An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War

by Patrick Taylor

  The trouble, Fingal thought, with double entendres is that they only ever have one meaning. “I think,” he said, “I’ll have a little rest”—she took her foot away—“but if we’re going to have a nightcap, I’m sure I could manage another Paddy a bit later.” He thought about “later” as he watched Hanif filling the others’ wineglasses. Elly had pointed out the servant’s quarters. If this man lives in, it will be hard for her to get any further than she has already. Not with an in-house chaperone. Fingal patted his tummy and sighed contentedly.

  “Splendid,” she said. “Pour, please, for me and the others, Hanif, then bring in the desserts.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll have had either of these, Fingal,” Michelle said when the plates were set on the table. “That one’s basbousa, semolina soaked in sugar syrup topped with almonds. The other one’s my favourite, luqmat al-qadi. They’re round doughnuts that are crunchy on the outside, syrupy inside.”

  “I’m going to have a bit of both,” John said. “Perhaps it’ll slow me down a bit. Give you a better chance at our next squash game, Fingal.”

  “I think,” said Fingal, “if I’m going to play any more games, I’d better think about trying to get fit.”

  He felt the pressure on his ankle again as Elly said, “I’m sure we can arrange all kinds of exercise for you, Doctor.”

  Fingal swallowed and moved into shallower waters. “But for now, I’m going to keep up with you, John, and try all the desserts.” He helped himself. Michelle was right about the luqmat. Delicious. He took two more.

  “What,” said John, “has anybody heard from home since last we met?”

  Fingal stopped chewing. Ma’s recent letter had been full of her work for a charity for unwed mothers. Lars had brought Fingal up to date with the state of a new orchid that was being cultivated in his greenhouse. Hardly earth-shattering intelligence. He’d had a letter from Deirdre two days ago. It had been dated May 19, before the Dunkirk evacuation. It was the usual much-hungered-for mix of uncensorable chitchat and professions of her love, her yearning for his return next month. And broad hints about how she was going to make things up to him for their forced separation once they were married. He should think of that rather than be welcoming Elly’s shin-stroking under the table, but the very thought of making love to Deirdre seemed to make Elly more desirable. He started chewing again, tried to ignore Elly, and paid attention to what was being said.

  “Mummy managed to get tickets to see the new flick Gone With the Wind in the West End,” said Elly. “She said Vivien Leigh was marvellous as Scarlett O’Hara, Leslie Howard was quite dishy as usual, and Clark Gable wonderfully wicked as Rhett Butler.”

  “I wonder if it’ll ever get to Alex?” John said.

  “I wonder if Clark Gable will ever get to Alex, more to the point,” she said with a chuckle. “Everybody ready for coffee?”

  Heads, including Fingal’s, nodded.

  “Hanif, please,” she said, “then when you’ve tidied up you can run along home.” She grinned at Fingal, who sat upright.

  “Let’s,” she said, “take our coffee and liqueurs on the balcony. John, will you see to the drinks? Finn,” she said, with emphasis, “would like another Paddy and I’ll have a Hennessy XO. You know where everything is.” She rose and the others followed suit.

  Elly led the way through a second set of French windows into the dark of an Egyptian night. A sliver of waxing moon was beginning to set. This second balcony was furnished with rattan chairs and a circular table. Elly lifted a box of Swan Vesta matches from the tabletop and lit two candles inside glass globes. “Sunset in June,” she said, “is about an hour earlier than back home.” She plumped down in a chair and said, “Come and keep me company, Finn.”

  He sat by her side with Michelle on his other flank.

  “Where is home for you, Elly?” said Fingal, taking a sip of the whiskey.

  “John and I were stationed in Portsmouth before the war, but home for me is Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire. Daddy’s the vicar, but mummy’s family have a bit of cash so I was packed off to Cheltenham Ladies’ College when I was thirteen.”

  “That’s a famous girls’ school,” Fingal said, impressed.

  “Raaather,” she said, making her already polished accent even more upper class. “Lots of ‘Jolly Hockey sticks,’ don’t’ch know?” She laughed, then said, “More like a bloody prison camp. I got expelled in my last year—for smoking. Daddy was blazing.” She laughed and Michele said, “If the navy ever commissions an HMS Incorrigible, I think they’ll be naming her for you, Elly.”

  That made Fingal guffaw.

  John appeared. “Drinks,” he said, set four glasses on the table, and sat beside his wife. “Can’t stay much longer, Elly. I have the morning watch tomorrow on Nile. Four A.M. to eight. When we go, can we give you a lift to the dockyard steps, Fingal?” John asked.

  “I’ll look after Finn,” Elly said. “You go and get your beauty sleep, John.”

  Michelle laughed. “If Elly’s driving, Fingal, remember to hang on. Chris bought a Peugeot and she thinks she’s Dick Seaman.”

  “I hope not,” said Fingal. “He crashed in the Belgian Grand Prix last year and I’m afraid that was the end of him.”

  “Good heavens. I didn’t know that. It just shows you how isolated you get here,” said Michelle. “I try to keep up with news from home, but it’s not always easy.”

  “Dick Seaman was driving much too fast on a wet track. Don’t worry, I’ll take special care of you, Finn,” Elly said, and he knew that in the darkness outside the candles’ glow, no one could see that she had taken his hand under the table.

  Hanif appeared with a tray loaded with four plates. On each was a small cup and saucer on which lay a sweet biscuit. A second saucer supported a small copper container, broader at its base than at its top, with a long wooden handle.

  “Elly and Chris—” said John.

  An unintended reminder to Fingal that Mrs. Eleanor Simpkins, Elly to her friends, was married to a fellow naval officer.

  “—always serve qahwa ghali, Egyptian-style coffee.” He tipped the contents of his copper container into his cup.

  Fingal followed suit and sipped. “It’s delightful,” he said, savouring the rich, dark brew.

  They sat in companionable silence, sipping their coffee and liqueurs, probably all, like Fingal, grateful for a lull in the conversation. He took another mouthful of coffee and let the sights, sounds, and smells of the Egyptian night wash over him: As there were no enemy aircraft within flying distance and wouldn’t be unless Italy declared war, the city was not blacked out and its lights shone into the night sky hiding all but the brightest stars. Night insects buzzed and moths attracted by the candles fluttered, one coming too close and crashing on burning wings much as Fingal imagined an enemy bomber might, caught in Warspite’s antiaircraft fire. Traffic hummed from the Corniche and although the air was redolent of spices, the inescapable Alexandrine animal dung aroma hung on the night air.

  Hanif appeared noiselessly. “Excuse me, madam. If that will be all?”

  “Yes, Hanif. Off you trot,” Elly said. “I’ll see to finishing up.” She squeezed Fingal’s hand.

  “Been a lovely evening, Elly,” said John, standing, “but Michelle and I really must be running along.”

  Michelle rose. “No need to get up, Fingal.”

  Fingal had started to leave his chair, but Michelle’s polite admonition and downward pressure from Elly’s hand kept him seated.

  “Lovely meeting you,” Michelle said. “Now see that Elly behaves herself.”

  “I will,” Fingal said.

  “I’ll see you out,” Elly said, glass in hand. “Excuse me, Finn. I’ll be right back.”

  He took a deep breath. Make your excuse and get out of here, he thought. And yet it had been months since he’d had any close contact with a woman. Her perfume lingered and he heard her laugh as she bade the other guests farewell. He cleared his throat, looke
d at his half-empty glass. Right. A bit more chitchat, finish this, then home to Warspite. And to keep his conscience clear, as soon as he got to his cabin, he’d write a long letter full of love to Deirdre.

  “Will you blow out the candles, come inside, and close the windows, Finn?” Elly called.

  Fingal dealt with the guttering flames, smelled the wax as the wicks let off black smoke. He stood, mouthing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” to himself.

  … how I knew

  my true love was true …

  Then he closed the French windows and turned to see Elly, drink in one hand, cigarette holder in the other, reclining full length on one of the sofas, her legs together, knees slightly flexed. If she had both hands clasped behind her head, she might have been the model for Goya’s two paintings of the Maja; the Clothed and the Naked versions. “It’s—it’s been a lovely evening,” he began.

  “Come and sit beside me,” she said, drawing her knees up, forcing her skirt to slip well up her thighs.

  Fingal swallowed and moved closer. “Elly, I—”

  She made a moue. “Don’t be such a bashful boy, Finn. Come and sit down. If you’re worried about Chris, I love him dearly, but we have an arrangement. He’s not actually on Touareg tonight, and I don’t mind really. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Old conventions? Pffft.” She sipped her brandy. “What time do you have to be back on board?”

  Fingal inhaled, noticed the little ripples in the whiskey in his glass, and said, his voice hoarse, “At the dock by ten thirty.”

  “Well,” she said, holding her arms open wide, “it’s only twenty past eight. I always arrange my little soirées to accommodate any shipboard officers who might come. We’ve all the time in the world. Come and sit down.”

  Fingal looked at her, her striking, smiling eyes, open lips, the rim of her areola showing on the swell of her left breast, and the firmness of her thighs. He found himself picturing her naked like the Maja. And he wanted her. He wanted her very much. Deirdre would never know.

  He sat in the hollow of Elly’s body, leaning against her, feeling her warmth as she wrapped her arms round his neck, pulling him down. Her lips and her tongue found his and he responded, freely, joyously, longingly.

  “Why,” she said, “don’t we go along to the field.” She chuckled. “Have a little romp?” She stood and took his hand, bringing him to his feet.

  This is all wrong, Fingal thought. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I want this woman. This wanton, lovely, free-spirited woman.

  Outside, through the closed French doors, the night was rent by roaring and screeching. What the blazes? Fingal disentangled himself from Elly and stood rooted in his tracks. He recognised the high hooting of destroyers’ sirens, the tenor whoops of the cruisers, and the basso profundo rumblings of the battleships. He remembered Richard saying in a gharry on the Rue des Soeurs that in case of emergency, successive blasts on ships’ sirens was the signal for immediate recall.

  “Elly,” he said, “I’m awfully—”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, readjusting her neckline to a more modest drape and smoothing down her skirts, “I’m a navy wife. I understand. Come on. I’ll run you to the boarding steps.”

  It wasn’t until Fingal was getting out of her car at the dockside that he realised—between the erotic tension just before the sirens had sounded and the mixed feelings of dashed desire and relief at being given a foolproof excuse to get away—he’d forgotten to collect his cap.

  31

  Remembered Kisses After Death

  An ever-joyous Arthur Guinness tumbled out of his kennel the minute O’Reilly and Kitty emerged from the kitchen.

  “Heel,” O’Reilly said, and the big dog tucked in. O’Reilly’s mind was racing and his legs followed suit, setting a brisk pace through the village with Kitty in step beside him. Neither of them spoke as they waited briefly beside the Maypole for the traffic light to change. But once across they were thwarted by Helen Hewitt coming out of the tobacconist’s.

  “Och, Doctor and Mrs. O’Reilly, how are the pair of you?” She bent and patted Arthur, who, well-mannered as he was, sat down when O’Reilly stopped walking.

  “Grand altogether,” said O’Reilly, feeling the urge to laugh at the polite lie. “How are you getting on?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Helen said. “I passed my chemistry and zoölogy exams last month so I’ll be going into second year in September. I never thought a wee girl from my kind of background could ever get a chance to be a doctor, but here I am. My da’s tickled pink. He never quits telling people.”

  “He has every right to be proud, and we’re all very pleased for you, Helen,” Kitty said.

  “Thank you.” Helen smiled and said, “I’ve time off from that summer job you helped me get as a ward orderly in Newtownards Hospital, Doctor O’Reilly, so I’m staying with my da, and I’m going up to Belfast tomorrow. You mind Doctor Laverty’s pal Jack Mills?”

  O’Reilly nodded.

  “We ran into each other at a hop in the Student’s Union a couple of weeks back. Asked me to give him another chance. And he’s a very handsome lad.” She winked at O’Reilly.

  “Good for you, Helen,” he said, pleased for her, but eager for the privacy of the beach. “Now we must be running along.”

  “Good evening to you both.” Helen lit a Gallagher’s Green and headed off up Main Street.

  “Nice girl,” Kitty said after a while of walking down Station Road.

  “She is, and very bright. I just hope Jack Mills doesn’t hurt her a second time.” He glanced at Kitty and immediately regretted the remark. Her lips were pursed and she was nodding her head in emphatic agreement. O’Reilly could practically hear her thoughts. Wasn’t that what he’d done to her all those years ago? And because it was, she had no reason not to—to do what with this Garcia y Rivera?

  “Hi on out, Arthur,” O’Reilly said as they started to climb a sand dune. The dog loved to run, and perhaps watching him might distract Kitty from O’Reilly’s last remark. The breeze whispered in the marram grass and the sand crunched underfoot. It was heavy going and he took Kitty’s hand to give her a pull uphill.

  “Thank you.”

  “Look at that,” he said as they crested the dune. More sandy ridges lay ahead before the beach proper. The tide was out and the strand glistened nearly as brightly as the sun’s golden evening path across the lough. Fork-tailed, black-capped terns wheeled above and oyster catchers flew in line astern giving piping cries.

  He continued to hold her hand for the descent to a well-worn route at the foot of the sand hill. Once on it they were in a private place unless someone else out for a walk came along.

  Arthur came trotting up, panting, pink tongue lolling, satisfying himself that his people were where they should be before charging off again.

  Kitty stopped and said, “I’ll explain as we walk along. It’ll be easier for me.” Then she kissed him, a soft, gentle kiss.

  “Fine,” he said, not fully understanding why, but willing to accept what she said. He squeezed her hand.

  “First, Fingal, I love you with all my heart. I always have, but I heard what you said to Helen.”

  He bowed his head.

  “It hurt me when you put medicine first before me, not once, but twice. A year later it still hurt.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Sssssh,” she said, “what’s done is done. And I didn’t mention it to bring up old wounds, just to, well, explain, what happened to me in 1937. I was lonely, my Spanish was improving, but it was hard work maintaining a conversation and there were very few people around who spoke English. Agnes Brady, the girl from Dublin I’d come out with, was there, but we weren’t always off duty together. Something attracted me to Mañuel from the moment he sat down.” She said it in such a matter-of-fact way she might have been describing a long-ago shopping trip to Belfast, but she’d said “Mañuel” not “Mister Garcia y Rivera.” The use of his Christian name was telling. “He ordere
d caballa ahumada, smoked mackerel, and asked me if I’d join him in a glass of wine. We chatted. His English was very good. He told me he had seen me there before, but had never had the valor, the courage, to speak to me. But that night he did. The sunset died, the café owner was singing some Catalonian love songs, a full moon rose over—”

  “Kitty, it’s all right. I understand.” He wanted her to stop. He didn’t want to hear the details. He didn’t want to, but he knew he’d have to listen—for her sake.

  “No, you don’t understand, Fingal. Let me tell you. I need to tell you,” she said. “Mañuel had a very sad history. He’d been a lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid. A historian specializing in the Napoleonic wars. He and his wife and family lived on the campus. That district was heavily shelled by Franco’s forces in November 1936…” She stared out to sea before turning back and saying, “His wife was killed…”

  Now he heard the sadness, but anyone could feel sorry for a recently widowed man. “I’m sorry to hear that,” O’Reilly said reflexively, still forcing himself to listen to a story he really didn’t want to hear. “I’ve seen what shelling can do.” And his mind flew back to the carnage after Narvik, Calabria, Crete.

  “Mañuel lost half a lung, and nearly lost an eye. But his little girl, Consuela, who’d been two then, survived unharmed. When he was well enough, they moved to San Blas to be with his family. Consuela had turned three by then. He wanted nothing to do with the fighting. Even if he had, with only one lung he couldn’t enlist.”

  “It’s all right, Kitty,” O’Reilly said, but it wasn’t. He recognised that he was starting to feel jealous.

  “Fingal, I don’t know why I feel guilty about this. You and I had parted, you had found a new love, and yet I feel that telling you this, I’m hurting you, even betraying you.” She inhaled, held her breath, then let it and her next words out with a rush. “We had an affair. I—I fell in love with him.”

  Silence hung. So two and two did make four. In the upstairs lounge, he’d been trying not to admit the possibility. O’Reilly tried to understand how he felt. Kitty, who had been in her late twenties, had had no obligation to him. None at all. They had parted. He’d lost his virginity when he’d been in the merchant navy and he’d married Deirdre after he and Kitty had parted. Damn it, he’d even come close to having an affair himself when he was engaged to Deirdre.