"You remember," she said, in her hoa.r.s.e voice, "when I come 'til youse first and youse found out I was short of that wee thyroxine thingy in my blood, so I was?"

Barry nodded. He did indeed remember. O'Reilly had missed the diagnosis of hypothyroidism and had been giving her vitamin B12 as a tonic. The hoa.r.s.eness in her speech was a result of her hypothyroidism.

"And Doctor O'Reilly prescribed me that thyroid extract." She peered round. "Where is the big fellah the day anyway?"

"He's got a bit of a cough."

"Has he, by G.o.d? What's he taking for it?"

"Now, Cissie," Barry said gently, "I can't discuss Doctor O'Reilly with you. You know that."

"Aye, right enough, but-"

"Now, what can I do for you today, Cissie?"

"It's my throat, so it is." She leant forward toward him. "Now I know my voice is a bit crakey ever since I got the thyroid thing, but for the last two-no, I'm wrong-for the last three days, or mebbe it's four . . . no, no, three . . . I remember now. It was the day the milkman, Archie Auchinleck . . . him with the son a soldier in Cyprus . . . Archie dropped my milk on the doorstep, and the bottle broke, and the milk froze, and my cousin Aggie slipped on it and fell on her a.r.s.e and . . ."

Barry hoped she hadn't noticed him rolling his eyes to the heavens, but something had brought her back on course.

"Anyways," Cissie continued, "it's been raw and sore something chronic." She leant forward and whispered, "And it hurts to talk."

Barry had to stifle a smile. There could be no greater imposition in Cissie's life. "Have you been coughing?" he asked.

"Only a wee bit."

"Have you taken anything for it?" Countryfolk, he knew, often used honey for a sore throat, and he had once seen a child whose mother applied a hot potato in a sock to the front of the neck.

"I did try tying some Saint Brigid's cotton around my neck." She opened the collar of her coat, and Barry saw a rough piece of cotton cloth knotted around her throat.

"I'm sorry, Cissie, but I'm not familiar with the treatment."

She tutted. "You leave the cloth outside the door of the house on the night before February first, that's Saint Brigid's Day." She crossed herself. "The saint herself pa.s.ses by that night and blesses the cloth." She rubbed the makeshift scarf. "I've had this bit since last year, so I have, but it's not doing me no good, so it's not."

Barry rose and pulled a small penlight from the inside pocket of his jacket. "I'd better have a look." He went to the instrument trolley and returned with a wooden tongue depressor. "Open wide and put out your tongue."

She obeyed.

He used the wooden spatula to shove her tongue toward the floor of her mouth and shone the beam of the little torch inside her mouth. "Say, 'Aaaaah.' "

"Aaaaah."

He could see the back of her pharynx and noted en pa.s.sant that she had no tonsils or adenoids. The beam lit up the normally pink membrane in her throat. It was an angry red, flecked with yellowish spots, and looked for all the world like a ripe strawberry with yellow instead of white seeds. Bacterial, probably streptococcal, pharyngitis. He removed the tongue depressor and felt the sides of her neck. Good. There were no enlarged lymph glands. "Your gullet's a bit inflamed, Cissie."

"Bad is it?"

He shook his head. "A bit of penicillin and a gargle, and you'll be right as rain in no time."

"Am I going to need an injection?" She eyed the instrument trolley. "I've my stays on."

"Not today." Barry could picture the day he'd first met Cissie. O'Reilly had given her an injection through her dress and hit the whalebone of her corset, and the syringe ricocheted across the room like a well-thrown dart.

He returned to the chair, swiveled round to the desk, and wrote a prescription for penicillin V to be taken orally four times daily for five days. "Here." He handed her the scrip. "And can you make up a gargle of table salt and warm water?"

"Och, aye."

"Good. Use it three times a day, and go easy on the talking. You mustn't strain your voice."

"I will, sir. And will I keep wearing the Saint Brigid's cotton?"

Five months ago Barry would have told her it was a superst.i.tious waste of time. "Absolutely," he said solemnly, "and for a couple of days after you're all better." He knew by the great grin that creased her face he had said exactly the right thing.

He rose and gently took her arm to help her to her feet. There were other patients waiting. Barry knew that once Cissie Sloan got comfortable in a chair, she could be a hard woman to budge, even if the chair was one of Doctor O'Reilly's specials with an inch sawed off the front legs so that patients kept sliding down the seat. He steered her to the door to the hall. "If it's not all better in six days, next Monday, come back in and see me."

"It'll have to be better. If you could see the amount of work we've to do to get the chapel hall ready for the kiddies' Nativity play . . ."

"I'm sure you'll be fine, Cissie." Barry increased the pressure on her arm. "It'll take more than a tiny wee germ to knock the stuffing out of a powerful woman like yourself."

She blushed at what Barry supposed she saw as a compliment and playfully punched his shoulder. He knew he should take such familiarity as an indication of total acceptance by Cissie Sloan, but he rubbed his shoulder and wondered how Ca.s.sius Clay, the new world heavyweight champion, would fare after three rounds with the woman. Cissie would probably have destroyed him in the second round.

"I believe you, and thanks a lot, Doctor Laverty," she said. "It's early, I know, but if I don't see you before, you have a very merry Christmas."

"Thank you, Cissie, and the same to you."

He was about to leave her to make her own way out the front door when she asked, "And will you be coming to the Nativity play? It's Christmas week. The Monday."

"I will." He opened the surgery door.

Cissie lowered her voice. "And will you be bringing the pretty wee lady that's over at her studies in England?"

Barry laughed. There were no secrets here in Ballybucklebo. "I will, Cissie. She's coming home." And it couldn't be soon enough for him. He just hoped O'Reilly would be back on his feet so he, Barry, could have as much time off as possible to spend with Patricia Spence, the pretty wee lady who was studying at Cambridge.

He bade good-bye to Cissie and headed back to the waiting room. At least, he thought, the time pa.s.sed more quickly when he was busy, and trying to solve the patients' problems left little time for worrying about Patricia. She'd told him she loved him and that should be enough, shouldn't it?

He opened the door to the waiting room. "Who's next?"

He was not prepared when Santa Claus, resplendent in his red fur-trimmed suit, black boots, and vast white beard lumbered to his feet and announced, "Me, Doctor sir."

Barry chuckled, glanced around to make sure his next patients wouldn't be a bevy of elves, and escorted Saint Nick along to the surgery. He wondered how O'Reilly would deal with this; indeed he wondered, as he shut the door behind him, how O'Reilly was getting on this morning.

A Memory of Yesterday's Pleasures.

O'Reilly reckoned he could be doing a d.a.m.n sight better. He fidgeted in his armchair in the upstairs sitting room and stared at his unlit pipe in the ashtray. Christ, he wanted a smoke, but the flaming cough refused to go away, and it had kept him awake for half the b.l.o.o.d.y night.

He twitched his plaid dressing gown shut, tightened the waist tie, and scowled at his pyjamaed legs and slippered feet sticking out from under a blanket where they were propped up on a footstool. He cleared his throat, spat into a big linen handkerchief, and looked at the results.

The sputum was clear and sticky. There wasn't a large amount. Cla.s.sically sputum was expected to be like that with early bronchitis, which was almost certainly what ailed him now. Last night he'd had a sore tickly throat and Barry had been right about tracheitis, but by the early hours of this morning O'Reilly's entire chest had become tight and wheezy.

Acute bronchitis, while hardly life-threatening, was a bit more serious than tracheitis, and it might take just that bit longer for him to recover. He frowned at the gob in his handkerchief. If there were lots of pus cells, the stuff would have a greenish-yellow colour. It didn't, so he'd not have to worry about acute bacterial bronchitis or pneumonia. In the latter case, there would be a rusty tinge as well. He peered more closely. No blood. Excellent.

Blood in sputum meant one thing and one thing only until proved otherwise. Last night, the expression on young Laverty's face had told O'Reilly what Barry was thinking, as clearly as if he had spoken his thoughts aloud. He probably a.s.sumed that his senior colleague hadn't read about the connection between smoking and lung cancer. But he had, by G.o.d, and as things stood in the research community, cigarettes were definitely implicated. Pipe smoking didn't seem to be so bad. O'Reilly looked at the gob once more. Definitely no blood. It was a relief. Even doctors were not impervious to worrying about their own health.

He heard the front door slamming below. Young Barry was at his work, showing one patient out and going to get the next. Good for Barry. O'Reilly certainly didn't feel up to facing the mult.i.tudes this morning. He heard the telephone in the hall ringing. No doubt somebody who wanted a home visit, and that would keep Barry occupied for part of the afternoon. O'Reilly half listened to Kinky's voice coming from below as she answered the phone. It seemed odd that after all the years when he'd had n.o.body to share the work, he could now happily delegate some to his new a.s.sistant.

He yawned, coughed again, stuffed his handkerchief into the pocket of his dressing gown, and with his eyes half closed, lay back against the cushion at the back of the chair. He was sleepy and, he realized, bored.

He heard a quiet "Ahem," opened his eyes, and turned his head. Kinky came in through the doorway, head c.o.c.ked to one side, a steaming mug held in one hand.

"Yes, Kinky?"

"Is yourself feeling a bit better, sir?"

"A little, thanks."

"Huh." Mrs. Kincaid shrugged. O'Reilly thought she looked as believing as a mother who, having just caught a child out in some minor peccadillo, asks, "What are you doing?" and gets the sheepish reply, "Nothing."

"Well, my granny used to say, 'Feed a cold and starve a fever,' so I've made you some beef tea." She set the mug on the coffee table, stood back with arms folded, and glowered down at O'Reilly. "Here."

He knew he had no choice but to drink from the mug. He lifted it, and the tangy, meaty smell of the bouillon filled his nostrils. He sipped. "By G.o.d, that's powerful stuff, Kinky." He was relieved to see her expression soften. "Made it with Oxo, did you? Bovril maybe?" He knew at once that that had been a stupid thing to say. Kinky would never use a proprietary brand of anything if she could make her own.

"I did not." She frowned. "Indeed not, sir. It's made from the grade A beef, and-"

"Sorry, Kinky. I should have known, but I'm not altogether myself today." He took a deeper swallow.

"I'll forgive you," she said. "Thousands wouldn't"-she looked at his mug-"but get that down you, and get the good of it into you."

He thought she was going to add "like a good little boy."

"And I've a great big bowl of chicken broth for your lunch, so."

O'Reilly smiled weakly. "And I thought it was the Jews who believed in chicken soup?"

"Well, maybe they do and maybe they don't, but the Cork people do, so." She moved closer. "Sit forward."

He did as he was bid, and she grabbed the cushion, pulled it free, fluffed it up, and stuck it behind his back. "Now lean you back against that," she said.

O'Reilly leaned back and handed her the now empty mug. "Thanks, Kinky." He coughed, shook his head like an irritated stallion trying to dismiss an annoying cleg-fly, and said, "Who was on the phone?"

"The new doctor from the Kinnegar; he says his name's Fitzpatrick. He wants to come calling. He said it would be a courtesy visit."

"I hope you told him not today. I don't feel much up to having visitors."

"Of course I did." Kinky bent and arranged O'Reilly's blanket more tidily. "We've to get you back on your feet, so." She frowned. "I hope I convinced him for he seemed bound and determined to come today. If he does, I'll see to him."

O'Reilly smiled. This new Doctor Fitzpatrick might sound bound and determined. However, if anyone ever produced an ill.u.s.trated dictionary, a photo of Kinky, arms folded on chest, multiple chins thrust out, would accompany the entry for "determined." Doctor Fitzpatrick would have his work cut out if he imagined he could get by Kinky.

She snorted but smiled back. "Now is there anything else you'd be needing?"

"Just one wee favour?"

"What?"

He pointed to the big wall-mounted bookshelf. "Fourth shelf up, halfway along. The book in the orange cover."

She went to the bookshelf. "This one? The Happy Return by C. S. Forester?"

"That's it."

She brought the book and handed it to him. "About birthdays, is it? Like 'many happy returns'?"

He took the slim volume and managed a little laugh. "No. It's a story about a sea captain in Lord Nelson's navy."

"Nelson? And him the fellah with one eye and one arm on top of the column in Dublin City?"

"Right. They have one of him in London too. In Trafalgar Square."

She shrugged and said, with a tinge of disapproval, "Huh. No doubt he keeps the London pigeons as happy as the ones in Dublin."

O'Reilly knew Mrs. Kincaid was no respecter of English heroes. He pointed at the book. "This is a great read."

"Well, I'm sure if it's a story about the navy it'll do grand to keep your mind occupied, an old sailor man like yourself."

O'Reilly coughed. "Sure that was more than twenty years ago, Kinky."

"And don't I know it very well? And haven't I been housekeeping here since you got off that big battleship when the war was over and you came here?"

"You're right."

"Neither the one of us is getting any younger . . . and . . ."-she headed for the door-"neither is my chicken soup. I'll have to tend to it at once."

"Kinky?" O'Reilly settled back against the cushion. "Thanks for the beef tea."

"It's nothing." She hesitated in the doorway. "I'll be bringing your soup up on a tray. Would you like me to ask young Doctor Laverty to join you for his lunch?"

"I would."

"I'll see to it, so." She left.

Fingal O'Reilly smiled. Not for the first time he wondered just how an old bachelor man like himself would have managed without her. She could be as fussy as a mother hen, authoritarian as a sergeant major, and diplomatic as an amba.s.sador. Although he ran the practice, there was no doubt about who ran Number 1 Main Street, Ballybucklebo.

He cleared his throat, reached over to the coffee table, picked up his half-moon spectacles from where he had left them, stuck them on his nose, and opened the book. He hadn't read the Hornblower stories for years, and when he saw the handwriting inside the front cover, he gasped. To Fingal on our engagement. With all my love, Deidre.

He let the book fall into his lap.