The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories (Irish Country Books)

by Taylor, Patrick

I knew that O’Reilly’s opinion of PC McGillicuddy, RUC, was rather to the south of contempt. As I remembered, there was something about one of Lord Fitzgurgle’s pheasants that had found its way into the backseat of O’Reilly’s car—all unknown to his lordship or his gamekeeper—and a debate between the chubby arm of the law and the local representative of Hygeiea and Panacea surrounding the ownership of that deceased member of the family Phaisanus versicolour.

  My musing was interrupted by O’Reilly muttering, “Bloody dog.”

  I assumed he was referring to Arthur Guinness, but before I had time to inquire, O’Reilly stopped walking and I was forced to follow suit. Our progress was blocked by PC M. McG., RUC.

  “Morning, Doctors.”

  “Morning, Officer,” I replied. It has always struck me as sensible to keep on the good sides of policemen, parking wardens, gamekeepers, water bailiffs, and such. I didn’t expect O’Reilly to do more than grunt, given his known opinion of the constable in particular and the rest of the human race in general. As you well know, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly treated few people with respect, let alone deference.

  I imagine Catherine the Great, or “Big Katy” as she would have been called in Northern Ireland, had a similar approach to the citizens of Mother Russia. “Rodina,” I believe, is the correct term in Russian for the place—but you probably didn’t want to know that. Anyway, Big Katy would condescend to peasant and archduke alike. They in turn would grovel to her.

  She had a bit of an edge over O’Reilly. Although almost every citizen of Ballybucklebo and its environs did metaphorically tug their forelocks to their physician, he didn’t have the right to order them shot if they did not. And I know that in his heart he believed he should have that prerogative.

  It was with those thoughts running through my mind that I watched in amazement as he smiled, inclined his head, touched the peak of his cap with the fingers of his right hand, wished Constable McGillicuddy a very good morning, and inquired about his health.

  “I’m grand, Doctor,” replied the constable. “Grand altogether.”

  “Good,” said O’Reilly. “Very good. Well. Must be off. Duty calls.” He sidled past McGillicuddy and I followed. What on earth could have happened to reduce O’Reilly to such a pacific state?

  “Bloody dog,” he grunted as he strode along.

  “Arthur?”

  “Arthur.”

  “More cats in trees?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Worse.” He stopped dead. I halted. Fingal turned to face me. “I had a burglar.”

  “My God.” Something had happened in my absence.

  “Indeed. Some misbegotten nitwit broke into my place. Arthur’s meant to be a watchdog.” O’Reilly snorted. “Bloody animal must have nearly beaten the intruder to death with his tail. Flaming dog didn’t even bark, never mind tear the man’s throat out.”

  I had no difficulty believing that. Arthur Guinness, apart from an unrequited passion for my trouser leg, was the gentlest dog in Ireland.

  “What was taken?” I asked.

  O’Reilly shrugged. “Couple of bottles of whiskey. Not much, but I thought I should at least make our local Sherlock Holmes earn his wages, so I telephoned him.”

  Aha, I thought, and McGillicuddy had apprehended the villain and recovered O’Reilly’s whiskey. That would explain his recent civility.

  “Bloody dog,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Arthur’s a retriever, not a Rottweiler. You can hardly blame him for not going for the burglar.”

  “Burglar? Burglar?” O’Reilly shook his head. “I would forgive him that, but just now you saw me being nice to McGillicuddy.”

  “Because he got your whiskey back.”

  “I wish,” said O’Reilly. “I have to be nice to the constable because, after neglecting to deal with my burglar, do you know what was the first thing Arthur-bloody-Guinness did when McGillicuddy arrived?”

  I shook my head and saw O’Reilly’s brows knit and his nose tip pale. “Arthur-bloody-Guinness bit McGillicuddy.”

  I had difficulty stifling a laugh, which, if the look on O’Reilly’s face was anything to go by, would have been as appropriate as a snigger at a funeral.

  To my surprise O’Reilly himself was starting to smile. “Still,” he said, turning to stare at the constable’s retreating back, “old Arthur G. does have impeccable taste.”

  DECEMBER 1998

  Hell on Wheels

  Donal Donnelly and his venerable velocipede

  I was walking along the street on my way to make a house call. O’Reilly was taking morning surgery. My forward progress was blocked by Donal Donnelly, who clearly wanted my opinion. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it, Doctor Taylor, sir?” he asked.

  You’ll recall Donal, a gangly youth who occasionally worked as an itinerant barman at Lord Fitzgurgle’s soirees. You can’t place him? Not surprising, really. Donal had once been described by Kinky—O’Reilly’s housekeeper—as “an unpredisposing sort of a kind of a man.” He was. Utterly unpredisposing. There’s no reason why you should remember him.

  Cast your mind back to the time Donal stalled his father’s tractor at the village’s only traffic light. That was when O’Reilly, stuck behind as the light kept changing colours, left his car, walked up to the tractor, and asked a terrified Donal if he was waiting for a particular shade of green.

  Got him now? Right. Twenty-three, four foot ten, ninety-one pounds, ginger hair, a squint, buck teeth that were the envy of the local hares, and a tendency to acneiform eruptions.

  You’re probably wondering why I’m spending so long getting you up to speed on the physical characteristics of Donal Donnelly. You may even have forgotten his opening remarks: “It’s a beauty, isn’t it, Doctor Taylor, sir?”

  The “it” in question was a Raleigh bicycle. Donal stood beside it holding on to the handlebars, beaming at the elderly velocipede with all the pride of a new mother looking into her pram.

  “Indeed, Donal.” The white lie was invented for these situations. “Beauty” and Donal’s ’cycle could only occupy the same sentence when ice skates are sold in Hades, but Donal was a gentle soul and if he wanted me to admire his new possession I saw no reason not to.

  I gazed at the machine. Once it had been black. There were flakes of enamel scattered over the uniform patina of rust that covered the frame. It was the woman’s model. Men’s bikes had a crossbar that ran horizontally from the front wheel-forks to the saddle post. On the woman’s model, the bars dipped from the fork to the bit where the pedals are attached. The arrangement was a hangover from the time women wore voluminous skirts. Real men—the non-quiche-eating types—wouldn’t have been caught dead on a woman’s bike.

  “It only cost me thirty bob,” Donal said.

  “You stole it.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell Donal that he might have made a reasonable bargain if the previous owner had paid him thirty shillings to take the thing away.

  “Just you wait until I’ve fixed her up a bit, Doctor.” He pushed the lever that should have activated the handlebar-mounted bell. There was no “ting,” just a rusty grinding noise. “Just you wait.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, glancing at my watch, “but I’d best be getting on now, Donal.”

  He touched the peak of his cloth cap and we parted. I confess I thought little of Donal Donnelly and his bike for several months.

  * * *

  The next time I saw the bike it was propped against the side of O’Reilly’s house. I didn’t recognize it at first as Donal’s. He had indeed “fixed it up a bit.” The rust had been sandpapered away and the frame painted a screaming primrose yellow. A chrome-plated bell was fixed to the right handlebar. The mudguards’ lime green shone in the morning sunlight. Every spoke had been tinted scarlet. This, it must be remembered, was before LSD and the psychedelic movement. I was so engrossed I didn’t notice Donal and O’Reilly approaching.

  “Morning, Doctor Taylor.” I turned and saw Donal grinning from ear
to ear. “Told you I’d fix her up.” He laid one hand on the saddle. “And Doctor O’Reilly says I can keep her.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “That’s right, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Indeed it is, Donal.” I could see O’Reilly was struggling to keep a straight face.

  “That’s good,” I mumbled, wondering what that last remark meant. I watched Donal cycle away with all the dignity of the maharajah of Ponderistan in his state barouche, then turned to O’Reilly, who was now laughing openly.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, “poor Donal.” A frown crossed O’Reilly’s craggy visage. “That bloody man the Reverend McWheezle should have known better.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Donal’s getting married.”

  “Never. Who to?”

  “Maggie MacCorkle’s niece, Martha, and the pair of them went to McWheezle for a bit of a rehearsal.”

  I was having some difficulty understanding what this had to do with Donal keeping his bicycle.

  O’Reilly explained. “They got to the bit, ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow.’ Donal asks what ‘endow’ means. McWheezle tells him Martha gets all Donal’s possessions.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did, and poor old Donal’s been stewing for a week about whether to give up Martha or his bike.”

  “And that’s why you told him he could keep the bike.”

  “It is,” said O’Reilly.

  “But how could you outrank McWheezle on a theological question?”

  “Easy,” he said, pulling out his briar. “I told Donal that endowments were made after a man dies. Martha gets the bike in Donal’s will.”

  I had to laugh. “You’re a crafty old devil, Fingal. The Wily O’Reilly.”

  “I am,” he said, “and you can buy me a pint.”

  JANUARY 1999

  What’s in a Name?

  O’Reilly checks in

  Some ethnic expressions suffer in the translation and yet if left untranslated are well understood. Take the Yiddish “chutzpa.” There’s no English equivalent nor does there need to be. I know I need not expound further, at least to those of you who know my old mentor, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, when I tell you that he had “a good conceit of himself.” And you know he didn’t “suffer fools gladly.”

  This combination could lead to misunderstandings, pallor of the O’Reilly schnozzle, and as much heat generated as in one of those bizarre chemistry experiments we were forced to conduct as first-year medical students.

  I was present when O’Reilly’s unwillingness to condescend to lesser mortals led to such an inevitable outcome. To add spice, it was one of those rare situations when O’Reilly was bested in a verbal joust. The reagents in the reaction were Fingal Flahertie and a desk clerk at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin. The catalyst was a suitcase.

  It had been a present to O’Reilly from Lord Fitzgurgle. Fingal was inordinately proud of the buffed pigskin and his name, Doctor F. F. O’Reilly, inscribed on a small brass plaque.

  How the clerk and O’Reilly came into contact requires a few words of explanation. The occasion was one of those annual exercises of legalized thuggery. I refer of course to the sport of rugby football. According to tradition, the game was invented at the English school Rugby, when during a soccer game one young lad picked up the ball and ran with it. I favour an earlier explanation that the modern game is a watered-down version of a contest invented by the Visigoths, who used a human head for a ball.

  O’Reilly had been a keen player in his youth. (I believe that if gladiatorial contests had been legal in his salad days he would have taken an active role. He was, as you’ll recall, a former boxing champion of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.) He always went to Dublin to cheer on the Irish rugby team. And this was the second time he’d asked me to come as his guest.

  “It’ll be a grand trip,” he announced. “And we’ll stay at the Gresham again.”

  “Terrific.” I almost meant it. The internationally recognized luxury of the Gresham Hotel would almost make up for being driven to Dublin by O’Reilly. I won’t bore you with an account of the journey. I will take you directly to the Gresham.

  O’Reilly strode up the front steps with the force of the Bolshevik Army at the St. Petersburg Winter Palace. He brushed aside the efforts of the uniformed doorman to carry the pigskin portmanteau. “Jasus, Gallagher. You know I always carry my own luggage.”

  The doorman tugged at his forelock. “Sorry, Doctor, sir. I didn’t recognize you for a minute.”

  “You what? Haven’t I been coming here for twenty years now?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  O’Reilly grunted. “Come on, Taylor. I want to get us registered and go for a jar.” He shouldered his way through the crowd in the lobby. “This won’t take long. All the staff know me here.”

  I refrained from remarking that that had not been initially obvious from the way the doorman had behaved, and followed in O’Reilly’s footsteps.

  He halted at the registration desk, set his case on the plushly carpeted floor, and leant forward, arms folded on the counter.

  The desk clerk was filing papers in pigeonholes behind the counter. As was the custom in those days, he wore a full morning suit, tail coat and pinstripes.

  I heard a low rumbling coming from O’Reilly and knew how much he disliked being ignored.

  “Oi,” he said.

  Either he was not overheard or the clerk chose to overlook the less than polite remark.

  “OI!”

  The clerk half-turned, looked over a pair of spectacles at O’Reilly, and returned to his filing.

  O’Reilly’s nose tip paled. I knew he was going to go ballistic. (As an aside, if you believe you’ve found an anachronism because the expression “going ballistic” belongs to the ’90s, not the ’60s, let me remind you that the original ballista, a Roman artillery piece, predated even O’Reilly by the odd millennium.) He lifted a hand and smashed it down on a bell that adorned the counter. Quasimodo would have been proud of the clangour.

  “OI, YOU!”

  The clerk turned. “Is sir addressing me?”

  “Sir bloody well is. I want to register.”

  “Indeed.” The clerk pulled a ledger along the countertop.

  “What name, sir?”

  “Jasus, not you too,” said O’Reilly. “How many years have I been coming here?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, sir. I started working here two weeks ago.” The clerk sniffed. “Now. What name, sir?”

  “Use your eyes, you thick bastard.” O’Reilly pointed at his suitcase. “My name’s on the case.”

  “Certainly, sir.” The clerk scrutinized the luggage. “I see,” he said. “Silly of me.”

  “I should think so,” said O’Reilly, calming a little, at least until the clerk remarked in unctuous tones, “And how long will Mister Genuine Pigskin be staying with us?”

  FEBRUARY 1999

  Fill ’er Up

  Donal Donnelly makes a fuel of O’Reilly

  When I told you about Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and the desk clerk at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, I remarked that I wouldn’t weary you with an account of our drive there from Belfast. There was no promise, overt or implied, not to tell you about our drive back.

  Motorcars were to O’Reilly as explosive-laden bombers were to kamikaze pilots. The only difference between the “Divine Wind” fliers in their Mitsubishis and O’Reilly in his long-nosed Rover car was that he confidently expected to return from each mission. In our small village and the environs all the locals were well aware of his propensities and were as adept at taking avoiding action as U.S. warships in Leyte Gulf. Well, most U.S. warships.

  Like some of the smaller aircraft carriers in the Philippines, Donal Donnelly was an exception. In his last vehicular encounter with Fingal Flahertie—when Donal’s tractor had stalled at a red light—the unfortunate youth had been the subject of a tongue-lashing of ferocious intensity.

  This fact is germane t
o the rest of the story. I hadn’t realized at the time that Donal could harbour a grudge and, like the mills of God, he ground slowly, but he ground exceeding small. I probably would never have known if O’Reilly hadn’t told me the story on the drive back from Dublin.

  We left the Gresham on Sunday morning. Ireland had beaten England the day before and we’d celebrated with some of Fingal’s old classmates from Trinity College. I had a very sore head, O’Reilly looked as if he might bleed to death from his eyeballs, and I had a distinct impression I’d be better to go home by train.

  Certain mystic sects believe the gods are especially protective of small children and idiots. The same deities must also have held a watching brief for O’Reilly when he was behind the wheel—and I leave it to you to decide under which category. If, as O’Reilly’s passenger, I qualified for attention from the deities, it was definitely because I was an idiot. There was a perfectly good train service from Dublin to the North of Ireland.

  “Hop in,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “Great day.”

  As I boarded I couldn’t help but agree. It was one of those crisp February mornings—sun bright, sky eggshell-blue, clouds puffy and white—that God makes in Ireland to ensure that never more than half the population can bring themselves to emigrate.

  “Right,” said O’Reilly, grinding the Rover into gear and pulling away from the curb in a series of jerks that would have made a spastic kangaroo proud, “won’t take us long to get home.”

  “Good.” I crossed my fingers and hunched down in my seat.

  We managed to leave the city of Dublin more or less intact. I didn’t count the dray horse that was last seen disappearing along O’Connell Street at Mach 0.5 or the two dustbins that were bowled over. I was heartily relieved when the Rover hurtled along the country roads, if for no other reason than there were fewer impediments to forward progress.

  “We’ll be across the border in no time,” said O’Reilly, swerving to avoid a chicken.

  I glanced at the dashboard instruments. The speedometer read seventy miles per hour and—oops—the petrol gauge read empty.