome? Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And the worst was he was going to die. Barry Laverty felt the tears prick his eyes, pool at the back of his throat. No. Not me. And not now. I’m only twenty-three. I’m almost a fully licensed doctor. Not now when I’ve just fallen in love with this wonderful girl. He was barely aware of shouting “Not now,” before he buried his face in his pillow and sobbed and sobbed.

  Pull yourself together, man. He lay still on the bed and took a deep breath. Never had he felt so alone in his life. It was quite a while before Barry Laverty dropped off into an exhausted sleep.

  * * *

  “Sorry to wake you up, Barry,” Jan Peters said, “but I have to take your morning pulse and temperature.”

  Barry opened his eyes. Light streamed in from the skylight overhead. He blinked. Sat up. “It’s all right.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “How are you this morning?”

  “A bit better, I think.” Like hell. The feelings from last night rolled through his weary body like a tidal wave. He told himself to try to put them away. He managed a smile for Jan.

  “Here,” she said. “Pop this under your tongue.” She handed him a clinical thermometer. He did as he’d been asked, remembering that whereas in cases of flu it would still be up, in Hodgkin’s, the temperature was usually normal in the morning. He felt Jan’s fingers on his wrist and watched her consult her pocket watch. All nurses wore one pinned to their apron’s right shoulder strap.

  The two minutes it takes for a mercury thermometer to register seemed like an eternity.

  Jan removed it, said, “Nice and normal,” and shook the mercury down. She lifted a clipboard from the rail at the bed’s foot and made entries on a piece of graph paper. “Anything you need?”

  A reprieve would be nice, he thought, but said, “No thanks.”

  “I’m off, then”—she took off her gown at the door—“but breakfast will be here soon, and I’ll be back later to make your bed and give you a sponge bath.” She left, and Barry barely had time to tell himself that no one had actually confirmed what he suspected—he could be entirely wrong, and getting himself up to high doh wasn’t helping anything—when the door opened.

  Jack, Harry Sloan, and Norma Fitch, all masked and gowned, trooped into the tiny room with a chorus of “Morning, Barry,” bringing their energy, rude health, a dog-eared copy of Arthur Hailey’s Airport, and a jar of calf’s foot jelly. Norma’s mother swore it could cure any ailment.

  “Morning.”

  None questioned the diagnosis of flu. It was considered bad form, apart from asking general questions about how the sufferer was feeling, for colleagues to pry into signs and symptoms. That was what the patient’s doctors were for. Illness was considered a private matter between patient, family, and medical staff. Many Ulsterfolk had been shocked back in 1955 when the American press had announced to the world that their president, Dwight Eisenhower, had suffered a heart attack.

  In front of his friends, Barry had hidden his concerns until they were getting ready to leave. “Thank you all very much for coming. Much appreciated. Jack, could you hang on for a minute, please?”

  “Sure.” Jack sat down again.

  Norma and Harry left, Norma saying, “And don’t worry, Barry, you’ll be back in the salt mines with the rest of us soon.”

  He dearly hoped that were true.

  “What can I do for you, my old son?”

  Barry, fearing they might be overheard, glanced round the room and said in a low voice, “You and I go back a long way.”

  “Ten years.”

  “There’s no one else I’d tell this to, but I’m worried.”

  Jack frowned. “Oh? What’s up?”

  “Jack, you were there when young Swanson came to repeat my blood tests. You took the sample. After you’d left, Sister explained that my total white count was low. You know that’s not usual in flu. They wanted to do a differential, that’s why they needed more blood, and they’ve arranged for me to be seen by Doctor Nelson on Monday.”

  Jack’s frown deepened. “Why has that got you worried? Gerry Nelson’s a good head.”

  “His specialty includes blood and lymph cancers.”

  “And you think you’ve got one?”

  Had he heard a hint of laughter in Jack’s voice? He pressed on. “I have a lot of the symptoms of Hodgkin’s.” Barry looked down and repeated them for Jack’s benefit. He looked up. “I know I’m probably blowing this out of proportion—”

  “You could say that.”

  “You think I’m an eejit.”

  “No, I do not.” Jack frowned.

  “I can’t think of anything else.”

  Jack scratched his head. “I’m sorry, mate. As your friend, I can understand why you’d worry.” He smiled. “But, remember Tom Williams? Thought he had bone cancer because his left knee was really sore. Consulted an orthopod. Orthopod examines Tom and says, ‘Don’t waste money on a coffin yet. You’ve knock knees—and you’re way overweight.’” Jack chuckled.

  Barry smiled. He did remember Tom Williams. But this was different. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself by co
nfronting Doctor Swanson or Sister Flynn, but I had to talk to somebody. Get it out of my system. It’s the uncertainty, the having to wait, the not being in control that’s getting to me. I know the prognosis for Hodgkin’s. It’s not good.”

  “I understand. Uncertainty is tough.” Jack pursed his lips. “Maybe some facts might help? As a physician, and a green one at that, I can’t help you with viruses. I missed some of those lectures. You know I’ve always been way more interested in surgery. But I do remember one thing about Hodgkin’s. The disease only affects one in about thirty thousand people annually in the United Kingdom. Compare that to the fact that everyone has had flu or some other viral fever. Remember what Professor Bull used to say? ‘If there are two birds on a telegraph wire here in Belfast, they’re more likely to be sparrows than canaries.’ Rare things are rare. My guess is that applies to you too.”

  “Rare things are rare. Thanks, Jack. That does help. And thanks for understanding.”

  “I believe,” said Jack, “that is what friends are for. And you can buy me a pint when they tell you not to worry and let you out of here.”

  * * *

  The orderly had just taken Barry’s lunch tray away when the door opened, and a masked and gowned Bernie O’Byrne walked in, accompanied, glory be, by Virginia. His jaw dropped when he recognised those green eyes above her mask. The two women, wearing their uniforms under their gowns, crossed his room and sat on plain chairs at the head of his bed. He hoped he didn’t look too much like a gormless mooncalf.

  Bernie studied his face. “And how are you, Barry Laverty? You’re looking tired.”

  “I am tired, and achy, and a bit feverish, but not too bad, thanks. And thanks for coming.”

  “We’ve been worried about you since you took ill, so we thought we’d pop by. It’s a golden opportunity for Nurse Clarke to learn more about caring for infectious patients.” Bernie winked at him. “We hear it’s probably flu. There’s a kind of sisters’ union, and Margaret Lynch and I were in the same class when we were students here. As long as we observe the barrier nursing protocol and don’t tire you too much, she’ll be happy for Nurse Clarke to be here.”