The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories

  The tale of Mister Brown and Miss Gill

  I think I’ve mentioned that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, among his other attributes, was kind to widows and small children. He had a knack of talking to youngsters as if they were adults, taking their concerns with grave sincerity.

  Please remember this was the man who’d crushed Doctor “Thorny” Murphy with a single sentence, had given Sir Gervaise Grant enough nightmares to make Edgar Allan Poe look like a beautiful dreamer, yet around the chisslers of the small town he was, in his own quotation of the Bard, “Naught but a cooing dove.”

  A long afternoon surgery had just finished, and I was perched on the examining table. Mrs. Kincaid knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said O’Reilly, eyebrows rising as he looked up from his seat at the rolltop desk. “Jasus, not more of the sick and suffering?”

  Mrs. Kincaid appeared, followed by a little lad of about six who peered out from behind her skirts. He held firmly to the hand of a girl who must have been a couple of years his senior.

  “Mister Brown and Miss Gill would like to have a wee word, Doctor.” Kinky looked solemn.

  O’Reilly’s great eyebrows slid back from their attempt to meet his hairline. “Come right in.”

  Kinky ushered the pair forward to stand in front of O’Reilly. I was immediately put in mind of the carollers who visited Rat and Mole in The Wind in the Willows. The boy’s short pants almost reached his skinned knees and while one sock was firmly held in place, the other was wrinkled round his ankle. He stood with his toes turned in. He clung to the hand of his companion.

  The girl, clean in a patched grey dress, kept her cornflower blue eyes demurely fixed on the threadbare rug.

  “Well,” said O’Reilly, “what can I do for you?”

  I sat quietly watching.

  The little girl looked up at him and said, quite clearly, “Mister Brown and I are going to get married.”

  O’Reilly didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “Married, is it?” He pushed his half-moon glasses up the bridge of his bent nose, sat back, and steepled his fingers. “There’s a thing now.”

  The little boy scuffed his toes along the carpet, sniffed, and dragged the back of one forearm across his nostrils.

  “Yes,” she said. “Mister Brown proposed to me yesterday.”

  “Did he now?”

  “I did,” said Mister Brown.

  I couldn’t recollect how my textbook of the diseases of children suggested how one dealt with a paediatric premarital counselling visit, but was quite willing to learn. Besides, I wanted to see how O’Reilly managed to extricate himself from this one. I would probably have laughed and sent them packing.

  Not O’Reilly.

  “Well,” he said, “‘Marriage is an honourable estate, not one to be entered upon lightly.’”

  I flinched. I couldn’t believe he was going to get to the bits about the comforts of the flesh.

  Mister Brown nodded very seriously. He seemed to be uncomfortable and stood pressing his knees together.

  “Good,” said O’Reilly, “that’s clear then.”

  Mister Brown tugged at the front of his pants.

  O’Reilly stood. “I tell you what. I think we should continue these discussions over a cup of tea. Would you like that, Miss Gill?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Good.”

  “Doctor Taylor, would you be kind enough to ask Mrs. Kincaid to put the kettle on and set a tray for four?”

  I thought I might as well go along. I might also have the opportunity to ask Kinky who the children belonged to. I left the room, hearing Fingal say, “And have you found a nice place to live?”

  He was standing at the front door when I returned, his big shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. I could see past him to where the betrothed were scurrying down the front path, Mister Brown still clinging to Miss Gill’s hand.

  He called after them. “Are you sure you won’t stay for tea?”

  But Miss Gill called back over her shoulder. “We can’t, Doctor O’Reilly—Mister Brown’s just wet himself.”

  MAY 1997

  O’Reilly’s Surprise

  The flowers that bloomed in the spring

  “Begod, I’m famished,” announced Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, helping himself to a canapé. The morsel vanished with the rapidity of a small insect trapped on a chameleon’s tongue. “There’s not enough on these things to keep a flea from starvation. Come back here, you.”

  The red-jacketed waiter to whom these words were addressed did a quick one-eighty like one of those figure skaters winding up for a death spiral. Donal Donnelly, mostly unemployed, occasional waiter at catered functions, proffered the tray of nibblers to O’Reilly with the subservience of a minion offering John the Baptist’s head to Salome on a silver platter.

  Now I wouldn’t want you to think that Donal was scared of Doctor O’Reilly. Just because Donnelly was a patient of long standing and once upon a time Doctor O. had reduced Donal’s dislocated shoulder—without the benefit of anaesthesia—was no reason for the youth to be scared of my mentor. Absolutely, totally, and utterly petrified is probably a better description.

  “Good lad,” said O’Reilly, grabbing a shrimp and a chippolata on a cocktail stick. “Run along.”

  Donal scuttled away.

  “So?” O’Reilly asked, picking a tooth with the chippolata stick. “What do you think of this hooley?”

  “Very nice,” I replied, slightly overawed by my surroundings. I should tell you that in the late ’60s, the concept of elitism hadn’t been invented yet by the perpetually dissatisfied—those whose only claim to any degree of status is the volume with which they can whinge about perceived wrongs and who reckon because they always came last in the egg-and-spoon race that there’s a conspiracy afoot to keep them in their places. The ones who have a personality with a specific gravity that would match that of lead, who feel they should have floated to the top by dint of no other effort than the fact of their existence.

  Lord Fitzgurgle, twentieth Earl Hurtletoot, hereditary master of the lands surrounding our small village, had no doubts about who was elite and who wasn’t. The medical profession, represented by Doctor Fingal O’Reilly, Doctor Murphy (he of the crown of thorns), and myself, were. Just. We’d been invited to the annual “show the peasants a bit of condescension” evening at his lordship’s stately home.

  “Very nice,” I said once again.

  “Stop repeating yourself,” O’Reilly grunted, swallowing a dollop of Black Bush whiskey. “His lordship keeps a good drop.” He smacked his lips with the appreciatory enthusiasm of a satisfied orangutan. “Where the hell’s young Donnelly?”

  “I think he went back to the kitchen.”

  “Keep an eye out for him.” O’Reilly adopted the tone he usually reserved for when he was imparting one of his pearls of wisdom. “I’ve been to these dos before. Takes forever to get the grub on the table. Take my advice.” He waved an admonitory finger. “Stock up now.”

  “Right, Fingal.” I cast an eye about for our waiter and hoped he would shortly hove into view. A hungry O’Reilly could become a tad irritable. Like a viper with its tail caught in a vice-grip.

  “Don’t go away,” said O’Reilly. “I see our esteemed colleague Doctor Murphy over there. I’ll just nip over and inquire after his health.” Fingal had that look in his eye. I deemed it safer to stay where I was.

  I stood looking around me. The room was a fine example of the kind of decayed gentility to be found in the houses of the remnants of the nobility in Ireland. Lord Fitzgurgle’s ancestors scowled down from the walls. Ranks of oil paintings of peers of the realm. The First Earl looked like a brigand. He’d probably been ennobled for nicking a few sheep for his liege lord or stamping on a few Irish peasants. There was no sitting on your duff in the sixteenth century if you fancied a bit of swift promotion.

  Between the pictures hung assorted trophies. Wicked-looking knobkerries, assegais,
a horribly serrated spear, one or two moth-eaten zebra-skin shields. Hunting trophies abounded. Fox heads, stags’ heads, and a mounted cape buffalo stared down.

  “That fellow must have come through the wall at a hell of a tilt.” I turned to see the returned O’Reilly squinting up at the buffalo. “Faster than that bloody Donnelly.”

  I saw O’Reilly’s eyes light up. I followed the direction of his gaze. It was fixed on a large ceramic bowl that sat on a heavily carved sideboard.

  “Peanuts,” he muttered and set off at a trot.

  “Evening, Doctor.” His lordship stood at my side. Stiff military bearing, bushy white moustache, and a bulbous nose the colour of raw beef. The quinine in tonic water is prophylactic against malaria. And it had been effective—in all the seventy-six years he’d lived in Ulster he had not contracted malignant quartan. Not once. The brandy with which the duke had for years fortified his tonic accounted for the nose.

  “My lord.”

  It’s difficult to express in writing what my expression actually meant. At first glance you may think it was a greeting appropriate to my host’s station. I can only hope he took it that way. In fact it was an exclamation of serious concern.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see O’Reilly. His eyeballs bulged, his face was redder than his lordship’s nose. Much redder. And the tip of O’Reilly’s nose, the marker of his anger level, was white as driven snow. His cheeks bulged and he was tugging at his collar. This display of facial gymnastics had clearly upset the very attractive woman to whom he’d been talking. She was hastening away, occasionally casting a backward glance at Fingal.

  “Good. Good,” said Lord Fitzgurgle. “Enjoy yourself, my boy.”

  “Thank you, my lord. Excuse me.” I thought I was witnessing my first case of apoplexy, but as I neared O’Reilly his complexion cleared slightly. He managed an enormous swallow.

  “You all right, Fingal?”

  He made a gurgling noise for all the world like water running out of a bath and pointed at the bowl of peanuts. Now, it’s said that when Horatio swam the swollen Tiber, Lars Porsena of Clusium could scarce forbear to cheer. I had a similar bad attack of the scarce forbearances. In my case, it was laughter I had to suppress.

  Doctor O’Reilly, momentarily distracted by the charms of his companion, had seized and stuffed his mouth with an enormous handful, not of peanuts, but of the dried flower petals that had lurked in a potpourri.

  He didn’t complain of being hungry for the rest of the evening.

  JUNE 1997

  Shock Therapy

  The astonishingly rapid cure of Agatha Arbuckle

  I may have alluded to the fact that my old tutor, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, could, on occasion, be a little unorthodox. I believe the early Catholic Church regarded Martin Luther in roughly the same light. I do, however, suspect there was a difference between the two men. There’s not a shred of published evidence to suggest that the hero of the Reformation had much of a sense of humour. Certainly in any of the woodcuts, lithographs, and other sundry reproductions of the old cleric he looks to have been remarkably po-faced.

  O’Reilly could be accused of many things (and frequently was, after the Mucky Duck had closed for the night), but lacking a well-developed sense of the ho-ho-hos was never one of them.

  It has been said that laughter is the best medicine. It could be back then. I’m not so sure today. A well-meaning one-liner may be greeted with a polite titter. It can also lead to a frolicsome chat with the disciplinary committee of your provincial college or a visit from those merry minions of mirth, the harassment police.

  Doctor O’Reilly suffered from no such constraints.

  Just before Friday-morning surgery was to start, he peered through a crack in the door to the waiting room.

  “Would you look at that lot?” he said. “The weary, wilting, woesome, walking wounded wanting our wisdom before the weekend. The scabrous sick searchers after solace for their scorched souls. Jasus.” He stepped back from the door. “See for yourself.”

  I chanced a glance.

  The waiting room was full. Four local farmers; three housewives; Donal Donnelly, who I’d last seen waiting at Lord Fitzgurgle’s soiree; and Maggie, looking suspiciously as if the pain above her head had returned, sat on benches arranged round the walls of the room. Two small boys ran around the remaining open space, arms outstretched, banking and weaving and making machine-gun noises.

  A single wooden chair occupied one corner. Whoever took that seat would be first into the sanctum sanctorum when O’Reilly opened the surgery. This morning’s winner was a woman with a smile like last week’s rhubarb. Her lips were set at a permanent twenty to four. Her upper body, thin as a rake handle, twitched up and down at about two-second intervals. A series of faint “hics” could be heard over the racket of the simulated dogfight.

  “Ha,” said O’Reilly as he let the door close. “You’d need the diagnostic skills of a Galen to sort out that lot. Piles, sniffles, backaches, a couple of ruptures. Donnelly’ll be looking for another doctor’s letter so he can draw his sick pay, and God only knows what Maggie has for us today. And to top it off there’s Agatha Arbuckle with her chest going up and down like a hoor on hinges.”

  He got that glint in his eye and a coercive tone to his voice. “I don’t suppose you’d like to take the surgery today?”

  He was right. If for no other reason than I had no wish to tend to Maggie or Agatha Arbuckle, I know the oath of a certain classic quack from the isle of Cos has some kind of codicil about ministering unto the sick. Old Hippocrates didn’t practise in Ulster. Nor did he have to sort out Maggie or Aggie on a regular basis. “Sorry, Fingal. Lots of house calls.” I began to sidle toward the front door.

  O’Reilly heaved an enormous sigh, the kind of noise a beached right whale makes just before expiring. “All right. But I could do without Agatha today.”

  “Sorry about that,” I lied. I could do without her too. Agatha Arbuckle, fifty, spinster of this parish, secretary-treasurer of the Presbyterian Women’s Union, was not one of my favourite people. Nor one of O’Reilly’s. Somewhere in the woman’s soul lurked a pool of acid. Not your regular sulphuric or nitric. Oh, no. Agatha’s psyche was fuelled by aqua regia, an acid so powerful that one drop can dissolve the armour of a main battle tank.

  “I’ll have to be getting on,” I said. “Just going to nip upstairs and get my bag.”

  I’d been wrong about the whale. It wasn’t one. From O’Reilly’s expiratory rumblings it sounded as if a whole school of cetaceans had taken up permanent residence in the hall. As I headed up I heard him say, “Come in, Agatha. What seems to be the trouble?” Just as I came back into the hall, doctor’s black bag clutched in one hand, the door to the surgery opened and Agatha rushed past me to the front door. The look of shock on her face would have suited the mayor of Hiroshima just after the big bang. What had Fingal said to her? From somewhere I remembered that hiccups could be a sign of terminal ureamia.

  O’Reilly sat in his swivel chair at the rolltop desk. He looked enormously self-satisfied. “Thought you were off doing house calls.”

  “I’m just going, but I saw Aggie a minute ago. Is she all right?”

  “Right as rain.”

  “But…”

  “No ‘buts’ about it. I fixed her.”

  “How?”

  Certain cats, I believe from the county of Cheshire, are reputed to grin. O’Reilly’s vast smirk would have shamed them into expressionlessness. “Told her she was pregnant.”

  “You what?”

  He nodded. “Told her she’s up the builder’s.”

  Aggie? Impossible. “She couldn’t be.”

  “I know,” he said, rising to his feet and pausing for dramatic effect, “but it cured her hiccups.”

  JULY/AUGUST 1997

  Happy as a Pig in …

  Diagnosing porcine pregnancy

  “What do you know about pigs?” O’Reilly inquired.

 
I paused, a small sherry halfway to my lips. “Pigs?”

  “Mmm,” said O’Reilly, wiping Guinness froth from his upper lip. “Pigs.”

  I glanced round the snug of the Mucky Duck, but the landlord was nowhere in sight. Erroneously, as it turned out, I’d assumed that O’Reilly was about to make some disparaging remark about mine host, Arthur Turloch Osbaldiston, purveyor of strong drink, intoxicating liquors, and fine tobaccos. A man of substantial proportions, a complexion of a pinkness to match the hue of a hog, and a squashed nose of similar configuration.

  “Pigs?”

  “Yes. Pigs, man,” said O’Reilly, his nose tip paling.

  What the hell was he on about? Male chauvinists, lumps of cast iron, the Saracen armoured personnel carriers of the British Army, or cloven-hoofed mammals? All could legitimately be called pigs. Certainly the APCs were by the citizens of Belfast. “Pigs, Fingal?”

  O’Reilly’s brows knitted. Actually they moved up and down so rapidly it might have been said “O’Reilly’s brows crocheted,” but it wasn’t. Not by me anyway.

  “They say,” he remarked, idly using an index finger to draw a smile in the white head of his stout, “that perseveration is an early sign of mental disease. Why do you keep mumbling ‘pigs’?”

  “You asked the question.”

  “What question?”

  “Pigs. You asked, ‘What do you know about pigs?’”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “Oh.”

  That seemed to put an end to a rather aimless conversation. I wasn’t disappointed, but of course I was wrong. O’Reilly heaved himself vertically, carried his empty glass to the counter, leaned over, and yelled, “Nurse!” He wasn’t ill. This was his standard summons for anyone with the power to pour him a drink. Arthur Turloch Osbaldiston hove weightily into view, glass in one hand, dishrag in the other. “Yes, Doctor O’Reilly?”

  “Two more.”

  “Right, sir.” Osbaldiston busied himself seeing to Doctor O’Reilly’s next pint. As he ran the black brew into the glass he asked, anxiously, “Well?”