An Irish Country Christmas (36 page)

Barry heard the bred-from-the-cradle mistrust of many Ulster folk, even Catholics like Cissie, for their countrymen south of the border, even though here in Ballybucklebo there was no sectarian strife. He watched O’Reilly get Callum to lie flat. Then O’Reilly gently palpated the boy’s stomach.

“You’d wonder if there’ll ever be a united Ireland again,” Cissie continued. That spoken thought must have set up deeper ones because Cissie frowned, rubbed her upper lip with the web of her right hand, unconsciously picked her nose, and said nothing for at least two seconds.

O’Reilly, like a rugby back running with the ball and seeing a hole in the defences, plunged into the gap. “He’ll be fine, Cissie. No cause for concern. He’ll pass it naturally in a day or two.”

She stopped picking her nose. “Honest to God, Doctor?”

“Cross my heart. I’m so sure I’ll not even ask you to get him to use a potty so you could go through his motions until you find it and prove it’s out.”

Cissie’s nose wrinkled. “I’d not fancy that much, so I wouldn’t. Still it’s better than my cousin Aggie suggested . . . you know Aggie, the one with—”

“The six toes,” Barry mouthed soundlessly, in time with Cissie’s declaration. She rarely missed the opportunity to mention them. He saw O’Reilly nod and smile.

“Anyroads, Aggie said Callum would need a big operation with one of them sturgeons up at the Royal, but then she wanted me to stick primrose roots up my nose.” She turned to Barry. “Them pills you give me done the trick something smashing, so they did. That’s two times now you’ve fixed me, Doctor Laverty . . .”

“You’ll not need to come in to see me then, Cissie.”

“Right enough,” she said, allowing O’Reilly to steer her to the door. Callum was finishing tucking in his shirttails with one hand; the other was being held firmly by Cissie as she dragged him along in her wake.

“Off you trot, Cissie,” O’Reilly said, starting to close the front door behind her. “And if you’ll take my advice, Callum”—the little boy, still clinging to his mother’s hand, turned to look at O’Reilly—“you’ll not let your ma stop the sixpence out of your next week’s pocket money. It’ll be Christmas in another twelve days.”

He was still laughing as he closed the door behind him. “Twelve more days. It’ll be here in no time,” he said. “It’s no time at all since
last
Christmas. It seems to come round more quickly every bloody year.” Barry thought he detected a wistful tone in the big man’s voice.

“I haven’t really noticed,” Barry said, “but with only a few days left, the pair of us should each get a day off next week for a bit of Christmas shopping.”

“Good idea.”

“And I don’t know what you’re going to be up to this morning, Fingal, but seeing that wee lad and his mother reminded me of something I’ve been putting off for too long.”

“Procrastination is, as Edward Young said in about sixteen ninety-five, the thief of time.”

“You’re right.” Barry started to climb the stairs. “So this morning, crossword puzzles be damned, I’m going to write to my mum and dad.”

“Give them my regards, Barry, but don’t take too long writing. I want you to do me a favour later.”

“Oh?”

“His Lordship’s gardener always cuts a tree for me. It’s to be ready today. Could you take a race out and pick it up?”

“Certainly, Fingal.”

“Good lad. I’d like to get it done today because I have a funny feeling we might just be busy next week.”

Plotting in the Dark, Toils Much to Earn
a Monumental Pile

O’Reilly savored the ripe taste of the tobacco, a taste he had acquired as a second-year medical student. He’d no time for cigarettes. They were much too mild. He blew out a cloud of pungent smoke that swirled up to the ceiling of the lounge, and then he inhaled again. In his throat and chest it no longer felt like a sheet of rough sandpaper was being pulled over abraded tissue. He was completely recovered.

Last night he’d draped his coat over the back of an armchair. It now lay in a crumpled heap on the seat. Her Ladyship had dragged it down and was now curled up in the middle, her tail over her nose. She made gentle little whiffling noises as her limbs twitched spasmodically and her eyeballs rolled behind closed lids. “Sorry to disturb your dreams,” he said, as he dislodged the cat and lifted his jacket.

Lady Macbeth gave him a look of scornful disdain, sprang to the floor, and crossed the carpet to the corner of the room. There a newly cut eight-foot-tall Norway spruce stood in an old butter box supported by wooden cross members nailed to either side of it. Lady Macbeth stretched her forelegs, put her front paws on the top of the box, arched her spine so that her back became concave, and yawned mightily. She eyed the tree, and for a moment O’Reilly wondered what would become of any dangling decorations that caught the little cat’s attention.

He would let the tree remain undecorated for a while longer; then he’d marshall Kinky and Barry to help him trim it and to put presents underneath it as they arrived in the mail. He knew Barry had already received a parcel from Australia.

O’Reilly glanced at the mantel. It was filled with Christmas cards that had been sent to him and to Barry. They’d soon have to start putting new arrivals on the sideboard and downstairs in the dining room. He already left the morning post’s quota of cards unopened on the sideboard: six addressed to him and three for Barry.

Barry was out visiting a child with asthma, a boy O’Reilly had seen the previous night. The boy, Billy Cadogan, was one of five children, the son of Phyllis and Eamon who ran the newsagent’s. They lived in a thatched cottage beside the shop further along Main Street. Barry’d not known that Phyllis had psoriasis and Eamon a hernia, but the family had been members of the practice for years.

O’Reilly remembered delivering all but one of the children. Brid, who’d be six next September, had come very fast, and by the time he’d arrived Miss Hagerty was tidying up and the wee one was bathed and asleep in the drawer of a chest of drawers.

Last night O’Reilly had given Billy a subcutaneous injection of 0.3 millilitre of adrenaline 1/1000 solution, something he had done several times in the last three years.

The wheezing had improved, but his mother had phoned half an hour ago to say the child’s condition had deteriorated. Barry would probably have to give him more adrenaline, as well as 10 milligrams of ephedrine by mouth.

Asthma was a most unpleasant condition. When O’Reilly’d arrived at the Cadogans’, Billy was gasping, clutching his throat with one hand, and rolling his eyes at his doctor in a silent plea for help. Within minutes of the injection the wee lad had been able to gasp, “Thank you, Doctor.” O’Reilly had silently blessed whoever had discovered that adrenaline, a hormone secreted by a gland that sat on top of the kidneys, could ease constriction of the bronchial tubes.

It was then that O’Reilly noticed his own breathing had improved, and praise be, since he’d got home and had a decent sleep, he was completely better. He inhaled the fresh piney scent of the spruce.

The aroma was, he thought, the most evocative of all the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of Christmas. If he closed his eyes, he could let it take him back to 1940, to the one Christmas he’d spent with
Deidre before the war had taken them both, him to sea and Deidre forever.

They’d been living in a little boardinghouse in Portsmouth. He had three weeks’ shore leave. Their tree had been tiny but its piney perfume had filled their living room. Deidre had been as anxious as a kitten because she’d never cooked a turkey before, and he knew she wanted to make their first Christmas perfect.

He’d bought her a pearl necklace, and he could remember her cries of pleasure when she’d opened the box, and how she’d kissed him.

That the turkey had been undercooked hadn’t mattered in the least.

He admired his gold cuff links, the ones she’d given him that Christmas. He wore them to this day. He sighed, put on his jacket, and headed back downstairs to the surgery.

He’d decided he must try to let that flame burn a little less fiercely, and now, now that Kitty had come back into his life, he was going to keep that promise he’d made to himself. Funny, he thought, how any wound to the flesh, unless it was lethal, would heal—not without scarring, true, and sometimes it might need help from stitches or an unguent—but heal it certainly would. Even wounds to the heart heal, he thought wryly.

But if he were going to let Kitty be the balm for his bruised heart, he’d have to let her in. He’d have to allow himself to be vulnerable if he were ever again going to feel the pleasure and contentment, the affection a good woman could bring.

It would not be the wild youthful joy he’d known with Deidre—that could never be—but there was something stirring within him for Kitty O’Hallorhan, the Kitty he remembered as a girl, the Kitty he now saw as a mature, self-possessed professional, and he admitted, as a beautiful and desirable woman.

Was it worth risking being hurt if she rejected him or if, after time had passed, they decided it was “just one of those things”? He smiled. He and Kitty used to dance to that 1935 Cole Porter tune.

By God, he decided, it was. It was worth taking the risk. And, he grinned, not only was Kitty a handsome woman, but she was also a superb cook. He recalled with relish the fry she’d made him last night.
He wondered if she or her mother would be doing the cooking while she was in Tallaght.

Poor Deidre hadn’t quite mastered the culinary arts, but with her he’d been pleased to dine on a bowl of Heinz tomato soup and bread from the bakery. He smiled—and he was pleased he could remember her with a smile.

O’Reilly’s step lightened as he came down the last two stairs and along the corridor to open the surgery door. He noted that there was standing room only. “Right, who’s first?” he bellowed.

“Us, sir.”

O’Reilly immediately recognized Donal Donnelly’s carroty thatch and buckteeth and Julie Donnelly neé MacAteer’s cornsilk blonde hair. “Come on then. You both know the way.” He headed for the surgery knowing they would be following. This was a slice of luck. He needed Donal’s help with the plan to raise money for Eileen Lindsay.

O’Reilly stood aside at the door, while Donal, holding tightly to Julie’s hand, let her precede him into the surgery. Donal held one of the straight-back wooden chairs for her, waited until she was seated, and only then sat himself.

O’Reilly took his place on the swivel chair and put on his half-moon spectacles. “Well,” he said, “nice to see the pair of you back. How was the honeymoon?”

Donal blushed as deeply red as his hair.

“London was marvelous,” Julie said. Her green eyes sparkled. “And we’d a whole week there. We saw Buckingham Palace, and the Changing of the Guard, and the Tower of London . . .”

“Sounds like fun,” O’Reilly said, “but I don’t think the pair of you came in this morning to talk about London.”

“Oh, no, Doctor,” Julie said. “You remember I told you at the wedding I was in the family way again?”

O’Reilly nodded.

“You told me to come and see you or Doctor Laverty when we got home.” She took Donal’s hand again, looked at him for a long moment, and then continued. “You remember what happened the last time, Doctor O’Reilly?”

“I do.” Indeed he did. She had miscarried in August. “It was a shame.”

He saw a glistening in her eyes as she said firmly, “Donal says we’re taking no chances with this one, so he made me come in the minute we were back.”

“Very sensible of him.” O’Reilly said, looking at Donal over his spectacles. “I’ll need to ask you a few questions, examine you, and arrange some blood work, Julie. Do you mind if Donal stays?”

“Not at all.” She shook her head, and her beautiful hair tossed and rippled. “Sure what he doesn’t know about me now—after we’ve been courting for nine months, married for a week, and he’s had me pregnant twice—you could write on the back of a postage stamp with a thick-nibbed pen.”

“Fair enough.” O’Reilly turned, bent forward, opened a drawer in the desk, and pulled out a chart for tracking a pregnancy. He scrawled Julie’s name at the top and put in the name of the father. He asked her address (“Twelve Comber Gardens”), her age (“Twenty”), and her occupation (“Housewife”).

He quickly filled in the details of Julie’s previous medical and surgical history, her family history, and the dates and outcome of any previous pregnancies. “And your periods, Julie. Are they regular?”

“As clockwork.”

“And what was the first day of your last one?”

“October the seventeenth, sir.”

O’Reilly calculated rapidly. He used Naegele’s rule. Add seven days and subtract three months. “That means you’re due on the twenty-fourth of July next year.”

“July, Doctor?” Donal asked. “So if it’s a wee boy and he’s born a bit early, there’s a name just waiting for him. William,” he said proudly.

“Victor of the Boyne, July Twelfth, sixteen ninety. King William of Orange of glorious and immortal memory,” O’Reilly added.

“It’ll be no such thing, Donal Donnelly,” Julie said firmly. “We’ll call a wee boy Brendan . . . for my da, and a wee girl Minnie for your ma.”