An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Read online

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  To Dorothy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Irish Country series would not have been written and published without the unstinting assistance of a large number of people, most of whom have been with me, guiding and supporting from the very start. They are:

  In North America

  Simon Hally, Carolyn Bateman, Tom Doherty, Paul Stevens, Irene Gallo, Gregory Manchess, Patty Garcia, Alexis Saarela, and Christina Macdonald, all of whom have contributed enormously to the literary and technical aspects of bringing the work from rough draft to bookshelf.

  Natalia Aponte, my agent.

  Don Klancha, Joe Meir, and Mike Tadman, who keep me right in contractual matters. Without the help of the University of British Columbia Medical Library staff, much of the technical details of medicine in the thirties and forties would have been inaccurate.

  In the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom

  Rosie and Jessica Buckman, my foreign rights agents.

  The Librarians of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and The Rotunda Hospital Dublin and her staff.

  For This Work Only

  My friends and colleagues who contributed special expertise in the writing of this work are highlighted in my author’s note.

  To you all, Surgeon Commander Fingal O’Reilly MB., DSC., and I tender our most heartfelt gratitude and thanks.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map: Plan of Ballybucklebo

  Map: Alexandria Harbour

  1. A Rose by Any Other Name

  2. If You Have Tears, Prepare to Shed Them Now

  3. In Holy Wedlock

  4. Only the First Step That Is Difficult

  5. Cry “Havoc!” and Let Slip the Dogs of War

  6. Come Cheer Up My Lads, ’tis to Glory We Steer

  7. Move from Hence to There

  8. Brave New World

  9. He Had a Fever

  10. My Belly Was Bitter

  11. Nuisance of the Tropics

  12. Emptied Some Dull Opiate … and Lethewards Had Sunk

  13. Plan the Future by the Past

  14. I Must Go Down to the Sea Again to the Lonely Sea …

  15. The History of Class Struggle

  16. The Hours of Light Return

  17. The Mackerel-Crowded Seas

  18. Fathom Deep I Am in Love

  19. He Smelleth the Battle Afar

  20. Grim-Visag’d War

  21. Thus Must We Toil

  22. Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)

  23. On the East of Eden

  24. A Stranger in a Strange Land

  25. He Haunts Wakes, Fairs

  26. They Would Ask Him to Dinner

  27. Would Not Give His Judgment Rashly

  28. Temptations Both in Wine and Women

  29. Scare Me with Thy Tears

  30. Merely Innocent Flirtation …

  31. Remembered Kisses After Death

  32. The Voice of a Great Thunder

  33. Requireth Further Comfort or Counsel

  34. Tread in the Bus on My Toes

  35. The Rockets’ Red Glare, the Bombs Bursting in Air

  36. Dear Nurse of Arts … and Noble Births

  37. Those in Peril on the Sea

  38. It Is the Generous Spirit

  39. Full Fathom Five

  40. Vast Sorrow Was There

  41. The Bomber Will Always Get Through

  42. Laughter and the Love of Friends

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  Other Books by Patrick Taylor

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  A Rose by Any Other Name

  Someone was ringing the front doorbell of Number One, Main Street, and insistently at that. Doctor Fingal Flaherty O’Reilly was eating a solitary lunch of cold roast ham, hard-boiled eggs, and salad while his partner, Doctor Barry Laverty, was out on an emergency home visit. “Coming,” O’Reilly roared, put down his knife and fork and, grabbing his sports jacket from the back of a chair, headed for the front hall. His housekeeper, Kinky Kincaid, usually answered the door but today she was preparing for her wedding the following day.

  The noon sun brightened the afternoon, but even its late-April radiance could add little lustre to the full vestments of Mister Robinson, the Presbyterian minister, who stood at the doorway wringing his hands. His rusty black robes, O’Reilly thought, made the man look like a dishevelled crow. “Yes, Your Reverence? What’s up?”

  “Doctor, can you come across to the church at once? Please?”

  “Somebody sick?” O’Reilly asked, shrugging into his jacket. “I’ll get my bag.” He turned, but was forestalled by the minister grabbing an arm.

  “Nobody’s sick, but the war of the roses is breaking out in my church. There’s a row and a ructions, and I don’t know what to do. Please come. If anybody in Ballybucklebo can stop it, it’s you.” He turned, trotted down the short gravelled drive, and was forced by a lorry heading from Bangor to Belfast to wait for O’Reilly to catch up. As soon as there was a gap in the traffic, the minister hurried across the road to the church with O’Reilly trailing behind.

  “What row?” O’Reilly asked, catching his breath as they passed under the lych-gate.

  “Maggie Houston and Flo Bishop.”

  “Who? Maggie and Flo?” O’Reilly frowned as they passed into the shadow of the old yews in the graveyard. “But they’re old friends, for G—” Better not say “God’s sake.” His frown deepened. “I think,” he said, stopping in his tracks, “you’d better explain before we go in.”

  Mister Robinson sighed. “The ladies of the Women’s Guild take it in turns on a weekly rota to look after decorating the church for services and ceremonies. Maggie Houston’s on the duty this week. Because we all know Kinky’s fondness for wildflowers, Maggie’s got them by the great gross—”

  “For the wedding tomorrow.”

  “Correct, but Flo Bishop, being matron of honour, even though it’s not her turn to do the flowers, has assumed responsibility for decorating the church with hothouse roses because she says Kinky deserves the very best. She’s formed a subcommittee with Aggie Arbuthnot and Cissie Sloan. Maggie whipped up support from Jeannie Jingles and Alice Moloney and…”

  “And you have two regiments going at it hammer and tongs? The wildflower fusiliers and the red-rose rifles, right?”

  “Right. Mrs. Bishop and her gang have commandeered the communion table and choir area and Maggie and their friends have placed themselves strategically—”

  “Say no more.” O’Reilly, while being sympathetic to the minister’s dilemma, was having great difficulty controlling an enormous grin. “Lead on, Macduff,” he said. “This is something I’ve got to see.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. They won’t listen to me. But you’ll make them see sense.”

  O’Reilly followed the minister until they reached the nave, where the perfume of flowers was over
powering even the dust of two hundred years that usually haunted the old building.

  On Maggie’s side, heaps of freshly plucked wildflowers were piled on the front pew. Roses on the opposite side of the aisle formed Flo Bishop’s ammunition dump.

  The two groups, led by their respective champions, stood facing each other at the top of the nave.

  “You’ll do no such thing, Maggie MacCorkle—”

  “It’s Mrs. Houston to you, Mrs. Bishop.”

  Both women stood facing each other, arms akimbo, eyes afire, leaning forward, chins jutting. Flo’s teeth were clenched and there she had Maggie Houston née MacCorkle at a disadvantage. The older woman wasn’t wearing her false ones, and clenched gums were less than threatening.

  Lord, O’Reilly thought, harking back to his boxing days, And in the blue corner at one hundred and eighty pounds … “Ladies,” he said. “Ladies, whatever seems to be the trouble?”

  He could make no sense of all the women’s voices speaking at once, but made a shrewd guess about what was being said.

  “All right, all right,” he said, “now settle down. Settle down.” He waited as Flo smoothed her dress as a just-pecked mallard duck would waggle her tail feathers.

  Maggie adjusted her hat. It had a single wilted bluebell in its brim.

  “Can we not sort this out like the civilised people we are?” he said.

  Flo glowered at Maggie. Maggie folded her arms across her chest. Their supporters closed ranks behind their principals.

  “All right,” said O’Reilly, “let me see if I can get this straight. Maggie. Maggie?”

  “Yes, Doctor O’Reilly.”

  “You and your friends love Kinky and you want her day to be perfect, don’t you?”

  “We do, so we do, but,” Maggie turned her frowning face sideways to Flo Bishop, “thon Flo—”

  O’Reilly cut her off. “Flo, you and Aggie and Cissie feel the same way but think you know a better way to make Kinky’s wedding day shine?”

  Flo glowered and said, “Me and the ladies do love Kinky and she told me that on the night Archie proposed he give her red roses and that’s why—”

  O’Reilly cut her off too. He wanted no more petrol poured on the flames. “Whoa,” he said, “whoa, calm down and pay attention, the lot of you.” It wouldn’t hurt to throw his weight around just a little bit at the beginning. Take control. “Now listen. I think I know Kinky Kincaid better than anyone in the village and townland. Wouldn’t you all agree?”

  Subdued murmuring of assent.

  “Good. And just so we’re all clear, can we agree again that we love Kinky?”

  Flo scowled at Maggie, who scowled right back.

  “Ladies?” O’Reilly put an edge of steel in his voice. “Are we all agreed?”

  “I am,” Cissie Sloan said. “I mind the day she first come til the village, so I do. No harm til you, Doctor dear, but it was way before your time, sir. It was a Wednesday—no, I tell a lie it was a Friday, and she—”

  First defection on Flo’s side, O’Reilly thought, but let’s not have Cissie ramble on too much.

  “Houl your wheest, Cissie Sloan,” Jeannie Jingles said, but with a smile. “We all remember her coming and it doesn’t matter a jot or tittle exactly when. What Doctor O’Reilly says is true. There’s not a woman in the whole townland more widely respected.”

  A breakaway from solidarity with Maggie. “And what,” said O’Reilly, “if the respected Kinky was a fly on the wall here today. What do you reckon she’d be thinking about all these silly selfish schoolgirl shenanigans?”

  He waited, quite prepared to re-ask the question, but Cissie had started the rent in the fabric of Flo’s group.

  “I think,” said Aggie Arbuthnot, tearing it further, “she’d be sad to see her friends falling out over nothing, and,” her voice cracked, “I’d not want for Kinky to be unhappy about nothing on her wedding day.” She sighed. “It would be a right shame if she was, so it would.”

  “You’re dead on, Aggie.” Jeannie Jingles spoke for the opposition. “You just said a mouthful.” She smiled.

  “I’ll give you my twopenny’s worth,” said Alice Moloney. “I don’t agree, and please let’s not anybody get upset about that, but Kinky’s a very sensible woman. I don’t think she’d be sad at all. I think she’d be laughing like a drain at the lot of us going at it like a bull in a china shop—and all because we want the very best for her. We’re all daft.” She turned to O’Reilly. “We’re like a bunch of kiddies. Thank you, Doctor, for helping us to see that.”

  O’Reilly inclined his head.

  “Buck eejits,” said Maggie very quietly, “the whole lot of us, and I’m sorry to have been so thran, so I am.”

  A lovely Ulster word for “bloody-minded,” O’Reilly thought.

  Mister Robinson, who for the duration of the recent discussion had wisely, O’Reilly thought, until now distanced himself from taking part, said, “‘Blessèd are the peacemakers,’ Matthew five and nine.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” O’Reilly said.

  Maggie and Flo’s “Please do, sir” was as one.

  “Kinky’s a country girl from County Cork. She’s loved wildflowers all her life. I’m sure she’d be delighted to have them at her wedding.” From the tail of his eye he saw Maggie’s grin start, so quickly added, “But Flo has a point too. I remember well the night Archie asked me for Kinky’s hand and the beautiful red roses he brought with the ring that evening. I think they’d add a really romantic touch.” Flo’s smile kept Maggie’s company. He waited.

  “So why,” said Maggie, “don’t we do both? If that’s all right with you, Flo?”

  “Aye,” said Flo, “it is, Maggie, dear. We should have thought of that before, so we should.” She turned to Mister Robinson. “I’m sorry about all the fuss over nothing, sir.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, now you’ve kissed and made up,” he said.

  “And,” said Maggie, “once we’re done, I think the six of us and,” she hesitated then said, “Mister Robinson and Doctor O’Reilly if they’d like, should all go home to my house for a wee cup of tea in our hands and,” her toothless grin was enormous, “none of youse’ll go hungry. I just baked two plum cakes today, so I did.”

  “That would be lovely,” Flo said, “wouldn’t it, ladies?”

  The other four women nodded in agreement.

  O’Reilly caught the minister’s eye. He’d seen the same glazed look on the face of a rabbit cornered by a fox. Clearly Mister Robinson had experienced Maggie’s stewed tea and cement-like fruitcake before and was searching desperately for an excuse so he could decline. O’Reilly himself had no such hesitation. “I’d love to come, Maggie. I haven’t seen your cat, General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, nor Sonny’s dogs for ages, but you’ll understand a doctor’s day is not his own?” She and the others would at least think they did, and any doctor could claim being needed by the calls of his profession. “But nothing, not a team of wild horses, will keep me from the wedding tomorrow.”

  2

  If You Have Tears, Prepare to Shed Them Now

  Fingal O’Reilly patted the pocket of his sports jacket for the dozenth time that day. The little velvet-covered, dome-lidded box was still there. He looked over at the petite, fair-haired woman beside him. He and Deirdre Mawhinney had been keeping company for two years, since the summer of 1937 when he’d been working as a trainee obstetrician in Dublin’s Rotunda Maternity Hospital and she’d been a student midwife.

  He reached out his hand, she clasped it, and together they strolled toward the seafront along the winding mossy path of Strickland’s Glen, the secluded little valley that lay off the road between the seaside towns of Bangor and Ballybucklebo. He was planning to produce the box at just the right moment today, but when was that right moment going to be?

  He’d never thought he’d get over his first love, Kitty O’Hallorhan, but as the months had passed, Deirdre, the lively twenty-two-year-old from Clough Mills, Cou
nty Antrim, had surprised him. And so had the depth of his feelings for her.

  She continued to surprise him and it was one of the things he loved about her. He’d collected her this morning from the nurses’ home of the Ulster Hospital in Belfast’s Mount Pottinger Road. His secondhand 1928 Hillman 14 had rattled and banged, but it had got them safely to the Crawfordsburn Inn for a lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding followed by sherry trifle. The chilled bottle of white Burgundy that Fingal hoped might give him the extra bit of Dutch courage had put them in a relaxed mood after a hectic week. He knew he was going to need it once he’d got her to a secluded, romantic spot.

  He skipped for a couple of steps and heard her contralto chuckle. He inhaled the almond perfume of whins mixed with the piney smells of the Douglas firs that towered overhead. It was Saturday, the first of July, and gloriously warm, so hot he would have taken off his sports jacket if he’d been inclined to free his hand from Deirdre’s firm grasp. But he wasn’t.

  “It was a lovely lunch, Fingal, thank you,” she said, “and it’s a beautiful afternoon. Look at the way the sunbeams are coming through the trees.”

  Deirdre’s ability to take a childlike pleasure in the simplest things, sometimes even clapping her hands with unrestrained joy at a new song, or a scene she’d never seen before, delighted O’Reilly.

  “Aren’t they—aren’t they—like fairies’ lights?” she said, gazing up.

  If there were such things as fairies, the Little People, he could not imagine a more perfect home than Strickland’s Glen. By God, but he was happy to be here. Happy to be walking this ivy-tangled lane with this woman. Happy to be working in Ballybucklebo. And overjoyed that now Deirdre was a qualified midwife she’d left the Rotunda and taken a post in Belfast in April this year to be near him. Political changes in Southern Ireland had made his prospects in Dublin bleak, and he’d had to come north last year. He loved her very much and, hard as it was for him to believe, she loved him.

  He glanced up to follow her gaze. Rays of bright light danced as a light breeze sent the branches swaying and trembling. He was close to trembling himself as he looked round. Nobody. They had just come round a sharp corner and the path turned left round laurels about twenty yards ahead. This was the perfect place, a private dell sheltered by the laurels. Now, he told himself, get on with it, you eejit. She won’t say no. Dear God, don’t let her say no. He stopped, forcing her to do so too. He looked down into a pair of smiling blue eyes separated by a tip-tilted snub nose. Her eyes were wide and inquiring under the fringe of her fashionable hairdo, its fair back and sides in reverse rolls tucked into diamond-mesh netting studded with tiny jet beads.