An Irish Country Wedding by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online

Fingal.”
    O’Reilly grinned. “Bit more won’t hurt.” He set the brush aside then opened the oven door and popped the pie in. “Thirty minutes and everything’ll be done,” he said.
    “Kinky told me twenty-five minutes at medium,” Barry said.
    “Medium?” O’Reilly peered at the knurled wheel on the oven door. “I guessed that’d be about four hundred fifty. That’s what it’s at, and an extra five minutes won’t do it any harm. I like my crust nice and brown,” O’Reilly said.
    Barry had a vague recollection of his mother using a setting of 350° to reheat already cooked food but decided to keep his counsel.
    “Then at the start of the first dog watch, or if you prefer six o’clock, a feast fit for a couple of kings for us, lad.” He dropped his bantering tone. “And not long to wait after we’ve finished eating to hear what’s going to happen next in the Royal.”
    Barry recognised what Fingal was doing. It was primitive, probably a throwback to when their ancestors wore skins, but by refusing to mention Kinky by name, O’Reilly, like Barry, was trying to pretend nothing was happening to her, or could.
    O’Reilly untied his apron. “In the meantime,” he said, finishing the whiskey in one swallow, “I suggest we have a small libation, but unlike the ancient Greeks, refrain from pouring the sacrifice on the earth and use our throats instead.” He set the apron aside. “Come on. Upstairs to the lounge.”
    “I’ll get out of my coat and I’ll be right up,” Barry said.
    He hung his coat in the hall and was heading for the stairs when the doorbell rang. Now what? Barry opened the door to find Maggie MacCorkle smiling her toothless smile.
    “Hello, Doctor dear,” she said. A limp daffodil adorned her hatband. “I’ll only keep you a wee minute, so I will.”
    “Come in, Maggie.”
    “Och, no. I’ll not be stopping.” She proffered a brown paper bag. “John McIlderry, him that works at City Hall, came out to bring Sonny some townland records, you know   … the oul goat’s looking for a hill fort or a passage grave or some ancient ould thing near Ballybucklebo. You know what he’s like about his archaeology.” She raised her eyes to the heavens. “Anyways, John telt us Kinky was sick. He’d heard it from Cissie Sloan, so he had.”
    Who’d heard it from Aggie Arbuthnot, Barry thought.
    “Sonny reckoned, no harm to yiz, but you and himself might not be the greatest cooks. Sonny’s out in the motor — ”
    Barry leaned past Maggie and waved at Sonny, who was sitting in his parked 1954 Sunbeam-Talbot.
    Sonny waved back.
    “So we thought we’d bring youse this here cottage pie I’d made yesterday and had in the fridge.” She shook the parcel. “And I put in a couple of slices of my plum cake for afters.”
    Barry accepted the bag. “That’s very kind,” he said, hoping, ungraciously he knew, that Maggie’s cottage pies were not as God-awful as her plum cake. “Thank you.”
    “Is Kinky going to be all right, sir?” Maggie had lowered her voice.
    “She’s in the Royal and she’s comfortable,” Barry said, know ing he sounded like an official hospital bulletin, “but that’s all I can say. Sorry, Maggie.”
    “Och, aye. I know you’re like priests, you doctors. Have to keep things confidential, like.”
    “That’s it, Maggie, but we’ll let her know you both were asking for her, and please thank Sonny.”
    “You and himself just let us know if you need anything,” Maggie said, “and there’s no rush to get the pie dish back when you’ve done.” She turned, then called back over her shoulder, “Just drop it in some day you’re passing.”
    “Right.” You didn’t get people like Maggie and Sonny fussing over you when you worked in a teaching hospital, Barry thought as he trotted through to the kitchen to pop the bag in the fridge.
    He heard a roar from upstairs.
    “Are you coming tonight, Laverty?”
    “Take your hurry in your hand,” he