An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War (36 page)

Or should they perhaps simply ignore this Consuela? There was a thought. He narrowed his eyes, and sipped.
There
indeed was a thought. She would have no way of knowing if her letter had been delivered. Why not let the past slip away? Pretend it never happened. He made a harrumphing noise in his throat and shook his head. He'd never in his life refused a head-on challenge.

He became dimly aware of the aromas of steak and kidney wafting upstairs. O'Reilly sighed. Even that failed to move him. He sat in an armchair, welcomed Lady Macbeth onto his lap, stroked the little cat's head, sipped his whiskey, and tried not to get irritated with himself for his indecision. He couldn't even be bothered to read a book.

*   *   *

“Did you enjoy that, Fingal?” Kitty asked.

“Very much,” he said, and forced a smile, “but no thanks. I couldn't manage a second helping.” He saw her frown and could guess she was thinking, That's not like Fingal O'Reilly. Conversation during the meal had been desultory, about as personal as a discussion about the weather between a couple of English strangers on a train.

“Is it bothering you so much, pet?” she said, coming to what they both knew was the crux of the matter. “I'm not apologising for what happened.”

“Nor should you.”

“I'm just sad that someone who meant a great deal to me at one time has died.”

“‘… any man's death diminishes me'?”

“That's part of it, but he wasn't just any man either. I think you understand that.”

O'Reilly nodded. “I do, and I know I'm being unreasonable.” He looked straight at her, nodded his head, and said slowly, “It's just going to take a bit of getting used to. You telling me all this came as something of a shock.”

She pursed her lips then said, “I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have kept it to myself.”

“I don't think so,” he said, staring at the tablecloth. “You and I have always told each other the truth. I'm being irrational, I know. I just need a bit more time.” He looked up at her. “I love you, Kitty, and I've no reason to be jealous—but damn it all, I am.” It helped to say out loud what he'd been trying to avoid recognising. “And I simply don't want to help you to decide what to do about this Consuela woman. Not yet.” Despite his earlier resolve, he was leaning toward suggesting that they simply pretend the letter had never been delivered. Forget all about it. “I don't know if it might not be better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I understand. I'm not sure myself.” She smiled at him. “What I am sure is that I love you, Fingal. I know this is ultimately my decision to make, but I don't want to make it on my own. If we do see her, I want us to do it together,” she said, and stood. “We'll not talk about it anymore tonight. Give me a hand to clear off and then let's go and watch
Softly, Softly
.”

“Right,” said O'Reilly, standing. The weekly Saturday night police drama, which the BBC had been broadcasting since January 1966 as live performances, might be just what he needed to get his mind off the conundrum that wasn't going to go away. It might be seen in a clearer light after his brain, having been consciously focussed on something else for a while, and after a night's sleep, might find a way to cast a clearer light on the question.

*   *   *

It had been a broken, sleepless night, and by breakfast time O'Reilly was no closer to knowing what to do. His eyes felt gritty. They'd both feigned cheerfulness at breakfast, avoiding the subject altogether, and now with Jenny on call and Kitty paying back a favour to Sister Jane Hoey with an extra shift at the Royal, O'Reilly had decided to go and see his brother in Portaferry. A quick phone call had confirmed that Lars would be home.

A little after ten O'Reilly put Arthur into the back of the Rover—there'd be time to give him a decent run—and drove up and over the Ballybucklebo Hills, then on toward Newtownards. He was going to drive through Greyabbey, but had an idea and so stopped on the Main Street outside a pebbledashed house next door to the RUC barracks. A man with a neatly clipped grey goatee eventually answered the door.

“Och, Doctor O'Reilly. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was in the studio out back. Great to see you. Come on, on in.” He stepped aside.

“Thanks, Bob,” O'Reilly said, moving into a small, neatly furnished front parlour. “How's your work going?”

“Have a pew.” The man settled himself in a worn wingback chair and started rubbing at a splash of azure-blue paint on his thumb. “Work is going well, thank you. I'm getting a lot more commissions every week, and I'm selling in the gallery next door.”

“That's good to hear. I'm happy for you, Bob.” When O'Reilly had first met Bob Milliken a couple of years ago on the foreshore of Strangford, both men had been shooting a dawn flight. Later that day, the house painter had brought O'Reilly home and shown him some beautifully rendered watercolours of Strangford and the waterfowl that lived there. Bob had said he was considering painting watercolours full time and O'Reilly, who had been charmed by the man's work, had encouraged him. “So you don't regret taking the chance?”

Bob shook his head. “Best thing I ever did. I'm making a good living as an artist and I'm doing something I love.”

“I'm delighted.” O'Reilly had worried for several months that his encouragement might have been misplaced.

“Cup of tea?”

O'Reilly shook his head. “I'm on my way to Portaferry to have lunch with my brother and I have to give Arthur his walk at the stream at Lisbane before that. So I should be getting on, but I wondered if you still had that wee picture of the snipe?” O'Reilly and Kitty's most recent outing to Gransha Point had included a stop to see Bob. She'd much admired the piece.

“I do. I'll go and get it.”

Bob returned in minutes. “Here.” He handed O'Reilly a four-by-eight-inch frame holding a picture of a single cock snipe diving through the air, wings fully spread, long narrow beak pointing ahead, all against a powder blue sky punctuated by the stems of three tufted reeds.

“Lovely,” O'Reilly said, remembering how her grey eyes had sparkled when she'd first seen it. “How much?”

Bob smiled. “For you, Doctor? Ten pound ten.”

O'Reilly rose, shook Bob's hand, and said, “Done. Will you take a cheque?”

“Aye, certainly.”

It took moments to write. “Forgive me for running, Bob.”

“Never worry.” They took the few steps to the front door together. “Feel free to drop in anytime, and say hello to Mister Lars for me.”

“I will. See you soon,” O'Reilly said as the painter ushered him out and he headed for the car, the little painting tucked under his arm.

*   *   *

A happily walked Arthur, who had started two snipe from the banks of the stream at Lisbane, was fast asleep in the seat-well of the Rover when O'Reilly parked outside his brother's house. The day wasn't too warm, but O'Reilly rolled down the window, let the big dog snooze on, and clambered out of the car only to be struck, as always, by the sight of Strangford Lough laid out before him.

“Finn.”

O'Reilly spun on his heels and turned to face his brother.

“Good to see you, Finn. Come in.” Lars led the way to the house and held open the door.

“And you, big brother.” O'Reilly stepped into the familiar hall. He noticed a bowl of orchids on a table. Lars and his exotic plants.

“We'll go on into the lounge,” Lars said.

O'Reilly turned left into the spacious room with its views across the narrows at the mouth of the lough to Strangford Town on the other side and the great bay of the Castleward Estate east of the town. As always he paused to admire a skyscape in oil of a boiling in the heavens, a gargantuan storm that Ma, God rest her, had painted in '36 as their father had been dying of leukaemia. “Ma was a very good artist, Lars,” O'Reilly said, and for an instant remembered Kitty admiring the same scene when he'd taken her to Lansdowne Road for dinner on his graduation night. Ma had glowed when Kitty, no mean painter herself, had admired the work.

“She was that, Finn.” Lars indicated an armchair. “Have a pew. Tea? Coffee?”

O'Reilly sat and shook his head. “You're sure you've time for lunch at the Portaferry Hotel?”

“I do. I've made a reservation.”

O'Reilly nodded. “Good. Then, no, nothing now.”

Lars sat. “How are you, Finn? You've something on your mind, you told me. Or were you out on a call last night too? You look like you didn't get too much sleep.”

“I didn't. But not because of a patient,” O'Reilly said.

“And you said it's something about Kitty? She's not ill, is she?”

“Nothing like that. It's—it's difficult to explain.”

Lars leant forward, folded his right arm across his chest, and cupped his chin with his left hand. “Fire away.”

“You remember in the '30s. Kitty and I were an item, then we weren't, then we patched things up for a while until my work got in the way again and then—” O'Reilly stopped, not sure how to continue.

“And she went to Tenerife. I do remember. I thought when you met Deirdre you were quite over Kitty. I certainly didn't expect the pair of you to get wed so late in life, but I'm delighted for you.”

O'Reilly detected a faint tinge of sadness in his bachelor brother's voice. “Me too, but…” O'Reilly stood, walked to the window, and stared out at the little car ferry heading out from the Strangford shore on its way to Portaferry, battling the strong currents of an ebb tide at its peak. “Och, Lars, there's no point ploughing the same furrow twice. Deirdre's gone. I'm married to Kitty now, I love her dearly”—he'd tell no one else save Lars and her his deepest feelings—“but last evening she told me something that's got me all at sixes and sevens.” He paused.

A stronger-than-usual wave hit the little ferry and for moments she was shoved completely off course.

“Go on, Finn,” Lars said in a soft voice that had O'Reilly imagining his solicitor brother comforting a recent widow as they discussed the probate of her late husband's will. “Come and sit down.”

O'Reilly did, still watching the little vessel from the corner of his eye.

“I know it's difficult for you, Finn. Usually it's the other way round, you sorting out problems for your patients, but I am your brother.”

O'Reilly nodded. He took a deep breath. “When I came home last night, I found her in tears. She'd got a letter from Spain. She told me that when she'd been nursing in Tenerife she'd had an affair with a Spaniard.” O'Reilly couldn't bring himself to name the man. “He died six weeks ago. Learning of it must have brought back a flood of memories for her. And for me … I've always had far too vivid an imagination…” It took no effort to see himself in Narvik in 1940, four decks down on
Warspite,
hatches battened down, and under German fire. His mind had run rampant picturing the compartment flooding, thinking he could even smell the oily water. Right up to today he could recall how, when the action was over and Richard Wilcoxson had let his medical staff go on deck for a breath of fresh air, Fingal had felt waves of the blessed relief from his own claustrophobia brought on entirely by letting himself picture too clearly what might go wrong.

“When she told me some general details I should have accepted them simply as cold fact, her confession as if to a priest, me in this case, her need to get it off her chest. I'm well used to handling unpleasant facts without embellishing them on behalf of my patients, but when it came to myself? My bloody mind went beserk. I had all kinds of scenes in my head.” He half snorted a laugh. “Scenes in glorious, bloody Technicolor, moving pictures of them walking in the moonlight in a fishing village called Los Abrigos, drinking wine, laughing together, him calling her ‘
mi corazon,
' kissing her. Lars, don't ask me to tell you exactly how I pictured them making love … Just don't.” He inhaled.

“I can guess,” Lars said. “Not pleasant for you. Not pleasant at all.”

“And here's the thing.” O'Reilly scratched one ear. “I've no right to be jealous, but…” He looked into Lars's dark eyes. “Damn it all, I am. Very jealous.”

Lars nodded. “I think,” he said, “that's perfectly natural. I'm sure I'd have felt exactly the same had I been in your shoes, Finn.”

“Honestly?”

“Mmmm,” Lars said, looking down to the floor. “You know, Finn, I still think about the judge's daughter in Dublin. Jean Neely. I can still remember how it felt when she turned down my proposal of marriage on a Christmas Eve. Married some other bloke.”

O'Reilly frowned. “I could tell you were hurting back then. I tried to help. I'm sorry if I wasn't much use.”

“I was. Hurting sore, but you tried, Finn. You tried your damnedest. That's what brothers are for. That's why I'm trying to understand and help you today.”

“And you are. Just by listening you are. Letting me spill it all out.” Then a small smile started. “You know,” he said, “it is a comfort, Lars.” O'Reilly noticed that the ferry was much closer to the Portaferry side now and seemed to be coming back on course. “Thank you.” He pursed his lips. “There is one other thing.”

“Go on.”

“It was the man's daughter who wrote to Kitty. She's a woman in her thirties now. Her name is Consuela.” He paused.

Lars frowned. “I hesitate to ask, but are you worried that—”

“Kitty might be the mother?”

Lars inclined his head.

“No. Kitty went there in late '36, started seeing the fellah a year later. At that time his little girl was two going on three.”

“That's all right then.” Lars smiled. “I think, brother,” he said, “once you've confronted the green-eyed monster for a while longer, you'll see you've nothing to worry about.”