It was my sister Étain, in whose house I was temporarily living at Chapelizod, who had insisted that I should respond to the letter. Étain knew all about the entertainments business. She was a semiprofessional singer and told me that a company such as Averty Enterprises did not make mistakes.
“Turn down an offer to work for Averty Enterprises? You must be out of your skull!”sh e had jeered. Although Étain was a few years younger than I was, after our parents died in a traffic accident, it was she who worked to keep a home together. I had been in my final year at medical school. I had felt that I still owed something to her for going round the pubs and clubs and singing to earn a living for the both of us. She was not a great singer, but had a nice, easy voice. She was a balladeer rather than a “pop”sin ger. Poor Étain. She had made a bad marriage to an irresponsible and impecunious youth named Art Moledy, who had disappeared to America within a year. She became very ill after that and nearly died. I had felt protective toward Étain from then on and took heed of her advice. On this occasion I wasn’t so sure that she was right. Surely an entertainments company would need a medical doctor like an opera singer with laryngitis?
But there I was, standing on the steps of the company head office, and decided that I might as well go through with the meeting. I set my shoulders determinedly and marched up the steps to the brightly painted door. In a small hallway beyond, a burly uniformed security guard gazed sourly at me.
“I have an appointment,” ”I stammered as his six feet six ihnecs of height towered threateningly over me.
His eyes narrowed, and he testily demanded, “Got your letter?”
I scrabbled into my pocket and brought forth the letter.
The security man stared at it as if trying to find some fault with it.
“Up the stairs, first right,”h e eventually ordered in a laconic manner.
Up the stairs, first right led me to a door marked RECEPTION. A bored but pretty-looking girl sat behind a desk on which there was a small telephone exchange, an intercom unit, and a computer. She was doodling with noughts and crosses in a notebook and started nervously as I entered and presented my letter to her. She read it carefully, then, without a word to me, reached for the intercom.
“Dr. Sheehan is in reception, sir.”
A muffled voice squawked unintelligibly from the box. The girl regarded me coolly.“Up the stairs, first left,”sh e ordered.
I climbed another flight of stairs, came to an unmarked door, and tapped gently. A male voice boomed, “Enter!”I did so.
“Dr. Joseph Sheehan?”Th e man was beefy, red-faced, overweight, and oozed bon diable. He rose from a massive desk and looked every inch a theatrical entrepreneur, even down to the garish grey-blue suit with the broad stripe. Gold chains jangled from one wrist and his multicolored silk tie would have lit a darkened room. He pumped my arm like a man determined to get water from a dried-up well. Unhealthy beads of sweat shimmered on his forehead.
“Are you Mr. Ronayne?”I asked. That had been the signature on my letter.
“Sit down, Doctor. I am Ronayne, director of Averty Enterprises. Sit down.”
I obeyed. He pulled a sheaf of papers out of a folder and glanced at them. I noted his wheezing breath and wondered whether I should suggest he try an inhaler for the condition. I waited patiently as he peered at the papers.
“Surely there has been some mistake?”I finally ventured after a while. “I am a medical doctor. I know nothing about the entertainment world.”
He reluctantly brought his gaze away from the papers and stared dourly at me for a moment.
“Mistake?”h e seemed puzzled.
“You cannot be looking for a full-time medical doctor for your company, and that is the position that I am looking for,”I added.
“There is no mistake. Let me ask you a few questions—just to confirm some facts. You have just returned to Dublin, right? You’ve been abroad. You did your training here and are a . . . a . . .” He referred to the papers.“You are a Licentiate of the College of Surgeons and Fellow of the College of Physicians, right?”
I wasn’t sure whether the staccato barks were meant as statements or questions. I decided that the word “right?”a t the end made them into questions.
“Right,”I confirmed.
“For the last three years you have been working in Africa with Médicins Sans Frontières, right?”
“Right,”I echoed dutifully.
“Pretty tough work in Africa, I suppose? Famine, malnutrition, and all that, right?”
“Right,”I echoed back, then relented. “It was pretty tough. But how did you know that I was back in Dublin looking for a new position? Your letter was addressed to me at the College of Physicians, but they aren’t supposed to hand out personal information.”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“We have our contacts, Doctor Sheehan. I suppose that you have had to deal with HIV, AIDS, and all that sort of thing?”
“Oh yes,”I said, a trifle bitter by the memory of the suffering that I had seen. “And all that sort of thing.”
“I gather that you were working at the Wambiba Hospital specializing in AIDS screening?”
“For a time. I was specializing in blood diseases.Why does all this interest you?”
Ronayne sat back and placed his hands together across his ample stomach. He stared at his desk for a moment. His eyes seemed to focus on a fly that was crawling across the papers in front of him and, for a while, he seemed oblivious to everything else. My sharp cough caused him to jerk up and he refocused on me.
“We do need an in-house doctor. Full-time. We are a big business. Right? We deal with lots of clients. Big names.We need someone who is discreet. Right? We were informed that you had finished your contract abroad and had returned to Dublin. You need a position. Right? We are prepared to offer you that position. The position of chief medical officer to our company. It may mean some travel, to visit our clients abroad, but in principle you will be based in Dublin. We have a small medical facility at Clontarf.”
He mentioned an annual salary that was extraordinarily generous, adding, “This doesn’t exclude you taking on any private patients so long as it doesn’t interfere with your first priority, which is company business.”
I was intrigued. It sounded too good to be true.
“What does the work entail?”
“You run the medical facility and we send you our clients for medical checks.We want to know that they are in good health. Right? So we need a thorough examination, blood tests and so on—can’t be too careful about druggies and people with AIDS and so on—we have a worldwide reputation to think of. We have to insure all our clients. Your confidential reports come to us. Then we fix up insurance and so on.”
“It seems straightforward enough,”I agreed. The idea was beginning to appeal to me the more I thought about the financial remuneration and the possibilities it offered. “But who are your clients?”I resisted the temptation to add: “. . . and so on.” It was a manner of punctuation that came as naturally to him as other people say “er” and “ah.”
“Pop singers, members of bands, groups, and so on. You know the sort of thing.We send groups all over the world. Insurance is crucial, and the insurance companies can wheedle out of anything unless we apply the small print. Right? If we claim someone is healthy, and an accident happens, and it can be proved that they are not healthy, we wind up with egg all over our faces and out of pocket. Understand what I mean?”
It was easy enough to follow.
“What about laboratory backup? If you want all the screening tests to be done, you need a technician and laboratory equipment.”
Ronny sat back and shook his head.
“You will have the facilities but, as we need to be discreet, it will be up to you to see all the tests through yourself. That is why we give you full-time employment and a generous salary. Of course, you will have a nurse receptionist, but the rest must be confidential.You might be se
eing only two or three clients a week, or even fewer. Therefore, you will have plenty of time to conclude each test yourself. If you want to see the laboratory before making a final decision, I can drive you up to Clontarf right away.”
I sat and reflected for a moment.
“Is there a problem?”h e prompted, anxiously. “Your dossier says that you were doing all your own testing in Africa.”
“There is no problem in that respect,”I assured him. “Let me look at the laboratory, then I’ll give you my answer.”
It was a formality. I had already made up my mind to accept, but I didn’t want him to see that I was so eager.
FOR A WHOLE WEEK I had nothing to do but laze about my well-equipped office and laboratory, which was tucked on the end of Marino Crescent, facing onto the sea. Bríd, the nurse receptionist, was competent, a married middle-aged woman, and a reassuring fixture. Averty Enterprises certainly did not stint on equipment. Some hospitals would have given the collective right arms of their surgery staff to possess many of the diagnostic machines that were at my disposal.
It was Bríd who injected a note of drama in an otherwise humdrum day by telling me about old Dr. Hennessey, who had been my predecessor. He had taken it into his head to go midnight bathing off the Bull Wall at Clontarf, and his body had never been recovered. He had gone insane, she thought, for the day he decided to take his midnight dip in the turbulent sea, he had been mumbling about blood being life, or some such phrase.
Toward the end of the week I began thinking seriously about pursuing the idea of a private practice. Ronayne had assured me that the company would not object to my having private patients if it did not interfere with work for the company.What work? I had a whole week of nothing else to do but familiarize myself with the laboratory and its equipment. Bríd’s only strenuous occupation seemed to be reading copies of Ireland’s Own or telling me tales of the eccentricities of old Dr. Hennessey. I discussed the prospects of building up a private practice with her, and she offered to organize the appropriate listings and advertisements to promote it.
It was not until the following week that the first couple of clients were sent by Ronayne. Bríd showed them into my consulting room with a disapproving look.
They were young girls, fresh out of convent school, gawky yet trying to be sophisticated. They were not more than seventeen or eighteen years old.
I tried to put them at ease while I went through the medical checks.
“And what do you do in show business?”I asked gravely.
They giggled.
“Oh,”said one of the two, a broad-faced redhead with a fast West Cork accent, “we aren’t in showbiz yet.”
“We are too!”c orrected her blond companion in a snappish tone. She was a thin-faced girl with the harsh tones of south Dublin. She positively reeked with some cheap perfume. Her articulation was punctuated by a certain four-lettered Anglo-Saxon expletive, which she pronounced to rhyme with the word “book.”“We are going to be backing singers, and Mr. Ronayne has promised us a season in England. That’s why we need this insurance thing. He’s sending us to some seaside place—Whitby, I think he said.”
“It’s our first contract,”c onfessed the redhead.
I busied myself with the tests, wondering if their singing voices were any better than their speaking voices, for I could not honestly say that I picked up any discernible talent there. The stench of the blonde’s cheap perfume lingered for two days.
I was able to let Ronayne have my typed reports on the following day.
He was on the telephone after lunch.
“Excellent reports,”h e breezed. “I just wanted to check that you did carry out all the specified blood tests. Right?”
I felt irritated.
“I would have thought the reports were specific,”I replied coldly.
He was conciliatory.
“Right. But these are your first reports. I thought I would just check, right? It’s all very important for the insurance and so on.”
“Right!”I returned. “But it’s down in black and white. All the required tests have been made. You have two healthy girls on your hands. Though I can’t vouch for their singing voices.”
“Oh?”H e seemed sharply interested.
“To be honest, I thought that their voices were pretty unmusical. But, of course, you don’t pay me for that opinion. You obviously know your own business.”
“Right!”H e sounded vaguely amused.
I began to think that I had little appreciation of modern music as, over the next several weeks, a succession of people came through the consulting rooms for examination. They were mainly young girls, though a few androgynous youths paraded before me. Most of them were healthy enough, although I found some with various ailments. Drugs have become a problem in Dublin in recent years. A couple of youths tested HIV positive while another girl confessed that she was a diabetic. Ronayne always seemed pleased when I was able to give a clean bill of health for his potential performers.
Thanks to Bríd’s management I even began to squeeze in some private patients, and life was looking decidedly good.
When I went back to Chapelizod in the evenings I would talk things over with Étain. I could see that she was a little envious of the stage-struck youths who, thanks to Averty Enterprises, were setting off on various world tours.
“Aren’t you meeting any real stars yet?”Sh e mentioned the names of some well-known singers who were reputedly handled by Averty Enterprises. I shook my head. The would-be talents I described were of no interest to her except to stir her envy.
“From what you say,”sh e sniffed coldly, “I could easily get Averty Enterprises to represent me.”
I had to admit that she was right. Judging by the so-called talent I had seen, Étain could have been one of their more professional singers. As I have already mentioned, she had been quite a hit on the pub-and-club circuit. Since she had been on her own, after her husband left, her singing was the only thing that really interested her. She was still in her late twenties, still young enough to make the grade in the music business. I noticed that she was quiet for a few days, but I didn’t think any more about it.
Then, one morning, much to my surprise, Bríd showed her into my consulting room.
“A Miss Étain Moledy to see you.”B ríd made it clear that she did not realize that we were related.
“What are you doing here?”I hissed in astonishment after Bríd had closed the door.
Étain smiled brightly.
“I’m here for a medical examination, big brother,”sh e replied calmly.
“What?”I nearly exploded, trying to keep my voice low and wondering if she were joking.
“Your famous Mr. Ronayne has sent me.”
I stared at her.
She continued in an unconcerned tone: “I went to audition for him. He likes my voice and thinks I have a great talent. He wants to send me on a tour of Australia. It all boils down to his medical examiner giving me a clean bill of health for the insurance, and you are the medical examiner for the company.”
“This isn’t ethical,”I protested. “I am your brother. Does Ron-ayne know . . . ?”
I glanced nervously to the door beyond which my nurse receptionist sat.
“Of course not,”Étain snapped. “I used my married name and called myself ‘miss.’”R onayne won’t know. He contacted you at the College of Physicians, so he doesn’t even know you live in Chapeli-zod. And you use that goddamn mobile phone, so he wouldn’t even associate my phone number with you. In other words, it’s up to you. Are you going to blow the whistle on me?”
Of course, I wasn’t. I have already said that I felt responsible for Étain, especially after the sad experience with her husband, Art Moledy.
“Is this singing deal what you really want?”I asked.
She smiled eagerly at me and nodded rapidly.
“You know it is. It could lead to good things.Yes, it is what I really want.”
I knew Ét
ain, If she had set her heart on something, then there was nothing that I could do to dissuade her.
Ronayne was pleased at the report I sent in. I wished Étain well.
It was a day later that there was a discreet knock at my consulting room door. Bríd showed in two men whose soft hats and raincoats gave them the appearance of refugees from a movie set of a 1940s detective thriller. Indeed, so stereotyped were they that, at first, I thought they were clients of Averty Enterprises. But Bríd coughed hollowly and said, “Two gentlemen,”sh e made clear that she was dubious over the use of the word, “from the Gardaí.”
It was only after one of them showed me his warrant card that I realized that she was not joking, and they were, indeed, members of the Garda Siochána, the Irish police.
“I am Detective Halloran,”said the one who had showed me his identification. “Dublin Metropolitan Division.””He was a sotcky man with gloomy features. He did not bother to introduce his colleague, who had simply entered the room, then lounged with his back against the wall by the door, hands in pockets.His jowls worked rhythmically as he masticated chewing gum.
“How can I help you?”I asked.
“Not sure that you can, Doctor,”H alloran confessed in a voice that showed he contemplated the worst in life. He fished into his bulky raincoat and withdrew a faded photograph. “Recognize her?” He pushed the print across my desk and seated himself opposite.
I frowned as I stared at a young girl in school uniform.
“I don’t think . . .” Then I peered closer. “Does she have red hair, by any chance?”
There was a long sigh as if Detective Halloran had just been told that he was going to face the rest of his life in loneliness and penury.
“She does,”h e intoned mournfully.
Emerald Magic Page 24
