The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories

  He glanced down at the gauge. The car wobbled across the white line and back to O’Reilly’s side, missing a gypsy caravan by the width of a coat of paint.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We’ll stop at the next petrol pump.”

  I was surprised. O’Reilly always mistrusted instruments that didn’t show him what he wanted to see. And petrol was at that time considerably cheaper in the North of our divided country.

  “You believe the gauge?” I asked.

  He laughed like a drain. “I do now,” he said, “ever since that Donal Donnelly gave me my come-uppance.”

  “What—?” I was momentarily interrupted as the car crested a small rise and for several seconds was airborne. The crash of our yielding to Earth’s gravitational field muffled O’Reilly’s chuckles, then he said, “A while back there I was very interested in the petrol consumption of this motorcar.”

  “I remember.” I did indeed. He’d been extremely boring on the subject and then inexplicably had lost interest.

  “Do you recall the week I thought I was going to get a hundred miles to the gallon?”

  “Watch the sheep, Fingal.”

  I swear he drove the only vehicle that could go from seventy to zero in less than a microsecond. The halted Rover oscillated on its springs while two black-faced ewes ambled across the road. The gears ground and the Rover continued on its way.

  “Can you imagine I really thought this car would do a hundred miles on one gallon of petrol?” O’Reilly snorted. “Boy, was I the right eejit.”

  I was relieved that we were travelling rather more sedately. I was also surprised that Fingal would admit to having been wrong—and smile about it.

  “I’d spent all week telling the lads at the Mucky Duck I’d got her up to forty, then fifty. They started taking bets when I’d hit seventy.”

  In those days, thirty miles to the gallon was pretty impressive. “So you’re telling me the instruments were wrong?” I asked.

  “Not at all. They were spot on. I might have believed I’d made the hundred if I hadn’t caught him.”

  Are you a bit lost? Don’t worry. I was often confused and confounded by O’Reilly.

  “Him?” I inquired as O’Reilly pulled the car off the road beside a single petrol pump.

  “Him,” he said. “Donal Donnelly.”

  “Right,” I agreed, happy that the car had stopped. I watched a red-faced gentleman, presumably the owner of the pump, amble toward our car.

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, rolling down the window. “Donal had heard about the whole business. Every night he’d been slipping into my garage, and do you know what he’d done?”

  I shook my head.

  O’Reilly nodded at the pump’s proprietor. “Fill her up, please.” He turned back to me. “Just like Donal. Just to make a goat of me, Donal Donnelly had been topping up my petrol tank.”

  MARCH 1999

  A Curious Affair

  Things that go “yeeow” in the night

  “Riven” is a word that has slipped from common usage, but I can’t think of a better one to describe the effects of the shriek that tore through the fabric of the early morning hours chez O’Reilly. Believe me, the night was riven—positively riven—by a caterwauling like the death throes of a banshee.

  I sat up in bed. I didn’t have goose bumps; I had ostrich wens. My erector pilae were in spasm. I silently begged the Deity to ensure that whatever was making the noise would find the slumbering O’Reilly in his bedroom on the floor below before it came after me. I hauled the blankets up round my chin and listened.

  “Thumpity-thump” came from below, drowning the chattering of my teeth. That would be O’Reilly’s feet hitting the floor.

  “Stop making that **#**#@!* noise!”

  Three miles offshore the lighthouse keepers must have heard O’Reilly’s dulcet tones.

  The creature ignored his blandishments and went up and down the scale like an air-raid siren with operatic pretensions.

  Judging by the clumping on the stairs, O’Reilly was heading down.

  “Shut up!” O’Reilly’s command made the glasses on my nightstand rattle. The eldritch howling ceased as if the sound waves had been sliced with a razor. The front door opened and was slammed. I heard O’Reilly climbing the stairs muttering, “Bloody cat.”

  When O’Reilly appeared for breakfast, my initial thought was to avoid any mention of the mysterious events of the earlier part of the morning. I’d slept badly and was not in the mood for conversation.

  “Did you hear all that row?” he asked, helping himself to a pair of Mrs. Kincaid’s poached kippers from a steamer on the sideboard.

  I could imagine the mayor of Hiroshima asking a passing citizen, “Did you notice that bang?”

  “Indeed,” I said, waiting for O’Reilly to be seated at the table. “Most curious.” I hoped my uninterested tone would stifle any further discussion. “Some tea?”

  He ignored my offer to pour. “Curiosity, my boy. Curiosity. You’ve said it.” His speech was muffled by a mouthful of kipper.

  “Actually, I said, ‘Most curious,’ but it’s probably the same thing.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “‘Most curious’ describes your appreciation of the events. ‘Curiosity’ is the property that was responsible for the row.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I remarked.

  “Do not,” he said, “try to confuse matters by quoting Lewis Carroll. The issue is one of curiosity.”

  “Killed the cat, I believe.” I hoped that might put an end to the discussion. I was unprepared for the effects of that remark.

  He guffawed—loudly—almost choked on a kipper bone, and slapped himself on the chest. “Absolutely right. It damn nearly did.”

  I remembered his “bloody cat” remark.

  “This morning?” I inquired.

  “Umm,” he said, holding out his teacup. “Pour.”

  I did as I was told. “Lady Macbeth couldn’t contain hers.” He shovelledsugar into his cup.

  You may remember an episode with a kitten that had savaged my finger. She’d grown into a massive moggie and rejoiced in the name of Lady Macbeth. It sounded as though something untoward had happened to my feline nemesis. “Go on,” I said.

  “Piqued your curiosity, have I?”

  I let the remark pass, although the frustrating thing was that he had.

  “Thought so.” O’Reilly reached for the milk jug. “Well, the old curiosity piqued Lady Macbeth last night. Mrs. Kincaid must have set a couple of mouse traps.”

  Mouse traps. Little wooden devices with bait and a spring-loaded bar. Mouse took the bait, dislodged a lock, and released the bar, which snapped over with enough force to break the mouse’s neck.

  “Lady MacB must have decided to investigate.” He poured milk into his tea. “Stupid animal had one stuck on the end of her nose.”

  Despite my dislike of the beast I couldn’t help feeling a certain sympathy for her plight.

  “No real harm done, in spite of the row she was making,” said O’Reilly. “More a matter of hurt pride.” He lifted a forkful of kipper. “She can have the leftover kippers for her breakfast. That’ll cheer her up.” He masticated slowly and swallowed. “It might teach her a lesson. Like the one I taught Donal Donnelly.”

  “Donal?”

  “Um. He was most curious.”

  I confess so was I, until O’Reilly glanced at his watch and said, “Come on. Eat up. We’re going to be late for morning surgery. I’ll tell you that story at lunchtime.”

  To be continued.

  APRIL 1999

  Curiouser and Curiouser

  Things that go “aargh” in the day

  “I’ll tell you that story at lunchtime.” That had been O’Reilly’s parting remark as we finished our breakfasts and headed off to our morning tasks. He’d gone to visit Lord Fitzgurgle to make comforting noises about his lordship’s gout—and probably spend the rest of the morning sampling the baronial sherry.
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  I’d not had much time to wonder about the story that was meant to be forthcoming at lunchtime. The question of Donal Donnelly’s curiosity had been pushed aside by the demands of a busy morning.

  I ushered Maggie MacCorkle, my last patient, into the surgery. She’d come in for a fresh supply of the vitamin pills that, if taken ten minutes before the onset, prevented the recurrence of headaches two inches above the crown of her head.

  I reached into the cubbyhole of the rolltop desk where O’Reilly kept his free samples and produced the magic placebo.

  “Ah, thanks, Doctor,” said Maggie, stuffing the bottle into her handbag.

  I hoped she was going to leave, as it was now half an hour past lunchtime, but she was anxious to tell me about the doings of her cat, General Montgomery.

  I listened—I hope patiently. Perhaps it was my empty stomach’s quite believable impression of those boiling mud pits in New Zealand that prompted her to remark, “Ah sure but I’ve taken up enough of your time, Doctor sir.”

  “That’s all right, Maggie.” I held the door, waiting for her to leave. “Glad to hear the General’s still bright as a bee.”

  She sniffed. “He is that—and it’s more than I can say for that buck-eejit Donal.”

  Donal Donnelly, you’ll remember—he of the psychedelic bicycle—was married to Maggie’s niece, Martha. “You’ll not need me to be telling you about that one,” she said. “Away on, Doctor dear, and get your lunch.”

  “Right, Maggie.”

  As I watched her go, I began to wonder about a strange series of coincidences. Maggie’s chat about her cat had led her admittedly sometimes off-centre thoughts to Donal Donnelly. Last night O’Reilly’s cat, Lady Macbeth, had suffered a misfortune. It had led his usually convoluted intellectual processes to Donal Donnelly.

  Somewhere in the back of my invariably muddled mind I started to hear the theme music of an American TV program that was starting to gain some notoriety even in Ireland. A little subconscious voice said, “Welcome to the Twilight Zone”—although in Ballybucklebo it would more likely be the “Early Evening Environs.”

  Comforting myself with the thought that whatever supernatural events had befallen Donal were more likely to have been the result of too long a stay in the Mucky Duck rather than a close encounter of the third kind, I left the surgery, crossed the hall, and went into the dining room.

  “Busy?” O’Reilly muttered through a mouthful of chicken pot pie. I could see the congealed remnants of what half an hour ago would have been another of Mrs. Kincaid’s culinary gems.

  I nodded, helped myself to a glutinous plateful, and sat at the big table. “I’ve just been having a chat with Maggie.”

  He hiccupped. So he had been at the sherry.

  “She mentioned Donal. You said you were going to tell me a story about him.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did. About curiosity.”

  “That’s right,” he said, and hiccupped. “Poor old Donal.”

  I chewed my chilled chicken.

  “Do you know what a polecat is?” he asked, and before I could answer, continued, “It’s a member of the ferret family—but bigger. More teeth, more claws.”

  I knew as much about overgrown weasels as I did about pigs. Nothing. I’d conveniently forgotten that years ago, when I introduced you to O’Reilly, I may have remarked that among his many attributes he was an unregenerate poacher—and in Ireland ferrets were as much tools of that particular trade as scalpels are to surgeons.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Donal didn’t think so.”

  I swallowed. “Fingal, it’s been a long morning. I’ve a list of home visits as long as your arm to do after my late and thus nearly inedible lunch. If you want me to say I’m curious, consider it said, but please get to the point.”

  “What point?” He footered about lighting his briar. I swear O’Reilly did it simply to irritate.

  I pushed my half-finished plate away. “This morning you said that Donal was curious, you taught him a lesson, and that you would explain at lunch.”

  “I am explaining.”

  “Then what does my state of knowledge about stickcats have to do with Donal?”

  “Polecats, son. Polecats. They bite.”

  “Fingal.”

  He hiccupped, exhaled smoke, and chuckled. “All right. Donal used to do odd jobs for me, but apart from his congenital dimness he had a fatal flaw.”

  “Let me guess. Curiosity?”

  “Right. He couldn’t keep his nose out of things that didn’t concern him.” O’Reilly’s brow wrinkled. “I didn’t really mind him rummaging about in the drinks cabinet, but I drew the line when I caught him reading patients’ charts.”

  My immediate thought was that under those circumstances Doctor O. would have been less likely to draw a line than dig an enormous trench. “What did you do?”

  “I spoke to Fergal McGillicutty and borrowed something from him.”

  McGillicutty was a farm labourer who, for a price and no questions asked, was always able to produce a brace of pheasants or a fat hare for Mrs. Kincaid.

  “And?”

  “I put it in a box in the back garden just before Donal came over to cut the grass. I told him that under no circumstances was he to open the box.”

  “He opened the box, didn’t he, Fingal?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.” O’Reilly could barely contain himself. “But Donal survived. He only needed six stitches.”

  “Good God. What was in the box?”

  “I told you,” said O’Reilly. “Polecats bite.”

  My involuntary laughter was cut short when he looked pointedly at his watch and said, “Isn’t it about time you were off to see your customers?”

  “Right,” I said, rising.

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to be up to this afternoon?”

  I knew very well he’d go to sleep off this morning’s load of sherry, but I said, and I meant it, “I’m not curious, Fingal. Not in the least.”

  MAY 1999

  A Matter of Time

  O’Reilly bends the law

  There’s a difference between broken and bent. If you don’t believe me, I’ll explain. As with anything vaguely related to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, you may find the explanation convoluted.

  When I worked for Doctor O’Reilly, Ireland had returned to daylight saving time, but during the second great numbered unpleasantness we’d had a peculiar system of “double summer time” when the clocks were advanced not one but two hours.

  This, it was widely believed, had been introduced to foil the Luftwaffe’s night bombing raids. How, the denizens of Ballybucklebo reasoned, could the German air force indulge itself in a touch of nocturnal bombing when there was no longer such a thing as night, and the sun, literally, shone at midnight? (It was this kind of reasoning that allowed the Irish to plan a manned mission to the sun. They’d avoid the heat by going after dark.) The Germans short-circuited the defensive ploy by resorting to what was, according to the new clock settings, very early morning bombing raids. This upset that sense of fairness so dear to the hearts of the average Ulsterman; the Germans were regarded as no longer playing by the rules.

  Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly would never have failed to play by the rules. Never. He was, or at least as far as Her Majesty’s Royal Navy had been concerned, he had been, an officer and a gentleman. I can categorically assure you I never saw him break a single rule during all the time I spent with him.

  Bending was another matter. It’s said the first pretzel was designed by O’Reilly when he mistook a straight biscuit for a statute of which he disapproved.

  You may be wondering what the vagaries of springing forward, falling back, and O’Reilly’s disdain for the laws of mere mortals have in common. To help you see the connection let me add the catalyst—alcohol. Still confused? Bear with me.

  You do know that O’Reilly enjoyed a shot, both in the “of whiskey”
sense and at the occasional unsuspecting duck. It might help if I explained that the months for molesting migratory mallard ran from September to February. You also are aware, because I’ve been at some pains to tell you, that when the omens were propitious on any given autumn or winter Saturday, Doctor O. would stick me with being on call, summon Arthur Guinness, and vanish in the pre-dawn blackness to bang and blaze barrel after barrel at the bewildered birds.

  On the third Saturday of October in the year of our Lord I don’t remember exactly, O’Reilly and the faithful hound had been somewhere on the foreshore of Strangford Lough since well before dawn. I’d been ministering to the medical emergencies: one cut finger, one marble up a nostril, and one hangover—Donal Donnelly’s—that could have been mistaken for the symptoms of a brain tumour in anyone who actually possessed such an organ. I’d eaten a splendid late supper—slices of one of Mrs. Kincaid’s roast hams—and for once feeling like a bit of company had wandered over to the Mucky Duck.

  By this stage of my apprenticeship with Doctor O. I was well known to the locals and they to me. The snug was full of the usual suspects—Arthur Osbaldiston behind the bar, Fergal McGillicutty, Donal Donnelly “having a hair of the dog,” as the English call it, or, as the Irish say, “taking the cure”—in front. The local constable leant against the bar, straight glass of stout clutched in one hand.

  “Evening, Doc. Sherry?” Arthur asked.

  “Thanks.”

  He poured, handed it to me, and glanced over to where a large clock hung high up on the opposite wall. It was eight minutes to ten. “Himself’s late the night.”

  “The ducks,” I remarked, sipping from my glass.

  “Oh aye,” said Arthur, polishing a glass with a grubby dishcloth, “Doctor O’Reilly’s a terrible man for the ducks.” He glanced back at the clock and his head made an almost indiscernible twitch toward the rotund arm of the law. “The doctor’d better get himself in soon if he wants a wee hot whiskey to keep away the dew. I’ve to close in five minutes.” He smiled obsequiously at the constable. “Isn’t that right, officer?”