A Dublin Student Doctor (15 page)

“I remember Doctor Micks telling us way back we couldn’t change the world,” Bob said. “I’m not heartless, Fingal, but the tenements of Dublin have always been there.”

Fingal sat back. This wasn’t the place to give his friend a lecture, and yet. And yet perhaps happy-go-lucky Bob Beresford should have his eyes opened. Just a bit. “Actually they haven’t,” he said. “They’re relatively recent.”

Bob frowned and stopped his glass before it reached his lips. “Go on then. You have my attention.”

Fingal set his pint on the table. “My mother is committed to slum clearance. She’s told me that in 1802 after the Act of Union of Ireland with the rest of Britain and the dissolution of the Irish Parliament, the Anglo-Irish upper classes decided life would be better in England and started leaving Dublin.”

“Silly of them. It’s a great city,” Bob said.

“They didn’t think so. It certainly wasn’t politically stable then. Irish Nationalism was rampant. They might indeed have been safer getting out.”

“I suppose.” Bob sipped.

“So did they. They flooded away. Do you know that by 1840, a Georgian house that would have sold for eight thousand pounds in 1791, just before the United Irishman rose in 1798, was worth perhaps only five hundred?”

“I’ve always said it’s safer putting money on the horses than speculating on property,” Bob said. “It’s over quicker.” He laughed.

Fingal chuckled. “Can you not be serious about anything, Bob?”

“Not if I can help it.” He finished his whiskey.

Fingal took a small pull on his pint. “Think about this. Once the prices had fallen, whole terraces were acquired by profiteering landlords who crammed as many as fourteen people into one room.”

“How many?” Bob’s eyes widened.

“Fourteen.”

“Good God. I didn’t know.” Bob frowned, looked at his empty glass. “One more for the road,” he said, rose, and inclined his head to Fingal’s pint.

“Not for me.” He didn’t want to have too many before Kitty appeared.

Fingal glanced at his watch. Seven fifteen. It wasn’t like Kitty to be late, and the later it got the less likely it would be that she was coming. Her punctuality, a trait she shared with Charlie Greer, was one of the things he’d come to admire about the twenty-two-year-old from Tallaght. That and her understated pride in looking after her patients. He took a pull on his pint and was struck by a thought. He didn’t want to move on to another girl as he usually did. They had had such fun on the few nights they’d been out together, and he knew he really wanted to see Kitty this evening. And if they kept on walking out? He was curious about what their future might hold. Not that he had any immediate plans for anything permanent with Kitty O’Hallorhan. But, and the thought surprised him, if things did progress, who knew what might transpire? Certainly, and the unromantic, practical nature of the idea amused Fingal, a GP could do worse than having a nurse for a wife. At this stage he should be thinking less about domesticity and more about what great legs she had and how they would feel above her stocking tops, not what might happen two years from now.

“They’re quick on the pour here,” Bob said as he reappeared with a whiskey. “Sure I can’t get you another?”

Fingal shook his head. “But thanks.”

Bob sat. “Makes you think,” he said. “Fourteen in one room.” He drank. “Still I imagine there weren’t too many like that.”

“You’d be wrong. One-third of Dublin’s population is living in at least six thousand tenements. My ma’s a friend of Eamon Donnelly. He’s a member of the Dáil. She quoted his speech to the House to me over tea one day. ‘To pass through O’Connell Street with all its brilliant lights … one would scarcely think that only some yards away the slaughter of the innocents was going on.’ He had been referring to disease-ridden Gardiner and Dominick streets.”

“Good God. They’re just up the road from here,” Bob said.

“Where we’re enjoying a warm pub and a drink.” Fingal sipped. “Did you know a Housing Bill had been passed in 1931? Dublin’s finally started slum clearance.”

“Actually no. I didn’t. I don’t pay much attention to politics, but it sounds like it’s about time.”

Fingal finished his pint. “We started this conversation talking about Paddy Keogh and Francis Street. It’s still there. Not cleared yet. No rehousing for Paddy. Don’t you think, Bob, there should be more for him to look forward to when he gets discharged from Dun’s than a damp slum with one outside privy to serve sixty or more people and slop buckets that have to be emptied every morning stinking up the room at night? The man was a hero of Passchendaele, for Christ’s sake. Surely he deserves better, but the government of the Irish Free State has no obligations to British ex-servicemen, and the British government barely gives pennies to their old Irish soldiers. So he’s like the man with the penny whistle. He has to beg.”

Bob stared into his glass then looked Fingal squarely in the eye. “I’ve wondered about you, Fingal. I know you take great satisfaction from working with patients. I can see an attraction to medicine in that. I’ve envied you, but looking after patients isn’t enough for you. You want to change the world too, don’t you?”

“No, Bob.” Fingal shook his head. “No I don’t. Just a little corner.”

Bob nodded. “I’m beginning to understand. Tell me. How do you think a doctor could help? I’m not cut out for looking after patients. I’m too bloody ham-fisted.”

“You don’t have to see patients. We’ve been doing courses in hygiene. They’re all about public health.” He smiled. “Changing little corners of the world by making sure people have sanitation, clean drinking water, get vaccinated.”

“Sounds dull,” Bob said, “but I see what you mean.”

Fingal was struck by a thought. “Bob, will you make a bet?”

Bob grinned, ear to ear. “Is the Pope Catholic? Try me.”

Fingal finished his pint. “I’ll bet you that if that Scottish fellow, that Doctor Fleming that Doctor Micks was talking about, finds a way to purify the stuff from the mould
Penicillium,
doctors will be able to put an end to infections.”

Bob laughed. “That’s a fine bet, Fingal, but we’ll be waiting for years to see who won.”

“True, but it would be exciting finding out.” He waited.

“Do you know, Fingal. I agree. It would.” Bob grinned. “It bloody well would. That’s just like a horse race. You speculate, then wait for the outcome, and I love that.”

It was Fingal’s turn to smile. “I think the ‘finding out’ is called research, Bob. And the payout is possibly helping thousands, maybe even millions of people. Something to think about, my friend?”

“Indeed.” He looked pensive. “I suppose going into research could be a reason to pass my exams.”

The curtain was drawn back.

As was expected of gentlemen when a lady entered, they stood. Fingal knew he was grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kitty said, propping her umbrella against the wall, pulling off her head scarf, and shaking her black mane loose to shine in the light from the overhead fixture. “Hello, Bob.”

“Kitty.” Bob raised his hat, took her hand, and lifted it to just below his lips. “Delightful to see you. May I buy you a drink?”

Kitty O’Hallorhan was a very different woman out of her austere uniform. And it wasn’t the first time Fingal had wondered what she’d look like out of her ordinary clothes as well.

“Well—” She glanced at Fingal, who nodded. “Glass of Shooting Sherry, please.”

Bob had said he’d not play gooseberry. Fingal glanced at his friend. Handsome, beautifully dressed, manners of an English “Milord,” pots of money, women round him in swarms. For a second Fingal wondered if he should be worried.

“Fingal? You sure?”

Fingal laughed. “All right, but just one.” He held Bob’s gaze.

Bob nodded, lifted Fingal’s empty glass, and left.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Fingal,” Kitty said. “I’d things to finish on the ward.” She opened her raincoat then laughed. “I told the superintendent it’s my father’s birthday. Sometimes she’s not a bad old stick. She’s let me out until ten.”

Good for you, girl, he thought. He smiled. “Och, but sure absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Fingal hugged her and gave her a chaste kiss.

She sighed. “I just wish our schedules weren’t quite so full. It’s been three weeks since you took me to the Abbey Theatre to see that wonderful
Pygmalion
and it’ll be nearly two more until New Year’s Eve.”

He shrugged. “I know, but what can we do? I’m on call every third Saturday. I have to study, and—” He hesitated. He didn’t want her to think she was coming second to it. “And then there’s the rugby.”

She shook her head. “I’m perfectly happy to come and watch you play.” Her lips curled into a smile and her eyes sparkled. “Your friend Bob Beresford is such a marvellous escort.”

Fingal coughed and frowned. “I’m sure he is. He’ll be leaving soon.”

“Now don’t be getting jealous, Fingal O’Reilly. You look like a grumpy old bear.”

“I’ll accept grumpy, but not old. I just turned twenty-six.” His kiss was less than chaste. “And that’s to prove it. Now,” he said, pulling out a chair. “Sit you down.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Here we are,” Bob said, returning with the drinks. He gave each theirs, but remained standing. He lifted his glass and drained it. “Fingal, thank you for explaining to me about the tenements.”

“I hope I didn’t bore you.”

“Not at all. And you’re right. There are more ways a doctor can help than in the clinic.”

“Think about it, Bob.”

“I will. Now, Miss Kitty, fairest of the fair—”

Fingal saw Kitty smile and blush.

“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’ but I’ve to see a man about a dog.”

Kitty laughed. “I thought men said that when they needed an excuse to go for a drink.”

Or for a pee, Fingal thought.

“They do,” Bob said, “but in this instance the man in question has a great lummox of an animal and he plays the penny whistle for pennies.” Bob glanced at Fingal. “I reckon two shillings would buy them both supper.”

“You,” said Fingal to Bob’s departing back, “are a sound man.”

14

Have Felt My Soul in a Kiss

“What,” asked Kitty, “was that all about?”

Fingal laughed. “I met Bob on Grafton Street. I was patting a dog’s head. Its master was playing the penny whistle.”

“And I’ll bet you gave him money, then, you big softie.”

He shrugged.

“You are, you know, and I like that.” She sipped her sherry and stared into the glass, then turned to him, a smile replacing the pensive look of only a moment before. “I wish I got more than Saturdays out of that Nurses’ Home or could finagle more special dispensations like tonight.” She tossed her hair. “They call it the Nurses’ Home, but it’s more like a bloody nunnery.” She laughed and took another sip. “And just because the senior nurses are referred to as sisters doesn’t mean they’re nuns. Some of them just act that way. They seem to think anything pleasant is sinful. We even have to turn off the radio at nine o’clock and I love listening to good dance bands like Duke Ellington and Joe Loss.”

Fingal nodded. “Mantovani. Billy Cotton.” He moved closer to her. “If Glenn Miller ever comes to Dublin, I don’t care what the rules are, I’m getting you out of there and we’re going to the concert even if I have to tunnel under the wall and borrow the money from Bob.”

Kitty laughed. “I’d love that, but if the lady superintendent was in one of her better moods, like tonight, you could save yourself a lot of digging.” She frowned. “Most of the time the way she goes on you’d think that men, students in particular, were one step down from the devil.” She screwed up her face.

“Old Nick himself, bye,” Fingal said in a stage Cork accent, “we’re the divil’s own when it comes to girls. Indeed we are, so. Mashers to a man.”

“You’re not one of those women chasers, are you, O’Reilly?” she said. “You’ve told me about your years at sea.”

“You know what sailors are. Girls in every port.”

Her smile was broad as she finished her sherry. “And am I your girl in the Port of Dublin?” And yet he heard a plaintiveness in her voice.

Fingal gathered her in an enormous hug, kissed her again and tasted the sweetness of her, felt the tip of her tongue on his. For a moment he allowed his hand that was inside her raincoat to slide along the firmness of one breast. He felt her shudder.

“Fingal.” She was breathless when she pulled away. “You haven’t answered my question. Am I—”

“My girl in the Port of Dublin? By God, Kitty O’Hallorhan, you are. The only one.” He meant it. He kissed her again.

She moved closer and made no demur, but trembled as his hand caressed her breast through her wool dress.

She pulled away, closed her coat, and yet her smile was gentle as she said, “We have until ten tonight,” she inhaled deeply, “before I’ve to be back.” She put up one hand to smooth her hair. “So would you get me another drink, please?”

He picked up her glass and his own, now empty. “Just be a tick.” He could still imagine the softness of her and her delicate musk lingered with him. If she’d worn that on the ward, Sister Daly would have had a purple fit. No jewellery, no perfume was the order of the day.

Begod, no wonder. If that perfume of hers had the same effect on the male patients on Saint Patrick’s Ward as it had on him it would be like the miracle at the pool of Bethesda. Half of the men would rise, take up their beds, and walk and the other half would have envied the hell out of them. Quite the girl, all right.

He went to the bar. “Brendan, a glass of Shooting Sherry and a pint.”

The barman, a young lad of eighteen who stood five foot and had healed acne scars on a face like a potato, sucked a hollow tooth, started a pint, picked up a bottle and poured. “Shooting Sherry? Same young lady after t’ree months? Not like you, Fingal O’Reilly. It’s usually more like a couple of nights den dey’re gone.” He tutted, winked, and handed over the glass. “Mind you, she’s rightly fit.” He described an hourglass shape in the air with his hands.

“I’m glad she has the Brendan Mulcahey seal of approval, you gurrier.”

Brendan laughed. “Takes one gurrier to know another—sir.”