An Irish Country Village

by Patrick Taylor

  “No, Kinky.” Barry realized that by seeming to ignore her cooking, he had insulted her once more. He grabbed the hatbox and gave it to her. “I—that is, Doctor O’Reilly and I—have a wee something for you.”

  “Why? It’s not my birthday or Christmas.” She held the box in front of her.

  “No,” said O’Reilly, forkful of crab cake halfway to his mouth. “It’s because we love you.”

  “Less of your soft soap, Doctor dear.” But Barry could tell by the way she smiled that the gift and O’Reilly’s words had pleased her. “Now eat up before it gets cold, and I’ll run off and have a look in this.”

  “I will,” said O’Reilly, and the better part of a crab cake vanished.

  Barry tucked in. The cakes had a flavour of fresh Dungeness crab, what the locals simply called “eating crab.” He couldn’t identify the subtle spice, but it was delicious. The chips were golden, crisp, and firm. He didn’t bother trying to start a conversation. He could see O’Reilly wolfing down his supper with the enthusiasm of a recently rescued, marooned mariner.

  Barry was still eating when O’Reilly set his knife and fork on his now empty plate with a clatter, smiled at Barry, and said, “Just the job to set a fellah up for a lonesome wellie boot hunt.” O’Reilly rose and headed for the door. “I’m off to see if I can find the brother to the one Arthur nicked. Keep an eye on the shop, and I’ll be back as quick as I can. I still want to see that rugger game.”

  “Right.” Barry was pleased to be left in charge. He pushed his empty plate aside and ran a finger round the inside of the tight waistband of his trousers.

  “Excuse me, Doctor Laverty.” Kinky stood in the doorway. “How do you like the look of that?”

  He turned. The green felt trilby was set exactly on the centre of her silver hair.

  “It suits you, Kinky,” Barry said. “It really does.”

  “It’s just what I needed for Maggie’s wedding,” she said.

  “You’ll be the belle of the ball.” Barry thought of Rhett Butler giving Mammy a red petticoat. “Kinky, it’s by way of saying I’m sorry for that crack on Sunday.”

  “What crack?”

  “About Jesus and the Beatles . . . and Doctor O’Reilly’s sorry too for turning his nose up at your lunches.”

  She shook her head. “Yerragh, Doctor dear, it’s nice of the pair of you to worry about my feelings.” She glanced down. “But then himself worries about everybody’s feelings”—she looked back to Barry—“and I’m glad to see you’re taking after him.”

  Barry blushed.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Please.”

  She sat heavily on a dining room chair. “I have been a bit cantalach lately . . .”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Grumpy, but it’s nothing to do with you or himself, so don’t you fret.” She looked straight into Barry’s eyes. “I told you a bit about myself and Paudeen.”

  Barry had been flattered last month when she’d confided in him about how she’d lost her husband, a Cork fisherman, years ago. “I do,” he said quietly.

  “It was August he was drowned. Sometimes it comes back to me, so.”

  “I’m sorry, Kinky.” She still grieved after all these years. He couldn’t help but wonder if he lost Patricia, would he still be yearning years later?

  “What’s done’s done,” she said. “I just wanted you to understand.”

  “Thanks, Kinky.”

  “Not at all. It’s me to be thanking you for the hat. Imagine Sonny and Maggie. There’s a thing.”

  Sonny. Barry wondered if Kinky could help. “Kinky,” he said, “Sonny’s stuck in that home in Bangor, and Doctor O’Reilly wants to get him out, but so far he can’t find a place for Sonny to stay. You wouldn’t happen to know of anybody with rooms to rent?”

  She frowned. “I did. Brie Lannigan had a room but she let it to Julie MacAteer when the wee lass left the Bishops, but bedamned if I know of anywhere else. But I’ll ask about.”

  If she could find somewhere, it would be one less thing for O’Reilly to worry about. And Bishop. Kinky might just be able to help there too. “There’s another wee thing.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Have you heard about the councillor and the Duck?”

  She snorted. “Who hasn’t?”

  “He and Mrs. Bishop were in here earlier, and Doctor O’Reilly asked the councillor to change his mind.”

  “Bertie Bishop? Change his mind? Did you ever try to pour molasses on a freezing cold day?”

  “I know but it’s all to do with the lease, and when Doctor O’Reilly broached the subject . . .” Mrs. Bishop’s words and the councillor’s violent hushing of his wife were as clear in Barry’s mind as if they had just happened. “Mrs. Bishop started to say something—‘Bertie doesn’t . . .’—but that’s as far as she got.”

  Mrs. Kincaid frowned. “He doesn’t what?”

  “I don’t know, but could it be possible, just possible, that the councillor’s claim to the title isn’t sound?”

  She laughed. “Anything’s possible in Ballybucklebo, and that councillor’s crooked as a corkscrew. It’s a wonder when he walks over a parquet floor he doesn’t drive himself into the woodwork, so.” She wagged a finger at Barry. “Watch yourself, lad,” she said. “It’s one thing to care like himself, but don’t you go getting as devious.”

  Barry knew it was meant as a friendly warning, but he found the suggestion flattering. “It’s only a glimmer of an idea, but could you do a bit of sniffing around with Mrs. B?”

  “I will, so. And now the dishes won’t wash themselves.” She rose. “And if you see that wee cat, tell her she’s forgiven.”

  “It’s Doctor Dolittle you want for that, Kinky. I can’t talk to animals, but I know what you mean.” He rose. “Off you go and get your work done. I’m just going to nip upstairs and take a peek at your fine needlework on my corduroys. Thanks for fixing them.” He followed Kinky out and climbed the stairs. He knew he was clutching at straws asking Kinky to help solve O’Reilly’s problems, but sometimes the Cork woman seemed to be able to find out things neither he nor O’Reilly could. She was like Della Street, that TV lawyer Perry Mason’s secretary.

  Barry hoped Kinky could take some load off the big man’s shoulders, and as he started to climb the final flight of stairs he wished he could also get Kinky to help speed up Major Fotheringham’s pathology report—and tell him what to do about Patricia as well.

  He went into his bedroom and saw his pants neatly folded on the bed, the rent virtually invisible, so skillfully had Kinky mended it. He would have been very pleased had Lady Macbeth not been curled up sound asleep, half on the legs of the pants, half on the candlewick bedspread, her body well clear of the pool of cat puke smack in the centre of the seat of the trousers.

  “Bloody cat!” he roared, and he could hear O’Reilly’s voice in his. He grabbed for the trousers. Lady Macbeth woke, leapt to her feet, arched her back, fluffed her fur, and spat at him. “Shoo!” Barry said, angrily. The cat sprang to the floor and vanished. Barry bundled up his trousers and took them downstairs. Mrs. Kincaid was drying the last of the dinner plates.

  “Kinky?”

  “What?”

  “You won’t believe this but—”

  “Lord Jesus. Not again. Give them here,” she said.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Och, it’s not your fault.” She took the pants. “Between him putting back the boot Arthur stole, and me cleaning up after the cat, the animals round here keep us busy enough.”

  Barry had expected Kinky to be irritated, but she seemed not the least bit put out. “I’d not have it else,” she said. “Himself, the great amadán, needs the company.”

  It was a word Barry did recognize—it meant idiot. But he could hear the affection in her voice.

  “Still,” she said, “it’s been better since you came, Doctor Laverty, so.” She turned on the tap and started to run water over the stain.
“It’s not my place but . . . I told you last month and I’ll tell you again . . . I hope you’ll be staying.”

  Before Barry could reply, O’Reilly shoved his way in through the back door. “Found it,” he said, beaming. “You’d never guess where. The back step of Donal Donnelly’s mother’s. He lives with her, you know. There was the other boot, all alone, just waiting for its opposite number. And do you know?” He lowered his voice. “Nobody saw me put it back.”

  “A good thing too,” said Barry. “I can just see the headline . . . Wellie Boot Snatcher Found: Eminent Physician on Bootnapping Charges.”

  “Get away with you, Doctor Laverty,” Kinky said, smiling. “Now go on, the pair of you, and watch your rugby match, and I’ll be up later with a cup of tea and barmbrack.”

  “Great,” said O’Reilly. “Come on, Barry.”

  The television set was in a small room on the first-floor landing, not in the upstairs lounge. O’Reilly had explained he couldn’t stand the baleful eye of the blank screen staring at him if the set wasn’t in use.

  Barry took a small armchair.

  “Sherry?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Please.”

  Barry waited for O’Reilly to return, still thinking about what Kinky had said. He was twenty-four; O’Reilly, fifty-six. Damn it, the man was old enough to be his father. Perhaps that was why O’Reilly wanted Barry to stay. As a substitute for the son he’d never had. Barry wasn’t entirely sure it was a role he wanted to play. Ulster fathers could be a bit overpowering, hesitant to give their sons the independence Barry wanted, and yet, at this very moment, when Barry was struggling to regain acceptance, it was a comfort to know that the older man was there.

  “Here you are.” O’Reilly, whiskey in one hand, gave Barry a glass, sat in the other armchair, and put his boots up on a footstool. “Slainthe.”

  “Cheers,” said Barry. He’d heard enough Irish spoken today. “What time’s the kickoff?”

  “Another ten minutes.” O’Reilly stretched and yawned. “Well,” he said, “the pair of us seem to have survived another week. I’d say it hasn’t gone too badly.”

  Barry sipped his sherry. “True,” he said, “but there’s still a few matters outstanding.” He thought again of the awaited pathology results, Sonny, Councillor Bishop—and Patricia Spence.

  “Indeed,” said O’Reilly, “but ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ ”

  “Matthew 6:34.”

  “True,” said O’Reilly, “and don’t forget, we’ve the horses to look forward to tomorrow. Do you know,” he said, rising and switching on the set, “we’re like a couple of fellows pushing wheelbarrows?”

  “Pushing wheelbarrows?”

  “Indeed.” O’Reilly laughed. “Everything’s in front of us.”

  There Were Multitudes Assembled

  The Rover bounced over a rutted lane to a five-bar gate. Ahead Barry could see cars, estate wagons, Land Rovers, and horseboxes parked in ranks on a grassy hillside. A steward in a cloth cap, brown grocer’s coat, and armband was directing traffic. O’Reilly stopped the car and gave the man a pound note.

  O’Reilly paying . . . , Barry thought. Makes a change.

  “Last row on your left, Doctor O’Reilly.” The steward opened the gate.

  “Right.” O’Reilly drove slowly up a gentle hill, past six rows of parked vehicles, and along the aisle between the sixth and seventh row. He pulled in beside the last car and stopped. “Here we are,” he said. “Out.”

  Barry stepped onto the springy turf and looked around. A blackthorn hedge surrounded the field. Two sycamores and a single rowan tree, its myriad berries scarlet harbingers of a hard winter—or so the locals believed—cast their shadows. A flock of jackdaws, flying as erratically as blown soot, circled one of the sycamores. Their bickering and gossiping nearly drowned out the noise of a tractor working somewhere in a valley.

  Beyond the hedge the little Ulster fields, most bordered by drystone walls, rolled like gentle waves. These hillocks, he knew, were called drumlins, rounded hills left by the last ice age. Someone had once described County Down as looking like a basket of green eggs.

  Cloud shadows hurried across fields where flocks of black-faced Suffolk sheep and herds of Dexter cows went about their business. Both dual-purpose breeds—the sheep for their wool and mutton, the cattle for their milk and beef—were like the Ulstermen who kept them: hard-working, unspectacular, durable, and thrifty.

  In the distance he could make out the tall, Georgian chimneys and slate roofs of Bucklebo House peeping over small beech woods. It was, he knew, home of the Marquis of Ballybucklebo in whose demesne lay these fields—and the all-important racetrack.

  O’Reilly had walked round to Barry’s side of the car. “There you are,” he said, pointing down the hill. “The Ballybucklebo racecourse in all its glory.”

  Barry looked over the rows of parked vehicles, each surrounded by its passengers, some perched on shooting sticks, some on folding chairs, all tucking into picnics spread on the open boot doors. Men in jodhpurs, cavalry twill pants, hacking jackets, all wearing camel-hair caps, many with binoculars slung round their necks; women in slacks, tweed skirts, heavy woolen pullovers, blazers, most wearing gay silk headscarves that fluttered in the breeze. Their colours made Barry think there were hundreds of exotic butterflies on the hillside, but the noise of happy chattering was more like the sound of a flock of starlings. Labradors, springer spaniels, short-haired pointers, and Jack Russell terriers sat or lay on the grass. The breeds favoured by the hunting-shooting-fishing fraternity, who must have come from all over the Six Counties.

  “Three miles and two furlongs,” said O’Reilly. “That’s the start there. They run on the track for half a mile, then out into the country, back round the other side of the track, round a curve, and finish back at the start line.”

  At the foot of the hill Barry could see a rope stretched between low white rail fences; further along the track the fences merged into dense hedges bordering a stretch of short-cut grass. He could see the first hurdle between the hedges, a barrier of woven withies mounted on larch poles. The track disappeared from his view where knots of spectators were gathering to watch the first race from behind the hedges.

  “The jumps are four and a half feet high, and there’s a tributary of the Bucklebo for a water jump.” O’Reilly started to sing to himself:

  “And it’s there you’ll see the jockeys and they mounted on so stately,

  The pink, the blue, the orange and green, the emblem of our nation.

  When the bell was rung for starting all the horses seemed impatient.

  I thought they never stood on ground, their speed was so amazing.”

  “With me whack fol the do fol the diddlely idleay,” Barry said. “I know the song, it’s ‘The Galway Races.’ ”

  “Och,” said O’Reilly, “the Galway folks give themselves all kinds of airs about their wee event, held on the seventeenth of August, but for a real race meeting nothing beats this one.” He opened the Rover’s boot. “Let’s see what Kinky’s put in for us.” He wrestled a wicker hamper onto the boot’s door. “None of your salad,” he said with a grin as he opened the lid. “I think the hat worked wonders.”

  Barry waited as O’Reilly arranged a cold roast chicken, hard-boiled eggs, whole tomatoes, slices of baked ham, buttered wheaten bread, plates, knives and forks, salt and pepper, and two bottles of Bass ale on a chequered tablecloth. “Lunch alfresco,” he said, tucking a napkin under his chin and opening a bottle of Bass. “Dig in. And there’s more Bass where that came from.” He handed the bottle to Barry.

  Barry took it then and helped himself to ham, an egg, and a tomato. A single spaniel wandered over and stared hopefully at Barry’s plate.

  “Get away on home,” said O’Reilly. The dog trotted off.

  “You didn’t bring Arthur, Fingal. I thought he enjoyed a day in the country.”

  “Jesus,” said O’Reilly, ripping a drumstick from the bird. �
�With all these other dogs around? I’d be doing nothing but keeping an eye to him, and we’ve more important things to do today.” He pointed to the space between the hedge bordering the track and the first row of parked cars. “We need to have a word or two with one of them fellahs.”

  There was a crowd milling around a series of raised daises. On each was a desk like something out of a Dickensian countinghouse. Above, mounted on two stout poles, was a signboard announcing the owner’s name in garishly painted colours: “Honest Sammy Dolan—Best Odds,” “William McCardle and Sons, Turf Accountants.” Blackboards hung from the marquees, with the time of the race in chalk at the top and the horses’ names and odds in a column beneath.

  The bookies stood on their little platforms: big men, skinny men, men with florid faces; men in garish jackets; men in bowler hats and dunchers; bareheaded men; all with fixed smiles, all wearing leather satchels into which they stuffed pound notes in return for tickets recording the punters’ wagers. The bookies were calling the odds, their competing voices making such a din that they drowned out the sound of the jackdaws. “Pride of Copelands, two to five on . . .”

  “That’ll be the favourite,” O’Reilly explained. “You’d have to put five pounds down to win two.”

  “Breckonhill Brave the Third, evens . . .”

  “I understand that,” said Barry, sipping his Bass.

  “Golden Boy, two to one.”

  “One pound wins you two,” said O’Reilly.

  “Ten to one the field. Ten to one the field.”

  “Those are the odds on all the other horses in the race.”

  “What’s that lad doing?” Barry asked. He nodded to where a youth wearing white gloves stood slightly further up the hillside. His arms whirled up, down, sideways. He touched a finger to his nose, tugged his left earlobe.

  “Tic-tac man,” said O’Reilly. “He’s signalling to his boss, telling him the odds offered by the competition, or any recent information from a jockey or trainer about a horse that might change its likelihood of winning. They each have their own private semaphore systems, and the gloves are so their hands are more visible. See?”