There was quite a little crowd, many men with their jackets off, perspiring like O’Reilly, the women in their best dresses and hats.
O’Reilly looked at the chequered board, selected a square, and put down a ten-shilling note on 15. “That’s for you, pet, if we win,” he said to Kitty.
She made a little curtsey. “Thank you, kind sir.”
Mister Coffin, the undertaker, put half a crown on 8.
More squares were covered with money from strangers who, like the cuckoo clock buyer, would be down from Belfast.
“That it?” Donal asked, and as no one else had bet, counted, “One, two…” the little crowd chanted along, “threeee,” then Donal gave a mighty heave and set the wheel in motion. The leather flap chattered as it flipped from pin to pin.
“Round and round the big wheel goes. Where she stops nobody knows,” Donal cried.
The clattering grew slower until it was a tap—tap—tap. The flap hesitated over 15 and O’Reilly held his breath, but exhaled as it flipped past a few more numbers to stop in the 8 slot. “Well done, Mister Coffin,” O’Reilly said as the undertaker collected his winnings.
“Here y’are, sir,” Donal said. “Now don’t you be spending it all in the one shop.”
“I shan’t,” Mister Coffin said and started to turn away. “Doctor,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” O’Reilly hastened to reassure the undertaker. Any time the man asked that question, it always sounded a bit too professional, as if he had an eye out for business. “And yourself?”
“Very well, thank you,” he frowned, “but a little puzzled.”
“Oh?”
He lowered his voice. “Yes. I’ve been here at the wheel for quite some time and I’ve observed a most unusual phenomonon. The strangers rarely win and then it’s only if there is no local person betting.” His frown deepened.
“I’d not worry,” said O’Reilly, looking hard at Donal and wondering, How the hell are you pulling that one off, Donnelly? “The Lord moves in a mysterious way—and it’s all for a good cause.”
“Well—I suppose so.” He brightened. “Anyway, I must be off.” He giggled. “I’ve entered a blueberry pie in the fruit pie contest and I don’t want to miss the judging.”
“Good luck,” said an astounded O’Reilly. To the best of his knowledge, no man had ever entered before. “And neither do we. Shall we?”
“Let’s,” said Barry, “and support Kinky.”
“It’ll surely set the cat among the pigeons if Mister Coffin wins. I’d hate to miss that,” Kitty said and she lengthened her stride.
26
They Would Ask Him to Dinner
Fingal slipped his white uniform shirt over his head and down across the beginnings of a potbelly that hadn’t been there in his rugby-playing days. Getting exercise wasn’t always possible on Warspite, although he did, in emulation of his nautical hero, C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, try to get a long to-and-fro walk on the quarterdeck as often as he could. Since Tom Laverty had mentioned the possibility on the gharry ride to the Cecil three weeks ago in May, Fingal had taken out an honorary membership to the Alexandria Sporting Club. Founded in 1880, it lay in the Al Ibrahimiyyah district with Omar Lotfy and Sidi Gebir Roads to the northwest and Abou Quer Road to the southeast, and only two blocks from the sea. A large part of the complex was an eighteen-hole golf course bisected by the El-Gaish Road.
None of his Warspite friends was free this Saturday evening, so he’d taken a taxi here to see if he could get a game of squash and then have a meal on the terrace. Even though Warspite had been based in Alex for nearly a month now, the sights and smells were still exotic to him. Perhaps his penchant for stopping to buy baklava from street vendors was contributing to the tightness of his waistband, but he had to admit to himself, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, you always did have a sweet tooth.
He did up a couple of top shirt buttons. The changing room was humid with steam from the showers and smelled of fresh and not-so-fresh sweat. He’d finished having a badly needed post-game shower and was getting dressed. Face it old boy, he told himself as he patted his tummy. It’s 1940 and you’re thirty-two years old—not as young as you used to be. He’d lost a brutal first-to-nine-points game in the third set, nine to seven, to an RN Lieutenant John Collins whose home was in the village of Bourn in Cambridgeshire and who did something hush-hush in the signals section at headquarters. They’d met last week in the bar here. A cold beer on the terrace with my new friend, Fingal thought, would hit the spot.
Across the aisle John was hauling on his shorts. “Thanks, Fingal. Great game. You really pushed me hard.”
“Bollix,” Fingal said, but grinned. He stood in front of a mirror and ran a comb through his still-wet shaggy locks. Time for a haircut. “You ran the legs off me.”
“But stationed on shore I pretty much work banker’s hours. So I can get a game in almost every day before I go home to Michelle, the missus.” The man’s accent was upper-class English. Although he’d never heard it referred to as such in the navy, Fingal had begun to believe that their officer class underwent what the army called the “chameleon effect,” all acquiring the same clipped tones. Mind you, Tom Laverty and Wilson Wallace hadn’t, and Fingal wasn’t going to lose his brogue for anybody. “Having the missus here must be nice,” he said, thinking of Deirdre and missing her.
“A lot of us were able to bring our better halves out before the war. Can’t do it anymore of course since the war started, and now after Dunkirk…”
The horror of the Dunkirk evacuation was still fresh in Fingal’s mind five days after the last little ship had limped back to England across the English Channel. Fingal had made some terse entries in his war diary:
May 26, Operation Dynamo has begun. Evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and some French troops from beaches and through town of Dunkirk. June 2nd. Little ships under attack by stukas and Heinkels still gallantly getting troops off the beaches. June 4th evacuation called off. Almost 350,000 men out, but all equipment lost. How long can France hang on alone?
He wondered if Bob Beresford had got out.
John was saying, “Michelle’ll be joining us soon. She’s playing tennis with a woman who’ll be our hostess at dinner tonight. If I’d known I was going to bump into you—”
“Perfectly all right,” Fingal said quickly. “There’s always a bit of craic at the Cecil.” He smiled and took in his very civilised surroundings. “I suppose,” he said, “there’s a fair bit of dining out?”
“It’s not a bad billet,” John said. “There’s the permanent English colony of administrators, bankers, railway officials, that kind of thing too. They stayed on after the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was signed in 1936 granting semi-independence to the country. And of course there are their ladies and daughters.” His neatly cropped head of brown hair slipped through the open neck of his shirt. His brown eyes sparkled when he said, “It can get a bit ‘Change partners and dance with me.’ Most of the younger eligible local chaps have joined up. But there’s rather a lot of dashing naval bachelors who spend a good deal of time with men only, and then when they come ashore, well, you know what I mean.”
Fingal did. He remembered Tom’s craic about things being a bit W. Somerset Maugham. “I’m engaged,” he said with a touch of smugness. “I’ll be leaving for Blighty next month to do a course. My fiancée and I are getting married in Portsmouth when I’m there.” And he hugged the thought and felt aroused at the mere thought of Deirdre.
“That’s in the future, my friend. But I wish you every happiness,” John said. “A cold beer or two now are on the immediate agenda.” He finished tying a shoelace. “Beer’s on me.”
Together under a cloudless sky they strolled through a large park where the red-roofed two-storey clubhouse dominated the golf links, three swimming pools, red clay tennis courts, a football field, and a polo ground where a chukka was in progress. He could hear the horses panting, their hooves pounding, t
he creak of harness, and the “thwack” of mallets on the wooden ball.
Everywhere palm trees swayed in the hot June breezes. The noises of the city were faint and its malodorous vapours were as likely to have been granted entrance to this preserve of the British upper classes and their superior native friends as a couple of unwashed, jellaba-wearing fellahin peasant farmers would be offered memberships.
The two sailors found seats at a table in the shade of a large umbrella on a tiled terrace some reasonable distance from two occupied tables. The other patrons’ conversation was, as it ought to be, quite inaudible. Beer was ordered. Fingal lit his briar and John a Player’s Navy Cut cigarette. He left the packet open on the tabletop and Fingal could read the motto on the inside of the lid’s flap: It’s the tobacco that counts. Glasses and two bottles of Ind Coope’s Burton Pale Ale were delivered and John signed a chit.
“Thank you,” Fingal said, then, forgetting that his companion was not Irish, “Sláinte.”
“Um? What?” John frowned, then as Fingal drank smiled and said, “Oh, quite. Jolly good. Bit of the old Gaelic? Well, as we Sassenachs say, ‘Cheers,’ or, if you prefer today’s toast—”
It hadn’t taken Fingal long to learn the traditional naval daily toasts. Saturday’s was, and he raised his glass, “To our wives and sweethearts.”
John added the unofficial, “May they never meet,” and both men chuckled.
“Hello, darling. Good game of squash?”
Fingal half-turned to see a young woman in a short tennis dress holding a racquet in one hand and standing beside their table. She was accompanied by the lass she must have been playing.
John and Fingal scrambled to their feet. John pecked his wife’s cheek and said, “Mrs. Michelle Collins and Mrs. Eleanor Simpkins, may I present Surgeon Lieutenant Fingal O’Reilly, a hell of a squash player.”
It was not customary for men and women to shake hands.
Michelle smiled. “Delighted.”
Eleanor Simpkins’s smile was radiant and the sun made a halo of her shining blonde hair, done in the roll fashion of the day. “Lieutenant O’Reilly,” she said in a rich contralto, “it’s a great pleasure to meet you.”
Fingal pulled out a chair and waited for her to be seated before he sat and said, “Miss—I mean Mrs. I’m sorry, please forgive me—” Why the hell are you getting tongue-tied, O’Reilly? He noticed red lips smiling under a retroussée nose and high cheekbones. Damn it, but she was lovely. “Mrs. Simpkins. The pleasure…” He took a deep breath. “The pleasure is all mine.” Stop grinning like an amadán. She’s a married woman and you’re engaged and deeply in love with Deirdre.
“Please call me Elly. Everybody else does.” She sat and crossed her legs; long, well-muscled legs barely covered by her short white skirt. Her shirt was open at the neck and when she leant forward to put her racquet on the ground the collars parted and Fingal’s breath caught in his throat.
“And you’re Fingal,” she said, helping herself to one of John’s cigarettes. “Such an unusual name. Wasn’t it one of Oscar Wilde’s middle names?”
Fingal dashed to light it for her. “My father was a Wilde scholar,” he said.
“Fingal’s not just a pretty face,” John said from where he was sitting with Michelle. “He’s an ex–Irish rugby international.”
“Impressive,” she said, blowing a smoke ring then turning to John with a mock frown. “Ex-Irish? I thought once a man was Irish he was always Irish.”
Everyone laughed.
John chuckled and said, “She never stops teasing, do you?”
“Why on earth should I?” she said, lifting an eyebrow. Then, turning a radiant smile on Fingal, she asked, “What position did you play?”
Fingal melted. He generally kept his athletic career under wraps, but—though he knew he shouldn’t—he wanted to impress this vivacious young woman. He blushed and said, “Second row.” Her blue eyes had an intensity that matched the cloudless Mediterranean sky.
The club steward appeared.
“Your usual chotapeg, Michelle?” John asked.
Fingal never ceased to be amazed by how much Hindi had come from India into the lingo of the British armed forces. “And Elly?”
“You know,” she said, “I’d really love a snake bite.” She must have seen Fingal’s frown. “It’s a kind of shandy. Half beer, half cider.”
“Gin fizz and a snake bite, please, Mahmoud,” John said.
The steward left.
“How’s Chris, Elly?” John asked.
She shook her head. “Sometimes I think that husband of mine fancies he’s a reincarnation of Hornblower himself. Chris cares more for his bloody Touareg than he does for me. He went off to her an hour ago. Won’t be back for ages.” She took a drag on her cigarette.
Another of the new Tribal-class destroyers, Fingal thought.
“He’s left me one short for dinner tonight and”—she turned to Fingal—“our houseboy is an absolutely wizard chef. He’s putting on a traditional Alexandrine spread tonight. John and Michelle are coming. I don’t suppose you’d care to make up the numbers?”
“Well, I—” Damn it she was attractive, and he’d love to try the native cuisine. Gyppy tummy was prevalent, so apart from tasting the baklava, he had avoided eating in native establishments.
“Come on, Fingal, be a sport,” John said.
What would Deirdre say? Nothing, he told himself. She’d laugh and tell him to have a good time. She was so trusting and, besides, why shouldn’t an officer and a gentleman go out with mixed company and enjoy dishes he’d never tried before? “I’d love to,” he said.
“Oh goody,” she said, recrossed her legs in that angled-to-one-side, calves-tightly-together way that Fingal found was at once prim and yet erotic. And then she winked at him.
27
Would Not Give His Judgment Rashly
O’Reilly, Kitty, and Barry arrived at a series of tables, each displaying an array of pies on its tablecloth-covered top. Behind each was a pole with a placard reading BEST CREAM PIE, BEST MEAT PIE, and—the créme de la créme in the world of Ballybucklebo pie making—BEST FRUIT PIE.
The contestants—Kinky, Flo, Aggie, Cissie, Gertie Gorman, Connie Brown, Mister Coffin, and several more of Ballybucklebo’s pie-making artistes—were lined up in front of the table and staring expectantly at Mister Robinson. He sat behind the table regarding a row of pies, each missing a tiny wedge. He was sweating profusely and patting his stomach.
Possibly by a prearranged signal, the calliope stopped in the middle of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and Mister Robinson got to his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, it is my great honour to have been chosen to judge the fruit pie entries. To paraphrase the late Sir Winston Churchill, ‘Never in the history of fruit pie making have the works of so many, to produce so much culinary magnificence, been judged by so few.’ Me.”
A giggle ran through the crowd.
“Nice one,” O’Reilly said sotto voce to Kitty, who stifled a laugh.
“I was instantly reminded of the Judgment of Paris in Greek mythology.”
Typical Presbyterian, O’Reilly thought. Never miss a chance to preach.
“Three Greek goddesses all claimed a golden apple inscribed ‘To the fairest,’ and asked Zeus who should win. Your man Zeus, as we’d say here, was no dozer and he juked out by selecting a mortal called Paris to pick. All the goddesses offered Paris inducements, and one offered him the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris gave that scheming Jezebel the apple and he got—he got Helen of Troy, who unfortunately was already someone’s wife. And that was the start of the Trojan War.”
A wave of laughter rippled through the crowd.
“I,” Mister Robinson said, “am a great believer in one of the beatitudes, ‘Blessèd are the peacemakers,’ but I am not myself blessed with the wisdom of Solomon.”
“Come on, Your Reverence,” a voice called. “Who won?”
The minister took a deep br
eath, exhaled, then said, “For the first time in the history of the competition I am declaring…”
“Lord,” O’Reilly said to Kitty, “has Kinky’s reign finally ended?”
“I am declaring—a four-way tie.”
“Oooooooh,” murmured the crowd.
“The winners are, in alphabetical order, Aggie Arbuthnot, Kinky Auchinleck, Flo Bishop, and Cissie Sloan.”
“Crafty bugger,” O’Reilly said as the four winning friends hugged and kissed and the crowd roared its approval.
“Smart man if you ask me,” Kitty said.
“And,” said Mister Robinson as the applause died, “this precludes there being any runners-up, but an honourable mention is awarded to Mister Coffin for an absolutely delectable blueberry pie.”
The crowd cheered.
“Good for Mister Coffin,” Barry said. “I suppose, seeing he’s a bachelor man, he’s had to learn to cook.”
“I think more men should learn the art,” Kitty said, “and, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, one word out of you about not ‘buying a dog and barking yourself,’ and I’ll not make that special meal I was planning for tomorrow.” She put one hand on her hip and pretended to glower at him.
“Would I actually say such a thing? Really, Barry, I ask you. But you’re not cooking tomorrow anyway, love. We’re having a night on the town, you and I. And you know why, Kitty O’Reilly, and Barry knows why too.”
“I do indeed,” Barry said. “Tomorrow is your first wedding anniversary. Congratulations to you both from your best man, Fingal.”
“Thank you, Bar—” Kitty started saying, but O’Reilly grabbed her and planted a kiss firmly on her open mouth. “I don’t care who was looking. Thank you, Mrs. O’Reilly. Thank you very much. Now,” he didn’t wait for a reply from Kitty, “my tongue’s hanging out. We’ve to meet Sue in the refreshments tent. I suggest we head that way now.”
“Actually Sue’s teaching me to cook,” Barry said as they began to walk. “She’s of your opinion, Kitty. That it’s time women and men weren’t forced into predetermined roles about who does what job.” He frowned. “Sometimes she can bang her drum a bit loudly, but a lot of the time she makes a great deal of sense. She’s a great debater.”
An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Page 22