An Irish Country Wedding (6 page)

“Mmm, I think that’s already been done, Fingal.”

O’Reilly grinned. “Bit more won’t hurt.” He set the brush aside then opened the oven door and popped the pie in. “Thirty minutes and everything’ll be done,” he said.

“Kinky told me twenty-five minutes at medium,” Barry said.

“Medium?” O’Reilly peered at the knurled wheel on the oven door. “I guessed that’d be about four hundred fifty. That’s what it’s at, and an extra five minutes won’t do it any harm. I like my crust nice and brown,” O’Reilly said.

Barry had a vague recollection of his mother using a setting of 350° to reheat already cooked food but decided to keep his counsel.

“Then at the start of the first dog watch, or if you prefer six o’clock, a feast fit for a couple of kings for us, lad.” He dropped his bantering tone. “And not long to wait after we’ve finished eating to hear what’s going to happen next in the Royal.”

Barry recognised what Fingal was doing. It was primitive, probably a throwback to when their ancestors wore skins, but by refusing to mention Kinky by name, O’Reilly, like Barry, was trying to pretend nothing was happening to her, or could.

O’Reilly untied his apron. “In the meantime,” he said, finishing the whiskey in one swallow, “I suggest we have a small libation, but unlike the ancient Greeks, refrain from pouring the sacrifice on the earth and use our throats instead.” He set the apron aside. “Come on. Upstairs to the lounge.”

“I’ll get out of my coat and I’ll be right up,” Barry said.

He hung his coat in the hall and was heading for the stairs when the doorbell rang. Now what? Barry opened the door to find Maggie MacCorkle smiling her toothless smile.

“Hello, Doctor dear,” she said. A limp daffodil adorned her hatband. “I’ll only keep you a wee minute, so I will.”

“Come in, Maggie.”

“Och, no. I’ll not be stopping.” She proffered a brown paper bag. “John McIlderry, him that works at City Hall, came out to bring Sonny some townland records, you know
 
… the oul goat’s
looking for a hill fort or a passage grave or some ancient ould thing
near Ballybucklebo. You know what he’s like about his archaeology.” She raised her eyes to the heavens. “Anyways, John telt us Kinky was sick. He’d heard it from Cissie Sloan, so he had.”

Who’d heard it from Aggie Arbuthnot, Barry thought.

“Sonny reckoned, no harm to yiz, but you and himself might not be the greatest cooks. Sonny’s out in the motor
—
”

Barry leaned past Maggie and waved at Sonny, who was sitting in his parked 1954 Sunbeam-Talbot.

Sonny waved back.

“So we thought we’d bring youse this here cottage pie I’d made yesterday and had in the fridge.” She shook the parcel. “And I put in a couple of slices of my plum cake for afters.”

Barry accepted the bag. “That’s very kind,” he said, hoping, ungraciously he knew, that Maggie’s cottage pies were not as God-awful as her plum cake. “Thank you.”

“Is Kinky going to be all right, sir?” Maggie had lowered her voice.

“She’s in the Royal and she’s comfortable,” Barry said, know
ing he sounded like an official hospital bulletin, “but that’s all I
can say. Sorry, Maggie.”

“Och, aye. I know you’re like priests, you doctors. Have to keep things confidential, like.”

“That’s it, Maggie, but we’ll let her know you both were asking for her, and please thank Sonny.”

“You and himself just let us know if you need anything,” Maggie said, “and there’s no rush to get the pie dish back when you’ve done.” She turned, then called back over her shoulder, “Just drop it in some day you’re passing.”

“Right.” You didn’t get people like Maggie and Sonny fussing over you when you worked in a teaching hospital, Barry thought as he trotted through to the kitchen to pop the bag in the fridge.

He heard a roar from upstairs.

“Are you coming tonight, Laverty?”

“Take your hurry in your hand,” he called back up and trotted to the staircase.

“Jameson or sherry?” O’Reilly was standing at the sideboard when Barry entered the room.

Barry hesitated then said, “Whiskey, please.”

O’Reilly, who already had his own glass refilled, poured and handed Barry his. “Who was that?”

“Maggie and Sonny with a cottage pie.”

O’Reilly nodded. “News travels,” he said. “Come and sit down.” He moved to an armchair, shooed Lady Macbeth out of the seat, sat, and made no objection when the little cat sprang into his lap and curled up in a purring ball.

Barry took the other chair. “
Sláinte
.” He sipped the smooth Irish whiskey.

“Cheers.” O’Reilly drank. “How’s Colin?”

“Greenstick. I splinted it and sent him to the Royal.”

“Good man.” O’Reilly scratched Lady Macbeth’s head. “And I’ll say again that you were absolutely right to send Kinky too so you’d be here if anybody needed one of us while I was out.” He frowned. “It’s dawned on me how much we’re going to miss having her here to answer the phone or doorbell.”

“We should be able to manage. One here, one out doing calls, like this afternoon.”

O’Reilly frowned. “I’m not so sure. What if both of us are out? Or take tomorrow. Someone must go and see Kinky.”

“She’d appreciate it if it’s you, Fingal.”

“I know. I’ll look in on Donal Donnelly too. See how he’s doing.”

Donal. With all the anxiety about Kinky, Barry had forgotten that Ballybucklebo’s arch-schemer had had a head injury last Saturday, been operated on that night for the removal of an intracranial blood clot, and was recovering well. “Say hello to him too.”

“I will.” O’Reilly paused. “Trouble is if you’re out on a visit
—
”

“There’ll be no one to answer if a patient calls here.” Barry frowned. “Any chance we could get a temporary receptionist?”

“I doubt it,” O’Reilly said, “but you never know.” He took another swallow. “There’s one thing in our favour. By now everybody in the village, aye, and most of the townland, will know Kinky’s sick. They’ll probably understand if they phone and there’s no one here to answer.” O’Reilly finished his whiskey and handed the glass to Barry. “Get me another, like a good lad. I don’t want to disturb her ladyship.”

Barry put his glass on a table and went to the sideboard. He sloshed a finger of whiskey into O’Reilly’s glass. “Here.”

“Cheers.” O’Reilly raised his glass.

The front doorbell rang.

“Bugger it,” said O’Reilly, rising, decanting Lady Macbeth, and putting his drink on the sideboard. “My turn, and I want to see how my spuds are coming on anyway. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Barry rose, sipped his drink, and wandered over to the bookshelf. It was all very well for O’Reilly to recommend a book about the charge of the Light Brigade. The man had absolutely no system of shelving his books. Two of Graham Greene’s novels were separated by
The Wind in the Willows
and, Barry had to tilt his head to one side to read the upside-down title of
Rudyard Kipling’s Verse. Inclusive Edition 1885–1926
. He scanned book spines until he saw, on a shelf he could only reach by standing on tiptoe,
The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade
by Cecil Woodham-Smith. He pulled it down and read in the Acknowledgement,
This curious story has never been told before
— Good start, he thought. The author’s got my interest. He was well into chapter one when Fingal reappeared.

“Spuds are coming on a treat,” he said, “and I peeped in the oven. Talk about a scrumptious smell, and my egg yolk’s browning the pastry to perfection. We’ll eat in five minutes.”

“Who was at the door this time, Fingal?” he asked.

“Alice Moloney,” he said. “Bacon-and-egg pie for us and please give Kinky her love and wish her a speedy recovery. I put it in the fridge.” He picked up his whiskey. “Bring your drink. It’ll take me a minute to prepare things.”

Barry rose and followed O’Reilly. As they reached the hall the doorbell and the phone rang. O’Reilly grabbed the phone and nodded to the door, which Barry, glass in hand, answered. “Cissie Sloan,” he said, slipping the hand with the glass behind his back. He could hear the cadence of O’Reilly’s voice, but not the words. Was it news about Kinky? “Come in,” Barry said.

“I’ll not, thanks, but my cousin Aggie, you know, her with the six toes, says Mrs. Kincaid’s poorly and
—
”

“She is,” Barry said, hoping to dam the verbal tide for which Cissie was renowned.

“I mind the last time Kinky got sick. I was telling Flo Bishop about it just there now. I seen her when I was walking over here, like.”

Barry reckoned the entire population of the village must know about Kinky now.

“It was ages ago, so it was, 1954, the Coronation
—
” She stopped dead and tapped her temple with an index finger. “Amn’t I the right eejit? The Queen was crowned in 1953
 
… anyroad Kinky was taken sick when they opened the festival of Britain.”

“That was 1951, Cissie.” Barry’d been eleven at the time and most impressed with the Skylon.

“Right enough? Then she must’ve got poorly in ’52. Do you know, Doctor? See me? Some days my head’s a marley. Full of hobbyhorse shite, so it is. I’d forget my own name.”

Barry had two choices. He could agree that Cissie could indeed be absentminded or draw from his stock of kindly white lies. He chose the latter. “Nonsense, Cissie. Now, what can I do for you?” He really did want to know who was on that phone.

“Here y’are,” she said, thrusting forward a grease-proof paper-
wrapped parcel. “I got this recipe from my ma, and she got it from an Englishwoman who was in Holywood in the last war because her husband was a soldier stationed in Place Barracks there for a while. He was with the Royal Ulster Rifles, you know, their nickname’s ‘The Stickies,’ so it is.”

Barry accepted the parcel and quickly asked, “And this is?” He reckoned he had to distract her before she could launch into a telling of all the regiment’s battle honours since it was raised in 1793.

“In the old days it was a bugger, pardon my French, boiling down the pigs’ trotters to make the gelatin for it, but you can buy that in the shops now.”

“And
it
is?”

She grinned. “A couple of Melton Mowbray pies. They go a treat cold with Branston pickle, so they do.”

“Thank you, Cissie. I’m sure they’ll be lovely.”

She dropped a tiny curtsey. “I’ll be running along, then,” she said, “but if there’s anything youse and Doctor O’Reilly need?”

“Thank you, Cissie,” O’Reilly said over Barry’s shoulder, “and I’ll be seeing Kinky tomorrow. I’ll give her your love.”

“Sir.” She left.

“Good,” said O’Reilly, peering up and down the road, “I don’t see any three-legged asses, but that one could talk the hind leg off a donkey.” He headed for the dining room. “Food. I’ve taken it through to the dining room. Come on.”

With the drink he’d been hiding from Cissie in one hand and
the Melton Mobray pies in the other, Barry followed O’Reilly into the dining room, sat, and put the pies on the table. “From Cissie,” he said. “Pork pies. Now, who was on the phone?”

“Not the hospital. I’ll tell you while we eat.”

Barry glanced at his watch. Six ten. He should have realised it was too early to hear from the Royal. He looked at O’Reilly, who had put a tureen near himself. “Boiled spuds,” he said, lifting the lid, “should have been floury things of beauty, but that phone call and Cissie held us up. They’re a bit overdone now. Sorry.”

Barry smiled. The big man was just like his mother, a superb cook who was forever apologising because she never felt her efforts were quite up to standard.

“And,
la piéce de résistance
.” With a flourish O’Reilly waved his left hand above his head, wrist cocked, and with his right set a plate bearing the pie dish in front of Barry. “
Voila
. Note the brown beauty of the crust.”

Barry thought perhaps the pastry should be a golden brown rather than deep mahogany.

O’Reilly sat at the head of the table. He handed Barry a large knife and a silver triangular server. “Do the honours, lad, and get a move on. As an old Dublin patient of mine used to say, ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a farmer’s arse through a tennis racquet.’ I can taste those spuds soaked in the gravy from the pie.”

Barry laughed as he sank the knife into the crust. A plume of steam escaped with the scent of cooked meat. Very well-cooked meat. He carved a wedge and placed it on Fingal’s plate, already half full of potatoes. He started to serve himself when he heard a strangled noise followed by a loud “Bloody hell.”

“What’s up?”

“Look in your pie,” O’Reilly roared. “Look in the bloody thing.”

Barry peeled back the upper crust. Where there should have been tender steak and firm kidney surrounded by a rich gravy, only a few shrivelled pieces of meat sat beside black desiccated kidney slices. The gravy had congealed into lumps. “Oh dear,” he said, and recalled that P. G. Wodehouse had famously remarked, “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” Much the same could be said about a hungry Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and a well-fed one.

“It’s all Helen Hewitt’s fault.”

Barry shook his head. Sometimes O’Reilly’s logic still lost
Barry. “Helen Hewitt?” He remembered the young woman:
pretty, green eyes, eczema—

“If she hadn’t kept me on the phone so long. Still,” O’Reilly said, “she’s manna from heaven. We have a need and Providence has provided. You remember when Helen quit as Alice Moloney’s shop assistant and got a job in a linen mill?”

“I do.”

“The mill closed down last week. Helen’s out of work. She heard about Kinky from Mary Dunleavy, the publican’s daughter. Helen put two and two together and guessed we need someone to answer the phone
—
”

“Brilliant,” Barry said, “and she was bloody quick off the mark. That shows initiative.”

“I thought so too. She’ll start tomorrow at lunchtime. Now, speaking of manna,” said O’Reilly, “and in the culinary sense. Kinky makes her own Branston pickle.” He rose. “I’ll go and get some and we can eat up the pork pies. Starvation won’t be on our agenda and I’m sure Arthur will enjoy the burnt steak and kidney.” He took the remains of the pie and left.