Maurice Hickey: You wouldn't believe what I heard

When things are quiet in rural areas the vacuum will always be filled by rumour. All it takes is a morsel of fact, a pinch of the truth and a huge dollop of imagination. A certain measure of bitterness can help.

Most rumours start out harmlessly enough, but before you know it they get legs. These legs inevitably break into a trot, then into a canter and the next thing they’re at full gallop, gaining huge momentum and quickly transmogrifying into absolute fact.

The state of people’s health always provides fertile ground for speculation and conjecture. A raised eyebrow, a solemn face, or a borrowed word can dramatically shorten the journey from the doctor’s surgery to the funeral parlour.

The pub is an incubation unit for such rumours and a veritable information exchange on the health of the locality. It is a place where expert medical diagnoses based on mere crumbs of information are pronounced with great authority. The more terminal of the prognoses attract a collective intake of breath that’s as final a sound as the rasp of the gravedigger’s shovel.

Recently, my regular drinking companions and I were in our usual positions at Tom Walshe’s hostelry, when a funereal Pa Cantillon parked himself at the counter. We enquired as to the cause of his melancholia and he announced that his neighbour, Mick Treacy, was on his last legs. This was a shock. Treacy isn’t much older than any of us and news of the impending demise of someone from one’s own generation never fails to deliver a sharp jab to one’s mortality box.

“The crathur isn’t good at all,” said Cantillon. “The doc Doherty has a path beaten to his door over the last month or so.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“Well it seems it all started with a cough and then became a chest infection and now they say he has the Big C. ’Tis all over him and all over for him.”

“The poor auld hoor,” says Quirke. “He was in my class at school. Hard to believe it. A nice fella, harmless, still at home with his mother, of course.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“Oh nothin’, nothin’ at all.”

At that, the door opened and in walked three men. Two of them were strangers, but the third was the bould Mick Treacy and he the picture of health. After exchanging pleasantries with everyone, they made their way to the other end of the counter.

Tom Walshe took his leave of us to go and serve the new customers: “If you will excuse me gentlemen,” he said. “I must go down and enquire as to whether ’tis a miracle drug or divine intervention that has Mick Treacy lookin’ so well.”

Before Walshe got to the other end of the bar, Cantillon’s nose got the better of him.

“Well Mick Treacy,” he shouted. “Isn’t it fit and healthy you’re lookin?”

“Why wouldn’t I be,” he shouted back. “Sure you can’t beat the good mountain air on Crookdeedy.”

“And all is well at home?” Cantillon persisted.

“Ah, the mother hasn’t been the best, the legs are givin’ her a lot of trouble. She’s keepin’ the doc Doherty in a job, his car knows its own way to our house at this stage.”

“And there’s nothin’ wrong with you Mick,” asked Tom Walshe, who had positioned himself in the middle of the counter like a referee at Wimbledon.

“Not a thing,” said Mick. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” says Tom Walshe, “we had an eminent physician in our company of late, who claimed that you were about to be carried off by some mysterious illness. In fact, he said there wasn’t a clean shirt left in you.”

“And who is the eminent physician?” asked Mick.

“I can’t remember,” says Walshe. “There’s such a range of experts across the counter from me every night ’tis like being at university without havin’ to pay the fees. But a certain professor of modern medicine wasn’t very hopeful of you survivin’ the next bad cough.”

If Cantillon was embarrassed he didn’t show it. In fact, he went on to tell us another mad story swearing blind it was the absolute truth. When I got home The Mother was still up.

“Any news from the waterin’ hole?” she asked.

“No,” says I. “Unless you’d count Pa Cantillon’s stories as news. First he told us Mick Treacy was on his last legs until Mick himself walked into the pub and he as hale and hearty as any of us. Then he told us Nell Regan was caught in the church dressed in the priest’s vestments and ready to say mass. Two clergymen from the diocesan office walked in on her. You couldn’t believe a word out of that fella.”

“Not a word,” says The Mother. “Not a word.”