In the Company of Others (22 page)

I’m afraid I don’t believe in Wee Folk, I say.

He looks at me with astonishment, then recovers himself & says deferentially, They’re there nonetheless.

We walk on & he says, Aren’t they, Aoife?

A looks at me, suppressing a smile. I wager she believes in them.

Twas the peach frock she wore & the shoes her Father made.

23 September

God have mercy. The wee drop that accompanied Fiona was a wagon load piled to the heavens. I have never seen such a look on C’s face as the whole of it appeared in the lane pulled by a horse nearly dead from privation. Then came more than several of the Missus Keegan’s women friends & their children skipping along behind with a passel of dogs & a pig at the rear.

I insisted C leave the surgery & rest herself in our Bedchamber.

I cannot, she said, the oul Flanagan Sisters have waited since early morning & the Bailey infant has a miserable case of Thrush. She stood rigid as a broom handle, but I persisted, for the wagon load & all the rest would soon be spilling into the little room near the Surgery, surely provoking another of her Headaches.

Send A to see me through, I said & wondered at the look she gave me for the relief I offered.

God help us, there is no strength to tell the rest of it—a farce if ever there was one. The jumble is forced into the small room as a sausage into a casing—one might fear to open the door lest the flotsam of cupboards & coat pegs & crockeries spew forth & strike one down.

Arrival of the
Passiflora
anxiously awaited. Though found to be salubrious in Philadelphia, Valerian & Peppermint Oil now have but weak effect.

A now complaining of blisters raised by the wearing of shoes on Wedding Day.

They’re from your father’s own last, I chide. Tis a discredit to fling about the talk of blisters.

I am lately persuaded that we are overly insular here—I have no Discourse with anyone save Keegan & our patients. C has but A for company & the work of two upon her shoulders, though I pray the Missus Keegan will lift the burthen. There remains the issue however, of the several unfinished guestchambers. Thus if more guests are attracted than we can immediately handle, we’ll be hanging them up by a horseshoe nail.

In any case we must somehow introduce Society into the halls of Cathair Mohr.

Day following

Fog heavy o’er the Lough

Rose McFee came late yesterday with a basket of Burdock Root, & Nettles which she calls Devils Claw. She named her price for something I had not asked for nor required.

Why, Rose McFee, I say, how can ye charge a man who eased your pain & dunned ye nary a penny for the service?

That sarvice, she says, was paid by what I fixed on your neighbor.

I gave her a coin which she grabbed from my hand while instructing me in the proper use of her gleanings. I turned the raw stuff over to Aoife with a request to make a tea of the Burdock, as Rose attests it will unblock the sweat glands & urinary system which may help with the Headache.

It never arises in conversation, yet Nephew is clearly pleased to be my Heir. He swaggers about as if he owns the place in advance of my demise, suggesting where the pig sty be located & giving Keegan the business. Keegan gives it back. Th’ Young Bladder, Keegan calls him, being full of th’ piss, he says, tells us the goat is a most profitable animal & we should buy a flock of two hundred to begin. Keegan stalks away without a word & Young Bladder tells me Keegan must be dismissed—God have mercy. It is Nephew & his flock of hungry mouths who must be dismissed. I wonder at the numerous mistakes I have made here—chief among them, accepting land from a man who is no Christian neighbor, & now the issue of Nephew as heir to Cathair Mohr. It was the right thing to do, to pass my estate to the eldest son of my eldest brother & my Namesake into the bargain. I only wished to do as had been done unto me by Uncle. I will soon discuss the matter with my Solicitor.

Fiona on duty at an early hour—I have never heard such Rattle & Bang as she commandeers the arrangement of the kitchen to suit her taste. I’m told by a patient that the Missus Keegan can bottle a full Orchard in a day. A has fled to her family til the morrow, barefoot as any waif.

I did not return home to be a man of Show yet I require a horse for Keegan so that he needn’t take Adam when he goes about my business. And then I must provide a Carriage for C’s ministrations among the people, for oft times we are called out separately in any wether & she has her monthly rounds of near twenty miles, to boot. A could do with a cart & pony to visit her family & make the occasional call on a patient.

There is as well the problem of sheep & cattle—all these things I am able to see clearly now the house is liveable & the long labor essentially done. One wants a bit of mutton & beef for the table without dashing about to fetch it from others. And how then shall we have cattle when the pastures of Cathair Mohr are so long overgrown? And how then shall we manure the fields to restore their vitality if we have not cattle?

At the end, I am a town man lacking even the heart for tramping about in neglected fields wounding the Game. My father was a Sawyer whose husbandry ran to cultivating a patch of Turnips & keeping a bay mare, & no use to look for the bucolic influence from Uncle, a gentleman chiefly disposed to business, an interest in architecture, & the private life. Clearly I must furnish myself with a man to oversee further Improvements here. Keegan bright enough & industrious but not one to grasp the Long Picture.

I am reminded that Balfour employs roughly twenty or more men and women, tis a factory over there to feed and keep but three people, though I hear their entertaining of guests is near constant.

One concludes that it is not enough to have a comfortable house & a roof over one’s equipage—the monstrous thing begets itself like the common hare, adding up to the full Plantation & rendering a man as impoverished as his neighbor in the windowless cot.

Day following

Mackerel skies

Nephew & his legions departing day after tomorrow, thanks to God.

The lad says to me this morning, How do you cut off a leg?

I say to him, Why do you ask?

He says, I seen Danny Moore’s stump. He shown it to me, took th’ wrap off it.

Aye, I say, he likes to do that.

How do you cut off a leg? he says again.

A sharp knife for the flesh & muscle, I say, & a saw for the bone.

I have never seen a more solemn look on a young face.

I’d like to do that when I’m a man, he says.

Are you sure of it? There’s blood & guts to cutting into people, it’s a messy business & neither Doctor nor Patient relishes a minute of it.

I should like to do it, he says, very firm. Well, then, I must go out in the carriage tomorrow. Would you like to come along?

He thinks about this. Thoughts move over his face like shifting clouds reflected on the lough.

Yis, he says. Yis, sir.

Very well. Twill be raining cats & dogs & we’ll get a good soaking in & out of the carriage.

He looks at me, expectant.

We won’t be cutting off any legs tomorrow. Will you still come?

He thinks again, puckering his lips. Yis, he says & gravely takes my hand & shakes it.

Day following

The lad & I got away early & the rain held off until we were nearly done with our calls. We had a bite of mutton stew with Granny Moore & a fine soda bread to sop the gravy. He ate as if famished, then watched intently my ministrations to a nasty sore on Bridie Flaherty’s knee. Bridie had limped to the Moores to meet the doctor. Here, I said, offering him the nasty bandage that had been on near a week. He looked at it, aghast, then took it. Put it in the fire I said & he did. And wash up in the basin, I said & he did. In any case, the wound was nearly healed. To celebrate Bridie did a jigging hop on the other leg, which caused the lad to laugh.

We drove homeward in a misting rain.

After a long silence, he says, I don’t care to go back to Mullaghmore.

And why is that?

I like it here very fine.

His mother is one of the glum sisters—I could understand his reluctance.

We were trotting along by the great stand of bracken, on one of the smoothest carriage roads hereabout—I had my own men render it so.

How did you come by the name Eunan?

Me granda got it off an oul’ saint.

The boy looked over at me, serious as a monk.

Where is your father?

Me da has got no legs.

No legs!

But stumps like Danny Moore.

My God, I say. How did it happen?

’t was th’ stones fell on ’im when he was layin’ a wall.

He’s a mason, then.

Yis. His legs was trapped under th’ stones a full day & th’ part of a night.

Can he work?

No. He has th’ coughin’. He’s with my oul’ granny who makes medicine for ’im to stop th’ coughin’.

Does it stop, then?

No. Yis. Sometimes.

My thoughts fly to the many aggravations of the Lungs.

If it had been me at th’ cuttin’ off of ’is legs, he says, twould be a better job than them butchers done.

He looks suddenly thrice his age & turns his head & stares at the lough.

How do you get by?

Mam takes in sewin’.