An Irish Country Doctor Read Free Page A

work here.…”
    O’Reilly’s laugh boomed through the room. “Don’t take yourself so seriously, son.”
    Barry felt the flush begin under his collar. “Doctor O’Reilly, I—”
    “Laverty, there are some
really
sick people here who
do
need us, you know.” O’Reilly was no longer laughing.
    Barry heard the “us” and was surprised to find that it pleased him.
    “I need help.”
    “Well, I—”
    “Great,” said O’Reilly, putting another match to his pipe, rising, and marching to the door. “Come on, you’ve seen the surgery…. Why our American cousins insist on calling it the office is beyond me …. I’ll show you the rest of the shop.”
    “But I—”
    “Leave your bag there. You’ll need it tomorrow.” With that, O’Reilly vanished into the hall, leaving Barry little choice but to park his bag and follow. Immediately opposite he could see into the dining room, but O’Reilly charged along the hall, past a staircase with an ornate mahogany balustrade. Then he stopped and flung a door wide open. Barry hurried to catch up.
    “Waiting room.”
    Barry saw a large room, wallpapered with god-awful roses. More wooden chairs were arranged around the walls. A single table in the centre of the room was covered with old magazines.
    O’Reilly pointed to a door in the far wall. “Patients let themselves in here; we come down from the surgery, take whoever’s next back with us, deal with them, and show them out the front door.”
    “On their feet, I hope.” Barry watched O’Reilly’s nose. No pallor.
    The big man chuckled. “You’re no dozer, are you, Laverty?”
    Barry kept his counsel as O’Reilly continued. “It’s a good system … stops the buggers swapping symptoms, or demanding the same medicine as the last customer. Right…” He swung round and headed for the staircase. “Come on.”
    Barry followed, up a flight of stairs to a broad landing. Framed photographs of a warship hung on the walls.
    “Sitting room’s in there.” O’Reilly indicated a pair of panelled doors.
    Barry nodded but looked more closely at the battleship. “Excuse me, Doctor O’Reilly, is that HMS
Warspite?
”
    O’Reilly’s foot paused on the first step of the next flight.
    “How’d you know that?”
    “My dad served in her.”
    “Holy thundering Mother of Jesus. Laverty? Are you … are you Tom Laverty’s boy?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll be damned.”
    So, thought Barry, will I. His father, who rarely talked about his wartime experiences, had from time to time alluded to a certain Surgeon Commander O’Reilly who had been welterweight boxing champion of the Mediterranean Fleet—that would account for O’Reilly’s cauliflower ears and bent nose. In his dad’s opinion, O’Reilly had been the finest medical officer afloat. This man?
    “I’ll be damned. Laverty’s boy.” O’Reilly held out his hand. His handshake was firm, not crushing. “You’re the man for the job. Thirty-five pounds a week, every other Saturday off, room and board all in.”
    “Thirty-five pounds?”
    “I’ll show you your room.”

    “What’ll it be?” O’Reilly stood at a sideboard that bore cut-glass decanters and ranks of glasses.
    “Small sherry, please.” Barry sat in a big armchair. O’Reilly’s upstairs sitting room was comfortably furnished. Three Milliken watercolours of game birds adorned the wall over a wide fireplace. Two walls were hidden by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. From Barry’s quick appraisal of the titles—from Plato’s
Republic
, Caesar’s
De Bello Gallica, Winnie-the-Pooh
and its Latin translation
Winnie Ille Pu
, to the collected works of W. Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Leslie Charteris’s
The Saint
books—O’Reilly’s reading tastes were wide ranging.
    His record collection, stacked haphazardly beside a Philips Black Box gramophone, was equally eclectic. Beethoven’s symphonies on 33 1/3 rpm LPs were jumbled in with old 78s by Bix Beiderbecke