An Irish Country Village

by Patrick Taylor

  “God,” grumbled Bishop, “has she not done that before?”

  “She has, Mr. Bishop, but I’d like Florence to do it again.”

  “Get on with it then.” Bishop fumbled for his fob watch.

  Barry had a little surprise in store for the councillor and enjoyed the thought.

  Mrs. Bishop puffed and panted, and after a few attempts she conceded failure.

  “That’s fine,” Barry said. “Just sit down for a minute.” He helped her back into the chair. “I’m going to give you an injection, but get your breath back first.”

  Bishop stared at his watch. Barry prepared the neostigmine and atropine injections. “If you’d excuse us, Doctor O’Reilly?” Barry helped Mrs. Bishop to her feet and waited for O’Reilly to get off the couch. Then Barry led her there and closed the screens. “If you could just lift your skirt, pull the top of your knickers down, and bend over the couch?” Barry had adopted many of O’Reilly’s tricks, but injecting patients through their clothes was not one of them. He swabbed a piece of white, dimpled flesh with methylated spirit, and rapidly gave the two injections.

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry. Get your clothes settled and maybe you’d like to rest on the couch?”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” She adjusted her clothing, and Barry helped her up. “Florence, it’s possible the medicines might give you a bit of tummy cramp. Don’t worry about it. It’ll pass very quickly.”

  “All right.”

  Barry pushed back the screens, and although his words were meant for Mrs. Bishop, he spoke directly to the councillor. “Now,” he said, “we have to wait thirty minutes for the medicine to work.”

  “How long?” Councillor Bishop shot to his feet and gobbled like an enraged turkey. “How bloody long?”

  “Half an hour,” said Barry pleasantly, relishing having the upper hand, which was after all O’Reilly’s first law. “It’ll not seem like long.”

  “Not at all,” said O’Reilly. “Do make yourselves at home.” He twitched his head to the door. “Doctor Laverty and I have an urgent case to deal with, but we’ll be back in plenty of time.”

  Barry frowned. Urgent case? He really should stay in case Mrs. Bishop developed colic, but he followed O’Reilly through the door. When it closed, he asked, “What’s urgent, Fingal?”

  “I’d forgotten there’s a rugby game on the telly tonight. If we walk round to Miss Moloney’s now, we can come back for the Bishops, scoot out to see Myrtle, and be back in time for the game. And,” he said wistfully, “supper.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Barry followed O’Reilly through the door onto Main Street, turned left, and headed to the centre of the village. The sun struggled to break through thin clouds that hung low over the lough. Barry noticed the first brown leaves among a stand of elms on the Ballybucklebo Hills. Autumn was coming.

  The traffic was light. Women in head scarves went about their business, wicker shopping baskets over their arms. A youth with a cigarette stuck to his lower lip stood on a narrow, triangular ladder propped against the window of the greengrocer’s, chamois leather grasped in one hand as he washed the glass.

  Barry recognized a man in a striped apron coming towards them. The man managed to cross the road before the traffic light changed. But Barry and O’Reilly didn’t, and they stood waiting as an Inglis bread van, a cyclist, and a horse and cart crossed Main Street. Barry noticed how the man on the bike glanced at O’Reilly, and he wondered how recently the cyclist had occupied a convenient ditch.

  “Afternoon, Doctors,” said Archibald Auchinleck, touching the peak of his bus conductor’s cap. “Grand day.”

  “How’s the back, Archie?” O’Reilly asked.

  “I think it’s on the mend. Them pills is great.”

  “Good. And the boy?”

  The milkman’s face split into a great grin. “I’d a letter yesterday. It’s grand, so it is. Rory’s getting leave next week, and he’ll be coming home.”

  “That is good news, Archie,” O’Reilly said, as the light changed to green. “And how’s the fishing?”

  Barry glanced at his watch. O’Reilly had said they’d make this outing to save time. The Bishops were waiting, and yet O’Reilly seemed to be perfectly happy to stand about and chat.

  “I went out from Donaghadee last night,” Archie said and smiled. “Got six mackerel and a gurnard off the Copeland Islands, so I did. Do you fancy a couple of mackerel, Doctor?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “They’re a bit oily for me, but thanks, Archie.”

  The light changed, and Barry shifted from one foot to the other. Time was wasting. “Doctor O’Reilly . . .”

  “Take your hurry in your hand, Barry,” O’Reilly said. “We’ve to wait for the light.” O’Reilly continued chatting with Archie until the next light change. “Come on, Barry,” he announced, looking neither right nor left and stepping straight into the path of a cyclist who was trying to slow down. The woman just managed to jam on her brakes and stick one foot on the road.

  Barry shook his head and followed past the shops until they came to a narrow red-painted door beside a window in which were two mannequins dressed in floral skirts and sweaters. Hats were displayed on glass shelves. A sign above the door read: Ballybucklebo Boutique. Hardly Carnaby Street, Barry thought. He heard the bell jingle when O’Reilly opened the door.

  A gaunt, middle-aged woman, her pepper-and-salt hair pulled back in a severe bun, rushed out from behind a glass display case full of gloves, handkerchiefs, and handbags. Her thin lips were drawn up into a smile, but her hazel eyes were unsmiling,

  She clasped her hands and made a little curtsey. Barry had a mental picture of a female Uriah Heep at her most ’umble.

  “Doctor O’Reilly. What a pleasure. What a great pleasure, and this must be the young Doctor Laverty?” Her voice was indeed as Helen had described it—like cinders under a door. “How can I help you gentlemen today?”

  “A hat,” said O’Reilly. “For Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “I’ve just the thing.” She fluttered, turned, and screeched in a voice that Barry felt could have opened a tin of sardines at ten paces: “Helen . . . bring the blue box.” She turned her forced smile on O’Reilly. “My assistant’s a simple girl. She’s in the back.” Then she yelled, “Helennn.”

  Helen appeared through a bead curtain under an arch at the back of the store. She carried a blue hatbox.

  “Not that one, you stupid girl. The navy blue one.” She tutted. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Doctor.”

  Barry had already noticed that Helen was still wearing a long-sleeved blouse, a long skirt, and white cotton gloves. It didn’t look as if the hydrocortisone ointment was working—not yet, anyway. She reappeared with a navy blue box.

  “On the counter, girl. On the counter.”

  Helen glanced at Barry, rolled her eyes to heaven, and set the box on the glass.

  “Don’t just stand there. Open it.”

  “Yes, Miss Moloney.” Helen lifted the lid, pulled out handfuls of tissue paper, and lifted a hat onto the countertop.

  Barry stared at the confection. Emerald green, it was made of what looked like felt, shaped like a man’s trilby with a wide brim, and turned down at the front and up at the back. The hatband was of darker green satin.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Miss Moloney cooed.

  “A thing of beauty,” O’Reilly agreed, with a perfectly straight face. “Is it Mrs. Kincaid’s size?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “What do you think, Barry?”

  It was like being back in the surgery, Barry thought, with O’Reilly automatically seeking a second opinion. “It’s not what I think. It’s what Kinky will think,” Barry said.

  “If you’ll forgive me,” Miss Moloney simpered, “I think Mrs. Kincaid will love it. Positively love it.”

  “Right,” said O’Reilly. “We’ll take it.”

  “Wonderful.” She barely glanced at Helen. “Get it parcelled up. At once, gir
l. The doctors will be in a hurry.” She moved behind the counter. “I’ll just make out the bill.”

  Barry saw Helen sigh, reflexively scratch behind her left knee, and then start returning the hat to the box. “How are you, Helen?”

  She shrugged. He was disappointed. He’d been right. The ointment couldn’t be having much effect. No bloody wonder if the poor girl had to put up with being treated the way she was, day and daily. “I’m sorry.” He was sorry too that although most of the other patients he’d treated since Monday had responded, Helen clearly had not. At least he knew she hadn’t been expecting miracles. He wondered if O’Reilly was going to say anything to Miss Moloney about her treatment of her assistant, or whether perhaps he should mention it himself.

  “Have you not finished yet?” Miss Moloney glared at Helen.

  “Yes, Miss Moloney.”

  “Then don’t stand around. Get into the back room and get those other hatboxes stacked.”

  Helen left, and Miss Moloney smiled again at O’Reilly. “You’d not believe the number of hats I’ve had to stock, with two weddings coming up.” She wrung her hands, and this time her smile involved her eyes. Barry could picture the woman in her countinghouse, gloating over her profits. “Here you are, Doctor,” she said, pushing the hatbox to O’Reilly. “And here’s your bill.”

  “Give them both to Doctor Laverty,” O’Reilly said, and before Barry could protest, O’Reilly fixed him with a stare. “It was your idea, Laverty.” He bade Miss Moloney a good day, turned and left.

  The chimes over the door jingled as Barry sighed and pulled out his wallet. Bloody O’Reilly had just won a pound from Fergus Finnegan. Barry paid and took his change and the hatbox. He was still worried about Helen. “Excuse me, Miss Moloney . . .”

  “Yes?” Her voice was cold; one eyebrow was arched.

  “I wonder if you’re not being a bit hard on Helen.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  It was as if the temperature in the shop had plummeted by a good ten degrees.

  “What I mean is—”

  “Young man, when I have the impertinence to come into your surgery and tell you how to practise, you may come in here and tell me how to run my business.”

  “I . . . that is . . .” He glimpsed Helen peering out from between the beads and had no difficulty understanding what she was silently mouthing: “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Good afternoon, Doctor Laverty,” Miss Moloney said.

  Barry clutched the hatbox, and as he left he heard Miss Moloney yell, “Helennn, get in here this instant.”

  He was glad O’Reilly had not been present to witness the little scene. Barry knew he’d not broken O’Reilly’s first law. He’d left it in shards on the dress-shop floor. He quickened his pace to catch up with O’Reilly and tried to put that failure behind him. In the next five minutes he was going to find out what had happened to Mrs. Bishop.

  The Cure for This Ill Is

  Not to Sit Still

  O’Reilly was waiting in the hall. “Shove that in the dining room,” he said, nodding at the hatbox. “We’ll give it to Kinky later.”

  “We? I paid for it,” Barry said, dumping the box on the nearest chair. “He who pays the piper—”

  “Calls the tune.” O’Reilly started to open the surgery door, then remarked, “Let’s see if you’ve called this tune right.” He went in.

  Barry followed. He saw Councillor Bishop stumping up and down. “You said half an hour. It’s been thirty-five whole minutes, so it has.”

  “Dear me,” said O’Reilly. “How time flies.” He took his usual chair.

  “Would youse two get on with it?”

  Barry went to the couch. “How are you feeling, Florence? No tummy cramps?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  “Good.” Barry remembered Bereen had advised giving atropine to avoid that possible complication, and praise be, it had worked. He still felt a tad guilty about leaving his patient alone while he went out with O’Reilly. “Let’s get you up,” he said. He helped her sit and get off the couch. “How many times can you work your arm now?” he asked.

  “Och, Jesus. Not again,” Bishop growled.

  Barry ignored him and watched as Mrs. Bishop raised and lowered her arm, seemingly without any difficulty. “That’s fine. You can stop now.”

  “It’s a miracle.” She looked at him wide-eyed. “I couldn’t have done any better at Lourdes.”

  “You’d not be going to Lourdes,” Bishop said. “You’re a good Protestant, so you are. Lourdes is for Fenians.”

  O’Reilly coughed. “I think you mean Roman Catholics, Councillor.”

  “Aye, whatever. But I want to know now what is wrong with her and can you fix it? I’m fed up with her being useless.”

  “Your wife, Councillor,” Barry said, looking directly at Mrs. Bishop, “is suffering from a disease called myasthenia gravis. Severe muscle weakness.”

  Bishop frowned, and Barry heard the suspicion in the man’s voice when he asked, “You’re not full of bullshite, like the time you and O’Reilly bamboozled me about that test?”

  Barry wanted to smile, remembering how he and O’Reilly had completely flummoxed the councillor by making up detailed medical mumbo jumbo and swearing blind that they could prove he was the father of Julie MacAteer’s unborn child. “No, Councillor. We are not.”

  “It’s a very rare disease,” O’Reilly rumbled. “I’ve never seen a case.”

  “There’s likely a brave wheen of things you two haven’t seen,” Bishop said.

  Barry was so pleased to have been proven right that he was able to put his failure with Miss Moloney behind him and to ignore the councillor’s jibe. “Florence, you’ll need to take some tablets. One as soon as you get up, and one or two every time you start to feel weak, but I promise you you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  “Honest to God?” she asked, eyes wide. “Honest?”

  “I promise,” he said, “and if Doctor O’Reilly would let me get at the prescription pad . . .”

  “Right.” O’Reilly stood and moved aside.

  “I’ll write you a scrip.” Barry sat at the desk and filled in the blank form:

  R Tabs neostigmine bromide. 15 mgms

  Mitte 100

  Sig 1h/m, 1 or 2 PRN. P.O.

  He wondered why it was necessary to scrawl in abbreviated Latin when a simple English order would have sufficed for one hundred tablets to be taken orally, one on rising, one or two as required. No wonder chemists constantly complained about trying to decipher prescriptions. “Here you are,” he said.

  “Thanks, Doctor Laverty. Thanks a lot. It’ll be grand to get back on my feet.” Barry saw the glistening of a tear on her left cheek and noticed how her hand trembled as she took the paper. He put a hand on her shoulder. “My pleasure,” he said. “Come back and see me next week. I’d like to know how you’re getting on.”

  “I will.” She patted her tummy and smiled weakly. “Maybe I could get a few pounds off, too.”

  “It’s a couple of stone you need to lose.” Councillor Bishop strode to the door. “Come on, Flo,” he said. “We’ve been here long enough, so we have.”

  “Just a minute,” O’Reilly said levelly, but glanced at Barry as he spoke. “I want to ask you about the Black Swan, Councillor.”

  So, Barry thought, O’Reilly was going to try to play on Bishop’s gratitude—if the man was capable of feeling thankful to anyone.

  Bishop spun round. His eyes narrowed. “What about it?”

  “A little bird told me you’re not going to renew Willy Dunleavy’s lease.”

  “That’s none of your business, O’Reilly. Tell your wee bird to go and pluck itself.”

  Barry saw two simultaneous colour changes. Bishop’s cheeks flushed bright red, and the tip of O’Reilly’s nose blanched. They’re like two gamecocks in the same barnyard, he thought, and he was surprised when O’Reilly said calmly, “A lot of folks in the village would like you to reconsider.”
/>   “They can ‘like’ away to their heart’s content. Business is business, so it is.”

  “I see,” said O’Reilly. He sighed. “Pity.” It was the first time Barry had ever seen the big man accept defeat.

  “Doctor O’Reilly,” Mrs. Bishop interrupted, “Bertie doesn’t—”

  “Houl’ your wheest, woman.” The councillor rounded on his wife, the scarlet in his cheeks now puce. “Houl’ . . . your . . . wheest.”

  “Sorry, dear,” she said. She stared down at the carpet.

  “I should bloody well think so.” Bishop grabbed his wife’s hand. “Come on to hell out of this now.” The surgery door slammed as they left.

  Barry stared at the departing backs, then turned to O’Reilly. “You gave it a shot, Fingal.”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, “and missed . . . and Barry I’m stuck. Ever since we found out about the Duck, I’ve been racking my brains about how to get the wee bastard to change his mind. I can’t think of a single thing.”

  “Don’t worry, Fingal. I’m sure something will turn up.” Barry wished he could believe it were true.

  “Jesus,” said O’Reilly, “you and Mr. Micawber.” He shook his head. “Sometimes,” he said, staring out the window, “I think I should stick to the doctoring but . . . this bloody place gets under your skin. You end up being part of it.”

  “I know,” Barry said quietly.

  O’Reilly grunted. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m proud of you. You were right about Flo. She did have me foxed.”

  “Thanks, Fingal.”

  “The trouble is, I promised you if you were right I’d see to it that it worked wonders for your reputation, but without Flo or Bishop saying something, I can’t tell anybody.”

  “Patient confidentiality. I know,” Barry said. He was still glowing, thanks to his having been right and to O’Reilly’s unconditional praise. He continued, “It’s all right. I’ve had a couple of successes: the jockey and wee Colin Brown today, Jenny’s delivery on Wednesday. Mrs. O’Hagan’s happy about me fixing Kieran’s retention. I think you were right, Fingal, about me just getting on with my job.”