An Irish Country Christmas (47 page)

“They’ve been working away like beavers and there’s hardly a ticket left, so there’s not. They’re selling like the ones the fellah sold on the dead dog out in Kerry.”

“Good man ma da,” O’Reilly said. “Have you any at all left?”

Donal dropped a hand to his pocket and pulled out a few green tickets. He frowned as he offered them to O’Reilly. “There’s a few, but why would you buy any when you know they can’t possibly win?”

“Och,” said O’Reilly, “put it down to the Christmas spirit. Folks would think it strange if I’d not bought mine like everyone else.”

“Boys-a-boys,” Donal said, respect in his voice, “but you’re quare and sharp, Doctor. You’re near as sharp as the fellah with the dead dog.”

“Give me five.” He gave Donal a five-pound note. Donal pocketed the money.

“Thanks, Doc. Now like I was saying, when the Dubliner that sold the dog took it to the station to put it on the train to Kerry, what do you think he saw when he opened up the basket the dog was in?”

“You’ve already told me the story’s about a dog that’s dead.”

“As mutton, sir. But the Dublin man reckoned he could get away with it. Sure wasn’t it only one of those thick Kerrymen he was dealing with? For one thing he’d be too stupid to ship the animal back and demand a refund.” Donal held out his hand. “While I’m on about giving things back, give me the stubs, sir, and when you give Eileen her ticket, keep the stub for me. It can’t win if it doesn’t go into the hat.”

“Fair enough.” O’Reilly pulled out his wallet and put 4444 safely away. The other five he tore in two, gave Donal the stubs, and slipped the tickets into his jacket pocket. “Go on about the dead dog.”

“The Dubliner reckons he can swear blind that it was alive when he put it on board. The Kerryman will have to believe the story, and if he wants his money back will have to chase after the railway company for damages and that could take forever. On goes the dog. Away goes the train.”

O’Reilly smiled. “Go on.”

“Meanwhile, the Kerryman has been telling all his pals at the pub about the wonderful dog. ‘Begob,’ says he, looking at the pub clock, ‘it’s tree tirty-tree.’ ”

O’Reilly marveled at how easily Donal slipped from his native North Down accent to the singsong cadences of the southwest of Ireland where, because there is no “aitch” sound in the Irish language, none is pronounced when English is spoken.

“ ‘Time I was off to the station to meet the four o’clock from Dublin,’ he says. He gets there, takes off the basket, opens it, and . . .” Donal started back. His eyes widened. His voice dropped to a whisper.
“ ‘Holy tundering mother of the sainted Jasus Christ himself, and all the saints above! The poor wee doggy’s dead . . . ’ ”

If Donal ever lost his job as a labourer, O’Reilly thought, he’d have no trouble finding work in the theatre. The man was a consummate actor.

“ ‘And me out of pocket sixty pounds.’ But then”—Donal winked—“he has a wonderful notion. He closes up the basket. ‘Seamus,’ says he to the stationmaster, ‘will you mind this basket for a wee while for me ’til I send a man round to collect it?’ ‘Aye, certainly.’ ‘And, Seamus, don’t you let on it came in on this train. Tell the fellah it’s off the six.’ Then the Kerryman hoofs it back to the pub. The lads there are all agog to see the dog.”

O’Reilly started to chuckle. “Pay me no heed, Donal. Go on.”

“ ‘Och,’ says our hero, ‘it’ll not be here until the next train.’ He takes a long pause, then says he, ‘And I’ve been thinking on it. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth to be running such a grand dog so I’ve decided to raffle it. The winner can pick it up at the station off the six o’clock from Dublin.’ ”

O’Reilly nodded.

“ ‘Two pound a ticket,’ he says, and collects up the money from about forty men. They have the draw there and then. A lad from Knock-agashel wins, and about five thirty off he trots to collect the dog.”

“The recently late dog.”

“Aye. The dear departed. Stiff as a plank. By now it’s six thirty, and our lad’s been home for half an hour when there’s a powerful dundering on his door. It’s the winner. ‘You gobshite,’ roars he. ‘The feckin’ dog’s dead.’ ‘Jasus,’ says our man. ‘Dead is it? Dead?’

“ ‘As a feckin’ dodo. You sold me a pig in a feckin’ poke, you buck eejit.’ ”

“ ‘Tut,’ says he, ‘tut, tut, tut. Your man in Dublin swore he’d dispatched it alive.’ ”

“ ‘Well, the feckin’ thing’s dead. I have it outside in the basket. Do you want to see it?’ ”

“ ‘No, I believe you. Lord, but that’s very sad.’ And he looks all soulful. ‘I’ll not see you wrong,’ says he. ‘Not for one minute.’ ”

“ ‘All right then,’ says the man from Knock-agashel, and that’s a brave ways away. The whole story may never get back, our hero reckons.”

Donal stopped, fixed O’Reilly with a stare, and waited. Then, keeping his face expressionless, he said, “He pulls out three pounds from his pocket. ‘The least I can do is refund
you
your stake, and an extra pound for your disappointment.’ ‘Grand, so,’ says the Knock-agashel fellah. ‘I’ll be off now and no offence taken.’ ”

Donal stopped and raised one eyebrow. “Now what do you think, Doctor? Was that Kerryman not a clever one?”

Before he had stopped laughing O’Reilly had to wipe his eyes with a large handkerchief. “He was indeed, Donal, and you were right about another thing too. There
is
more than one way to make money from a fixed raffle . . . but the principle’s the same.”

“How come?”

“The fellahs in the pub didn’t know the dog was dead. Nobody except us and Johnny knows ours is rigged. So no more telling folks like you told Johnny. All right?”

“Mum’s the word, sir.”

“Good. Jasus, but that was a grand story.” O’Reilly still had to chuckle. Donal had painted the scene so vividly. “If it was the films you were in, you’d have won an Oscar.”

Donal smiled his mooncalf smile, a sure token he was pleased by O’Reilly’s praise.

O’Reilly clapped Donal on the shoulder. “Now run away with you, Donal Donnelly, and give my love to Julie.”

“I will, Doc, and don’t you worry. Eileen will be one turkey and maybe a hundred quid better off come next Wednesday.”

O’Reilly still had a smile on his face as he saw Donal out.

The next two patients shouldn’t take long, he thought. And then lunch. Bread and bloody cheese. It might as well be bread and water. Still, he brightened at the thought, the Cotter’s Kitchen would be open when he got to the city, and they did very tasty snacks.

He knew he shouldn’t complain about Kinky’s dietary restrictions on his behalf when he thought of how Eileen Lindsay must be struggling
to feed her family on her shifter’s wages. He sighed. He couldn’t help her earn more, but at least her kiddies would get their presents from Santa courtesy of Donal Donnelly and a dead bird. He chuckled and shook his head. That Donal was funny, amoral, and another thing about the lad, the way he kept knocking Julie up, he didn’t need any of Fitzpatrick’s gunpowder to put lead in
his
pencil.

O’Reilly walked along the hall.

The only thing gunpowder should be used for, and smokeless powder at that, was to make shotgun cartridges. While he was in Belfast, he’d pick up a couple of boxes of Eley-Kynoch 5 shot from Braddel’s the gunsmith in the Cornmarket. It would be silly to run out of shot two days from now when he and Arthur Guinness would go to Strangford Lough for a day’s wildfowling. That was something he was really looking forward to.

He hardly recognized that he’d had to stop whistling “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” to yell, “Next.” into the almost deserted waiting room.

The Pelting of This Pitiless Storm

O’Reilly huddled behind the wall of a semi-collapsed sheep cot halfway along Gransha Point, a dogleg-shaped peninsula sticking out into the waters of Strangford Lough. He could hear both the swishing in the grass outside as it thrashed, and bent, and swayed, and the regular grinding sounds of waves breaking on the shingle of the nearby shore.

He wore a waterproof insulated jacket over a thick oiled-wool Baínín sweater, a woollen shirt, and string underwear. He had draped a folded towel around his neck under his shirt for extra waterproofing. His thigh waders covered tweed trousers that were tucked into sea-boot stockings worn over silk socks. The added layer made the rubber boots a tight fit. His soft-crowned tweed Paddy hat was pulled down to cover the tops of his ears.

He felt as inflated as the Michelin Man, but despite his layers he still shivered. The barrels of his twelve-bore shotgun chilled his left hand.

The gale from the south had blown up last night. In the predawn, the Lough was living up to its old Viking name,
Strangfjorthr
, the turbulent fjord. It was ill-tempered, dark, and blustering, and a far cry from its well-mannered summer self of calm blue waters dotted with silent islands. That was the face it usually showed, the one that had caused the native Irish to name the inlet
Lough Cuan
, the peaceful lough.

Sometimes O’Reilly thought of the place as a high-spirited woman who changed her moods as the winds blew. Changeable. He hummed
a few bars of “La donna è mobile”—woman is fickle—and remembered sitting with Deidre listening to
Rigoletto
, from which the piece came, on his old 78s.

She’d been like that. Calm, serene, loving. But if he annoyed her, usually by being thoughtless, she had a temper that could send chills through him as the wind today was sending icy fingers through the cracks between the wall’s wet stones. He shuddered and gripped his gun more tightly when a gust charged through the entrance to swirl and batter, then die within. Deidre’s temper would build until he apologized, and then he’d hold her and she’d say she was sorry too.

Her smile then would be as friendly as the lights of a farmhouse across the bay. The folks over there would be up, he thought, the range lit, the kettle on for the tea, bacon sizzling in the pan. He’d not mind a bacon sandwich now.

The glow of the lights was masked. He knew their disappearance would mark the arrival of a rain squall sweeping in from the open sea. When it had passed, the lights would shine again. If only
she
would. If only. How often, he wondered, had he told other people there was no profit in ploughing the same furrow twice? He must stop dwelling on the past.

O’Reilly looked at the dark outline of Arthur. It didn’t seem like twelve years had passed since O’Reilly had brought home a wriggling, chubby black ball, who’d chewed his master’s slippers and buried his favorite pipe in the vegetable garden.

Buying the pup had been Kinky’s suggestion. She was a very astute woman, was Kinky Kincaid. She’d known that in his role as the village doctor, O’Reilly could not allow himself to develop deep friendships but must maintain a certain professional distance. Nor were there many opportunities for female companionship. She’d sensed O’Reilly’s need, and she’d been right in her prescription. Arthur—clumsy, good-natured, as fond of his Smithwicks as O’Reilly was of his Jameson—had been a staunch companion and loyal friend.

He bent and patted the dog. “For a while there, you big lump, you were my only friend.” At least until the marquis and O’Reilly had
grown closer, initially because of their work for the Rugby Club. Arthur looked up but rapidly looked away, as if to say, “Don’t interrupt me. I’m busy.”

O’Reilly noticed that the dog was sitting alertly, nose twitching, collecting the scents brought in on the wind. Arthur would smell all manner of things, but all O’Reilly could detect was the salty tang from the seashore.

Arthur whimpered, stiffened, and stared straight out through the opening and into the teeth of the gale.

O’Reilly strained to hear over the wind’s keening. Yes. His grip on the gun tightened. Yes. He could hear a whicker of pinions. Closer. Closer. He slipped the safety catch off. He stared and against the grayness of the false dawn sky saw three darker shapes like flying beer bottles hurtling head-on down the wind. As the ducks raced overhead, he hunched low, hiding behind the stones, holding his breath until he selected a target, straightened, and in one fluid movement brought the butt of the shotgun against his right shoulder, swung to lead the bird, and squeezed the trigger for the right barrel.

It seemed as if no time passed between the crash of the shot, the frantic flaring of two birds as in panic they clawed for altitude, and the fall of the third, its wings folded, its neck bent back. So rapidly did the wind carry the survivors to safety, there was no time for him to fire the second barrel.

O’Reilly sensed rather than heard the thump as his quarry hit the turf forty yards out from his hide.

Arthur was trembling, tensed like a panther ready to spring.

“Hi lost, boy.”

The dog raced out of the cot.

O’Reilly broke the gun, extracted the spent cartridge, fished a new one out of his jacket pocket, reloaded, closed the breech, and put on the safety catch. He stared out over the rear wall, now able to see Arthur more clearly as the light grew brighter. He knew that the sun, even if it was hidden behind clouds, would be over the horizon and climbing behind the low hills inland.

He watched Arthur stop, lower his head, and then straighten with the duck in his mouth. Head and bird held high, tail thrashing, Arthur trotted proudly back. O’Reilly turned to face the entrance as Arthur came into the cot, sat without bidding at his master’s feet, and presented him with a plump drake mallard.