Patrick Taylor's Blog, page 4

Men of the Cloth (2)

 First published in In Stitches magazine, January 1997

 

O’Reilly exacts a heavy price

 

‘Aye,” said Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, helping himself to a liberal dollop of horseradish dressing, “old Basket’s a decent enough chap for a Presbyterian minister.” Fingal was continuing the conversation that had begun upstairs, a conversation that had been interrupted by Mrs. Kincaid’s summons to Sunday dinner. I watched in awe as he spread the white concoction over a slice of roast beef prior to transferring the morsel to his mouth.

The horse in Mrs. Kincaid’s horseradish was not a Shetland pony. It tended more to the Clydesdale: big, muscular and very, very strong. Strong enough to have stripped paint. I’d been foolish enough to try it once before. I think it took about three weeks for the mucous membrane inside my mouth to regenerate. I watched O’Reilly’s happy mastication, expecting steam to appear from his ears. For all the apparent effect, he might as well have been eating ice cream.

“Here,” he said, spreading some of the incendiary condiment on my beef, “spice yours up a bit, young fellow.”

I smiled weakly and settled for a piece of Yorkshire pudding.

“Aye,” said O’Reilly, “Basket’s not a bit like his assistant. That McWheezle. That man has a smile like last year’s rhubarb. Mrs. Kincaid reckons that anyone who reared him would drown nothing.”

I thought it fair to surmise that Doctor O. didn’t exactly hold the Rev. Angus McWheezle in high regard.

“Pass the gravy.”

I complied, nibbling on a roast potato and avoiding the 50-megaton meat.

             “Not one of your favourite people, Fingal?”

            “Him? He’s a sanctimonious, mean-spirited, mealy-mouthed, narrow-minded, hypocritical, Bible-thumping little toad. That man has as much Christian charity in him as Vlad the Impaler.” O’Reilly harrumphed and attacked another slice of beef. “Bah.”

            “So you don’t like him very much?” Sometimes my powers of observation astounded even me.

             “How could anyone like a man like that? Do you know what he used to do?”

            I hoped the question was rhetorical. I think I’ve remarked previously that O’Reilly seemed to think I was blessed with some kind of extra-sensory perceptive powers. I simply munched on another piece of Yorkshire pudding and shook my head, both to signify that indeed I didn’t know what the Rev. Angus McWheezle had done to draw O’Reilly’s ire and to distract him while I tried to hide the horseradish-beef time-bomb under a small pile of broccoli.

            “Do you know” — I continued to shake my head — “that if there were an Olympic event for smugness and self-satisfaction, the man could represent Ireland?” O’Reilly helped himself to another roast potato. “But I fixed the bugger.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. You remember I told you how Mr. Basket used to preach against the sins of the flesh?”

I nodded.

“Well, McWheezle went one better. He used to hound unmarried women who’d fallen pregnant. Humiliate them from his pulpit. Name them. That little @#$&*! didn’t think that their being pregnant out of wedlock was hurt enough.”

O’Reilly’s florid cheeks positively glowed — and it wasn’t the horseradish. It was his genuine concern for the feelings of his patients, most of whom would have had to leave the village, such was their disgrace.

“I see what you mean.”

“Right. I asked him to stop, but he refused.” O’Reilly paused from his gustatory endeavours, laid his knife and fork aside for a moment, folded his arms on the table top, leant forward and said, “But I stopped him anyway.”

“How?”

O’Reilly chuckled, in much the same way that I imagine Beëlzebub must chortle when a fresh sinner arrives on the griddle. I couldn’t prevent a small, involuntary shudder.

“Ah,” he said, “pride cometh … McWheezle showed up in the surgery one day.

“‘It’s a very private matter,’ says he.

“‘Oh?’ says I.

“‘Yes,’ says he. ‘I seem to have caught a cold on my gentiles.’

“Threw me for a moment, that. ‘Your gentiles?’ says I.

“He waved a limp hand toward his trouser front.

“‘Aha,’ says I. ‘A cold on your genitals.’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Let’s have a look.’”

O’Reilly’s chuckle moved from the Beëlzebubbian to the Satanic.

I knew what was coming next. I knew the story had done the rounds of every medical school in the world, and yet Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly was the most honest man I’ve ever met.  If he said what I thought he was going to say had actually happened, I’d believe him.

“Mr. Wheezle unzips. He has the biggest syphillitic chancre on his ‘gentiles’ that I’ve ever seen.

“‘It’s a bad cold right enough,’ says I, handing him a hanky. ‘See if you can blow it.’”

O’Reilly picked up his knife and fork. “Good thing we had penicillin. Poor old McW. was so terrified that I wrung a promise out of him there and then to leave the wee pregnant girls alone.” Fingal O’Reilly started to eat. “Tuck in,” he ordered.

I was still chuckling at his tale when I suddenly realized that I’d just filled my mouth with enough of Mrs. Kincaid’s horseradish sauce to start the second great fire of London.

O’Reilly must have noticed the tears pouring from my eyes. It’s hard to miss something with the flow rate of the Horseshoe Falls.

“Ah, come on now, Pat,” he said solicitously. “It’s a funny story — but it’s not that funny.” 

Men of the Cloth (1)

First Published in In Stitches Magazine, December 1996

How the minister learned about sex

 

In today’s egalitarian society it may be hard to believe that once upon a time some members of a community were held in greater respect than the rest of the common herd. In rural Ulster the possession of a higher education was thought to confer exalted status. The pecking order among the upper echelons wasn’t always clear, but it was fair to say that the local teachers, physicians and men of the cloth were somewhere at the top of the heap.

In his own eyes at least, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, stood at the apex. Mind you, the challengers for top spot were a motley crew.

Mr. Featherstonehaugh, the teacher, besides having a name that could strangle a pig, was as tall and skinny as a yard of pump water and suffered from what was known charitably as a “terrible strong weakness.” (Which is to say that any pupil foolish enough to come within two feet of Mr. F. was at some danger of suffering skin burns from the whiskey fumes of the permanently pissed pedagogue’s pulmonary products.)

Father Fitzmurphy was a quiet man who’d taken his vows of humility so seriously that his presence was scarcely noticed. Compared to Father Fitz., Uriah Heep would have looked like a blatant self-promoter.

On the other side of the sectarian divide, the Presbyterian Church was represented by a senior and a junior minister. The senior minister, Rev. Manton Basket, was middle-aged and very tall across, an allusion to the fact that he was in no danger of being suspected of suffering from any form of anorexia. The junior, Mr. Angus McWheezle, was of Scottish descent. Actually he hadn’t so much descended as plummeted — the kind of man who would have given Charles Darwin some very difficult times wondering if he hadn’t got things quite right and perhaps the apes were in fact offspring of the clan McWheezle.

            O’Reilly, while nominally of the Protestant persuasion, could not have been described as devout. Well, he could, but it would have been like attributing feelings of piety and love for all mankind to that well-known philanthropist, A. Hitler. Business, however, was business, and O’Reilly did attend morning services on Sundays if only to try to persuade his potential customers that he was a worthy physician.

            You may well wonder why I’m telling you all this. Bear with me. O’Reilly’s relationships with both of the Presbyterian ministers are worth the relating.

            “Good to see you, Doctors.” Rev. Manton Basket beamed at O’Reilly and me over his chins as he stood outside the church door greeting the departing members of his flock. He had a paternal arm draped over the shoulder of his eldest son, a spherical boy of about 12. The rest of the tribe, all five of them, were lined up in a row, tallest on the right, shortest on the left, like a set of those chubby Russian dolls.

O’Reilly nodded as he passed the Baskets. “Powerful sermon, your reverence,” he said, but he kept hurrying on. I was well aware that he found old Basket dry and, as you know, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly’s preferences tended more to the wet — the wet that even now was waiting for him in the upstairs sitting room over the surgery.

“You should have heard his sermons when he came here first,” O’Reilly said to me. “I’ll tell you all about them when we get home.”

I had to lengthen my stride to keep up with O’Reilly, who moved from a walk to a canter to practically a full-blown gallop as he neared the source of his sustenance. He relaxed once he was ensconced in his favourite armchair, briar belching, fist clutching a glass of what he’d referred to as his communion wine.

“Where was I?”

I settled into the chair opposite and prepared for another of O’Reilly’s reminiscences.

“When?” I asked.

“Not ‘when,’ ‘where.’”

“What?”

“Not ’what,’ not ‘when’ … where.”

“No,” I said, feeling the inexorable tug of yet another of those moments with O’Reilly when the circuitousness of the conversation began to feel like the Maelstrom. I knew how old Capt. Nemo must have felt as the Nautilus sank lower and lower. “I meant what did you mean when you asked, ‘Where?’”

“Silly question.” He exhaled in his best Puff the Magic Dragon fashion. “I should have asked, ’Who?’”

“When?” It just slipped out.

“Don’t you start.”

“What?” Oops.

Fortunately he was in one of his expansive moods. He laughed and handed me his empty glass. “Who do you think Manton was?”

“Why?” The sight of the tip of O’Reilly’s nose beginning to pale pulled me up short. I refilled his glass and waited.

“Manton was a minor prophet.” He accepted the tumbler. “That’s who his reverence is named after.”

I admit I was pleased to be so informed. It was a name I’d never heard before.

“Came from a very strict family. That’s why you should have heard his sermons when he first came here.”

“Fire and brimstone?”

“And how.” O’Reilly chuckled. “You could have felt the spits of him five pews back.” O’Reilly sipped his drink. “He’s a decent man, Manton Basket. Unworldly, of course.”

I was about to ask what that meant when O’Reilly continued. “When he first came here he put an awful amount of effort into denouncing the sins of the flesh.”

“Including gluttony?” I inquired, thinking of Dumbo, Jumbo and the Rev. Manton Basket.

“No. Just the sexual kind.” O’Reilly made a sucking noise through his pipe. The gurgling was like the sound of the run-off through a partially clogged bath-drain. “Pity was, he hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.”

“Oh.”

O’Reilly rose and stretched and ambled to the big bay window. “Aye. He’d been here about two years when he came to see me professionally. Seemed he and the wife couldn’t get pregnant.” O’Reilly turned away from the view of Belfast Lough. “Bit tricky asking a man of the cloth about his procreative efforts. Even worse, his sermon the week before had been about the sin of Onan.”

“Onan?”

“Yeah. The bloke who spilled his seed on the ground and got clobbered by a thunderbolt for his pains.”

The “bit tricky” became clearer.

“Fingal, how did you persuade Rev. Basket to provide a sperm sample? Bottle in one hand, lightning conductor in the other?”

“Didn’t have to.” O’Reilly looked smug. “That’s the advantage of a bit of local knowledge. I just asked him to describe exactly what he and his wife did.”

“And?”

“Every night for two years they’d knelt together by the bed and prayed for offspring.”

“That was all?”

“Aye. I had to put his stumbling feet on the paths of righteousness, so to speak.”

“Good Lord. How did he take that?”

O’Reilly chuckled. “Frostily. Very frostily at first.”

I had a quick mental picture of the six little Baskets.

“Ice must have thawed a bit when he got home.”

“And he was a big enough man to thank me. He is a decent man.” A cloud passed over O’Reilly’s sunny countenance. “Not like that weasel McWheezle.”

“The assistant minister?”

Before O’Reilly could reply, Mrs. Kincaid stuck her head round the door. “Dinner’s ready, Doctors.”

“Come on,” said O’Reilly, “Grub. I’ll tell you about McWheezle over dinner.” 

To be continued.

The Law of Holes

 

First published in Stitches Magazine, November 1996

 

 

O’Reilly’s near-death experience

 

I was surprised one day when, after evening “surgery,” I retired to the upstairs sitting room to find my senior colleague, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, sitting in his usual armchair sipping what appeared to be a gin and tonic rather than his usually preferred whiskey. He ignored my entrance and my polite inquiry about whether he’d like me to refurbish his drink.

Do remember that such suggestions were usually greeted with the enthusiasm towards an impending monsoon of those peculiar toads that live in states of total dehydration in certain deserts, only coming to full animation when the rains appear.

“Sure?” I said, helping myself to a very small sherry.

“No,” he replied lugubriously, pulling out his old briar and stoking the infernal device until the smoke clouds gave a fair impression of the aftereffects of the combined weight of the attentions of the RAF and the USAAF on the hapless town of Dresden.

“No/yes or no/no?” I said brightly.

“What are you on about, Taylor?”

As far as I could tell through the industrial haze, his nose wasn’t pallid, yet his use of my surname was an indicator of his general state of displeasure. Foolishly, I ploughed on.

“Er, no you’re not sure you don’t want another, which is a way of saying yes you do, because if you had been sure that you wanted no more to drink your answer should have been yes and …”

“Sit down,” he said, “and shut up.”

Which actually seemed like a very sensible thing to do. I sat and said, self-effacingly, “Right. First law of holes: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

The thought struck me as, if not original, at least comical.

“How,” he said peering over his half-moon spectacles, “did you know?”

“How did I know about what?”

“The hole, you idiot.”

“I read it somewhere,” I confessed.

He grunted. “Couldn’t have. It only happened last night.”

I was becoming confused. Truth to tell, my being in a fuddled state around O’Reilly was closer to the norm than his drinking gin and tonic. I felt a sense of relief, the kind of feeling that comes with knowing that God is indeed in His Heaven and all is right with the world.

“And,” he said, “no one knows about it except Seamus Galvin and me.”

My confusion was now as dense as the tobacco fog that surrounded us.

O’Reilly sighed heavily. “Would you like to hear my side?”

It almost seemed a shame to be enlightened. “Please.”

He gestured with the glass in his hand. “I’ll have to give it up.”

Enlightenment was going to be some time coming. I’d thought we were discussing holes. “Digging holes?”

“No.” He shuddered like a wounded water buffalo. “The drink.”

Oops. I thought for a moment that I was having an auditory hallucination. Fingal O’Reilly? Give up the drink?

“All because of the hole, you see.”

“Of course,” I said. They’d taught us in psychiatry to humour certain types of raving lunatics. I saw not at all but had no intention of enraging O’Reilly.

He pointed at his glass. “Just tonic water,” he said in tones that would have done a professional mourner great credit. “Bloody Galvin,” he added, and lapsed into silence.

Tonic water. Holes. Galvin. I had some difficulty seeing any logical connection. Then I remembered. Seamus Galvin and his wife Mary were the ones who were going to emigrate because O’Reilly had restored their family fortunes by clandestinely purchasing a garage full of rocking ducks.

The Galvins were leaving tomorrow and last night there had been a send-off at the “Mucky Duck.” I’d missed it because of a long confinement in an outlying cottage, but O’Reilly had attended. Something Fingal had said earlier came back to me: “It only happened last night.” Now, Galvin’s party was last night and something concerning a hole had happened, something sufficiently catastrophic as to make O’Reilly decide to take the pledge. I was beginning to feel I merely needed a magnifying glass and a deerstalker to be able to change my name to Sherlock. I might even ask Fingal if I could borrow his pipe. Only one question. What was the “something”?

O’Reilly’s rumbling interrupted my attempt to reason things out. “Should never have let Galvin leave by himself.”

So it was at the party.

“I should never have taken a short cut through the churchyard, but it was pouring, you see.” He peered over his spectacles.

“Quite,” I said solicitously.

O’Reilly took a deep swallow of his tonic water and regarded the glass with a look of total disgust before fixing me with a stony glare and saying, “No harm telling you, seeing you already know.”

I merely nodded.

“I fell into a freshly dug grave.”

The — or more accurately, my — mind boggled.

“I couldn’t get out. It was raining, you see,” he said by way of an explanation. His nose tip was now becoming pallid.

I seem to remember that when stout Horatio made it across the foaming Tiber, his enemies ”could scarce forbear to cheer.” Being attached to my teeth I felt that despite the mental image of O’Reilly scrabbling like a demented hamster against the slick sides of a muddy six-foot hole, I definitely should forbear to laugh.“Oh dear.”

“Yes,” he said aggrievedly. “Bloody Galvin. How was I to know he’d fallen into the same grave? It was black as half a yard up a chimney down there. And cold. What was I to do?”

“Stop digging? First law of holes,” I said.

“Don’t be so bloody silly. I huddled against a corner and like an eejit said aloud to myself, ‘Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, you’re not going to get out of here tonight.’ Galvin, who must have been lurking in another corner, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘By God you won’t.’ But …,” O’Reilly shrugged, “by God, I did.”

“Must have given you an awful shock,” I remarked, wandering over to the sideboard and pouring a stiff Paddy.

“It did. Oh indeed it did. Got the strength of ten men.”

I handed him the glass. “I believe shock can be treated with spirits.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, swallowing a large measure, “and none of your no/yes, no/no rubbish.” 

O’Reilly’s near-death experience

 

 

 

 

 

Murphy’s Law

First published in Stitches Magazine, October 1996

 

Doctor O’Reilly has the last laugh

 

I have characterized Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly as an ex-navy boxing champion, classical scholar, unregenerate poacher, bagpiper, souse, cryptophilanthropist, foul-mouthed bachelor and country G.P. This, I believe, is called a thumbnail sketch. There was nothing thumbnail-sized about O’Reilly, however, not his physical dimensions, not his personality and certainly not his ability to hold a grudge. He could, on occasion, be the perfectly balanced Irishman — a man with a chip on both shoulders.

Someone described revenge as a “dish best eaten cold.” For the life of me I cannot remember if it was that well-known Scots-Italian, Mac E. Avelli, or some other dead white male. No matter. O’Reilly had certainly heard of the concept but as usual had improved on it to suit his own requirements. In O’Reilly’s world, revenge wasn’t best eaten cold. It should be consumed deep-frozen, preferably at about absolute zero.

Job, it’s rumoured, was possessed of a modicum of patience, but when it came to waiting for just the right moment to deflate a swollen ego or right a perceived wrong, O’Reilly made Job look like a hyperactive child who’d been fed a sugar-enhanced diet and stimulated with an electric cattle prod.

I first became aware of this attribute when O’Reilly arrived home after making a house call. The barometer of his temper, his bent nose, was pallid from tip to bridge and his eyes flashed sparks. He helped himself to a rigid whiskey (stiff would have been an understatement) hurled himself into an armchair and snarled, “I’ll kill the bloody man!”

I tried to hide behind a copy of the British Medical Journal. King Kong tried the same thing on top of the Empire State Building. At least O’Reilly didn’t shoot at me.

“That *#@##** Doctor Murphy! He’s a menace.” O’Reilly inhaled his drink. “Put down that comic and listen.”

Hardly respectful of the organ of organized medicine in the U.K., but I felt, given O’Reilly’s *#@##*** mood — and please remember that I did describe him as “foul-mouthed” — it might be better to say nothing. Besides, I dearly wanted to know what Murphy had done to raise my colleague’s ire, temperature and, judging by the colour of O’Reilly’s naturally florid cheeks, blood pressure.

“Bah,” said O’Reilly.

“Humbug?” I inquired.

“Exactly,” he agreed, devouring yet more of the potent potable product of Paddy pot-still Distillery.

A modicum of colour was returning to O’Reilly’s schnozzle, so either the ethyl alcohol was having its recognized vasodilatory effect — probable — or O’Reilly was beginning to calm down — unlikely.

“That Murphy. I’ll get the @**. Do you know what he’s just done?” Definitely vasodilatation. “Do you remember Maggie O’Halloran?”

This was an easier question than its predecessor relating to Dr Murphy’s doings. The answer to the first question required second sight; for the latter, simple recall was all that was needed.

“Oh, yes, Fingal. The woman with the headaches two inches above her head. The one who thought she was pregnant with the second coming?”

“Exactly,” he said. “The silly old biddy decided to consult that well-known veterinarian, Doctor Murphy.”

Oops. I had a fair idea of what was coming next. Doctor Murphy and Doctor O’Reilly existed at opposite ends of the spectrum, not only of visible light but of electromagnetic waves not yet discovered by physical science. As O’Reilly was rough and ready, Murphy was devious. O’Reilly’s clothes tended to fit him where they touched and Murphy always dressed immaculately. O’Reilly would walk on hot coals for his patients; Murphy might venture onto ashes, but only in very stout, highly polished boots.

And O’Reilly had a soft spot for Maggie O’Halloran.

“Poor old duck,” he said, “Murphy told her she needed to see a psychiatrist.” He snorted like a warthog with severe sinusitis. “It took me two hours to calm her down.”

I knew he didn’t begrudge the two hours but did resent the trauma caused to a simple, if somewhat eccentric, woman.

“Oh dear,” I said and waited.

“Do you know what else he said to her?”

The second sight thing again. I shook my head. “He said, ‘Doctor O’Reilly should know better than to play God.’”

I maintained a diplomatic silence.

“Play God! Me? That bloody man doesn’t play at being God. Murphy works at it. Pour me another.”

I did as I was told, handed the glass to O’Reilly and tried to change the subject. “What did you think of the Irish rugby team’s showing last Saturday?”

His reply was unprintable. I began to suspect that it was entirely my fault that they’d been beaten by Scotland by a substantial margin, but at least I was able to get him off the subject of Doctor Murphy.

 

                                   

 

I forgot about the whole thing until about three months later. There was a meeting of the local medical society. Doctor Murphy was there, immaculate in a three-piece suit. As usual, he took a pontifical stance on most issues and on one occasion, in public, in front of our peers, admonished Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly about the dangers of doctors in general and O’Reilly in particular of playing God.

I’m told that the Manhattan Project scientists hid before they made a little bang at the Alamogordo test site. I looked round for the nearest bunker, but to my surprise O’Reilly said nothing. Absolutely nothing. A nuclear blast would have been preferable. Just imagine the feelings of Doctor Oppenheimer if the switch had been thrown, nothing had happened and it had been remarked that somebody really ought to nip outside and see what was the matter. Now what?

I found out just as we were about to leave.

Doctor Murphy had slipped into his overcoat but seemed to having some difficulty adjusting his shiny bowler hat.

“Bit of trouble with the hat, Murphy?” O’Reilly inquired, solicitously. “Not surprising, really.”

The rest of the company waited expectantly, all knowing full well the lack of brotherly love between the two men.

“And why not?” asked Murphy.

“Ah,” said O’Reilly. “It’s the playing God thing. A fellah’s head must hurt when he’s spent most of his life wearing a crown of thorns.”

The Biblical allusion wasn’t lost on those assembled. Poor old Doctor Murphy from that day was known locally as “Thorny Murphy,” to his great discomfort and O’Reilly’s great joy.

And Doctor Murphy never again accused Doctor O’ Reilly of playing God. 

Working As Equals

Originaly published in Stiches Magazine, September 1996

 

O'Reilly fails to mellow with time

 

From time to time after I'd emigrated to Canada, I would return to my roots in Ulster. When I did so, I'd always make a point of visiting my old friend Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly to see if he'd mellowed with time. The last time I dropped in to see him, in the early '80s, he was still in harness.

When I called at the house. Mrs. Kincaid answered the door. She told me that for the last week Doctor O'Reilly had been dealing with a particularly rough 'flu epidemic. He'd been summoned the night before to see a little girl who was desperately ill with pneumonia. He'd simply loaded the parents and the child into his own car, driven the forty-odd miles to the Royal Victoria Hospital and then, because the parents had no phone, brought them back to his own home so they could receive regular progress reports. He was like that. He was very tired, she said, but she was sure he'd be glad to see me.

She knocked on the door. "Come in." I'd have recognized those gravelly tones anywhere. She opened the door.  O'Reilly sat at his old roll-top desk. The heavy boxer's shoulders were more bent, his complexion more florid. He was writing a prescription for a young woman. "Just a minute." He didn't look up. "Remember, Annie. One at breakfast time and one in the morning."

"Thank you, Doctor O'Reilly." The young woman left.

"Good God." He saw me standing there. "You still alive?"

I could tell by the grin he was pleased to see me. He didn't get up. He arched his back. "I'm buggered. Tell you what: you have a pew" — he motioned towards the examining table — "and I'll finish the surgery."

"Right, Fingal." I went to the couch, remembering vividly that this was exactly how we'd started.

"We'll have lunch at the Black Swan when I've finished stamping out disease," he said, as Mrs. Kincaid ushered in the next supplicant.

I sat there quietly as he saw patient after patient, flu case after flu case. In the middle of the chaos, a well-dressed man in his early 40s entered the room and took a seat.

            "Good morning," said O'Reilly, "What seems to be the trouble?"

            "Oh, I'm fine," said the man, looking disdainfully at the shabby furnishings. "Perfectly fit."

            O'Reilly's bushy brows moved closer to each other, like two hairy caterpillars heading for a choice leaf. "I'm just a bit busy …"

            "My business will only take a moment. I'm new in this town."

            The caterpillars reared their forequarters questioningly. O'Reilly said nothing.

            "Yes." The man crossed one immaculately creased trouser leg over the other. "I'm interviewing healthcare providers."

            O'Reilly leant forward in his own chair, head cocked to one side. "You're looking for a what?" His question sounded so ingenuous he could have been addressing an American tourist who'd inquired where he might find a leprechaun.

The man shook his head and smiled a pitying smile, the kind he obviously kept for yokels like O'Reilly. "A healthcare provider. One who will be sensitive to my needs as a consumer." He looked down his nose at O'Reilly's rumpled tweed sports jacket. "One with whom I can work as an equal, defining and discussing my options, so that I can identify the optimal approach to a given problem."

O'Reilly sat back. The black brows settled. I saw the tip of his nose begin to whiten, an ominous sign, but his rugged face wrinkled in a vast grin. "I doubt if I'm the man for the job." He shook his head sadly.

The man sat stiffly. "And why's that?"

O'Reilly ran his beefy hands along the lapels of his jacket, like a learned judge about to deliver his opinion, fixed the stranger with a stare that would have been the envy of any passing basilisk and said, in dulcet tones, "For one thing, I'm only a country doctor, not one of those healthcare what-do-you-ma-callums you were telling me about." An edge had crept into his voice. Any one of O'Reilly's regular patients would have found urgent business elsewhere. "And I don't think we could work as equals."

The stranger shifted in his chair. "And why not?"

"Because," said O'Reilly, rising to his feet," you'd be a very old man. You'd need six years of medical school, two years' postgraduate work and 42 years in practice."

The man rose, sniffed haughtily and said," I don't like your attitude."

O'Reilly's smile was beatific. "I was wrong. We are equals. I don't like yours either." He held the door open and waited for the man to leave.

Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, I'm glad to say, definitely had not mellowed with time. 

A Pregnant Silence

First published in Stitches Magazine, July/August 1996

 

Another lesson by Doctor O'Reilly, practical psychologist

 

Some therapeutic interventions simply do not appear in the textbooks.                             

            Regular readers will remember Maggie, she of the incessant complaints, the headache two inches above her head, the chronic backache. In her early fifties, she was what the ministers of the time when reading the banns would have referred to as a "spinster of this parish," except that for Maggie the banns had never been called. She remained what the locals charitably described as "one of nature's unclaimed treasures."

Her trials and tribulations, and the way O'Reilly handled them, let him teach me a lesson in practical psychology, a lesson that I'll be happy to pass on to anyone who has the fortitude to stick with this story to the bitter end.

(As an aside, "the bitter end" is the part of a ship's anchor cable that's attached to the vessel. This column isn't called Taylor's Twist, another nautical term, for nothing.)

"Pat, that one's driving me bloody well daft," said Doctor O'Reilly. We were walking along the main street. O'Reilly stopped and pointed with his blackthorn walking stick through the window of the local grocery store. Naturally, when he stopped, so did I.

"The grocer?" I asked, knowing full well that the source of O'Reilly's impending descent into raving lunacy was entirely the fault of the other figure, visible through the pane.

"No. Maggie. Maggie MacCorkle."

"Oh?" I wondered what was coming — Maggie had been visiting Doctor O'Reilly on a weekly basis for the last three months, and absolutely refused to see me.

"She's convinced she's pregnant." As he spoke, O'Reilly tapped his temple with one thick index finger. "Nutty. Nutty as a fruit cake." He sighed.

I confess her presenting symptoms caught me off-guard. Wishing to demonstrate my encyclopaedic grasp of the physiology of the reproductive process, I immediately wondered aloud, "Would she not have needed a bit of masculine help?"

O'Reilly shook his head ponderously. "She says that it's another immaculate conception, and the responsibility is more than she can bear."

I was beginning to see what he meant about Maggie's resemblance to a filbert-filled Christmas confection. The troubled look on his face rapidly disabused me of any notion of making remarks about wise men and stars in the East.

"She's a sorry old duck." O'Reilly leant on his stick with one hand, jamming the knuckles of the other under his nose. "I'm damned if I can figure out how to persuade her she's just going through the change of life."

"Have you thought about getting her to see a psychiatrist?" I inquired helpfully.

O'Reilly shook his head. "Sure you know by now what these country folk are like about things like that."

I did indeed. The last patient to whom I'd made such a suggestion had bristled like an aggrieved porcupine and stormed out of the surgery. I could imagine Maggie's reaction.

"Anyway," said O'Reilly, "she's no danger to anyone or herself." He produced a large handkerchief from his jacket pocket, buried his battered nose and made a noise like the RMS Queen Elizabeth undocking.

"If she tells one of our headshrinking colleagues that she's the mother-to-be of the Second Coming, she'd be in the booby hatch as quick as a ferret down a rat hole." He stuffed his 'kerchief back into his pocket. "She'd really lose her marbles in there. No. It's just a matter of getting her to see that she's not up the builder's."

Unable to make any useful suggestions, I began to ruminate about the quaint euphemisms of the day for pregnancy: up the spout, in the family way, up the builder's, bun in the oven, poulticed.

It was clear from the way Fingal kept furrowing his brow that he was also at a loss for a solution and, knowing him as I'd come to, I could tell that he was worried.

Fate intervened.

As we stood there silently, Maggie bustled out of the grocer's shop. She was carrying a brown paper bag, presumably her purchases. Her face split into a wide grin when she noticed Doctor O'Reilly and she began to hurry towards him. I could see that she'd failed to notice a young lad wheeling a bicycle.

The resultant collision wasn't quite of the magnitude of the meteor that smacked into planet Earth and, it's rumoured, put paid to the dinosaurs, but the fallout was dramatic.

The lad picked himself and his cycle up and rode off muttering some less than complimentary epithets about old bats who should watch where they were going. Maggie sat on the pavement, hair askew, legs wide under her voluminous skirt, surrounded by the wreckage of the contents of her parcel. A shattered ketchup bottle lay at the edge of a spreading scarlet puddle of its contents. Right in the middle of the crimson tide, the yolks and whites of two broken eggs peered malevolently upwards.

I saw a look flit across O'Reilly's face, a look the like of which must have been there when Archimedes spilled his bath water. Fingal didn't exactly yell, "Eureka," but he'd clearly thought of something. He stepped over to where Maggie sat, knelt, put one solicitous hand on her shoulder, whipped out his hanky, dried her eyes, peered closely at the crimson clots and their ocular ova, and pronounced in sad, sombre, sonorous sentences, "There, there, Maggie. There, there. No need to grieve." He looked up at me and winked. "It couldn't have lived — its eyes were too close together."

The relief on Maggie's face could only have been matched by the joy of the old boy scout Baden-Powell when the British Army arrived at the outerworks of Mafeking.

Some therapeutic interventions simply do not appear in the textbooks. 

 

Strangford Lough

 I know everybody wants to read about O'Reilly but many of my readers enjoy the descriptions of my part of Ireland. Here's one I wrote some time ago. O'Reilly will be back in the next blog I promise.

Turn the map of Ireland through ninety degrees and you will see the silhouette of a shaggy dog. The animal's legs and body form the sovereign nation of the Republic of Ireland. Lying in the dog's head are the six counties that owe allegiance to the British crown. Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital, is ten miles as the crow flies from Newtownards, a busy market town set at the head of the largest salt-water inlet in the British Isles. It marks the little dog's ear. Strangford Lough, 33 kilometres long by six kilometres wide, the largest sea inlet in the British Isles, is one of Ulster's most popular tourist destinations.

When I left Ireland for Canada forty years ago Strangford was a wild lonely place of mudflats, islands left behind when the last great ice age retreated, and pladdies, low rocky reefs, sea wrack covered and hidden at high tide. Strangford Lough was where two young men, friends since boyhood, spent their Saturdays in their own private retreat away from the bustle and grind of the weekday city. Neill, stockily built, darkly complected, a superb shot, skilled helmsman, and I, fair skinned, slight, shared an unspoken love for the place where our pleasures were dictated only by the changing of the seasons.

The local flocks of mallard, teal, and pintail were joined in autumn and through the bitter winter by flocks of migratory waterfowl, buff-pated widgeon, clanging battalions of brent geese, stately skeins of greylag which arrived to feed…and provide sport for wildfowlers. Early mornings would see us, accompanied by Grouse, Neill's big, black Labrador, huddled in the lee of a ruined sheepcote that stood above the shore of the Long Island. When southerly gales churned the water into dark, steep white caps the hurled spume stung our faces and the wind numbed our fingers. Strangford was showing the face that led the Viking invaders of the Tenth Century to call it, Strangfjorthr, 'the turbulent fjord'. And yet we waited, careless of the cold, straining to hear the whicker of pinions in the dawn's gloaming.

            On summer days, when Strangford lived up to its old Celtic name, Lough Cuan, 'the peaceful lough', with the sea azure, the air as warm as fresh buttermilk, we'd leave the moorings at Kircubbin, take my 26-foot sloop, Tarka, to race or simply go where the wind blew, only returning to the anchorage when the distant Mourne Mountains scrawled an indigo line against a star-filling, velvet sky.

            The Mournes, heather-covered granite, solid and enduring as the Ulster folk, are the background to two water colours that hang in my home. When my working day has been too long, the British Columbia skies primed with a monotonous undercoat of flat grey, I sit and let the paintings draw me back to what was, and always will be, a magical place.

            The last time I returned, in October 2007, Ireland and Strangford seemed to have changed. The Republic of Ireland, once a poor country, now boasted one of Europe's fastest growing economies. In the North of Ireland, after 30 years of internecine strife, a truce had been in effect for 13 years. On Strangford, tourists who before the Troubles had not even heard of Audleystown Neolithic cairn or Castle Espie, home of Ireland's largest living waterfowl collection, now visited the Lough's historic sites, bird sanctuaries and wild life interpretive centers. Americans, many searching for their Irish roots, cycled from Greyabbey to Portaferry, stopping at churchyards to read the names from moss-grown headstones that stood tilted among long grasses beneath sombre yew trees. Sailors on skippered or bare-boat charters explored the myriad islands…the locals will tell you there is one for every day of the year…and sheltered inlets.        

            The years had indeed changed Strangford…and two men, friends from boyhood. 

            Neill was to collect me from my hotel in Belfast. We'd planned, for old times' sake, to drive down to Strangford and make the short voyage to the Long Island.

I hardly recognized him when he walked into the lobby. His once jet hair was streaked with grey, a bulge at his midriff accented his stockiness but his eyes shone the way I remembered, his smile when he saw me was the smile I'd seen so many times when he'd made a difficult shot, or beaten a competitor's boat across the finishing line.

            "How the hell are you?" His handshake had lost none of its power.

            "Good to see you Neill. How're Jenny and the kids?"

            "They're grand, and I'm off the leash today. At least until six. We're supposed to be taking you out for dinner tonight and she'll roast me if the pair of us are late home."

            "Like the time when we stayed too long in the 'Mermaid' in Kircubbin?"

            Neill laughed. "Mind you, that was a great night. The craic was ninety." He glanced at his watch. "We should get moving. The dinghy's on the car's roof rack, picnic's in the boot…do you still like a drop of Harp?"

I nodded, thinking of the tart, chilled lagers we had drunk together on Tarka in the warmth of the summer evenings, the race over, the sails furled.    

"Come on, then." He turned and I followed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Last time we went to the island you had a brace of mallard," Neill said, as he stowed a knapsack under the inflatable's seat.

"And you had three widgeon." I remembered that morning, the one we both had known would be our last for Lord knew how long together on the Lough. The wind had howled and kicked the water into vicious, short waves.

"It's a better day today," said Neill, clambering in. "I don't think those clouds over the Mournes mean much."

"I hope not." As I climbed aboard I stared at the distant thunderheads. "I don't fancy trying to get home in this thing if it howls up out of the south. And you know how quickly it can."

"It'll never happen," he said, hauling on the outboard motor's starter-cord.

            I knew it would be pointless trying to chat over the clattering of the noisy little engine so I sat quietly, drinking in the well-remembered sights, breathing the sea weed-salted air, content to let Neill steer out into the Dorn Inlet and down past the Castle Hill. On the crest of the hill great elms, bowed with the spring-green leaves, sheltered the ruins of an old church that had been constructed from the ancient stones of a castle built there by Baron le Savage in 1180. I saw Neill staring up at the hillcrest and wondered if, as he had said years ago, he still imagined he could hear the ghostly ring of Viking axe on Celtic shield, hoarse Irish battle cries of, 'Erin go bragh', and 'faugh a ballagh'.

            We left the Dorn to cross Ardkeen Bay, its glassy surface rippled only by our wake and the splashes of seals that the racket of our engine had disturbed from their basking on the wrack-covered Seal Rocks. Three oystercatchers, black and white and scarlet billed flew in line astern. Ahead lay the Long Island, a shingle-shored wishbone. Off to my right I could see the long, low shape of Gransha Point, bent like a crooked finger, for ever beckoning towards the turrets of Scrabo Tower solitary on its promontory above the town of Newtownards. I heard the liquid calls of curlew high overhead.

            I felt a breeze on the back of my neck and glanced to my left. Catspaws riffled the water and cumulo-nimbus clouds bore down on us like great grey and black teams of horses unharnessed from their cannons that now flashed and roared in the sky.

            I could tell by the urgent increase in the engine's racketing that Neill had pushed it to full throttle. He bent toward me and I had to strain to hear him over the growling of the wind, the slap, slap as the boat's flat rubber bottom smashed over the chop that had come up out of nowhere.

            "Hang on. The sooner we're out of this the better."

            "Right." I grabbed the rope that ran round the top of one of the pontoons and hunched against the blown spray and the rain that soaked my shirt and jeans and plastered my thinning hair to my scalp. What, I wondered, would it take to overturn our little boat? I found myself humming the air of Anac Cuan, an old song about a boat sinking and the drowning of people and frightened sheep.

One of the Long Island's points, low and coarse grass covered, made a lee and blocked the waves' force We sought sanctuary there like the early Christian monks fleeing to a round tower.

            The boat's motion eased in the more sheltered waters and I felt my clenched fingers relax as Neill ran the bows up onto the shingle and cut the engine.

            "Hop out," he said. "We'll beach her."

            We stepped into ankle deep water, took one side of the dinghy each and hauled the inflatable ashore, the bottom crunching on the shingle, slithering over the tide-line of glistening kelp.

            "That'll do." Neill straightened, flicked his head back and shook himself as I remembered old Grouse the big Labrador, now long gone, shaking himself after a water retrieve. Neill grinned. "Bit lumpy there for a minute or two."

            "Told you it could come up fast," I said, glad to be on dry land.

            "Aye, but these summer ones usually blow over pretty quickly." He frowned. "It had better. It would be daft to try to get back until the sea's gone down a bit."

            "And Jenny wants us home for six."

            Neill shrugged and grabbed the knapsack from the dinghy. "Come on. We'll get a bit of shelter in the old sheep pen." He set off at a smart trot and I followed, feet sinking into the springy grass.

            We were both short of breath when we rounded one of the ruin's tumbled walls, but behind the weathered-smooth stones the wind was less and the rain seemed to be slackening.

            Neill puffed. "Not as fit as we used to be."

            Nor as reckless, I thought, as I hauled in a lungful of moist, salty air.

            "Still," he said, pointing to the south, "I think the worst of the storm's over. I can see the Mournes."

            "If you can see the Mournes, it's going to rain, and if you can't see them…it's raining."

            "Canada's not changed you that much, has it?" he said, laughing at the old chestnut. "Still the same old Ulsterman."

            "We all change," I said quietly, and I knew it was the truth.

            "I know so," he said, "but Strangford doesn't. Not really."

            "What do you mean?"

            "It's seen the Firbolg, the Tuatha de Danaan, Celts, Saint Patrick and the monks, the Vikings, the United Irishmen, the Troubles, the truce. They've all left their marks and those are mostly tourist attractions today. Places you and I used to go wildfowling are bird sanctuaries. Some of the old pubs are swanky roadhouses."

"So it has changed."

 He shook his head. "Strangford's like us Ulsterfolk. We wear jeans now, not kilts and caubeens, but underneath we're still the same. The Troubles like the storms here blow over us, but like the islands and the mudflats, the green of those little fields over on the mainland, the birds and the seals, badgers and the foxes we'll still be here no matter what." He took hold of my arm. "And Strangford will always be here for you to come home to."

            Home, I thought. There was moisture on my cheeks and not only from the dying rain.

            "Speaking of home," he said, "we will get back to mine in time for dinner. Just look at that."

            A strip of blue stretched from the hilly horizon to the base of the passing clouds. Bright rays of sunlight streamed down like the beams of heavenly searchlights, dappling the waves that even then seemed to be growing smaller. The rain had stopped.

            "Here," Neill said, offering me an open bottle of Harp and a ham sandwich. "What'll we drink to?"

            I looked around from the Mournes in the south, over islands and the white sails of yachts, to Scrabo Tower still mist shrouded in the north. I tasted the salt of the air, heard the piping cries of knots of dunlin that whirled low over the beach like spores blown from a puffball mushroom, raised the bottle and said, "How about, 'To Strangford…and home'?"

I know everybody wants to read about O'Reilly but many of my readers enjoy the descriptions of my part of Ireland. Here's one I wrote some time ago. O'Reilly will be back in the next blog I promise.

Well Said, Sir

First published in Stitches magazine, June 1996

The silencing of Doctor O'Reilly

 

'How are the mighty fallen?"David, a Biblical king said something along these lines. I'm sure his sage utterances would have been worth the listen if he'd been in the "Mucky Duck" the night O'Reilly met his match.

When I introduced you to Doctor Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills O'Reilly, I mentioned some of his attributes. As I recollect, I described him as an ex-navy boxing champion, classical scholar, unregenerate poacher, bagpiper, souse, cryptophilanthropist, foul-mouthed widower and country G.P.. I may have neglected to note that in addition, he regarded himself as a bit of a wit, and disliked intensely being bested in any verbal joust.

The fact that all of his local potential opponents knew very well that Dr O' could be a great man for prescribing, and on occasion administering, the soap-suds enema as a panacea for just about any minor complaint, if the complaint was brought by someone in whom the font of medical knowledge wasn't well pleased, may in part have taken the edge off the local competition.

On the particular evening I'm about to describe, Doctor O'Reilly was in full cry.

No wonder he was in good voice. He'd just won the local pibroch competition.

The pibroch is said, by those who understand these matters, to be a thing of complex beauty. It's the classical music of the great highland bagpipe. Only the most experienced and skillful piper will even attempt the pibroch in public. (Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a great relief. To me, the thing is interminable, tuneless, repetitive, embellished with incomprehensible grace notes and an assault to the civilized ear.)

The tune, if it can be so called, is played on the chanter and immediately brings to mind the noise that would accompany the simultaneous gutting and emasculating of a particularly bad-tempered tom cat. Over the melody, on and on, thunder the drones, those pipes that stick up from the back of the bag like the remaining three tentacles of some long-fossilized prehistoric squid.

Needless to say, playing pibrochs takes a great deal of breath. I forget exactly how much water is lost per expiration, but judging by the post-pibroch intake of uisquebeatha by the average exponent of the arcane art, the amount of dehydration suffered must be extensive.

To return to the public bar of the BlackSwan. O'Reilly sat at a table in the middle of a circle of admiring fellow pipers, replacing his lack of bodily fluids like one of those desert flowers that only sees rain once every ten years. I was in my customary corner sipping a small sherry and trying to mind my own business. I'm told that some people in Florida try to ignore hurricanes.

O'Reilly was at his pontifical best. His basso voice thundered on. He'd launched into a monologue several minutes previously on the relative merits of plastic versus bamboo reeds for the chanter. The assembled multitude listened in respectful silence, although judging by the glazed expressions on some of the faces their interest had waned. O'Reilly warmed to his subject, brooking no interruption, rolling like a juggernaut over anyone who might try to get a word in edgewise. He was talking on the intake of breath.

I watched as a member of the group signalled for a fresh round of drinks. The barman delivered the glasses shortly afterwards. O'Reilly was now up to verbal escape velocity, emphasizing his words with staccato jabs of his right index finger on the beer-ring-stained tabletop.

He stopped dead — in mid-sentence. A ghastly pallor appeared at the tip of his bent nose. Something had annoyed the great man. I craned forward to see. Catastrophe. Somehow the barman had neglected to deliver a drink for Doctor O'.

The silence, now that he'd shut up, was palpable. He fixed the cowering bartender with an agate stare and demanded, pointing at the appropriate orifice, "And haven't I got a mouth too?"

That was when it happened. A voice, from which of the assembled pipers I never discovered, was heard to say clearly, distinctly and with heartfelt sincerity, "And how could we miss it? All night it's been going up and down between your ears like a bloody skipping rope."

I  do believe David Rex went on to say, after his remarks about the precipitous plummeting of the powerful, "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph."

Philistines are rare in the North of Ireland. There were no women in the public bar, and it would be a breach of professional confidentiality to tell you who among the party were preputially challenged.

But the rejoicing — if not in the streets, at least in the "Mucky Duck" — was vast. And for once, O'Reilly was at a complete loss for words. 

Sunny Disposition

Originally published May 1996 in Stitches Magazine

The O'Reilly Method of Social and Preventive Medicine

 

Doctor O'Reilly was fond of extolling the virtues of general practice. He reckoned that a good G.P. should be the master of what he called, "all branches of the medical arts." Once I thought I'd caught him out, but as usual he managed to get the better of me. It all came about because Sunny disappeared. O'Reilly was very fond of Sunny and by chance couldn't stand Councillor Bishop.

If you're feeling confused, don't worry, any association with O'Reilly will do that to you. If you can bear with me, I'll try to explain.

Sunny lived in his car — not because he was penurious far from it; he'd inherited a sizable sum when his father died — and not because he was stupid; he held a PhD. He lived in his car because there was no roof on his house.

There was no roof on his house because 20 years before the roof had needed new slates. Sunny had engaged Mr. Bishop, town councillor, building contractor and property developer, to do the job. For reasons that are lost in the mists of Ulster history, just at the time that the old roof had been removed, Sunny and Bishop had fallen out. Sunny refused to pay and Bishop refused to finish the job. Sunny moved into his car and decided to retire from the rat race.

O'Reilly had introduced me to Sunny shortly after I'd started to work there. One of us would drop by to check on him about every couple of weeks or so. I don't think I've ever known a more contented 60-year-old man.

His car was parked at the front of what had been the garden. One patch of ground remained uncluttered and there Sunny grew his vegetables, which he sold to the locals. The rest of the place looked like a junk yard that had come into close proximity with a tornado on stimulants. Other old cars, perambulators, washing machines, scrap metal, phonograms, two tractors, and an old caravan were piled hither and yon, vaguely covered by tattered tarpaulins, weeds growing merrily in the interstices.

His treasured possessions did little for local property values but his neighbours tolerated his eccentricity, bought his vegetables and passed the time of day with him. O'Reilly had mentioned that the caravan had been a gift from Sunny's neighbours, but he'd only lived in it for a week before returning to his car and turning the caravan over to his four dogs, who were his best friends and constant companions.

I was surprised one afternoon when I made a routine call to find that neither Sunny nor his dogs were anywhere to be seen. The woman who lived next door told me that Mr. Bishop had taken Sunny away two days earlier and that someone from the animal protection society had come for the dogs yesterday. I thought it seemed strange and raised the matter with O'Reilly during the course of our evening meal.

The progress of a large slice of steak to O'Reilly's mouth halted precipitously. He lunged at me with the meat-covered fork. "What?"

I wondered if the old adage, "don't shoot the messenger," could be adapted to, "don't skewer him on a dinner fork," and repeated the intelligence.

            "Bloody Bishop!" O'Reilly slammed the meat into his mouth and worried at it like a jackal with a particularly tasty piece of dead zebra. He swallowed, larynx going up and down like an out-of-control U-boat. "Bloody Bishop!" O'Reilly hunched forward, elbows on the table, shoulders high. "I bet he's found a way to have Sunny put in the home." My mentor sat back, pinioned the remains of his steak and slashed at it with the fervour of a member of the Light Brigade venting his spleen on a Russian gunner. "He's trying to get his hands on Sunny's land." He scowled at his plate and pushed it away. "Right. You nip round to the home and see if Sunny's there." O'Reilly stood. "I think I'll go and have a chat with Mr. Bishop."

By the look in O'Reilly's eyes and the pallor of the tip of his nose, I knew Mr. Bishop was shortly going to wish he was spending a relaxing time with a Gestapo interrogator who was suffering from strangulated haemorrhoids.

Sure enough, Sunny was in the home. He was a lost, terrified old man. He told me that the nurses scared him, the other inmates were rude and he couldn't stop worrying about his dogs. He begged me to take him home and cried when I had to explain to him that I'd discovered he was under a restraining order, for his own good and that until it was lifted, I was powerless to intervene. I stood beside his bed, looking at a man who'd been reduced in two days from an independent, albeit slightly unusual, individual, to a pathetic institutionalized wretch. I could see that he'd lost weight and indeed looked very ill.

I still had his, "Och, please get me out, Doctor," in my ears as I climbed the stairs to O'Reilly's sitting room. Doctor Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly was parked in one of the armchairs, pipe belching like a Pittsburgh steelworks chimney. He didn't bother to turn to see who'd come in. "Well?"

I shrugged. "Sunny's in the home. You were right."

His big head nodded ponderously, acknowledging his rightness, but he said nothing.

I carried on. "If we can't get him out of there, I think he's going to die."

O'Reilly half turned and waved towards the other chair. "Sit yourself down, my boy. God is in his heaven and all is right with the world."

I started to argue but he interrupted. "Sunny should be on his way home now."

"But …"

"No buts. I explained things to Mr. Bishop."

The only word I can find to describe the smile on O'Reilly's battered face is demoniacal. "You remember the lass we had to ship off to England a couple of months ago — piffy?"

"Piffy? Right. PFI, pregnant from Ireland." I knew that the Ulster community had about as much tolerance for young women with child, but out of holy wedlock, as a mongoose for a cobra. These unfortunates had to be shipped out. "What about her?"

He blew a smoke ring at the ceiling and stabbed his pipe stem through the hole. "Mr. Bishop's maid. I just explained to him that if the order wasn't lifted, I might just have to have a word with Mrs. Bishop — tell her the real reason that the lassie had to visit her sick sister in Liverpool. That cooled him." O'Reilly stood and started heading for the sideboard, remarking over his shoulder, "The last I saw of Bishop, he was on his way to the Town Hall, aye, and to the animal shelter." He poured himself a stiff whiskey. "They don't teach you young fellows medicine like that."

Relieved as I was that Sunny's troubles would soon be over, I thought I might just have a bit of a dig at the self-satisfied Doctor O'Reilly, he who reckoned that good G.P.s should be masters of all the branches of the healing arts.

"And what branch of the healing arts would you say you were practising?" I asked, guilelessly.

O'Reilly stopped in mid-pour, put one finger alongside his bent nose and said, as if to a not-too-bright child, "Social and Preventive Medicine, son. Social and Preventive." 

Anatomy Lesson

The things you learn on a Dublin pub crawl

Originally published in Stitches Magazine,  April 1996

Doctor O'Reilly was a keen sportsman. I think I've remarked previously that he was an ex-boxing champion. He'd also played a fair bit of rugby football in his youth. I found out about his interest in rugby one weekend in January. Ireland was to play Scotland at Landsdowne Road in Dublin. To my great pleasure, O'Reilly invited me to accompany him to the match. He would provide the transportation and tickets, and would pay for my hotel room on the night before the match.

The drive to Dublin was uneventful and we checked into the Gresham Hotel. I'd barely begun to unpack my bag when there was a knocking at my door. I opened it. There stood O'Reilly, grinning from ear to ear. "Do you fancy a jar?"

It is, I'm told, possible, just possible, for an entertainer to decline the Royal Command to appear at the London Palladium. It was not possible, not remotely possible, for anyone to turn down O'Reilly's invitation for a drink.

"Right," I said, with all the enthusiasm that must be evinced by the prisoner on death row when the chaplain sticks his head round the cell door. I'll say one thing for convicted American murderers: the electric chair is reputed to be very fast. Their suffering is over quickly. I'd been with Doctor Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly in full cry on his home turf and had lived, barely, to regret it. What he might be like when he was truly off the leash didn't bear thinking about. Oh well. My life insurance was paid up. "I'd love one. Where to?"

He winked, a great conspiratorial wink. "Usually the rugby crowd goes to Davy Byrne's, but I thought we might take a wee wander to The Stag's Head at the back of Grafton St.

"Do you know how to get there?" I asked, knowing that when O'Reilly was ready for his tot, depriving him of it for long could produce the same effects as poking an alligator in the eye with a blunt stick.

"Of course. Didn't I go to medical school here, at Trinity College?"

That was something I hadn't known. Those of us who were graduates of Queen's University Belfast referred disdainfully to Trinity as "that veterinary college in Dublin." It was unfair to a fine school, but there was a rivalry between Queen's and the other place. The picture of the enraged alligator popped into my mind and I decided not to mention my lack of respect for his old Alma Mater. "Silly of me." I said. "Lead on, Fingal."

And away we went, just like the caissons, over hill over dale.

Now Dublin isn't that big a city, it just seemed big after about two hours of walking. O'Reilly was becoming just a tad irritable if the pallor of his nose tip was anything to go by.

"Jasus," he remarked, as we found ourselves at the end of yet another publess cul-de-sac, "I'd have sworn it was down here."

I coughed. "Should we maybe ask directions?"

I imagine Capt. Oates would have received the same kind of look from Robert Scott that O'Reilly hurled at me if the gallant gentleman had asked the same question on the way back from the South Pole. Frosty — very frosty.

"Not at all," O'Reilly countered, making an about-turn on the march and heading back towards the main thoroughfare. "I know this place like the back of my hand."

I took little comfort from that statement. He had both hands in his trouser pockets.

Dusk was falling as we trudged along Grafton St. for the umpteenth time. O'Reilly was never one to admit defeat gracefully, but his internal drought, which by then was probably on a par with the drier reaches of the Sahara, finally got the better of him.

A grubby youth was washing a shop-front window or, to be more accurate, redistributing the streaks of city grime. O'Reilly tapped him on the shoulder. The youth turned."My good man," O'Reilly asked in the tones that he reserved for lesser mortals, "do you know where The Stag's Head is?"

The Dubliner wasn't one bit overawed, neither by O'Reilly's size nor his overweening manner. He gave O'Reilly a pitying look and said with an absolutely straight face, "Do I know where The Stag's Head is? Of course I do — it's about six feet from its arse."

I thought O'Reilly was going to explode, but instead he collapsed in peals of helpless laughter.

We did eventually find the pub in question. The irony was that just kitty-corner from it was another pub, The Vincent Van Gogh which, believe it or not, is known to the locals as The Stag's Arse. The Dublin lad hadn't even been trying to be funny.