An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (2 page)

I note on page 35 that the RAF, at the height of the Battle of Britain on September 15, 1940, had claimed 182 (185 according to other sources) enemy planes destroyed. Postwar records set the actual figure at 75. In all such matters as food rationing, motorcars, radio programmes, songs, films, and women's fashions of the day, I have used archival sources, usually accessed on the Internet. The remarkable Takoradi ferry route was in service from 1940 to 1943 and functioned as I have described. I have seen the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight that is mentioned in chapter 34. It was flying over Duxford, which was Douglas Bader's station during the Battle of Britain. It is comprised of two fighters, a Supermarine Spitfire and a Hawker Hurricane, and one Avro Lancaster bomber. To watch those venerable veterans and listen to the snarl of six twelve-thousand-plus-horsepower Rolls-Royce Merlin engines brought tears of gratitude for the heroic young men who flew them in battle and the determined young women who ferried them from factories to airfields. Particularly impressive is that seven men made up the operational crew of a Lancaster. Its ferry pilot flew single-handed—and there were no power-assisted controls.

There is one other important character in this book. HMS
Warspite,
“The Grand Old Lady.” For completeness, may I tell you that once returned from America fit again for battle, she served with valour against the Japanese in the Indian Ocean in 1942–43 before being transferred to the Mediterranean, where, in September 1943, supporting the Salerno landings, she was struck by a primitive German air-launched guided missile. After being patched up again, she fought in 1944 as a floating battery supporting the American landings on Utah Beach on D-Day. She was sold for scrap in 1947.

In conclusion to the explanations, and in fairness, having boasted of my attempts to be accurate, I must also confess to some small deceptions made for dramatic purpose. HMS
Touareg
and HMS
Swaledale
did not exist. I conjured them. Nor was there any air raid on Portsmouth on October 1 as it is described in chapter 10. Portsmouth did suffer sixty-seven attacks between July 1940 and May 1944. I apologise to the people of that fine city, which, apart from lesser raids, endured three catastrophic assaults on August 24, 1940, January 10, 1941 (alluded to in chapter 42), and March 10, 1941.

As you may know, for many years I was involved in medical research. Old habits die hard. For those of you who wish to read more deeply into the background to this novel, I have consulted:

Ballantyne, Iain.
Warspite.

Birbeck, Eric, Ann Ryder, and Phillip Ward.
The Royal Hospital Haslar: A Pictorial History.
*

Birbeck, E.
The Church of Saint Luke Royal Haslar. An Appreciation.
*

Birbeck, E. Numerous reprints describing medical procedures, staffing, and working at Haslar.
*

Bungay, S.
The Most Dangerous Enemy. A History of the Battle of Britain.

Clarke, R.
The Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast. A History 1797–1997.

Cunningham, A. B. C. Admiral of the Fleet and Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope.
A Sailor's Odyssey.
(The words of his speech after Crete are taken from his dispatch cited on p. 462.)

Gardiner, J.
The Blitz. The British Under Attack.

MacLean, A. HMS
Ulysses
.

Monserrat, N.
The Cruel Sea.

Plevy, H. Y.
Battleship Sailors.

Prysor, G.
Citizen Sailors.

Richardson, J. B.
A Visit to Haslar 1916.
*

Tarrant, V. E.
Battleship
Warspite.

Watton, R.
The Battleship
Warspite, which contains her marine architectural drawings. Her sick bay really was on the main deck, the wardroom on the upper deck aft on the port side, and the four-gun six-inch batteries on the upper deck abaft A and B turrets.

Wade, F.
A Midshipman's War. A Young Man in the Mediterranean Naval War 1941–1943.

Poems quoted: “In Flanders Fields
,
” Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, M.D.; “For the Fallen
,
” Robert Laurence Binyon.

I hope this note has helped to explain this work, and the glossary at the end of the book defines some of the more arcane aspects of British service usage and regional dialects, including those from both ends of the Emerald Isle. They are here to give you, the reader, more insight into it—and, I trust, more enjoyment of the pages that follow.

P
ATRICK
T
AYLOR

Salt Spring Island

British Columbia

Canada

October 2014

 

 

*
Denotes material provided by Eric Birbeck

 

1

A Party in a Parlour

The Dublin coddle had been cooked to perfection and Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly had not been able to resist the sherry trifle for dessert.

“That was very good,” he said, looking wistfully at the few smears of cream, custard, and strawberry jam on his otherwise empty plate. “I think I'll have a second…”

Kitty O'Reilly grinned. “Fingal, my love, you're already having a bit of difficulty getting into your gear. Don't forget, we have a formal black tie dinner tonight. You want to look your best for me, don't you?”

“Of course,” he said. “For you? Anything.” And while he seemed to say it in jest, one look into those amber-flecked grey eyes told him that inside he really meant it. He beckoned to the waitress in the familiar little restaurant on Dublin's Leeson Street, asked her for the bill, paid, then rose and helped Kitty to her feet. “How do you fancy a stroll, bit of a leg stretch? Work our lunches down? It's not too far back to the Shelbourne Hotel even if we go the long way round.”

“Love it,” she said, “for old times' sake.” She took and squeezed his hand. “Remember I used to have a flat here on Leeson Street thirty years ago?”

“I do,” he said, preferring not to recall too clearly that night, in 1936, when she'd told him that he'd put his work ahead of her once too often, and that as a couple they were finished. “And I remember,” he said, “walking you from your hospital on Baggot Street to get to that very restaurant we've just been in.”

They were turning onto Wilton Terrace, on the north bank of the Grand Canal, both relishing the walk in the crisp, late-September air, heading in the direction of Mount Street. The lawn that bordered the canal was dotted with widely spaced trees. He looked across the expanse of grass to the narrow waters and the reed-lined bank of the far shore. “It was a Sunday, I think,” he said. “We were coming along the other side of the canal, and we stopped for a bit of
craic
with an old boy who was repairing the retaining wall. He and I smoked our pipes, as I recall, while he told us the history of An Canáil Mor.”

“And then,” she said, “you chatted with a bunch of stark-naked kids from the Liberties, swimming in the canal. Remember how hot it was?”

 … wherein the good old slushy mud seagulls did sport and play …

He sang a snatch from “Down by the Liffey Side,” perhaps not entirely appropriate for the canal, but overhead real gulls soared and made harsh, high-pitched
gulla-gulla-gulla
screams on a breeze that brought the Dublin smells of traffic exhausts and mudflats of the nearby great river at low tide.

“One of the gurriers was a patient, and you gave him a bag of sweeties, and he called you ‘the Big Fellah.' I could see how you were respected in the Liberties because you cared for your patients, and I loved you for it.” She walked closer to him and he put his arm around her waist. “I've always loved you, Fingal,” she said.

He hung his head. It was, he felt, superfluous to echo the sentiments like a moonstruck sixteen-year-old. He knew he did and she knew and that was what mattered. As they passed under the bridge carrying Baggot Street, he couldn't resist saying, “A lot of water has run under the bridge since then—”

“That,” she said, “was a terrible pun, Fingal O'Reilly, or whatever—”

“It was a metaphor—”

“Right. A metaphor, a terrible metaphor, but a true one.”

They were all alone under the bridge.

She grasped the lapels of his tweed jacket and kissed him. They parted and walked on, holding hands. “I love you and I love Dublin where we met,” she said. “Strumpet City, Dirty Dublin, Baile Átha Cliath—the town at the ford at the hurdles.”

O'Reilly smiled. “Me too.”

He pointed to where a barge, brightly painted, engine putt-putting, diesel smoke belching from its funnel, butted blunt bows west heading for the midlands of Ireland. “Horses pulled most of them when we were youngsters here,” he said, and thought, But you can't turn back the clock.

In its passing, the vessel chased a flock of mallard. The birds, sunlight shining from the drakes' emerald heads, flared, rose together, then circled, setting their wings, and pitching back into the canal with much ploughing of watery furrows, squabbling, and tail pecking.

“I've always loved ducks,” he said. “Maybe it's time to put my gun away, but I'd miss Strangford Lough so much.”

“And so would Arthur Guinness, the great lummox. He is a gun-dog, after all.”

“You're right,” he said, pulling her up the steps by the next bridge to Mount Street Lower. “Do you know I once assisted a gynaecologist in a private house here. He removed an ovarian cyst right in the woman's bedroom. My old boss, Phelim Corrigan, gave the anaesthetic.”

“Such different times,” she said. “Surgery's all done by specialists in hospitals now.” She swung their hands in a wide arc. “Here we are. Merrion Square. Do you remember when we stopped to listen to a man haranguing a crowd of Blue Shirts about the Spanish Civil War?”

“I do. And I remember you insisting we stay to listen,” and a few weeks later going off to Spain, my Kitty, he said to himself. My own fault, but it had hurt like hell. “And when you'd heard enough, we called for Bob Beresford, who had a flat here, and the three of us went to the horse races.” O'Reilly's heart ached doubly for the lost years that might have been spent with Kitty, and for his long-dead friend. He said nothing for a while, remembering. Remembering.

Today, and indeed the rest of this weekend, was certainly a time for memories. In a few hours, he and Kitty would get into their best bibs and tuckers to attend the opening cocktail reception and welcoming dinner for the thirtieth reunion of their 1936 medical school class at Trinity College. But those were fond memories, happy ones, and he recalled a snatch from an ancient English folk song he'd had to learn at school,

Begone dull care, I prithee begone from me

Begone dull care, thou and I shall never agree

“Right,” he said, “time to get back to the Shelbourne. We'll cut across Merrion Square, nip along Merrion Street Upper, and take Merrion Row to Saint Stephen's Green. I'd like a nap before we have to start getting ready for tonight's festivities.”

“Come on then,” she said. “I do want you rested, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you in your naval uniform. I'll never forget the sight of you in it at one New Year's Eve formal dance when we were both students.”

And Fingal O'Reilly, who hated formal dress, would for her sake struggle into his number one uniform in lieu of a dinner suit and black tie, ready to forge more memories of happy times together.

*   *   *

O'Reilly clapped as the applause grew for Sir Donald Cromie, plain “Cromie” to his closest friends, who had risen in his place at their table in a private dining room of Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel. He jangled a fork on an empty glass, and the high-pitched sound rose with the buzz of conversations and laughter, and the clink of cutlery on china, to the white-plastered ceiling, there to mingle with a cloud of pipe, cigar, and cigarette smoke.

O'Reilly winked at Kitty, who smiled back. God, but he loved that smile. He surveyed the other graduates from the Trinity College School of Physics, class of '36, and their spouses who had assembled for the opening cocktail party and banquet of their reunion. Sitting round linen-draped tables, most of the men wore sombre dinner suits, their satin lapels shiny, and the ladies added bright counterpoint in their evening gowns or cocktail dresses. The opposite, he thought, of dowdy ducks and flamboyant drakes like the mallard he and Kitty had seen earlier on the Grand Canal.

He looked back at Kitty. Her sleeveless empire-line dress of shot emerald green silk was punctuated by a corsage of deep pink moth orchid that his brother Lars had grown in his own greenhouse. She sported matching pink satin opera gloves, and her hair was cut in a pageboy style to frame her face. Kitty O'Reilly was, in his opinion, by far the most elegant and desirable woman here. And he wasn't the teeniest bit biased.

He grinned at the thought and tugged at the collar of his Royal Navy mess kit dress uniform jacket, with his medal ribbons on the left breast. He should have been wearing miniature medals, not just the ribbons, but for very personal reasons he hated his decorations, one in particular, but no one here would care that he was in breach of regulations, and it had been a long time since he had left the navy. He'd have been a damn sight more comfortable in tweed pants and a sports jacket, but the conventions must be observed. Kitty liked him to wear the damn monkey suit to formal occasions, and there was nothing O'Reilly would not do to please her. Two other people were similarly dressed. A fellow O'Reilly had barely known was in the full kit of an RAF squadron leader, medical. One of the women was in the dress mess kit of an officer in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Navy Nursing Service, with whose nursing sisters he had worked closely in Haslar hospital in 1940.