An Irish Country Family--An Irish Country Novel

by Patrick Taylor

  She nodded and managed a small smile, but her head drooped.

  “People kept telling me, ‘Don’t get close to patients. Thicken your skin.’ But I didn’t. I know most of my patients here. And looking after them is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done, even though sometimes I have to mourn their passing, grieve for them. Look at me, Emer.”

  She looked up. Her eye makeup was smeared.

  “I told you before I think you’re going to make a wonderful GP.”

  “If I can find a place.”

  “When, not if. When you find a place. I’m only a few years ahead of you. I learned the hard way to get to know my patients, and do you know something?”

  “What?”

  “So does that great unsung hero of a man, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. Learn from him as well as me. Know your patients and you’ll never tire of your work.”

  “Thanks, Barry.”

  “Now,” he said, “the bathroom’s across the hall. You go and fix your face and I’ll talk to the family.” He put the mirror back in his bag and left.

  Barry let himself into the living room. All three men were seated, drinking tea. “Please accept my deepest sympathy. Anne’s gone,” he said. “And from what you told me, Guffer, and what I’ve just seen, she went gently. No suffering.”

  Pat said, “That’s good to know. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Seamus nodded.

  “Thanks.” Guffer made a hiccupping kind of noise and said, “Would you take a cup of tea in your hand, sir?”

  “Please.”

  Guffer stood, poured, and handed Barry the cup and saucer. “I’m sorry we’ve no biccys.” He swallowed. “Annie always took care of things like that.” He remained standing. “Now sit you down, sir.”

  Barry put his bag on the floor and sat in what had been Guffer’s chair. “Doctor Emer’ll be down in a minute. She just wanted to powder her nose.” There was no need to let the Galvins know she was upset. He took a mouthful of tea, set his cup and saucer on a convenient small table, and withdrew a book of death certificates from his bag. “It’ll only take a minute to fill this in.”

  Seamus said, “Back in America, they’re desperate keen on them autopsies. Ma’ll not have til be cut open will she, sir?”

  Barry managed a reassuring smile. “No. She won’t. Here it’s only for unexplained”—he was going to say “deaths” but changed to—“passings. I’m quite able to certify the cause, so don’t worry yourself, Seamus.” Barry finished writing and signed the form. “This has to be taken to the Registrar of Births and Deaths over in Newtownards, but I can save you a trip.”

  “Oh?” Pat said.

  Barry sipped a mouthful of tea. “Yes. I assume Mister Coffin will be making the arrangements?”

  “Aye,” Guffer said. “I know it sounds heartless, but I went round a couple of days ago and had a wee word.”

  “It wasn’t heartless, Da,” Seamus said. “Didn’t Ma ask you to, and didn’t she and Mister Robinson pick out the hymns and readings from the scriptures?”

  Barry shook his head. Anne Galvin had been a remarkable woman. “I’ll drop in on Mister Coffin. His folks can take care of all the paperwork, including going to Newtownards.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Guffer said as Emer, face now repaired, came in.

  “Cup of tea, Doctor?” Pat asked, rising, “and please have my chair.”

  Emer sat. “Thank you on both counts. Just milk, please.”

  Pat handed her a cup.

  “Do you know, Doctor,” Guffer looked from Pat to Seamus, “it was a great comfort til Annie and me having our boys here at this sad time. At the heels of the hunt, there’s nothing more important than family.” He smiled at his two grown sons.

  “You’re right, Guffer,” Barry said. “Nothing in the whole world.”

  “My Annie was the religious one. I went along til please her,” Guffer said, “but would everybody please bow their heads and close their eyes for a wee minute and send their thoughts til her.”

  Barry did.

  After some time, Guffer said, “Thank youse all very much.”

  All three Galvin men had hankies out and were dabbing their eyes. Finally Guffer said, “Do you mind when you come til see Annie, sir, after they sent her home from Marie Curie and she asked about that Burl Ives’s song, ‘Wayfaring Stranger’?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “She wants that sung at her funeral, and youse all know that Alan Hewitt has a great tenor voice. I talked til him a couple of days back. He says he’d be pleased to.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Emer said.

  “Aye,” said Guffer. “There’s a couple of lines in the first verse that I think sum things for our Annie.” He recited, “… there’s no sickness, toil nor danger in that fair land to which I go.” His inhalation was shaky. “And it’s true. I know she’s in her heaven now. Rest in peace, love. Rest in peace.”

  34

  Let’s Go On with the Show

  July 11, 1964

  “Here you are, folks.” Jack Mills handed his friends each a typed and stapled sheaf of papers. “As the writers, directors, and lead performers, we get the programme hot from the presses. Tada!” Barry, Jack, Harry Sloan, and Norma Fitch had come earlier than the rest of the cast. The four had dealt with some last-minute details before the doors opened and the curtain went up on this year’s annual Houseman’s Concert. For now they were taking a breather before changing into costume.

  Jack stood in front of his three friends seated in the first row of seats in the Bostock House auditorium, named for the matron appointed in 1901, Mary Frances Bostock. The building provided subsidised housing for single staff nurses, and its auditorium was the ideal venue for the annual concert, taking place this year on Saturday, July 11. Barry stared at the date on the front page of the programme and realized their houseman’s year was almost over.

  He set his dinner suit on the chair beside him, opened the programme at page 1, and read aloud, “‘The Royal Victoria Hospital Houseman’s Concert 1964. Copyright. All rites, including last, reserved. For any resemblance to characters living, or to all intents and purposes dead, we accept no responsibility, it’s entirely their own fault.’” He smiled and scanned the next few pages. Every one of the fourteen sketches and comic songs either took the mickey out of the senior consultants and administrators or was filled with risqué humour or off-colour limericks. “Hey, who put this one in? ‘She wasn’t what men would call pretty/And other girls offered her pity/So nobody guessed/Her syphilis test/Involved half the men in the city.’”

  “Me,” Norma said. Her grin was feral. She moved a hold-all onto a chair beside her.

  The men laughed.

  “Good for you,” Harry said.

  Every houseman had a role. For tonight, God bless them, the senior house officers, doctors like John Geddes, were carrying out the juniors’ duties. The four friends had been the prime movers of the concert. Jack had a monologue and Barry a lengthy narrative poem, “The Snake,” he’d written. The senior staff to be guyed went under distorted but recognisable names. In one sketch, Jack Mills would portray Doctor Cranky Cartridge, an unsubtle caricature of Doctor Franky Pantridge. In another, Barry would be playing Sir Bosom Gazer, a reference to a senior man with a penchant for well-endowed young women.

  After the list of acts were more one-liners. He read, “‘Have you heard about the psychiatrist who slept under the bed because he was becoming a little potty?’” Barry groaned. “God, that’s an awful pun. ‘Potty’ meaning out of his mind, or chamber pot.”

  Jack, in the accents of a well-known Cockney comedian, said, “I don’t wish to know that. Kindly leave the stage. Ba-boom-boom.” He dropped on one knee with his right arm extended.

  “You’re so sharp,” said Harry with a smile, “you’ll cut yourself, Mills.” He riffled through the pages. “I don’t know when the tradition started, but I think it’s a terrific way for us all to let off steam. It was great craic put
ting the show together, and it lets us get in some home truths too, under the protective umbrella of a fool’s pardon.”

  “‘Our grateful thanks to the consultants for allowing us to take their illustrious names in vain,’” read Norma. “That should cover it, don’t you think?” she said with a bark of laughter.

  “That may cover the medical staff, but personally I feel an apology is in order from the dining room. Still, I got my licks in, so to speak.” Harry stood, looking solemn, and cleared his throat.

  “‘The houseman’s meals are all the same/ and don’t we know the man to blame?/He sees no point in wasting food/When burned-up crap is just as good.’”

  “Aye, dishes like savoury mincemeat á la dunghill or potato soup with less spuds than the great famine. But it’s nearly all over, the grub and the year, and I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve gained a lot of confidence—”

  Barry, with no steady girlfriend since Virginia Clarke, said with a smile, “And you’ve worked your way through almost every student nurse, you old lecher.”

  Jack grinned, blew on the tips of his right fingers and thumb, and rubbed them up and down on his left lapel in the Belfast gesture of self-congratulations. “You’re only young once, my son.”

  “Aye,” said Harry, “and I feel more than a year older, but I’ll say one thing. It was great to sample all of the services, get a taste for what might interest you.”

  “And is it still pathology for you, Harry?” Norma asked.

  “It is. Professor Biggart has a job for me in his department, starting next month.”

  “And you’ll not miss seeing patients?” Barry said. The death of Rusky Peters back in February had hit him hard, but partly thanks to Jack’s sage advice on the night and his continuing support, and partly from some inner reserve, Barry had coped. And more than ever he wanted to get to know the patients he was treating.

  Harry shook his head. “I meant what I said back in the fall. I’m impressed by the work clinicians do, but I’m going to help them from the lab. Particularly the surgical specialities.”

  “That’s where I’m going,” Jack Mills said. “Mister Sinclair Irwin of 13 and 14’s going to take me as his senior house officer in August.”

  “Sinky’s been a great boss to work for on my last rotation,” Barry said, “but I’m just not cut out to be a surgeon.”

  “We knew you couldn’t hack it,” Jack said.

  “Not cut out? Can’t hack it?” Norma groaned. “I think you two are still working on tonight’s script. We were talking about our futures. I’ve definitely decided on paediatrics. The new professor, I. J. Carré, has a house officer position for me at Sick Kids, and Barry?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Eventually I want to try general practice, but there’s no starting date of August the first like there is in hospital posts, so I’m going home to Bangor, having a break, and then I’m going to start looking for an assistantship in County Down. I’ll have the luxury of all the time in the world to decide, and unlike you lot, no more exams to face.”

  Jack put his fingers to his forehead.

  “Hey, old friend. Attack of the nerves?” said Barry.

  “No, not at all. There’s something I wanted to tell you that might be able to help with a job.”

  “Oh?” Barry was interested.

  “No, it’s gone. But it’ll come back to me and I’ll let you know.”

  Norma said, “None of us are thinking of emigration?”

  Jack went into his upper-class English accent he’d be using later in a sketch. “Are you suggesting one should head for the colonies? What a positively ghaaaastly thought.”

  When he’d stopped laughing, Barry said, “Nothing would persuade me to leave Ulster. Not one thing.”

  And Harry, with seriousness in his voice, said, “I think we all feel like that.”

  Heads nodded in agreement.

  Norma fiddled with a ballerina’s tutu in her hold-all. She’d need it later. “It’s going to feel strange next month. We’ve all been together for the last seven years. Then on August the first, we’ll all be going our separate ways. I’m going to miss you lads.”

  Jack, never one for displays of emotion, looked distinctly uncomfortable. “But hey, bye, we’ll have our memories,” he said brightly. “You know, like that first day in casualty. You missed that, Harry, but the housemen from the class before arranged for us to be swamped with customers on our very first day.”

  “The waiting hall was packed,” Barry said, “and in rapid succession, as one patient was called, each patient moved up one seat, sort of a serpentine movement. Some irreverent medical student of bygone years named the unfortunates who came to casualty ‘the snakes.’ That’s what gave me the idea for my poem.”

  “Go on then,” said Jack, “give us a verse or two.”

  “This piece is in the rhythm of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’”

  “Oscar Wilde,” Jack said. “I’ve remembered. I’ll tell you later, Barry. Please go ahead.”

  “Right.”

  Deep in the gloom of the Ambulance Room

  White-coated figures make

  A silent plea that you not me will make the dread mistake,

  That has led the brave to an early grave

  When they tried to treat a snake.

  “There’s twelve more verses—”

  “Twelve more verses,” said Jack. “Oh, the anguish.”

  “I guess I’ve added a few since you heard it last.”

  “Remind me not to be around when they start pelting you with rotten tomatoes.”

  “Pay Jack no mind,” said Norma. “Give us another stanza, Barry.”

  “Okay. In the penultimate verse, our hero’s fate is described.”

  With courage sapped, his nerve had snapped

  His mind had given way.

  With lips that shake, “A snake, a snake,” was all that he could say

  That’s the only word we’ve ever heard

  Him gibber since that day.

  “And here I thought you liked patients, Laverty,” Jack Mills said.

  “I do. But sometimes I think a bit of gallows humour helps us cope with some of the less pleasant ones.”

  “Quite right, Barry,” Harry said. “I find gallows humour helps with the less alive ones as well.”

  Barry heard a sound behind and turned to see the other housemen coming in. “Come on. Time to go backstage.” He picked up his dinner suit and followed Jack and the others up onto the stage and into the wings, where Norma, clutching her hold-all, headed off for the women’s dressing room and the lads went into the men’s.

  “Norma’s right about seven years together,” Harry said. “I know you two went to Campbell. I went to Belfast Royal Academy. The lot in my sixth form had been together for five years when we left school in ’57. We got together a group. We called it the Fifty-seven Club and we meet once a year. Formal dress. What would you think about us Royal Victoria housemen calling ourselves the Sixty-four Club and meeting, formal dress, first Friday in December, say, at the Dunadry Hotel near Templepatrick on the way to the airport?”

  Jack was taking off his jacket. “Brilliant idea. Barry and I’ll help you organise it.”

  “Absolutely,” Barry said, hanging his costume in a locker. “We’ve shared a lot.”

  “And who knows what’s ahead,” Jack said. “Barry, I’ve remembered what I wanted to tell you.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was reading The British Medical Journal the other day. Looking at the ads. There’s a GP, a Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, in a place called Ballybucklebo, between Cultra and Holywood. The good doctor’s looking for an assistant. Might be worth a look. I’ll give you the journal when we get back to The Huts so you can get his address and phone number.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  The room was filling up now with the other male housemen.

  Ten minutes, Barry thought, and the curtain
would go up on the Houseman’s Concert 1964—and in twenty-seven days they’d lower the final curtain on seven years of training. Seven years of making friends for a lifetime through shared crises and triumphs. He glanced at Jack, and Norma, and Harry. Seven years to prepare them for their next chosen steps in medicine. Barry smiled. He wondered what kind of a man this Doctor O’Reilly might be and what sort of a place Ballybucklebo was. Barry shrugged. He reckoned he might as well find out soon.

  35

  A Party of Friends and Relations

  July 5, 1969

  O’Reilly watched as, hand in hand, Jack Mills and Helen Hewitt left the bar hatch where they had been talking with her father, Alan Hewitt, and approached the table in the main hall of the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts Sporting Club, where O’Reilly sat with Kitty, Lord John MacNeill, and his sister Myrna.

  “Excuse me my lord, Lady Ferguson,” Helen Hewitt said, making a small curtsey. “I know I wrote the night in June that I learned I’d passed, but I wanted to thank you both in person for the MacNeill Scholarship.”

  “You already have given me the best possible thanks, Doctor Hewitt. Not only did you pass, you took first-class honours and the gold medal in medicine. There’s only one man prouder than me here tonight, and that’s your father.”

  “Actually, sir, you might have to fight me for that honour,” said Jack with a broad smile.

  Myrna laughed. “Well, no other woman here tonight could be prouder of you than me.” Myrna’s face suddenly became serious and she took one of Helen’s hands. “And your mother, Doctor Hewitt. She would have been so proud.”