An Irish Country Cottage

by Patrick Taylor

  “Thank you,” she said.

  O’Reilly slung a game bag over his left shoulder and tucked his unloaded twelve-bore shotgun, broken at the breech, into the crook of his right elbow. He opened the car’s back door. “Come.”

  Out piled Kenny. His otter tail thrashed and he rapidly shook his square chocolate head.

  “Sit.”

  Down went the dog’s backside.

  “Good.”

  The cobbled stable yard was crowded with parked cars and four estate cars with wooden side panelling. Five men carrying shotguns were dressed in waterproof coats, with paddy hats or deerstalkers, and were drinking from teacups. No alcohol for the guns. Bloody sensible, O’Reilly thought.

  The other spectators, gentlemen similarly clad and ladies wearing head scarves, reefer jackets, heavy sweaters, slacks, and rubber boots, were returning the empty glasses of what would have been the equivalent of a fox hunt’s stirrup cup to Thompson, the marquis’s valet/butler.

  At the other side of the yard, a group of beaters, most wearing dunchers and carrying stout sticks, was being instructed by Rory Mehaffey, the gamekeeper. O’Reilly recognised an off-duty PC Mulligan, Gerry Shanks, and Lenny Brown, accompanied by his son Colin. The lad had certainly filled out and could do with a shave. He’d be sitting his Junior Certificate this June; the next step, O’Reilly hoped, on the road to university. Passing that, and in two more years passing Senior Certificate with high enough marks, would be the gateway to an academic path for the young lad. Colin’s mongrel, Murphy, sat at his feet. Several springer spaniels; Finn MacCool, the marquis’s red setter; a German pointer; and a Jack Russell terrier who rejoiced in the name of Riley milled around, sniffing each other to renew old acquaintances.

  One Donal Donnelly was conspicuous by his absence. He’d have gone down to Rasharkin to be with his family for the New Year’s Day holiday. O’Reilly was no closer to coming up with a solution to finding temporary living quarters for the Donnelly family. He sighed and thought, What can’t be cured must be endured, but his heart ached for them. He turned to Kitty. “Quite the turnout,” he said, then looked up at a cold blue sky where wisps of grey cloud wandered from west to east, “and not a bad day for the shoot.”

  To O’Reilly’s right, weak sunlight limped over the roof of the stables. The last of John and Myrna’s hunters had been sold the year before, but two sturdy cob horses that the MacNeills rode for fun looked with large brown eyes past their Roman noses, from which little jets of vapour were emitted every time they exhaled. A third horse’s head, small, thick-maned, and pure white, appeared from a stall farther along.

  To O’Reilly’s left stood the big house. Its core was a grey, solid, Georgian pile in the Palladian style with little external ornamentation, regular rows of windows, and towering chimney stacks with red terracotta pots. Successive lords of the manor had cobbled on a new wing here, bay windows there, a conservatory. O’Reilly pointed out a domed and slitted observatory to Kitty. “John MacNeill’s Lord-knows-how-many-greats-grandfather built that and identified the comet MacNeill from it about the same time Herschel discovered Uranus.”

  “And two hundred years later, the Americans and Russians are racing to be first to put a man on the moon. We’ve come a long way,” she said.

  “In some ways,” he said. “And in others, not at all.” The Georgian part of the house had been completed in 1799, one year after the rising of the United Irishmen—a group of mostly Presbyterians and Catholics who regarded themselves as Irishmen only and would countenance no sectarian friction.

  O’Reilly noticed the marquis and his sister walking toward them. John wore a deerstalker, Norfolk jacket, plus fours, and stout leather boots. Myrna, who always rode side-saddle, as usual sported her riding habit with its voluminous black skirts. She carried her light Boss twenty-bore, with which she was a crack shot.

  John, like O’Reilly, was carrying a twelve-bore, but while O’Reilly’s came from Braddell’s, the local Belfast gunsmith, John’s was one of a matched pair from Purdey’s, the gun-makers to the aristocracy. Before the war, each gun at a grouse shoot would have a man called a loader, who would relieve his master of a just-fired gun, the first of the pair, and hand him a loaded one, the second of the pair, then reload the recently fired one to be ready again. King George V regularly used this system of exchanging guns twice to take five grouse from a covey of five.

  That master-servant situation, with the master enjoying the sport and the poorly paid loader doing the hard work, embodied the divide in Ireland between the landed gentry, who were Anglicans, and the working poor, who were Catholic or non-conforming Protestants. It was a divide that had bedevilled Irish politics for centuries and had led to the breakup of the country into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1921. Today what was happening in Ulster was still in part a class struggle with religious overtones, but was now complicated by the desire of the Nationalists to be reunited with the Republic and an equally strong longing of the Loyalists to remain part of the UK.

  The People’s Democracy had sent forty of their members on a four-day march to Derry this morning trying to get their non-sectarian points across, and O’Reilly wondered how they were getting on.

  He heard Kitty greeting the MacNeills. No one else was near, so she could afford to be informal. “Happy New Year, John. Myrna. Thank you for inviting us.”

  “Happy New Year, O’Reillys,” John O’Neill said, bowing, taking Kitty’s hand, and raising it to half an inch from his lips. “And it’s my great pleasure.”

  “And ours,” O’Reilly said.

  The little white horse neighed.

  “New horse, John?”

  The marquis shook his head. “Belongs to a cousin who’s gone to Australia for a while. We’re just looking after her. She’s a little sabino-white Shetland.” He glanced at his watch and said with a smile, “I don’t want to rush you, but we really should be moving to the first drive.” He started walking back into the yard. “The shooting brakes are waiting.”

  “Fine,” O’Reilly said, following, with Kitty at his side.

  John O’Neill glanced over his shoulder. “I hope you and Kitty will sit with us at lunch. I’ve an important question I’d like to ask.”

  * * *

  “Hey on out. Hey on out.” O’Reilly listened to the distant cries of the beaters and their whistling. The men, with their dogs ranging ahead, would be walking in line abreast through a wood in front of where O’Reilly stood. The racket of them beating their walking sticks on the trunks of leafless silver birches would flush out any birds perched in the trees or feeding in the undergrowth. It was the beginning of the morning’s third drive. He slipped two Eley-Kynoch five-shot cartridges into the gun’s breech, closed the weapon, and made sure the safety catch was on.

  He and Kitty were fourth from the right end of the line of eight guns spaced at twenty-five-yard intervals in a fallow field bordering the wood. She sat on her shooting stick to his left.

  Kenny sat rigidly at O’Reilly’s right. The big dog’s nostrils were never still. O’Reilly was conscious of the smell of pine borne on the breeze from a nearby reforested area. He wondered what a kaleidoscope of scents the Labrador was getting.

  “Hey on out, hey on out. Hey on. Hey on.” Whistles. The clamour of stick on trunk. The beaters were drawing nearer.

  “Kek-kek-kek.” A cock pheasant crowed from somewhere ahead. Today’s shoot was cocks only, to preserve the hen birds for next season’s breeding stock.

  “Cock over,” voices yelled.

  O’Reilly heard the rattling of pinions as a single cock pheasant burst from the coppice, stubby wings a blur as the bird strained to gain height, its long tail feathers trailing behind, its dark green and red-wattled head thrust forward. It would pass directly over him. He slipped off the safety catch. As the bird drew nearer, O’Reilly put the gun’s butt to his right shoulder and began, as he had been taught years ago by his uncle Hedley, to “shovel up” a bird approaching from hea
d on. He stared along the barrels and swung the bead sight through the travelling pheasant until the sight had gone from the tip of its tail to barely clearing the neb of its beak. The pheasant was directly overhead when O’Reilly squeezed the trigger of the right barrel, too late aware that he might not have allowed enough lead-off. The gun bellowed and the recoil slammed the butt into his shoulder.

  The gun to O’Reilly’s right yelled, “Tower bird,” the traditional call to indicate that, as is the way of its kind, the wounded pheasant was climbing vertically into a cloudless sky.

  This second shot needed no deflection to account for the bird’s forward progress. O’Reilly simply covered it with the bead sight, fired the left barrel, and watched the pheasant’s head snap back, its wings still, and the bird plummet to earth, hitting the ground with a thump and a burst of feathers. “Hi lost.”

  Kenny bounded away across the field.

  “Hey on out. Hey on out.” The shouts and whistles were closer now. “Cock over. Cock over.” O’Reilly heard more shots from along the line as Kenny picked up O’Reilly’s bird and trotted back, head high, to sit at his master’s feet and present the trophy. O’Reilly removed the still-warm pheasant from the dog’s mouth and slipped it into his game bag to keep company with another cock, a woodcock, and two wood pigeons. A single dowdy brown hen pheasant whirred over their heads. O’Reilly smiled and wished her Godspeed.

  All now was silent and the line of beaters and their dogs had emerged from the coppice.

  “That’s it for the morning, love,” O’Reilly said, and waited while Kitty stood and folded up her shooting stick.

  She pecked his cheek. “Well done, Slattery.”

  He frowned as he extracted the spent cartridge cases. “Slattery?”

  “‘Slattery’s Mounted Foot,’ that song by Percy French. You know how it goes.” And she sang in a breathy contralto, “‘This gallant corps was organised by Slattery’s eldest son. A noble-minded poacher with a double-breasted gun.” She pointed at his twelve-bore.

  O’Reilly, content with this morning’s sport, laughed. “Eejit. You’re great fun to be with, you know that, Kitty O’Reilly? ‘Slattery’s Mounted Foot,’ is it? Now, come on. Let’s join the others for lunch. My belly thinks my throat’s cut.”

  * * *

  Trestle tables had been set up in a treeless field. Two for the guns and guests, another two for the beaters. The marquis and Myrna sat opposite each other at one end, O’Reilly and Kitty faced each other, Kitty beside Myrna and O’Reilly beside the marquis. Kenny was tucked in under the table.

  To one side of the field, peeking out from a stand of leafless alders, O’Reilly thought he could make out a gable end of a small building overgrown with ivy and half-hidden by a huge clump of cow parsley. He wondered for a moment what it could be. The estate was large and he hadn’t seen all of it.

  “Good sport this morning, Fingal?” the marquis asked.

  “Your head keeper, Mehaffey, showed us fine birds, sir.” In deference to the farmer to O’Reilly’s side and the local banker, Mister Canning, to Kitty’s left, the formalities must be observed. “Thank you.”

  “Good man, Mehaffey. Glad we can keep him on.” The marquis sighed. “The hunters are gone and so are the grooms, and the grouse moor in County Antrim, and the last two under keepers, but we still have the wherewithal to keep the shoot and the beat on the Bucklebo River. Do tell young Doctor Laverty he’s welcome to fish it anytime.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I will.” O’Reilly sat back as a maid set a plate of steaming pea and ham soup in front of him, then he picked up his soup spoon.

  “It’s very hot, Fingal,” Kitty said. “Eat it round the edges like a pussycat.”

  He laughed. “Ma used to say that to Lars and me when we were little. I will,” he said, taking his first sip. Good, but not as good as Kinky’s. He paused to think about what she’d do to the brace of pheasants that he, as a gun, would receive after the shoot.

  Thompson was moving along behind O’Reilly’s side of the table. “Claret, sir?” he said to the farmer.

  One glass of wine would not affect the guns and would complement lunch, O’Reilly knew.

  “Please.”

  Thompson poured, then moved and stood to attention behind O’Reilly. “Good afternoon, Surgeon Commander.” They had been shipmates on HMS Warspite during the war. Thompson had been a gunnery chief petty officer, and as such, the social divide between servant and master’s guest could be set a little to one side. “Nice to see you and Mrs. O’Reilly, sir.” Thompson poured for them.

  O’Reilly turned. “And you, Thompson. How are you?”

  “I am very well, sir, but concerned. The lunchtime news bulletin is reporting that the civil rights marchers are being verbally harassed by Loyalists. I hope it doesn’t”—he frowned—“I believe the American word is ‘escalate’ into violence.”

  “So do I, Thompson.”

  “Enjoy your afternoon, sir. I must be moving on after I’ve seen to the rest of this table.” He shook his head. “It really is a pickle.”

  “That’s the word for it,” the marquis said, “and, Fingal, I hear one of our villagers is in a bit of a pickle too. Burnt out last week.”

  So that was the question John had mentioned this morning. “It’s the Donnellys, sir.”

  “Thought it might be. Tragedy about the fire. Nice old thatched cottage, as I recall. But that thatch goes up like tinder, I believe. It’s very lucky no one was hurt.”

  O’Reilly nodded. “At the moment Julie and the kids are at her parents’ and Donal’s lodging with Dapper Frew. At least Donal’s insured for replacement value and getting permission for rebuilding’s not going to be a problem. There’s a Neolithic burial mound in the back garden, but Lars”—O’Reilly glanced at Myrna but all of her attention was on Kitty—“is arranging for a letter of permission from the National Trust.” O’Reilly shook his head. “In the short term that’s a help, so building can get started, but Donal’s not covered for temporary accommodation while he waits for his house to be rebuilt.”

  John MacNeill nodded. “We—um—we’d rather heard that rumour, and I think there’s something the MacNeills might be able to do about it.”

  O’Reilly sat bolt upright. “Really? That would be terrific. Kitty? The marquis thinks they may be able to help the Donnellys.”

  “You remember,” said Myrna, “how we gave two unused labourers’ cottages to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum a couple of years back?”

  “I do.” Each had been disassembled brick by brick and rebuilt at the museum. Donal himself had helped with the work.

  “We have one more on the estate,” the marquis said. He pointed to the stand of alders. “Generations of underkeepers and their families used to live there, but—” He paused and shook his head.

  O’Reilly heard the wistfulness in his friend’s voice.

  “It’s close to the pens where we rear the young pheasant poults. It’s pretty dilapidated. I’m no expert”—He glanced at his watch—“and we really won’t have time to go to it today, but I wonder if we could get Bertie Bishop to take a look and see if it could be made habitable reasonably cheaply.” He smiled. “And as Donal seems to have kept his word about not, ahem, borrowing any more of my pheasants, I’d be delighted to have him and his family as tenants. Peppercorn rent, of course, if the place can be fixed up.”

  “Essentially rent-free, then,” O’Reilly said.

  “That,” said Kitty, “would be wonderful, my lord, my lady.”

  “Could you round up Bertie for Saturday, say, tennish, Fingal? Myrna and I have business in London until Friday. And I hoped you could come here too, Fingal and Kitty. I know you like to keep your finger on the village pulse. You may need a plan B if the place can’t be fixed. If Bertie Bishop wants to bring his foreman, to give a second opinion, that’ll be alright.”

  “I’ll see to it, sir. Donal Donnelly’s the foreman.”

  “Ah, I see. I had rather hoped to
keep this quiet until we knew whether it would work, but I suppose that’s a vain hope in Ballybucklebo. That’s settled then,” the marquis said.

  Two maids started serving plates of beef and Guinness stew.

  John MacNeill remarked, “I hope the sport is as good after lunch and…”

  A harsh growling sounded from where the beaters’ dogs were lying. O’Reilly glanced over to see the German pointer with his brown shoulders and dappled hindquarters standing over a cowering Murphy. The pointer’s hackles were raised, his teeth bared, and the rumbling was coming from deep in his throat.

  Colin Brown yelled, “Get you away to hell from my Murphy.” He started forward.

  Lenny Brown grabbed his son by the arm. “Take your hurry in your hand. Don’t ever get between two dogs if they’re fighting.”

  Colin struggled, “Och, Daddy, Murphy’s—”

  The keeper, Mehaffey, carrying a stout ash plant, was heading toward the dogs.

  Without bidding, Kenny uncoiled from under O’Reilly’s table. Four bounds saw him between Murphy and the pointer. The big chocolate Lab planted himself, legs astraddle, lowered his head, and fixed the pointer with an unblinking stare. Only the right side of Kenny’s upper lip curled to show a glistening canine tooth. His defiance was the more ominous because he made not a sound.

  The pointer took a step backward.

  Kenny advanced and the pointer whimpered, turned, and, cropped tail drooping, whined and fled.

  Kenny stood over Murphy and gave him a friendly lick.

  A round of applause broke out at both tables as Colin collected a trembling Murphy. “There now, wee lad. Never you mind. You’ll be alright. Alright.” He cradled the mongrel, who licked Colin’s face.

  Kenny returned to O’Reilly. “Well done, Kenny,” he said, giving the gun dog a series of firm pats along his flank. “‘Blessèd are the peacemakers,’” he said to Kitty, and wondered about what peace was being broken on the road to Londonderry.