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

by Taylor, Patrick

  “Fingal,” I said, “I’m sure you’re right about the Irish whiskey, but I believe you promised to tell me about the fish.”

  “I’m doing that,” he said. “The last time we were in here I had a chat with Angus MacKay.”

  “I know,” I said. “I got stuck with the bill.”

  “Yes, right, but it’s my shout tonight.”

  “Correct.” I savoured my sherry.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “Angus was very much of the opinion that Scotch whisky was greatly superior to Irish.”

  I thought about this, but the connection between the relative merits of two kinds of ethnic firewater and the catching of a salmon wasn’t instantly apparent.

  “I showed him,” said O’Reilly smugly.

  “Fingal,” I glanced at my watch, “I’m sure this is intriguing, but what about…?”

  “The salmon?” He emptied his glass and roared, “Arthur, two more!” He turned back to me. “Patience, my boy. Patience.”

  The drinks appeared and once again O’Reilly paid. “Now,” he said, “where was I?”

  “Search me.”

  His brows knitted. “Right. The whiskey.”

  “No, Fingal. The fish.”

  “Same thing,” he said. “Listen and I’ll tell you—and don’t interrupt.”

  “I’m all ears.” Wondering where this was going to lead, I sat back and waited.

  “You know I went fishing today? Well, who should be on the bank of the Bucklebo but Angus MacKay.

  “‘Morning, Angus,’ says I.

  “‘Chust so,’ says he.” O’Reilly made a fair hand at imitating the little Scot’s lilt. “And that was the last we spoke for about four hours.” O’Reilly glanced round the room. I presumed he was ensuring that he wasn’t being overheard. Apparently satisfied, he bent forward and said quietly, “Angus had six fish on and I hadn’t had as much as a nibble.”

  I understood his reluctance to be overheard. The man couldn’t stand to be bested at anything, and his next words took me as much by surprise as his earlier apology.

  “I finally went and asked Angus’s advice. I’d noticed that he had a little jar of some brown liquid. He dipped his worms into it before he cast. ‘What’s that, Angus?’ I asked him.”

  For a moment, O’Reilly asking for guidance seemed to me as likely as Julius Caesar having a quick word with a legionary recruit about the advisability of crossing the Rubicon. Then I remembered that Angus was Lord Fitzgurgle’s ghillie—a man of undoubted piscatorial expertise.

  “‘The whisky,’ Angus told me. ‘The Scotch whisky.’

  “‘Could you spare a drop?’”

  So there was a connection between the drink and the fish. Interesting, I thought.

  “Angus looked solemn and peered at his jar. ‘I’d like to, Doctor, sir, but there’s chust enough for me—and the worms.’ I don’t need to tell you that I was a wee bit disappointed.”

  As was a Mister Adolf Hitler when his generals informed him that regrettably his plans to own a large chunk of the city of Stalingrad would have to be deferred for a week or two.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I remembered that I always carry a flask of Irish—for medicinal purposes. I took it out and showed it to Angus. ‘Do you think this might work?’

  “‘Would that be the Irish, Doctor, sir?’ The wee man looked as disdainful as only Angus can. ‘I think it would chust upset your worm,’ said he.

  “I needn’t tell you, Pat, I considered that a bit of a challenge.”

  The code of chivalry called for the armoured antagonist to throw down a galvanized gauntlet. In my opinion, Angus MacKay had chucked the mailed glove and accompanied it with a breastplate, a pair of greaves, and the helmet for good measure.

  “‘We’ll just have to see, won’t we, Angus?’ I told him. I gave a worm a good soaking and cast.”

  O’Reilly’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Have you ever seen a depth charge go off?”

  “No. They weren’t part of our classes,” I said, reminding myself that O’Reilly had been in Her Majesty’s seagoing forces.

  “It’s a thing of beauty,” he said. “White water everywhere.” He chuckled. “The Bucklebo looked just like that. And do you know what?”

  “No,” I replied innocently.

  “When all the spray died down, there on the end of my line was the salmon I brought home, twice as big as anything Angus had caught.”

  “So you reckon you’d made your point about the superiority of Irish whiskey.”

  “More than that. When Angus dipped his worms in Scotch, the fish took the bait. It wasn’t until I’d landed mine—and fighting him is what kept me away from the surgery—it wasn’t until he was on the bank that I saw—and so did Angus, for I called him to see—that my worm had grabbed the fish by the throat.”

  MAY 2001

  O’Reilly Puts His Foot in It

  Out of the mouths of babes …

  “I’ll kill you, Uncle Fingal. I’ll kill you bloody well dead, so I will.” Thus spake an obviously enraged William Butler Yeats O’Reilly, aged eleven.

  I could infer his state of mind by observing the pallor of his nose tip.

  When gales were impending in coastal areas around Ireland, the coast guard hoisted south cones as a warning to mariners. This information was broadcast on the radio. Seamen who were familiar with the signalling convention made all speed for safe havens. When an eruption by a member of the clan O’Reilly was imminent, the O’Reilly schnozzles blanched. Those who could read the signs were usually well advised to take avoiding action.

  On this particular occasion the wrath of the youngest O’Reilly was directed at Fingal, not me. I decided it might be interesting to stay and observe.

  If you’re having some difficulty remembering William Butler Yeats O’Reilly—Willy for short—he was the son of Lars Porsena O’Reilly, who was the brother of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. By intensely exercising your genealogical skills you’ll be able to ascertain that Willy was Fingal’s nephew.

  O’Reilly’s brother and family dwelt in the town of Portaferry at the mouth of Strangford Lough, and O’Reilly had dragged me along while he paid a familial pre-Christmas visit. When last Doctor O. and I had ventured down there, young Willy had been the cause of a minor upset, much as one Gavrilo Princip had been the source of a certain amount of dissension when his disposal of the Archduke Ferdinand had inexorably led to the first great numbered unpleasantness.

  You may remember that I told you about Willy, then aged ten, in the Portaferry school’s Christmas pageant. That was when, because he’d been relegated from the starring role of Joseph to that of innkeeper, he had, on stage, in public, in front of six nuns, invited Mary into the inn but told the upstart playing the part of Joseph, in no uncertain and very audible tones, to “feck off!”

  When the smoke and dust had died down, Willy’s father, Lars Porsena, had taken his son aside and had explained gently that the English language was a precious thing, an instrument of great precision, of beauty, of resonance, not a thing to be taken lightly or profaned. His words, or perhaps his actions, had seemed to make a lasting impression on Willy, who’d stood to take his meals for the next three days.

  Certainly since that time Willy’s use of profanity, at least within the earshot of potentially offendable adults, had ceased. Until today.

  “It’s all your bloody fault.” Willy spat the words. Some species of cobra have the ability to hurl their venom several feet. They would easily have been outranged by O’Reilly’s nephew.

  I watched O’Reilly. I could tell by the way he shuffled his feet that he was uncomfortable, and I suspected that although I was completely in the dark about why his nephew should be so irate, O’Reilly might well have some inkling of understanding of the nature of his misdemeanour. He made no attempt to defend himself or to chastise Willy for swearing.

  “Would you like to tell me what happened?” he asked.

  “C
an you not guess?”

  “Well…”

  “Aye. Well. Easy for you to say.” Willy shook his head in the kind of pitying way adults use when they notice a small child or someone of strictly limited intellectual ability—a Donal Donnelly, say—commit some unspeakable act of folly.

  This was what our old professor of psychiatry used to call “role-reversal” of the very first magnitude. The boot, as Donal Donnelly was frequently heard to observe, was very firmly on the other shoe.

  “All right, Willy,” said O’ Reilly in his most placating voice, “tell me what I did.”

  “Can you not guess?”

  “Was it the words?”

  “‘Was it the words?’” Sarcasm dripped from Willy’s tongue like gobbets of fat from a tallow candle. “Was it the bloody words?”

  “Hah-hm,” said O’Reilly in a fair imitation of C. S. Forester’s fictional sea captain, Horatio Hornblower. “Hah-hm.”

  I’d stood quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself as I enjoyed his discomfiture, but some imp drove me to inquire, “What words, Fingal?”

  He turned and glowered at me.

  “You tell him, Uncle Fingal. Just you tell him,” said Willy.

  “Well,” said O’Reilly uneasily, “Willy here got himself into a little bit of bother at last year’s…”

  “Christmas pageant,” I said. “I remember.”

  “And Dad said he’d marmalize me if he ever caught me swearing again,” added Willy.

  “He was just right,” said O’Reilly.

  Willy’s look of scorn would have stopped a train in its tracks. “My dad always keeps his promises,” he said. “I didn’t want that, so I started to use little words.”

  “Little words?” I asked.

  “Aye,” said Willy. “I’d not say, ‘train,’ I’d say, ‘choo-choo.’ I’d call dogs ‘bow-wows,’ cats ‘kitties.’” He scowled at O’Reilly. “It’s very hard to say, ‘Look at what that bloody bow-wow’s done now.’ And it worked. I never once upset my dad—until he took your advice.”

  “And what would that have been, Fingal?” I asked sweetly.

  “Hah-hm,” said O’Reilly, hanging his head. “I thought Willy was too old to be using baby talk, so I suggested to Lars Porsena that he should make Willy use proper, adult language.”

  “And you should have minded your own bloody business,” said an aggrieved Willy.

  O’Reilly sighed. “All right, Willy,” he said resignedly, “perhaps you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” said Willy. “Do you know what happened?”

  “I can guess,” said Fingal.

  “No, you can’t,” snapped Willy. “You and your ‘adult language.’ Dad kept at me for weeks and weeks.” Willy’s pause was pregnant, not with a singleton but with triplets at least. I became impatient. “Go on,” I prompted.

  Willy looked at me. “Dad asked me what books I wanted for Christmas.”

  As was usual in my dealings with the O’Reilly clan, the waters of my hitherto clear understanding of the problem were beginning to become muddied.

  “No,” said O’Reilly, “he didn’t ask for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I did worse,” said Willy, “and it’s all your fault, Uncle Fingal. You gave me The House at Pooh Corner last year.” Willy scowled. “Dad had been going on so much about me using grown-up language that I got muddled about what book I wanted this year. So I asked for ‘something more about Winnie the Shite.’”

  JUNE 2001

  O’Reilly’s Cat

  “I must go down to the sea again…”

  “You’re not serious, Fingal?” I asked the question because his most recent suggestion made about as much sense to me as the thought of climbing into the works of an operating combine harvester.

  “’Course I am. She’ll love it. You’ll see.”

  The “she” to whom he referred was at that moment imprisoned in a cat-carrying box, from which emanated a series of low, deep, threatening growls that would have made a banshee blanch.

  You may remember that O’Reilly had a cat. Why not? After all, Old MacDonald had a farm. I’ve told you about the creature—a pure white beast whose ancestors must have come straight from Transylvania if her taste for my blood was anything to go by. I’d earlier given some thought to seeing if a certain Doctor van Helsing was listed in the medical directory.

  After all, Maggie MacCorkle’s advice to belt the beast with a scratching post to discourage her attempts to reduce O’Reilly’s furniture to kindling and me to a walking heap of raw meat had been ignored. O’Reilly had dismissed Mrs. Kincaid’s pleas and brushed away my protests with an assurance that Lady Macbeth—that’s what he’d named her—would grow out of her repeated and totally unpredictable moments when she apparently believed that since there was definitely some sabre-toothed tiger blood in her past, she had a moral obligation to live up to her heritage.

  O’Reilly picked up the cat carrier. “Absolutely love it,” he said.

  Judging by the increased volume of the caterwauling, her ladyship was not of the same mind, but as you well know, dissenting opinions rarely carried much weight with Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get her down to the boat.”

  That, you see, was what O’Reilly had decided. Lady Macbeth would love, in his decidedly minority opinion, a trip to sea in his twenty-six-foot sailboat.

  Ordinarily, as you know, I’d have used any legitimate excuse short of shooting off one of my toes—a habit referred to during the first great numbered unpleasantness as “causing self-inflicted injury”—to avoid another nautical adventure with Ballybucklebo’s answer to Captain Ahab. This time, particularly given the dubious outcome for the original old ivory-legged, obsessive-compulsive when he actually caught up with his Moby Dick, nothing would have kept me away. “Just call me Ishmael,” I muttered as we headed for the car.

  “What are you on about, Taylor?” O’Reilly asked, shoving the cat carrier into the backseat. “Lady Macbeth’s a white cat, not a white whale.”

  “I know. But Ishmael was the only survivor of the Pequod’s crew. If it weren’t for him the tale would never have been told.”

  “The only story you’ll have to tell will be about how much her ladyship enjoyed herself. Isn’t that right, Lady Macbeth?”

  Only Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, whose self-described ever-open mind had that day clanged shut like a steel trap, could have interpreted the cat’s very accurate impression of a hand-cranked air-raid siren with a slipped clutch as an affirmative.

  “I’ll leave her below in the saloon,” O’Reilly announced, squeezing his bulk through the hatch. “We’ll let her on deck once we’re well away from the dock.” He vanished. The cat box vanished. He closed the hatch behind him.

  Sound carries at sea, even when a vessel is still moored. From my vantage point in the cockpit I had no difficulty hearing, “Out you come, Lady Macbeth,” hissing that could have been forced from an over-inflated and recently perforated rubber dinghy, and then a bellowed, “Yeeeow!”

  It took some self-control on my part to refrain from passing any remarks about the four red lines on his face that were very evident the moment his head appeared at the hatchway. Still, I thought, with his almost blue cheeks, red stripes, and very white nose tip, his face would have a certain amount of appeal to any passing Ulster Loyalist.

  “It’s all a bit strange to her,” he remarked. “She’ll be all right once we’re at sea.”

  “If you say so, Fingal.”

  “’Course I do. Now,” he bent and turned on the engine, “you let go the dock lines. I’ll take the boat out.”

  And so it came to pass.

  Small-boat diesel engines tend to be somewhat noisy and their exhaust gases malodorous. It’s usually a great relief to hoist the sails and turn the motor off. Then, in the normal course of events, if there’s a decent breeze, little can be heard but the gentle singing of the wind i
n the rigging, the swish and lap of the water. Salty scents fill the nostrils.

  That’s in the normal course. O’Reilly had been adamant that Lady Macbeth would love her first seagoing experience, and as was recognized by no less an expert than Billy Shakespeare, “The course of true love never runs smooth.”

  “Eldritch” is the only word I can use to describe Lady M.’s commentary on her situation. She sounded like the entire string section of a symphony orchestra when half have been given the score to one of Shostakovich’s tone-poems and the rest upside-down copies of a Sousa march. The song of the wind had no hope of competing. And please remember the hatch was shut.

  Borne on the sea breeze came a strange aroma. Pungent, acrid, and very definitely feline, it was something an advertising executive might have described, in a last-ditch attempt to save a failing perfume company, as eau de catpiss.

  “I don’t think she’s altogether happy, Fingal.”

  I could see that it pained him to have to admit that I might just be right.

  “Be a good lad,” he said. “Nip below and see how she’s doing.”

  Worms, it is said, can turn. My very acute self-preservatory instincts kicked in. In helminthic terms, I positive whirled on my axis.

  “No,” I said, surprising myself with the vehemence of my reply. I moved some distance away from him, expecting his response to be on a par with the verbal riposte Captain Bligh must surely have hurled at a certain Mister Fletcher Christian, but to my surprise O’Reilly merely shrugged.

  “Take the helm. I’ll go below,” he said, moving forward and opening the hatch.

  Something white raced past his shoulder, shrieking like every last one of the Furies. I wouldn’t have believed the cat’s next actions if I hadn’t been there in the flesh to bear witness. She went up the mainsail, close to the mast, at something that must have approached the escape velocity the American space scientists of the time were trying to achieve with their Agena rockets, reached the spreaders that stick out from the mast to support the shrouds, and stopped there. She crouched like one of the exotic gargoyles that ancient monks used to adorn the eaves of their more spectacular cathedrals and hurled noisy and vituperative imprecations down onto the heads of the humans below.