The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories

  I believe the expression used by sports commentators when a goal has been scored is “The crowd roared.” It did.

  O’Reilly’s nose paled. He let the laughter subside, fixed the conductor with a glare the intensity of one of those laser lances that safe-crackers use to cut through tungsten-carbide-toughened steel, and said, “Thank you.”

  I was amazed. I’d expected bile laced with sulphuric acid.

  He half-turned away, hesitated, turned back, and said in a deceptively level voice that could be heard all the way to the back of the waiting passengers, “And will that one have a monkey in a blue uniform swinging round the pole too?”

  JULY/AUGUST 1998

  Dog Days of Winter

  The case of the leg-loving Labrador

  Normally I like dogs, but I’m prepared to make exceptions. Let me explain—but first let me give you the background. Did I tell you that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly was a keen shot? I found it difficult to approve of his pastime. After all, what had a duck ever done to him? Besides, I often found myself taking call at peculiar hours on my days off—either pre- and post-dawn or before and after dusk—so he could slip away to fire feverishly at his feathered friends.

  Ducks, it seems, are creatures of habit and fly inland to feed at night and back out to sea during the day. They reverse the process in the gloaming. At these times wildfowlers park themselves on the shoreline, like the heavy flak of occupied Europe during the last global unpleasantness, and blaze away at the unsuspecting avians with all the enthusiasm of a regiment of Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunners at a squadron of Lancaster bombers. The only difference is that the ducks can’t shoot back.

  I’m giving you this information because his hobby was the reason O’Reilly had another member of his household. One I’ve neglected to tell you about before. Arthur Guinness wasn’t the patriarch of the famous family of Dublin brewers but a large black Labrador dog, O’Reilly’s constant companion on his murky missions of mayhem against mild-mannered mallard.

  Arthur had all the attributes of his breed: gentleness, playfulness, boundless enthusiasm, and, I suspected, a willingness to be trained, if O’Reilly had had the slightest notion of how to teach an animal. He didn’t. One word from Fingal and Arthur did exactly as he pleased.

  One thing that pleased him enormously was my trousered leg. No matter where we were, as soon as I hove into view Arthur would greet me with a joyful “Arf,” rear up, and clasp me to him. Front paws round my thigh, grinning as only Labradors can, he would bash away at my shin like one of those automatic rivet guns. It was a miracle that I didn’t give birth to a litter of Labrador puppies with corduroy coats.

  I did say I could make exceptions to my generally pleasant feelings toward the genus Canis.

  Another of Arthur’s little pleasures was his pint. It seemed that some years previously he’d accompanied O’Reilly into the Mucky Duck, his usual stop for a glass of revivification after huddling on the chilled foreshore. On that particular post-hunting foray, someone had spilled a glass of bitter on the floor and Arthur had lapped it up with the speed of a commercial vacuum cleaner. From that moment the dog had been hooked.

  I apologize for taking so long filling in the background, but bear with me. It’s all germane.

  I was sitting in the surgery at nine o’clock on a December evening. I wasn’t in the best of moods but was in my best suit. I was dressed up because I’d planned to take a certain young nurse out to dinner. I was cast down because O’Reilly had pleaded with me to look after the shop.

  It seemed that the wind and tide conditions were so ideal that he might have the best evening’s shooting of his life. To deprive him of the opportunity would have been more cruel than Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites set off on a package tour of the Sinai Desert. He promised he’d be back by eight. I hadn’t had the heart to refuse his entreaties and I could still see my nurse if he kept his word.

  By nine, having just sewn up a lacerated finger when I might have been gazing over a glass of Beaujolais into a pair of marvellously brown eyes, I hoped that his bloody shotgun had exploded.

  It hadn’t.

  The door opened. O’Reilly stuck his head round.

  “I’m back.”

  I grunted.

  “Sorry I’m a bit late.”

  “Very late.”

  “Come on, Pat, I had a flat tire.”

  I let a silence hang, the kind that psychology research workers achieve in sensory-deprivation chambers.

  He had the good grace to look sheepish. “Look. I really am sorry. I came straight home. I didn’t even stop for a drop in the Duck.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t his fault and his sacrifice of his usual post-wildfowling tot was a measure of his contrition.

  “All right, Fingal.” I managed a weak smile.

  “Good lad.” He beamed. “I’ll make it up to you. Come on, I’ll buy you a jar.”

  Why not? I had no other plans for the evening now.

  “Fine.” I rose and followed O’Reilly into the hall.

  “Arf.” A muddy Arthur Guinness, who must have accompanied his master, greeted me with enthusiasm.

  I watched him eying my brand-new trouser legs and prepared to fend off his amatory advances.

  “Hang on to Arthur, Fingal.”

  “What? Right.” O’Reilly grabbed the dog by the collar and the three of us set off for the Duck.

  Osbaldiston was behind the bar and what’s known in Ireland as “the usual suspects” were in their accustomed places.

  “Evening, Doctors,” mine host remarked. “The usual?”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly and planked himself down at a vacant table. I followed suit and Arthur Guinness tucked himself in by O’Reilly’s feet. At least he seemed to have lost interest in my pants.

  Osbaldiston waddled over, put a whiskey in front of O’Reilly, a small sherry before me, and set a bowl of best bitter on the floor. Arthur Guinness gave a fair impression of the tattered cartoon character leaving the desert and arriving at the oasis. He was the only living creature that could sink a pint faster than Fingal or who had a similar capacity.

  By my count Arthur had consumed half a gallon before we left. He was only a bit shaky on his pins but his perpetual grin was even more lopsided. I was heartily relieved that his inebriation had definitely dampened his amorous ardour. My new pants were safe.

  At least they were until we stopped and waited to cross the road. Arthur must have mistaken my leg for a lamppost. I could have killed him.

  SEPTEMBER 1998

  In a Pig’s Ear

  What a boar

  “What,” inquired Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, “do you know about pigs?”

  I stopped in my tracks. Déjà vu. We’d had this conversation before, six months previously, when the question had reared its ugly head about the fecundity of the publican Arthur Osbaldiston’s sow.

  “Absolutely nothing. Don’t you remember?”

  “Pity.”

  “I agree. It is a pity you don’t remember.”

  He grimaced. “No, idiot. It’s a pity you don’t know anything about pigs.”

  “Why is it a pity, for God’s sake?” I was feeling a tad exasperated.

  “Because,” he said, pointing vaguely across the field we were crossing, “there’s one coming.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. He was right.

  I should tell you that we were making a house call. One of his patients, Dermot Kennedy by name, lived on a small farm on the outskirts of the village. The lane was so rutted that O’Reilly had simply abandoned the car, opened a five-barred gate, and announced, “We’ll take a shortcut through the fields.” And so we did.

  The grass was knee-deep, dew-bespangled, and absolutely perfect for ensuring that my remaining pair of trousers was sodden. (My other pair was at the dry cleaner’s after O’Reilly’s alcoholic Labrador, Arthur Guinness, had mistaken me for a lamppost.) The joys, I thought, of rural practice.

  And it s
eemed that those joys were to be multiplied.

  “It’s coming this way,” O’Reilly muttered, lengthening his stride.

  I chanced another look. I wasn’t even sure that the brute in question was a pig. It seemed to me to be about the size of a well-nourished hippopotamus, moved with the same rolling gait, and was indeed heading in our direction. It was a healthy pink colour, except for a pair of very red and rather malevolent-looking eyes, and hippopotami were exceeding rare in the fields of Ulster.

  “It is a pig,” I said, more to myself.

  “Brilliant. I didn’t realize you were an experienced zoologist.” O’Reilly’s walk changed to a canter and I modified my steps to match his, wondering what all the unseemly hurry was about.

  “I read somewhere that domesticated boars can turn ugly,” he said. He seemed rather short of breath.

  I chanced another glance behind, forgetting that such errors have been known to cost Olympic sprinters the gold medal. Our porcine pursuer had no distance to go to live up to O’Reilly’s description if my mentor had been alluding to physical appearance. It also had narrowed the gap between two perspiring physicians and itself.

  “Ugly?” I asked.

  “Right.” Puff. “Bloody big teeth.” O’Reilly’s canter moved through the gears to a fully developed gallop.

  He was right about boars’ teeth and, more to the point, O’Reilly was opening a respectable distance between me and his rapidly departing back. It dawned on me that if the boar astern had any intentions of using its “bloody big teeth” on the intruders in its territory it would settle for the closest to hand—and that was me.

  I’ve heard that a small man, in the heat of adrenaline-driven action, can single-handedly lift an overturned motorcar. As I passed O’Reilly I was covering the turf at a rate that would have beaten Roger Bannister to the four-minute mile. The boar’s hoofbeats drew nearer. My only consolation was that O’Reilly was a big man and it would take the animal some time to devour him. I imagine early Christians felt much the same about plumper members of their groups when the lions entered the Circus Maximus.

  I was even luckier than a skinny Christian. I had a way out. I was drawing nearer to the far side of the field. I went over the gate like a steeplechaser at the Grand National and nearly collided with a man who stood in the farmyard. I just had time to notice that the onlooker wore a flat tweed cap on his head and a bemused grin, confused by a ferocious squint on his face.

  The quiet of the afternoon was broken only by my heavy breathing and a crashing, rending noise as O’Reilly burst through the blackthorn hedge like a Sherman tank in the Bocage country of Normandy.

  I watched as he took several deep breaths, examined the rents in his jacket, and made an heroic effort to regain his dignity. He stumped over to the cloth-capped stranger. Despite his recent exertions, O’Reilly’s nose tip was ivory. “Dermot Kennedy,” O’Reilly bellowed, “what the hell is so funny?”

  Mister Kennedy was unable to answer. He was doubled over and laughing like a drain.

  “Jasus, Kennedy.” I thought O’Reilly was going to burst. “Jasus, Kennedy, you’ve a man-eating boar in that field. We’ve just escaped by the skin of our teeth. How in the name of the wee man can you laugh?”

  Mister Kennedy straightened up, gathered himself, and said, “She’s not a boar. That’s Gertrude, the kids’ pet sow. She just wanted her snout scratched.”

  I made a quick preemptive strike. “I told you, Fingal. I don’t know anything about pigs.”

  OCTOBER 1998

  Arthur and the General

  “I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree”

  “Quick, Pat,” said O’Reilly. “Take Arthur Guinness inside the house.”

  “Why?” I asked, looking at O’Reilly’s black Labrador, who was making a peculiar ululation and staring intently upward into the boughs of the big sycamore tree that grew at the bottom of O’Reilly’s back garden.

  “Don’t ask, just do it like a good lad. Maggie’s coming.”

  “Oh,” I said, reaching for Arthur’s collar and wondering why O’Reilly wouldn’t want Maggie MacCorkle, she of the supracranial headaches, to see his dog. “Right.” I’d been impressed as a child when shown a picture of a statue of the Greek mythological figure Lacoön wrestling with two enormous snakes. I achieved a deeper understanding of the old boy’s difficulties when I tried to persuade Arthur Guinness to go where he did not wish. Little boys may be made of “snaps and snails and puppy dogs’ tails,” but adolescent Labradors are constructed from high-tensile steel springs. I pulled in the general direction of the back door to O’Reilly’s house. Arthur dug in his heels, cranked up the volume of his yodelling, and stared straight up.

  My gaze followed his and I wondered what up the tree had captured the dog’s undivided attention. There was something just visible in a fork of a high branch. The something was orange-coloured and bore a striking resemblance to—Maggie’s ginger tomcat, General Montgomery.

  All was revealed unto me. With the exception of O’Reilly’s furniture-clawing kitten, all cats were anathema to Arthur G. It was almost certainly his fault that General Montgomery was up the tree, and that would explain why O’Reilly wanted the dog out of sight when Maggie arrived.

  The least I could do was accommodate my mentor. Besides, I wanted to see what would happen when Maggie discovered the whereabouts of her perpendicularly placed pussycat.

  “Come on, Guinness.” By dint of superhuman effort I managed to haul the black dog along the path and shove him inside the house. He wasn’t happy to be incarcerated and expressed his dissatisfaction by hurling himself against the closed door.

  I ignored the dog and headed back. My return to the scene of the action coincided with Maggie’s arrival. Now that Guinness was offstage, a semblance of quiet had returned, punctuated only by an intermittent yowling from above.

  “Evening, Maggie,” I heard O’Reilly say.

  “Evening, Doctor,” Maggie replied, craning her neck and staring upward. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is that you, General? Is that where you are? I’ve been looking for you. How did you ever get up there?”

  I saw O’Reilly blush and was convinced that my original supposition that the General had been chased up the tree by Arthur Guinness was correct. Fortunately the cat didn’t speak English and couldn’t give O’Reilly away.

  “Will you not come down now?” Maggie said and made “push-wushing” noises. O’Reilly said nothing and the General gave a fair impression of an air-raid siren. He budged not an inch. In both his colour and his lack of locomotion he could have passed for an Ulster Orangeman whose motto is “Not an Inch.”

  “What’ll we do, Doctor?” Maggie implored.

  I saw what was coming next and launched a preemptive strike. “It’s a pity about my acrophobia, Maggie,” I said gravely, adding both for her benefit and for O’Reilly’s, “I’ve a terrible fear of high places.”

  I could see by the pallor creeping into O’Reilly’s nose tip that I’d been right again. He had been going to suggest that I climb the tree. It was his dog that had put the cat there. As far as I was concerned, natural justice demanded that O’Reilly get it down.

  General Montgomery yowled. Maggie sniffed. I waited.

  “All right now, Maggie.” O’Reilly shrugged off his jacket and handed it to me. “Don’t you fret.” He hauled himself onto the lowest bough. His upward progress reminded me of a nature film I’d once seen of a three-toed sloth as it made its hesitant, ponderous way through the jungle. All O’Reilly needed was a bit more hair.

  His nose drew level with the General’s perch. I heard the cat spit and O’Reilly’s expletive as claws raked his schnozzle. Perhaps my moving well away from the base of the tree reflected a degree of cowardice but I had no desire to be underneath if O’Reilly lost his hold.

  I was impressed by his skilful descent, the General tucked like a rugby ball under one arm. He reached the ground, offered the cat to Maggie, shot me a look of utter disdain, a
nd rubbed the back of his hand over his bloody nose. “Here you are, Maggie. Now don’t let General Montgomery go up any more trees.”

  “I won’t, Doctor.”

  I’m sure Maggie meant it. It was a pity that at that moment Mrs. Kincaid opened the back door to yell, “There’s a phone call for you, Doctor Taylor.”

  My last picture as I went inside to take the call was of a happy Arthur Guinness at the tree’s foot and the tweed-covered backside of O’Reilly as he ascended on his second mission of mercy.

  NOVEMBER 1998

  Something Happened

  Arthur Guinness has a run-in with the law

  I’d been away from the practice for a week and had returned just in time to help O’Reilly with a busy morning’s surgery. I didn’t have the opportunity to ask him to bring me up to date on the doings in the village of Ballybucklebo. I hoped he’d fill me in over lunch, but after the last patient of the morning departed, O’Reilly wanted to make a house call, on foot, to a nearby cottage. I decided to accompany him.

  It was a glorious June mid-morning, a grand day for a walk, and after the bustle of Belfast I was enjoying the relative tranquillity of Ballybucklebo’s only street. As we walked I surmised that it was unlikely that gold had been found in Jimmy Ferguson’s manure heap or that Maggie MacCorkle had won the Miss Ireland beauty pageant during my absence. Nothing much ever happened in the place. I knew that.

  As usual, I was wrong.

  “Jasus,” said O’Reilly, staring straight ahead.

  My gaze followed his and I saw approaching us the portly figure of Police Constable Michael McGillicuddy, Royal Ulster Constabulary, sole uniformed upholder of Lex Britannicus in the village and the surrounding townlands.

  I knew that O’Reilly’s opinion of PC McGillicuddy, RUC, was rather to the south of contempt. As I remembered, there was something about one of Lord Fitzgurgle’s pheasants that had found its way into the backseat of O’Reilly’s car—all unknown to his lordship or his gamekeeper—and a debate between the chubby arm of the law and the local representative of Hygeiea and Panacea surrounding the ownership of that deceased member of the family Phaisanus versicolour.