“I know. Nursing at Baggot Street Hospital’s like that too. You know I got all worked up about the poor in Tallaght, my part of Dublin, and that’s why I picked nursing when I realised after a couple of years at art school I couldn’t make a living as an artist. I’ve never regretted that choice, so I do understand what you’re saying, and I respect you for it,” she said. “I think it takes someone special to want to do it.” Her smile was broad. “And I think you’re special, Doctor O’Reilly.”
Fingal glowed. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you very much.”
He felt the pressure of her hand and knew she was telling him, as she had last year in a tearoom on Abbey Street, that she loved him. He started to apologise again for sending her away, readied himself to make the leap and tell her he loved her. “Kitty, I’m sorry—”
“Your wine, sir. Will you taste it?”
Blast. He’d tell Kitty his feelings later. There was no real urgency. He felt—he felt comfortable with her. “No, thank you. Please let the lady try it.” He ignored the waitress’s raised eyebrow as she poured. So what if women never sampled the wine? Kitty knew her stuff in the oenophile department.
“Perfect,” Kitty said.
The waitress poured, shoved the bottle in an ice bucket, and produced two menus. “Here you are,” she said. “I’ll give you a minute.”
“Cheers.” Fingal sipped. Cool, crisp, fruity—and not a patch on a well-pulled pint of stout, but tonight was Kitty’s night. “Here’s to your bright eyes.” Grey flecked with amber. He drank again.
Kitty smiled and said, “Thank you,” and consulted the menu. “Choices,” she said, “decisions, decisions.”
Fingal read the table d’hôte menu, didn’t fancy roast lamb tonight so turned to the à la carte.
A discreet cough drew his attention to the waitress, who now stood by the table, pencil and order pad in hand. “Have sir and madam decided?”
“Sorry,” Fingal said. “Give us a tick.”
The waitress sniffed and said, “Take your time. God keeps makin’ plenty of it, but Chef’s not the Almighty and he wants to close the kitchen.”
“Kitty?”
“I’ll have the lamb chops please, and mash.”
“Sirloin, rare, and chips. We’ll get veg?”
“You will.”
“Terrific,” said Fingal, “and sorry to keep Chef waiting.”
The waitress tutted and tossed her head. “Sure aren’t all chefs the same; believe they’re no goat’s toe, but see our one? Our one t’inks he’s a philosopher. Profound, like.” She shook her head and curled her lip. “He’s about as deep as a feckin’ frying pan—and twice as dense.” She left.
Fingal laughed. Slapped his knee. “Did you hear that? ‘Deep as a frying pan.’ I can’t help liking Dubliners. Where else in the world would you hear the likes?”
“Probably,” she said, “nowhere outside the city, but definitely in a practice at Aungier Place.”
He laughed. “As they’d say in those parts, ‘True on you, Kitty. True on you.’” He exaggerated the first syllable of true so it sounded like “tuhroo.”
Her grip on his hand tightened. “Good Lord, Fingal,” she said, “you are half a Dubliner even if your folks did bring you here from the wee north, and now you’re sounding like a Northsider at that.” And she laughed. “I know when you get settled into this job you’re going to love it.”
“And if Charlie comes in I’ll only have to work one weekend in three and I’ll have evenings off midweek—”
“And that’ll leave plenty of time for,” she hesitated, “your family.”
He nodded. Kitty needn’t say any more. He knew she understood.
“And,” she said, “I hope there’ll be some left over for us,” and puckered a pretend kiss.
He tingled at the “us.” “There will,” he said. “All the time in the world.” He grinned. “And I’m not like the chef. I’m happy to take all the time the Good Lord sends—for us.” He looked into those smiling grey eyes and knew he meant every word. “And, by the way,” he said, lowering his voice. “I love you.”
10
Upon the Heath
“I didn’t know you’d been invited, O’Reilly,” Bertie Bishop said, pulling the stock and barrels of his twelve-bore from a leg-o-mutton gun case he’d taken from the boot of his Bentley. The councillor was wearing plus-fours, a Norfolk jacket, and a deer-stalker.
He reminded O’Reilly of a rotund, Edwardian Mole in an illustrated edition of The Wind in the Willows. Ostentatious, O’Reilly thought, not a bit concerned that his own outfit was scruffy. Wellington boots, old tweed pants, a gansey knitted by Kinky years ago worn under a patched hacking jacket, the ensemble topped with a Paddy hat.
“And it’s nice til see you, Mrs. O’Reilly.” Bishop favoured Kitty with a wintry grin.
To O’Reilly’s dismay, the man had been included in today’s opening day of grouse season on the marquis’s County Antrim moor. This despite his gaffe on his lordship’s pheasant shoot back in January during which Bertie’d nearly shot Kitty.
“And you, councillor,” Kitty said, and favoured him with a dazzling smile.
Hypocrite, O’Reilly thought, barely hiding a smile himself. Or perhaps, more charitably, Mrs. O’Reilly was just being diplomatic. She was dressed for the day in a headscarf, plain waterproof jacket, Donegal tweed skirt, ribbed woollen stockings, and laced brogues. Fingal approved. Simple and practical gear for a day out tramping the moors. She carried a shooting stick. And she looked lovely.
He tucked his own gun under his arm. “Keep an eye on Arthur, would you, please? I want to have a word with Myrna. Doctor-patient stuff. Stay, Arthur.” He wandered across to where the marquis had parked his shooting brake at the side of the road. Myrna was sitting nearby on a camp stool, a portable easel set up in front of her, and her watercolours open on a folding table. “How are you, Myrna?” O’Reilly said. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to come and see you in hospital. I hope Sir Donald took good care of you.”
“Fingal, lovely to see you. And I’m sorry about nearly losing your invitation.”
“Never worry,” he said. “How’s the hind leg?”
“Remarkable,” she said. “It’s only three weeks since the stupid thing was fixed. Your friend Sir Donald said he used something called a Kuntscher nail and explained how in the old days I’d have been in hospital for months.”
Like my friend John-Joe Finnegan was back in 1936, O’Reilly thought.
“I’m not allowed to bear too much weight yet. Not up to tramping with you lot, but I love it up here and it’s a marvellous day for a few watercolour sketches.”
She was a keen watercolourist, but her work tended more to the Grandma Moses primitive school than the lush paintings of the Mourne Mountains by Percy French. “Just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to call if you’re worried.”
“Of course. Enjoy yourself up there.”
Myrna was right. It was a great day for the shoot and her art. Overhead in the blue heavens, small clouds drifted high above County Antrim and out across the distant enameled waters of the North Channel. Further north, a summer shower was tumbling over the purple bulking masses of Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre and further still was the island of Islay, where in the town of Lagavulin they distilled a damn good single-malt Scotch whisky.
“Glad you could make it, Fingal,” the marquis said when O’Reilly arrived where Kitty stood with Arthur. The marquis was instructing Bertie and the other three guns, a local farmer and his wife and another landowner. The two Antrim men had springer spaniels at their feet, and the marquis’s liver-and-white Jack Russell terrier, Buster, sat by his master.
“Thank you, sir,” O’Reilly said.
“Fingal, I want you to anchor the left end of the line.”
“Fine.”
“Then, at twenty-five-yard intervals, Edna, you beside Doctor O’Reilly, please.” She was the wife of Richard
Johnson, who farmed near Clough Mills, and she was a crack shot. O’Reilly had met Ned Falloon, a local landowner, and the Johnsons on previous shoots.
“Then you, Richard, then Ned. Bertie, you’ll be beside me and I’ll anchor the other end of the line.”
O’Reilly understood that Bertie was being put next to John MacNeill so the marquis could keep an eye on the councillor.
“Questions?”
A shaking of heads.
“Right,” said the marquis. “Ned, if you’ll take Richard and Edna and the springers in your brake, I’ll bring the Ballybucklebo contingent in mine. See you at lunchtime, Myrna.”
“Have fun,” she said.
The marquis held open the passenger door for Kitty, leaving Bertie and O’Reilly to get in the back, and put Arthur and Buster, who were old friends, in the rear compartment. The shooting brake jounced and rattled along the rutted lane that climbed through a mile of cultivated stepped fields until it reached the border of the moor.
O’Reilly couldn’t make out the conversation from the front so he sat quietly, looking forward to the day’s sport, delighted that Jenny had been so accommodating in changing on-call days so he could be here—another reason she’d be a distinct asset if Barry didn’t want to come back. Maybe they’d find out more about that at dinner tonight. He smiled. All was right with the world and—
“What’s all this rubbish I hear? You’ve brung in a lady doctor, O’Reilly?” Bertie leant closer and said over the noise, “Bloody great waste of taxpayers’ money, women in medicine. I know all medical students pay something, but the government pays a lot more per student. I hear tell the marquis give a scholarship to Helen Hewitt too. Load of bullshite. They should never let women into medical school, if you ask me.”
“I don’t believe I did, Bertie,” O’Reilly said. His euphoric bubble had been pricked and he could feel his nose tip blanching. “But by God if Jenny Bradley’s good enough for me, and she is, she’ll be good enough for you.”
* * *
“Hey on, Arthur. Hey on out, boy,” O’Reilly roared. “Push him out.” By the time the marquis had aligned the guns, O’Reilly’s choler over Bertie’s remarks had subsided. The man had sputtered a bit after O’Reilly’s riposte, but had uncharacteristically lapsed into silence. He was quite simply a solid-gold twenty-four-karat gobshite and nobody would ever change him. To do so would need a Road to Damascus experience, and as far as O’Reilly knew, Damascus was about three thousand miles away. Forget him and enjoy the day, he’d told himself. And he was. This was the fifth beat. “Hey on, boy.”
As if the gundog needed encouragement. The big Labrador quartered the ground, completely in his element, nose down hunting for scents, tail erect but barely moving. Sunlight made his coat shine.
O’Reilly carried his shotgun across his chest, muzzle pointing safely up, butt ready at the instant to be tucked into his shoulder. From the surface of the barrels came a faint whiff of three-in-one oil. Wildfowling on Strangford Lough’s salty shores was hell for making gunmetal rust. The smelly oil was preventive.
With Kitty slightly behind and to his left, he followed Arthur as the shooting party climbed a rise, all ears, human and canine, alert for any hint of grouse breaking cover. “Hey on, boy. Hey on.”
The two springer spaniels as well as Arthur were working the cover ahead and he could hear their owners’ cries of encouragement. O’Reilly caught the toe of his boot, stumbled, and regained his balance. Watch where you’re going, eejit, he told himself. You know well enough about the gnarly twisted roots of the heather up here. The group had already covered a broad strip of such territory as they walked toward Ballypatrick Forest. When they reached its fence, they’d rest for a few minutes, maybe have a smoke, then wheel and retrace their steps over a new beat for a mile to the heights above the valley of Glendun, one of the famous Glens of Antrim. He murmured a few lines of an old song,
Where the gay honeysuckle is luring the bee,
And the green Glens of Antrim are calling to me.
O’Reilly, a County Down man who thought Strangford Lough was as near to Heaven as mortals could get, had no difficulty understanding why folks from these parts, folks like Ballybucklebo’s schoolmistress, Sue Nolan, who came from Broughshane, felt just the same about their glens. He wondered how Barry’s romance was progressing. He’d find out at dinner tonight.
O’Reilly was nagged by an ache in his calves. Not as fit as you should be, he told himself. He’d know about sore muscles tomorrow, but then you couldn’t make a kipper without killing the herring. If you wanted a day’s rough shooting that meant lots of hiking where the guns and their dogs covered the ground on foot, starting the game in front of them. There were no gamekeepers, no beaters, no pickers-up like at the driven grouse shoots, which were now too expensive for all but a very wealthy few. There the guns were accompanied by loaders and waited in butts. When beaters drove the birds, usually in groups of five, over the butt, the hunter would fire the first gun’s two barrels, hand it to the loader, take the second gun of the matching pair, usually of James Purdey & Sons manufacture, use the next two barrels, and if necessary accept the first gun reloaded. King George V was reputed regularly to kill five birds out of five. The names of those of the aristocracy who usually missed with all six barrels was, tactfully, not recorded.
O’Reilly’s ruminations were cut short, and the second he heard the alarm call of a sharp Goback, goback, goback, he raised his gun to his shoulder. With a rapid whirring of stubby wings, four red grouse broke cover immediately in front of Edna. Her shot. He’d not poach until she’d fired twice, but he slipped off the safety catch and covered the bird nearest to him. From a corner of an eye, he admired how in one effortless motion she brought her weapon up, sighted, fired at a bird, and as it collapsed in a puff of russet feathers, she took the next with the left barrel before the first had hit the ground. She’d taken her chance well.
His bird was now in a rapid downward glide. The butt thumped his shoulder when he squeezed the trigger, his ears rang, and the smell of burnt smokeless powder tickled his nose. The fourth grouse, calling, Chut, chut, chut, curled away to O’Reilly’s left to land safely in the heather well outside the paths of the approaching sportsmen. Good. Breeding stock for next season.
At the sound of the shots, Arthur stopped in his tracks, marked the falls, and looked back at O’Reilly.
He heard Kitty say, “Good shot, dear.”
He smiled at her and said to Edna, “Nice right and left.”
“Thanks, Fingal.” She broke her shotgun, ejected the spent cases, and reloaded. When the party had assembled this morning and parked on the Loughareena Road, he’d admired the walnut stock and blued barrels of her new Boss twelve-bore. Those gunmakers had been supplying sporting weapons to the gentry since 1812, the year Napoleon Bonaparte had defeated the Russians at Borodino, which Tchaikovsky had commemorated in his famous overture. “Hi lost, Arthur,” O’Reilly called and, pleased with his own shooting, sang a few cheerful bars. “Pom tiddle iddle tiddle om pom pom, Pom tiddle iddle iddle om pom pom,” with great stress on the “om pom poms.”
The dog ignored the mangled music. He took his line and sped ahead. A springer was heading in the same direction. In moments, the Lab had returned, sat at O’Reilly’s feet, and offered up a cock grouse with russet plumage, white legs, and a black tail. There were white stripes under the wings and a red comb over each eye. “Good boy. Hi lost.” O’Reilly took the bird and slipped it into a game bag slung over his left shoulder. It didn’t matter who collected the birds. At the heels of the hunt, the marquis would give each gun a brace—O’Reilly happily imagined Kinky roasting his to make a tasty snack for him and Kitty. The rest of the day’s bag would be sold to Belfast restaurants to help defray the costs of the shoot.
In a short time, Arthur returned with a second bird, was relieved of his burden, complimented, and sent out to a new command of “Push ’em out now.”
O’Reilly noticed that the spr
inger was once again quartering the ground, so it must have retrieved the third bird and, like Arthur, was hunting again. The line of guns advanced with several more shots fired before they neared the boundary of the coniferous forest, its piney smell drifting on the breeze. He saw the marquis hold up a hand, and as the other guns reached the rusty barbed wire, they walked along it to join him. “Good sport, so far,” his lordship said. “The reports that it’s been a first-class breeding year are true.”
“I’m not so sure Jenny Bradley would agree about sport,” Kitty murmured.
“She’s not backward in coming forward with an opinion,” O’Reilly said, wondering if he was altogether happy with Jenny’s propensity for questioning, then remembered how Phelim Corrigan had responded to Fingal’s challenges back in ’36. The young woman had every right to speak her mind. It showed spunk.
“They’re such pretty little things, the grouse,” Kitty said, “I could feel sorry for them myself, but I do know how much you love your shooting.” She looked down at a grinning Arthur. “And so does he.”
“Don’t you worry about the grouse. As I told Jenny, grouse rear large clutches every year so their populations soon recover. Conservationists like my brother Lars carry out annual counts. There are five thousand breeding pairs in all of Ireland alone and another two hundred and fifty thousand in Britain. Their greatest threats are from natural predators like martens and kestrels, and possibly a nematode worm.”
“Not from hunters like you, Nimrod, then?”
“A grandson of Noah, I believe,” he blew her an imaginary kiss, “and, ‘a mighty hunter before God,’ to quote. No, we really don’t do much damage to the population.”
“I’m glad.” She laughed and said, “And I love to see you so happy, Fingal, taking a bit of time off. It’s beautiful up here and we couldn’t have had a better day for it. That sun’s wonderful.”