An Irish Country Doctor (15 page)

Barry hardly noticed the time pass as Miss Hagerty busied herself tidying up the mess of the delivery and then went to make the new mother a cup of tea. O'Reilly expertly examined the newborn as Barry repacked the instruments.

"Right," said O'Reilly, "young Barry Fingal's fit as a flea." He gave the baby back to Maureen.

"Thanks again, Doctor," said Maureen. "He'll make a grand wee American, won't he?"

"Indeed," said O'Reilly, "a regular Abraham Lincoln."

Barry remembered that the Galvins intended to emigrate once the baby was born.

"Miss Hagerty'll be in tomorrow. She'll make sure you and the wee one are all right, and Maureen, if you're worried about anything, give us a call." 

"I will."

"Now," said O'Reilly, "we'd better be going. Doctor Laverty could use a bath and a change of shirt. He's off somewhere tonight." Barry nearly dropped the bag he was carrying. In the excitement of the delivery, the terror that things could go wrong in his inexperienced hands, and the jubilation that everything had turned out perfectly, he had completely forgotten about Patricia. "You run on, Doctor Laverty," said Maureen. "You did grand, so you did, and Doctor O'Reilly, I don't know how you fixed it, but Seamus'll be tickled pink that it is the wee boy you promised us." How in hell, Barry wondered, could O'Reilly promise anybody what the sex of an unborn baby would be?

As soon as they were back in the car, Barry asked. O'Reilly grinned. "That's one of the few useful things my predecessor taught me. The first time they come in to find out if they're pregnant, you ask them what they want."

"But we can't do anything about it."

"I know that, so you write down the opposite in the record." 

"I don't understand."

"Look, say Mrs. Hucklebottom comes in in her third month and tells you she wants a boy. You write 'girl' in the record." Barry frowned.

"Six months later if baby Hucklebottom is a bouncing boy, Mrs. H. is delighted."

"But what if she has a girl?"

"You show her the six-month-old record. What's written in it?" 

"Girl."

"Exactly. You tell Mrs. H. you're very sorry, but she must have forgotten what she asked for when she saw you first." 

"But that's dishonest."

"Indeed it is, but I've yet to meet a new mother who really cared about the sex of the child as long as it had all its fingers and toes, and it works wonders for your reputation."

Barry sniffed.

"Sniff away, son, but half of curing folks is getting them to have faith in their healer. . . . Sometimes we doctors aren't much better than a bunch of Druids. We might as well be casting the runes and chanting incantations to Lugh or Morrigan or any of the other old Celtic gods."

Barry recognized the truth of what O'Reilly had said, but every year new discoveries were made. If Jonas Salk had discovered his vaccine just three years sooner, Patricia and all the other victims of the 1951 polio epidemic need not have suffered. Since 1953 they'd known about the link between smoking and lung cancer. New antibiotics appeared regularly. O'Reilly must surely see that. "But there is so much we can do that works," Barry countered. 

"Thank God for that. But the whole thing still hangs on having the customers believe we know what we're doing . . . And if they think you're special, they're more likely to heed your advice, and anyway, unless it's something really serious, time cures most of them. Ambroise Pare had it right four hundred years ago. He said, 'I dressed the wound, but God cured the patient.'" When O'Reilly said, "cured the patient," 

Barry remembered something that had been bothering him. Jeannie Kennedy. Jack had been going to Children's Hospital to re-operate on an appendix abscess. "Fingal?"

"What?"

"Is Jeannie Kennedy home from the hospital yet?" 

"No. She blew up an abscess. They opened her again yesterday, but she's on the mend now."

So Jack had been going to assist in Jeannie's reoperation. 

"Aye," said O'Reilly, pulling into the lane at the back of his house. "I always phone the hospital to see how any of my lot are getting on. Sir Donald spoke to me this morning . . . when you were still asleep ... so I was able to let the Kennedys know they mustn't be too worried."

"Decent of you."

"Rubbish." The car stopped. "I'll take Arthur for his walk, and you go and get cleaned up, make your phone call, and tell your lassie you'll not be able to see her until after supper."

"But-"

"No buts. You still have to go and tell the proud father."

"Could you not do that?"

"I didn't deliver the wean, you did, and son, you did well." 

"I was scared stiff."

"Didn't look like it to me. Now bugger off, get organized, and walk down and meet me in the Mucky Duck."

"The what?"

"The Black Swan, known to all and sundry as the Dirty Bird or the Mucky Duck."

God's Holy Trousers

Barry undressed. His trousers as well as his shirt were bloodstained. He bathed, changed, and gratefully gave his splattered clothes to Mrs. Kincaid to be washed. Then he phoned Patricia. His hand shook just a little when he heard her voice, and he mouthed a silent, "Oh, yes," when she said she'd be happy to be picked up at seven. Where they'd go after that was anyone's guess, but he didn't care as long as she'd be with him.

He walked with light steps past the church and the row of thatched cottages. What a day. The sun shone; he'd delivered Barry Fingal Galvin and to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's satisfaction. Now he'd drop into the pub to congratulate the father, go home for a quick supper, and then . . . He skipped like a ten-year old leaving school at the end of the summer term.

He paused at the maypole and waited for the light to change. He could see The Black Swan ahead. He didn't want to stay there long. It wouldn't do to show up at Patricia's the worse for drink. He crossed the road and went into--what did the locals call it?-- the Mucky Duck?

The bar, loud with competing voices and hoarse laughter, was a single timber-beamed, low-ceilinged room. To his left, bottles stood on shelves behind a counter where a bald-headed man, wearing a floral waistcoat over a striped shirt, pulled pints. Barry counted six half-filled straight glasses of Guinness on the marble bar top. The place was packed. Men in shirtsleeves and collarless shirts, pints in hand, crowded round the bar. Seamus Galvin, left ankle strapped, stood swaying in the centre of the crowd. He had one arm round the shoulders of a ginger-haired youth. Donal. . . ? Donal Donnelly, that was it. Barry grinned. Already he could recognize some of O'Reilly's patients by name.

Through the fug of pipe tobacco smoke that made his eyes sting, Barry could see tables and occupied chairs crammed cheek by jowl in the small space. Either the Ballybucklebo natives took their drinking seriously, or news of the Galvins' baby had gone through the place with the speed of light. Barry suspected the latter. He peered through the throng but saw no sign of O'Reilly. Councillor Bishop, seated at a table, beckoned with a crooked bandaged finger. The gesture reminded Barry of a patron summoning a tardy waiter. "Laverty, hey, you. Laverty, where the hell's O'Reilly?" Barry, too content to let the councillor's dictatorial manner bother him, shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. "When you see O'Reilly, Laverty, you tell the old goat it's time he had a look at my finger."

"It's Doctor O'Reilly, Bishop," Barry said civilly, "and you know when the surgery's open."

"It's Councillor Bishop to you, you young puppy." Bishop started to rise.

A man sitting at the table put a hand on the councillor's shoulder. Don't you be getting your knickers in a twist, Bertie. Have another pint." The man winked at Barry. "Pay no heed, Doc. He's half-cut." 

Barry turned away as the door opened and O'Reilly appeared, followed by a panting, tongue-lolling, sand-covered Arthur Guinness. Barry glanced anxiously at his corduroys, his last clean pair of pants. "Good afternoon to this house," O'Reilly bellowed.

Conversation died. Every eye turned toward the door. The men who sat at the table nearest the door rose and joined those standing at the bar. Without a word of thanks O'Reilly took one of the chairs. "Under and lie down."

Arthur obeyed, much to Barry's relief.

"Take the weight off your feet, Barry."

Barry sat, carefully tucking his legs under the chair out of the way of the drooling dog. "The usual, Doctor?" he heard the barman ask. 

"Aye, and a pint for Doctor Laverty."

In moments, two pints of Guinness were delivered to the table. "
Sláinte
," said O'Reilly, sinking half of the contents of his glass in one swallow. "It's warm out there."

"
Sláinte mhaith.
" Barry sipped the bitter stout. The barman reappeared carrying a bowl. He bent and shoved it under the table.

"Arthur likes his pint," O'Reilly remarked, "but he only drinks Smithwick's bitter."

Barry heard lapping noises under the table. The buzz of conversation rose.

"Doctor Laverty's round," O'Reilly said.

Barry tightened his lips, but paid.

"Lovely," said O'Reilly, finishing his glass. "Come on, boy. Don't let yours go flat."

Barry swallowed more Guinness but was determined to restrict his intake to one pint. Someone was standing at his shoulder. He turned to see Seamus Galvin, a lopsided grin pasted to his narrow face. He bore a striking resemblance to a tipsy weasel. "So's a boy, Doctors? S'a wee boy?"

O'Reilly nodded.

Galvin hiccupped. " 'Nother round here, Willy," he shouted to the barman. "On me."

"Easy, Seamus," O'Reilly said quietly, "you'll need your money now there's another mouth to feed."

Seamus tried to lay one index finger alongside his nose but managed to stick it into his nostril. "Ah, sure, I'm like Paddy Maginty; I'm going to fall into a fortune." He favoured O'Reilly with a drooping wink.

"Oh?" said O'Reilly, glancing at Barry. "And where would that come from, Seamus?"

"Least said, soonest mended." Seamus extracted his finger and squinted at the tip.

Two more pints appeared. Barry felt something stirring at his feet, and Arthur Guinness's square head appeared. "One for Arthur," Seamus ordered.

The barman collected Arthur's bowl.

Barry drank from his first pint and eyed the second. Seamus Galvin climbed onto a chair and stood, swaying like a willow in a high wind. He whistled, a piercing shriek like the blast from a tugboat's siren.

Silence.

"Just wanna say . . . just wanna say ... to say." He wobbled and grabbed the chair back. "I just wanna--"

"Get on with it, Seamus," someone roared.

"Just wanna say . . . best two doctors in Ulster . . . in all of Ireland." 

"Hear, hear."

Barry looked up. The last remark had come from Donal Donnelly, who was staring at O'Reilly. The ginger-haired youth had a look on his face that seemed to be a cross between adulation and terror. 

"Balls," Councillor Bishop yelled. "That bloody O'Reilly couldn't cure a sick cat."

"Wheest, Bertie," his friend said.

Barry looked at O'Reilly, who lifted his glass to Bishop and smiled. There was enough ice in the smile, Barry thought, to put a hole in the Titanic.

"Are you not going to say something, Fingal?"

O'Reilly shook his head. " 'Revenge,'" he said, " 'is a dish best eaten cold.' I'll say no more today."

Barry stared at the corpulent councillor and thought, I'd rather not be in Bishop's boots when O'Reilly makes good on that promise. The barman came back with Arthur's bowl. His subtable slurping was drowned out as Seamus Galvin roared, "Just wanna say . . . best doctors in Ireland. They got me a wee boy, so they did. Everybody have a drink to Farry . . . Bingal. . . Gavlin." He finished his pint to the cheers of the crowd.

Barry felt duty-bound to join in the toast. He regarded his empty glass with surprise. That stout had vanished quickly. "A wee boy," Galvin continued when at last there was a semblance of silence. "And I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you, that's very smart because," he inhaled deeply and swept his gaze over the entire room, "any ould tinker can put a hole in the bottom of a bucket. . . but. . . but it takes a craftsman to put a spout on a teapot." He clapped O'Reilly on the shoulder and, to the renewed cheers of the patrons, waved both arms over his head, hands clasped like a boxer who had just KOed his opponent. Then with great solemnity he fell off the chair.

"Jesus," said O'Reilly. "Drink. It's the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbour. It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss." He looked round. "Donal Donnelly, see if you can get the proud but paralytically pissed papa home." 

"I will, Doctor, I will, so I will." Donal nudged a man beside him. "We'll need to oxter-cog him." Together they took the limp Galvin by his armpits and dragged him towards the door. 

"'Not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come,'" O'Reilly remarked to the passing group. He turned to Barry. "Drink up."

"Wordsworth, 'Intimations of Immortality,'" Barry said, taking a goodly swallow from his second pint, surprised by how much better than the first it tasted.