Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

moments. “I’ll call Delaney,” she said after a while.
    â€œDelaney?” asked Fatty.
    â€œYes,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “Delaney, the plumber. This is a job for a professional, I’m afraid. Delaney’s just down the road. He’ll be here in no time.”
    Delaney, with all the discretion of one who is professionally party to the most intimate problems of others, appeared to be not in the least surprised by Fatty’s plight. He surveyed the problem from all angles, knocking on the side of the bath with his bare knuckles to determine where the obstruction lay. He, too, tried to dislodge Fatty by pulling at his arms, until Fatty gave a yelp of pain from the plumber’s rough tug.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. O’Leary,” he said. “But I’m going to have to remove the bath. I’ve got a device down in my workshop that will enable me to prise the bath open a bit and set you free. But I can’t bring it in here, you see.”
    Fatty gazed at the plumber’s ruddy face, with its chapped skin and eruption of subcutaneous warts around the nose. He opened his mouth to protest, and then closed it. What was the point? There seemed to be no other way of getting him free, and he could not spend much longer stuck in this cold, inhospitable couch.
    â€œBut don’t you go worrying about it,” said theplumber. “I’ve freed people from baths before. You’ve got no idea how often it happens.”
    Reaching into the bag that he had carried in with him, he extracted several tools, with which he proceeded to remove the taps. That done, he unscrewed the ornamental clawed feet from their stone setting, and finally detached the drainpipe from the bottom of the tub.
    â€œThat’s coming along very nicely,” he said as he stood up to inspect his labours. “Now I’ll just go down and get a few hands to help and we’ll be on our way.”
    Fatty lay gloomily in his prison while the plumber summoned help. Ten minutes later Mr. Delaney returned with the chef, a powerfully built figure with rolled-up sleeves, and a man who had been tending cattle in a field at the edge of the lough.
    â€œRight, boys,” said the plumber cheerily. “We’ll just give this old bath a lift and carry it down the stairs to my van. One, two, three!”
    Fatty felt himself being lifted into the air as his three straining porters began their slow journey down the stairs and out into the courtyard.
    â€œWe’ll have you out of there in no time at all,” said Delaney reassuringly, as they manoeuvred the bath out of the back door.
    â€œYes,” said the cattleman, peering over the edge of the bath at Fatty. “It’s an awful shame for a visitor like yourself to have this happen to him. An awful shame.”
    Fatty tried to smile, but it was difficult. He wondered whether he should try a trick that he had used as a young boy, whereby he closed his eyes and simply pretended that he was not there. If he did this now, he might be able to transport himself mentally back to his home in Fayetteville and imagine himself sitting on the deck with Betty. Or perhaps he could think of himself bowling with Tubby O’Rourke and Porky Flanagan, or even take himself back to boyhood and see himself fishing with his father in the lake near their summer house. Such pleasant images, these were, but not strong enough to protect him from the intrusion of reality, for now he heard the cattleman give a shout and the bath began to be lowered slowly to the ground.
    â€œThose wretched cows have broken through the gate again,” the cattleman grumbled. “Could you come and give me a quick hand now to chase them back in before they get onto Mrs. O’Connor’s lawns and there’s a real hullabaloo.”
    Fatty opened his eyes and stared up at a sky framed by the smooth white sides of the bathtub. Suddenly theplumber’s face and torso loomed