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Coming back from a run on Sunday morning, I came to a halt in front of the B and B, wiping my face and pulling my sweaty tee shirt away from my skin. It was the first time in months I’d been out for a run. My fitness level was down to zero, which came as no surprise. I bent over, put my hands on my knees and tried to get my breathing back to normal. While I was recovering, I noticed someone getting out of a car that had just pulled up. Someone faintly familiar. Someone all washed and brushed and dressed in country tweeds. Shit. Fergal. I’d forgotten we had a date.
“Hi, Finola,” he said as he approached. “I hope I’m not late?”
“No,” I panted. “You’re early.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s five past eleven.”
I straightened up, wishing I had a towel to wipe my dripping face. “I’m sorry, Fergal, but I completely forgot about our date.”
His face fell. “Oh. So what do you want me to do? Will we reschedule? I can come back another Sunday. It’s my only day off, so—”
I suddenly felt as if I’d kicked a puppy. “No, it’s okay. I’ll just have a quick shower, if you don’t mind waiting for a few minutes?”
He brightened. “Of course not. I’ll wait in the car. Need to check my messages anyway.”
“Great. I won’t be long.” I raced through the door and into my room and jumped into the shower, thankful my hair was short and would dry in no time. I quickly showered, dried myself and got dressed. Jeans, light-blue shirt and a grey sweater seemed appropriate for a sightseeing-with-lunch kind of date. A dash of blusher and mascara, and I was good to go. My hair still damp, I ran out the door and arrived at the car, breathless.
Fergal looked up from his phone. “That was quick.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Must be some kind of record for a woman.”
“I’m not a woman, I’m me. Put that phone away and let’s go.”
He laughed and did what he was told.
I opened the passenger door and transferred a bag full of syringes, a dog lead and a halter to the back seat. “I suppose this is your travelling surgery.”
Fergal started the engine. “Sorry about that. I had a couple of calls before I came here. I normally use my jeep for work, but the car’s handier sometimes. Don’t worry, a friend’s covering for me today, unless there’s a big drama somewhere.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “You never know with horses, especially thoroughbreds. They’re very fragile. And extremely valuable...as you probably know.”
“Sort of,” I said as my eyes drifted to the beautiful landscape rolling by.
We drove out of town and down country roads towards the mountains rising up before us. I was about to break the silence, when Fergal took a sharp turn and drove past the gates of an old house and up a narrow twisting lane, on either side of which a carpet of purple flowers stretched as far as I could see. I was speechless. It was like entering some kind of paradise, silent and sheltered from the wind.
“Oh,” I whispered. “My God, what is this?
“Rhododendrons.” Fergal pulled up. “Let’s stop here for a while.”
“Oh yes,” I sighed. “This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Fergal nodded. “It’s pretty stunning all right. But it’s not all so wonderful. The rhododendrons have spread like wildfire in this area. They thrive in this acid soil, and they’re creating problems for the environment because of their nasty habit of taking over and causing native plants to die out.”
I kept looking at the wonderful vista. “It’s not a native plant?”
“No, it was brought here in the nineteenth century from India by landowners who wanted exotic plants for their gardens. Then they thrived in our mild climate and fertile soil and went completely mad.”
“I can see that,” I remarked and picked up my phone. I opened the window and took a shot of the purple valley and the white butterflies flitting from bloom to bloom. “It’s kind of surreal, like something from a movie.”
Fergal started the car. “Very true. Beautiful, but with a nasty undertone.”
We drove on, up a steep road full of hairpin bends, through pine woods and heather. The views of the valley and the Galtee Mountains beyond were breathtaking. We stopped briefly at the mountain pass called the Vee and looked at the lake, dark and brooding between the mountains. What a magic, mystical landscape this was.
I turned to Fergal. “Thank you for taking me on this trip. I never knew this county was this interesting and beautiful. It’s a shame Dubliners know so little about these rural areas.”
“Yes it is. But maybe you should spread the word? Write about it.”
I nodded. “Yes. Good idea. I was planning to have my own blog, anyway. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d write about, though. But now I do.”
“I look forward to reading it. Let’s get going. It’s about another half hour to Lismore. We’ll have time for a little sightseeing before lunch.”
The landscape was different on the other side of the mountain pass. We drove through green fields, then down the hill into dense, leafy woods with lush vegetation. I spotted palm trees and ferns, feeling as if we were in a sub-tropical forest.
“It’s more sheltered here,” Fergal explained. “We’re near the castle, and this is part of the property and gardens. They brought in all these exotic plants many years ago, and now it’s gone a bit wild.”
“It’s like a jungle. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a parrot. Or monkeys swinging from the vines.”
Fergal laughed. “I know what you mean.” He glanced at me and touched my hand. “Are you enjoying the drive?”
“Very much,” I replied, wondering how I could get this silent man to say more than one sentence at a time. Good-looking in a horsey way, he was solid, dependable and—boring. But he’d taken me on a lovely tour of the back country and shown me parts of Tipperary I didn’t even know existed. A good man with a true-blue heart. A very rare species these days.
We arrived at the edge of Lismore village, where the towers of a fairy-tale castle rose above the river and the old bridge. After parking in the main street lined with quaint old houses, we visited the medieval church and its ancient graveyard, where many of the gravestones bore inscriptions from as far back as the sixteenth century. The sun warmed our backs as we walked around, reading the names and imagining how the people had lived and died.
“So many women dying young,” I remarked, reading the faint letters on a headstone. “This one was only twenty-two.”
“Childbirth,” Fergal said. “They often married at sixteen or so, had a couple of children and then died. The children often died, too. Tough times for women.”
“Very tough.” Suddenly chilled despite the hot sun, I wrapped my arms around myself. “For anyone.”
Fergal put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes. Pestilence, war and bad living conditions. Nobody lived very long. The vibes of all that are still around. Can you feel them?”
I leaned against him, oddly comforted by his gesture. “Yes. I think I can.” I shivered.
Fergal gave my shoulder a little squeeze before he let it go. “Let’s have lunch.”
“Good idea.”
Over beer, quiche and salad in a cosy pub near the castle, I tried to prod Fergal about the people in the town, especially Johnny Keegan.
Unlike everyone else I had asked, Fergal didn’t mind telling me what he knew. “Ah, good old Johnny,” he said. “Lovely man. We used to go fishing together.”
“So why did he leave?”
Fergal frowned. “I don’t know the whole story, but I think it had something to do with his wife and her son. He married a woman from Croatia about three years ago. She had a son who was about ten when they got married. They didn’t quite fit in here. I think she found it hard to make friends. And the boy had serious problems at school. I think the other kids were mean to him. But I was so busy at the stud during the six months before they left. January’s foaling season and then the sales at Goffs...”
“So you lost touch?”
Fergal took a swig of his beer. “Yes. And when I got back to him, they were already packing up to leave. Something weird going on there, I thought.”
“But you never found out what it was?”
“No. But I had the impression Johnny was angry, and...” Fergal hesitated.
“And?”
“Scared.”
“Scared? Why do you say that?”
Fergal was about to speak when were interrupted by someone standing at our table. I looked up. It was Rory Quirke.
He touched Fergal’s shoulder. “Hi there. Thought I’d find you here.”
“How did you know I’d be here?” Fergal asked.
“My dog got sick. I rang your surgery, but I was told you were off today, and that useless eejit you call assistant said he was on duty. But I remembered you asked Finola to come on an outing here, so I went to find you. Then I saw your car parked outside and used my tiny brain...” He paused for a moment. “Hi, Finola.”
I nodded trying to stay as cool as he looked. “Hi there, Rory.” I smiled, taking in his tall frame dressed in jeans and scuffed suede jacket over a tight tee shirt. His face was strained, and there was something close to panic in his eyes.
“What’s up with the dog?” Fergal asked.
“Poison,” Rory said. “We were out walking in the hills and she ate something—a rat or a fox that had been poisoned. She got sick about an hour afterwards, and now she’s nearly paralysed.”
Fergal got up. “Where is she?”
“In my jeep parked outside. It’s Nellie, my Irish setter.”
“Nellie? Jaysus.” Without another word, Fergal ran out of the pub, Rory at his heels.
I paid the bill and followed them into the street, where I found the two men carrying the dog to Fergal’s car.
Fergal turned to me when they had laid the unconscious dog on the back seat. “I’m going to take her straight to the surgery. My car’s more comfortable and faster than Rory’s. Finola, you go with Rory, and I’ll catch up with you as soon as I’ve dealt with this. Rory, please call my assistant and tell him what happened, and ask him to set up the equipment. Just say it’s a poisoned Irish setter. He’ll know what I’ll need.”
Rory nodded. “Grand.”
After ensuring the dog was comfortable, Fergal drove off, leaving Rory and me standing there, staring at each other in an awkward silence.
Rory took a car key from his pocket and opened the door of his battered Land Rover. “Get in so. Sorry about the mess. Didn’t know I’d be driving a lady.”
“I’m no lady.” I shoved assorted farm paraphernalia from the passenger seat and climbed in.
“I know. I was being sarcastic.” He climbed in beside me and started the engine, and we drove in silence away from the village and up the road Fergus and I had driven along earlier.
Rory’s face was white, and his jaw clenched as we went up the steep hill to the Vee.
“I’m so sorry about your dog,” I said as gently as I could. “You must be worried.”
Rory nodded. “Yeah. I love that bitch. But I don’t suppose you’d understand if you don’t have a dog.”
“I do.” My thoughts went to the little black puppy, and I felt a pang of love. He was already mine in my heart.
He glanced at me with surprise. “You have a dog? Here?”
“At Jules’s. She’s minding him until I move into the cottage. A puppy that kind of wormed his way into my heart. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“Not a bit. Dogs have habit of stealing your heart.”
“They certainly do.”
We were quiet again all the way across the Vee, down the steep road and the spectacular view, through the magic valley with the rhododendrons.
“Pretty,” Rory said. “But destructive.”
“I know.”
“Sorry. Not feeling very chatty right now.”
“Of course not. Is Fergal’s clinic far?”
“Just outside town, but if we take a shortcut, we’ll catch up with him.”
I pulled my phone from my bag. “Do you want me to call him?”
“Good idea,” Rory grunted.
I found Fergal’s number in my contact list, pressed call and turned the speaker on.
He replied on the first ring. “Finola? We got here about fifteen minutes ago. Tell Rory Nellie’s having her stomach pumped, and we’re trying to find an antidote. She’s on a drip and seems a little more comfortable. No need to come in yet. We’ll call him when we have any further news.”
“Got that,” Rory shouted across me. “We’ll wait in the pub across the street. Give us a shout when you have any news.”
“Will do,” Fergal promised. “Sorry about our date, Finola, but I’ll make it up to you another time.”
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I really enjoyed the drive and the lunch. Thank you, Fergal. See ya.”
“Very considerate of you, as you paid for lunch,” Rory remarked after I’d hung up.
I shrugged. “That’s okay. It wasn’t the kind of date where the man pays, anyway. I assumed we’d share the bill, but then Fergal got busy. He can pay next time.”
Rory pulled up outside a thatched cottage which sported a sign saying ‘The Thatched Roof’ over its red half-door. “Next time? Is there going to be a next time?”
“Who knows?”
He peered at me. “You got on well, then?”
I gave him a cool stare. “Like a house on fire.”
He burst out laughing. “I can imagine. I bet you did most of the talking. Listen, how about a pint while we wait? Fergal’s clinic is just opposite. I need something after that scare, and it would be nice to have some company.”
“Why not? A pint sounds nice.” I met his twinkling eyes, and I suddenly felt the day had improved by at least a hundred percent. The boring date had turned into something quite different.