An Irish Country Doctor Read Free Page B

and Jelly Roll Morton, along with the Beatles’ most recent LP.
    “Here you are.” O’Reilly handed Barry a glass, sat heavily in another armchair, and propped his stoutly booted feet on a coffee table. Then he lifted his own glass, which Barry thought could have done service as a fire bucket if it hadn’t been filled to the brim with Irish whiskey. “I don’t go much for sherry myself,” O’Reilly announced, “but each to his own.”
    “I’d have thought it was a bit early for whiskey.”
    “Early?” said O’Reilly, taking a gulp. “It’s never too early for a decent drop.”
    My God, Barry thought, looking more closely at O’Reilly’s ruddy cheeks; don’t tell me he’s a raging drouth.
    O’Reilly, clearly oblivious to Barry’s scrutiny, nodded to the picture window. “Would you look at that?”
    Barry looked past the moss-grown, lopsided steeple of a church across the road from O’Reilly’s house, down over the rooftops of the terrace cottages of Ballybucklebo’s main street, and out over the sand dunes of the foreshore to where Belfast Lough, cobalt and white-capped, separated County Down from the distant Antrim Hills, hazy against a sky as blue as cornflowers.
    “Jesus,” said O’Reilly, “you couldn’t beat that with both sticks of a Lambeg drum.”
    “It’s lovely, Doctor O’Reilly.”
    “Fingal, my boy. Fingal. For Oscar.” O’Reilly’s smile was avuncular.
    “Oscar, er, Fingal?”
    “No. Not Oscar Fingal. Wilde.”
    “Oscar Fingal Wilde, Fingal?” Barry knew he was getting lost. He saw a hint of pallor developing on O’Reilly’s nose.
    “Oscar … Fingal … O’Flahertie … Wills … Wilde.”
    Barry stifled the impulse to remark that if you put an air to that you could sing it.
    “You look confused, son.”
    Confused, baffled, bewildered, utterly at sea.
    The pallor faded. “I was named for him. For Oscar Wilde.”
    “Oh.”
    “Aye,” said O’Reilly. “My father was a classical scholar, and if you think I got a mouthful, you should meet my brother, Lars Porsena O’Reilly.”
    “Good Lord. Macaulay?”
    “The very fellah.
Lays of Ancient Rome.”
O’Reilly took a deep drink. “Us country GPs aren’t all utterly unlettered.”
    Barry felt a blush start. His first impressions of the big man sitting opposite might not have been entirely accurate. Lowering his head, he sipped his sherry.
    “So, Laverty,” O’Reilly said, clearly ignoring Barry’s discomfort. “What’s it to be? Do you want the job?”
    Before Barry could answer, a bell jangled from somewhere below.
    “Bugger,” said O’Reilly, “another customer. Come on.” He rose. Barry followed.
    O’Reilly opened the front door. Seamus Galvin stood on the doorstep. In each hand he carried a live lobster. “Good evening. Doctor sir,” he said, thrusting the beasts at O’Reilly. “I’ve washed me foot, so I have.”
    Barry thought of a grubby Eliza Doolittle saying to Professor Higgins, “I washed me ’ands and face before I come.”
    “Have you, by God?” said O’Reilly sternly, passing the squirming creatures to Barry. “Come in and I’ll take a look at your hind leg.”
    “Thank you, Doctor sir, thank you very much.” Galvin hesitated. “And who’s this young gentleman?” he asked.
    Barry was so busy avoiding the crustaceans’ clattering claws he nearly missed O’Reilly’s reply. “This is Doctor Laverty. He’s my new assistant. I’ll be showing him the ropes tomorrow.”

Morning Has Broken
    Barry woke to the jangling of his alarm clock. His attic room had just enough space for a bed, a night table, and a wardrobe. Last night he’d unpacked, put his few clothes away, and propped his fishing rod in one corner near a dormer window.
    He rose, drew back the curtains, and looked out over what must be O’Reilly’s back garden. Then he picked up his toilet kit from the bedside table and headed for the bathroom. As he shaved, he thought about the events of last night. O’Reilly