Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor (7 page)

“It is,” Fingal said, “and from what I saw as a student, we need more of it.”

Doctor Corrigan shifted from one buttock to the other. “True, and how much have ye seen of the other side of medicine? The one for the rich?”

“Not a lot. My folks’ friend Mister Oliver St. John Gogarty, the ENT surgeon, has a private plane and a primrose Rolls-Royce. He charges three hundred pounds for one operation done privately. He taught me at Sir Patrick Dun’s,” Fingal said, “and to be fair, he was absolutely meticulous when he operated on the charity cases.”

“I’d expect that of the man. I know him too, and I know about how private practice works in Blackrock and Ballsbridge.”

“My folks live in Ballsbridge,” Fingal said.

“I’ll forgive ye,” Doctor Corrigan said, “and I know about practising among the rich because, apostate that I am, I let my principles slide. I was an assistant in Merrion Square for a year after I qualified. Money was good, but I got fed up being treated like a minor tradesman at the beck and call of the idle rich. Half of them had nothing better to do than sit around all day dreaming up new imaginary illnesses to suffer from. There was a wonderful vogue for colitis—whatever the hell that is—among the ladies. You could make a fortune giving high colonic enemas.”

Fingal whistled and said, “Really? I never knew.”

“And you never saw the highheejins at a hospital like Dun’s, did you? They’d not want to be in a bed beside someone like Mary Foster. They get treated in nursing homes or at home.” Doctor Corrigan wheezed his dry laugh. “I came here in ’07 and I’ve been here since, and I think the locals are used to me by now. I fit in and it’s comforting to be respected, have them value my work, and so I stay, hoping I’m doing some good.”

Fingal thought of John-Joe. “Doctor Corrigan’s a sound man,” he’d said.

“But,” and Corrigan laughed, “the real truth is that I am a real Irishman, too stupid to come in out of the rain.” The man’s smile faded and his voice was level. “I hope ye’ll take the job.” He shook his head. “I can’t promise ye’ll have it forever, mind. There’s always rumours of the new administration changing the boundaries of the districts of each dispensary or reducing staff. We’ll have to see how things pan out.”

Fingal hesitated. That didn’t concern him greatly. There’d be other jobs. A doctor would always find work, not like labourers or even skilled tradesman like John-Joe Finnegan. But would the satisfaction of being a respected, recognised local figure, of getting a diagnosis right, be compensation enough for what he’d just heard about the long hours, the poor pay, the possible future insecurity? The paperwork? He already had experience of the squalor in the patients’ homes. That didn’t bother him. And after a certain initial discomfort with Doctor Corrigan, Fingal reckoned he could do much worse in a senior. He had said he’d not mind working alternate nights, but remembering one of his father’s adages about “fools rushing in” said, “Can I have a day or two to think about it?”

“Ye can.”

“Doctor Corrigan, I’ll be honest as well. I love medicine, but there are other things in my life,” like Nurse Kitty O’Hallorhan and rugby football, he thought. “You said if you could hire me and another doctor, the call schedule would be much lighter? One of my classmates is still making up his mind. His name’s Charles Greer.”

“The big red-haired ox that played in the second row for Ireland last season?”

So Doctor Corrigan followed the rugby? “The very fellah. He’s one of my best friends. I’m seeing him tomorrow for a jar. I’ll phone him tonight, tell him what you told me, follow up tomorrow and see if he’s interested, and if he is—”

Doctor Corrigan beamed and said, “If he is, we’d each work one weekend in three. Ye see yer friend tomorrow, and if he wants to find out more, bring him round on Friday at noon.” He slipped off the stool, crossed to Fingal, and offered his hand. The grip was solid. No nonsense.

“Think hard about it, O’Reilly.” The handshake was broken. “And for now I’ll bid ye fair adieu and go back into the trenches with the great unwashed—the poor divils.”

7

Ruinous and Old but Painted Cunningly

Fingal let himself into the high-ceilinged hall to find Bridgit vigorously taking a feather duster to a large Chinese urn. She bobbed at Fingal. “Nice to see you home, Doctor O’Reilly.”

“Thank you, Bridgit.” He smiled at her use of his title. Her elevation of him from Master O’Reilly to Doctor had been instantaneous the moment he’d qualified.

The County Antrim woman from Portglenone had been working for the family since they’d lived in Holywood in the north and had accompanied her employers, Professor Connan O’Reilly and his wife, Mary, and their two young sons to Dublin so their father could take the chair of classics and English literature at Trinity College.

“I’m a bit late. I got held up,” he said. “Where’s Mother?”

“In her studio, sir. The professor’s sleeping, so he is.” She inclined her head to the closed door that led to Father’s study. It had recently been converted to a ground-floor bedroom to save him the effort of climbing stairs, something he was no longer able to do.

“I’ll not disturb him,” Fingal said. Father slept a great deal now as his condition worsened. “It’s important he gets his rest.”

Bridgit’s voice quavered as she said, as if to herself, “Sleeping’s all very well, but me and Cook wish he’d eat more. The poor professor has no’ got the appetite of a stunted wren these days, so he hasn’t.”

Fingal’s stomach growled. It seemed unkind after what the maid had said, but he was famished. “I’ve missed lunch. I’m sorry, but do you think Cook could make a quick snack? Something that’s not too much trouble?”

Bridgit cocked her head and said, “There’s tomato soup, and would you like a sandwich, sir? There’s a brave wheen of cold ham left over.”

“Soup and a ham sandwich would be grand,” he said. “Thank you, and please thank Cook for me. Could you bring it along to the studio? And maybe a pot of tea, Bridgit?”

“I’ll see to it, sir.” Bridgit bobbed a curtsey and left.

Fingal let himself into what had been a guest bedroom before Ma converted it into a studio in 1928. He stood just inside the doorway. On bright days like today, the room was filled with light, and now the midafternoon sunshine streaming in accentuated how pale she had become. The tan she’d brought home in May from her and Father’s long visit to Greece and Egypt, their wintering over in Cap d’Antibes, had faded, and her eyes were sunken, bleary. He knew she was sleeping badly, but being Ma she refused to admit to any tiredness.

The room was heavy with the smell of oil paint, turpentine, and linseed oil, overpowering the perfume of a huge bunch of red roses Ma’d brought from the garden yesterday and set behind her on a broad windowsill. “Fingal, you’re back.” She turned from her easel close to the window, upon which was a canvas prepared with a russet wash of diluted oil paint. “Have you had lunch?”

He knew his mother well enough to know she would have been fretting about his lateness, but rather than asking for an explanation she worried he hadn’t eaten. “Not yet, but Bridgit’s getting Cook to make me some soup and a sandwich. I told her to bring it here. I thought we could chat while you were working.”

She indicated one of a pair of folding wooden chairs. “Have a seat then.”

Fingal did, and watched his artist mother. Her paint-stained smock was in scruffy contrast to the immaculately dressed woman she usually was. She held a palette with swirls of coloured oils that recently had been squeezed from their tubes. A metal dipper clipped to the palette’s edge held linseed oil, and she darted the brush into the dipper and began to soften a dark blue paint with drops of the oil. He knew better than to ask her what the subject would be. Ma never liked to discuss her paintings until they were finished, although she didn’t mind Fingal or Father watching as she worked. “I saw Doctor Corrigan, but we were called out to an accident,” he said. “That’s why I’m late. Some poor divil got hit by a tram. Broke his ankle.”

“Not nice,” she said.

“He’ll be all right,” Fingal said. “Pity about his job though.”

“Why?”

“The chap’s a cooper. He’d just landed a place at Guinness’s. He’ll be hors de combat for quite a while. They’ll find someone else now.” For a moment Fingal hoped Ma might say she knew one of the members of the famous brewery family and might be able to pull strings.

“So many out of work. It is a very hard world out there,” she said, put the brush aside, and lifted a palette knife, “and none too easy here.” She sighed. “You knew Doctor Micks was coming this morning. He said he was sorry to have missed you.”

Father couldn’t have a better specialist than Fingal’s old mentor from Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital. He attended Father at least once a week.

“He spoke to me in private.” There was a catch in her voice. “He doesn’t think—He’s not confident that Connan is going to live much longer. Doctor Micks offered your father another blood transfusion, but he declined. I think it was the right decision.” Her gaze was fixed on Fingal’s eyes.

The worry that was never far from the front of Fingal’s mind gnawed at him. He was no stranger to death, but watching his own father being wasted by acute myelogenous leukemia was harder than anything he’d done in his twenty-seven years. It was typical of Father’s iron will to refuse a transfusion that could only delay the inevitable. Fingal would like to have touched his mother’s hands but both were occupied. All he could do was say, “It was the right one. And Father’s not in any pain and has all of his wits about him.” It was the only comfort he had to offer.

She smiled and braced her shoulders as rigidly as he’d seen old Queen Mary doing in a Pathé newsreel of her husband King George V’s funeral in January. Mary O’Reilly née Nixon, was like Her Majesty, a woman of the Victorian age. Sometimes Fingal wondered what went on behind those seemingly reserved façades. He was aware of the door opening behind him.

Ma smiled and said, “Connan. You’re awake. Fingal’s home.”

Father was leaning on a blackthorn walking stick.

Fingal crossed the floor. “Take my arm.” He felt his father’s hand on his forearm and together they walked slowly. Fingal helped him onto the other folding chair.

It took Father a while to catch his breath before he could say, “Thank you, son.” He’d been a tall man, but now he was stooped. His once black hair was thinning and silver. The tartan dressing gown he wore seemed to have been made for a man twice his size. The skin of the hands folded in his lap was alabaster white and onion-skin thin. Veins coursed beneath. A bruise the size of a half crown disfigured the back of the left hand. “Good to see you home.” He looked at the canvas. “Please don’t stop, Mary. You know how much I like to watch you work.”

With the edge of the palette knife she started applying paint a third of the way up from the bottom of the canvas, drawing it across in a gently ascending thin line.

Fingal knew that as a boat builder begins with the keel on which the skeleton of the vessel is laid, so Ma started her ’scape pictures with the horizon. With so much space left above it, this one was going to be a skyscape. She had a knack for capturing those moments when nature wrought a summer sky of such perfection that the viewer half-expected to see angels in one corner, or those of agony when Boreas the north wind piled up the thunderheads of Armageddon and made mortal man feel tiny and afraid.

“Fingal’s just come in. Would you like a cup of tea, Connan?” Ma asked as if it were just another workaday afternoon.

“No, thank you, dear.” He turned to Fingal. “Do please sit. How did the interview go? Are you going to take the job?” There was no hint of approval in his voice.

Fingal frowned. His father had a deeply held belief that his younger son should specialize, a desire fostered by his friends Doctor Victor Millington Synge, nephew of the playwright, and Mister Oliver St. John Gogarty.

“Doctor Corrigan, the principal, seems like an interesting man.” Fingal smiled. “I must say initially he put me off. Seemed arrogant and bullying, but we had a tête-à-tête. I could grow to like that man a lot, I think. You would, M—Mother.” Father hated Fingal calling her “Ma.” He had told him often that it was “common,” and perhaps he was right. Still, he always thought of her as Ma. “He worried a lot about the poor when he was about my age and is still committed to helping the underprivileged.”

She stopped in the middle of softening the edge of part of the horizon. “Good for him. I’ve seen the living conditions in the Liberties. The sooner they’re razed the better. The city fathers have plans to pull down whole streets and put up seven thousand four hundred new dwellings by ’38, but that’s still a long time away. They should be moving faster.”

“I’m sure Doctor Corrigan would agree. He has a more direct approach, looking after the people despite their surroundings, trying to help them one case at a time,” Fingal said, thinking of the little doctor and Manus Foster, his skin pink from coal gas poisoning. “He is very committed to his work. I could learn a lot from him.”

“Corrigan graduated in the same year as Doctor Micks,” Father said, then a cough clutched him and he bent over but soon righted himself and continued. “They attended Doctor Steevens’ Hospital together for some of their training. Doctor Micks says the man’s a very good doctor.” Father coughed again. “For a G.P.”

“I can have the job if I want it.”

“And do you?” Father asked, and coughed, this time deep in his chest, a moist sound. He gasped twice. “I’m sorry,” he said, and worked at getting his breath back.

The disease had spread to Father’s lungs. Fingal gritted his teeth. He’d been seeing patients for long enough not to be surprised by the random unfairness of how illnesses struck, but it was unjust how this abomination had afflicted Father—bloody unjust. He was still a relatively young man—only fifty-seven. Fingal clenched his fists, then let them relax, waiting for him to speak.

“I’m all right now,” Father said. “I asked if you were going to take the job, Fingal.”