An Irish Country Christmas (39 page)

“Right, but we’ll keep it hush-hush. If Eileen suspected for one minute it had been a put-up job, she’d not accept a penny.”

“I agree. She struck me as a very proud woman.” Barry scratched his chin. “How is Donal going to make sure she gets the winning ticket?”

O’Reilly laughed. “Don’t ask me
how
Donal will fix things. I haven’t the faintest idea, but he will. That’s one tricky problem solved.” O’Reilly allowed himself a tiny bit of smugness.

“I wish he could help us with our other one. Dear Doctor Fitzpatick.”

So Barry was still worried about losing patients, was he? O’Reilly started on the first lettuce leaf. “I’d another of his customers in today. Secondary infertility. They’ve two kiddies, but number three is slow coming. The highheejins up at the Royal are flummoxed.” The second lettuce leaf was next. As soon as it was finished, O’Reilly paused with knife and fork at “Present arms.” “And I’ll bet you’ll not even begin to guess what the Kinnegar’s answer to Hippocrates has suggested.”

Barry shook his head. “Fingal, I’m not even going to try. Tell me.”

“Gunpowder.”

“What?” Barry sat bolt upright.

“You heard right. Gunpowder, one teaspoon every morning in the husband’s tea.”

“Good God. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, it’s so ridiculous. Gunpowder.”

“I think,” said O’Reilly slowly, “we need to pay Fitzpatrick a courtesy call of our own.” He looked straight at Barry. “I really don’t think he’s a threat to us, son. He’ll get away with handing out his weird nostrums for a while . . . you can fool all of the people some of the time—”

“So said Abraham Lincoln.”

“But country folks are a damn sight cleverer than many people give them credit for. I reckon they’ll start to see through him soon enough.”

“Do you know, Fingal, ever since you told me about the breech he missed, I’ve thought about him?”

“And?”

“I still worry a bit about him pinching our patients, but I’m
really
getting concerned that he’s going to kill somebody,” Barry said.

“Aye. I know. Or make someone worse instead of better. You’d think nobody had told him that the most important rule in medicine is ‘First, do no harm.’ ”

“So what are
we
going to do? Report him to the authorities? Try to talk to him?”

O’Reilly frowned. “I’m no great respecter of authority, and . . . get that grin off your face, Laverty. I know what you are thinking. I do pay respect where respect is due.”

“Sorry, Fingal.”

“I’d be in no rush to report a colleague, not even Fitzpatrick. You don’t go round making reports just because you don’t like somebody.”

“He’s not an easy man to like.”

“Nobody much liked him when he was a student. Kitty will tell you that. He picked on student nurses like her. I had to tell him to leave her alone. I like him even less now. But I’m with you, Barry; I’m a damn sight more concerned that he’s going to hurt somebody badly, and you know how slowly the powers that be react. If we wrote a report tomorrow, it could be months before anything happened.” O’Reilly leant forward. “It’s up to us to act. And soon.”

“How?”

“I’m going to phone him today and set up that meeting.” O’Reilly scratched his chin. “When we meet, the first item on the agenda will be to try to get him to see reason about his practices.”

“And the other items?”

O’Reilly lifted his shoulders. “I’m not much for lost causes, but he wasn’t a bad student. I didn’t like him, but then you don’t have to like everybody. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll see the light and be a better doctor for it.”

“And if he doesn’t agree, is there anything else we can try?”

It would be a forlorn hope, O’Reilly knew, and he didn’t want Barry to think that he, O’Reilly, was letting this become a personal matter. He looked at Barry and said, “You know that in Ireland they say you can rape your best friend’s sister and he might forgive you, but if you informed to the British, or reneged on a wager, they’d still be talking about you in a hundred years.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with Fitzpatrick.”

“He reneged on a bet with me,” O’Reilly said.

“He what? Here in North County Down? He must be mad. If the folks knew that, his reputation would vanish overnight.” Barry grinned. “You can blackmail the man, Fingal. Threaten to let the word out.”

“You’re absolutely spot on. Threaten. I’d never actually tell, but he’d not know that because, as far as I’m concerned, the whole thing’s between him and me.”

“But if he
thought
you might do it, he’d know he’d be an outcast,” Barry said.

“He would, but then he always has been a bit of a one.”

“And do you honestly think we can get him to see the light? Reason with him or threaten him, get him to change?”

O’Reilly shook his head. “Leopards and spots . . . but it won’t cost anything to try.”

“Good. Can I come too? I might be able to help.”

“I’d like that, Barry.” O’Reilly scowled at his empty plate. “And I’d like the second course of lunch too.”

As if reading from a script, Kinky came bustling in carrying a tray for the empty plates. “There’ll be no second course, sir. I’ll not have
the women of the village laughing because
my
doctor is starting to look like one of those zeppelins I saw in a documentary on television the other night.”

“Zeppelin? Zeppelin? Who said that, Kinky?” O’Reilly bristled.

“No one yet, sir. I just said I wasn’t going to let it happen. Just calm yourself.”

O’Reilly swallowed. Damn it, he was still hungry. “But there’s got to be a second course. I smelled it cooking not half an hour ago.”

“Doctor dear,” she said, lifting his plate, “that was no second course. That was sweet mincemeat I’m making for to fill Christmas mince pies, so. I’ve a lot to make, what with the ones for the party and the ones for this house.”

“Oh.” O’Reilly sighed. “Oh, well.” He knew he’d have to content himself. Sweet mince pies wouldn’t make much of a second course of lunch anyway, but perhaps he could get Kinky to serve some with an early afternoon tea.

“Now,” she said, carrying her laden tray to the door, “you’ve no calls to make this afternoon, Doctor Laverty dear. No medical calls, that is, but there was one phone call.”

“Patricia?” Barry spun in his chair, a great smile beaming.

Kinky shook her head and Barry’s face fell. Poor Barry, O’Reilly thought.

“No. Not Miss Spence. Cissie Sloan.”

“Cissie?” Barry frowned. “Has she had a relapse? Is something else wrong with her?”

“Perhaps,” said O’Reilly with a grin, “she had to stop talking for half an hour and she bust her stays.”

Barry laughed.

Kinky tutted. “That’s not entirely fair, Doctor sir, but she does have the gift of the gab, I’ll agree. Anyway she’s not sick,” Kinky said. “She was just wondering if you two gentlemen were going to pop into the parish hall to see how the preparations are coming on.”

O’Reilly remembered he had promised to drop in last week but had been sidetracked by the drama of Eileen’s missing money. “Why don’t we do that this afternoon, Barry?”

Barry sighed. “Fair enough. I’ve nothing better to do.”

“That’s right,” Kinky said, with a twinkle in her eye. O’Reilly knew he was the only one to notice it, along with the great softness in her voice, a softness like that of a mother comforting a disappointed child. “But you will have very soon . . . when your Miss Spence comes home.”

Folks Who Live Beneath
the Shadow of the Steeple

Barry’s nape hairs were still standing on end when he went into the back garden with O’Reilly, and it wasn’t the bitter wind that had made them so. It was eerie. Kinky had the gift. Barry had no doubt about that. But was a pity that when he’d pressed her to be more precise about Patricia’s arrival, Kinky had smiled, shaken her head, and said, “That’s all I know, sir.”

The tingling in the back of his neck had subsided by the time he passed Arthur’s kennel. The Labrador lollopped out, tail going like a threshing machine with slipped gears, tucked his nose an inch behind O’Reilly’s leg, and stayed perfectly “at heel” without having to be told.

“He always behaves himself in duck season,” O’Reilly said. “I think he can read the calendar.” He stopped to pat the big dog’s head. “We’re going on Saturday,” he said. “Saturday. Five more days.”

“Aaarghow,” said Arthur. His tail drooped, and he heaved a massive sigh.

“But you can come for the ride,” O’Reilly said, as he took the last step to the back gate and opened it.

Barry and Arthur piled into the Rover. Barry was glad to be out of the half gale. He loved Ulster, but at this time of the year he could almost be persuaded that practising somewhere with a lot more sunshine—Fiji or Tahiti, say—might have some merit. And, he sniffed, in a dry climate he’d not have to put up with the pong of damp dog.

O’Reilly started the engine and drove off, turning left at the end of the back lane. Barry now knew the layout of the village well. To get to
the chapel and its attached Parish Hall, O’Reilly must drive from one end of Ballybucklebo to the other.

Barry looked at the rows of attached cottages that flanked Main Street on the Bangor side of the village’s lone crossroads. He could have told anyone who asked which of his patients lived in which cottage. He’d made a lot of home visits since he’d started here in July.

He noticed that many of the homes sported holly wreaths on their front door. Small Christmas trees garlanded with fairy lights filled front parlour windows.

The car rolled to a stop for the traffic light. It was here in Barry’s first week in Ballybucklebo that O’Reilly, infuriated at Donal Donnelly for stalling his tractor and making him miss several light changes, had roared at Donal, “
Was there a particular shade of green you were waiting for
?”

Barry chuckled. Funny how Donal had become so important in the life of Ballybucklebo.

“What are you chortling about?” O’Reilly asked.

“Donal,” said Barry, not entirely untruthfully. “Donal and his schemes.”

“Aye,” said O’Reilly, “he’s so sharp he could cut himself.”

Barry, still smiling, looked to his left where the Maypole pointed a stiff finger at a dark sky. Ragged clouds, perhaps bearing snow, scudded before the brisk northeaster. He wondered if they might have a white Christmas. The last one he remembered was when he was seven and his father had taken him tobogganing on the hills of Bangor Golf Course.

He looked across the street to the Black Swan, where Mary Dunleavy was outside washing the front windows with a chamois leather she kept dipping into a bucket of sudsy water. She recognized the car, as every local would, and waved her chamois. He waved back.

The light changed and the car moved ahead slowly, its progress hindered by a small herd of black-and-white Friesians, their udders full, being driven leisurely along the road by a collie and a man on a bicycle. One cow lifted her tail and dropped a heap of steaming cow clap.

Even with the car’s windows closed, Barry could smell the pungent aroma. Although the new rustic odor was perhaps less unpleasant than the old one of damp dog, at times he thought he’d be quite grateful to suffer from anosmia, a condition where the sufferer had no sense of smell. Barry had never thought he’d be grateful if Fingal lit his pipe. He was wrong.

Barry noticed that there weren’t many pedestrians today. That wind was cold, and besides, few housewives would shop for any perishable goods on a Monday. They knew that anything for sale would have been left over since Friday and would not be fresh.

All the shop windows were decorated. There was spray-on snow, sprigs of holly, tinsel streamers, a cardboard Santa, paper chains of letters spelling “Merry Christmas,” and a crèche attended by an angel with one wing, hovering by a string over the manger. All competed for the attention of the passersby. Main Street, Ballybucklebo, was like Donegal Square in Belfast, but in miniature and more personal.

Here in the village he might well have treated some of the shop assistants; most would know him by name, and they would go out of their way to be helpful. In Belfast he was often made to feel like no more than a device for carrying cash and perhaps leaving some in the store.

He loved this place more each day—its smallness, its tight community, its unhurried pace. He wondered how Patricia, a small-town girl herself, would feel about Ballybucklebo after her three years at Cambridge.

Three years. How much would she have changed after such a long time? He knew how much he himself had grown in the mere five months he’d been here. It would be unreasonable for him to expect Patricia not to be different, and yet—and yet he ached at the thought of the girl he had fallen in love with becoming another person.

He suspected from her lack of urgency about coming home for Christmas that the process had started after only three months. Perhaps after a couple of years she’d decide she’d outgrown a small-town GP.

The Rover’s old heater was doing its best, but at the thought of losing Patricia, Barry shivered.

The university town wasn’t large, but he knew she’d have the opportunity to meet any number of interesting people there, including, damn it, interesting young men.