An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (58 page)

“I tell you,” said Tom, “I'm not sorry to be back in Alex. Maybe get a chance for a decent meal in the Cecil Hotel. And I could do with a couple of Blue Light Ales and a bit of peace and quiet.”

“Any word from Ulster?” Fingal glanced at a framed photo of a pretty woman carrying a six-month-old baby.

“Carol's well and young Barry's going from strength to strength. Roll on my home leave. I'd like to see my son while he's still in short pants. I envy you those months in England, Fingal. I really do. How is Deirdre?”

Fingal smiled. “She's well—I think, but the last letters I got earlier this month had been written in January. Those Cape of Good Hope convoys are too slow and too few.”

“I hear an airmail service is getting started,” Tom said. “The army are already getting letters that way.”

“We're not,” Fingal said. “Damn it.”

“Their lordships in the Admiralty probably still favour carrier pigeons and semaphore, but our turn will come.”

“Can't come soon enough for me,” said Fingal. He hesitated, then told himself, Why should you be embarrassed about confiding in Tom? He's your friend. “Her most recent letter was dated January the twenty-third. She's—she thinks she might, just might, be expecting.” Her normally regular-as-clockwork period had been ten days late on the day the letter had been written. He savoured the words in her letter once again.

I mustn't get too excited, darling, but I do believe I have a part of the man I love to distraction growing in me now.

“Well done, Fingal O'Reilly, you salty old seadog,” Tom said, and his voice was filled with happiness. “That's wonderful news.”

“It is, isn't it? I literally danced a jig when I read her letter. Swore to myself to tell nobody.” But the news had been bubbling in him like steam in a cylinder and the safety valve had just let go. “But I'm glad I told you, old friend.”

“So am I, Fingal. So am I. And she's due in…?”

She'd be nearly four months now, but he had no way of knowing. “I reckon late September,” Fingal said, “and, I don't mean to be ungracious, Tom, but I am a doctor. I know how many miscarriages happen in the first three months. It's pretty early yet. Could we hold the celebration until we hear she's got past three months? I don't want to tempt Providence.”

“All right. We're all the same, us bloody Irish, aren't we? Superstitious as hell.”

“We are,” said Fingal, fingering the pipe in his pocket that Deirdre had said the
sidhe
had put a protective spell on.

“But let's have a drink anyway,” Tom said. “Let's drink to A.B.C.'s pasting of the Eyeties at Matapan. I've got the facts here.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Listen.”

Fingal unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and opened his now dog-eared war diary. “Fire away,” he said.

“We damaged one brand-new battleship, sank three—three, mark you—heavy cruisers,
Pola, Fiume,
and
Zara,
and two destroyers. They shot down one torpedo bomber. Do you want the casualty figures too? We lost three men on the plane.”

And the Italian losses were probably in the thousands, Fingal thought. He'd never forget seeing those blazing ships being pounded to their deaths, vast chunks flying into the night sky like the pieces in some malevolent ogres' game of tiddlywinks, nor hearing the next morning about the utterly confused melée of opposing destroyer forces that had taken place during the night after the main battle was over. “I'm sure they were pretty grim,” Fingal said. “No. No thanks.” He hated to think of comparing our losses to theirs like some kind of sporting contest where whoever collected more bodies won the cup. “Dammit, Tom, war's not a seven-a-side rugby match, and for what?” Every single death had been a young man, not an abstract point on a scoreboard. Fingal quoted,

“But what good came of it at last?”

Quoth Little Peterkin.

“Why that I cannot tell,” said he

“But 'twas a famous victory.”

“Remember learning that at school? Robert Southey. ‘Battle of Blenheim'?”

Tom nodded and said, “But I can't spout it like you. And what's come of Matapan is more than just a ‘famous victory,' Fingal. It's a complete shift in the naval balance of power in the Med in our favour.” Tom wandered to the windows. He pointed to where two other battlewagons swung at anchor. “All our big boys are still intact. Mussolini's had three of his sunk at Taranto, then one badly damaged by us at Calabria. Now add Matapan.”

“I'd hope they'd learn. Stop getting their sailors killed for nothing,” Fingal said.

“Well said, and if it's any consolation, our side behaved like gentlemen after it was all over. The Italian skipper tried to scuttle the
Pola,
but she was still afloat. Our destroyer
Jervis
went alongside, put a gangway across, and rescued two hundred and eighty-five men. By morning our ships had pulled another nine hundred out of the water, and we'd've got more if the Jerries hadn't tried to bomb our ships. Even then A.B.C. radioed the position of the survivors to the Italians before we buggered off out of range of the bombers. Gave free passage to a hospital ship.”

“He's a humane man, Cunningham,” Fingal said, “and I'm no pacifist, I just…”

“Hippocrates and Mars aren't such a good mix?”

“That's about it.” Fingal rose. “Anyway, thanks for the details. Someday when this lunacy is over and we're all back home in Ulster, Deirdre and I will have you and Carol round for an evening, and I'll fish this out,” he held the notebook high, “and we'll do the ‘old men reminisce' act.” He closed his pen. “But for now I want to go to my cabin, write a few letters.”

“See you at six,” Tom said, “and the first one's on me.”

*   *   *

“There,” Fingal said, and sealed the final envelope and added the missive to a pile on his desk. Lord knew how long it would take, but in the fullness of time Ma—and he'd been neglecting her dreadfully—Lars, Angus Mahaddie, Marge Wilcoxson, and Bob Beresford all would have letters from him. So would Flip Dennison, the burned pilot who had kept his promise to stay in touch and who in his last letter said he was recovering very well. And last, but most certainly not least, Deirdre would be hearing from him. He did the letters up with a red rubber band.

He tried to ignore the all-pervasive smell of fuel oil, the humming of machinery. The thrumming of air intake fans underscored the usual sounds of metal on metal as sailors chipped rust, and the occasional bawled order by petty officers. Fingal had been back on
Warspite
for nearly three months and had slipped so easily into the shipboard atmosphere it was as if he'd never left. As if the time with Deirdre, the flat at Alverstoke, even his time at Haslar, had all been a dream.

He grabbed his cap and picked up the letters. He'd drop them off at the outgoing correspondence office on his way to the mess and the drink with Tom. But first he intended to get a bit of fresh air. He closed his cabin door, followed a corridor, then went up a companionway heading aft until he arrived in the open air beside X turret.

A gunnery CPO and—he squinted into a flash of sunlight—yes, it was Alf Henson, were coming the other way. “Afternoon, Chief,” Fingal said. He was eager to talk to the younger man, but he couldn't realistically expect any conversation from Henson. Regulations insisted that the petty officer would do the talking unless Fingal asked a direct question of the junior rating. “Henson. A word.”

The CPO and leading seaman halted and came to attention.

“Stand easy,” Fingal said. “How are you, Henson?”

“Fine, sir.”

“'E's a darn sight better than that, sir,” the CPO said. “We've just come from our gunnery officer, Mister Randall, 'im what took over from Mister Wallace 'oo left the same time as you, sir. Leading seaman 'Enson 'ere's getting a mention in despatches and 'e's up for promotion next go round.”

“Well done, Henson,” O'Reilly said, and thought, That's a step closer to getting married to your Elsie. Good man.

“You saved
Formidable
at Matapan, didn't you, Alf?” the CPO said.

Fingal was intrigued. “You did what?”

Henson glanced at the CPO then looked down.

The chief said, “You remember, sir, that after the battlewagons had pasted the wop cruisers all 'ell broke loose with both sides' destroyers going at it hammer and tongs?”

“I knew something serious was going on,” said Fingal, “but couldn't see anything from my station.”

“Well, sir, old
Formidable,
wot we nicknamed ‘The Ship that Launched Herself'—”

“I was in Ballybucklebo when that happened at Harland and Wolff in August 1939.” He remembered because it was a month before he'd proposed to Deirdre. “A supporting cradle collapsed and she took off by herself. Of course,” he shrugged and turned his palms, “we built the
Titanic
too.”

Both seamen laughed at the black humour.

“Anyway, sir, the night was black as old Nick's hatband, we could see sweet Fanny Adams. The aircraft carrier'd pulled out to starboard. She was about five miles away when our searchlights caught her. Our crew hadn't fired a shot and we was all keyed up and raring to go. We got our guns dead on target when Henson yells, “Mister Randall, that's
Formidable
. Don't shoot, sir. Don't shoot.' You should've seen the officer's face. ‘Well done, Henson,' says 'e, and Mister Randall ain't one to give out praise for free.”

Fingal said, “I don't like to think what our six-inch shells would have done—”

Bugles blared from Tannoys and the warning bells set up their jangling clamour. An air raid. Action stations. Not again, for Christ's sake. Please. Not in the harbour.

The CPO and Henson led Fingal in the dash for'ard, the gunners heading for their six-inchers on this deck and he for the medical distribution station three decks down. As he ran, he heard the clamour of the anchored ships' antiaircraft ordnance, the thrumming of German aeroengines, the shrieks of falling bombs. From one deck above,
Warspite
's four-inch AA guns bellowed at the foe, and the soft scents of the Levant—palm oil and coffee, animal droppings and garlic, cumin and kumquats—were strangled by the obscene stench of bursting high explosive.

Posting his mail would have to wait.

 

47

The Standing Is Slippery

“Ooops.” O'Reilly flailed his left arm and clung for dear life to Kitty's woolly-mittened hand with his right. He regained his balance—just. “Let's stand still for a minute, shall we?”

“Of course, dear.” Kitty stopped gracefully, at least as gracefully as anyone could while hauling with both arms to stop the forward and possibly downward progress of such a big man. “Let's get out of the way,” she said, and towed him away from a throng circulating clockwise on the frozen pond. She headed toward the rime-covered bank where they'd left their shoes when they'd put on their skates.

It was Saturday and Arthur had had a good run in the morning. A skating rink was no place for a dog, even one as well behaved as old Arthur. O'Reilly was beginning to wonder if it was any place for a middle-aged GP, either.

On the ice, single skaters glided along, their hands clasped behind their backs. Some, the showier types, presumably imagining they were Hans Brinker on his silver skates, were tearing round the periphery, lapping the slower skaters. A young woman, unknown to O'Reilly, was wearing the full short-skirted gear and doing spins and what Kitty had told him were lutzes and axels in centre ice. Perhaps the aspiring figure skater usually practiced at the King's Hall in Belfast, which had an indoor rink and skating classes.

Couples glided by holding hands or with arms round each other's waists. Breath and body steam rose over the crowd. The shushing of blades on ice was punctuated by children's laughter and shrieks. Most of the adults and some older teenagers were trying to move in time to Waldteufel's “The Skater's Waltz,” coming from a Dansette portable gramophone being supervised by Ballybucklebo's resident disc jockey Donal Donnelly. He'd rigged a microphone and speakers too, so he could make announcements.

O'Reilly wobbled but managed to stand panting beside her. “I'd forgotten you did a bit of figure skating in Dublin,” he said. “I'm not quite so nimble. And it seems—”

Cissie Sloan, who was skating beside Flo Bishop, squealed, then yelled, “Jasus, Flo, hang on” and flopped onto her backside in time to one of the waltz's famous cymbal crashes. She slithered for ten feet in a flurry of black skirts and white skate boots thrust in the air before coming to a halt with her white fur pillbox hat askew over one eye.

O'Reilly finished his sentence. “—I'm not the only one.”

Helped by Flo, Cissie was scrambling back onto her feet. “Don't worry, Doctor. I've not broken nothing so you can quit looking worried, so you can. Nothing hurt but my pride, and truth to tell…” She chuckled. “I don't have much of that anyway.”

He laughed and said, “I'm glad to hear you're all right, Cissie.” He watched as the two women continued down the ice, Cissie still adjusting her hat.

He turned to Kitty. “It reminds me of the Irish judge at a figure skating competition who gave tens to a skater who kept falling down.”

Kitty smiled. “Go on,” she said, literally putting her tongue in her cheek. “And why would the judge do that?” Kitty adjusted her green crocheted toque and tucked the matching scarf more firmly into the neck of her russet sweater.

O'Reilly adopted a thick Northside Dublin accent. “Why? I'll tell yuh why. Because that there skater deserved tens just for trying. It's feckin'
slippery
out dere.”