An Irish Country Love Story

by Patrick Taylor

  “You don’t want him to think you can’t cope with not knowing and you don’t want to offend him by making a move that he promised to make and hasn’t.”

  “That’s right.” He signalled for the next left turn and then with a squealing of tyres made a tight U-turn on the deserted side road. “No time like the present.”

  Kitty clutched the edge of the seat and said nothing.

  Returning to the main road, he floored the accelerator, barely paused before making a right turn across the Belfast-bound traffic, and in moments was heading up the long curved gravel drive to Ballybucklebo House, past the lopsided topiary. He braked outside the great front door.

  “Well, you seem to have made a decision.”

  “I have. I see no reason not to drop by. John MacNeill is still one of my patients, and he has hypertension. Come on in with me. I need some moral support.”

  They mounted the short flight of broad steps. “And if you keep driving like that he won’t be the only one with high blood pressure,” Kitty said. But she was smiling. “As Cissie Sloan would have said, ‘I near took the rickets.’ You must learn to slow down.”

  “Sorry,” O’Reilly said, trying to sound contrite as he shoved on the brass bell-push, “but I was in a hurry.”

  “Dear old bear,” Kitty shook her head, “whenever are you not?”

  The front door opened. Thompson, his lordship’s valet/butler, stood, firmly at attention, a silver tray tucked under his left arm.

  O’Reilly half expected the old chief petty officer to salute. The man always used O’Reilly’s naval rank.

  “Surgeon Commander and Mrs. O’Reilly. How may I be of service? And please come in.”

  O’Reilly, holding his ground, said, “Thank you, Thompson, but no. Is his lordship at home?”

  “I regret that no, sir, the marquis and Lady Myrna are out at the moment.”

  “Oh. I see.” O’Reilly now regretted his impetuousness. Face-to-face with John MacNeill he was sure he could have passed this off as a routine drop-in. The pressure didn’t really need remeasuring for another two months, but it would have been easy enough to laugh, remark that he must have got the dates wrong, take the readings, and work the question about the lease into the conversation. Now he felt awkward and off-balance.

  “Will there be a message or would the surgeon commander prefer to leave his visiting card?” The silver tray was proffered.

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Left my cards at home, Thompson. Off duty today. Actually I’d prefer it if his lordship didn’t know I’d called.” Standing on the man’s doorstep, he suddenly appreciated that not only did he not want the marquis to know how agitated he was, he didn’t want John MacNeill feeling under pressure to find that damn lease.

  Thompson frowned. Swallowed. Then took a deep breath, obviously steeling himself to face the unexpected situation. O’Reilly took in the man’s usually neat appearance and noticed a small smudge of dirt on his forehead and the faintest tracery of a cobweb on the shoulder of his black coat. “It is a somewhat unusual request, sir. I am expected to notify his lordship of all callers. All callers.”

  Bloody hell. He was putting this man on the spot, but it couldn’t be helped. “Thompson, you and I are both old Warspites.” That was how men who’d served on the same naval vessel referred to each other, regardless of rank. “As one to another, I’d rather he didn’t find out I’d been here.”

  “May I be so bold, sir, as to inquire whether this has to do with the lease situation?” Thompson’s face was expressionless.

  “It has, Thompson, and I know what I’m going to ask might contravene the butlers’ code”—If there was such a thing. O’Reilly had no idea—“but Mrs. O’Reilly and I are eager to speak to the marquis. I don’t suppose…”

  A small smile began on the butler’s lips. “They have to attend a meeting at the Ulster Folk Museum in Cultra. They just left a few minutes ago, sir. The meeting’s not until three, but I believe there was some horse demonstration they wished to observe.”

  “Thank you, Thompson. I think perhaps Mrs. O’Reilly and I will just nip round to the museum. See if we can bump into the marquis there, accidentally, on purpose, as it were. And if you don’t mind—”

  “Mum is the word, sir.” Thompson’s smile had reached his eyes. “As one old Warspite to another.”

  “Thank you,” O’Reilly said. “Thank you very much.”

  Thompson nodded. “And if that will be all, sir, I’ll return to my duties. Good day, sir, madam.” The butler retreated inside, closing the heavy wooden door behind him.

  It wasn’t until they had reached the main road and were heading for Cultra that Kitty said, “I seem to remember Bob Beresford calling you ‘The Wily O’Reilly.’ Appealing to the man’s loyalty to an officer? That was a pretty impressive display of thinking on your feet.”

  “Perhaps not the best use of rank, but it had to be done. I just hope to God we see John and Myrna,” O’Reilly said. “Old Number One’s been my home since before the war. More than twenty years.”

  “And mine since we got back from our honeymoon. I know that’s only seventeen months, three weeks, and four days…”

  She’d been keeping count too? Dear Kitty.

  “… but I love the old place. I don’t want to leave it, not one bit, and nor does Kinky, but I suppose if we must…” She touched his shoulder.

  “I’ve been thinking about the plan B we talked about last Saturday and how I feel about Number One. It was the place I yearned for as a safe haven all through the war.” A snatch from a tune called “The Enniskillen Dragoons” flitted through his mind.

  when these cruel wars are over, I’ll be home in full bloom …

  And the wars had been cruel. Planes ablaze tumbling from the skies, ships blowing up victims of shells, torpedoes, bombs. Huge warships sinking into the sea. Men on both sides maimed, burned, dying. O’Reilly had not returned to civvy street in full bloom. He’d returned a changed man. A scarred man, a grieving man, his new bride dead and five years buried. But at least Ballybucklebo had provided him with a calm refuge and Number One and dear old Kinky their safe place.

  He indicated for a left and turned into the drive to the Ulster Folk Museum, pulled into the car park, and stopped the Rover. “It’s not quite as cut and dried as I first thought.”

  “It rarely is. You having mixed feelings?”

  He nodded. “There are memories, of Ballybucklebo and Number One, that involve Deirdre and old Doctor Flanagan, and a young Kinky Kincaid. Bittersweet memories. Then, my love, you came along and filled the place and filled me and made me happy, but sometimes I wonder, does the thought of those memories of mine not bother you?”

  “I do not begrudge you Deirdre, Fingal O’Reilly. You loved her dearly and were shattered by her loss.” Kitty’s voice was matter-of-fact. “There’s always been a place in your heart for her. I’ve always known that, but I’m not jealous.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nodding her head slowly, she continued, “Those memories might get to me, if I let them, but I don’t. I had my own past. Remember?”

  “I do,” he said, “and it bothered me for a while, but not anymore.” He stared through the windscreen, then said, “For the last couple of days I’ve been wondering. We made a new start in July ’65 when we married, and it’s been wonderful. Would it be such an awful thing if we did lose Number One and had to make a complete break with my past?”

  Kitty took her time answering. “I don’t know, Fingal. I honestly don’t know. Apart from the effect on us, I keep thinking of Kinky. She’d have no place in a modern group practice in its own building. And if we were to build another house I’d prefer something smaller. She might not need to come every day, and the place has been her home a lot longer than yours. Still, she has her own home now. Perhaps she might think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to break with the past herself. It was a sanctuary for her, as well, after her husband died.”

  “Aye, it was,” he
said. “It’s what I said, the whole bloody thing’s not cut and dried, and anyway it’s probable we’ll not have the choice.” He shook his head and made a growling noise. “Even so, I want to know what, if anything, John MacNeill knows about our future, and we’re not going to do that sitting in a car park.” He opened the door. “Let’s look for him and see the museum at the same time. I’m told it’s very interesting, but do you know? I’ve never been here once in the three years since it opened.”

  31

  God Made the Country and Man Made the Town

  Ten minutes later, he and Kitty, in company with other sightseers, were strolling along a tarmac path toward the early-twentieth-century town of “Ballycultra,” reconstructed from buildings brought from all over Ulster. “Each one disassembled brick by brick, numbered, and then rebuilt on this site,” said O’Reilly, reading from the guidebook.

  Kitty stopped. “Listen.”

  From overhead came a glittering song, rising, soaring, as pure and bright as diamonds.

  “What an exquisite sound.”

  “Skylark,” O’Reilly said. “The museum’s farm deliberately plants crops to provide habitat for them.” He smiled. “I only know because it’s one of Lars’s pet projects. The species has become threatened by modern agricultural methods.”

  O’Reilly led the way along a cobbled street of grey terrace houses. “There’s a horseshoeing demonstration in a few minutes. I reckon that’s what Thompson was referring to. We’ve time to take a gander at the village before we head there.”

  The first shop was a grocery. Wares in tins and bottles were displayed in the window: Coleman’s Mustard, Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, Lipton’s tea, Jacob’s Cream Crackers. The slogan H. Rawlinson, Purveyor of Fine Groceries and Sundries since 1878 had been painted in a semicircle of gold letters high on the glass and in smaller letters below By appointment, supplier of China teas to the Twenty-Sixth Marquis of Ballybucklebo.

  “Fingal? Do be tactful about how you ask the twenty-seventh about the lease.”

  “Of course I will. I am the soul of tact, my dear.”

  Kitty made a comic face and O’Reilly laughed. She knew him so well. But he promised himself he would not let his temper get away with him. They stopped in front of the open door. A smiling mannequin with an up-curved waxed moustache and brilliantined dark hair with a centre parting stood wearing a full-length brown apron. Glass-topped counters displayed rows of bottles, each containing boiled hard sweeties: clove rock, brandy balls, bull’s-eyes, gob-stoppers. A coal fire burned in a small black grate.

  “I remember shops not much different from this when I was growing up in Holywood in the 1910s,” O’Reilly said.

  “And of course you would remember that era so much better than I.” Her chuckle was throaty. “Since you’re older than me.”

  O’Reilly laughed. “By two whole years, madam.”

  They walked past other open doors of what the guidebook said was a street of typical city terrace houses. He noted a spinning wheel in one, an HMV gramophone with a horn and the famous trademark of Nipper the dog in another. It stood on a table next to a treadle-operated Singer sewing machine. Ma had had one for her maid, Bridgit, in the big house on Lansdowne Road, Dublin, before the war.

  At the end of the street was a small school. A teacher and her class, each pupil clutching a slate and chalk, all sat behind lift-top desks, each with its own ceramic inkwell inset at the right front corner. It must be the kind of outing the schools arranged as educational treats for the kiddies. They were being addressed by a bespectacled school ma’am, her hair in a severe bun, a white blouse with mutton-chop puffed sleeves and a cameo over her left breast, flared grey skirt over black high-button boots. All very Edwardian. Behind her, pinned to a wall, was a map of the world with the British Empire coloured red.

  “Come on, Kitty,” he said, “time to be heading on. Says here,” he consulted the guidebook map, “the farm and smithy are at the end of this street.” He led her over the cobbles to a five-bar gate that opened onto a rutted lane with grass growing up the centre. To the left a great leafless oak towered over a dry stone wall. A single massive brown and white Hereford bull with a ring through his nose stood thrashing his tail and chewing his cud in the surprisingly warm winter sunshine. O’Reilly wished he could feel as contented as that animal, but the anticipation of getting news from the marquis was creating a queasiness in the pit of his stomach. The almond scent of whin flowers filled the air, coming from several clumps in the field, and he breathed in the fragrance, hoping it would calm him.

  “Good Lord.” Kitty pointed to the ditch, where a small rotund creature with a pointed snout, beady eyes, and its body covered in spines was trundling along. “Who is that odd little fellow?”

  “Hedgehog,” said O’Reilly, remembering Marge Wilcoxson at Twiddy’s Cottage in Fareham in 1940 with her trio of orphans, Riddle, Me, and Ree. She’d been hand-rearing the spiny little creatures, and her huge Old English sheepdog Admiral Benbow had paid for his curiosity more than once. “They usually hibernate from November to March, but they do change nesting sites during that time. Maybe the sun woke this one up.”

  “I’ve seen all kinds of interesting things with you—badgers, woodcock, hedgehogs. Thank you, Fingal.”

  He paused to watch the little animal sidle under the hedge before saying, “I love the country and I love showing it to my city girl.” He stole a quick glance up and down the lane. No one in sight. He turned, and kissed her. “And I love you, Mrs. O’Reilly. Now,” he said, “let’s go and see how a working horse is shod and beard the marquis in the process.” He laughed. “I’ll always remember what a Dublin patient who hated his job said. ‘Jasus, Doc, the only animal that works is the draught horse … and you know what part of its anatomy it turns to its labours? Its feckin’ arse.’”

  And, both laughing, Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly walked into the farmyard to join the small crowd, which to O’Reilly’s delighted relief counted among its numbers John MacNeill and his sister, Myrna.

  * * *

  They were in a high-ceilinged barn at the front of a small crowd of sightseers, many of whom were children. Sun streamed in through the open double front doors and between cracks in the plank walls. O’Reilly could see a half-full hayloft above his head and a ladder leading up. Of eight stalls three were occupied, and tack and nose bags hung from the walls. There was a smell of hay and horses.

  “There they are, Fingal. Now please, please be discreet. The marquis is a busy man. I’m sure you can find a way to get the conversation around to the lease without—”

  “Halloooo, O’Reillys.” Myrna’s cultured contralto voice cut like a huntsman’s horn through the buzz of conversation. She gestured to them to join her and John at the front.

  They snaked their way through the crowd. “Fingal, Kitty, what a delightful surprise.” O’Reilly knew the marquis was skilled at sounding delighted even when he was not, but today he did not sound convincing. In fact, he looked distinctly uncomfortable as he stared down at his boots.

  “Everyone’s told us what a great spot this is, sir, and we’ve never been,” O’Reilly said. Some of the crowd were a bit too close for O’Reilly to be informal in his address. “It’s a fine day so we thought we’d take a shufti.”

  “I hope you were impressed with Ballycultra,” the marquis said.

  “Very,” Kitty said.

  A heavy anvil sat front and centre beside a small forge where charcoal glowed cherry red and bellows waited to bring it to greater heat. The tools of the farrier’s trade—hammers, pincers, nippers, tongs, hoof knives, and nails—lay in ranks on a workbench. Assorted sizes of shoes filled galvanised buckets under the bench. A bucket of water stood by the anvil.

  “John was on the steering committee when the folk museum was being organised,” said Myrna.

  The marquis nodded. “The folks who run the museum are always on the lookout for new properties. We’ve come to discuss donating two of our eighteenth-century l
abourer’s cottages. They’re not needed now since we’ve had to let some staff go, but their upkeep costs money. Myrna and I are meeting with senior museum administrators at three.”

  “I think that’s wonderful,” Kitty said, “and I’m sure the cottages will be accepted.”

  “They will. We’ve kept them in good repair over the years,” Myrna said. “I’m just here to keep John company. I had hoped Lars would be here too, but the wretched man is back in Portaferry this weekend tending to his precious orchids. Sometimes,” she said, “a girl could despair when she’s put aside for a bunch of exotic flora.” She chuckled. “Still, he’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

  O’Reilly glanced at Kitty, who nodded once. She too, must have detected the fondness in Myrna’s voice. He truly hoped matters were progressing on the romantic front for his big brother. But as he smiled at the MacNeills, inwardly he was seething. Did John simply not want to discuss the matter? O’Reilly inhaled. It looked like he was going to have to come to the point and ask directly. “John—”

  “Fingal, I think I know what you’re going to say. Look, I’ve wanted to call every day this week. I know how important the lease is to you, but I’m afraid my files are not quite as, well, quite as organised as I might wish and—”

  “What my brother is trying to say, Fingal, is that while he is a very conscientious steward of his land, he would never get a place as an efficiency expert. John is mortified that he has not found that lease, Fingal. He’s had Thompson going through every desk drawer, file cabinet, and pigeon hole in the house. And Simon O’Hally’s clerk is doing the same at his office.”

  “I’m so very sorry, Fingal, Kitty,” the marquis said. “Lars and Simon have been going through all the documents pertaining to the National Trust transfer as well, but of course we don’t own the land Number One is built on anymore so it hasn’t turned up in those files. But my father’s policy was never throw anything away if it pertained to the estate and there’s stuff all over the house.”