The marquis pursed his lips. “I’ll have to start cutting back somewhere. Didn’t sleep too much last night trying to decide where.”
O’Reilly hesitated. His formal medical training told him to ask a leading question, try to get the man to talk more about his concerns. His knowledge of John MacNeill suggested a different approach. “Would an afternoon out with me and Arthur in the bog cheer you up? I’m sure the Kearneys won’t mind if I bring you along.”
The marquis smiled, then sobered. “You’re quite sure I wouldn’t be intruding on your privacy?”
“Not at all. Arthur and I would enjoy your company.”
“Do you know,” he said, rising, “I think it would work wonders. I really do. Blow away the cobwebs. Give me a minute, Fingal. I’ll get myself organised. And thank you.”
He tugged a cord that would make a bell ring in the servants’ quarters. “Will we need another dog? I can bring Sophie.”
“No need. It’s not a big piece of cover and with two dogs we’d be finished in no time. I want Arthur to earn his keep today. It’s his idea of doggy heaven pushing up and retrieving game.”
“Fair enough.”
Thompson, the valet/butler appeared. “My lord?”
“Thompson, I’m going snipe shooting with Doctor O’Reilly.”
“Yes, sir, and good morning, Commander O’Reilly.”
“Morning, Thompson.” The man had been a CPO gunner on Warspite in the Med. He always used O’Reilly’s naval title.
“The twenty bore with number eight cartridges and your game bag, sir?” Thompson said.
“Precisely,” the marquis said, “and if you’ll excuse me, Fingal, I’ll just be a minute changing into my shooting gear, then we’ll be off.”
And the lift in his voice, the grin on his face were all that it took to convince O’Reilly that he had indeed prescribed the right medicine for his old friend.
* * *
O’Reilly knocked on the door to the Kearneys’ farmhouse. Blue smoke straggled up from a chimney and the air was redolent of burning turf. He turned up the collar of his Barbour waterproof jacket. The rain wasn’t heavy, but was, as the locals said, the kind that wets you. And the temperature was down. If it sank a couple more degrees, O’Reilly reckoned the drizzle would turn to snow.
Arthur, seemingly uncaring of the cold, sat and stared up at his master. His otter tail made lazy trips back and forth across the flagstones of the path.
Lorna opened the door. She stood with one hand supporting the small of her back. Her thirty-week pregnancy was obvious now. “Doctor O’Reilly.” She smiled and glanced at the game bag slung over O’Reilly’s shoulder, the open double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. “Come for a shot at the snipe?”
“If that’s still all right with you and Reggie and—”
Her eyes widened and she dropped a curtsey as the marquis walked from the car, bent to give Arthur a quick pat, and stood at O’Reilly’s side. “My lord,” she said.
“I hope you and Reggie won’t mind if his lordship keeps me company,” O’Reilly said.
She stood and spoke to the marquis. “It would be a great honour, sir,” she said.
“It would be very gracious of you and your husband,” the marquis said, “and I shall be most grateful.”
“You tear away, sirs…” She frowned, pursed her lips, inhaled.
Clearly, O’Reilly thought, she’s trying to work out the correct thing to do. By her smile, she’d arrived at a decision.
“And if you’re cold when you’re done, call in for a cup of tea in your hand,” she smiled, “or maybe you’ll be ready for a wee hot half-un?”
“It would be a very great pleasure,” the marquis said, “and please do not go to any trouble. I know I should be delighted to have a whiskey.”
“Ah,” said O’Reilly, “mother’s milk. I’ll take you up on that too.” Clever of the marquis, he thought, asking for whiskey. If there’d been any suggestion of a cup of tea, she might have spent the rest of the afternoon baking, getting out the best china, probably washing and ironing her best tablecloth.
“We’ll head on,” O’Reilly said.
“Rather you nor me,” she said, and shivered. “You’d think as a good Ulsterwoman I’d be used til the rain, but, och.” She hunched her head down into her shoulders. “I’d rather curl up in front of the fire with a good book. I’ve just started on Some Experiences of an Irish RM. Them two what wrote it were quare gags, so they were.”
She’s got over her shock at seeing the marquis, O’Reilly thought. John MacNeill had a knack for putting folks at their ease.
“Sommerville and Ross,” the marquis said. “As I recall they were cousins, two women actually. And weren’t they funny indeed. Very funny. I believe my father met them several times, fox hunting.”
“Honest to God, your lordship?”
“Mmm.”
“Sometimes,” said O’Reilly, “I think one of their characters, the ever-scheming Flurry Knox, was a model for our Donal.” O’Reilly wondered how Bluebird’s pups were doing.
“Donal? One of a kind, but with a heart of corn.” She moved a step back. “Anyroad, I’d keep you colloguing all day, sirs, so away you on and enjoy your sport. Just walk in when you get back. I’ve for til go til my sister’s, but Reggie’ll be here and he’ll see til youse.”
O’Reilly blinked raindrops from his eyelashes, pulled the brim of his Paddy hat down, said, “Thank you, Lorna. Come on, John,” and began to walk. “Heel, Arthur.”
The marquis walked at O’Reilly’s shoulder and the big dog tucked in.
As they walked in silence, O’Reilly pictured Lorna going round like a liltie getting the living room redd up and prepared for a visit from a peer of the realm. She’d boast about it to her friends for months. He reckoned she’d been too overawed by meeting the marquis to enquire about the blood tests. Which was probably all to the good. The results were back and her husband Reggie was Rhesus positive, and nothing more could be done until about thirty-four weeks, when further testing would be needed to see if the baby was affected.
They climbed over a stile in a low drystone wall and into a field that sloped gently down to marshy, low-lying land. Ahead in the distance, the battleship grey of the waters of Belfast Lough fused with the darker Antrim Hills whose tops seemed to have been welded to the pewter-coloured sky.
In this pasture, whin bushes were scattered here and there, their yellow flowers in sharp contrast to their dark green spikes. He stopped in front of the largest clump, took two cartridges from his pocket, slipped them into the chambers, and snapped the gun shut. “Might get a rabbit here, John.”
The marquis chuckled. “Or one of my pheasants. If a hen breaks cover, please let her go, Fingal, but feel free to take a cock.”
“Thank you,” O’Reilly said.
The marquis walked about twenty yards from O’Reilly, who bent to Arthur and said, “Hey on out.”
Arthur, who had sat at his master’s feet the moment O’Reilly stopped walking, put his nose to the grounds and charged into the clump with a great crashing of shrubbery and thrashing of branches. The sounds and motion soon stopped and were replaced by a more subtle rustling. As O’Reilly watched, a hare, great hind legs pumping, big ears flying, brown fur and white scut damp in the drizzle, broke cover. In a fluid motion, O’Reilly threw the shotgun forward, releasing the safety catch as he did, brought the butt into his right shoulder, sighted, and swung the muzzles through the running animal to lead it by the length of its body. He was just about to squeeze the trigger when the hare jinked ninety degrees to its left and headed straight for a small herd of black Dexter cattle that was wandering over to investigate the men and their dog. He laughed, put his gun up, and set the safety catch. Two things struck him. Mrs. Hannah Glasse’s Georgian recipe for jugged hare, which began, “First, catch your hare,” and memories of a pasture outside Fareham, Hampshire, in 1940, when a herd of Herefords had brought to him a swee
ping feeling of homesickness and a longing to be back here in Ulster.
Arthur reappeared from the gorse patch. A dog couldn’t shake his head with a look of contempt and say, with a curled lip, “I did my job, you bollix.” But by the big Lab’s bearing, he managed to convey those sentiments.
“Sorry, Arthur,” O’Reilly said. “I’ll try to do better with the birds.” He tucked the gun under his right arm, started walking toward the cows, waved his left hand at the herd, and yelled, “Away on to hell out of it. Go on. Hoosh. Hoosh.” They were so close he could smell their bovine breath. He kept on walking, pursued by Arthur.
One cow gave an almighty bellow, kicked up her heels, and charged down the hill, hotly pursued by the rest. The herd then stopped as if on command, turned, and stared at the intruders.
“Daft bloody animals,” he said when he caught up with the marquis, then flinched as a raindrop found its way under his collar. “That rain is cold. Still, as Ma used to say to my brother Lars and me when we were little, ‘You’re not made of sugar. You won’t melt.’ Then she’d shoo us out to play on a rainy day so we’d get some fresh air and she could paint in peace.”
The marquis laughed. “Nanny used to say the same thing to Myrna and me, then sit by the nursery fire, drink a pot of tea, and read The Strand Magazine.”
O’Reilly smiled at this glimpse into John MacNeil’s childhood, then hunched his shoulders and shivered. He wasn’t worried about melting. Quite the contrary. His fingertips and, he was sure, his lips, were turning blue. It was more likely he’d freeze solid. He lengthened his stride and glanced at his friend. The marquis, born and raised into Ulster aristocracy, would have been trained from childhood to seem impervious to physical discomfort like the cold.
A blackthorn hedge marked the boundary between the pasture and the wasteland, and he had to push hard to get a rusty iron gate to open. “After you, John.”
No farmer would want his beasts straying into the marsh. Immersion in the water, it was believed, would lead to the highly contagious foot rot.
Once through it and the gate securely closed, O’Reilly and the marquis walked along a path that skirted the swampy field and led to the far end.
“You know,” the marquis said, “my family used to own this farm.” There was wistfulness in his voice. “When Father died, the only way we could raise the estate taxes was to part with a fair bit of property.”
“The MacNeills owned the Mucky Duck too, didn’t they? I remember you telling me that when you helped us stop Bertie Bishop’s attempted takeover,” O’Reilly said. “It must have been difficult for you, having to break up the estate?”
Overhead a flock of green plover flapped lazily across a leaden sky. Their cries of “Pee-wit, pee-wit” gave them their local name.
The marquis sighed. “I know why you invited me today, Fingal. We’ve known each other for far too long. I can practically hear you thinking. You’re concerned because I’m worried about money. So you decided it was for my own good that I should have a bit of fun today.”
“And isn’t that my job? You’re a patient as well as a friend.”
“You and I, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly,” said the marquis, “are two of a kind.”
O’Reilly laughed. “I’m not worrying about money.”
“And I’m very glad of it. But you are worrying about me and every other soul in the village.”
“Well—”
“Well nothing. You are, aren’t you? Who helped Sonny Houston get a roof on his house? Who got me to help him stop Bertie’s plans to buy the Duck? Who helped Donal Donnelly and his pals when they made a bad investment in a racehorse?”
O’Reilly shrugged. “Touché.”
“It’s not really the money itself that bothers me. My family has for centuries been the biggest employer in the village and townland. It’s been passed on down for generations that the current marquis, and that’s me, has unavoidable responsibilities to fulfill to the villagers. Just like you have as a physician.”
“But John, you do fulfill them. How many committees and boards do you serve on at no charge? You never miss the annual fete, the gymkhana, the rugby club Christmas party for the kiddies. Shall I go on? You fund a scholarship to the university. How many people—house servants, grooms, jockeys, gamekeepers, shepherds—do you employ, aye, and keep in decent and affordable housing?”
The marquis’s smile was rueful. “It’s going to be a lot fewer when I go. If my wife Laura were still alive, the estate would pass directly to her, without any taxes being due. That’s the law. But with Laura gone—” He hesitated and O’Reilly did not intrude on his friend’s thoughts until he said, “Sean will inherit, and he’ll have to pay. Even now, for me to continue employing any of my staff, I’m going to have to let others go and sell the things they worked on. Perhaps my horses, my grouse moor.” He scowled. “I’ll miss the things, but I feel terrible about hurting the people. It’s the people that are important.”
“And you feel helpless?”
The marquis shook his head and looked down.
“I know that feeling. Right now, I have a colleague who is seriously ill and is refusing my help. I can’t do a damn thing for him.” He hunched his shoulders as they passed a gap in the hedge and a rain-bearing gust ripped over the rusty barbed wire fencing that blocked the hole.
“Two of a kind, all right. I still don’t know what to do, but I feel better knowing I’m not alone. Thank you, Fingal.” He stopped because they had come to the field’s end. “I think your tactic of getting me to relax is working. Let’s start the first beat and forget about our worries at least until the shoot is over.”
“Fair enough,” O’Reilly said. “Seeing as we’ve only the one dog, I suggest we both follow Arthur and take the shots turn about.”
“Fine, if you go first.”
O’Reilly nodded and said, “Hey on out, Arthur.”
Arthur ran ahead, his paws plashing through the puddles, his tail up like a flag waving, appearing and disappearing between the thigh-high rushes of the kind that for centuries had been used to thatch roofs in Ireland. O’Reilly and the marquis followed.
Snipe hunting was simply a matter of walking from one end of the field to the other with a dog out in front quartering the ground, driving out the birds. The little wading creatures, which when startled would leap into the air, flew away with an erratic jinking pattern that made shooting them more a matter of luck than good aim. Then guns and dog moved twenty yards to one side and walked back, repeating the process until the entire area had been covered.
O’Reilly’s Wellington-booted feet crunched into ice rime at the edges of puddles and squelched through the mud. The reeds swished with his passage, the stink of marsh gas assailed his nostrils, and the drizzle falling competed with a mist rising from the groundwater to make the air palpable.
A harsh, craking noise up ahead came from a snipe flying away low over the reeds, juking from side to side like a slalom skier. O’Reilly had the gun to his shoulder, covered his bird, and fired. Its wings folded and the snipe tumbled to earth. “Hi lost.” O’Reilly smiled. He’d not lost his touch.
“Good shot, Fingal,” the marquis said.
Arthur came splashing back, sat soggily at O’Reilly’s feet, and offered the bird.
“Good boy,” he said, patting Arthur on the head and taking the limp bird from the big dog’s soft mouth. The Labrador’s tail thrashed so hard it flattened the reeds. O’Reilly looked at the snipe. Its velvet brown eye was misting in death, although its light brown body, though damp, was still warm. The head with its long straight bill drooped on a flaccid neck. O’Reilly frowned. He felt sorry for the little bird. More and more lately, he’d begun to wonder about his wildfowling. As a youngster, he and Lars had taken to it as their birthright, but Lars had put away his guns and volunteered with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as a conservationist.
The light was beginning to fade when they completed the final beat and had added a
few more birds to the bag. “Time for that whiskey, John,” O’Reilly said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m foundered.”
* * *
“This’ll hit the spot,” said O’Reilly. He savoured the aroma of his hot half-un: Bushmills Irish Whiskey, cloves, sugar, and lemon juice all topped up with boiling water. In his hurry to drink, he scalded his lip. “Holy thundering Mother of—” He remembered that the Kearneys were devout Christians and bit off the rest.
“You all right, sir?” said Reggie Kearney from where the three men sat in front of the hearth in a sitting room smelling of lemon furniture polish and burning turf from the fire.
He had obviously been briefed by his wife and had not been overawed by the marquis when he and O’Reilly had shown up ten minutes ago.
Reggie Kearney paused from his knitting. It had surprised O’Reilly the first time he’d seen Reggie, who stood more than six feet and had shoulders like an ox, working the wool and needles, but Reggie had explained that he enjoyed making things and that his mother had taught him how when he’d been a wee lad.
“Just teaching myself to take my hurry in my hand,” O’Reilly said. “No real harm done. But it was nippy out and I wanted to get the whiskey into me.” He smiled at Reggie. “We’ve had a great afternoon. Thanks for letting us have a shot on your land.”
“Sure you’re welcome any time, Doctor. And I know your family used til own it, my lord, so it’s right and proper you should be here, so it is. And you’re both country men. You know to ask permission, not to let my beasts out, not to trample my crops. Last week some buck eejits from Belfast with not a by-your-leave went onto Dermot Kennedy’s place and put lead pellets into one of his pigs. Dermot was raging, fit til be tied, so he was, but Mister Porter, the vet in Conlig, got them out and the pig’ll be fine.”
The marquis tutted and said, “It’s appalling. Some city folks have no manners, and less sense.”
An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea Page 18