An Irish Country Practice

by Patrick Taylor

  “Oh Lord.” Barry sat back, eyes closed, imagining him and Sue driving down to the little peninsula, parking their cars, and himself carrying his new bride over the threshold. “You are serious, Dapper?”

  “In soul I am.”

  Sue was going to be over the moon, and Barry had a wicked thought. Perhaps he’d not tell her. Surprise her when they got back from France, just carry her over the threshold, but on second thought would it be worth having her worry for an extra two weeks? Nah. But what a lovely thing. Gracie starting to heal and Barry and Sue going to get the bungalow.

  Dapper produced a few sheets of paper. “If you can sign these…” He indicated where.

  Barry took a deep breath and looked around the table. Jack and Connor seemed to be having an animated conversation about rugby, but Fingal was observing him, his big hands wrapped around his pint. “My dad always said to read carefully any document you signed,” said Barry to Fingal, “but I trust you, Dapper.”

  Fingal nodded. “Aye. I trust him too.”

  “It’s a standard contract, no hidden clauses,” said Dapper. So Barry scanned them, signed them, and handed them over to Dapper, who checked the signatures, scribbled the date, and said, “Dead on. Now all I need is a cheque for ten percent.”

  Barry said, “Oh-oh. I need to sell some shares my grandfather left me in his will to raise that. I’ll make the arrangements first thing tomorrow, but it’ll be a day or two before the money’s in my account. Can you wait for a few days?”

  “Aye, certainly. Today’s the fifth. Make it out for the tenth.”

  Barry enquired, “To whom?” was told, and scribbled a cheque for four hundred and ninety pounds. “There.”

  “Great. Me and Mrs. Miller’s solicitor and your solicitor’ll get all this sorted out before you get home.”

  Barry said, “I don’t actually have a solici—”

  “Don’t worry,” O’Reilly said. “Brother Lars owes me a favour. Leave it with me, and I’ll get my bank manager to approve a mortgage for you. I know how much you make a year.” O’Reilly chuckled. “I should. I pay your wages.”

  “Thanks a million, Fingal.”

  “Great,” Dapper said. He handed Barry a key. “I’ll give you the rest of the keys when Gracie’s finished, but this one means you can go straight from the airport when you’re back from France, and I’ve got a local cleaning lady laid on til redd the place up before you get home. That’s my wedding present. Now I’m away to have a jar with Donal.” He rose.

  “Thank you, Dapper.” That he had just bought his dream home was getting through to Barry. “Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy,” then on impulse yelled, “Willie?” Damn it all, Barry was getting married on Friday to the most wonderful girl in the world, Jack Mills had proposed and been accepted. Connor Nelson was fitting into the practice like—like a key in a lock, and they were among good friends.

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Champagne and four glasses.”

  “Right away.”

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a house, Barry Laverty,” said O’Reilly, “which means Kitty and I will be getting Number One to ourselves except for the nights Nonie’s on call.”

  “Give you more chances to work on getting Kitty to slow down,” said Barry, giving his senior partner a sly wink.

  Fingal shook his head and laughed. “I’ll miss having you about the place, Barry, but I’m very happy you and Sue will be starting married life in your own home. Just you take care of that girl. She’s one in a thousand.”

  “Thanks, Fingal, and I promise.”

  Boing.

  Barry looked at the pub door to see who had arrived. Guffer Galvin and a stranger—no it wasn’t, it was Seamus Galvin, three years older and with a suntan like a film star.

  Guffer was squinting through the fug until he recognised Barry. He and his son walked to the table. “Excuse me,” he said, “but Seamus here got home three days ago. He was banjaxed with that there jetlag, but he’s getting better, so the night my Annie says til me, says she, ‘Take you our boy down til the Duck. You bought him his first pint there and I’m sure he’d like a real Guinness. See some of his old mates.’”

  Fingal was the first to rise from his chair, pull up two more chairs, and offer a hand to Seamus Galvin. “Welcome back, Seamus.”

  “And how is Anne, Guffer?” Barry asked.

  Guffer smiled. “Since the moment Seamus here set foot in our house she’s been like a dog with two tails.” He bent and whispered in Barry’s ear, “We all know what she has is dead serious, but she does seem to be mending so we’re living for the minute.” He straightened up. “I’ve never seen her so happy.”

  “I’m delighted.” Barry wished he could make her disease go away, but at least he could take some comfort in having had a hand in making Seamus’s visit possible.

  Guffer looked all round the room. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, for just a wee minute?” He put two fingers in his mouth and let go such a piercing whistle that Arthur Guinness and Kenny both howled. “If I could have youse’s attention, please. Please.”

  Conversation died.

  “Youse all know me.”

  “We do, Guffer Galvin,” Bertie Bishop said, “and we’re all sorry for your troubles and hope Anne’s doing better.”

  “She is, thanks to you good people and others not here. Ballybucklebo give us the money for our younger son, Seamus here, til come home all the way from California til see his ma. Say thank you, Seamus.”

  Barry grinned. It looked like this being a daddy was a job for life.

  Seamus said, “I do thank youse all so much, and so does my Ma.”

  “There are no words,” Guffer continued, “til tell youse how grateful we are. Not one. But thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.”

  There was a solid round of applause, then what Barry could only describe as an embarrassed silence, before scraps of conversation began again.

  Willie arrived, set four coupes on the table, and began uncorking the bottle.

  “Sit down, you two,” said Fingal as he sat himself. “How are things in America, Seamus?”

  Seamus beamed. “It’s a pretty swell place, Doc. Maureen loves it and”—Barry noticed a nasal quality to Seamus’s speech—“the one you delivered, Doctor Laverty, Barry Fingal, is getting mighty big. Mighty big. He’s knee-high to a grasshopper already.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Barry said, hearing Seamus’s American twang and idiom. He half expected John Wayne to belly up to the bar and drawl, “Lookee here, Pilgrim.”

  “And, Doctor O’Reilly, I always wash my feet when I go to his office to ask my doctor about a sore ankle.” Seamus laughed.

  Barry pictured with clarity the flight of a terrified Seamus Galvin from the front doorstep of Number One Main into a rosebush, and a great ogre of a man, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, hurling a shoe and sock after the victim and yelling those very instructions.

  “Good for you, Seamus,” O’Reilly said.

  “I hear you’re getting wed, Doctor Laverty. Donal says the Highlanders will be playing and he’s got a spare uniform for me. My ma taught me how til play when I was a chissler.”

  Anne had been surrounded by her set of uileann pipes on that horrible afternoon when she’d really started coughing up blood. “I’d appreciate that, Seamus,” Barry said quietly, thinking of that day nearly eleven weeks ago.

  “Willie?”

  Willie Dunleavy stopped wrestling with the wire cage. “Yes, Doctor O’Reilly?”

  “Their first pint’s on me as a welcome home for Seamus.”

  “Thanks very much,” Seamus said, and offered his hand, “and I’ve no hard feelings about you chucking me out, sir. Honest to God.”

  O’Reilly laughed and shook. “I know. Sure didn’t you come and apologise and give me a brace of lobsters? Away on, Seamus, and enjoy your pint.”

  Barry Laverty sat and watched, marvelling at how his first glimpse of a patient and Doctor O’Reilly in Ball
ybucklebo would also be his last as a single man with Fingal and the self-same patient, Seamus Galvin, builder of rocking ducks, who had just crossed some five thousand miles and three years to be here with his sick mother.

  It was an odd feeling, thinking of Anne Galvin as Barry heard the sound of a champagne cork popping and then Willie pouring him a full glass of bubbles. Barry could not be sad right now. His own happiness was complete, and damn it all nobody could predict for sure what the future held for Anne Galvin. Suffice that her beloved son was home and she was happy too.

  Was it really three years since she had last seen Seamus? Three years since Barry had joined Fingal? How much had happened in those years? And what more did the future hold?

  He lifted his glass and said to his friends, “Never mind me getting married, never mind my getting my house. Think about what you’ve seen here tonight. Neighbours thanking neighbours for their help in a time of great need. I want us to drink to something wonderful, immutable, permanent. To Ballybucklebo, the best village in the thirty-two counties of the best country in the world.”

  And four Ulstermen drank to what was simply the unassailable truth.

  AFTERWORD

  by Mrs. Maureen “Kinky” Auchinleck, lately Kincaid, née O’Hanlon

  After adding recipes to eleven books by your man Patrick Taylor, and spending a year writing my Irish Country Cookbook I think I’m getting the hang of this. Here I am again in my own kitchen, pen in fist ready to add more recipes that I hope you’ll enjoy. Archie and I only got home yesterday, Saturday, July 8, 1967, a day as warm and sunny as the Friday before it. We stayed that night in the Ballymena Arms after the reception for young Doctor Laverty’s wedding to that lovely Sue Nolan, and proud we were to have been part of the groom’s party. Doctor O’Reilly looked splendid in a top hat, tails, and a dove-grey waistcoat. In truth, he does clean up well when he sets his mind to it, so. Or mebbe it’s Kitty that cleans him up. Lord knows it was always a struggle for me when he was a widower man. You’d think then by the yolk stains on them he used his ties to eat eggs with.

  Kitty, Lord love her, could have stepped out of a bandbox, pillbox hat on her just-done glossy hair, cream tailored suit with an above-the-knee skirt, dark hose, and patent leather pumps. Doctor Laverty’s best friend and best man, Doctor Jack Mills, had brought Helen Hewitt, his lady friend. We’re so proud of her here. She is going to be the first doctor ever from Ballybucklebo. And a lady one too, so.

  The First Broughshane Presbyterian Church doesn’t have a steeple like ours, but it does be neat and tidy and the florist had it decorated with pink and white roses and under their perfume was a hint of jasmine. Archie agreed that Doctor Laverty’s folks, Mister and Mrs. Laverty, are a lovely couple, and that Tom Laverty was an old shipmate of Doctor O’Reilly’s from the war. I nearly wept when Mister Selbert Nolan walked his only daughter up the aisle, her in white. Her dress did be strapless, and with shoulders like hers why should she not show them off? Close-fitting, it was, but then it flared at the knee to a floor-length train all round. Oh, she did look so glamorous. When I was a girl they called a woman’s hair her crowning glory and Miss Nolan’s, well Mrs. Laverty as she is now, was done up in all its copper beauty, with only a filmy veil to cover her face.

  When the minister had finished and said, “You may now kiss the bride,” Mrs. Barry Laverty threw back her veil and, forgive my familiarity, Barry kissed her and the place was as filled with soft love as a pillow is with down feathers. And if there was a dry eye in the church it would only be because—and I know about it because Doctor O’Reilly had such a case—someone had blocked tear ducts, so.

  And what a procession to the Nolan farm for the reception. The Ballybucklebo Highlanders had come in a bus hired by Mister Bertie Bishop. They paraded, bagpipes in full tune, with Seamus Galvin, home from America to see his mother who taught him how to play the pipes, and Donal Donnelly marching side by side. The happy couple followed in a wee cart pulled by a donkey. That rig had been laid on at Doctor Jack Mills’s request by—? You guessed it. Donal Donnelly.

  I’ll not bore you with any more details, but the happy couple will be in France now. I did ask Mrs. Laverty to keep her eye out there for new recipes for me.

  Och well. For the rest of their lives may the roof above them, which will be the Millers’ old cottage by the sea when they come back from France, never fall in, and those beneath it never fall out.

  And may I stop rabbitting on and put pen to paper for the first of five recipes, including my very own version of eggs Benedict. Please enjoy them all.

  PARSNIP AND APPLE SOUP

  2 oz. / 55 g butter

  2¼ lb. / 1 kg parsnips, peeled and chopped

  1 lb. / 450 g potatoes, peeled and chopped

  12 oz. / 340 g onions, peeled and chopped

  20 oz. / 680 g Bramley apples (or other sharp-flavoured variety), peeled, cored, and chopped

  40 oz. / 1.2 litres chicken stock

  20 oz. / 570 mL milk

  Salt and freshly ground pepper

  Parsley and maple syrup to garnish

  CROUTONS

  2 slices of thick white bread, buttered

  Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan, then add the chopped parsnips, potatoes, and onions.

  Season with salt and ground black pepper. Cover with parchment paper and the pan lid and sweat gently on a low heat for about 10 minutes, checking often to ensure that the vegetables are not sticking. Remove the parchment and add the chopped apples and the stock and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Liquidise with a blender and return to the heat. Thin to the required consistency with the milk and check the seasoning. Garnish in individual bowls with parsley, croutons, and maple syrup.

  Croutons

  Butter slices of thick white bread. Cut into cubes and place in a hot oven, 375ºF / 190ºC, for about 10 minutes until golden brown.

  POTTED HERRINGS

  It is handy to have these ready in the refrigerator when the doctor is on call and I could never be quite sure when he would return from his home visits. I think they do indeed taste even better the following day after you prepare them, so.

  8 herrings, cleaned, scaled, and wiped dry inside and out, with heads and tails removed

  1 onion, chopped

  4 bay leaves

  1 teaspoon pickling spice

  Freshly ground black pepper

  Equal parts malt vinegar and water

  Preheat the oven to 325ºF / 160ºC.

  Roll the herrings from the tail end and place side by side in an oven-proof dish about 8 inches by 6 inches so that each one supports the other and prevents it from unrolling. Cover with chopped onion, bay leaves, pickling spice, pepper, vinegar, and water. Cover the dish with a lid or with aluminium foil and place in the oven for about 35 minutes. Leave to cool before serving with buttered wheaten bread, or baby new potatoes cooked in their skins and slathered in butter.

  These will keep for several days in a refrigerator and taste even better after leaving overnight.

  Herrings are members of the sardine family and have lots of little bones. Somehow they just seem to melt when cooked like this.

  KINKY’S EGGS BENEDICT WITH SODA FARLS

  4 fresh eggs

  4 rashers bacon

  1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

  Boiling water

  HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

  3 large eggs

  2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  4 oz. /113 g butter

  2 Soda Farls (recipe below)

  Make the soda farls first. You can have these ready in the freezer to use at any time. You will need only half a farl per person, unless of course you are giving everyone 2 eggs each.

  Bacon

  Grill or fry the bacon and keep warm.

  Hollandaise Sauce

  Now make the Hollandaise sauce.

  I do this i
n a blender but you may want to use a whisk. Separate the egg yolks and egg whites.

  Heat the vinegar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and reduce to about half. Put the vinegar mixture into the blender and gradually add the egg yolks and salt and pepper with the blender running slowly. Melt the butter in the same pan that you used for the vinegar and with the blender still running add the melted butter to the egg yolk mixture. The sauce will start to thicken and if you think it is too thick just add a little hot water.

  What you have now is a traditional Hollandaise sauce. I like to make more than I need so that I always have some in the freezer and am prepared to make a quick Benedict. However, the traditional Hollandaise does not freeze at all, so what you have to do is to beat up your leftover egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold them into the Hollandaise mixture. Freeze in individual portions and when needed just thaw and heat gently in a bain-marie or in a microwave on very low power for just a few seconds.

  Poached Egg

  For a soft poached egg, bring a pan of water to the boil, then add the vinegar and reduce to a gentle simmer. Crack the egg into a bowl. Using a spoon, swirl the water in the pan to create a whirlpool, then carefully pour the egg into the centre of the whirlpool. Poach for 2 minutes, or until the whites are just set, then remove and place in a bowl of iced water until you are ready to use. To reheat the eggs just put into hot water for a few seconds and drain with a slotted spoon and paper towel.

  To Assemble the Egg Benedict

  Cut the farls in half and toast and butter them. Place the grilled bacon on top, then the lightly poached egg. Finally, pour the Hollandaise sauce over the top and serve straightaway.

  SODA FARLS

  Makes 4

  8 oz. / 227 g all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1½ tablespoon butter

  10 oz. / 295 mL buttermilk

  First, warm a griddle or a large frying pan over a moderate heat and dust with a little flour. This will stop the wet dough mixture from sticking to the pan.

  Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and rub in the butter. Now make a well in the middle and pour in about three-quarters of the buttermilk, stirring quickly. (The baking soda will react on contact with the buttermilk as the leavening agent, and if you take too long at this step the bread will not rise sufficiently.) Add the remaining buttermilk if needed. While the mixture should be quite wet and sticky it is not as wet as a pancake mixture would be. It should not be too wet and sloppy or you will not be able to shape it. Now if it still looks a little too wet to shape add some more flour gradually until it is like a bread dough and not a pancake batter. Now turn your dough out onto a well-floured work surface and knead lightly, then shape into a flat round.