An Irish Country Wedding

by Patrick Taylor

  “In a minute,” Barry said. “Can I have a look at your wound?”

  “Aye, certainly.” She lay up on the sofa and pulled up her skirt and petticoat.

  Barry would have liked to have had a blanket or a rug to cover her now exposed suspenders and stockings, but there didn’t seem to be one handy, and anyway, checking her wound wouldn’t take long. He sat on the edge of the sofa beside her and said, “All right?” as he pulled down the tops of her knickers.

  “Go you right ahead, sir.”

  A dusky stubble of pubic hair was growing back from being shaved off preoperatively. The scar was obvious, a red line slightly curved down and running horizontally across the bottom of her belly an inch and a half above her pubic symphysis. Good. Her gynaecologist, Doctor Harley, had made the transverse Pfannenstiel incision now being used more frequently rather than the more traditional pubic-symphysis-to-belly-button vertical one. A teacher of Barry’s referred to it as “splitting the patient from stern to gudgeon,” a nautical expression indicating the entire length of a vessel. “Nice bikini incision,” he said, laying a hand over it. It was cool, and obviously Mairead was feeling no discomfort. He palpated her lower abdomen. Once again she did not complain. “You’re healing up well,” he said, pulling up her knickers and standing.

  Mairead stood and let her skirt fall, adjusted it, and sat. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and inclined her head. “Can I ask you a wee question? And please sit yiz down.”

  Barry sat in a rocking chair. “Fire away.”

  She rummaged in her purse and handed him a thin sheet of aluminium foil regularly studded with little transparent plastic bubbles, each containing a tablet. “Them there’s called Conovid,” she said.

  Barry recognised the oral contraceptive that had been introduced into the United Kingdom four years ago. “The Pill,” he said.

  “Doctor Harley says he doesn’t want me getting pregnant for six months. Give my innards a chance to heal up.”

  “That makes good sense,” Barry said. The hospital had sent him a copy of the operative report and he knew exactly what had been done. “Doctor Harley’s a great man for new techniques. I know because he taught me. He’s specially interested in helping women get pregnant when they are having trouble. Most gynaecologists would have taken out the damaged tube with the pregnancy in it. Then you’d only have had one tube left for you to try to get pregnant again.”

  She nodded hard. “And me and Gerry want another wee one, so we do.”

  “And I reckon you’ve been given the best possible chance, because Doctor Harley was able to save the damaged tube, so you still have two.” Barry did not tell her that statistically she now had a reduced chance of conceiving at all. And if she did, of women whose tube containing a first ectopic pregnancy had been conserved, fifteen percent of those next pregnancies would be another ectopic. Even so she would have been even less likely to suceed with only one tube. By not telling Mairead these statistics he was following the precepts of his teachers who believed that if the future for a patient was unclear, there was no need to worry them further with uncertainties. It was believed to be the kindest way. Perhaps, Barry thought, but I know if it was me I’d like to be told exactly what was going on; but then, I speak the language of medicine.

  “So why can’t I try to get pregnant at once? I’m not getting any younger, you know, and there’s already a powerful gap between my two and the next one.”

  Barry, humbled by her optimism, sought for the best words to explain. “Your tube, the one that was operated on, it’s not completely better yet. It’ll still be raw in places, and when an egg tries to get along it it might get stuck—”

  She smiled. “You mean I’d be like an egg-bound hen?”

  “Sort of,” Barry said. Typical of a countrywoman to pick a familiar example to help her understand. Occasionally a hen’s egg became trapped in the oviduct causing the unfortunate bird great pain. “But human eggs don’t have hard shells and are so tiny it wouldn’t harm you, but if it got fertilised there and couldn’t move to the womb, it would grow until—”

  She grimaced. “I’d rather not have that again.”

  “So you do as Doctor Harley suggests. Take your pill for six months and then away you go … and Mairead, if you do get pregnant, and I sincerely hope you do … you let Doctor O’Reilly know at once.”

  Her face fell. “Can I not come to you, sir? I mean Doctor O’Reilly’s very nice and all, so he is, but I’ve heard about how good you are delivering babies, you know.”

  Barry blushed. God, but there were some lovely advantages in being known and respected in the local community. He’d miss it. He’d forgotten that it wasn’t common knowledge in the village that he’d be moving on soon. Once he told Mairead, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the word was out. And his patients had a right to know. “Mairead, I’ve really enjoyed working here, but come July I’m going away to take more training.”

  “Honest to God? Och.”

  Och. The universal Ulster sound that could convey any emotion from surprise to disappointment to amazement. This one was definitely disappointment. “But I’m going to learn more about delivering babies and treating ectopic pregnancies,” he said.

  She sighed. “If you must, you must, I suppose—” She looked at him, head slightly to one side. “But might you come back, sir, once you’ve finished training, like?”

  “You never know,” Barry said. And it was the truth. He himself didn’t know for sure and only time would tell, but he was certainly looking forward to finding out. “And if I do and the timing’s right, I’ll look after you.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve one last call to make.”

  He had and then it was home to get tidied up. He’d not seen Sue since Saturday, ten days ago, and that had been a less than successful evening. Their difficult conversation over her political activism had put a decided damper on the entire dinner and her goodnight kisses had lacked warmth.

  Barry got into the Volkswagen and started the engine. Oh well, a long time ago Billy Shakespeare had said something about the course of love never running smoothly. Barry drove away from the kerb. And it wasn’t that he was in love with Sue Nolan, now was it? But damn it all, he’d missed her like hell since that night and was sure, now things were back to normal at Number One in the evenings and Fingal had given Barry tonight off, that the dinner for two he was taking her to at the Crawfordsburn Inn would see them reconciled. Of course it would.

  34

  Is Murder by the Law?

  “Aye,” Colin Brown said, showing Barry a split grubby plaster cast covered in scrawled signatures and childishly drawn pictures, “the nice doctor at the Royal said I could keep it as a sou … sou … keepsake, so he did.” He grimaced. “Mind youse, when your man the cast fellah got out the wee electric saw to cut the plaster, I thought he was going to take off my whole bloody arm—”

  “Colin,” Connie said. “Language.”

  “Sorry, Mammy.”

  Barry was sitting at the kitchen table. “They do look scary and they make an awful buzzing noise.” Barry remembered the finely toothed wheel attachment that was powered by an electric drill motor. “But the little saw doesn’t spin round and round. It just rocks back and forth very very quickly and it only divides the plaster.”

  “And it tickles, so it does,” Colin said. “By the time your man was finished I was laughing like a drain.” He held up his arm. It was deathly white where it had been hidden from the light for six weeks. “Good as new,” he said, wiggling his fingers. “Just like youse promised my mammy, Doctor Laverty.”

  “Say thank you to Doctor Laverty,” Connie said, “for coming specially for to see youse again today.”

  “Not just Colin,” Barry said, not relishing what he wanted to ask next. “How’s Butch?” There had been no more complaints from Bertie Bishop about Lady Macbeth since the Saturday Sue had come down from Belfast, and neither Barry nor Fingal had had the time to make e
nquiries. But it wasn’t only to satisfy his curiosity that Barry wanted to know if Colin’s ferret could be the instigator of the pigeonicide.

  Colin frowned, looked down at his shoes, scuffing a toe on the tiles.

  “Come on, Colin,” Connie said, “it’s not like you to get shy all of a sudden. Tell Doctor Laverty what happened. He’ll not tell nobody, isn’t that right, sir?”

  By the way Connie moved to her son and laid a protective hand on his shoulder, Barry had a fairly good idea about what might be coming next, so he quickly said, “Cross my heart,” and did so. Among the children of Ulster and indeed among many of the adults, there was no more binding promise.

  Colin swallowed, looked up at his mother, back to Barry, took a deep breath, and said, “Butch must’ve got out last night, so he must. I said night-night til him at my bedtime, put him back in his cage, and when I went out to give him his brekky—” Colin stared at the floor.

  “Go on,” Connie prompted.

  “He was sitting in our yard. I didn’t know how he’d got out, but Daddy found a hole in the chicken wire at the back of Butch’s cage.” Colin brightened. “My daddy fixed it, so he did. Butch’ll not get out again, honest to God. He’ll be good, so he will.” His look at his mother was full of pleading. “He’ll be good.”

  “It’s not all,” Connie said.

  Barry heard Colin sniffle and say, “I’ll tell him, Mammy.”

  “That’s a good grown-up boy. Always tell the truth, even if it hurts,” Connie said.

  “When I took a hold of him his nose was all bloody, and—”

  Oh dear, Barry thought, dreading what was coming next.

  “And I found two feathers in the yard.”

  “I reckon Butch’d killed a seagull or something,” Connie said, and as she looked at Barry he heard the hope in her voice and knew she was asking him to corroborate her statement. “God knows,” she said, “there’s lots of them round Ballybucklebo.”

  Barry was torn between wanting to go along with the fable and being in no doubt as to the real source of the feathers. And, he suspected, nor were Connie and Colin. News of Bertie’s earlier losses would have been all over the village.

  “We’re waiting for Colin’s daddy to come home, so we are.”

  “Daddy’ll know it was a seagull,” Colin said. “He will. He will.”

  Connie nodded. “I hope so—”

  There was a hammering at the front door. “Excuse me,” Connie said. “I’ll just go and see who that is.”

  Barry slipped off his chair and squatted in front of Colin. “You love Butch, don’t you?”

  “Aye, I do.” He was close to tears.

  Before Barry had time to console his young patient, a pounding of boots along the hallway forced him to look up, only to be confronted by a scarlet-faced Bertie Bishop. The man hadn’t even had the courtesy to remove his bowler hat. “Councillor,” Barry said, his heart sinking, “what brings you here?”

  “None of your business, Laverty.”

  Barry flinched, straightened his shoulders, and, remembering something O’Reilly had said about bullies, stood his ground. “You’re interrupting a medical consultation. I’ll thank you to wait outside.” He could see Connie standing behind Bishop, trying to get past him to be with Colin.

  Bishop clenched his teeth, growled deep in his throat, and Barry watched as the man’s chest swelled not unlike one of his own pigeons. “I’ve come here to say something, I’m going for to say it, then I’ll let you finish with your patient,” said Bishop. “Youse bloody quacks think youse is more important than anybody else, so youse do. Well, you’re not.”

  Barry ignored the jibe. “Say your piece, then out.” He pointed to the hall. Inside he was trembling, but with suppressed rage or amazement at his own temerity he did not know. It was what O’Reilly would have said. Barry even managed a tiny smile. Bertie Bishop wasn’t the patient today, but Barry was in principle invoking O’Reilly’s first law, Never, never, never let the patients get the upper hand.

  Bishop thrust out his chin. “Youse know bloody well, Laverty, that something’s been getting at my birds.”

  “You accused Doctor O’Reilly’s cat … twice, and you were wrong,” Barry said with a quick glance at Colin, whose lower lip had started to tremble.

  “Aye, well, I’m not wrong this time, so I’m not.” Bishop’s grimace was feral. “I’m just back from Belfast. I went to see the new birds I got on Saturday, so I did. Both of them were dead. Looked like they’d been put through a combine harvester and them still with their feathers on before they went in.”

  Barry heard a catch in the councillor’s voice. Miserable gobshite, as O’Reilly would call the man, he might be, but there was a sense of loss in his tone.

  “And there was pawprints in the bloodstains all over the place. Clear as the nose on your face.”

  Barry heard a small sob and looked to see tears streaming down Colin’s face. “Could it have been a fox?” Barry asked, trying to divert the councillor.

  “Jasus, you’re no countryman, Laverty. Fox gets into a henhouse it’ll kill every bloody thing in there, and anyroad these weren’t fox’s prints. Much wee-er. And the animal has five toes, foxes have only four on their back paws.”

  Barry tried desperately to find an alternative. “Perhaps a stoat or a … a weasel got in?”

  Bishop barked a single “Huh,” then said, “youse’ve no notion, son. Them’s one and the same thing, just different names.”

  “I believe,” said Barry, determined not to let Bishop score a point, “the term ‘sable’ is also applicable.”

  “That’s as may be,” Bishop ploughed on. “There’s no pure white weasels, certainly no white foxes in Ireland, but there is ferrets, and one of them lives dead close to my feckin’ loft, so it does. Your man Steve Wallace, him that owns the garage the loft’s over, him what mistook the animal for O’Reilly’s cat … I’m glad you put me right on that, Laverty … that bloody cat was nothing but a red herring.”

  Barry felt a peculiar sense of guilt because by his exonerating Lady Macbeth Barry had put Bishop onto a hot scent.

  “Steve saw a white thing this morning, and everybody knows about that wee lad there’s ferret. And it’s just a doddle across the road to my loft from here.”

  “I don’t think that proves anything,” Barry said, but knew he was clutching at straws.

  “I want to see that ferret,” Bishop shouted, “and it’s none of your business, Laverty. I don’t give a tinker’s toss what you think. I’m sure it’s been murdering my birds.” Bishop tried to stride past Barry, but Barry moved to block the man’s progress.

  “Mister Bishop, you’ve made your point.”

  “I want that there feckin’ ferret. If there’s blood on its paws—”

  Barry took a deep breath. His mind raced as he tried to formulate an emergency plan. “Connie,” he said, looking her in the eye with a gaze that probably went right down to the soles of her feet, “will you please ask the councillor to wait in your lounge. I’ll be finished with Colin soon.” He turned his back on Bishop and bent to Colin.

  Bishop said, “All right. All right. I’ll wait, but youse remember what it says in the Bible. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a feckin’ tooth.’ If I find that—” He was still protesting as, judging by his fading tones, Connie showed him into the lounge and shut the door. “Colin,” Barry said in a stage whisper. “Do you trust me?”

  Colin nodded.

  “Take me to Butch. Quietly.” Barry snatched a large tea towel off the drying rack and followed Colin, who unsnibbed the back door. Together they slipped out, Barry carrying his doctor’s bag.

  “Do you ever carry Butch in your pocket or in a box?”

  “Aye. He’s well used to it.” Colin pointed to a cage with a wooden door in one side, a wooden floor, and chicken wire sides and top. “There he is.”

  The ferret reared up on its hind legs and put its forepaws on the wire. Barry noticed what could be blo
od-staining on the pads. “All right, Colin,” he said, “get him—” Barry opened his bag, spread the tea towel over the contents. “—and pop him in there.”

  Colin hesitated.

  Barry said, “You told me you loved Butch.”

  Colin nodded and looked solemn.

  “We’ve not much time. I’m going to save his life, but you’re going to have to let him go.”

  Colin nodded. His tears were tripping him. He bent, unlatched the door, gently took hold of the little animal, dropped a kiss on its head, popped him into Barry’s bag, and said, “Bye-bye, Butch. Take you care, now.”

  Barry shut his bag. “Your mammy was right, Colin. You are a grown-up man.” He cast around and saw a stick, grabbed it, and used it to tear a rent in the chicken wire. “Come on, Colin,” he said, “back inside.”

  Once in the kitchen, Barry pushed his bag under the table, took a deep breath, and called, “All right, Connie. I’m finished.”

  Connie reappeared with Bishop in hot pursuit.

  Again Barry looked deep into her eyes and nodded nearly imperceptibly. Please understand, Connie, he thought.

  “Where is it?” Bishop demanded.

  “I’ll show you,” Connie said, and opened the back door.

  Barry craned to see Bishop storming out, bending over the cage, peering inside, fingering the rent in the wire, and yelling, “The bloody thing’s not here. Where the hell is it?” He charged back into the kitchen. “The feckin’ thing’s got away, Laverty.”

  Barry thought Colin could have got a place with Aggie’s amateur dramatic company, so realistic was his “Noooooo,” and the increased floods of tears that followed.

  “I think, Councillor,” Barry said as stiffly as he could manage, “you may have been right about Butch. But if the animal has disappeared, you won’t be able to prove it, ever, so I am afraid, just like Shylock, you won’t be able to collect your pound of flesh.”

  Bishop spluttered, veins standing out on his forehead. “If that bloody ferret shows up here again and I find out, Mrs. Bishop’s going to have a white fur trim on her best coat collar, so she is.”