An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War (6 page)

“I do hope so,” she said. “I'm going to miss you, Fingal.”

He squeezed her hand. “And I you, pet.” He forced a smile. “And cheer up,” he said, “it'll be a pretty safe billet.”

He was to join HMS
Warspite,
a super-dreadnought. In light of his earlier naval experience, their lordships said, and his medical qualifications, he had been promoted from sub-lieutenant to surgeon lieutenant with four years' seniority and an expectation of another rise in rank to surgeon lieutenant-commander within one year or so.

“And I'll be getting a promotion soon and that'll mean a bit more cash to be put by for when we can get married.” He glanced at his single cuff ring with its central upward loop called a curl. Once he'd reported on board, he'd get a second plain ring added beneath and red cloth between them to signify medical branch. Good thing he'd kept his old 1930 uniforms. Bloody war, and just when he was finding his way in a practice in Ballybucklebo that he loved, with marriage to the woman he loved supposedly in their very-near future.

He felt the pressure of Deirdre's hand on his. “You will take care of yourself, darling, won't you?” Frown lines marred her usually smooth forehead.

He tried to make light of it and to soothe her fears. He glanced round to be certain he was not being overheard. “My ship has a fourteen-inch armour belt and eight fifteen-inch guns. Each shell weighs nearly a ton. And she's got a great gross of secondary armament and antiaircraft guns. There are one thousand two hundred men on board, not counting me yet.” He wondered if his old friend, Tom Laverty, was still on her as a navigating officer. “It's not me that'll have to take care. It's bloody Adolf Hitler's navy. His nice new
Bismarck
won't dare show her face. Not to my ship.” He laughed.

“I suppose it sounds encouraging. I mean, all those guns and armour and so on. And you'll hardly be alone.” She smiled, looking a little reassured. “But I'll still worry.”

He turned his hand so he held hers and looked into a pair of piercing blue eyes. “No need. Honestly. I promise.” He saw no reason to tell her that in the First World War at the Battle of Jutland in 1916,
Warspite
had sustained massive damage, fourteen killed, and sixteen wounded. His smile faded. “But maybe I was wrong asking you to marry me with the world getting more topsy-turvy every day,” he said. “I never thought I'd be going off to fight in a world war and we'd have to delay things.”

She shook her head. “Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. Since the day I met you in Dublin's Rotunda Hospital I knew I was going to fall in love with you.” She squeezed his hand. “But you were such a shy, hesitant old bear. The other trainee doctors weren't so bashful.” Her laugh was throaty.

My own ineptitude cost me my first love. Kitty O'Hallorhan, as far as he knew, had stayed on in Tenerife after the Spanish Civil War ended in April, continuing at an orphanage for children who'd lost their families in that war. She'd kept in touch with Virginia Treanor, one of her nursing cronies in Dublin, and she, an old friend from their student days, had told Donald Cromie, now a trainee surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital. He'd mentioned it to Fingal en passant. After he and Kitty had parted, Fingal O'Reilly had decided to emulate his bachelor brother Lars and have nothing to do with the fair sex—until that summer day in 1937 when a student midwife with the most amazing blue eyes—all he could see of her face over her sterile mask—had walked into the delivery room.

In the background, the ensemble had switched to “I'll Be Seeing You,” and Fingal sang along for a bar or two.

I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,

That this heart of mine embraces …

Then he said, “We danced to that in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin last year, the September night I finally plucked up the courage to tell you I loved you,” and he looked at her and saw a petite, newly qualified midwife crying softly at their table and saying, “Oh Fingal, I'm so happy.”

“I always will love you, Deirdre, no matter how far away I am.” And he wondered how many times men—men on both sides—had said that to dear ones. War? Bloody lunacy. Fingal popped the rest of his éclair in his mouth and glanced at his watch. His train for Larne would be leaving in half an hour. There he would catch the
Princess Victoria
ferry or her sister ship
Princess Maud
to Stranraer in Scotland on the first leg of his journey to Greenock. It was a good thing the Midland was a station hotel and he'd have no distance to walk. “Would you like anything else, pet?”

She shook her head.

Fingal attracted the attention of a passing waiter.

“Yes, sir?”

“Just my bill, please.” He noticed that the man had a distinct kyphoscoliosis, a hunchback.

Deirdre waited until the man had departed then said, “I'll write, Fingal. Every day.”

“And I'll write too.” Fingal felt a lump in his throat.

The quintet had shifted to a version somewhere between andante and adagio of “September Song.”

He squeezed her hand. “Thank you for saying that you'll wait.”

“I love you, Fingal,” she said. “I always will.”

“Thank you, my love,” he said softly, “and I will come back. Promise.” He wanted to kiss her, but it wasn't done to be too emotional in public.

“Your bill, sir.” The waiter had returned.

Fingal consulted it, took out his wallet, and paid. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you, sir.” The man hesitated. “May I say something?”

“Fire away.”

“When I was a wee lad I had TB of my spine.”

That explained the hunch.

“They'd not take me for the army, but I'd just like for til say that me and my mates here, us waiters and waitresses, like, all want for til thank you, sir, so we do, for going off til do your bit.” He turned to Deirdre. “And, missus? We all hope your brave sailor-man comes home safe and sound, so he does. Begging your pardon.” The man was blushing.

“Thank you,” Fingal said, and felt the lump in his throat grow bigger. “Thank you very much.”

“If you'll excuse me, sir?” The waiter began clearing the table.

O'Reilly rose and held Deirdre's chair. “Now,” he said to her, “no arguments. I'm getting a taxi for you.”

“Thank you, Fingal,” she said, rising. “I'm not good at waving damp hankies on platforms.” He saw how her eyes shone, heard the catch in her voice.

Bugger convention. O'Reilly, who towered over her, swept her into his arms, lifted her off the floor, and after remarking, “I love you, Deirdre Mawhinney, and we will get married—one day,” kissed her long, hard, and with all the longing in him. He set her down and was amazed by a small round of applause and a man's voice saying, “Bon voyage, captain.”

“Come on,” he said, “out of here,” and blushing and taking her hand hurried her to the door.

They collected their coats and his suitcase from the cloakroom and Fingal helped Deirdre into hers. She turned and faced him as he shrugged into the new duffle he'd bought this morning. “Last hug,” she said, then moved into his arms and held him tightly. “Look after yourself. Please.”

He held her hand and together they went out onto York Street.

As he settled her into one of the recently established W. J. McCausland's Auto Taxis and paid the driver, he looked at the love of his life, into sad, brimming blue eyes, at her soft lips, her trim figure, and said, “You look after yourself, darling. I'll get leave one day and until then I'll write. I promise.”

“I'll not say ‘good-bye,' Fingal,” she said. “Just, ‘until the next time.' I love you,
a cuishle
. Take care.”

And Surgeon Lieutenant Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, not wanting to see her tears, heart like lead in his chest, closed the taxi door, clenched his teeth—and went to war.

6

Come Cheer Up My Lads, 'tis to Glory We Steer

Thank the Lord the open motorboat, a thirty-six-foot pinnace
Warspite
had sent to collect Fingal from Greenock Docks, had three dodgers. The canvas screens were in place and each at least provided some protection from the elements. He sat amidships on a bench behind the shelter nearest to the stern and shivered, paying little attention to any possible view ahead. He was tired, cold, and distinctly out of sorts.

The ferry crossing last night from Larne to Stranraer had been rough and the Scottish boarding house there damp and draughty. A six
A.M.
train, which had covered the hundred miles to Greenock at a crawl, was crowded. He'd missed lunch, and the couldn't-care-less-sir petty officer in charge of arranging transport seemed to think that delivering junior officers to His Majesty's battleships ranked a good deal lower on the scale of importance than sending a month's supply of toilet paper to an armed trawler. Fingal had languished cold and bored in a rickety dockside hut.

Spray struck his cheek. He hunched his shoulders, but his convoy coat (naval jargon for duffle), provided little protection from the wind. The coat was so new he'd not even had time to put his rank shoulder straps on.

He shivered. What had been a breeze had kicked up to a gale howling down from the mist-shrouded Rosneath Peninsula across the upper Firth of Clyde. All he could hear was the puttering of the engine, a whistling noise as the tempest tore over some projection on the boat, and the constant slapping against the hull of a vicious chop. Spray was being torn in tattered streamers from the wave crests. The little vessel was making heavy weather of the last part of the shore-to-ship voyage.

“Hang on, sir,” a deep voice roared. “Not much longer.” The boat's cox'n was a leading seaman. The killick badge on his left upper sleeve, an anchor fouled by a rope wrapped loosely round it, denoted his rank. He was the possessor of one of the biggest ginger beards Fingal had ever seen. The man stood at the helm as unconcerned as if he'd been on a parade ground ashore.

The pinnace pitched and rolled and took water green over the bows to be smashed into wind-driven spume against the canvas screen. Fingal pitied the able seaman who crouched behind it there. Another AB of, O'Reilly guessed, nineteen or twenty shared the space aft. Those two sailors' main function was to handle the bow and stern lines when docking or casting off.

Fingal tasted salt mixed with a suggestion of bile in the back of his throat. There was a churning in his guts. Perhaps it was no bad thing he'd not eaten for a while. He'd last had sea legs in 1931 and hoped he wasn't, like Admiral Lord Nelson, going to be seasick in harbour. Fingal knew from his previous nautical experience that fixing your eyes on something immobile, like a horizon, could help avert seasickness. He moved along the bench to the port side and stuck his head around the dodger.

He had to grab his cap before the wind took it. The gale stung his cheeks and made his eyes water. The sight he saw made them widen and his mouth gape. “Holy Mother of God,” he said, and was barely aware he had spoken. The earlier sea mist that had shrouded his view from the dock had been whipped away. Tail of the Bank, the main anchorage in the Firth of Clyde, lay open to his gaze and before him were more ships at anchor than he had ever seen collected in one place. Lines from Henry Newbolt's “Little Admiral” came to mind.

Brag about your cruisers like leviathans—

A thousand men apiece down below

How many and who were the men in those grey, grim giants? Some would be career navy, but many would be conscripted “hostilities only” ratings, civilians drafted to serve in the war. They'd be barely trained, resentful, scared, and, like him, missing their loved ones. And yet, he suspected, they'd also be not a little proud, as deep down he was, to be following in the footsteps of Admirals Nelson, Howe, Bowen. And every man jack, volunteer or conscript, would be facing immersion in the ocean, fire, explosion, flying metal fragments, bullets, and disease, all things that might kill—or horribly wound. Nor would they be immune to the regular ills of the flesh.

He took a deep breath. And it would be his job, with the two other doctors and one dentist of
Warspite
's medical branch, to tend to the 1,200 crew of the battleship, and any casualties brought aboard. What the hell did I ever learn at medical school to prepare me for that? The half of sweet bugger all. He hoped he'd be up to the job.

He studied more closely the largest ship he could see and recognised the Home Fleet's flagship from seeing her description in
Jane's Fighting Ships.
Shore boats fussed round her. HMS
Nelson,
where Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, GCB, DSO, flew his flag, was an imposing if unusual sight. She carried her main armament of nine sixteen-inch guns on an elongated foredeck ahead of the tall bridge tower and single funnel.

The anchorage was full to overflowing and she was surrounded by cruiser squadrons and destroyer flotillas. Nearby he saw a single pipsqueak among the bigger ships, a Flower-class corvette, about two hundred feet overall. Many of these escort vessels were being built in Belfast. Seeing her, small among giants, but from his own home country, gave Fingal a twinge of homesickness, even loneliness.

In the merchant anchorage, a convoy was forming with ships anchored in lines. Part of one bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, perhaps? And that little corvette was going to help escort them across the Atlantic? Good luck.

He staggered as a higher-than-usual wave made the pinnace heel, but managed to grab hold.

Around them and among the anchored fleet were harbour craft, drifters shuttling crew back and forth, launches, supply boats and, he noticed, an admiral's barge putting out from
Nelson—
all battling the waves. The wind was freshening.

He watched as the pinnace rounded the battleship's stern, and as it did another great grey warship slowly was unmasked. Grey, yet of a lighter shade than the other vessels of the Home Fleet. HMS
Warspite
was still wearing her Mediterranean colour scheme. She'd been there at the outbreak of hostilities. They were approaching her at an angle from astern on the ship's port side. Fingal knew that the aft starboard gangway was reserved for admirals. To his relief, the great hull was acting as a windbreak and the waters in her lee were relatively calm. His nausea began to settle.