An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (57 page)

Barry, whose nose was losing its blue tinge, moved to stand beside O'Reilly.

“You'll be wanting til see wee Caroline,” Reggie said, pointing to the crib.

“First things first,” O'Reilly said. “How are you feeling, Lorna?”

“Ah, grand,” she said. “Grand altogether. Doctor Sproule give me the complete once-over just before I was discharged, so he did. He said for to tell you as far as he's concerned I was A1 at Lloyds and not to worry because they'll be seeing me next Thursday at the postpartum clinic.”

“Fair enough,” said O'Reilly. “If the specialists are satisfied we'll forgo examining you. Agreed, Doctor Laverty?”

Barry nodded.

“And Caroline?” O'Reilly asked.

“She's still a wee bit yellow, but they said that was to be expected.”

“And how's she feeding?”

“Wee Caroline started breast-feeding six hours after she was born, and took to drinking every four hours like her daddy takes to his Guinness on a Friday night.” She laughed.

“I like my pint,” Reggie said, and chuckled. “We may be good Presbyterians, but we're not teetotallers.”

“Good man-ma-da,” O'Reilly said, and thought, I'd go a pint myself. Definitely on the way home.

“The only trouble with four-hour feeds is wee Reggie Junior,” Lorna said. “I'm sleepy all the time, and Reggie still has a farm to run, so he has. The wee lad was going til get a bit neglected so he's at his granny's until I get better rested.”

“Good idea,” said O'Reilly. “And you'll have your feet under you in no time.” He turned to Barry. “Doctor Laverty, you've had more recent experience with a lot of newborns than me. Would you do the honours?”

“Of course.” Barry stripped off his gloves, shoved them into his overcoat pockets, and said, “Mister Kearney, would you hold Caroline for me, please.”

O'Reilly watched as Reggie Kearney, all six feet of him, with shoulders like an ox, bent and, with infinite gentleness, lifted his tiny daughter from her crib. He held her tenderly as Barry began his examination by opening the baby's cardigan and pulling up her nightie. Caroline objected.

“Nothing wrong with her lungs,” O'Reilly said with a smile as the little one's screeches filled the room. He simply had to speak more loudly. “Boys-a-dear,” he said, “that's a powerful bright cardigan she's got on. Some of your handiwork, Reggie? Fair Isle, is it?”

“Aye,” said Reggie with pride in his voice, “it is. Fair Isle's a tricky pattern, but not as tough as all the cable stitches in Arran knits. Anyroad, Lorna said the doctors wanted the wean to have woolly caps to wear all the time so I knit a clatter of them too.”

“The doctors advise that,” said O'Reilly, “because little ones can lose a powerful amount of heat through their heads and getting cold is very bad for babies, especially premature ones.”

“She'll not get cold in this house,” Lorna said, rising, taking two big pieces of turf from a wicker basket and putting them on the fire before returning to her seat.

Barry straightened up. “You can dress her, please, Mister Kearney.”

O'Reilly was impressed by the nimbleness of Reggie's fingers despite their looking as clumsy as sausages.

“A tiny bit of icterus, sorry, doctor talk. She's still a wee bit yellow, but only from her belly button up, and none on her palms or soles. That's very good.”

O'Reilly agreed. It was a rough rule of thumb used clinically to guess the severity of jaundice, but he and Barry had the reliable backup of the figures in the letter from RMH.

“Give her here, Reggie,” Lorna said. She had already unbuttoned her blouse.

Reggie bent and handed over his very vocal new daughter and in moments the room fell silent as she latched onto Lorna's nipple and began to feed.

Madonna and child, O'Reilly thought, and saw how Reggie was grinning and Barry, so grumpy on the drive out and strictly professional here, was standing, head tilted to one side, with a smile best described as dreamy. Mothers' love had that effect. No wonder the great artists, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Rubens, Dali, had all rendered the subject. The moment seemed suspended in time. The warm room redolent with the earthy smell of turf, the intense concentration of the couple on the tiny child held in her mother's arms. The four adults said nothing for several minutes until the steady ticking of a clock on the mantel reminded O'Reilly of the time.

“Reggie, do you mind the day his lordship and I dropped in?” O'Reilly said quietly.

“After you'd been at the snipe?”

“Aye. He said he'd like to give Caroline a christening present. Can I let him know that she has arrived?”

“Go right ahead, Doctor,” Reggie said, and immediately turned to Lorna. “I forgot to mention it to you, love. Clean slipped my mind in all the running back and forth to Belfast and wondering if this little one was going to be okay.”

“That's all right, Reggie,” she said. “It'll be a great honour. She'll be getting baptised in January, and Doctor O'Reilly, we'd like you and Mrs. O'Reilly and Doctor Laverty and his young lady Miss Nolan to come. We hear she'll be back from France for Christmas.”

“We'd be delighted,” O'Reilly said. “Just let us know the date. Doctor Laverty?”

“I'll need to discuss it with Sue but I'm very flattered.”

O'Reilly said, “Right. I think that's about it. I'll let Miss Haggerty the midwife know you're home, and she'll pop in on Monday. See how you're getting on. We need to be heading back. Come on, Doctor Laverty, and if we don't see you before, have a very merry Christmas.”

“And to you, Doctors,” Reggie said, holding open the door. “And thanks for helping to see wee Caroline into this world. She had us worried a bit, but youse doctors knew the right specialists and they, with the good Lord's help—”

“Och, say no more,” O'Reilly said. “I was lucky to have two young doctors who were right up to date and could advise me.” And, he thought, to show me that it
is
important for me and Barry and even old Ronald Fitzpatrick to keep up to date.

“Thanks a million for everything, Doctors. And a safe drive home,” Reggie said as he closed the door of the farmhouse and O'Reilly and Barry headed for the Rover.

*   *   *

The two men were quiet as they headed back to Ballybucklebo. The car was still frigid inside, but some of the warmth and scent of the Kearneys' turf fire and the closeness of the Kearney family seemed to have taken the edge off the iciness in the Rover. And O'Reilly, now assured that there was plenty of time for a side trip to the Duck, was driving at a more leisurely pace.

“Thank you, Fingal.”

“For what,” O'Reilly said nonchalantly, keeping his eyes on the road.

“For putting up with my grouchiness on the way in.”

O'Reilly nodded. “Apology accepted.” He let it hang to see if Barry wished to explain, although O'Reilly was damn sure he knew the underlying cause.

Barry sighed, shook his head, inhaled, and finally said, “I know it's stupid, Fingal, but I still can't stop worrying about Sue. Since you and I talked about it back in November I've tried to take your advice. I've managed to phone her twice, but you know what getting long-distance calls through to Europe is like. The calls have always been cheerful—she's having a wonderful time—and her letters too, but…”

“But you still can't shake the feeling that something's wrong?” O'Reilly could sympathise. He remembered only too well the frustration of wartime long-distance communication, when it could take more than two months to get a letter from home.

“Right. Something just feels wrong. As if there's something I just can't see. As if I'm peering through some kind of fog.”

“And is that feeling coming from Sue, or is it coming from inside you? I remember something my brother Lars quoted to me back in September. ‘It's not love, but jealousy that's blind.'”

Barry managed a weak smile. “Jealousy. You're right. I am jealous and it's colouring everything. All of my thoughts and my conversations and letters with Sue. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm still worried about Sue and that blasted Frenchman, Hamou. He took her to Aix-en-Provence last weekend to see the cathedral and they had lunch in some famous brasserie, the Trois Garçons or the Deux Garçons.”

“I'm no world's authority on conducting illicit affairs, believe me,” O'Reilly said, “but do you suppose if, and perish the thought, Sue was being unfaithful, she'd keep telling you about this Hamou?”

“Nooo. But,” another sigh, “then why is she going on about him? Does it not occur to her that I might be worried? Does she take my love for granted so much that she doesn't realize how this comes across? I don't know, but seeing Lorna and her baby and Reggie grinning from ear to ear … Bloody hell, Fingal, I'm almost twenty-seven. I've had bad luck with girls, but one day, one day soon, I'd like to settle down. We're supposed to be getting married in March when Sue comes home for good. I'd like to start a family. I'm worried, Fingal, and I get cross with myself. I know I should trust her. I know we're engaged but,” he shrugged, pursed his lips, “I'm terrified about what she's going to say when she gets here.”

“I understand.” O'Reilly felt a tiny pang still. “I never did,” he said quietly, “never did have a family.” Barry didn't need to know why, but maybe one day O'Reilly would tell the lad. “And Kitty and I are just a bit over the hill for childbearing.” He laughed.

Barry managed a smile. “I dunno, you're not Methuselah yet, and four years ago Charlie Chaplin was a daddy at seventy-three, and Pablo Picasso managed it at sixty-eight.”

O'Reilly decided to try to keep the mood light. He changed down and passed an exhaust-belching Bedford lorry that had chicken coops piled up in its back. “I think,” he said, “given Kitty is a tad—em—mature too you might have to invoke Abraham as well.”

“Abraham?”

“‘And Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said, shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear—'”

“Genesis, I believe,” Barry said, and laughed.

“Nice to have the old Barry back,” O'Reilly said with a smile, “but, frankly if I'd had a son as impertinent as you were before we got to the Kearneys'…” And in truth, Barry was the next best thing to having a son of O'Reilly's own.

“What would you do … Dad?”

O'Reilly braked outside the Duck and parked the car. “What would I do?” He lowered his voice and nodded rapidly several times. “What would I do? I'd tell him I hear his pain, his worries, that I do understand. I'd tell him to hang on, that she'll be here in Ulster in four days, I'd tell him that the five-pound bet is still open because I know I'd win. I just know.” He grasped Barry's upper arm, squeezed and let it go before dismounting and, as Barry appeared on the other side of the car, said, “And I'd tell him, the first pint's on him and maybe the second.” O'Reilly realised that there was prickling behind his eyelids and it nearly got worse when Barry looked O'Reilly straight in the eye across the frost-rimed roof of the car and said levelly, “I think, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, you'd have made a wonderful father.” Then he grinned. “But you'd have had to get used to buying the first round, and I think tonight's as good a time as any to start learning.”

 

46

To Change What We Can

Gulls wheeled and dipped over the small boat–busy waters and the relentless sun shone on Alexandria's palm trees, minarets, domes, houses, bazaars, souks, brothels, narrow lanes, and the broad, ever-bustling Corniche. It looked so peaceful—and would be until the enemy mounted another air raid.

“This report on Matapan makes impressive reading,” said Tom Laverty. “Sorry it's taken me more than a month to get it to you, Fingal, but there's been one or two little matters to occupy us.”

“Like the Germans coming to the support of the Eyeties in Greece and Rommel's lot running amok in Libya,” said Fingal. “Tobruk under siege. Never a dull moment.”

The two men were sitting in comfortable chairs in the navigating officer's cabin high up on the bridge structure. By late April, temperatures in Alex were in the mid-seventies and already both men's clean white shirts were damp in patches. The view from the window was out over the big guns where their crews were carrying out maintenance work. Beneath the barrels of A guns, sailors swabbed the foredeck stretching past the breakwater. The huge chains that kept
Warspite
moored started from their cable lockers, ran to the bows, and down into the waters where her anchors, clawing the mud and seashells, held the great ship in Alexandria's harbour.

“You miss most of the fun deep in the ship when we're at action stations,” Tom said. “I can see why you need help keeping your war diary up to date. It can get pretty hairy up here; convoy runs to Malta, Luftwaffe units now based in Greece and Libya bombing the bejasus out of us, and us with bugger all air support. We chased Italian convoys and shelled Tripoli a couple of days ago.” Tom shrugged then sighed. “You won't know, but A.B.C.'s getting worried. He doesn't think we should have weakened the desert forces by sending troops to Greece. He told us this morning that the situation's so bad now that we've no hope of beating the Germans there, and that the navy's going to have to try to get fifty-five thousand of our men from the mainland to Crete. My guess is we'll be doing another bloody Dunkirk from that island too before long.” He tried to force a smile, but Fingal could tell that Tom was concerned.

Fingal said, “We should heed what they say. ‘If you can't take a joke…'”

“‘You shouldn't have joined.'”

They both laughed, but it was wry laughter.