An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War

by Patrick Taylor

  Tom counted on his fingers. “Four fifteen-inch-gun battleships, but three really need massive refits. Warspite’s the only fairly modern one. The aircraft carrier HMS Eagle and her Fleet Air Arm Swordfish torpedo bombers, the Seventh and Third Cruiser Squadrons, both made up of six-inch-gun-armed vessels, twenty-five destroyers, and twelve submarines and their depot ship HMS Medway. I’m not counting things like boom defence vessels, motor torpedo boats. Can’t give you an exact number, but it’s enough for the present.”

  “And the Italians?” Richard asked. “Lord knows how Il Duce will jump, but if he did form an alliance with Germany, how big a threat would the Italian navy be?”

  Tom shook his head. “We’d have our hands full. The Regia Marina has, in commission or ready for service, several modern battleships that all outclass the old vessels at Admiral Cunningham’s disposal except Warspite. And its cruisers have eight-inch rifles. Ours have six. I know, because I saw the Italian ships when we were on goodwill visits before war broke out.”

  Fingal shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand politics. Italy was on our side in ’14 to ’18.”

  “But then they got the Fascisti and Mussolini.” Richard nodded toward the harbour where a pinnace was approaching Warspite’s port quarter. “That’s our boat, and right on time.” He glanced at his watch. “Benito Mussolini made Italy’s trains run on time, they say. So does the Royal Navy with its liberty boats.” He stepped aside, outstretched one arm. “After you two,” and then in a fair imitation of Leading SBA Barker’s Cockney accent remarked, “All ashore what’s going ashore, gents, hif you please.”

  * * *

  A dappled grey horse that looked to Fingal to have nearly terminal swayback was solemnly clopping ahead, pulling their gharry along a bustling thoroughfare. It was noisy with the racket of hooves and wheels, the engines of ancient motorcars, horses whinnying and donkeys braying, all accompanyied by an endless symphony of honking horns. An Arab in flowing white robes guided a single-humped camel along the street.

  “I can never remember,” Tom said, “if that’s a dromedary or a bactrian camel.”

  “Dromedary,” Richard said. “The bactrian ones live in China. They’re the ones with the twin hump mount.”

  Fingal inhaled. The most overpowering smell was of animal dung mingling with roasting coffee, and dashes of spices that he could not begin to identify. Their conveyance was bringing the three men from the dockside through the native quarter along the notorious Rue des Soeurs, the red-light district, to the more salubrious city centre. Alexandria’s red-light district was out of bounds to all service personnel unless in transit, but Fingal was sure he’d seen a couple of sailors ducking back into an alley. They must have seen two regulators, as the naval police were called, marching along the street looking for men breaking the rules. Sailors cooped up at sea for months would pay little attention to out-of-bounds orders, and in about a week sick parade would be dominated by cases of the clap, or, worse, syphillis.

  A thought struck him. “Suppose there’s a sudden emergency. How do we get all the crews out of these warrens and back to their ships?”

  Richard said, “Combination of things. The Jaunty—”

  “What?”

  “The masters at arms of the ships with men at liberty. The nickname’s the Jaunty, a corruption of the French gendarme. Their naval police do a round-up and before that the ships’ sirens will sound.” Richard smiled. “Sorry. Should have told you before we came ashore.”

  Fingal stared around. On each side of the road, plastered square buildings were apparently built on top of each other with no obvious rhyme or reason. Some had domes and balconies. Some protruded onto the street. Most were open-fronted housing, small shops, coffeehouses.

  “Those scruffy-looking blokes are Egyptians,” Richard said, nodding at a group of men sitting round a table. “You can tell by their loose smocks and fezzes. They sit all day drinking Turkish coffee. In Nelson’s navy they’d have been called ‘idlers’ because they send their missusses out to earn the crust while the men take their ease. Upper-class Egyptian men favour Western dress, and although the working-class women often wear the veil, their better-off sisters don’t.”

  The gharry stopped abruptly. The way was blocked by a man riding a donkey and one pushing a hand cart in a heated dispute over who had the right of way. Fingal had a flash of memory of old Lorcan O’Lunney, the tugger he’d befriended in Dublin.

  The pavement underfoot was littered with horse apples from the innumerable draught animals, and flies swarmed around the ordure. Fingal had seen locals using fly whisks and determined to get one at the earliest opportunity. People on foot jostled by. He noticed one man of about fifty being led by the hand. His eyelids were scarred shut and puckered, and Fingal made a diagnosis of trachoma, better known as Egyptian opthalmia, the leading cause of blindness in the world. The human race would be a damn sight better off looking for a cure for it and other debilitating illnesses, than shooting at each other.

  He was distracted by their driver yelling something in what Fingal assumed was Arabic and using his whip to threaten the donkey rider. Eventually the gharry was able to proceed. The driver shrugged, smiled, and said, “Insha’Allah,” obviously by way of apology.

  “It means, ‘It’s the will of Allah and can’t be helped,’” Richard explained.

  “I see,” Fingal said, drinking in with delight the sights and sounds. This really would be something to tell Deirdre about when next he saw her.

  From somewhere farther inland, a voice began calling, “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar…” and was echoed from several different directions.

  “It means ‘God is good,’” Richard said. “Those are the muezzins, the men of the mosques who call the faithful to prayer. It’s late afternoon so that’s Asr, the third of the five daily devotions. The religions rub shoulders here and funnily enough, there’s very little friction.”

  Not like Ireland, Fingal thought, but stifled the idea.

  “It’s a pretty cosmopolitan place,” Tom said. “There are Egyptian, French, Italian, Greek, Jewish, and Armenian districts.”

  “And English,” Richard said.

  “Off-work you’ll find them and their memsa’bs at one of the two sporting clubs,” Tom said. “Naval officers have automatic memberships.” He produced a leer that came as a surprise to Fingal, winked, and lowered his voice. “Used to be quite the places for a bit of the old Somerset Maughams.”

  The English writer’s short stories were rife with tales of colonial extramarital dalliances.

  “—before I met Carol, of course.”

  Fingal laughed. Interesting to know, but Deirdre was at no risk of his being tempted by bored, rich, excitement-seeking English wives who’d be waited on by servants at home and who, apart from their social whirl, had little to do to pass their days. “I’d not mind a day at the horses,” he said, and thought fondly of trips to Leopardstown racetrack with Bob Beresford in their student days. Bob was in the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to a light tank regiment now, somewhere in Europe.

  “We’re here,” said Richard, paying the driver a few piastres. “The famous Cecil Hotel. I suggest we nip in for a cold beer, then pick up another gharry or even do a bit of walking to sightsee before we come back here for dinner.”

  “Fine by me,” Tom said, dismounting. “Fingal?”

  “As they’d say in our part of the world, I’m yer man.” Fingal got down. He was immediately accosted by a street vendor in a red striped jellaba, fez, and sporting a huge drooping moustache. The man tugged at Fingal’s short sleeve and said, “I am having a wonder of the East for sale, effendi.”

  Fingal laughed. “Oh,” he said, knowing full well he’d been advised to avoid street vendors. “A wonder of the East?” He expected to be offered dirty postcards or perhaps a woman. It might make a good story for telling later in the wardroom. It was reputed that when one such mendicant had been told by a very upper-class Englishman that he
did not want the man’s sister, he wanted the British consul, the answer had been, “Very difficult, sir—but I’ll try.”

  “The master is a Christian?”

  Fingal chuckled. It made a change from the Ulster, “Are ye Catholic or a Protestant?”

  “I am.”

  “Come on, Fingal,” Richard called.

  “Just a tick.” Fingal bent his head to hear what the man was whispering. It was all he could do to keep from bursting out laughing before he straightened and said, “No, no thank you. I’m most grateful, but I really don’t need a piece of the true cross from Calvary. No, not even if it does come with a certificate signed by Pontius Pilate himself.”

  Richard Wilcoxson and Tom Laverty were being besieged by ragged urchins yelling for “Baksheesh, baksheesh,” or alms. The hotel doorman shooed the beggars away and Fingal, running his fingers inside his open collar and feeling the sweat, followed his friends into the Cecil heading for the bar. That beer would certainly hit the spot.

  24

  A Stranger in a Strange Land

  Fingal followed his friends into the Cecil Hotel’s foyer and through to a lounge bar. Richard was speaking to a waiter and Tom had already taken a seat at a circular filigree brass table.

  “I for one,” said O’Reilly, dropping into a comfortable rattan chair beside his friend, “can take this climate after Norway and the North Atlantic. I’m sure all this is old hat to the pair of you, having been in Alex often before, but it’s all new to me.”

  “I like the place,” said Richard Wilcoxson. “It really is a cosmopolitan city. Some of the buildings like the Morsi Abou el Abbas Mosque and Saint Catherine’s Cathedral are well worth a visit. And the place oozes history. Founded in 332 BC by Alexander the Great—”

  The Egyptian waiter, smart in white jacket and red fez, coughed discreetly and said, “Your drinks, effendim.” He set three bottles of Blue Light Ale and glasses on the tabletop. There were beads of condensation on each glass.

  “Used to get this stuff in Malta,” Tom said. “Tuppence halfpenny a glass. It’s not a bad drop.”

  Fingal lifted his bottle and glass, the cold welcome on his palm, and poured. Already there were damp patches on his shirt beneath his armpits, and he was looking forward to the chilled ale. Overhead, electrical fans circled soundlessly. Though civilians occupied a few tables the bar was largely full of officers; naval colleagues in whites, Royal Air Force men in slate blue, and army types whose shorts were much the same cut as Fingal’s, but of faded khaki. There were French naval officers too, probably off the cruisers he’d been shown earlier. It was officers only here. There were plenty of pubs and clubs along a big thoroughfare, the Corniche, for “other ranks.” The murmurings of conversation rose and fell, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter. Turkish tobacco smoke had its own distinctively acrid smell.

  “Cheers,” said Richard, then lifted his glass and drank.

  His sentiments and actions were mirrored by Fingal and Tom.

  Fingal, who, like all naval personnel, had been repeatedly warned that many Egyptians were German sympathisers, was determined to keep the conversation in here on neutral subjects. “Careless talk costs lives,” after all. “You started to tell us a bit of the history of the place, Richard.”

  “I did. When we were here before the war I read up on it. After Alexander died, one of his generals, Ptolemy, founded an Egyptian dynasty in 305 BC and they ruled here as Pharaohs until the Romans came in 80 BC.”

  “Cleopatra was one of the Ptolemaic lot, wasn’t she?” Tom said.

  “That’s right,” Fingal said. “Quite the lass, if you believe half the stories. Had affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. Did for herself by clasping an asp to her bosom.” He fished out his pipe.

  “It must have been quite a hotbed of Greek culture back then. But sadly, most of the ancient Grecian buildings like the famous Library and Alexander’s mausoleum are gone. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Pharos lighthouse, stood not far from here. Earthquakes did for it. The palace of Ras el Tin is on that site now, beside the yacht club and not far from the coastal forces base. Actually it’s a reasonable walk from here and the place is worth a look. I suggest that when we’ve finished these, we go out there.”

  “Let’s do it,” Fingal said, and drank.

  “Tom? You in?”

  “Suits me.”

  “Fine,” said Richard.

  A young, round-faced surgeon lieutenant came in peering around as if he were looking for somebody he knew. His uniform was spotless and the two stripes on his shoulder straps were wavy, indicating he was Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The cloth between the gold was red—medical branch—and Fingal noticed that, like his own legs, those of the newcomer were white. Troops who had been out here for some time were wont to belittle newcomers by listing their own service postings and ending with a scornful, “And my knees are brown,” implying that they’d been here long enough to get a suntan.

  “Can we help you?” Richard Wilcoxson asked as the young man moved nearer.

  “Thanks. I’m a bit lost, actually.” His smile was engaging. “Just got here the hard way from England and it seems my ship has left.”

  “You’re one of us. A sawbones,” Richard said. “Join us if you’re all alone.”

  “Thank you.” The young medical officer took a chair.

  Richard introduced himself, Fingal, and Tom, and told the young man that, just as in the mess, titles of rank were not used among officers on shore leave. He explained that they were all off Warspite. He beckoned to the waiter, who materialised with all the speed of a genie popping from his lamp. “Four more Blue Ales please.”

  “Yes, effendim.” The man vanished.

  “Steptoe. Patrick Christopher Steptoe,” the young man said. “HMS Hereward—or at least I’m supposed to be.” He laughed. “She left for the—” he hesitated. “Well, for points unknown and won’t be back until later this month.” Fingal guessed that he and the newcomer were about the same age. His accent though, like Richard’s, was strictly upper-class Brit.

  “Hereward?” Tom said. “H-class destroyer. Launched in ’36, I believe. Four quick-firing four-point-seven-inch guns.”

  For a second Fingal glanced at the civilians. He’d been surprised by Tom’s disregard for security, but then it dawned on him that the destroyer, built in ’36, would have been described in detail in Jane’s Fighting Ships, which annually listed and described every warship worldwide. The Germans’ naval intelligence service, the Abwehr, would already know all about her specifications.

  “Apparently, but I’ve never been aboard her.” Patrick laughed again. “I’m a bit new at this. I qualified from Saint George’s Hospital Medical School in London last year. Did a locum, but then I really thought I should volunteer when war broke out.”

  “Good for you. Tom and I are regulars and Fingal’s a reserve officer.”

  “I see.”

  “And?” Tom prompted.

  “After a bit of preliminary training I was told to report to Hereward. I got here yesterday so I’m billetted at the Naval Base Hospital. They expect to have a job for me by tomorrow, at least until my ship comes back.”

  The waiter appeared with the beer.

  “Cheers,” Patrick said, “and thanks. This is very welcome. The beer and the company.” He drank.

  “So,” said Richard, “you’re at a loose end this evening. We’re going for a walk after we’ve finished these drinks, then back here for dinner. If you’d care to join us?”

  “That would be terrific. I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”

  “If you’ve just left Blighty, you must have up-to-date news from home,” Fingal said.

  “’Fraid not. I came by ship. Took me quite a while to get here. Ages in fact, and most of it was a bit boring to be honest. Lots of waiting with not much to do. So I don’t have anything to report.” He looked around and said, “But I’ve hardly been out of England before, and from
what I’ve seen, this Egypt’s a most interesting place.”

  * * *

  Overhead, the sun baked down and after the coolness in the hotel the heat outside, even at this hour, hit Fingal; and then there were the flies. They buzzed everywhere.

  On the pavement outside the hotel, a gulli-gulli man in jellaba and fez had attracted a small crowd and was performing feats of sleight of hand, hoping for a few coins. Similarly dressed dragomen, the official interpreters and guides of Alexandria, offered their services in barely accented English.

  Fingal’s group didn’t need a guide. They had Richard. “This square that we’re crossing is Saad Zaghloul Square. Two of Cleopatra’s needles once stood here before they were shipped off, one to London and one to New York. Actually they had nothing to do with Cleopatra. They were erected a thousand years earlier by Thatmose III.”

  “I believe,” Fingal said, “that massive concrete road between us and the sea is the Corniche.” Across the road he saw a shore where date palms swayed.

  “Right, and that’s the inner or eastern harbour ahead,” Richard said. “It’s too shallow for ships.”

  The sheltered bay was full of moored dhows and feluccas. Fingal and his friends had to dodge the traffic to get across the Corniche to the promenade.

  “It’s about a mile-and-a-half walk to the palace,” Richard said. “I suppose I wouldn’t do it in the heat of the day, but it’s not too far for late afternoon.”

  “‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,’” sang Fingal. “Ooops. Sorry, sir.”

  “No offense taken, Lieutenant,” said Richard, laughing. Then Richard himself began to sing in a surprisingly rich baritone. “‘It’s such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see, That though the British are effete, they’re quite impervious to heat.’ Noel Coward.”

  “In my case,” Patrick Steptoe said, “I suppose I should start singing his ‘Has anybody seen our ship? The HMS Peculiar.’”