An Irish Country Love Story

by Patrick Taylor

  “I thought so,” O’Reilly said. “Can’t be helped.”

  “The driver’s insurance should take care of it,” Bertie said. “It shouldn’t need to go to court. That corner’s been a known hazard for years.”

  Kitty came back. “The Cornhill Insurance people have been most helpful. Disturb as little as possible, they say, but we have permission to put up a bit of weather proofing. It’s to their advantage that the less extra damage done the better.”

  “Great,” said Bertie. “If I can use your phone I’ll get Donal and a couple of other lads round right away to get the hole plugged.”

  “In the hall,” O’Reilly said. “Meanwhile, we’ll cover up the rest of the furniture in here with dust sheets, and when we’ve done, Bertie, will you join Mrs. O’Reilly and me upstairs for a cup of tea?”

  * * *

  O’Reilly, Kitty, and Bertie sat round the fire in the cosy upstairs lounge. Distant sounds of sawing and hammering came from below where Donal Donnelly and two other workmen were building the patch for the dining room wall. For some time to come the folks at Number One would have to take their meals up here while reconstruction went ahead. At least the surgery was intact.

  “Here, Bertie,” said Kitty, offering a three-tiered cake stand. “Jacob’s Afternoon Tea biscuits, Kinky’s jam tarts, or McVitie’s digestive biscuits.”

  “Thanks very much, Mrs. O’Reilly.” He took a jam tart. “My Flo makes these with Kinky’s recipe, but, no harm til Flo, hers are never quite the same, so they’re not.”

  Kitty laughed. “Kinky really is one of a kind.”

  O’Reilly said, “And so are you, Bertie. It’s very decent of you coming out on a pouring Saturday afternoon to arrange for temporary repairs.”

  Bertie swallowed a bite of jam tart. “It’s no different to yourself. You don’t say, ‘Sorry it’s Saturday’ if there’s an emergency, do you?”

  “’Course not,” O’Reilly said, then, “Pass me a digestive, please, love.” He took a bite. “Tell me, Bertie, how long will it take to get the dining room fixed?”

  Bertie Bishop pursed his lips. “There may be a wee snag.”

  “Oh?” O’Reilly sat forward. “Snag?”

  “You see, as long as I’ve been on council they’ve been chuntering on about straightening the road at this corner. An accident like today’s was bound til happen sooner or later. It’s a mercy no one was hurt.”

  O’Reilly frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with the price of corn.”

  “You see, Doctor, everybody on council knows yourself. They haven’t wanted to upset you. We’ve spoken to the ministry to see if we could go through the churchyard, but there’s laws hundreds of years old, so there are. You can’t dig up graves without enough paperwork to run the Belfast Telegraph for a month.”

  What was Bertie hinting at? Had this accident opened some doors to official action on straightening the road through his property? O’Reilly looked around the room in the house that had been a central part of his life since 1946. It held his furniture, his books, his records, his memories. And he could lose it? He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. Not without a fight he’d not.

  Bertie said, “Your house was built for the Presbyterians too.”

  “I know,” said O’Reilly. “Old Doctor Flanagan told me about it. When Flanagan’s grandfather, Michael, was minister here, a donor put up two hundred and fifty pounds in 1817 and took a two-hundred-year lease from the MacNeills. He built a manse to give to the church, and finished the building in 1818. Michael’s son Ethan succeeded him as pastor to the Presbyterian flock. None of Ethan’s sons went into the church, but his oldest boy, my old boss Doctor Flanagan, studied medicine. By the time he was ready to set up his medical practice in 1897 the new minister was a bachelor and needed something smaller. The church allowed Doctor Flanagan to buy the old manse from them and his estate eventually sold it to me after the war.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Bertie said. “But if that’s when it was built it’s Georgian. I’ll have to apply for planning permission to do any renovations and major repairs on a house of that period. There’s a group on council wants that there road straightened…”

  “I don’t believe it,” O’Reilly growled. “Through my house?” He looked at Kitty. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her gaze intent on Bertie.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, Mrs. O’Reilly, but it’ll have til be debated at the next meeting.”

  “And when’s that?” Kitty said quietly.

  “Two weeks.”

  “So we’ll have to live under canvas for two weeks before you can even get started on the repairs?” O’Reilly’d lost interest in his tea and biscuit.

  “I’m afraid so, but…” Bertie brightened, “there’s another party would like til see a bypass round the south side of Ballybucklebo. There’s far too much traffic going through the village now and it’s going til get worse.” His smile was self-deprecatory. “I’m the chairman of that group and we’ve been consulting with contractors in Belfast too. My company could handle the,” Bertie paused, “the demolition—sorry, sir—of Number One…”

  O’Reilly flinched.

  “… and a bit of road straightening here. But a road round the village is a bigger job than my company can handle by itself.”

  “Do you think you’ll have a chance? I mean to get the bypass round the village,” Kitty asked.

  “If it comes to a vote, it’ll be close,” Bertie said, “but I didn’t come down the Lagan on a soap bubble yesterday.”

  “Indeed you didn’t.” Bertie Bishop was one of the most politically astute men in the village. Particularly, the thought struck O’Reilly, if there was likely to be a profit in it for Councillor Bishop.

  “I wish I could tell youse different, but that’s the way it is.” Bertie stood. “And there’s one other snag. You know there were two vacancies filled on council just before Christmas?”

  “Yes, I know,” O’Reilly said, “Alice Moloney was elected to one of them. She was telling me all about it when I bumped into her the other day. And the other one is … damn it to hell…”

  “Hubert Doran.”

  “Hubert Doran. Hubert bloody Doran. I remembered thinking at the time that it might be a problem. He and I have been at daggers drawn for years. I certainly did not vote for that man, but he got in, bugger it,” said O’Reilly. “Sorry, Kitty, but Hubert Doran, pardon my French, is a turd of the first magnitude.”

  “Fingal,” Kitty said, “in my job, I’m no stranger to language. I understand that you’re upset, but I’ll not ‘pardon your French’ in our own home.”

  “Look. I’m sorry, but this is all such a bloo—I mean a ruddy shock. I had no idea council has been quietly plotting to demolish my house.”

  Kitty softened. “All right. This once, but please, Fingal, don’t make a habit of it.”

  O’Reilly saw Bertie try to hide a smile and fail. “There’s been no plotting going on, Doctor, just civic due diligence is all. I guessed something like that was going on with you and Doran,” Bertie said. “He’s definitely in favour of, and I’m sorry, demolishing Number One.”

  “Blue—” O’Reilly glanced at Kitty and cut himself off. “And I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do to stop him, or start our own campaign?”

  “Yes,” said Kitty. “We can fight this, surely?”

  “Leave it til me. I’ll not ask what the feud is about. It’s none of my business, so it isn’t. I’ll just do everything I can.”

  “Thank you, Bertie. I appreciate that. Will the council meeting be open to the public?” O’Reilly asked.

  “As far as I know, “Bertie said, “but I’ll be in touch the minute I hear anything about what might happen at council. And I promise I’ll do all I can.”

  “Thanks, Bertie,” Kitty said.

  “Thank you for the tea, Mrs. O’Reilly. I promised Flo I’d take her to the Grand Opera House the night. It’s the last performance of this year’s
pantomime, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, so I’ll have to be checking on Donal and his men, then be running along. I’ll see myself out.”

  O’Reilly stood. Two bloody weeks to wait. Bureaucracy, blast and damnation, O’Reilly thought. And the reams of paperwork for this would make Colin Brown’s measles notification form look like a page from a kiddy’s copybook. “Thanks for everything, Bertie,” O’Reilly said.

  “Say hello to Flo,” Kitty said as the portly councillor left. “Now sit down, Fingal, and tell me about this Doran man. Why are you and he feuding?”

  O’Reilly collapsed into the chair beside Kitty’s and gripped its upholstered arms. “He’s a very well-off farmer. Has about sixty acres that marches with the Houstons’ place. Thinks he’s no goat’s toe. He rarely comes into the village, thank God, so I don’t see much of him, but six or seven years ago I was out there giving Arthur his constitutional. There’s a warren up there at the back of Sonny and Maggie’s and you know how Arthur loves to push the bunnies out.

  “I heard a ferocious howling and there was the bastard holding a golden retriever bitch by her ear—her ear—and beating the tar out of her with her own leash. He was screaming at her and he punched her. I made Arthur stay, ran over and—damn it all I was furious. He set up to hit her again so I grabbed his arm and I decked him. He was out for about two minutes. When he came to, I told him if he ever, ever laid hands on a dog like that again I’d thrash the bejasus out of him. Then I walked away. As I went back to Arthur, I heard him yell, ‘I’ll get you, O’Reilly, you shite, and you know what long memories Ulstermen have.’”

  “That’s horrible, Fingal. Horrible. All of it, the dog beating, the threat to you,” Kitty said. “It does sound like you’ve made a bad enemy.” She frowned. “But Bertie’s on your side. So is John MacNeill. With luck, Doran won’t be able to influence too many councillors. Try not to worry too much, love. We’ll have to wait and see, that’s all,” she said, “and I have great faith in Bertie.”

  “So do I,” O’Reilly said, “especially if there’s likely to be money for him in any dealings.”

  “And I’m sure your brother, Lars, will have an opinion. You can ask him next Tuesday when we have dinner at Ballybucklebo House.”

  “I can, can’t I?” O’Reilly said, brightening.

  “And,” said Kitty with a twinkle in those grey eyes flecked with amber, “it’s an ill wind or in this case an ill rain that blows nobody any good.”

  “What are you on about?”

  “It’ll be months now until you have to get new dining room curtains. And, I did ask, the insurance will pay for them.”

  “Kitty O’Hallorhan,” he said, “I do love you.”

  16

  Taxes Upon Every Article

  “Thank you, Thompson,” John MacNeill said.

  “Will that be all, my lord?” The marquis’s valet/butler, who had served in the war with O’Reilly on HMS Warspite, stood at attention, a silver tray tucked under one arm. He had given whiskeys to the men while Myrna sipped a small glass of Harvey’s Shooting Sherry and Kitty her usual gin and tonic.

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll ring if we need anything else. Please tell Cook we’ll dine at seven forty-five.”

  “My lord.” Thompson left.

  Logs blazed in the grate and Finn MacCool, one of the marquis’s red setters, lay on the rug.

  The lord of the manor stood leaning against the corner of the drawing room mantelpiece with one leg crossed over the other at the ankle. He wore a blazer with the eight-pointed star crest of the Irish Guards embroidered in silver wire on the left breast pocket. A maroon silk cravat filled the open neck of a white shirt and there were knife-edge creases in his grey flannels. O’Reilly glanced above the fireplace at an enormous oil painting in the style of Sir Joshua Reynolds of a man in the ermine-trimmed robes of an eighteenth-century peer of the realm. Then he looked at the semicircle of seated guests surrounding the present peer. It was a tableau from a way of life that was passing. That, of course, was why Lars was here. To help with the transition.

  “Glad you could make it, Fingal, Kitty. And for a change on an evening when it’s not lashing down. The forecast says we should have sunny skies for the next few days.”

  “Thank you for inviting us, John,” Kitty said.

  O’Reilly thought she looked lovely tonight in a simple knee-length black satin sheath dress. “By five thirty it’s still as dark as old Nick’s hatband,” he said, “but at least it’s warmer.” O’Reilly noted that while John MacNeill was an Ulsterman through and through, he had adopted the very English custom of using the weather as a neutral kickoff for any conversation.

  “Which I imagine will make things a bit less draughty at Number One, Kitty,” Myrna said. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like having a dirty great lorry come through your window. I drove past your place yesterday. Usual Monday-morning departmental meeting at Queen’s. Your rosebushes have had it and that’s quite a hole patched up in your wall.”

  “The driver made a right bollocks of that turn,” O’Reilly said. “Kitty and I had just driven into our lane and she could tell he was going too fast. Next thing we knew air brakes were hissing, tyres were squealing, and then a bloody great bang when the cab hit the wall. Bricks and broken glass everywhere. Luckily no one was hurt. Kinky and Archie came straight round on Saturday evening to see if they could help. Decent of them. An insurance assessor came, but unfortunately we can’t start work on the repairs yet.”

  “Why on earth not?” Lars asked.

  O’Reilly sighed. “Apparently council has for years been arguing about whether to widen that road. Now they’re seriously looking at their options. Trying to decide whether to give me planning permission to do the repairs or expropriate my property.”

  “Expropriate Number One Main? Really?” said Lars.

  “Afraid so, brother.”

  “Well, they’ll have to give you fair market price and a decent settlement to cover the costs of inconvenience. You can be sure I’ll see to that for you.”

  Having a solicitor for a brother did come in handy at times, O’Reilly thought.

  “Fingal and I don’t want money from the council,” Kitty said. “We want to stay put. It’s our home.”

  “I’ve been in that house since 1938 when I joined old Doctor Flanagan. When I came back after the war and bought the practice I kept the place exactly as it had been.”

  “Right down to the dining room curtains,” Kitty said.

  O’Reilly laughed. “We’ll be getting new ones.” He grew more serious. “I’ve a lot of memories wrapped up in that old place and we’re not going to give it up without a fight.”

  “Good for you, Fingal,” Myrna said.

  “I wonder,” Lars said, “if the lorry owners or their insurers might try to sue the borough council?”

  “Whatever for? If the man was driving too fast,” Myrna asked.

  “For having a known dangerous corner and not doing anything about it. If Kitty could testify that the lorry was being driven recklessly, then the case would probably collapse.”

  “We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t come to that, Lars,” O’Reilly said. “Kitty and I can do without court appearances. We’ve enough to worry about wondering whether the house might be expropriated.”

  “There’d be no question of that,” the marquis said, “if our family still owned the land where your house is, but…” He shrugged.

  Myrna snorted and said with an edge to her voice, “We can thank Sir William Harcourt and Gladstone’s Liberals for that. The nineteenth-century Liberals were socialists at heart, bunch of sociological Robin Hoods, rob the rich and give to the poor,” Myrna said. “Although I suppose the conditions of the working poor after the Industrial Revolution were pretty grim.”

  “You just have to read Dickens,” O’Reilly said. “Oliver Twist in the workhouse.”

  “And,” John said, “in fairness, Myrna, there was an enormous gap between the ver
y rich and the very poor. On the other hand, the peerage and landed gentry provided a great deal of employment, cheap housing, board, keep, got doctors for their servants if they fell ill.”

  “A way of life I’ve only read about in books,” said O’Reilly. “Wodehouse, Galsworthy. Although even when I was growing up in Dublin, we had a live-in cook and maid.”

  “Ah, well, in our father’s day, before the first war, the big house here had butlers, footmen, a housekeeper, cooks, all kinds of maids, nannies, and that was just the indoor staff. The Liberals did not approve of people who lived as we did. I suppose they saw it as a kind of feudalism. And it was, I dare say,” Myrna said with a sigh. “They were all for taking from the wealthy to fund what we’d call social services today. Their government had a four-million-pound deficit, so in 1894 the chancellor of the exchequer, Harcourt, introduced an eight percent death duty and it’s been a source of revenue for successive governments ever since. Huh. Has anyone ever heard of a government that lowered taxes?”

  “At least,” John said, “until 1911, the year after I was born, the House of Lords could veto bills from the House of Commons, keep rates at a reasonable level. Then, when Dad was still Marquis of Ballybucklebo, H. H. Asquith, another Liberal prime minister, removed the peers’ power of veto with the Parliament Act. Then he introduced increased estate duties in 1914. I can still remember Father coming home from taking his seat in Westminster.”

  “He must have been spitting teeth,” said O’Reilly.

  “Oh, he was. He knew it was the end, and he was right too, as far as the MacNeill family was concerned.”

  “It was a very bad time for us MacNeills,” Myrna added. “Our father’s younger brother, Uncle Albert—”

  John MacNeill laughed. “Myrna, must we tell all our secrets?” His laugh was light, but there was a warning sound in his voice.

  “Come on, John, you don’t mind if I tell our friends about our black sheep?”

  The marquis picked up his drink from the mantel, walked to a wingback chair a few steps away, and settled into it. “No, not really. Not at all, in fact. I’m suppose most aristocratic families have one. Often the younger brother of the title holder. It’s been part of our family lore for years. Go ahead, Myrna.”