An Irish Country Wedding by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

“Bring your drink. It’ll take me a minute to prepare things.”
    Barry rose and followed O’Reilly. As they reached the hall the doorbell and the phone rang. O’Reilly grabbed the phone and nodded to the door, which Barry, glass in hand, answered. “Cissie Sloan,” he said, slipping the hand with the glass behind his back. He could hear the cadence of O’Reilly’s voice, but not the words. Was it news about Kinky? “Come in,” Barry said.
    “I’ll not, thanks, but my cousin Aggie, you know, her with the six toes, says Mrs. Kincaid’s poorly and — ”
    “She is,” Barry said, hoping to dam the verbal tide for which Cissie was renowned.
    “I mind the last time Kinky got sick. I was telling Flo Bishop about it just there now. I seen her when I was walking over here, like.”
    Barry reckoned the entire population of the village must know about Kinky now.
    “It was ages ago, so it was, 1954, the Coronation — ” She stopped dead and tapped her temple with an index finger. “Amn’t I the right eejit? The Queen was crowned in 1953   … anyroad Kinky was taken sick when they opened the festival of Britain.”
    “That was 1951, Cissie.” Barry’d been eleven at the time and most impressed with the Skylon.
    “Right enough? Then she must’ve got poorly in ’52. Do you know, Doctor? See me? Some days my head’s a marley. Full of hobbyhorse shite, so it is. I’d forget my own name.”
    Barry had two choices. He could agree that Cissie could indeed be absentminded or draw from his stock of kindly white lies. He chose the latter. “Nonsense, Cissie. Now, what can I do for you?” He really did want to know who was on that phone.
    “Here y’are,” she said, thrusting forward a grease-proof paper- wrapped parcel. “I got this recipe from my ma, and she got it from an Englishwoman who was in Holywood in the last war because her husband was a soldier stationed in Place Barracks there for a while. He was with the Royal Ulster Rifles, you know, their nickname’s ‘The Stickies,’ so it is.”
    Barry accepted the parcel and quickly asked, “And this is?” He reckoned he had to distract her before she could launch into a telling of all the regiment’s battle honours since it was raised in 1793.
    “In the old days it was a bugger, pardon my French, boiling down the pigs’ trotters to make the gelatin for it, but you can buy that in the shops now.”
    “And it is?”
    She grinned. “A couple of Melton Mowbray pies. They go a treat cold with Branston pickle, so they do.”
    “Thank you, Cissie. I’m sure they’ll be lovely.”
    She dropped a tiny curtsey. “I’ll be running along, then,” she said, “but if there’s anything youse and Doctor O’Reilly need?”
    “Thank you, Cissie,” O’Reilly said over Barry’s shoulder, “and I’ll be seeing Kinky tomorrow. I’ll give her your love.”
    “Sir.” She left.
    “Good,” said O’Reilly, peering up and down the road, “I don’t see any three-legged asses, but that one could talk the hind leg off a donkey.” He headed for the dining room. “Food. I’ve taken it through to the dining room. Come on.”
    With the drink he’d been hiding from Cissie in one hand and the Melton Mobray pies in the other, Barry followed O’Reilly into the dining room, sat, and put the pies on the table. “From Cissie,” he said. “Pork pies. Now, who was on the phone?”
    “Not the hospital. I’ll tell you while we eat.”
    Barry glanced at his watch. Six ten. He should have realised it was too early to hear from the Royal. He looked at O’Reilly, who had put a tureen near himself. “Boiled spuds,” he said, lifting the lid, “should have been floury things of beauty, but that phone call and Cissie held us up. They’re a bit overdone now. Sorry.”
    Barry smiled. The big man was just like his mother, a superb cook who was forever apologising because she never felt her efforts were quite up to standard.
    “And, la piéce de résistance .” With