Friends Indeed Page 9

  'The Orange loyalists are up to their tricks again,' he said, 'raising no less than two flags on the steeple of the church in Clones last night. Says here one of them was orange and the other blue with William III on horseback in the centre. Not that it did them much good, they're floating there still but without a bit of notice being taken of them.'

  'Neither the mustard poultice nor the oil is doing much good,' Martha reported as she came from the bedroom. 'Fill the kettle again, Sarah. We'll keep trying.'

  'There'll be civil war and bloodshed before it's all over,' Cristy Rooney said, 'and even when it's over it won't be over, not by a long shot. All of the armies in the world won't make things right when the will of a people is put down and divided.'

  'Let me get the doctor,' I urged, 'it can't do any harm and I've got the carriage outside.' I expected an argument. I got none.

  'He might do some good,' said Martha and I knew then that Mary Ann's life was in imminent danger. 'Go with her, Sarah, to the dispensary in Eccles Street. Get Dr Morgan. He's old but he's the best of them.'

  'He could hardly get up the stairs when he came to Mrs Tarpey.'

  Sarah's objection was for the sake of it. She was every bit as frightened as I was as she threw on the Paris shawl and we went down the stairs together. The women on the steps fell sympathetically silent as we went past them. Everyone knew everything in Henrietta Street.

  The driver began muttering as he held open the carriage door for us. 'There's an unhealthy amount of sickness about,' he said as we climbed in, 'the Asiatic cholera, hundreds dead from that. My own nephew dead from the typhus. You'd wonder what plan God had for us all.'

  'It's not religion we want from you but speed with the horses.' Sarah pulled the door shut with a snap.

  We made Eccles Street in less than ten minutes and found the dispensary, not far from the new Mater Misericordiae hospital, in another two. It was after five o'clock by now and its shutters were closed up for the day. We stood side by side on the step as Sarah lifted a dull, unpolished brass knocker and let it drop, twice. We heard the sound resounding in the house behind. Then we heard a silence.

  'God in Heaven, please don't let him be gone,' Sarah prayed with a passion that God didn't seem to hear. The silence stretched.

  I lifted the knocker again, high. When it hit the door this time the sound echoed even in the street. Inside, someone began running down the stairs. 'Thank God,' said Sarah.

  A young man in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat opened the door to us. He had bright red hair and a pale, plain, freckled face.

  'The dispensary's closed,' he said. 'It opens at nine in the morning.'

  'I want Dr Morgan,' Sarah said, 'my sister's sick. She needs a doctor. We've done all we can with her. She's ten years old.'

  'In what way is she sick?'

  'I'll tell all that to Dr Morgan.'

  'I'm a doctor too. Tell me.' The way he said it there was no arguing with him.

  'My grandmother says it's pneumonia. It began, without warning and with a fever, two days ago. Then a chill took over her body, rattling every bone, and then a cough. She's weak in her head and dizzy. She's too tired even to lift her head up.'

  'Your grandmother could be right. I'll get my bag.'

  'Dr Morgan is the one usually comes to Henrietta Street. We've got a carriage . . .'

  'You'll need more than a carriage to coax Dr Morgan to Henrietta Street. He died two weeks ago. Of typhus.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Allie

  Dr Daniel Casey, sitting opposite myself and Sarah in the horse cab, folded his arms and looked out the window.

  The driver had made no attempt to small-talk him about health matters, or anything else, as we climbed in. Daniel Casey wasn't the kind of man people were easily familiar with. He was remote and very serious.

  'The patient is ten years old, you say?' he frowned fiercely as we moved off. I don't think he even knew he was doing it. He had sandy eyebrows and the green-grey eyes of a lot of red-haired people. They were his best feature.

  'She will be eleven next month, with God's help.' Sarah tightened the Paris shawl about her shoulders.

  'It's the help of man she needs now.' The doctor said this in a way that made me certain he was an atheist. I put the question to him.

  'Do you believe there's a God who might help?' I said.

  He unfolded his arms before answering. 'It's said that you only need scratch a man who practises medicine to find an atheist.' He half smiled. 'In my case this is true.'

  I didn't ask him why; I didn't want to hear about nightmare suffering and the wonders of medical science. I had another question for him. 'What about women who practise medicine? Do they find it equally hard to believe in God?'

  'I don't know. But the miracle of a woman being allowed to become a physician probably helps them have some faith.'

  'There are still so few women in medicine then?'

  'Hardly any at all,’ he turned to Sarah. 'How was your sister when you left her?'

  'Feverish. Full of a great lassitude. More and more racked by coughing.'

  'Is there blood?'

  'Blood?' Sarah straightened. 'There's no blood . . . that I've seen.'

  'When she coughs does she bring up phlegm, or pus in which there's blood?'

  'I haven't seen any blood,' Sarah repeated, 'but she complains of pain when she coughs.'

  He didn't speak again until we reached Henrietta Street. Then he spoke only to excuse himself and rush ahead of us up the stairs. He had his jacket off and was bending over Mary Ann with a stethoscope to her chest when we arrived.

  'He's young for a doctor.' Martha, filling the bedroom doorway with her large, bony frame and heavy skirts, made certain Dr Casey could hear her. She was annoyed at the older doctor for dying. 'Dr Morgan had no need for instruments. Like any good physician he could read a sick person with his hands.'

  'He couldn't heal himself,' Bess said from the bedside, 'so be quiet and let this man do what he has to do.'

  She stood as if praying while Daniel Casey gently examined Mary Ann. When he was finished he stroked the child's arm and told her she was brave and that he would come again tomorrow. She smiled, trusting him, her eyes like hot coals in her face.

  'There's tea made,' Martha Rooney was gracious enough as he came out of the room, 'you'll have a cup?'

  'I'll wash my hands if I may?’ he said and Bess showed him the basin ready filled. The rooms had never seemed so clammy. It was as if the combined heat of the past months had slowly baked its way through the thick walls.

  Cristy Rooney put his paper down when the doctor sat to the table. 'You're young for a doctor,' he said, echoing his mother.

  'I'm fully qualified,' Daniel Casey took the tea Bess handed him,'and your daughter has pneumonia right enough. She'll need to be nursed, night and day, in just the way you've been doing. There will be a crisis on the ninth day.'

  'We didn't need you to tell us she'd pneumonia or that she needs nursing,' Martha said, 'and the ninth-day crisis is well known to the people around here.'

  'Yes. I'm sure it is. I'm sorry not to have better news for you.' He gulped the tea, then asked for a second cup. 'There are many things medical science has no cure for. This disease is one of them. Nature has its own way of dealing with it. I'll come every day. I live in rooms over the dispensary so you'll know where to get me if you need me at any time.'

  'There are six days until the ninth day then we'll know.' Bess crossed herself. 'We must pray to God and His Blessed Mother that she'll be spared to us.' She took a breath. 'Prayer is all we have now.'

  'Yes,' said Dr Casey, 'prayer will help.' His face, as he said this, was perfectly sincere. 'Children are resilient and make remarkable recoveries.'

  'What's the point of the tube then, the stethoscope? Why did you put the child through that kind of thing for no reason?' Cristy Rooney looked angry. It was the only emotion he felt able to show.

  'The stethoscope is a powerful assistant to dia
gnosing disease,' Dr Casey spoke as if in a classroom, 'it's an aid too in the detection of foreign bodies in the air passages. There's every chance she'll get well.'

  'There's a fifty-fifty chance,' Cristy Rooney said.

  Dusk was falling and the room filling with shadows as Martha lit a candle and put it on the table. She put another on a shelf. The shadows lengthened and the bird, which had been giving the odd warble until then, fell silent.

  Dr Casey unrolled his sleeves and buttoned his shirt cuffs. The candles highlighted the fine, dark red stubble on his chin and cheeks and made him look tired. He looked a lot less young too.

  'Thank you for coming,' Bess said, 'my daughter and her friend will go to the end of the street with you.' She turned to me. 'You'd best go on home Allie they'll be wondering where you are I'll be at the house in the morning.' She stopped. 'Maybe you'd explain our situation to your father for me?'

  'There's no need for you to come tomorrow . . .'

  She patted my hand. 'There's every need so go on home now.' She stood. 'I'm going back in to Mary Ann.'

  'I'll sit with you,' her husband said as he picked up his newspaper, 'for a while.'

  Going down the stairs, with the doctor ahead of me and Sarah, I saw the quick, black shape of first one rat, then another, darting along the hallway to the back of the house. It was a relief to get out of there and into the noisy, gaslit street. We left Sarah on the footpath, both the doctor and myself promising to return next day, and walked towards Granby Row to get me a horse cab. Dr Casey said he preferred to walk back to his rooms over the dispensary.

  'What will happen on the ninth day?' I asked.

  'There will be a crisis during which the temperature shoots up.' He looked about, as if expecting a horse cab to appear from a doorway. 'The patient either dies, or miraculously gets better.'

  I thought about Cristy Rooney's remark. 'So it's true she has a fifty-fifty chance, if she lives that long . . .' I hesitated. 'Is there anything I can do?'

  'There is little either of us can do, Miss Buckley.'

  He didn't speak again until we got to Granby Row. There were a lot of people about but no cabs to be had and, because I found his silence unsettling, I said I would walk on alone to Rutland Square where I was sure to get one. When he insisted on coming with me I was irritated, and not one bit grateful. I couldn't stop him but I could do something about the silence. I began asking questions.

  'You're not a Dublin man?' His accent told me this much.

  'I'm from Galway.'

  'Why did you choose to practise medicine?'

  'My father was a general practitioner.'

  It was like getting teeth from a hen but I persisted. 'Was? He doesn't practise any more?'

  'He died of typhus. As Dr Morgan did.'

  'Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . . upset you. Or to pry.'

  'It's all right. He died when I was a small boy.' His smile, when he looked down at me, made his face less plain. 'Contagious diseases are what you might call an occupational hazard for physicians.'

  A silence, much worse than the first, stretched. It was that awkward time of evening when the horse cabs were all engaged taking people to the theatre and such and there still wasn't one to be seen. I embarked on a less personal line of questioning.

  'What's your view of Sir William Wilde? Is he as scandalous as they say he is?'

  'I have no view on Sir William Wilde's private life,' he said stiffly, 'he's a fine doctor and has made a special study of diseases of the ear.'

  Pompous as well as overly serious, I thought. 'He hasn't been cast out by his peers then, on account of the scandal surrounding the court case he was involved in?'

  'Certainly not.' He was curt. 'Do you think he should be?'

  Touche, I thought, pleased I'd sparked a response. 'I don't know enough about the case to form a judgement. I've been away for two years. In Paris.'

  'I studied medicine in Paris. At the Hopital la Charite. I spent five years there.'

  'Oh. I see.'

  I felt flattened, and envious. He'd been in Paris far longer than I had. I wondered if he'd lived the life of reckless abandon student doctors were infamously known for there.

  'What were you doing in Paris?' he asked.

  'I was in a convent, learning deportment. I didn't really see that much of the city.'

  'I spent my time there at the hospital,' he admitted. 'I was a conscientious student. I owe my education to a patron, a friend of my father's. I worried about letting him down and missed out on the life of the city.'

  I might have known. 'You could become part of Dublin city life instead,' I said. It was then, just as he was beginning to talk, that a horse cab came alongside. Dr Casey helped me up and had closed the door before I sat down.

  'Good night, Miss Buckley.' He strode away.

  He didn't look back, once. He didn't give me a chance to even say good night or to thank him. He certainly hadn't been polished up much during his time in Paris. His manners were pure west of Ireland.

  The days of Mary Ann's sickness lost their beginnings and endings and blurred into one long day as the week went on. I left Haddington Road early each morning and came back in the evening and in between sat with Mary Ann and read to her or sponged her small body to keep it cool. She got thinner. It was impossible to believe anyone could be so thin and live.

  Sarah hardly left the rooms in that time and Martha Rooney went out only to sell what she could in the mornings. Sarah's father came and went and read his newspaper and looked at his daughter and went out again. Bess worked and sat with Mary Ann when she came home. Dr Daniel Casey came every day. Nobody talked about the ninth-day crisis. It was enough to be waiting for it.

  My parents didn't try to stop me going to Henrietta Street. My father came once to visit Mary Ann but my mother said she felt too distressed to visit. Her distress didn't prevent her buying new gowns for herself, nor from telling me I'd fallen back into the ways and manners of Henrietta Street. On the seventh day of Mary Ann's illness she had Mary Connor purchase a basket of fruit for the sick child. Mary Ann couldn't eat any of it, of course, but Bess said it was the gesture that counted. I thought myself that my mother might have made a more useful gesture while she was at it. Money or bed linen would have served some purpose.

  I was alone a lot with Sarah. Poor Mary Ann, whose terrible lethargy kept her asleep most of the time, was barely aware of us or our conversations. We talked a lot.

  ‘I sometimes think Mary Ann getting sick like this is God's way of punishing me,' Sarah said one day.

  'Punishing you for what?' I said.

  'For my selfishness. For putting myself before everything. For my impurity. For offering myself to a man. For being without shame.'

  We were by the window, the day dulled by a mist but still hot enough. I was standing, looking into the street below. Sarah was sitting on the sill, saying all of this as if reciting one of the litanies we'd been taught in national school.

  'Who is the man?' I asked.

  'He's a soldier. A corporal. His name is Jimmy Vance and he's stationed in Beggar's Bush Barracks. I met him early in the summer, one day in Baggot Street when I was shopping for provisions for your mother. He carried my basket for me.' She stopped, remembering. I waited a long time for her to go on. 'He made me laugh and he was so handsome in his uniform,' she said at last and looked up at me. 'How many women would you say have fallen in love with soldiers in uniform since the beginning of time?'

  'Do you mean since they wore chain mail and plate armour?'

  'Oh, Allie, please say you understand what I'm trying to tell you . . .' She was close to tears.

  I made allowances for her weepy state, given how upset she was about Mary Ann. Tears, in my view, were for the great sadnesses in life. Loving a soldier didn't seem to me something to cry about.

  'You're telling me you love this Jimmy Vance,' I said as I pulled over the stool and sat facing her, 'and that you've given yourself to him, is that it?'
r />   She didn't answer immediately, tracing the letter J with her finger on the window, thinking I don't know what thoughts. Now that she was confirming what I'd suspected I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Once it was spoken between us I would have to openly acknowledge another's right to her affections and loyalty. But it was too late to go back. She'd opened the gate herself and I would have to accept whatever came through.

  'I haven't given myself to him in the sense that you mean,' she said at last, 'but I want to and do love him. He's…'

  'Does he love you?' I drew the line at listening to the wonders of her soldier's personality and beauty.

  'He says he does.'

  'Has he asked you to marry him?'

  'Not yet.'

  'Do you think he will?'

  'I know he will. He says he won't go to India without me.'

  It was a minute before I could bring myself to go on with my questioning. For those sixty seconds I hated Jimmy Vance.

  'You would go to India with him?'

  'I would go to the planet Mars with him.'

  'You might have to, when your father finds out.'

  'Do you think I haven't thought of that?' She rubbed furiously at the letter she'd outlined in the window. 'He's the reason I keep Jimmy a secret.'

  'Your grandmother won't be any easier,' I said, 'and your mother will wear holes in her knees, praying for you. But she won't oppose you.'

  'I've thought of all that and I know my mother won't go against me. But her life will be made a misery by my father and grandmother. My father will rant night and day about me disgracing the family. My grandmother will be as bad but with her it'll be because she doesn't want me to marry anyone. Not in this country anyway. She wants me to go to America and find a life and a husband there. She says there's nothing in Ireland for someone like me and that there won't be for years to come.'

  'Are you sure your Jimmy Vance is so very secret from them all?' I said. 'I suspected that you had a man, after all. Your mother knows something is up and so does my father, I'm sure of it.'