A Dublin Student Doctor (7 page)

“Please tell Cook,” Ma said to Bridgit.

“Hey bye, you always was a grand man for the pan, sir, so you were,” Bridgit said as she left, her Antrim accent as strong as it had been the day she’d left the village of Portglenone and taken service with the O’Reillys.

“Father out?” Fingal asked.

“He’s giving a tutorial.”

Fingal blew out his breath. “How is he?”

She hesitated before saying, “Pretty much the same as usual. Perhaps he tires more easily. He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”

“Really.” Fingal curled his left hand and inspected his fingernails.

Ma pointed to a chair, the twin of hers. “Come and sit down. It’s lovely to have you here. It’s been three weeks since your last visit.” He thought she looked wistful when she said, “I just wish your brother could come as often as you do, son. I know sometimes when he drives up he’s seeing that nice Jean Neely girl.” She laughed. “No time for old fogies like us.”

Fingal sat and crossed his legs. “Lars was down from Portaferry at Christmas,” he said. “It’s a three-hour trip in his motorcar.”

“I know,” she said, “and I’m delighted for your brother. He seems happy being a solicitor in that small town and Jean might just suit him well.”

Fingal, not wishing to become too involved in a discussion of Lars’s love life, said, “He always knew what he wanted for a career.”

She touched his knee. “Both my boys did.”

“And,” he said, “thanks to you and Lars, Ma, I’m doing it. You’ve no idea how much I’m enjoying it.”

“I think I do, and I’m delighted. I’m only sorry you had to go away for so long before you could get started.”

“There was no other way.” He caught her wistful look and knew it must have cost her. “I’m sorry too.”

“Don’t be.” There was a tiny edge in her voice that Fingal had never heard before, not even at the height of his battles with Father. “Don’t ever be sorry for following your dream. Of all emotions, regret is the most futile.”

Fingal wondered what Ma had to regret.

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to one side. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “What could I have to regret? I have everything a Victorian wife could possibly want. A lovely home, a successful husband, two wonderful sons.”

“Victorian? You make yourself sound old, Ma.”

“Well, I was four in 1887 when Queen Victoria had her Golden Jubilee. And the attitudes of her era certainly didn’t perish when I was growing up.” She hesitated then said, “I was a girl once, Fingal. And I was lucky. Your grandfather had some advanced ideas. He believed girls should be educated—up to a point. When I was fourteen he sent me to Victoria College in Belfast and let me stay there until sixth form.” She turned away and looked out through the window. “I was captain of hockey that year, 1901. I was eighteen.”

“The year Queen Victoria died and a year after my namesake kicked the bucket,” Fingal said, wondering why Ma was telling him this.

“Poor Oscar,” Ma said. “I’d read his plays.” She winked at her son before continuing, “Very risqué for a young lady then, but I loved
A Woman of No Importance.
” She stood up quickly. “Come on. Let’s continue this next door. I need coffee. There’s a pot in the dining room. Have a cup with me while you wait for breakfast.”

He followed his mother across the hall and into the formal dining room, admiring the stateliness of her carriage, the grace of her walk. She was a handsome woman. He could imagine her as a girl, lovely, spirited. He pulled out a chair and sat where Bridgit had set a place for one. The cut-glass chandelier overhead sparkled diamond and blue like moonbeams reflected from rippled water.

“Here.” Ma handed him a cup of coffee and sat opposite with her own.

“That new hairdo suits you much better than your old chignon.”

Ma patted her hair. “Lots of waves are all the fashion. I do try to keep up.” She sipped her coffee. “I’ve always tried to keep up.”

“With fashion?”

She shook her head. “With the world. When I was at Victoria College I read the
Belfast Telegraph
every day. I supported Lady Constance Lytton and Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst and their campaign for votes for women.”

“You were a suffragette? Good Lord.”

“I was worse,” Ma said, “I nearly gave your Grandpa Nixon heart failure.”

Fingal sat forward, his coffee ignored. “How?”

“When I left school I told him that in 1899 the Faculty of Medicine of Queen’s College Belfast had approved the admission of women.”

Fingal pushed his chair back. “Ma—Ma, you wanted to be a doctor?” It was unbelievable. Ever since he was a nipper, it had seemed to Fingal that Ma had only one goal, to take care of her family. And yet all along, she had wanted what he himself so desperately did. “Jesus.”

“I know. Shocking, isn’t it?” Her smile was sad. “That’s what Grandpa thought too.”

“That’s not what I meant. We have three girls in our class, and why not? I was just surprised about you, that’s all. I never knew.”

“I was going to tell you when you first told me medicine was what you wanted. Then I realised it had to be your decision, your dream, not mine, so I kept my counsel.”

Fingal swallowed. It must have taken a lot of willpower for her not to say anything.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Grandpa wouldn’t hear of it. To be fair he did let me study English. Still, it’s how I met your father so something good came of it. He was a postgraduate student working for his MA. He taught a series on the poetry of Oscar Wilde.” She sipped her coffee and looked down at the tablecloth. “He was awfully handsome, and his voice when he read from Wilde’s works gave me goose pimples.”

Fingal looked at his mother.

“He was a socialist back then,” she said. “Thought that Keir Hardie—the first Labour MP in the British Parliament—thought the man walked on water. I agreed. We were married in 1904 as soon as he got his MA. Grandpa was very pleased.”

“And you’ve regretted not going to medical school ever since?”

She shook her head. “I told you, of all emotions, regret is the most futile.”

Those, he thought, are her words, but he heard the catch in her voice.

“And that’s why you helped me defy Father?”

“You remember we used to read Yeats together?”

He nodded.

“‘Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams’?” Fingal heard the edge back in his mother’s voice. “No one should tread on anyone else’s dreams. No one.”

He felt his eyes prickle. “Thanks, Ma,” he said very quietly. “Thank you very much.”

For a while Fingal was content to respect her silence. His own thoughts bubbled. In 1927, he’d come close to accusing his father of wanting to live his life vicariously through Fingal. Instead he was living his dream all right—but Ma’s too.

He heard the door open and turned to see his father standing in the doorway. He seemed to have lost weight since Christmas. Fingal noticed shadows under brown eyes. The darkness was new and somehow Father’s skin seemed paler. His gaze rested briefly on Fingal, who stood so quickly he had to grab his chair to stop it toppling.

“Connan,” Ma said, “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Look who’s come to see us.”

“Wretched student didn’t show up, Mary. You know I always allow them ten minutes, but then they’ve had it.”

Fingal’s jaw tightened. He hoped his father meant the luckless student had missed his chance for a tutorial, but knowing Father he was pretty sure that unless a watertight excuse could be produced there was more severe retribution in store.

“It’s all worked out nicely,” Ma said. “Fingal popped in and now you’re home early.” She fixed her son with a glance. “You were disappointed that Father wasn’t here. Isn’t that right, Fingal?”

“How are you, Father?” Fingal asked.

“Well enough,” he said in a clipped voice. “How are you, Fingal?”

“For goodness’ sake, Connan, you’re not addressing a class. Sit down. Have a cup of coffee,” Ma said. “You sit too, Fingal.”

Fingal sat.

Father walked round the table and took a chair beside Ma.

“I’m well too, Father,” he said.

“And—um—how are your—um—medical studies going?”

“Well,” Fingal said, “very well. You know I’ve passed all the exams first go so far. I’m ready for the next one in June.”

“I would have expected that. And the arts courses?”

“Fine.” Fingal smiled. “It’s a good thing you and Ma—Mother—taught Lars and me to like reading when we were little. I’m really enjoying them, but I feel a bit of an eejit having to wear a gown to attend classes. It’s so—so mediaeval. I’ll be glad to be rid of the thing when I get my BA.” He glanced at Father trying to gauge his response, hoping for a smile.

“Tradition should be respected.” Father turned to Ma. “I’ll have that coffee, please, Mary.”

Fingal took a breath. A word of encouragement would have been appreciated. Fingal watched as Ma rose then he looked back to the spare man opposite. He sat, shoulders braced, back straight. His three-piece, pin-striped suit was perfectly tailored.

The Victorians, Fingal thought. This restraint, this self-containment. It was how they were reared. And yet his father’s indifference was galling. It gnawed at Fingal. He knew he was breathing too quickly, suspected his blood pressure was rising. He was tempted to forgo breakfast here, there were plenty of cheap cafés, but he shook his head. There was no point making a scene.

Damn it all, Cook would, as always, serve up a right tightener and Ma would be terribly disappointed if he didn’t eat every scrap. And if Fingal hadn’t realised by now he was never going to please Father, then perhaps it was enough to have pleased one of his parents. He looked at his mother, her lined but still radiant face turned to her husband. Perhaps it was enough.

7

Social Comfort, in a Hospital

The true beginning of Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly’s immersion into clinical medicine started on a crisp Dublin morning. He strode from his digs under a sky that had the washed-out look of late autumn. Brittle brown leaves shared the gutters with fish-and-chip wrappers and discarded cigarette packets.

When Fingal arrived at the teaching hospital, Charlie Greer was waiting with a group of four other students. Fingal barely had time to bid them good morning when a small man came down the front steps and announced, “Good morning. I am Doctor Micks, deputy professor of materia medica and therapeutics and attending physician here at Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital.”

He was slim with a pointed chin and narrow face that made Fingal think of Gladys, the classroom skeleton. Doctor Micks wore wire-rimmed spectacles and a long white coat over the waistcoat and trousers of a grey suit. “I’m here,” he said, “to welcome you to the first day of your six-month clinical clerkship. You will be, as we call it, ‘walking the wards,’ working with general medical inpatients. You’ll attend required outpatient sessions and prescribed lectures. Your surgery training will come later.”

Fingal fingered the tubing of the stethoscope in his pocket the way an ancient Celt might have fingered a runic talisman. He’d aced Intermediate Part II and collected his BA in June. Ma had come to the graduation ceremony in the Examination Hall to watch him and his friends, including a bemused Bob Beresford, receive their degrees. She’d made an excuse for Father. Said he’d been a bit under the weather. Now that those exams and the courses from June to October were over, the real meat of learning medicine was beginning.

“I should like to know your names,” Doctor Micks said. “You are, Miss?”

“Manwell, sir. Hilda Manwell.”

“And you, Mister?”

“Fitzpatrick, sir.”

Pity, Fingal thought, that the man had also picked Sir Patrick Dun’s. Hilda was an unknown. At least the other lads, Bob, Charlie, and Cromie, were here too.

“And you?” he asked, nodding at Fingal.

“O’Reilly, sir.”

“O’Reilly? You, and I believe Mister Greer there, you play rugby for Trinity, do you not?” He smiled. “I am led to believe that one or both of you might be capped for your country.”

Fingal blushed and glanced at Charlie, who said, “If it’s anybody it’ll be O’Reilly, sir.”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with your studies, I wish you both the best of luck. Your success will add lustre to Trinity and to Sir Patrick Dun’s.”

Fingal swallowed. That had been generous of Charlie and it wasn’t true. Greer was the better player.

Doctor Micks turned to Bob.

“Beresford, sir.”

“And you?”

“Cromie, sir.”

“Thank you. Now, before I take you to the wards, I think it’s important that you, as new junior medical staff—”

Fingal grinned. They were only students, but it was courteous to be treated like doctors.

“—know something of the history of Sir Patrick Dun’s.”

Fitzpatrick’s hand shot up. He was so excited he was waving his hand. Fingal could picture him asking, “Me, sir. Me, sir. Pick me. Please, please.”

“Yes, Mister Fitzpatrick?” Doctor Micks frowned. “You have a question?”

“No, sir.” He adjusted the pair of gold-framed pince-nez. “I’ve read about Sir Patrick.”

Fingal looked over at Charlie, who raised his eyes to the heavens. Fingal shook his head and inwardly cringed. This sucking up to teachers was taboo.

Fitzpatrick was tripping over his words. “He was born in Aberdeen, in Scotland in 1642. He treated King William of Orange for a shoulder wound on the day before the Battle of the Boyne. When he died, he left most of his fortune to found another medical school in Dublin. Some of that money went to building a hospital on Lower Exchange Street in 1792. The staff and patients moved here to Grand Canal Street in 1816.”

A year after Waterloo, Fingal thought, and the victor of that scrap, Lord Wellington, had been born in Dublin. There was a dirty great monument to him in Phoenix Park.

“I see you’ve done your research, Mister Fitzpatrick,” said Doctor Micks, and continued, “As you students will be spending the better part of two years with us in various departments I think it is important you understand your surroundings and develop a deep sense of pride in this institution.” He pointed up. “Can anyone translate that gilt inscription on the arch beneath the clock?”