An Irish Country Family--An Irish Country Novel

by Patrick Taylor

  “Thank you. Thank you both,” said Helen. “I am very grateful. And I never would have known about the scholarship if it hadn’t been for Doctor O’Reilly. Thank you, sir.”

  “My pleasure. It seems only a few weeks ago when the marquis awarded you that scholarship, and by all that’s holy, you’ve done the MacNeills, indeed the whole village, proud.”

  “Fingal and I are delighted for you,” said Kitty. “I still remember you curled up in our lounge reading Popular Science and now, here you are, a doctor.”

  “Please excuse us. The place is starting to fill up. I think we should claim our table, Helen,” said Jack.

  The marquis said, “Quite right. We’ll get a chance to buy you a drink later.”

  O’Reilly watched as Jack seated Helen at an adjacent table, then threaded his way through the nearly full tables to the bar hatch.

  The nearby stage was hidden by closed curtains. Several tables away, Kinky and Archie were sitting with Maggie and Sonny Houston and Julie Donnelly, who had put her handbag on the empty chair beside her. Ronald Fitzpatrick and Alice Moloney, as they had at Donal Donnelly’s housewarming party, were sitting with Emer and Nonie and a young man O’Reilly did not recognise. Connor Nelson was on call tonight. The organising committee of Bertie Bishop and Flo, Dapper Frew and Lenny Brown sat together with Connie and Colin Brown. The fifth member, Alan Hewitt, was serving behind the bar because Donal Donnelly had other duties tonight.

  The loud buzz of conversation was punctuated with laughter and the clinking of glasses, and the tobacco fug was building. Someone had already opened the door to let in some fresh air. He looked around but did not see Oliver Mullan anywhere. Indeed O’Reilly hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man since that Tuesday in May. He felt for the fellow, sitting alone in his house, hearing the festivities over here. O’Reilly shrugged. It couldn’t be helped. “Here we are, only the first Saturday in July, and already the organising committee had put on a dance, a disco, a céilidh, and a hop, and the place is packed again tonight.”

  “And,” said John MacNeill, “the honorary treasurer tells me that after expenses, the money’s mounting up. We’ll be able to send some children to that multidenominational summer camp in Cushendall next year if the cash continues accumulating the way it has been.”

  “That’s terrific,” Kitty said. “So good for the kiddies. I’ve come to love that part of County Antrim. It’s so peaceful.”

  “And great social successes the events are too,” John MacNeill said. “I think we put on a wonderful show for BBC Ulster, Ulster ITV, and RTE on the first night. Father Hugh and Reverend Robinson were ecumenism personified, and Alan Hewitt and Gerry Shanks, a republican and a loyalist, shaking hands? What a powerful symbol that was. Bertie Bishop’s idea of showing the rest of the world how one little Ulster community can forget its differences and get along was brilliant. I had a letter from a friend in Philadelphia. The story was picked up by the major American networks. He was most impressed.”

  Kitty said with a mischievous smile, “That unity may not hold true tonight.”

  “Good gracious, Kitty,” Myrna said. “Of course it will. Why ever would you say it wouldn’t?”

  “Because,” Kitty said, “folks can fall out over things other than politics and religion. Talent contests can be great fun, but…” She let the idea hang.

  “Which is why neither Fingal nor I volunteered to judge,” John MacNeill said. “Kitty’s right. You need someone with the wisdom of Solomon.”

  “And a skin as thick as a rhino’s.” O’Reilly sat back in his chair and laughed. “By God, some of our citizens can be pretty competitive.”

  “And speaking of God, you can’t do much better than Father O’Toole and Reverend Robinson,” Myrna said, nodding to their front-and-centre table. “They’ll keep the peace.”

  “True,” O’Reilly said. “And I think tonight’s going to be a lot of fun.”

  “Bound to be,” Kitty said, “with Donal Donnelly as our master of ceremonies.”

  “Speak of the devil.” O’Reilly watched as the curtains jerked open to reveal an empty stage, a microphone on a tall stand, and behind it the carroty-thatched Donal Donnelly clutching the top of the stand in both hands.

  A series of hisses, squeaks, and a low booming came from two tall speakers, one at each side of the stage. “My lord, ladies, and the rest of youse lot, can you hear me at the back?” Donald roared out.

  Gerry Shanks yelled, “They can hear you in Donaghadee, Donal, and that’s nine miles away. Turn it down a bit.”

  Donal fiddled with a control panel.

  “Right,” Donal said. “Is that better?”

  “Dead on,” Gerry called. All other conversations had stopped.

  “Good. Now, youse all know me, I’m Donal Donnelly, so I am, and I’m your MC the night and I want til tell youse all how matters will proceed up here on the stage so you know what to expect from the, well, from the proceedings.” Donal paused for breath.

  “Go on then,” a stranger called out. “Get on with it. We want some music.”

  Donal shook his head, rolled his eyes to the heavens, and said with scorn in every syllable, “There’s one in every crowd. If the bollix was at a wake he’d only be happy if he was the centre of attention—and that would mean being the corpse.”

  The room erupted then the noise faded.

  “As I was saying, welcome to the first Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts’ talent contest. We have a number of acts, and each one will perform, and be judged, by Father O’Toole and Reverend Robinson. Will youse gentlemen stand, please?”

  Father Hugh in his cassock and Reverend Robinson in his black jacket and dog collar stood and faced the crowd and were politely applauded.

  As the clergymen sat, Donal said, “Now, in order that neighbours can chat with neighbours and the odd jar can be bought, when I’ve finished talking I’m going til sit down over there for a while beside my beautiful wife, Julie, and youse can mingle. In about ten minutes I’ll bring the first act up. Not sure yet who it’s going to be, but all will be revealed in good time. Then, when they’ve done their party piece, and youse all have shown your approval, like, by clapping and cheering and doing whatever else you want to do to show you liked the act, as long as it’s civil, mind, that’ll give the judges your opinions. Then, we’ll have another wee break, another turn, and so on. When everybody’s done singing and dancing and playing their instruments, we’ll find out the winner from our judges, who will have as tough a job as your man Hercules had when he mucked out them stables back in Greece. Now is all that clear?”

  “As mud, Donal, as usual,” Gerry Shanks called, “but we love you.”

  Laughter and applause.

  Donal grinned his bucktoothed grin and hopped down from the stage. The curtains closed.

  The sounds of practice scales on a set of uilleann pipes and the high notes of a pennywhistle rang out over the buzz of the crowd. A short queue had formed in front of Alan Hewitt’s bar hatch.

  O’Reilly became aware of two people standing beside him. He turned to see Lenny and Colin Brown. “Hello, Browns,” O’Reilly said. “How are you?”

  Lenny said, “I hope we’re not intruding, my lord, but could Colin and me have a wee word with Doctor O’Reilly?”

  “You are not intruding at all. Please do, Mister Brown.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Doctor O’Reilly. Do you mind when you and me had a kind of falling-out four years ago when I wanted Colin til work in the shipyards and you and Doctor Laverty and Mister Bishop ganged up on me and got me til let him sit the Eleven Plus exam and go to grammar school?”

  “I do, Lenny.”

  “Colin has something til say. Go on, son.”

  A blushing Colin, with both hands clasped behind his back, took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked O’Reilly in the eye. “Doctor O’Reilly, I want to say thank you very very much. You know I want to be a vet. You’re part of the reason I’m going to
get that chance.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I sat my first of the national school exams in June.” He offered O’Reilly a sheet of paper. “This here come, I mean came, in the post this morning. Mum and Dad are very pleased. I’d like you and Doctor Laverty, and Mister Bishop, to read it too.”

  O’Reilly took the sheet and scanned it. “Holy Mother of—Sorry.” He turned and cleared his throat to address the whole table. “Everyone, listen to this. Young Colin Brown here has passed eight subjects in the national school exams, and every one of them with distinction. My most sincere congratulations, Colin.”

  “Eight? All eight. Good Lord,” Myrna said, clapping her hands. “As a university type I can tell you what that means. The pass mark in the national school exams is forty percent. They are tough, tough tests. A distinction is awarded when marks are over eighty percent. Achieving that in eight subjects is practically unheard of. Very well done, young man.”

  John MacNeill offered his hand. “I think you’ll go far, Colin Brown. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Colin completed the handshake.

  Kitty, always the most demonstrative, stood up and kissed Colin’s cheek. “Well done, young man. Well done.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

  “His mum and me, we’re dead chuffed, so we are,” Lenny said. “Imagine. Our wee Colin going to university in two years with money from Mister Bishop after he passes the next set of national exams.”

  “And I’m certain you will, Colin,” John MacNeill said.

  “Now I said we didn’t want til intrude, so we’ll be going to see Mister Bishop next, but thanks again, Doc.”

  “And I’ll tell Doctor Laverty when he gets here. He’ll be delighted,” O’Reilly said to their departing backs.

  “Isn’t that wonderful?” Kitty said, sitting back down, but before anyone could answer, Donal’s voice came over the loudspeakers as the curtains opened. “My lord, ladies, reverend gentlemen, and youse lot. Let me present our first act, the Jolly Beggarmen.” With a flourish of his arm, he indicated a group of five men. Accordion, uilleann pipes, mandolin, penny whistle, and bodhran. “Let’s hear it for them.”

  O’Reilly recognised all five as members of the Ballybucklebo Highlanders. The piper was Angus Mehaffey. O’Reilly had heard from Barry that Angus would be playing the very pipes Anne Galvin had given him.

  Applause and whistles.

  O’Reilly, whose musical tastes covered the spectrum, sat enjoying the group’s set of jigs, reels, a hornpipe, and a vocal rendition of “Whiskey in the Jar.” He sang along,

  As I was goin’ over the far-famed Kerry Mountain

  I met with Captain Farrell

  And his money he was countin’

  I first produced my pistol …

  He joined in the great round of applause when the set ended, and glanced at his empty glass. “The trouble,” he said, “with the singing is that it gives you a thirst. Anyone else?”

  “Please, Fingal,” Myrna said. “A small dry sherry.” She handed him her empty glass. O’Reilly, glasses in hand, headed for the bar hatch, exchanging pleasantries on his way. Picking up snatches of conversations.

  “D’yuh see that there Rolling Stone Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool on Wednesday?”

  “Right enough? Desperate. Poor lad.”

  “Likely he was stoned. No pun intended.”

  “Hello, Doctor. Grand evening,” Kinky said when he stopped at their table.

  “Good evening to this table,” he said.

  “Maggie and I do have an idea, so,” Kinky said. “Next time, if the committee would give us a small budget, Maggie and Cissie—she’s babysitting Julie and Donal’s brood so they can be here tonight—Maggie and Cissie and I would cater, and you could charge for the food and make a profit for the kiddies’ charity.”

  “We could, you know.” Maggie’s hatband sported one red and one yellow carnation. “I’ll bet my plum cake would sell like hotcakes. There wasn’t a bit left after Donal’s housewarming. And I’ve a new recipe for cherry cake.”

  “I’ll bet it would. I’ll mention your suggestion to Mister Bishop. Now I’ve to be off to get drinks. Enjoy yourselves.” O’Reilly headed on but had to stop at the doctors’ table, where Emer was grinning from ear to ear and beaming at Nonie and her young man.

  “Have your Premium Bonds given you a big win, Emer?”

  She bounced on her chair. “Nonie, introduce Michael.”

  “Doctor O’Reilly, please meet Doctor Michael O’Driscoll.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Michael, could you give Doctor O’Reilly your seat for a minute?” Emer said. “We’ve something amazing to tell him. I want him sitting down when he hears.”

  Michael stood.

  Frowning, O’Reilly sat and put his empty glasses on the tabletop. What the hell was going on?

  “Tell him, Nonie. Tell him.”

  “Fingal, you remember when we all had lunch in April the day you and Emer saw the boy with mumps, and I said I might have something to offer with respect to Emer’s job prospects?”

  “I do, and as I recollect you said your lips were sealed. Are they about to be unsealed?”

  Nonie nodded. “The something, or rather somebody, was Michael.” She looked into his eyes. There was love there.

  O’Reilly thought he was beginning to understand.

  “Michael is an immunologist. He’s accepted a consultant job with the Bay of Plenty Health Board in Wellington.”

  “It’s in New Zealand,” Emer said, and laughed.

  Nonie held up her left hand to display a diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring. “He’s asked me to go with him and there’s a GP job available too. It took longer than we had anticipated making the arrangements, but we wanted to keep it all to ourselves until everything was certain. We finalised our plans last night.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” The implication was obvious to O’Reilly. “Well done, both of you. Nonie, it’s been a pleasure having you here, and I hope things turn out wonderfully for you both Down Under and that you’ll write and keep in touch.”

  “Thank you,” Nonie and Michael said in unison.

  Nonie continued, “We will, and I’m sorry about the short notice, but they’d like us in post by August the first.”

  “I’ll tell Barry when he gets here. He’ll be pleased for you and for Emer, and as soon as I can arrange things with Professor Gibson, Emer, you can consider yourself as an assistant with a view to partnership with Barry and me, with no break in the continuity of the practice.”

  Emer leapt to her feet and bent to give O’Reilly a smacking kiss. “Thank you, Fingal. Thank you. Thank you. I can’t…”

  But her words were drowned out by Donal’s amplified voice. “And now for your pleasure. Alan Hewitt will give us some songs from Old Ireland, and I’ll take back my usual job as barman.”

  O’Reilly looked at the empty glasses he’d deposited on the table and back to where his party sat. Damn. It would be considered coarse to get up and walk to the bar just as Alan started singing.

  “Please, sir, stay where you are.” Michael O’Driscoll motioned for the senior man to remain seated.

  Alan, with no preamble, began to sing “My Lagan Love.”

  Where Lagan streams sing lullaby

  There blows a lily fair

  The twilight gleam is in her eye …

  He sang four numbers, finishing with a rousing rendition of the “Rocky Road to Dublin” with everyone, O’Reilly included, belting out the choruses.

  One, two, three, four, five, hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road

  and all the way to Dublin,

  Whack fal-al-dee-rah

  When the applause died down and the hubbub of conversation restarted, O’Reilly rose. “I’ve drinks to get, but good luck to you both Michael and Nonie, and welcome aboard, Emer.”

  “Fingal,” Ronald Fitzpatrick said, “before you go, could y
ou wait one more minute?”

  “Of course.”

  “You will recall how a certain Colonel Mullan was, well, rude to Alice back in May?”

  “You needn’t worry about him, Ronald. His house is up for sale.”

  “I know, but what happened got me thinking.” He gazed fondly at Alice Moloney, who returned his loving look. “Well I, that is, you see—” His Adam’s apple bobbed and he blushed beetroot red.

  Alice said with a smile, “What my dear tongue-tied Ronald is trying to tell you is that he asked me to be his wife three weeks ago. We didn’t tell anyone but,” she smiled, “we tied the knot in Belfast and went to Dublin to have a little honeymoon. We only got home two days ago. And we wanted you, Fingal, to be one of the first to know. This seemed like the ideal spot to tell you.”

  O’Reilly’s roar, which would have made a bull elephant’s trumpeting sound like a mouse’s squeak, cut off every other voice in the hall. All eyes turned on the doctor. “Bloody marvellous. Well done, Ronald and Alice. May your troubles be as few and as far apart as my late grandmother’s teeth.” His gaze covered the room. “I’ve just had some excellent news, in fact two excellent pieces of news, and I’m a very happy man, so quit your rubbernecking and go back to talking to each other.” He seized Ronald’s hand and pumped it. “You old dog. Bless you both.”

  Conversations began again, everyone, no doubt, commenting on the eccentricities of their senior medical advisor. O’Reilly shrugged. It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last.

  “Thank you, Fingal.”

  O’Reilly lifted the empty glasses. “If I had a drink, I’d drink to the health of both couples and my new assistant. But now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my own party and tell them your news, so if you’ll give me your orders, it’s drinks on me for the table. Alan or Donal will bring them over.”

  As O’Reilly walked away from the serving hatch, carrying his pint and Myrna’s sherry, he reckoned he must be the most contented person in all of Ballybucklebo, until he saw Barry coming in holding Sue’s hand. They were laughing like two kids who’d just robbed an orchard and not been caught. Perhaps he might have some competition for that position? He’d find out what was so amusing after Barry had got their drinks, joined Jack and Helen, and dealt with the usual pleasantries.