An Irish Country Village

by Patrick Taylor

  Barry shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  “Jesus,” said O’Reilly with a grin. “Drinking it neat like a real Irishman. Good for you, son. None of your drowning it or, heaven help us, sticking ice in it the way the Yankees do. Do you know,” he said, “I think they like the ice for the same reason we tell mothers to put bad-tasting medicine in the fridge.”

  “Because chilling it numbs the taste buds?”

  “Exactly.” O’Reilly took a healthy swallow. “And why in the name of the wee man would you want to spoil the flavour, when Mr. John Jameson has gone to all that trouble to distill the stuff right in the first place?” He took another drink. “It’s about time you got off that sherry anyway. Fortified wine? It’s neither fish, fowl, nor good red meat.”

  “I happen to like sherry.”

  “So did I when I was your age, but I grew out of it.” He raised one bushy eyebrow.

  Is he telling me it’s time for me to grow up? Barry wondered. He held his glass in one hand and stared at the amber liquid, noting the tiny transparent curtains where some had flowed down the inside of the glass.

  “Pardon?” O’Reilly asked.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  O’Reilly nursed his glass of whiskey and looked down. “I thought I heard you say, ‘Cheers’ or ‘Sláinte.’ ”

  “Sorry,” Barry said. Lifting his glass, he muttered, “Sláinte,” and took a swallow.

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly. “Is fearr an tsláinte ná na táinte. Health is better than riches.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Barry said. He drank again.

  O’Reilly growled something and lowered himself into the other armchair. “All right, Barry. You’ve had a face on you like a Lurgan spade all afternoon. Cheer up, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. You know, son, I’ve been proud of you for the last few days . . .”

  Barry looked into O’Reilly’s face. There was gentleness in the man’s expression.

  “You’ve done well not letting this PM business get the better of you, carrying on with your work. It’s a lesson all doctors have to learn. You have to keep your own troubles to yourself because, trite as it may sound, the customers come first.” He frowned, took a deep drink, and said, as if to himself, “Sometimes they come first a bit too much, and you can have a bugger of a job closing your mind to them. It doesn’t hurt to get away once in a while.”

  Barry wondered if he meant that doctors should get away physically. O’Reilly never seemed to take more than a few hours off. Did the whiskey help him to blot out his concerns? Maybe, but it wasn’t helping Barry.

  He forced a weak smile. “Perhaps I need to get away. I could’ve done better today. I missed the diagnosis of that wee lad’s measles this afternoon.”

  “Why?” O’Reilly held his head tilted to one side. “Why did you miss it? It’s not a difficult one to make.”

  Barry flinched and tried to explain. “Because measles usually occur in late autumn. The boy had a runny nose; his eyes were inflamed and sensitive to light. Given the number of cases of hay fever we’ve seen recently, I thought . . .”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly. “Sparrows are more common than canaries sitting on Irish telegraph wires. One of my old profs used to say that.”

  “So did one of ours. Common diseases occur more commonly . . . but it’s our job to keep an eye out for the unusual. I didn’t bother looking in his mouth. I should have.” And damn it all, the same thing, rushing an examination, was the reason he found himself in his current predicament. “You found the Koplik’s spots inside his cheeks.”

  “I did, and any eejit could have made the diagnosis once he’d seen them.”

  It was a simple statement. O’Reilly’s nose tip was its usual plum colour, and his eyes did not hold any suggestion of disappointment.

  “I’m sorry.”

  O’Reilly swirled the whiskey in his glass. “And how long have you been in practice, son?”

  “You know bloody well. Six weeks.”

  O’Reilly nodded, seemingly unruffled by the edge in Barry’s voice. “And how many cases of measles have you seen?”

  “Two or three when I was a student.” He didn’t like to be reminded of his lack of experience. “Christ Almighty, I only graduated last year.”

  “Did you ever have them yourself?”

  Barry shook his head.

  “You must have been a lucky lad. I’d a terrible dose when I was nine.” O’Reilly had a faraway look in his brown eyes. “I’ll never forget old Doctor O’Malley. He used to come and see me every day. Funny old bird. He had muttonchop whiskers and always wore a morning suit. He was a damn good doctor and he’d played a ferocious game of hurley as a youngster. He played in the All-Ireland finals for County Cork.”

  Just like a certain colleague of mine, Barry thought. Old-fashioned in many ways; no muttonchops, of course; a damn fine physician; and at one time a very good rugby player. Barry could remember having chicken pox at age ten, being very impressed by his parents’ GP, and knowing it was then that he had decided he wanted to be a doctor. “Fingal,” he asked, “when did you decide to go into medicine?”

  O’Reilly guffawed. “I don’t think I actually know, but I do remember being fond of old O’Malley. In my last year at Clongoes Wood School it was time to think of a career, some of the lads I played rugby with were going to Trinity, and I thought medicine seemed as good a choice as any.”

  “And it has been?”

  “For me?” He frowned. “For a while there, when I was in the navy, I used to wonder if I’d have been happier as a sailor, but that notion passed. It passed the same way it does for all the youngsters who want to be firemen or engine drivers.” He rose and looked out the window. “It’s suited me fine, Barry. Just fine . . .” He turned and stared at him.

  Barry looked into O’Reilly’s face. His lips were curved in a small smile, and there was brightness in his deep eyes when he said, “And it’s going to suit you fine too, son, because, Laverty, for a young man, you’ve all the makings of a good doctor . . .”

  Barry looked into O’Reilly’s face. The smile had gone.

  “And like all youngsters you want everything at once. You want to be Sir William Osler, Louis Pasteur, and Alexander Fleming all rolled into one . . . and you want it now. Today.”

  “I suppose—”

  “Jesus Christ, there’s no supposing. It’s the truth, and do you know how I know? Do you?” Now there was a bite in O’Reilly’s voice. “Because, and I’ve told you this before, I wasn’t always fifty-six. How the hell do you think I felt a couple of years out of medical school, stuck on HMS Warspite with a thousand men to look after?”

  “Scared?”

  “Bloody well petrified.” O’Reilly lifted his hand. “It’s different in a war. You have to learn quickly, and you get to be experienced by making mistakes.” He took a deep pull of his whiskey. His smile was starting again, and it broadened as he spoke. “Experience is a wonderful thing. It lets you recognize the same mistake when you make it again . . . and again until one day you stop making that bloomer.”

  O’Reilly’s words, and his assurance that he thought Barry was going to make a good doctor, made Barry smile.

  “That’s better,” O’Reilly said. “Now, while I’m in the mood for preaching a sermon, I’m going to tell you something else. When I asked you why you missed the diagnosis of measles, I thought you might have had a different answer.” O’Reilly’s voice was level. “I thought you were going to tell me your mind was on other things.”

  “Well . . .” There was no point dissembling. He looked O’Reilly in the eye. “I wanted to get home in case Harry had phoned. He said he’d be in touch. We’re awfully out of touch when we’re making home visits.”

  O’Reilly nodded. “The thought’s occurred to me too. Wouldn’t a telephone that you could keep in your car be a wonderful thing?”

  “You’d need an awfully long telephone
wire.”

  O’Reilly laughed. “Och, I’m sure one day some genius’ll invent a short-range wireless telephone like the Talk Between Ships we had in the navy.” He stretched, then looked at Barry. “We do have a phone in the house. Any point trying to get hold of your mate now?”

  Barry shook his head. “He’ll have gone home and I don’t have his number. I don’t even know where he lives so there’s no point asking directory enquiries for help. The phone book’s full of Sloans.”

  “Pity,” said O’Reilly, swallowing the last of his whiskey and striding to the sideboard to refill his glass. “I was certain we’d have heard. I was wrong. I could have been wrong about something else too.”

  “What?”

  “I said that if I thought it was necessary, I’d go and see Mrs. Fotheringham again. I haven’t.”

  “Do you think it would help?”

  “Honestly, Barry? I don’t know.” O’Reilly parked himself in the chair and stuck his booted feet on the footstool.

  “Then why bother?”

  “Because you don’t give up a fight in the middle of the tenth round.” He looked enquiringly at Barry. “There’s another thing. I’ve known her for years. Yes, she’s all airs and graces. Yes, she’s a born-again hypochondriac. Yes, she’s the most demanding bloody woman in God’s creation, but—and it’s a big but—she and her late husband were remnants of the Raj. They had all of those values, good and bad, but they included a deeply felt sense of fair play and an absolute belief that if one’s word had been given it must be honoured.” He crossed his legs. “She’s promised me she’ll drop the suit if we have evidence it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But we don’t have the evidence.”

  “Yet,” O’Reilly said. “Not yet—”

  He was interrupted by something tiny scuttling across the carpet, Lady Macbeth in hot pursuit. A mouse. The little creature ran up the side of the footstool, along O’Reilly’s trouser leg, and was now trying to burrow inside his waistcoat. He grabbed it and held it firmly in one hand; then he set his glass on the coffee table, and stood. Barry could see the sharp nose and whiffling whiskers peeping out above the top of O’Reilly’s index finger.

  Lady Macbeth stood on her hind legs, front claws firmly stuck halfway up O’Reilly’s trouser leg. She made an eldritch growling, and Barry felt the hairs rise on the nape of his neck. He could only imagine how the mouse must feel.

  “Get to hell down, cat,” O’Reilly said.

  She paid no attention. Her tail thrashed, and her growling went up at least an octave.

  “Grab Her Ladyship, Barry.”

  Barry rose and tried to catch the animal. She ripped her claws free, dragging ragged loops of tweed from the fabric of O’Reilly’s trouser leg. Barry managed to hold on to her. “Got her,” he said.

  “Good,” said O’Reilly. “Hang onto her until I get this ‘wee, sleekit, cow’ring, tim’rous beastie’ out of the house.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Barry set the cat on the carpet.

  She fixed him with a steely glare, spat, and then sat and hoisted one hind leg so the knee was behind her ear, and began to wash her bottom. Barry had read some author who said cats engaged in such an ungainly pursuit looked as if they were playing the cello. It was an apt description.

  If Her Ladyship could sit, so could he. He went back to his chair and sipped his Irish. It was a damn sight harsher on the throat than his usual sherry, but it was certainly producing more of an inner glow.

  What the hell was it about O’Reilly that any creature, mouse or man, instinctively knew it could run to him if it was in trouble? Barry shook his head. He was damned if he knew, but it was true—and it was a great comfort. Maybe someday people would feel that way about him. One day, after he’d served his time like his mentor.

  The cat had finished her washing and was curled up in a ball by the time O’Reilly returned. “I put it out in the back garden,” he said. “Arthur won’t bother it. That mite really did have a ‘panic in his breastie.’ You should have felt the rate its wee heart was going.” He smiled shyly. “I couldn’t resist it. I was curious. I listened in with my stethoscope. You never heard the like.” He sounded astonished.

  Barry could picture the big man, gently holding the bell of his stethoscope over the mouse’s tiny chest, and the look of innocent wonderment that would have come into his eyes. “They say the Greeks prized the enquiring mind,” Barry said.

  “And you’re more yourself if you can be bothered to make a remark like that.” O’Reilly smiled, picked up his whiskey, and sat. “You’ve had a minute or two to think about what I was saying, Barry, when we were so rudely interrupted . . . what do you think about my idea? Should I keep up the good fight? Go and see the widow?”

  Barry wasn’t sure how to answer. He noticed his glass was empty. He went to the sideboard, helped himself, turned, and said, “It won’t be easy.”

  “For who? Me? For Mrs. Fotheringham?”

  Barry shook his head. “No. For me.”

  “You?” O’Reilly stood holding his glass. He frowned. “Why you?”

  “Because I’ve no choice. If anyone has to talk to her, it’s me. It’s my responsibility.”

  O’Reilly clapped Barry on the shoulder. “I knew you’d say that. I just bloody well knew it.”

  O’Reilly had never even hinted that Barry should go, nor had he made any effort to help Barry arrive at the decision. He felt as if he had been submitted to some crucial test and had unwittingly passed.

  “I’m proud of you, Barry,” O’Reilly said, raising his glass. “And you’ll not be going alone. If we haven’t heard by Saturday, we’ll drop in on her on Sunday.”

  “Thanks, Fingal. I appreciate . . .”

  Barry heard Kinky’s voice, and then her footsteps coming upstairs. He saw O’Reilly’s eyebrow lift in a question and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Barry’s palms grew damp.

  She stuck her head round the door. “Doctor Laverty. There’s a call for you, so.”

  Barry’s pulse quickened.

  “It’s your Miss Spence. You’d best run along and speak to her. She sounded all excited.”

  As he ran to the door, he heard Kinky scolding O’Reilly. “Lord Jesus, Doctor O’Reilly. If it wasn’t bad enough having to keep an eye on the young man’s trousers. Would you look at the state of your tweeds?”

  Barry took the stairs two at a time and grabbed the receiver. “Hello. Patricia. Where are you?”

  “In my flat.” She did sound excited.

  “But I thought you weren’t coming up to the Kinnegar until tomorrow.” He heard her laugh. His hand tightened on the plastic. “You’ve won, haven’t you?” He tried to sound enthusiastic.

  “Yes. I have. You were right. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Amazing.” He swallowed. “Well done. Congratulations.” He’d no trouble knowing exactly how she would be feeling. He’d gone through the same thing himself just over a year ago. “Laverty, pass,” the dean had read from the list of finals results. At first there was numbness, disbelief, understanding, and then an overwhelming urge to cheer and caper about.

  “Are you there, Barry?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “Can you come over? I wanted to see you so much I got Dad to run me up tonight.”

  Barry hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ll ask O’Reilly. Hang on.” He set the receiver on the hall table and turned to the stairs but heard O’Reilly bellow from the landing.

  “Well? Has she won? Kinky said she was excited.”

  “Yes. She has. She’s back and she’s in her flat.”

  “Bloody marvellous.” O’Reilly held his hands clasped above his head like a prizefighter who had scored a KO. “Well, don’t just stand there, both legs the same length, you great glipe. Go and see her and give her a big hug from me.”

  Good News from a Far Country

  The Volkswagen’s wipers struggled back and forth, trying and failing to clear the win
dscreen of drizzle. It wasn’t heavy enough to let the blades move freely, and their rhythmic scraping on the glass was as grating as fingernails on a blackboard. Barry hunched forward and concentrated on where he was going, along the winding road to the Kinnegar.

  It was difficult to see ahead, and not only through the streaked windscreen.

  He knew he loved her. Had known since the first night he’d kissed her. You were meant to rejoice when someone you loved won a victory, and he did—for the success itself—but the thought of Patricia’s going away tore at him.

  Jack had urged him to propose, give her a ring, mark her as his property, but he couldn’t. Was it because he was scared of the idea of marriage, because he thought he was too young at twenty-four? Or was it because one of the things he loved about her was her spirit, which like a wild pony, should be tamed only when the animal was ready? Damned if he knew.

  But the fact was she’d won and she’d be going to Cambridge. The question was, did she love him enough to save herself for him? Christ, it sounded like something from a cheap romance novel. Time, he supposed, would tell, but he already knew how much he hated uncertainty and waiting for answers to questions over which he had no control. And time, in this case, was going to be three long years. It would seem like forever, just as trying to get to the Kinnegar was taking much longer than he’d anticipated.

  He accelerated along a straight stretch, then slowed for a corner. Christ. There were brake lights up ahead, and the bulk of a lorry loomed out of the rain. He slammed on the brakes and wrestled with the steering wheel as Brunhilde slewed to the left. Then, tyres squealing, she juddered to a halt a few feet from the lorry. The soles of his feet tingled.

  He peered around the vehicle ahead to where a line of cars formed a tailback from something. Barry closed the door and sat hammering his fist on the steering wheel, and as the line crawled forward, he followed. He was almost abreast of the holdup before he could see what it was.