Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor (20 page)

18

The Clouds Ye So Much Dread

“Come on, Kitty. Let’s get going,” Fingal said as she locked the door to her flat on Leeson Street. He took her hand. “We’ve to be at Bob Beresford’s at one thirty if we’re going to get out to the course for the first horse race. He’ll go daft if we’re late and make him miss the two thirty.” And, he thought, I’ll be very happy to get into the bar tent for a pint or two. He grinned. “Never mind old Omar Khayyám and his loaf of bread and jug of wine and thou beside me in the wilderness. I’m up for a pint of stout, a big
cruibin,
and thou beside me at the paddock.” He kissed Kitty and she kissed him back.

“Behave yourself, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly,” she said, and pretended to slap his face. “And I don’t like stout.” She smiled up at him from under her eyebrows. “But if you’re as sweet to me as Bob usually is, I’ll let you buy me a chicken sandwich and a glass of claret.”

“To you? I’ll be sweet as honey.” He swung their hands in exaggerated arcs like a couple of schoolkids might and grinned as she laughed.

They’d strolled to the corner and turned onto Fitzwilliam Place in the sunny August afternoon, surprised by the number of pedestrians hurrying in the same direction. “Busy today,” he said. “They’ll be heading for Ringsend or Sandymount. It’s only a couple of miles from the middle of the Liberties. Lots of those folks go to Ringsend on weekends to watch the Gaelic football, kick a ball around, row, or swim in Dublin Bay. It’s the poor man’s Lido.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “A lot of the men are wearing blue shirts and dark ties.”

“Maybe supporters of some club?”

“I don’t think so, Fingal. They could be Blueshirts.” She sounded concerned and was frowning deeply. “I wonder what they’re up to? Maybe there’s to be a meeting of some sort?”

“No idea.” He’d known of the organisation formed from men who’d fought on the Irish government’s side in the 1921–22 Civil War. They’d called themselves the Army Comrades Association and in imitation of Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Blackshirts had chosen to wear the colour blue. They gave the Roman salute and flirted with Fascism, but they were mostly anti-Communist and pro–Catholic Church. “They pretty well folded up in 1933,” he said. “I think they amalgamated with some other small groups and formed Fine Gael, one of the new political parties.” And that was enough about that. The last thing he wanted today was to become involved in anything political. He agreed wholeheartedly with Phelim Corrigan’s opinion of politicians. A curse on all their houses. “Do you know,” he said, itching to tell her about something that had been at the forefront of his mind for days, “I saw something astounding last week that could have come straight out of a Victorian novel. Much more interesting than a bunch of eejits in pretty shirts.”

“What?”

“You’re a nurse. You’ve seen diptheria.”

“Yes. Bad cases in kids are horrid. Poor wee mites.” She tightened her grip and stopped him from swinging their hands. “Gasping for breath. Scared skinny.”

“Phelim says we’re seeing a lot less because we’ve had a vaccine since the early ’20s.”

“And that’s a very good thing,” she said.

“But kids do still get infected. Some mothers refuse to have them immunised. We saw one last Tuesday. Sick as a dog. You know how in bad cases a membrane forms over the larynx and upper trachea and blocks the airway?”

“I’ve only seen it once.”

“Me too, and it reminded me of that scene in
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
where the headmaster saved the life of a boy who was badly afflicted, but at risk of his own.”

She stopped walking, forcing him to stop. “How?”

They stood like a small rock as the tide of pedestrians swept by.

Fingal smiled to himself. He’d certainly got her interested and clearly willing to drop the subject of political rallies.

“The mother brought the wee boy to the surgery. I made a diagnosis, gave him antitoxin just the way they’d taught me, but he couldn’t breathe, he was cyanosed and getting bluer. I didn’t know what to do.” He’d been terrified. “The next step was a tracheotomy, but I’ve never done one.”

“It must have been awful for you too,” she said. “I know how helpless nurses and doctors can feel. What did you do?”

“I got Phelim from next door. I’ve never seen anything like it. He didn’t hesitate. He had me hold the kiddy tightly, grabbed a thin metal tube, put it into the boy’s mouth, God knows how far into the throat one end went, and then he started to suck on the other end.”

“Dear God,” she said, her eyes wide. “Suck?”

“It was a repeat of the novel’s scene. After a minute or two he pulled out the tube and there was a sheet of grey membrane hanging off its end.” Fingal recalled the moment with absolute clarity. “And the wee lad was hauling in great whoops of breath and the blue colour was leaving his cheeks.”

“That is astounding,” Kitty said.

Fingal nodded. “Phelim Corrigan, in my opinion, saved that boy’s life at no small risk of infecting himself. But the incubation period’s two to four days so he’s out of the woods now.”

“And you admire what Phelim did, don’t you, Fingal?” she said quietly.

He nodded. “Phelim’s the kind of doctor I want to be. Always, always puts his patients first.”

“I wonder,” she said, and he detected a wistful note in her voice, “if that’s why he never married?”

“I’ve no idea,” he said, and to bring a smile to her face, added, “and once the kiddy was clearly going to be all right, do you know what he did?”

“No.”

“He gave the mother a bollicking for not having had the child vaccinated, and to make his point—and he’s very good at pretending to be angry—he ripped off his toupee and hurled it across the room. He’s bald as a coot. I nearly ruptured myself trying not to laugh.” And to Fingal’s delight the thought must have hit Kitty’s funny bone. She dissolved into helpless laughter. When she’d pulled herself together, she finally managed to say, “I love the way you make me laugh—and I love you, Fingal O’Reilly.” Not waiting for a response, she started walking, bringing Fingal along with her.

As they continued up Fitzwilliam Place East he rattled on about the other interesting cases he’d seen since they’d last been together two weekends ago. Juggling his on-call schedule, her often unpredictable off-duty times, and catching up on sleep, often took a bit of doing. Ma needed to be kept company too, although she seemed to be brightening. She was talking about selling the house on Lansdowne Road and moving to Portaferry to be near Lars.

As Fingal and Kitty neared Merrion Square, she pointed ahead. “Hang on a minute please, Fingal. I’m sure we’ve plenty of time and I do want to see what’s going on over there.”

“It sure as hell is something.” As they passed the east side of Merrion Square Park, it was clear to Fingal where the crowd was going. The lawns were filling up. In the mid-’30s, Dublin was frequently the scene of political rallies with parties forming, dissolving, reuniting in different configurations. Not his cup of tea. He’d been too busy studying for years and now was fully occupied and enjoying working.

Fingal and Kitty arrived at the crossroads where Merrion Square South continues as Mount Street Upper. For a moment he spared a thought for Jane Carson in her big house there. She’d had her surgery nearly three weeks ago, had made a remarkable recovery, and only two days earlier, he and Phelim had stopped taking it in turns to make daily visits. One of them would call in in a week or so. Fingal had discovered that he and her husband, Robin, shared an interest in rugby football. Decent chap, Robin. He and Fingal had taken sherry together in the drawing room.

He was distracted by a roar of cheering and deafening applause coming from the throng gathering in the park. More political haranguing was about to start, not something that appealed, but Kitty was tugging at his hand. “Fingal, please. I want to hear.”

He glanced at his watch. “All right,” he said. “We can afford ten minutes.” In truth he would find it nearly impossible to deny her anything. “But I think we should move along to the north side of the square. We’ll be able to hear better there, and it’s closer to Bob’s flat. Look.” He pointed to a raised platform against the hedge halfway along the park’s north boundary. On each side of the dais, loudspeakers were mounted on poles, and a lectern stood in the middle facing into the park. From one pole flew a blue flag with a red Saint Andrew’s Cross.

“Good Lord,” said Kitty. “That’s the old flag of the Army Comrades Association. They are Blueshirts. I was right.”

Fingal and Kitty turned left and walked along with the park to their left, the four-storey redbrick terraces behind low wrought-iron railings to their right. Judging by the number of drawn curtains, most of the wealthy Merrion Square folks were not interested in the doings across the road. A few faces peered out of open windows.

“We’re nearly at Bob’s place,” Fingal said, and stopped, “but you know if we go further and turn left again we’ll be on the same street where Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was born. May the first, 1769. Dublin is steeped in history to her marrow.”

“And we’re seeing history over there.” Kitty pointed at the park. “It’s filled with Blueshirts. William Butler Yeats lived on Merrion Square too, you know, and he wrote marching songs for them. He thought they were true Irish patriots.”

“I like his poems.

Two girls in silk kimonos.

Both beautiful, one a gazelle.

You’re my gazelle.”

“Fingal. Thank you.” Her smile was radiant, but very quickly she turned back to look at the park.

Fingal could see the official party mounting the dais. A Tannoy loudspeaker buzzed and whistled, then a man wearing a blue shirt, dark tie, and dark beret stepped forward and stood at attention before a microphone. He tapped it with his finger, making loud clicks.

Silence fell.

“Good afternoon,” he said, his words amplified and tinny. “My name is Patrick Belton, I come from County Longford, I fought with Michael Collins, God rest his soul, and I’ve been in prison for my beliefs in a free Ireland.”

The crowd applauded, whistled.

“Although never a Blueshirt myself, I wear their uniform today in admiration of what they stood for and in sympathy with their cause, which I believe will become our cause.” He gave a Roman salute by raising his right arm stiffly at forty-five degrees from his shoulder, and was instantly imitated by all the blue-shirted men in the audience.

Fingal flinched, so loud was the cheering, and he shuddered. He’d seen Pathé newsreels of Nazis and Italian Fascisti. And to see the same salute, here in Ireland? Appalling. Fingal remembered a scrap of conversation he’d overheard in Davy Byrnes pub a few weeks ago. “Blueshirts? Fellah called Eoin O’Duffy used to be in charge. Strutting round giving each other straight-arm salutes. Maybe O’Duffy’ll come back and lead dem to Spain to fight if dere is a war.” Was that what this was about?

When the noise faded, Belton continued. “Before getting on with the business of this meeting, I call on Father Eamon O’Sullivan to bless us and our deliberations.” He stood aside and a robed cleric in cassock, stole, and biretta stood before the microphone, raised his right arm above his head, fist closed and the index and middle finger extended.

The crowd knelt.

Fingal, out of respect, bowed his head while Father O’Sullivan intoned a blessing and finished, “
In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti
 … Amen.” His Latin was not improved by his thick Kerry accent.

He was answered by a chorus of amens and stepped aside to be replaced by Belton. “My friends,” he said, his voice reverberating from the speakers, “as you all know, a civil war has been raging in Spain since the seventeenth of July.”

The crowd communally drew in its breath. So, Fingal was right. This was about the war in Spain. It was hard not to know about it. It was never out of the headlines.

“Come on, Kitty,” said Fingal. “It’s none of our business.”

The Tannoy continued distorting Belton’s speech, which quavered as he spoke about massacres of clerics in Spain by troops of anti-Catholic government forces.

Fingal tugged at Kitty’s hand. “Come on,” he repeated. “I’ve had enough.” He started to walk. “I want no more discussions of war on such a lovely afternoon.”

“I agree, but…” She had to step aside to avoid a boy in a brown uniform riding a bicycle with a full wicker basket slung on the handlebars. A metal plate on the frame announced,
Beirne’s Butchers. Fine meats and poultry. We deliver
. Fingal knew the lad’s wage for delivering choice cuts of meat to the big houses on Merrion Square was five shillings a week.

He waited for Kitty outside Bob’s door.

She held up a hand. “Fingal, before you ring the doorbell—”

“What?” He knew he sounded curt, but he was hoping she’d leave matters alone now. The prospect of a day at the races with his old friend Bob Beresford and Kitty was far more enticing than an afternoon spent trying to solve the world’s problems.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to say what I have to, Fingal.”

He sighed. “Go ahead.” This was an entirely new side of her and not one he was sure he liked.

“I don’t care about the politics in Spain. I worry about something else. You were upset by one boy with diptheria, rejoiced that Doctor Corrigan was able to save his life.”

“True.”

She pursed her lips. “The city of Badajoz fell to the Nationalists last Friday. They rounded up hundreds of defenders and locked them in, of all places, the bull ring. By reports coming out of Spain, they were machine-gunned, bayoneted. We don’t know how many were killed.” There was a catch in her voice, a glistening at the corner of her eyes. “I can’t help wondering … how many children have been left without parents. I keep thinking about them, about the orphans, about who looks after them?”

The Tannoy intruded, “—we must support the Spanish government forces because they are our Spanish Catholic brothers and sisters against the forces of evil. We will form a committee to be called the Irish Christian Front. Who is with me?”