An Irish Country Love Story

by Patrick Taylor

  “You done very good, so you did, Colin Brown,” said Dermot. “We’re all very proud of you.”

  Everyone muttered assent.

  “Come on,” said O’Reilly, leading the way. “I’ll be back very soon.”

  “You go first, Cissie, when the doctor comes back,” Shooey said. “I’m in no rush.”

  “But you was here first…”

  Barry could hear them still arguing over who should have the privilege of stepping aside as O’Reilly ushered him, Kinky, Colin, and the dogs into the kitchen and closed the door. “It’s a lot warmer in here than in the surgery and that poor beast needs the heat.”

  Barry was happy enough to let O’Reilly take command.

  The big man knelt beside Jasper and began to run his hands from the dog’s shoulders to the base of his tail. As he worked, he said, “Kinky, Colin looks foundered. Can you…?”

  “I’ll have hot chocolate and some of my ginger biscuits ready in no time, so. Sit you there on that chair, son.”

  Colin sat, legs dangling, and without bidding, Murphy headed for the warmth of the range and curled up on the floor.

  O’Reilly examined each leg in turn as Jasper’s milky gaze followed every move. “I can’t find any cuts or broken bones, but his fur’s matted and full of burrs and there’s more meat on a hammer than on this poor pup.”

  “Mrs. Auchinleck,” Colin said, “could you borrow me one of Arthur’s brushes?”

  “Certainly.” She went to a cupboard and returned with a dog brush.

  “Thanks.” Colin stood beside Jasper and began to brush his coat. “Poor ould fellah, I don’t think you’ve had anything much to eat since you ran away,” Colin said, “but last year a Labrador was lost for three weeks from Holywood and when he was found he was nothing but skin and bone, but he was still alive. It’s water they need. Just like us. We learned in school how, during the Irish War of Independence, Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork City, had gone on a hunger strike in 1920 and lived for seventy-four days.”

  “I was a girl a little younger than you when that happened,” said Kinky. “I remember it well. I’ll see to the poor crayture. Bread and warm milk and a drink of water will do. His poor wee tummy will be all shrunk, so. We’ll have to take it easy to start with.”

  O’Reilly straightened, went to the sink, and washed his hands. “I want to hear all about the rescue, but I’ve customers to see.” He grabbed a towel. “Let’s get Colin and Jasper fed and warmed up and by then I’ll be done and we’ll run Colin and the dogs out to the Houstons’. They’ll be delighted.” He left.

  “Here’s your hot chocolate and ginger bickies, bye,” Kinky said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Auchinleck.” Colin set the brush aside.

  She fussed at the stove and returned carrying a soup plate and one of Arthur’s bowls. “Bread and warm milk, and water for you, Jasper.” She set the bowls on the floor close to the range. Murphy looked up as Jasper crossed the floor.

  “Leave it, Murphy,” Colin said, and with a sigh the mongrel laid his head back on his paws.

  “So, Colin,” said Barry, parking himself on a wooden chair. “I’m dying to know. How did you find him?”

  Colin pointed at his mouth and kept chewing his second biscuit. He swallowed and said, “Mammy says I’m not to talk with my mouth full.”

  Kinky tousled his hair. “You’re a good boy for minding your manners.”

  “Anyroad,” Colin said, picking up the brush and beginning to tease out the burrs in Jasper’s coat. The dog, still intent on his bowl, paid no attention. “I was worried a couple of weeks back when I heard he’d run away in that blizzard, but my daddy told me Jasper’d probably come home. But he never. And the hunt for him didn’t work neither.” Colin looked longingly at the plate of biscuits.

  “Go ahead,” Kinky said. “Help yourself.”

  Colin did, but before he took a bite, said, “I told my daddy maybe Jasper had gone til the shore, but Daddy had til work and I had til go til school. It was dark by the time Daddy got home so we never went looking. I was going til go on the Saturday, but then I took sick with measles and I didn’t think much of it after that. When I was getting better, I asked Daddy again, but he said to let the hare sit.” Colin looked sad. “I think they’d all given up hope.” He bit into his biscuit.

  Barry waited as Jasper’s chewing kept pace with Colin’s, and Kinky went about skinning Cookstown sausages. “Toad in the hole for lunch,” she said.

  “I never gave up. Doctor O’Reilly said I had til stay in the house for ten days after my measles went away, but I could start going out last Saturday. So I did. I went to the shore, but no luck. On Sunday,” he grinned, “I wasn’t allowed to go til Sunday school neither, so me and Murphy went and hunted along the shore toward Bangor. We went a bit farther each day. No luck. But this morning I met Art O’Callaghan on his way to class. Him and me was down last summer on the beach at Smelt Mill Bay.”

  “Near Strickland’s Glen?” Barry said.

  “That’s right, Doctor, and do you know what? Art reminded me of a great hidey-hole there that not many people know about.”

  Jasper lifted his head from the bowl.

  Colin scratched the dog’s head and said, “Feeling better now?”

  Jasper made a strangled “aarghaargh” noise and looked at Colin with adoration.

  Colin kept on brushing.

  “Tell us more,” Barry said.

  “It’s a wee cave and you can only get at the mouth of it when the tide’s out. The cave doesn’t flood when the tide’s in and the sand in it is dead dry, and it’s no distance from Bryan’s Burn that runs down through the glen. So today me and Murphy made a beeline for Smelt Mill Bay. As soon as we got there, Murphy couldn’t wait for til go in the cave and, hey, presto, nothing but barking in the cave and then out he comes with Jasper in tow. I telled Doctor O’Reilly that the two dogs knew each other.”

  “You do be a very clever young man, Colin Brown, bye,” Kinky said. “Here. Have another ginger bickie.”

  “Wheeker,” said Colin.

  “And,” Barry asked, “you brought him here?”

  “I did in soul. He was very weak but able to walk quite a ways back round the sea path. I thought I was going til have til carry him the last quarter of a mile so I could get him here, but I told youse about Mister Auchinleck.”

  “But why here?” Barry asked.

  “The poor ol’ thing needed seeing to—and sure isn’t a doctor the next best thing to a vet?”

  So much, Barry thought with a smile, for the elevated status of physicians. He heard Kinky chortling.

  “And didn’t Doctor O’Reilly himself do as well as a vet,” she said, “and say Jasper was hungry, but fine?”

  “I did,” said O’Reilly, sticking his head round the door. “Everyone was very cooperative and surgery’s all done, so I’ll run Colin and the dogs out. Want to come, Barry?”

  “Try to stop me,” Barry said.

  “Nonie’s still out. I’m on call, but you’ll know where to find us, Kinky,” O’Reilly said.

  “I will, so.” She moved over to a cupboard and brought out a paper bag. “That is for you, Colin, for being such a clever boy. It’s my own homemade fudge.”

  “Sticking out a mile,” Colin said with a grin, accepting the bag. “Thanks very much, Mrs. Auchinleck.”

  * * *

  Barry knew that this was the boy’s big moment. The door opened. Sonny was a tall man and, distracted by the sight of the two doctors, he must not have noticed the boy on his doorstep. “I went for my tests this morning. I wasn’t expecting one of you until my results—”

  Jasper let go a loud “Woof.”

  Sonny took a step back, then knelt, threw his arms round Jasper’s neck, and paid no attention to the dog licking his face and drinking Sonny’s tears. “Jasper. Jasper. Jasper.”

  Maggie appeared, standing behind Sonny. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “You’ve found him.” Her toothless grin
was vast.

  “I don’t know who to thank,” he said, “but please come in, everybody. I’ll have to get Jasper water and something to eat. He looked at the dog. “You must be starving, boy.”

  “Don’t worry, Sonny,” O’Reilly said, helping the man to his feet. “I’ve given him the once-over, Kinky’s fed and watered him, and Colin’s got the worst of the burrs out. He’ll want more food soon, I’m sure, but best to start him off slowly.”

  “In that case,” Sonny said, “let’s all go through into the sitting room. Please, everybody take a seat.”

  Barry took an armchair beside the fire next to O’Reilly’s, Colin perched on a leather pouffe, Maggie stood beaming down at them, and Sonny, with Jasper lying beside him, took the sofa.

  “Now,” said Sonny, “who did find him?”

  “Murphy, sir,” Colin said, “but I helped him.”

  Sonny said, “Well done, both of you.”

  Barry listened while Colin, without interruption and, Barry thought, with considerable succinctness for a boy who could have revelled in his glory, told Sonny what had happened.

  “Remarkable,” Sonny said. “I simply cannot thank you enough, young Master Brown.” He rose and brought back something from a china cabinet. “Colin, I want you to have this as a symbol of my gratitude. It’s a fossilised ammonite.”

  Colin looked at it, his eyes wide, mouth open.

  “It’s from the Jurassic period,” Sonny said. “So it’s about one hundred and fifty million years old.”

  “Crikey. There was dinosaurs then,” Colin said. “Miss Nolan taught us about them. Thon Tyrannosauras rex had a power of architecture about him. Big teeth too.” He looked at the fossil again and stretched out his hand, holding it toward Sonny. “Mister Houston, no harm til ye, but this is far too precious like. I can’t take this off you, so I can’t.”

  Barry felt a lump in his throat grow larger when Sonny said, “No, Colin. Jasper is precious. All our dogs are. You returned Jasper to me. I want to give you something to show how much I appreciate that. Please keep it.”

  And, eyes still shining with wonder, Colin said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “I know Colin and Murphy found Jasper,” Sonny said, “but thank you, Doctors, for examining Jasper and bringing him home. It feels as if our family is complete again.”

  “And that’s just how it should be,” O’Reilly said. He rose. “Now we’d better get Colin home, and back to work for us doctors.”

  Barry stood and as he followed O’Reilly he mulled over Sonny’s last remark, “Our family is complete.” And wasn’t that what Ballybucklebo was? A great big scattered family where in a crisis ranks closed and everyone pitched in. By God, he thought as he closed the front door, there’s nowhere else I’d rather live.

  21

  A Little Sleep, a Little Slumber

  “For God’s sake, Kinky, get a doctor,” a man shouted from, it seemed, somewhere in outer space. Barry crawled up from the depths of slumber. After delivering Emer O’Loughlin’s second baby, a girl, he’d tumbled into his bed at five thirty this morning and had been glad to be off duty after nine o’clock so he could sleep on. He was barely aware of the door to his quarters opening and Kinky standing in the doorway.

  “Please, sir, wake up,” she said.

  Barry forced his eyes open fully and sat up. He was fully compos mentis now. He fisted his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven thirty, but we need you at once, so. Willie Dunleavy says Doctor Stevenson’s taking a fit or something.”

  “What? Where is she?”

  “In the surgery. Please come, sir.” Kinky stood wringing her hands.

  Many years of learning to respond at once had Barry leaping out of bed, grabbing and donning a plaid dressing gown over his pyjamas, struggling into carpet slippers, and regardless of his appearance—his hair must look like a ruined haystack—heading into the kitchen where big, round Willie Dunleavy was shifting from foot to foot. “Come on, Doc,” he said, starting to trot to the hall.

  Barry and Kinky hurried after.

  “I was so scared I near took the rickets. Doctor Stevenson just, well, had a bit of a fit like and then fell dead asleep, so she did. Right while she was filling out my form.”

  Oh Lord, Nonie. Not again. And in front of a patient this time. Barry sighed. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I’m the last patient. There’s her sitting at her desk. ‘Excuse me,’ says she, and chucks the pen at me—like her arm had a spasm. Then she puts her head down on the desk and falls asleep. I didn’t dare try til wake her up. I read in Reader’s Digest not to do that for sleepwalkers. I just left and come running to get help. I was scared skinny.” He stood aside to let Barry and Kinky precede him into the surgery.

  Nonie was sprawled in the swivel chair, head turned to one side lying on the desk blotter, eyes tightly closed, mouth agape. Laboratory requisition forms lay in disarray on the floor.

  Taking naps all over the house while she was off duty was one thing, but falling asleep in front of a patient? There had to be more to this than simple tiredness.

  She sat bolt upright, still, it seemed, asleep. “No. No. Take it away. No. Please. No.” She screamed, a high-pitched, eldritch sound.

  Willie muttered, “Jaysus Murphy,” and took a step back.

  Kinky looked at Barry, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong with her, sir?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I’ll need to examine her.” She must be dreaming, he thought, and whatever she was dreaming about wasn’t pleasant. He frowned. Took her pulse. One hundred. A bit fast. Now what? Should he wake her up? He tried to remember a lecture about certain neurological disorders and was racking his brain when Nonie shook her head and said in a perfectly reasonable voice, “Hello, Barry.”

  “Are you all right, Doctor Stevenson?” Barry said, glancing at Kinky and Willie Dunleavy.

  She shook her head. “Not entirely. I must have nodded off…”

  “Take your time.” Barry put a hand on her shoulder. “Kinky, would you please take Willie to your kitchen. Give him a cup of tea? He’s had a bit of a shock. I’ll see to him when I’ve finished here.”

  “I will, so. Come along now, Willie, like the good man that you are and let the doctors get on with it. I’ll toast some barmbrack.” She took his elbow and guided him from the room, closing the door behind them.

  Kinky Auchinleck, Barry thought, Ballybucklebo’s rock of ages, and in a crisis as reliable as Big Ben chiming the hour.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Nonie said, and forced a smile, “and in front of a patient too. But I must have nodded off and just there, now, I think I was hallucinating or having a God-awful nightmare. I could see something, I don’t know what, with huge teeth coming for me. And I was hearing a train whistle.”

  “I was here,” Barry said. “You screamed, then you woke up.” As he spoke, his mind raced. Constant need to nap, possibly a scary, he remembered the term, hypnopompic hallucination, seeing or hearing things as you woke up, pointed in one direction. Had his knowledge of her unwillingness to trade call, his irritation when two weeks ago he’d found her slumped on his table within inches of his precious model, had they blinded him? Was there more to her drowsiness than simply being a sleepyhead and possibly lazy? Could Nonie have—?

  She stood up and her voice was slurred. “Oh dear me. Now I’m seeing double,” and as she spoke her knees started to buckle.

  Barry stepped forward, grabbed her, and got her back into the chair. Loss of muscle function marked by slurred speech, double vision, and going weak at the knees all brought on by strong emotions like anger or fear—and she’d been terrified moments ago—was called cataplexy. Add that to napping and waking hallucinations and, good Lord. Did Nonie Stevenson have narcolepsy?

  He stepped back, relieved to note she was having no difficulty breathing, no muscle spasms. Were there any physical findings he should be looking for to help him make a diagnosis? Any intervention he should make like putt
ing a spatula in her mouth to stop her biting her tongue as one did with epileptics? He shook his head. He realised he and, he suspected the rest of his profession, knew precious little about the condition other than that the victim had uncontrollable urges to nap, and displayed the symptoms and signs he’d already noticed.

  Nonie looked up at him, blinking and rubbing her eyes. “Thanks, Barry. I don’t know what came over me.” Her voice was normal, but shaky. “It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t in the middle of giving an injection or lancing an abscess.”

  “You had a wee turn,” he said, trying to sound reassuring, but the same image of Nonie falling asleep with a scalpel or a needle in her hand had flashed through his mind more than once since he’d come into the surgery. “But I think you’re coming out of it.” Guilt like a cold stone lodged in the pit of his stomach. All along he’d been, if not actively disliking Nonie Stevenson, not able to warm to her. But what if much of her behaviour was due to an illness?

  So far he hadn’t done much about making a firm diagnosis. Things had been happening too fast, and while they were, he’d been concentrating on making sure no life-saving measures would be necessary. Now the sudden event was over, he should treat her as he would anyone who was sick, although as colleague to colleague it would be necessary to be perhaps a little more circumspect. “Nonie,” he said, “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  He sat on one of the patients’ chairs. “Have you always had this need to nap?”

  She frowned. “No. Not until about … about four years ago when we were housemen. I thought it was because of the terrible hours we kept.”

  Narcolepsy usually started in the late teens or early twenties.

  “I thought the same when I was training in obstetrics. I couldn’t seem to get enough sleep at night.” She forced a smile. “Even now I don’t. I keep waking up, never get a whole night right through, and, boy, do I have dreams! I’m always tired.”