A Dublin Student Doctor (44 page)

“Enjoy,” Kitty said.

And into that single word Fingal read volumes. Virginia would almost certainly have asked Kitty if she wanted moral support. Another’s presence would have squashed anything other than small talk, at the end of which Kitty could have said good-bye without either she or Fingal having been embarrassed. But Virginia had left.

“So, Fingal, how have you been?” she said over her shoulder as she crossed to the door of the flat and turned back to him. “Good Lord,” she said, “what have you done to your nose?”

He chuckled. “I didn’t do anything. Charlie Greer did. We were in the gym sparring. I let my guard down for a moment.” He shrugged.

“I’d have guessed you’d broken it playing rugby.”

Was there a hint of bitterness that while he’d let her go he’d kept on playing? “Boxing,” he said.

“Virginia didn’t tell me. She’s still seeing Cromie and keeps me abreast of most of the gossip. I heard from her that you passed your exam. Congratulations. You’re back on course.”

So she still was interested in what he was doing. “Thank you,” he said as he followed her into the sitting room.

She sat in an armchair. A simple loose woollen sweater could not disguise the beautiful woman beneath. She wore no makeup. Those amber-flecked grey eyes didn’t need any, nor did her full lips. “Have a seat.”

He sat on the sofa facing her. He recognised that the minute she’d closed the door behind them he should have taken her into his arms, kissed her, and told her he loved her. Damnation. For all the worldliness he professed to Lars, despite his experiences in the navy, Fingal was still in matters of his own heart an overgrown schoolboy. “You’re looking well,” he said.

“I am well,” she said. “I’ve been keeping myself busy. Baggot Street Hospital’s a wonderful place to nurse and I’ve been going to night classes to improve how I use pastels.” She pointed to a portrait.

No mention of the other man. Perhaps it was over. Fingal dared to hope. “That’s Virginia. I’d recognise her anywhere,” he said. “It’s very good.” We’re like a couple of boxers, he thought, sparring, throwing out exploratory punches, seeking the opening. “I like the way you’ve caught her expression.”

“It’s not quite what I was after. I’m still trying for better economy of line.” She stood quickly, surprising him, took two paces away and two back. Then she folded her arms and looked down on him. “Fingal,” she said, “you didn’t come here tonight to discuss the finer points of pastel art, did you?”

He sat forward, leaned his wrists on his knees, and stared down at his intertwined fingers before looking up into her eyes. “I came to apologise.”

She cocked her head.

“Kitty, I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

“I tried to understand. Your exams. Your father’s illness. I tried, Fingal. I really did.”

“Father’s in France,” he said. “In remission.”

“I’m glad.”

Silence.

She said, “If you have regrets, so had I. I broke my heart for you, cried myself to sleep. Virginia was wonderful.” Kitty laughed, a short dry laugh. “Held my hand through the worst. She didn’t want me to see you tonight. Thought it would open up the wound.” She lowered her voice. “Fingal, you took away my laughter.”

He hung his head.

She walked away and back again. “I appreciate your coming here tonight to apologise. I always knew you were a gentleman. Thank you. I accept your apology.”

He looked up at her. Kitty’s shoulders were braced, her stance erect. “Kitty, I—”

She held up a hand, palm out. “Fingal, I don’t want you to embarrass yourself.”

“I’ll not. I’ll not because it’s true, what I want to say. I—”

“Fingal, please don’t. I’ve something to tell you and I want you to hear it before you say anything.” One hand plucked at a crease in her skirt. “I think you know I’ve been seeing a surgical trainee.”

Fingal felt his mouth drying up. Those words hit as hard as Charlie’s gloved fist.

“For more than two months. He’s very sweet. A Galway City man.”

I’m sure he’s very sweet, Fingal thought, but I don’t give a tinker’s damn if he’s the duke of the whole bloody province of Connaught.

“Last week he asked me to marry him.” The words came out in a tumbled rush.

Fingal’s mouth opened. He couldn’t stifle pictures of a strange man kissing her, caressing her, telling her he loved her, and Kitty saying “Yes.”

“I see,” he said.

“Fingal, I told him I needed time to think about it.” The grey eyes looked straight into his.

Tell her, you moron,
a voice yelled in his head.
Tell her you love her.
If she needed time, that must mean she wasn’t sure. Perhaps, perhaps she still cared? But he found he simply couldn’t bring himself to ask. Fingal’s words were cooler than he intended. He rose. “I’m pleased for you, Kitty. I wish you every happiness.”

“Is that all you have to say, Fingal?” There was a catch in her voice. “Is it?”

“What else is there to say? You’re considering a proposal of marriage.” Stop being the gentleman, doing the honourable thing, the voice told him. Tell her you love her and the Galway man be damned. So what if she hadn’t simply sat at home pining for Fingal O’Reilly? Swallow your pride, man, and tell her.

“All right. I understand,” she said quietly.

“I don’t think,” he said, “there’s any point in my staying. I hope you’re able to make up your mind soon.” He moved closer to her. She wasn’t wearing her usual musk. Of course she hadn’t been expecting him.

Just as he hadn’t been expecting news of a marriage proposal.

“I hope, Kitty,” he said, “we might stay friends.” Another winner from your book of clichéd platitudes, Fingal, he thought. He extended his hand.

She took it. Her grasp was cool and firm.

He tingled at her touch.

“I know you and the lads have your big exams in five months,” she said, releasing his hand. “I hope they go well for you, Fingal. I think I more than anybody know exactly how much passing means to you.”

He saw how bright her eyes were. “I’ll let myself out,” he said. “I wish you well, Caitlin O’Hallorhan.”

“And I wish you luck, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, I truly do.”

This time it was his turn not to look back. As he closed the door he was sure he heard a sob, but he lifted his cap and coat, opened the outer door, and stepped out into the misery of a Dublin January downpour.

He wasn’t surprised that his cheeks were wet.

43

To Change What We Can; To Better What We Can

“Bugger off,” Fingal yelled at a lurcher snarling at the rear tyre of his Raleigh bicycle as he wobbled along to attend a labouring patient who lived on Swift’s Alley.

Fingal had ridden from the Rotunda, an institution founded in 1745, the year of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s abortive Jacobite rebellion, as a “Hospital for the relief of poor lying-in women in Dublin.” Proceeds from performances in the adjoining circular theatre from which the hospital had taken its name had been meant to defray the hospital’s costs.

As well as its inpatient wards, the Rotunda had a busy extern department where annually 1,500 women were seen at the antenatal clinic before being delivered in their own homes. Fingal had attended to today’s patient at the clinic, but he had first met her last year in Sir Patrick Dun’s. As Fingal had followed the progress of Roisín Kilmartin’s pregnancy, he had made sure she was taking her iron and liver extract, confirming she kept a normal level of haemoglobin.

His two-sizes-too-small bicycle had taken him across O’Connell Street Bridge, along the Quays, and now, well into the Liberties, he was bumping over the cobblestones of Francis Street, Paddy Keogh’s old home territory.

Fingal pedalled harder trying to keep up with Doctor Milliken, who despite his girth crouched over his handlebars and pumped his legs like a competitor in the Tour de France. Patients who had given birth many times did not linger in labour.

Doctor Milliken cycled on, seemingly oblivious to the street urchins who cheered him along. On an April Saturday afternoon, two men from the Rotunda would be a fresh source of amusement to the youngsters. The junior medical staff and students were known by their bicycles and the midwifery bags, leather hold-alls strapped to platforms mounted over the rear wheel. They held the necessary equipment for home deliveries. Inquisitive children were told that doctors brought babies in the black bags.

“Here come the babby doctors.”

Fingal recognised the gangly cigarette-smoking speaker as Jockser, who’d helped guard Bob’s car when they’d come to see Sergeant Paddy last year. The lad’s shirt had no collar, and his trousers, once someone else’s long pants, ended halfway down his bare shins.

“Is dat feckin’ great bag on your carrier the wan youse brings the snappers in?”

Fingal grinned. “Snapper” was another Dublin term for baby. Not only had he been learning medicine for the last four and a half years, he’d become fluent in the English of the tenements.

“Dey’ve got one bag each. Mebbe it’s twins.” That from Finnoula Curran of the fair shoulders, the little girl who’d directed him to Paddy Keogh’s room.

Roger Milliken dismounted under a laundry-laden pole sticking out from an upper storey window. He propped his bike against a whitewashed brick wall that must last have been white before the turn of the century.

Fingal followed suit.

“Hello dere, Big Fellah.” A boy in a cloth cap, clean sweater, short pants, and wearing socks and a pair of shoes got up from where he’d been sitting with his back against the wall. He grinned at Fingal. “How’s the form?”

“The form? I’m grand, and hello to yourself.” Fingal had to think and think hard for a name. “Declan,” he said, “Declan Kilmartin. How are you?”

“Put out of me house,” Declan said. “All the menfolk are, and the yougwans. There’s just me granny and me mammy and the midwife in the place. Me da, him wat’s workin’ stackin’ bricks and carryin’ a hod now for his oul’ pal Sergeant Paddy Keogh, the pair of dem are down at the boozer.”

Brendan’s income as a labourer would account for how well dressed Declan was compared with the rest of the kids here.

“De’re gettin’ a head start on wettin’ the babby’s head.”

Standard practice for Irish husbands when their wives were in labour. Having babies was strictly women’s work. Men had to suffer through it as best they could in the pub with their mates buying them drinks.

“Come on, Fingal,” Roger Milliken said. “It’s her ninth. Labour’ll be short.” He hefted his bag, pushed open a badly fitting plank door, and disappeared into the gloom inside.

Fingal lifted his bag and said to Declan, “Nip round to the pub. Tell Paddy Keogh I’m here and I’d like to know how he’s getting on.” He put his hand into his pocket. “Here’s tuppence and a bulls’ eye.”

“T’anks, sir. You’re a sound man,” Declan said. “I’ll tell dem and be back. It’s my job, once the snapper’s here, to run over to Auntie Dodie’s on Dean Swift Square. Dat’s where the rest of the family’s at. Tell dem to come home.” He trotted off.

Fingal entered the narrow communal hall and avoided a pile of recent dog turds. Beside a rickety staircase was a broken-down pram piled high with rusty saucepans. Someone would be selling them for scrap.

He heard the familiar sounds of labour.

“Ah, Jasus, ah Jasus,
ah Jasus.
” He recognised Roisín’s voice. “Feck it. Feck it. Feck it.
Feck it.
”

Another woman, whom he reckoned by her tones must be much older, kept saying, “It’s all right, me darlin’ girl. It’s all right.”

When he went into the room Fingal didn’t feel the same shock he had when he’d first visited Paddy Keogh. Tattered wallpaper, no running water, open fireplace, bare floorboards, picture of the Bleeding Heart, a chipped plaster Madonna on a scarred mantel. He’d seen it all countless times. A table and four chairs looked to be in much better condition than the furniture in other places. “Me da, him wat’s workin.” That’s what Declan had said. It looked as if Brendan Kilmartin was having a go at brightening up the room.

The floor planks had been scrubbed and the window had been washed so it let in light. Fingal remembered noting the first time he’d met Roisín that she’d kept her hair well brushed. It looked as if she tried to keep her home tidy too.

The tableau he saw was like an illustration by Fred Walker in Dickens’s
Hard Times.
The patient lay on newspapers on a straw mattress near the window. She was surrounded by her mother, the uniformed district midwife, and Doctor Roger Milliken.

“Ah, Jasus, ah Jasus,
ah Jasus, Mary, and Jooooseph.
”

Delivery must be imminent.

Over the usual tenement smells to which he had become inured hung the now familiar metallic odour of amniotic fluid. He could see a large damp stain on the newspapers. Her waters had broken.

“She’s nearly fully dilated, Fingal,” Roger said. “Get your hands washed, there’s soap and a basin of water on the table, and get over here.”

Fingal chucked his coat onto a wooden chair, rolled up his sleeves, and prepared himself to deliver another baby. This time he wasn’t sweating the way he had with the first five.

*   *   *

“Now,” said Granny, “now dat’s all over, who’d like a cup of tea?” She set a battered kettle on top of a small fire in the brick grate.

“Me, Ma,” Roisín said weakly. “I’m gummin’ for one. I’m as dry as a crop of bog-cotton.”

Fingal glanced at Roger and saw the tiniest shake of his head as he said, “Very kind of you, Mrs. Butler, but Mister O’Reilly and I should be running along.”

Fingal, noting a row of not-too-clean chipped metal mugs on a shelf, could understand Roger’s reluctance. You could catch typhoid from drinking out of dirty cups. Fingal had lost track of the number of times he’d had to get rid of the fleas he’d collected while working in the district.

Miss Tobín, the district midwife, looked up from where she was tucking a baby under a blanket in an orange box that served as a cot. “Run on, gentlemen. I’ll tidy up here.” She smiled at Fingal. “I think,” she said, “Mister O’Reilly, that went very well.”