Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor (31 page)

“Well, I—”

“I remember what you said when you’d had that case of diptheria and Doctor Corrigan sucked the membrane out. You said he always put the patients first—and that was the kind of doctor you wanted to be.”

“Within reason,” he said.

She stopped, tilted her head to one side, and regarded him. “Occasionally I wonder, Fingal, if some physicians shouldn’t be like priests and take a vow of celibacy. Your on-call seems to be making it awfully tricky for us to get together sometimes, and I do miss you.”

Fingal frowned. Where the hell had this come from? He revelled in her company, knew she was happy being with him, but he did take his professional responsibilities and his family commitment to Ma seriously. “Are you not happy?” he said. “I know I did turn my back on you last year when I had to work so hard to qualify, but I thought that was behind us. I—” Was Kitty angling for a proposal? He’d certainly never discussed such a thing with her and, anyway
,
with what he presently earned he could hardly support a wife and children. He shook his head and repeated his question. “Kitty? Are you not happy.”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “Truth?”

“Truth.”

“I’m happy with you, Fingal, but not with our situation. You’re concerned about your friend who lost his job because he has a wife and children. But do you ever think about having those things for yourself? A lot of my friends are married, settled down, having babies. I’m not twenty-one anymore.”

So that was it. Fingal looked about in short, jerky glances like a cornered boar looking for a way to escape. “I’m only beginning a career, Kitty. I do love you.” And that was as far as he was prepared to go. Please, he thought, let it be enough for now. Until I’m ready—ready to take the plunge. “Look. Ma will be going to live in Portaferry soon, and Charlie’s pretty decent about swapping call. I really do want to see much more of you. I’ll do my very best to make more time.”

She studied his face and sighed. He knew her well enough to know that she was struggling over what to say next. “I love you, Fingal.” She frowned. Took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s see how it goes.” She started to walk briskly and he had to lengthen his stride to keep up. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve a pot roast cooking and I don’t want it to dry up.”

She had always been able to change the subject quickly if she felt she was on emotionally thin ice. “Kitty,” he said as they turned onto Nicholas Street, “Kitty, I love you and—”

“Extra. Extra. Read all about it! International Brigade lands in Alicante to fight for the Spanish Government against Franco!” Kitty had come to a halt, transfixed. “Read all about it.” The barefoot newsboy in short, ragged pants turned his attention to her. “Ma’am?”

“Yes, give me a paper, please,” Kitty said.

Fingal gave the ragged urchin a copper and accepted a copy of the
Irish Independent.
“Here.” He gave it to her.

“I’ll read it when I get home,” she said, tucking the paper under her arm and striding off again, this time even faster than before. “You know, volunteers from all over have been arriving in Spain since August the first. The ones fighting against Franco’s forces are called the International Brigades.”

“I know,” he said quietly, thinking, Jasus, not bloody Spain again.

“Women have been going with them as part of their medical services.”

Fingal’s heart jumped. “What? You’re not thinking of—”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking. I just know that ever since I heard about the massacre at Badajoz, I can’t stop thinking about all those children who have lost their parents. It haunts me, Fingal.”

“Kitty. Please. I understand how you feel, but there’s nothing we can do.”

“People always say that. But a nursing friend of mine, Agnes Brady, she’s doing something. She joined the Irish contingent, the Connolly Column. I don’t know if she’ll be with the lot that have just arrived.” She stopped and looked into his eyes. “I don’t know, but I want to find out. You mentioned the Four Courts—how they were blown up in our Civil War? We know here in Ireland about the horrors of civil war. The one in Spain is just as senseless, but just as important. You worry yourself sick over your unemployed patients here. Permit me to show a bit of humanity, concern for the children of Spain.”

And after that Fingal didn’t think there was much more to say.

30

This Is the Happiest Conversation

O’Reilly sat at the head of the dining room table, his jacket hanging on the back of his chair. He watched the play of late October sunlight on the cut-glass chandelier above the table—blue, indigo, and violet—as a beam was refracted through a facet. Illuminated dust motes danced a saraband on convection currents above the sideboard where a warming plate sat under a chafing dish. On it, two shrivelled devilled kidneys remained, the sole survivors of the massacre, largely at his hands, of the original servings. He burped contentedly.

Kitty had left for work, Jenny was in the surgery, and he, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, was temporarily a gentleman of leisure. Not a single solitary sufferer had sought the solace of a home visit.

He spread Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade on buttered toast. The stuff had been a favourite of his for years. After several chilly negotiating sessions in 1947, Kinky had given in. Apart from the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce necessary to the devilled kidneys recipe, Cooper’s marmalade was the only bought preserve permitted at Number One Main Street and even then she only served it when she was feeling expansive. Did the fact that Archie had squired her to see
Lord Jim
starring Peter O’Toole last night have anything to do with her good mood this morning?

He took a bite, chewed happily, and scanned his
Daily Telegraph.
It didn’t look as if the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, was going to prevent his Southern Rhodesian counterpart Ian Smith unilaterally declaring the independence of his country from the British Commonwealth.

Not even a letter from Her Majesty seemed to be having any effect. O’Reilly knew that during the war Smith had survived the crash of his Hurricane, extensive plastic surgery, and later having his Spitfire shot down by German flak. He’d be no pushover if his mind was made up. And O’Reilly was sure it was all very important to Rhodesians.

He supposed he should take more interest in the big wide world, but in Ballybucklebo, as life trundled along with its little dramas, tragedies, and comedies closer to home, things were much more immediate than in—in Belfast, never mind in a country five or six thousand miles away.

And, most important, he, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, could not influence affairs in Southern Rhodesia by one jot or tittle. But he could make changes here. Like helping Helen Hewitt. Already Kitty had asked Cromie to speak to his colleague Mister Braidwood about a summer job in Newtownards Hospital for the lass. It seemed Braidwood ran a monthly hand clinic at the Royal, and Cromie would see him there soon. The work of the clinic was critical to artisans, returning their damaged hands to near normal function.

He finished his tea and toast and rose. Kinky’d already tidied much of the stuff away. He’d take the rest to the kitchen. Save her the trip. He lifted the chafing dish and blew out the squat little candles of the warming plate, piled his cup, saucer, plate, and knife on the dish, and headed for the door. He noticed as he passed that the waiting room was packed and wondered why Kitty was still chuntering on about changing his favourite rosy wallpaper. She’d brought the subject up last night.

“Fingal, I wish you’d take it seriously.”

“Take what seriously?”

“The waiting room wallpaper. Kinky agrees with me that—”

“It’s perfectly fine as it is. My customers don’t like changes.”

“Honestly,” she’d said and had let the matter drop, but that Kitty could be very persistent, he knew from of old.

He went into the kitchen, where Kinky sat on a chair, her back to him. She clearly hadn’t heard him come in. She was plucking one of the brace of green-headed mallard drakes he’d shot on Saturday at Strangford Lough. A sheet of newspaper protected the counter nearby where the other bird lay in its full plumage. She had a pillowcase ticking between her knees to accept the soft feathers from the breast. Typical Kinky. Waste not, want not. A few more birds and Number One would possess another down pillow. “Tidied up a bit,” he said, putting the dirty things on a counter near the sink.

She looked up. “Thank you, sir,” she said, “for I’ll be a while plucking and cleaning these birds.” She frowned and tutted when she saw that two kidneys had not been eaten. “Was everything all right?”

“We were all stuffed to the gills, Kinky, and everyone said it was grand.” To a Corkwoman, there was only one higher accolade than “grand,” and it pleased O’Reilly to see the colour rise in her cheeks, cheeks that since her introduction of the slimming diet for the pair of them were still rosy, but like the rest of Kinky, less heavy. “Grand altogether.”

“Go ’way out of that, Doctor O’Reilly.” She shook her head at him, but her grin was vast.

Even after their nineteen years together, twenty if he counted the time he’d spent here as an assistant to old Doctor Flanagan before the war, he could still take pleasure from paying her a compliment.

O’Reilly dragged another chair across the room, set it opposite her, and rolled up his sleeves. Picking up the second bird, he sat. “I’ll give you a hand. I’ve been dressing fowl since our uncle Hedley taught Lars and me to shoot. You know that.”

“I do,” she said. “And the help’s appreciated.”

O’Reilly’s left hand held the bird by its feet and he let its head fall into the ticking sack. He made his right hand into a loose fist and grasped feathers between outstretched thumb and curved index finger. Pushing his hand away, he tore a tuft of soft feathers free. He dropped them into the sack, then repeated the operation. “I’ve not lost my touch,” he said.

“You do enjoy your shooting, so, don’t you, sir?”

“It’s more than just shooting, Kinky. It’s an excuse to go to a quiet place. Be on my own with Arthur.” He let another tuft of feathers fall free. Next to Kitty and his brother Lars, Kinky was the only person in whom O’Reilly would confide. “There’s something about our Ireland,” he said. “The country places like Strangford Lough, the Glens of Antrim, the Cliffs of Moher. And I love dirty old Dublin, ‘Strumpet City.’” More feathers drifted into the sack.

“And I do be very fond of Béal na mBláth, Clonakilty, West Cork, and Dingle out in Kerry,” she said, her arm working in time with his, feathers drifting into the ticking.

He laughed. “We sound a bit like a brochure for Bord Fáilte, the Irish tourist board, don’t we?”

“We do not at all. You’re like me. You love this country and there’s no shame in saying it out loud, so.” The entire underside of Kinky’s drake was now completely bald, the skin white and pimpled. She turned the bird and started to pluck its back, but this time over a sheet of newspaper. These feathers were too coarse for making bedding.

O’Reilly stopped plucking. “You know, it’s not just the places. It’s the people north and south of the border. Most of them are hardworking folks. Helen Hewitt wants summer work to earn a few bob for her family.”

“Does she now? Good for her.”

He shook his head. It seemed that almost since the day he’d started medical school he’d become a one-man job-finder. “I knew a couple of Dubliners, Paddy Keogh, a one-armed army sergeant, and John-Joe Finnegan with a smashed ankle, and they both desperate for work despite their disabilities. They were brothers under the skin to Donal Donnelly.”

She laughed. “Donal? A complete skiver if there’s money to be made, but I grant you, that man works every hour God provides to take care of his family, so.”

“He does,” O’Reilly said, and bent back to his own work. He noticed Lady Macbeth sitting on the floor, one paw raised, batting at a single feather that fluttered on the wind of her paw’s passage.

“I’m a lucky man, Kinky,” he said. “My home’s in the best village in all the thirty-two counties. I’ve a job that is as satisfying as anything I ever dreamed of, and,” he bent over and touched her shoulder, “I’ve got the best housekeeper in Ireland.”

“Thank you, Doctor O’Reilly,” she said, and he heard how serious she sounded. “I appreciate that very much.” She sat back, took a deep breath. “Might you spare a Corkwoman a moment to answer a question?”

“I’m all ears. Fire away.” The lower part of his bird’s underside was as white as Kinky’s now. He continued plucking.

“I think,” she said, “I could not have a better employer, sir.”

“Thank you, Kinky.” A thought struck him. “Or even after all these years would you prefer to be called Maureen?”

“Kinky does be grand, sir, but thank you for asking. That is exactly what I mean. Only a gentleman would ask a thing like that.” She frowned and tugged at a single long feather that didn’t want to come free. “How a body’s called is important to them.”

He inclined his head and wondered where this was leading. Perhaps she needed a little prompt. “What would you like to ask me?”

“I’d like to say that apart from yourself, and I don’t mean to open old wounds, that I’m the only one here who met your Miss Deirdre Mawhinney before she became Mrs. O’Reilly…”

“There’s no hurt taken, Kinky.” He pursed his lips, inclined his head.

“Poor girl.”

He started plucking. “That’s very long ago now. I’ll never forget her, but the ache has gone.”

“And you hurt sore back then. I saw how you still grieved, sir, when first you came back here in ’46.” She jerked back as the feather came free.

He inhaled. “Aye,” he said quietly, “I did.” He still couldn’t see where this was going.

“And you know my story, my Paudeen, the fisherman, and how he was drowned.” It was a flat statement of fact.

“I do, Kinky. And you grieved long and hard too.”

“Until Paudeen spoke to me when I had that operation in the springtime of this year, so.”