An Irish Country Doctor (20 page)

Bugger. Another patient. "It's all right, Mrs. Kincaid." Barry came downstairs again and lifted the phone. "Doctor O'Reilly's surgery."

"Can I speak to Doctor Laverty?"

Barry recognized the voice. "Jack? How are you?" 

"Busy as bedamned, but I'm off on Friday. Fancy a jar?" Barry laughed. "Sorry, mate."

"Working?"

"No. I'm taking a girl to dinner."

"Poor girl."

"Piss off. This one's different."

"I've heard that before, but good luck to you. Sorry we can't get together. I'm running round like a blue-arsed fly here. I don't know when I'm off again."

"Still enjoying it?"

"You remember we used to watch Dr. Kildare on the telly?" Jack assumed an American accent. "'How do you like the work, Kildare?' 'It's hell, Doctor Gillespie, but I love every gruelling minute.' What a load of cobblers, but yes. I'm pretty sure I made the right choice."

Barry chuckled. "Me too." And he knew his words were true. 

"It's a great comfort to know you're out there stamping out disease," Jack said. "Listen. I found out about that appendix abscess. It was one of O'Reilly's."

"Jeannie. Jeannie Kennedy."

"I can't remember her name, but she's well on the mend. Should be out in a day or two."

"Great."

"Bugger." Barry could hear a beeping in the background. "My bleeper's going off. Got to go. Give me a bell sometime next week."

"Okay."

"And Barry? Friday night? Try to keep it in your pants." 

The Stars in Their Courses

Tuesday and Wednesday sped by. Barry knew that if he were asked to pick the salient moments from hours of full surgeries and rushed home visits, he'd have been hard-pressed to recall, except for those events that later he would come to realize would shape the futures of Doctor O'Reilly's more prominent patients. O'Reilly's phone calls to the Royal brought the news that Sonny was holding his own. He wasn't out of the woods, but his condition had not deteriorated.

Maggie had agreed to take care of his dogs. Seamus Galvin showed up to have his sore, but immaculately scrubbed ankle looked at, and the source of the fortune into which he had fallen was revealed.

O'Reilly and Donal Donnelly had had a most peculiar conversation about a dog.

Somewhere in the village Julie MacAteer tried not to worry about the results of her pregnancy test, but failed. Councillor Bishop's finger needed attention. And despite the long hours, Barry began to feel truly at home in his choice of career in general and in the village in particular. Ballybucklebo, where the orbits of people's lives swung on their orderly courses, preordained, highly individual, separate until nudged into a great planetary conjunction by the Fates--or by the Fates' local messenger, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. Seamus Galvin came into the surgery on Tuesday morning. He sat in the patients' chair and pulled a cloth cap off his pear-shaped head. His eyes, small and close-set, lurked between hairline and jawline like a pair of timid brown animals, never still, never seeming to focus on anything in particular.

"Good morning, Doctor O'Reilly. Morning, Doctor Laverty." 

"Morning, Seamus. How's young Barry Fingal?" Barry asked. 

"Grand. Mind you, it's a good thing men can't feed wee ones. He has Maureen up half the night, so he has." 

"Huh," said O'Reilly, "I don't suppose you'd think of giving the child a bottle once in a while?"

"Not at all. You don't buy a dog and bark yourself. That's Maureen's job, so it is."

O'Reilly looked at Barry over his half-moons and shook his head. "I'd not want you to rupture yourself, Seamus. A wiser man than I said, 'Work is the scourge of the drinking classes.'" 

"Wilde," said Barry. "Oscar."

"The very lad," said O'Reilly, "but that's not why you're here, is it, Seamus?"

"Ah, no, sir. It's time for you to take a wee look at my ankle." 

"Huh," said O'Reilly, "and I suppose you want a line?" 

"Oh, indeed, sir, I do that. I'll have to go on the burroo." Barry understood. Seamus wanted a medical certificate so he could draw disability insurance from the Bureau of Unemployment-- "burroo" in the local dialect. "We'll see," said O'Reilly. "Show me your ankle." Galvin bent and unwound a tensor bandage. O'Reilly sat back, knees together. "Put it up on my lap." Seamus obeyed. Barry moved closer. The ankle in question looked perfectly normal. No swelling. No bruising. "Can you bend it down?" O'Reilly asked.

Galvin made a show of trying to extend his foot. "Ah. Ooh." 

"Up," said O'Reilly.

"Ooh. Ah."

O'Reilly grasped the foot between both of his big hands and, bending it to the left, asked, "Does that hurt?" 

"Ah. Ooh. Ouch."

"You sure?"

"Indeed, sir."

"Hmm. Right. Let's see you walk on it."

Galvin stood and teetered across the room, hauling his allegedly wounded ankle behind him. He would have been giving a fair imitation of the mock-injury display of a mother plover trying to lead a predator away from her nest, except peewits don't usually moan "Ooh, ah" as they flutter across the moors. "You're one for the textbooks, Seamus," said O'Reilly. "It seems you've managed to hurt the side that was fine when you showed that hoof to me first."

Galvin hung his head.

"Maybe we should be putting you up for an Oscar? Best actor in a nonsupporting role?"

"But it hurts, sir. If I try to stand on it, I get a terrible stoon all the way up to my knee."

'Seemed to hold you up at the bar on Sunday when you were spending your fortune."

Galvin smiled an ingratiating grin that made Barry think of Charles Dickens's Uriah Heep. "Ah, but sure you know, Doctor sir, that alcohol kills pain." For a moment Galvin's dull eyes sparkled. Barry's mental image was of Wile E. Coyote with a light bulb flashing on above his cartoon head. "I know I had one or two. That must have been when I hurt the other side."

''
Ecce Galvinus. Homo plumbum oscillandat
" O'Reilly remarked to Barry, who immediately understood. "Behold Galvin. The man's swinging the lead."

"Is that plumbum stuff bad, sir?" Galvin hobbled back across the room and sat heavily, his narrow face contorted into a rictus.

"All depends," said O'Reilly. "Put up your foot again." Galvin obeyed, and O'Reilly rapidly reapplied the bandage. "You want me to give you a line?"

Galvin brightened. "Yes, please, sir. For two weeks if that's all right?"

"I might," said O'Reilly, "but. . ."

"But what, sir?"

"But I'd need to know about the fortune you said you'd be falling into."

Galvin sat back in the forward-tilting chair. "Ach, you don't, sir. Ach, no."

"Ach, yes, Seamus, I do. Or it's no line."

By the wrinkling of Galvin's brow and the clenching of his teeth, Barry could tell that the man was having a gargantuan struggle with himself.

"No tickee, no laundry, Seamus."

Galvin took a deep breath. "Maureen gave me the money." O'Reilly's nose tip blanched. "She what? The money for California?" Galvin hung his head.

"You skiver. You unmitigated gobshite. Give it back to her, do you hear?"

"I can't, sir. It's spent. On ducks."

"In the Mucky Duck?" O'Reilly rose and towered over Galvin. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you dead."

Galvin held both arms against the side of his head nearest to O'Reilly and leant his body in the opposite direction. "No not in the Duck. Well, only a couple of quid. The rest of the money went on ducks. Rocking ducks." One of O'Reilly's shaggy eyebrows rose. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Galvin slowly lowered his arms. "Rocking ducks, sir. I'm going to make rocking ducks. Just like rocking horses. There'll not be a kiddie in Ballybucklebo won't go daft to have one. The lumber and paint's all bought. I can sell them for twice what they'll cost to make. That's why I want two weeks off, so I can finish making them and get them sold. Then Maureen and me and the chiseller can go to America with a bit of the out' do-ray-mi." 

"And Maureen agreed to this half-witted notion?" 

"Lord, aye, sir."

Barry was pretty sure from the way Galvin refused to meet O'Reilly's glare that the man was lying.

"How many will you make?"

"About a hundred, sir."

"Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch. And how many kiddies that would want a rocking duck do you think live in Ballybucklebo?" 

"I don't know, sir." Galvin's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

"Forty, maybe fifty. Do you reckon they'll buy them in pairs? Matched sets?"

"I never thought of that, sir. But it will all work out. You'll see." O'Reilly said, "I doubt it."

Galvin pushed himself back up the chair, using, Barry noticed, a hearty thrust from his reputedly damaged ankle. "So you'll give me the line, Doctor sir?"

Barry was surprised when O'Reilly said, "A promise is a promise," and returned to the desk to scribble on a government form. Doctors were meant to be honest when supporting genuine claims for disability money.

"Here," said O'Reilly, handing Galvin the form. "Two weeks.

But you build those damn ducks. I might know a business in Belfast that'll take the lot."

Galvin tugged his forelock and rose. "Bless you, Doctor, and I will build them, so I will." He struggled to the door, accompanying himself with a lamentation of oohs and aahs.

"And Seamus," O'Reilly said softly.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Get out of your bloody bed and give that wife of yours a hand. Do you hear me?"

"I do, sir. I will." Galvin left.

"Useless bugger," said O'Reilly. "I told you he was a skiver when you were going on about me chucking him into the bushes." 

"So why did you give him a disability certificate when we both know he's faking it?"

O'Reilly sat in the swivel chair. "I was getting into too many fights with my patients when I wouldn't give them their lines."

"But that's part of our job."

"Balls. Our job's to look after them when they're sick, not behave like some bloody civil servant."

"I know, but--"

"What do you know about the medical referee?" 

"Not much."

"The politicos aren't altogether useless. A few years ago they had the bright idea that maybe an independent doctor, a referee employed by the ministry, could examine anyone their local GP thought was working the system. Take some of the load off the GP. Sometimes the referee'd pull a certificate at random and invite the customer up for a visit. Kept a lot of people honest. Let the ministry doctor be the villain. He's never going to see the patient again." 

"That makes sense."

"Didn't work. You were still the villain as soon as you told someone you were going to send them to the referee. They call him 'The Big Doctor.' They're scared stiff of him. It was as good as telling them to their faces that you thought they were pulling your chain."

"So what do you do?"

O'Reilly chuckled. "The Big Doctor is a classmate of mine. We worked out a code. Here." He handed Barry a blank certificate. "See where it says Signature of Referring Doctor?" 

"Yes."

"If I sign it F. F. O'Reilly, my friend knows I believe the complaint I is genuine. It saves him and the customers a lot of trouble. He doesn't have to send for really sick folks. But..." O'Reilly's chuckle became a full laugh. "If I sign it F. F. O'Reilly, M. B., B.Ch., B.A.O., the lead swinger's up in the ministry office before the ink's dry on the paper." 

"You wily bugger."

"The customer doesn't know I blew the whistle. No more fights in here. Works like a charm."

"And how, may I ask, did you sign Galvin's line?" 

"Ah," said O'Reilly, "let's just say my recommendation was unqualified. Now, be a good lad and see who's next."

"Might be a bit difficult to park the car on Main Street. They'll be getting it ready for Thursday," said O'Reilly, finishing his lunch. "We've to nip round to Declan Finnegan's. He lives over the grocer's. It's not a bad day. Let's walk. We'll pick up the car later." 

"Fine." Barry would be glad of the exercise. He seemed to have done little recently but sit in O'Reilly's surgery or in the big Rover. He thought wistfully of his fly rod, propped up, unused in his attic. A couple of lines from the old song "The Convict of Clonmel" popped into his mind:

At my bed foot decaying,

My hurley is lying;

Through the boys of the village

My gold-ball is flying.

He was hardly in gaol here in the practice, but never mind time off to go fishing--Friday and dinner with Patricia seemed to be such a long way away.

"Is it nice in there?" O'Reilly asked.

"Where?"

"Wherever the hell you've gone off to in your head. It's not spring, but I suppose your young man's fancy is lightly turning to thoughts of love?"

"Not quite how Tennyson put it, and if it's any of your business, I was thinking about fishing."

"Were you? I noticed you've a rod. You like to fish?" 

"Very much."

"I'll have a word with His Lordship."

"Who?"

"The Marquis of Ballybucklebo. Nice old bugger. He owns a beat on the Bucklebo River. He'd probably let you on his water if I asked him."