Malachi straightened with a groan and reached behind him to knead his strained muscles. With the sun beginning to set and with his hands behind him, he stood looking at his field of freshly sown potatoes. He sighed in relief. He knew now, that he and his mother would stave off The Poor House for yet another year. With his back still aching, he began the trudge home. Beating the darkness by mere moments, he opened the front door of his cottage. No candles were lit and the fire had died. He stifled his immediate reaction and called to his mother. She didn’t answer and he began to feel fear.
He ran to her room, brushing aside the blanket that served as a her door and found her shivering in her bed. He knelt at her side and took her hand.
“Mother? Mother?”
She turned a deathly pale face to him and tried to comfort him with a smile.
“Ah sure, tis but an Autumn chill Malachi. I’ll be right as rain tomorrow. You see that I won’t”
Malachi smiled at his mother’s words and the effort she was taking to reassure him.
“Are you warm enough?”
“Well I’d be lying if I said I was.”
He nodded.
“I’ll be right back.”
He returned to the kitchen and began to rescue the fire. He shuttered the windows and when the fire caught, he put the kettle on. He found the leaves and began preparing the mug of tea that was precious to his mother. He was disturbed by a shout from the bedroom. He rushed in to see his mother vomiting onto the hard-packed soil floor. She looked up at him apologetically. He gently took her shoulders and settled her back onto the bed. He found a bucket and began to scrape the vomit into it. He threw it and the bucket out the front door and sprinkled several handfuls of turf-dust onto the floor.
“Thank you son.”
“Tis a doctor you need Mother. We’ve some money put by and with the spuds set, we’re good for the rest.”
He looked at his mother, worry crowding the deep tan of his forehead.
“So no arguing. I’ll have the doctor here in three hours.
She turned her face to him, her body wracked with shivers.
“That’s all we have in the world Malachi. You’d throw it away on a bit of a chill?”
“Mother! You’ve never been sick a day in your life. You need a doctor.”
She beckoned him close and put her hand on his face.
“You’re a good man to be so worried about your old mother, so I won’t argue with you. All I ask is that you wait till morning.”
He looked at her. Worry and confusion overwhelming him. Then his shoulders dropped and he relented.
“Till morning then.”
“That’s a good boy. Now go make me a mug of milky tea, just the way I like it.”
He grinned at her and returned to the kitchen. The kettle was steaming as he poured the boiling water into a mug. He allowed it to steep for a count of two hundred, as he had done several times a day, every day, for near forty years now. Then he poured a generous measure of milk into the brew and returned to the bedroom. She was fast asleep. Her breathing regular, but loud and raspy. He stood and watched her for several minutes, the tea growing cold in his hand.
He put the mug down and got into the bed with is mother and held her close. As he fell asleep he noticed her shivers lessening. He woke next morning with a groan. His back reminding him of the field sown. As his eyes adjusted to the near total darkness he remembered his mother. He leaned over to find her sleeping peacefully. He sighed in relief and quietly got out of bed.
He made his breakfast and sat silently eating it. When the sun eventually filled the house with light he heard his mother call him. She was doubled up on her bed, clutching her belly in agony. She struggled to speak.
“Go. Go get the doctor.”
He left without pause. He would need to run the twenty minutes to Hegarty’s farm, where he would borrow their horse and then ride for an hour to the town, where the doctor held his practice. He hadn’t gone half a mile before he was forced to bend over a wall to empty his stomach. He tried to run on, but his legs were as jelly and though his belly was now empty, it still forced him to stop every few steps to bend and retch. Tears of anger and frustration began to fall from his eyes. He was reduced to crawling before he had to admit defeat. He felt a growing despair that his mother would die alone, with him curled up on this road. He punched the ground in grief and turned back. He began the slow agony of returning to his mother. If he could not save her, he would at least hold her hand at the end.
It was the longest hour of his life, but he did reach the house, His knees and hands were bloodied, but he got there. At the front door he struggled to his feet and was about to enter when he heard a noise behind him. He jerked round to see a young man, atop a horse, staring at him.
“Sorry to disturb you Sir, but you seem to be in some distress?”
Malachi nodded. He took his hand off the door to face the rider but without the support, he fell heavily to his knees. When he came to, he was laying on the floor of his kitchen. The fire was blazing and he was covered with a blanket. He looked around him warily, trying to make sense of the situation.
“Ah Malachi, you’re awake.”
Malachi looked up at a young man who was smiling down at him. The man had taken off his jacket and had rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“Who are you?”
The man reached down a hand to Malachi.
“I’m Doctor Bartholomew Smythe. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Malachi shook the man’s soft hand silently. He then tried to stand. The Doctor helped him to his feet and led him to this mother’s bedroom. She was asleep and deathly pale.
“Is she going to live Doctor?”
“I certainly hope so Malachi, I’d hate my first ever patient to die on me.”
Malachi could hear the attempt at humour but chose not hit the doctor for it. If this man was saving his mother then he’d endure his stupid words.
“Did you give her medicine?”
“I administered medicine to you both Malachi and I am confident you’ll both pull through.”
They returned to the kitchen and sat at the table. Malachi struggled to make conversation, never having had to entertain a guest like Doctor Smythe before. The good Doctor sensing Malachi’s discomfort took pity on him and asked him several inconsequential questions about the weather, his farm, local politics and his mother. This could only serve for so long and the uncomfortable silences grew longer. As evening approached however their awkward society was interrupted by Malachi’s mother walking into the kitchen, looking hale and hearty.
“Jaysus mother, tis as if you were never sick.”
She laughed and took a seat next to the Doctor.
“Make the tea Malachi and we’ll start the settling up, with the good Doctor.”
Malachi nodded and put the kettle on for boiling. He got three mugs and the leaves and put them on the table. His mother turned to the Doctor.
“Well Sir, you have our gratitude and you’ll have some money out of us too. What you asking for?”
The Doctor looked uncomfortable at the direct questioning and answered hesitatingly.
“Well, you see Ma’am, I am a Doctor newly raised and I am a practitioner of a new kind of medicine, so I am a little unsure of the charge.”
Malachi poured the boiling water into the three mugs and went to fetch the milk.
“A new doctor and a new medicine you say? That strikes me as expensive. Tell us abut this new medicine.”
The Doctor’s face lit up and he sat straighter on his chair, enthusiasm lighting his face.
“Well, Ma’am, I’m glad you asked, as it’s part of my job to spread the word to all and sundry about this most splendid invention. The efficacy of which, both you and your son can now bare witness to.”
Malachi sat down at the table, holding the jug of milk. The Doctor took the milk from his hand.
“If you will allow, I will demonstrate the principal that underpins this wondrous breakthrough in medicine, using this milk.”
Malachi and his mother watched the Doctor warily. Curiosity warring with their fear for the precious milk in this sop’s hands.
“I assume that the Lady of the house, is partial to milky tea?”
Malachi nodded.
The Doctor, with a broad grin, dipped a spoon into the jug of milk and then held the spoon over one of the mugs of tea. A tiny drop of milk fell from the spoon and he then used another spoon to stir the tea vigorously.
“The key is dilution. The less of an active ingredient the better.”
Malachi and his mother watched the Doctor blankly, as he took another spoon and dipped it into the stirred tea and added a drop of that tea to another mug. He again stirred that mug and repeated the process to the third mug. As he was stirring the third mug he looked at Malachi in triumph.
“Now, I would ask you to imagine another one hundred mugs and then ten times that many again. One drop progressing the whole way through entire.”
He stopped stirring and lifting the mug, he showed it to Malachi.
“Then at the final mug we have the milkiest tea possible as that mug of tea would have to remember the milk all the harder.”
Malachi quickly reached for the mug and took it from the Doctor’s unresisting fingers. The mug safe, the Doctor collapsed forward, his forehead slamming onto the table. Only then did Malachi see the handle of his mother’s favourite carving knife protruding from base of the Doctor’s skull.
Malachi put the mug on the table and poured a generous measure of milk into it. He then handed it to his mother. She took a sip and smacked her lips in satisfaction.
“Tell me Malachi, did you empty your bowels today?”
“Yes Mother and messy it was too.”
“I think we’ll be having words with Hegarty about that side of bacon he sold us.”
“Well I did say it smelled a bit.”
“True, but you’re a known picky eater.”
Malachi nodded in agreement as he sipped his black tea. He looked again at the Doctor.
“Do you think he believed what he was shite’n on about?”
“I don’t know, but at least we know this meat is fresh.”
“True enough, true enough. I’ll get the bucket.”
“Good boy Malachi, but make sure you give it a good wash first. We don’t want it remembering vomit.”
THE END
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