An Irish Country Love Story (37 page)

“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 labourer'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.”

“It will be my retirement project to create a proper archive one day,” said Myrna.

“I kept hoping each day that something would turn up—”

“Look,” said Myrna. “There's Norman. He's one of the curators. I think he's going to introduce Paddy.”

“My lord, my lady, gentlemen…”

Good old class system, O'Reilly thought, and shook his shaggy head. The same class system that had stopped him from owning the land upon which Number One sat. The marquis, Myrna, and perhaps O'Reilly were being recognised—a purist might argue that a physician hardly qualified as a real gentleman unless he were landed. But the formal welcome did not extend to the presence of lesser females or working men.

“I am Norman Bowe, one of the curators here. Welcome to our demonstration of traditional horse-shoeing.” He beckoned to a man wearing a duncher, open-necked blue shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and a full-length leather apron that was split from the lower centre almost to the man's crotch and the flaps held in place round his legs by leather straps. “I'd like to introduce Paddy Jackson, our farrier, who will explain about horseshoeing, which is now a dying art. He will then demonstrate on one of our working plough-horse mares. Paddy.”

The farrier stepped forward. O'Reilly had twice had to treat the sixty-seven-year-old man for burns, an occupational hazard of his trade. Fingal looked over at Kitty, who raised her eyebrows and took his hand. He swallowed down his disappointment and prepared to enjoy the little show. Paddy removed his duncher, lowered his bald head, and said, “My lord, lady, and how's about ye, Doc?”

“We are all very well, thank you, Paddy,” the marquis said, “and we'll be seeing you soon again because Myrna's horse, Ruby, will be needing a new set, but I'll be in touch. Do carry on with your work.”

“Right. Thank you, sir,” said Paddy. He grinned, reset his duncher, and launched into what must be an oft-repeated routine. “You might ask why does a horse need shoes? Wild horses don't need 'em, but wild horses don't carry riders or pull heavy loads, and doing that and walking on cobblestones and tarmac causes wear and tear on the hooves. So ever since the ancients domesticated the animals, we've been working out ways to protect the hoof.”

He bent and from the bench lifted a leather tube above an oval metal plate. “This here is a replica of what we think a Roman hipposandal looked like. ‘Hippo' was Latin for horse. Up in Belfast the theatre the Hippodrome is called for the places Romans used to race horses, and ‘hippopotamus' is Latin for ‘river horse.' Anyroad, the horse wore the hipposandals like boots and them and stirrups was what gave the Roman cavalry the advantage over their enemies.”