An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

by Patrick Taylor

  * * *

  “Whisky? At noon? I can smell it on your breath.” Marge sniffed and stepped back from her son’s embrace. “It’s not like you, Tony.”

  “No, it’s not,” Tony said, “but Fingal and I were celebrating a recent important decision.”

  Pip and Deirdre, each holding a schooner of sherry, had both half turned and were looking up at the men and Marge. Their chairs were, as usual, separated from the hearth and log fire by a somnolent Admiral Benbow.

  “Oh?” said Marge.

  “Mmm,” said Tony. “Now, I was going to wait until later when we’d be alone, and I know I’m meant to have a ring, get down on one knee, but damn it all—” His words tumbled out, one chasing the other at high speed. “Pip, you know I love you.”

  Fingal saw her eyes widen, a grin begin. The English might be a reserved lot, he thought, but once the floodgates opened—

  “Always have, and in the pub, Fingal helped me to see the light. I’ve been an idiot letting the war put me off. Philippa, Philippa, will you marry me?”

  Pip squealed, spilling her sherry as she leaped to her feet. Nodding, smiling, tears starting, she shouted, “Yes, yes, yes,” and threw herself at Tony.

  Admiral Benbow let go a basso profundo “Woof.”

  “God bless my soul,” Marge said. “Mirabile dictu, wondrous things are spoken.”

  Deirdre clapped her hands, stood, and kissed Fingal. “I’m so happy for them,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  “As they’d say in Ulster, it’s sticking out a mile, so it is,” he said, marvelling at Deirdre’s limitless ability to take great pleasure from the happiness of others.

  “You Irish,” said Marge. “Sticking out a mile, indeed.” She laughed. “I like it, and as the news clearly is, it calls for something bubbly. Come with me, Fingal, Deirdre. I want to check on our lunch. And let those two have a bit of time alone.”

  They followed as she headed for the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “And don’t worry about the spilled sherry. I’ll bring a damp cloth when I come back.” In the kitchen, pots bubbled on the top of a coal-fired Aga range and roasting smells filled the air. Burnished copper saucepans hung by their handles from hooks in the black rafters above a big pine table on a slate floor. She inspected each pot in turn, then sighed.

  “I am so pleased for Tony and Pip,” she said. “Now, Deirdre dear, tell me about your lovely day off yesterday.”

  “It was perfect, Marge. We explored about a mile of the shoreline of the Solent looking out to the Isle of Wight. Then lunch in the Fighting Cocks on Clayhall Road, you know the one where all the staff go, about half a mile from the hospital. They all call it the Pugilistic Pe—Well, never mind. Then we took the Gosport Ferry to Portsmouth and saw Gone With the Wind. I cried when Rhett and Scarlet’s daughter, Bonnie, was killed.”

  “Of course you did, dear.” The words sounded dismissive, but Fingal could hear the fondness in Marge’s voice and the way she looked at her young friend.

  “Now, champagne.” She went to the Kelvinator refrigerator and opened its left-hand door. “Here,” she said, handing Fingal a bottle of Dom Pérignon. He looked at the label and whistled. 1921. “I chilled this so we could celebrate your and Deirdre’s first-month anniversary.”

  “Marge,” said Deirdre, looking at the label, “that’s far too kind.”

  Vintage champagne? Fingal thought. Must have cost a bundle.

  “Fiddlesticks,” Marge said and, as if reading his mind, explained, “Richard always laid down a few bottles in the year they were produced. Relatively cheap back then, and your first month would have been an occasion worth celebrating. And so now this one is too. We can toast all four of you. Wasn’t that lucky I had a bottle ready?”

  Lucky, was it? Despite her protestations of cheapness, twenty-year-old champagne for a one-month anniversary? Or, thought Fingal, was Marge like old Doctor Flanagan’s housekeeper back in Ballybucklebo, Mrs. Kincaid, a wee bit fey?

  “Now, pop it on a tray. There are glasses in that cupboard.” She pointed, then busied herself soaking and wringing out a cloth.

  Fingal and Deirdre did as they had been bidden.

  Marge inhaled deeply, then shook her head, leaning against the sink.

  He saw the glint in her eyes.

  “I’m so very, very happy for them,” she said. “I don’t know how you did it, Fingal O’Reilly, but…” She had to get on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you. I only wish Richard could be here. Bloody war.” She stared into the distance, clenched a fist, cleared her throat, then said, “Come on then, let’s get the drinks through, and I want you to do the honours.”

  He followed her back to the living room and set the tray on the table near where Tony still stood holding Pip’s hand, both looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Do your duty, Fingal,” Marge said.

  “Right.”

  Pop. Fizzz. Then Fingal poured five glasses and used the tray to carry and offer them to the company.

  “Now,” said Marge, lifting her glass, “Lieutenant Commander and Mrs. O’Reilly, please join me in drinking to the health of my son, Tony Wilcoxson, and his beautiful bride-to-be, Philippa Gore-Beresford.”

  Three voices echoed the toast.

  “Thank you all,” Tony said, and before anyone else could speak, Deirdre said, “And I have a toast too for us all to drink, and a wish. I’m stealing one of your navy ones to start with,” she said. “Confusion to our enemies.”

  “Confusion to our enemies…”

  “And you, Fingal,” she looked from man to man, “and you, Tony, come back safe and sound to the four women who love you—Marge, Pip, me, and Ma back in Ireland.”

  As the women drank, Fingal looked at Deirdre, loving her for her understanding, loving her for her love for him and, it seemed—with the exception of the Germans and Italians—for everyone she met.

  33

  Lest We Forget, Lest We Forget

  Under a leaden sky the little park near the tarnished pewter sea was crowded. The sombre state of the weather suited the solemnity of the occasion. A small obelisk at one end of the park, the Ballybucklebo cenotaph, was inscribed with the names of the fallen of the Second Boer War, two world wars, and the Korean conflict. As was the case on memorials all over Ulster, the dead of the Great War outnumbered all the others. Ulstermen of the 36th Division had suffered more than two thousand dead on the first day of the battle of the Somme alone.

  Surgeon Commander O’Reilly stood at ease with the other Ballybucklebo ex-servicemen in the drizzle of another Remembrance Day, Kitty by his side. He hated to display his medals unless she absolutely insisted, and today she had not. And so he had left them, including his Distinguished Service Cross, at home. It was a small contingent led by its most senior member, “Shuey” Gamble, aged ninety, who had won the Military Medal at the Somme in 1916. He was lucky to be alive. Joseph Devine, who had lost his wife Sheilah last year, was an old World War I Vickers Vimy bomber pilot. Chief Petty Officer Thompson, butler/valet to the marquis of Ballybucklebo, stood beside Declan Finnegan, who had been with the tanks in France after D-Day and had brought home his French bride, Melanie, who stood with him. The man was trembling, but not from the cold. The surgery Charlie Greer had done for Declan’s Parkinson’s disease had not been entirely successful.

  Archie Auchinleck, late of the Irish Guards, kept glancing at the small honour guard from the regiment in residence at Palace Barracks in Holywood. The soldiers were commanded by Sergeant Rory Auchinleck, Archie’s son. Kinky stood by his side. Barry was in the almost-deserted surgery and could, if need be, answer the phone, making it possible for her to attend.

  The drabness of the day was punctuated by splashes of red from the linen poppies worn by every man, woman, and child.

  Today’s ceremony, O’Reilly knew, would not have the pomp and circumstance of the service at the London Cenotaph with royalty in attendance, artillery salutes, massed bands, a march past and a flyover by the Mem
orial Flight, but for the villagers here it was an intensely personal event. In such a tight-knit community, everyone, except for some of the younger children, was related to or had known someone who had served. Just about every villager was here. O’Reilly noticed Roger and Ruby McClintock. The grey-haired old man had a comforting arm round his wife’s shoulder. Their only son, Brian, had gone down with the mighty Hood, sunk by the Bismarck in May 1941.

  The service never failed to move O’Reilly to his very core, and Kitty too looked pensive. He wondered if she was remembering the war years she’d spent at the orphanage in Tenerife, how she’d befriended a widowed man and his small daughter, and how much she’d come to love them. O’Reilly would like to have taken her by the hand, but protocol demanded he maintain a military posture.

  The war dead deserved his homage. He, who never dwelt unduly on his war memories and was far from being a sentimental man, knew only too well the sacrifices that had been made and the loyalty of those who had made them. He would not miss the simple ceremony for love nor money.

  Mister Robinson, the Presbyterian minister, was officiating. Despite Father O’Toole’s ecumenism in all matters of faith, it was tacitly understood how difficult it would have been for him to come. He was a man from County Cork, which had been a hotbed of Republican sentiment during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. Everyone in Ballybucklebo knew his older brother had been shot down in front of the then-young seminarian, who had not been allowed to give the dying man the last rites. His killers had been the brutal British auxiliaries, the Black and Tans. There was a limit to how far even a man of God could be expected to turn the other cheek. Irishmen had fallen in British wars, but the Republic of Ireland did not mark the day—and neither did Father O’Toole.

  “It is now time for the laying of the wreaths,” Mister Robinson said.

  Sergeant Auchinleck shouted, “A-ten-shun,” which the honour guard and all the ex-servicemen obeyed, then, “Present—arms.”

  Boots slammed, Belgian FN rifles with fixed bayonets were snapped briskly to the “present.”

  Kinky also came from County Cork and had lived not a mile from Beál na mBláth, where Michael Collins was killed during the Irish Civil War. Her father, however, had refused to become embroiled in Irish politics and Kinky had worked in the north, in Ballybucklebo, throughout the Second World War. She was here to pay her respects to the fallen she’d known as friends and to take pride in her stepson.

  As he did every year, the marquis laid the first wreath, on behalf of the British Legion, the white enamel Maltese cross with laurel wreath and crown of his DSO hanging beside his campaign medals. The wreath’s artificial red poppies were stained purple in the rain. He stepped back. As he saluted, so did all the other ex-servicemen, O’Reilly included. He sighed.

  Bertie Bishop laid a wreath on behalf of the council; Colin Brown, in uniform, one from the Boy Scouts; and Jeannie Kennedy one from the Girl Guides.

  Sergeant Archie Auchinleck gave three orders: “Order—arms” and, when the command had been obeyed, “Reverse—arms” when each soldier smartly turned his rifle so the muzzle pointed to the ground, followed by “Off—headdress.” Every man’s head, military and civilian, was bared.

  Over the hushed crowd rang the pure sweet bugle notes of the “Last Post,” soaring, floating, and softly, so very softly, dying away.

  For two minutes there was not a sound save for the gulls and the susurration of the never-still sea on the shingle and sand. O’Reilly, heels together, arms with hands at the seams of his trousers, gaze fixed firmly ahead, gave his private memories free rein as he knew every adult present would be doing. He remembered gladly those who had returned. Tom Laverty; Richard Wilcoxson, dead of a stroke last year at the age of eighty; Angus Mahaddie, still going strong in Inverness; Patrick Steptoe, now a gynaecologist in England. He recalled sadly those who had not: the countless unnamed soldiers and civilians worldwide of all nationalities, and those of a more personal nature, the fallen sailors of the destroyer HMS Touareg, their canvas-wrapped bodies going over the side into the Med. The dead of the Battle of Narvik, including a young German whose life O’Reilly had tried to save. Those dead in the bombing of Portsmouth. The crews of Italian cruisers and destroyers sunk off Cape Matapan. The waste. And he felt a lump in his throat. A quick glance showed that Ruby McClintock had tears running down her cheeks. Lest we forget? How could she?

  His reverie was snapped by the traditional ending to the silence by the sounding by the bugler of “Reveille.”

  When it finished, Sergeant Auchinleck ordered his men to come to attention, on caps, and stand at ease.

  O’Reilly replaced his paddy hat and stood easy.

  Colin Brown came to the microphone, took a quick look at his mother, then swooped down to pull up one khaki sock that had fallen round his ankle. He must have been very thoroughly rehearsed because his high voice rang out clearly, despite the distortion of the sound system.

  In Flanders fields the poppies blow

  Between the crosses, row on row …

  The poem, which always moved O’Reilly, had been written by a fellow physician, John McCrae, a Canadian. Next year perhaps he would ask Mister Robinson if the poem “High Flight,” by John Magee Jr., the young American Spitfire pilot who died in 1941, might be included too.

  Colin was coming to the poem’s close.

  We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

  In Flanders fields.

  O’Reilly sighed again and the stubborn lump in his throat grew.

  Dapper Frew, the most talented of the Ballybucklebo Highlanders, stood at attention in full uniform, the great highland bagpipe bag under his arm and the drones over his left shoulder. He needed no microphone as he piped the haunting lament “Flowers of the Forest,” a tune only played in public at funerals or services of remembrance. Somehow the harsh notes entwined O’Reilly’s heart and squeezed. It was all he could do to hold back his tears. He still could not take Kitty’s hand, but from the corner of his eye he managed to glimpse her expression of concern for him and was warmed by it. He was able to stay dry-eyed until Mister Robinson finished with the Laurence Binyon poem called “For the Fallen.”

  Age shall not weary them, nor years condemn

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.

  The crowd replied as one, “We will remember them.”

  Archie marched his squad off parade and the old soldiers of two wars stood easy as the crowd dispersed.

  O’Reilly still stood, impervious to the drizzle, particularly remembering a Remembrance Day at Haslar in 1940, when a young leading seaman, Alf Henson, had lost two fingers, and Deirdre, only just Mrs. Deirdre O’Reilly, had ruined a sausage and sultana pie. His memory of Alf was fading, but Deirdre he could picture as sharply as if it had been yesterday, though the pain of it had been dulled with time and the return of Kitty.

  And there was Bob. As ever, that memory pulled O’Reilly up short. Bob Beresford, best friend of Fingal O’Reilly’s medical student days, lying somewhere, as far as O’Reilly knew, in an unmarked grave in Singapore. Killed by the deliberate neglect of his Japanese captors. Lest we forget our fallen? I’ll never forget you, Bob.

  And as he did, without shame, every Remembrance Day at the close of the service, Fingal O’Reilly let his tears flow for what had been, and what might have been, but had been cut off short. Then he dried his eyes and blew his nose with an almighty honk.

  Now Kitty did take his hand and squeezed. “You lost friends,” she said, “and I know you’re thinking of Bob.”

  He nodded and knew Kitty was far too tactful to mention Deirdre. “I did and I was,” he said. “What a God-awful waste.” He shook his head and forced a grin. “No more tears—at least this year.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Home to Number One. A spot of lunch will help cheer you up.”

  * * *

  “Eat up however little much is in it,” Kinky said. “It
is my toad in the hole that you love, sir, and I know you like it too, Doctor Laverty. I’m keeping Doctor Bradley’s warm for her, so.”

  “Yum,” said O’Reilly, preparing to attack her Cookstown sausages wrapped in Yorkshire pudding batter and baked, served with carrots, brussels sprouts, and onion gravy. “As any one of the locals might say, Barry, ‘Get you bogged into thon.’” He sliced into the first toad, chewed, and said, “Another winner, Kinky. Thank you. And thank you for hurrying back from the service to make it for us.”

  “Hear, hear,” Barry said.

  “I thought Rory handled his squad very well today,” said Kitty. “You must be proud of him.”

  “I am, Kitty, and Archie’s like a dog with two tails about it. Said it took him back to his days as a sergeant. He’s having lunch with Rory now. Making the most of it.”

  A forkful stopped halfway to O’Reilly’s mouth. “Most of what?”

  “It does be sad, but is a fact of army life. A month from now Rory’s regiment is to be stationed with the Paderborn garrison in Germany. It is a very good thing the Germans and us are friends now.”

  “I agree, Kinky,” said Barry. “And so would my dad. He always used to tell us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies, because they were often the same. But I’m sorry Rory will be going.”

  “Och,” she said, “if you look at it on a map it’s a powerful way to Germany. But Archie and I do want him to succeed in his career, and these days with all those aeroplanes flying back and forth I’m sure he’ll get home leave from time to time, so.”

  O’Reilly, mouth too happily full of food and too polite to talk with it full, grunted in agreement and smiled at the thought of his old friend Tom Laverty passing off the wisdom of the philosopher G. K. Chesterton as his own. He nodded to Jenny as she came into the dining room.

  “Sorry I’m a bit late,” she said, “but one of Fitzpatrick’s patients’ angina was playing up. I think he’ll be all right, but I didn’t want to leave him until the cardiac ambulance arrived.”