An Irish Country Welcome

by Patrick Taylor

  The phone went dead. Fingal replaced the receiver. He shook his head.

  He didn’t need to imagine the unremitting stress his colleagues were under. He’d lived through the same thing after the second battle of Narvik in 1940 when HMS Warspite became hospital ship for most of the casualties, British and German. He still remembered a young German sailor with a bullet in his belly calling for his mutti, mutti, du liebe Gott—Mummy, for the love of God. And the remark of the sick-berth attendant who shortly after gave the man an anaesthetic. “I don’t think much of the master race. ‘Cepting they talk funny, they’re not much different from us, are they, sir?”

  Why the hell couldn’t the local extremists feel the same way—for the love of God? He sighed. They’d buried the young German at sea on the seventh postop day. Surgery was never clear cut, but at least Dapper seemed to be doing well. O’Reilly decided that he and Kitty would pop in and let Donal know after they’d seen the Bishops.

  * * *

  “Come in, Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly.” Bertie Bishop led the way along a thickly carpeted hall where, behind oval glass frames, dried flowers adorned the walls along with a venerable aneroid barometer. Bertie’s Orange sash, which usually hung on a coat stand, was noticeable by its absence. “I’ve just been going over some business with Donal. I’ve asked him to join us.”

  “Fine. I’ve some news for him. It’ll save me a drive later.”

  They entered the spacious lounge/dining room with its view through a picture window out over an extensive lawn to the waters of Belfast Lough. A dining table in front of the window was covered in a red velvet cloth with gold tassels. A single brass flowerpot-holder squatted empty in the centre.

  The carpet was fitted and bore a pattern of orange circles inside purple diamonds. Those were the colours of the Orange Order.

  Flo’s silver cup was front and centre on the mantel, as she’d promised the audience it would be. O’Reilly wondered where she’d put her stuffed cat.

  Flo greeted them from an armchair at one end of a semicircle of seating arranged to face the fireplace. Donal rose from a straight-backed chair saying, “How’s about youse, Doctor, Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  “We’re both fine, Donal,” O’Reilly said. “And you’re well?”

  “Fit as a flea.”

  Before taking his seat, O’Reilly said, “We’ve known each other since 1946. You, Bertie Bishop, I must say, have mellowed considerably. Don’t you think perhaps it’s time we dropped the Doctor and Mrs.?” He offered a hand to Bertie. “It’s Fingal and Kitty. Same to you, Donal.”

  Bertie accepted the shake. “Thank you very much, Doc—Fingal, that’s very decent, but I think mebbe just in our homes, like. Ballybucklebo’s a very traditional wee place. As our town’s senior doctor, you’ve a position til uphold, so you have.”

  “Bertie’s right,” Donal said.

  But from the bucktoothed grin on his face, O’Reilly could tell Donal was pleased to be included as an equal friend. O’Reilly understood. “If you both wish.”

  “My Bertie’s right—” Flo hesitated before saying, “Fingal, and please sit down.”

  O’Reilly did, and noticed the stuffed cat sitting on a low table at his end of the sofa. By God, it was very lifelike. He’d nearly stroked it.

  Bertie must have noticed. “That there’s Snooks. I bought it for a bit of a gag for Flo on her birthday when we was on our holidays in Newcastle ten years ago.”

  “And we’ve had great craic,” Flo said, “when our guests try til pet her.” She chuckled.

  Bertie said, “Now, I asked youse round for a drink. Kitty?”

  “It’s early for gin. Would you have a glass of white wine?”

  Flo rose. “We do. In the fridge, and I’ve a few nibblers in the kitchen. I’ll fetch it and them through. Bertie, you see til Doc—’scuse me, see til Fingal.” She left.

  “Would you have a wee Jameson, Bertie?”

  “Aye, certainly. And Donal?”

  “Bottle of stout, please.”

  Bertie crossed to a sideboard and poured from a Waterford decanter into a cut-glass tumbler.

  “Easy, Bertie,” O’Reilly said. “That’s plenty.”

  “Right. Flo always says I’ve a heavy hand with the hard stuff. I’ll have a bottle of stout myself.” He poured Guinness from two bottles into two tumblers, carried the drinks over, and gave O’Reilly his whiskey and Donal his Guinness.

  Flo appeared, pushing a tea trolley. “Smith’s potato crisps, chicken liver pâté on wheaten bread, mushroom puffs, sausage rolls, cheese straws, and them’s all Kinky’s recipes, except the crisps. Please help yourselves.” She handed Kitty her wine, lifted a glass of what looked like C & C brown lemonade, and took her seat.

  “Cheers,” Bertie said, “and thank youse for coming.”

  The toast was returned.

  “Our pleasure,” Kitty said, “and, Flo, even though we’ve been here before, I’ll say it again. You have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And it’s all Flo’s doing. Now I built it, sure isn’t that my trade? But Flo furnished it.”

  O’Reilly heard the pride and the love in the man’s voice. “Kitty’s right, Flo, and you’ve every right to be proud of her, Bertie.”

  “Thanks, Fingal.”

  There was a comfortable silence in the room as they sipped their drinks together.

  “So, Bertie, you said you had some medical questions for me?”

  “Aye. Business before pleasure. Quite right. It was yesterday got me thinking about it. Our local Orange lodge and the Ballybucklebo Highlanders pipe band marched in Comber. We had great fun. Just a day out. The speeches didn’t have no pope-bashing, just talk about fellowship and Ulster being part of the UK. There was a temperance lodge there, and as usual four or five of their members got stocious.”

  “Don’t they always?” said Donal, who was pipe major of the Ballybucklebo Highlanders. “It wouldn’t be the Twelfth if a wheen of folks didn’t get legless.”

  O’Reilly smiled and Kitty chuckled. She too must have found the thought funny, of a bunch of men pledged to abstaining from alcohol getting drunk. O’Reilly wondered where this was leading, but Bertie was a man who rarely beat about the bush.

  “I thought nothing of it until I got home and switched on the nine o’clock news. Boys-a-boys, but what went on, and is still going on, with them there riots is desperate, so it is.”

  “I know,” O’Reilly said. “I just hope it ends soon.” He sipped his whiskey.

  “I’m not so sure it will, and between the jigs and the reels of it—” Here we go. “—you mind when I made up my will with your brother, Fingal?”

  “I do.”

  “And I said after Donal buys a quarter share of my company I’d use some of that money til take Flo on a world cruise.”

  Kitty said, “What a lovely idea. Lucky you, Flo.”

  “Lucky me too,” said Donal. “Dead jammy. Here’s me a partner. I still can’t thank Bertie and Flo enough.”

  “But you are going to, just like I told you this morning,” Bertie said with a grin.

  O’Reilly wondered what that could mean, but presumably all would soon be revealed. He saw the looks Bertie and Flo exchanged. He sighed and remembered what it had been like to be sixteen and in love. Catching Kitty’s eye, he half turned his head and stared into her eyes. God, she was a beautiful woman.

  “I’m a very lucky woman,” Flo said.

  Kitty, still holding O’Reilly’s gaze, nodded and mouthed, “Me too.”

  O’Reilly tingled.

  Bertie said, “The cruise is going for til cost seven thousand, two hundred pounds.”

  More than O’Reilly made in three years. He whistled.

  “But my Flo’s stuck with me through thick and thin. Gave up her family for me, so she did. Nursed me when I was sick. You’re worth every penny of it, pet, til me. Anyroad, there’s no pockets in a shroud.”

  Flo stood up, crossed the room, an
d planted a smacker on Bertie’s dome. “Thank you, sweetheart.” She stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder.

  He smiled. “Her and me’s been planning it for a few months and we’d meant til go next year, but what’s going on at the moment here made me think. I hope til God it does blow over.”

  “We all do,” Kitty said, “but we Irish are cursed with long memories. Some of the enmity goes back two or three hundred years.”

  “Aye. You’re right, Kitty. And I’m not so sure it will blow over, neither. Me and Flo talked it over and we’d like til move our cruise up til this September if we can. I know some folks might say we’re deserting oul’ Ulster in her time of troubles, but we’re getting old and tired and, well, we need a change of scene. And so, we’re going, so we are.” He inclined his head to Donal. “And that’s where Donal comes in. Our company has the contract for a new block of fifteen flats on that piece of wasteland near what used til be Maggie Houston’s cottage before she married Sonny Houston and moved into his place. It’s a big job and I feel comfortable leaving Donal to look after the start of the building until we get back.”

  “I’m dead honoured, so I am,” Donal said, “and a wee bit nervous. It’s a big understatement, so it is.”

  Flo said, “Undertaking, Donal.”

  “Aye. Right enough.”

  “And my Bertie has every confidence in you.”

  Donal smiled, but weakly.

  “You’ll do fine, son, I know it. And it’ll only be for about three months. The cruise starts in Southampton on the fifteenth of September and lasts for one hundred and three days.”

  O’Reilly sipped his whiskey. “And forgive me, Bertie, but I’m not quite sure what the medical question is?”

  “Sorry, Fingal. It’s about getting vaccinations. The company’s sent us a list of what we need. Things like yellow fever and typhoid. And we’ll need malaria pills. I’d like til know if you could get them and give them to us.” He rummaged in his inside jacket pocket and handed O’Reilly a small brochure.

  O’Reilly scanned the document. They would require immunisation against yellow fever, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio as a single injection, as well as typhoid. They were also advised to bring a supply of the antimalarial chloroquine. “I’ll need to have a word with the prof of tropical medicine at Queen’s, but I’m pretty sure I can get the injections and the pills.” O’Reilly snaffled a mushroom puff. “And we’ve got ten weeks, so if I get moving tomorrow, we’ve enough time. There is one thing. The aftereffects of some of them can be unpleasant.”

  Bertie looked up at Flo. “I think we should risk it.”

  “All right, dear.”

  “And I think you should sit down.”

  Flo did.

  O’Reilly’s mushroom puff vanished, and he helped himself to a sausage roll and two cheese straws. When they were finished, he said, “Flo, if Kinky ever leaves me, would you come and cook for us? The puffs, and rolls, and straws are just as good as hers.”

  Flo blushed and grinned. “Away off and chase yourself, Fingal. Nobody can cook like Kinky, but thank you for saying it.”

  “Fingal O’Reilly, there are more interesting things to discuss than your tummy, even if he is right about your cooking, Flo. I’d like to know where you’ll be going?”

  “Tell them, dear.”

  “We’ll be docking in”—Bertie adopted his address-the-council-meeting stance and ticked the places off with his right index finger on his left—“New York, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Durban, Mombasa, Bombay, Bali, Hong Kong, Kobe, Yokohama, Honolulu, then through the Panama Canal and home.”

  “Gosh,” Kitty said, “that’s quite the trip.”

  “Aye,” said Bertie, looking doleful but with a twinkle in his eye. “It is a world cruise. I don’t know where the hell we’ll go next for an encore. Maybe the moon. Thon Apollo 11 is set til be launched on Wednesday.”

  The appearance of a sense of humour in the usually practical Bertie Bishop caught O’Reilly off guard. He snorted a drop or two of whiskey down his nose, choked, grabbed a hanky, and blew. “Jasus, Bertie, go easy on the jokes. You’re getting so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”

  Flo grinned. “See my Bertie? It’s true, you know. Still waters do run deep.”

  Kitty caught O’Reilly’s eye, glanced at her empty glass, but made a tiny shake of her head.

  He nodded and finished the last of his whiskey. “Bertie. Flo. Thank you both very much, but it’s time Kitty and I were moving on. I’ll get on with your immunisation stuff tomorrow.”

  Kitty said, “And before you go on your tour, Flo, perhaps you and Bertie would come to us for a pre-lunch drink?”

  “That would be great, so it would.”

  Kitty stood. “And Donal, if you can get a sitter, perhaps you and Julie would join us?”

  “My God. Us? Mrs. Kitty, we’d be rightly honoured, so we would.”

  O’Reilly rose. “We’ll arrange it sometime later this month. Just for drinks and nibbles. We’ll have a decent sendoff for you in early September, but there is one more thing today. We were going to pop in at Dun Bwee, Donal, because I was talking to Mister Greer this morning about Dapper.”

  “I was dead pleased when you phoned on Friday to tell me he’d come through the operation.” Anxiety crept into Donal’s next question. “He’s not had a setback nor nothing like that, has he?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Not at all. Mister Greer says Dapper’s getting better every day, and if you want to visit it’s fine.”

  “Wheeker.” Donal grinned. “I couldn’t be more pleased if I’d won the football pools. And Dapper, he give me the keys to his car so I can drive myself up to visit while he’s in and collect him when he’s discharged.”

  “Terrific.” O’Reilly rose. “Thanks again, Bertie and Flo. Good luck when you take over the company for a while, Donal. Come on, Mrs. O’Reilly.” He made a sweeping bow. “Your chariot awaits. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  He followed her out of the bungalow and held open the Rover’s door.

  As she sat, her skirt rode up and he was treated to a view of a well-shaped leg from her stiletto heel almost to the top of her grey-nylon-covered thigh. His breath caught in his throat. Was it having been in the company of the still-in-love-after-so-many-years Bishops? Was it the exchanged looks with Kitty just now in the Bishops’ living room and the frisson he’d felt? He closed the door once she was in, waved to Flo on the front step, climbed into the Rover, and drove off.

  He was sorry his friends weren’t able to come this evening. Damn the sectarian violence in Ulster. He accelerated on the Bangor to Belfast Road, leaving a cyclist wobbling in his wake. But in a very short time, they would have Number One all to themselves. He’d forget the bad news for today. If he remembered correctly, there was a bottle of Catalonian Cava in the fridge. He reached across, squeezed her thigh, and heard her laugh.

  He drove into the lane, put the car in the garage, and took her hand as they walked across the back garden.

  Kenny was effusive in his greeting, but O’Reilly said, “Settle down. I’ll take you out later.”

  Kenny sighed and retreated to his kennel.

  Once in the kitchen he kissed Kitty. “I was thinking—”

  She snuggled against him. “I know what you were thinking.”

  He laughed. “And you’d be absolutely right.” He went to a cupboard and took out two champagne flutes.

  Kitty’s right eyebrow rose, and she smiled.

  “But I did have something else in mind too.”

  “Oh?” The smile faded.

  “It was what you said after Bertie told us about their world cruise. ‘What a lovely idea,’ you said. ‘Lucky you, Flo.’ That got me thinking. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it more since you dropped that guide in theatre on Friday—”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Her response was swift and defensive.

  “Nothing really, pet. We’ve talked about this before—” He look
ed into her eyes and wondered if, after all, this was the best time to bring it up, but decided to plough on. “I believe it’s about time you really thought about going part time.”

  She stepped back and cocked her head to one side, nodded, went to the fridge, and lifted out the bottle of Cava. She handed it to him. “I’m willing to concede it’s something we should discuss—and not because of what happened in surgery. But, if you’d be kind enough to open this, I think it’s something we might discuss later.” Placing both hands at the back of his neck, she tilted his head down until their lips met. “Much later.”

  9

  To Win or Lose It All

  “At zero two fifty-six Greenwich Mean Time this morning, July 21, 1969, an historic date, Commander Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface in the Sea of Tranquility.” The BBC’s technical advisor, James Burke, spoke from the Lime Grove Studios’ Apollo 11 set in London. Beside him, seated, were Cliff Michelmore, the presenter, and astronomer Patrick Moore.

  Burke was calm as he continued. “His first words, which we have received and will now let you hear, were—” The astronaut’s transmitted words were distorted but audible. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  Barry and Sue sat motionless on the couch in their cottage watching the black-and-white images on their television. Tigger, their tabby, was curled up on Sue’s lap, but Max, on this fine summer evening, was in his kennel in the back garden. They’d sat up late to watch.

  “I never thought they’d do it,” Barry said. “This is very exciting.”

  “Amazing.”

  Together they watched Armstrong move about on the lunar surface, collecting rock samples. Sue lifted Tigger and set the cat on the carpet. “All very interesting, but I gotta go.”

  Barry smiled at his wife’s departing back. Urinary frequency was another of the less-pleasant aspects of pregnancy. He turned back to the TV.

  Minutes later, lunar module pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. joined Commander Armstrong. The pictures were grainy, but Barry had no difficulty making out the two astronauts in their bulky space suits. They were moving in two-footed kangaroo hops, puffs of lunar dust disturbed with each step.