An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea Read online

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  To Dr. James “Jimmy” Taylor, squadron leader, RAFVR (Ret.),

  and

  all those of his generation who at huge cost fought

  and overcame great evil

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  we will remember them.

  Ne Obliviscaris. Lest we forget.

  My father, “Jimmy” Taylor, MB, RAFVR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Real life is not monochromatic. It is painted from a varied palette. In ancient Greece, drama, the staged representation of life, was represented pictorially by two masks: one smiling, Thalia, the muse of comedy; and one crying, Melpomene, the muse of tragedy.

  This book, number ten in the Irish Country Doctor series, is home to both.

  It continues in part to follow the fortunes of the doctors and the villagers of Ballybucklebo in the mid-1960s. It answers questions from readers of earlier works about the futures of the well-known characters, and introduces newcomers to the story. This is Thalia’s half of the book.

  I hope you will enjoy the goings-on, and if anyone tries to sell you Woolamarroo quokka herding dogs (and many thanks to Jill Evans, friend and author of The Time Traveller: The Development of the Great Dane, for invaluable advice on doggy miscegenation and reproduction), please remember, forewarned is forearmed. But if you still go ahead, I’m sure Donal Donnelly could as well get you a really good price on the Giant’s Causeway and the Mourne Mountains.

  While Donal may take a liberal interpretation of the truth, I always strive for accuracy. Scenes here set in the Dublin and Ulster of the ’60s, and the medicine of the time, are as realistic as memory serves and ordnance survey maps and my old medical texts from my student and trainee days allow. I should tell you that back in Ireland, Davy McMaster did run a bar in his farm at Lisbane when I was a young man. Lars and Fingal go there. Many’s the hot Irish I’ve had at Davy’s after a day’s winter wildfowling on frigid Strangford Lough. Today it is an elegant roadhouse, the Saltwater Brig. Dorothy, my partner, and I went back to it in September 2014 when we were in Ulster for the fiftieth reunion of the Queen’s University medical graduating class of ’64.

  In the author’s note in my last book, An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War, I made a solemn promise that I would conclude the adventures of Surgeon Lieutenant Fingal O’Reilly, RNR, and his bride-to-be, Deirdre Mawhinney, during the Second World War. I have kept that promise. This part of the book has its dark moments, and is Melpomene’s—and I make no apology.

  Fingal and Deirdre together spend time in Gosport in England, where Fingal has been seconded for anaesthesia training to the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar. Later, Deirdre goes home to Ulster and Fingal returns to his battleship HMS Warspite in the Mediterranean in 1941. (All battle scenes there are taken from the writings of eyewitnesses, to be found in the books cited below.)

  Haslar naval hospital opened in 1753, three years before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). During that war, 1,512 sailors were killed in action, but there were 133,700 other losses—most died of disease. The need for such a facility was obvious.

  In describing the anaesthesia of the ’40s, I owe a great debt to Doctor Roger Maltby, an old friend from Calgary who provided a rich source of material about the techniques. He also put me in touch with Surgeon Commander Mike Inman, RN (Retired), who read and corrected my naval descriptions in An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War. Mike Inman introduced me to a remarkable man, Eric Birbeck MVO, Royal Victorian Order (for service on HMY Britannia). Eric served in the Royal Navy Medical Branch for forty-four years, retiring as a senior chief petty officer. After retirement, he then became an anaesthetic technical officer in the British Civil Service. Eric, as the chairman of the Haslar Heritage Group, has been associated with Haslar for more than fifty years and has provided me with invaluable source material (see later). Last September, he walked me through the old hospital and took me to see the places in Hampshire like the Crescent, Alverstoke, Gosport, the Paddock, and the Gosport/Portsmouth ferry that you will visit in this book. There really is a pub called the Fighting Cocks, and it was nicknamed “the Pugilistic Penises” by the staff of Haslar. As if that were not enough, Eric has read every page of the manuscript and kept me right on matters of naval custom, naval medicine, and the workings of Haslar hospital. The book and I owe him a very great deal. Thank you, Eric. The accuracy is his. The errors mine.

  I have chosen to populate both stories with both real and fictional characters. The real people in the Ballybucklebo story are doctors and one bandleader. Graham Harley, a superb clinician and mentor, taught me and fostered my interest in human infertility. “Buster” Holland delivered my daughter Sarah. Nigel Kinnear was Regius Professor of Surgery at Trinity College Dublin. Sir Albert Liley’s contribution to the treatment of Rhesus isoimmunisation revolutionised its management until a vaccine against Rh positive red cells was developed, making the disorder a thing of the past. Ron Livingstone was a classmate and later a distinguished academic Canadian obstetrician and gynaecologist. Teddy McIlrath became a consultant radiologist at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, in 1965. Bill Sproule was a classmate at both a private school and when we were trainee obstetricians. And Charley Whitfield, who also taught me, was Regius Professor at the University of Glasgow. They have all served medicine with great distinction.

  Clipper Carlton’s Showband, a seven-piece dance band from Strabane, was fronted by Fergie O’Hagan and played at dance halls and functions. Dorothy and I danced to them in the late ’50s.

  There are many real people in the 1940–41 story as well—at Haslar, on the Takoradi run, on Warspite in the Mediterranean, and playing parts in ’30s and ’40s medicine.

  At Haslar, two admirals commanding, Surgeon Rear Admiral T. Creaser, and his successor, Surgeon Rear Admiral A. B. Bradbury; the matron, Miss M. Goodrich; the chaplain, John Wilfrid Evans.

  On the Takoradi run, Squadron Leader Ludomil “Effendi” Rayski, a gallant officer who had been commander of the Polish air force before Poland’s defeat by Germany. Rayski escaped from his native land to fight for the Allies.

  In the Mediterranean on HMS Warspite, Admiral A. B. Cunningham; Commander Sir Charles Madden, executive officer; Commander Geoffrey Barnard, fleet gunnery officer; Commander B. J. H. Wilkinson, fleet engineering officer; Admiral Henry Pridham-Wippell, who so ably commanded the outgunned British cruisers at Cape Matapan that he was knighted. He subsequently survived the sinking of the battleship HMS Barham in November 1941. Patrick Steptoe, medical officer on HMS Hereward, who was sunk with his ship on May 27, 1941, off Crete, became an Italia
n POW, and after the war went on to advance laparoscopy (and teach me the technique). Steptoe was one half of the team with Professor Sir Robert Edwards, Nobel Laureate, that produced Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby.

  In medicine, Professor Robert Macintosh, who headed the first-ever British academic department of anaesthesia located at Oxford University; and Sir Archibald McIndoe, who revolutionised the plastic surgical treatment of burned aircrew.

  And in other theatres, Douglas Bader, the legless fighter pilot; and Captain Edward Fegen RN, VC of HMS Jervis Bay, who gallantly held off the German commerce raider Admiral Scheer so his convoy HX-84 could try to escape.

  It is with great admiration and deep respect I have chosen to be as true as I can to the parts each played in real life that I have borrowed to give my story authenticity. I am using them too as a metaphor for everyone who served in World War II, a conflict that sadly is now slipping from memory even though the year of publication of this work, 2015, marks the seventieth anniversaries of both VE and VJ Days.

  Their being and actions are matters of history. Any dialogue has been put in their mouths by me, with the exception of Admiral Cunningham’s speech after the evacuation of Crete (see below.) The rest of the characters peopling these pages are the progeny of my overheated imagination.

  When it comes to being accurate, may I make a few more general observations about the wartime story and in a scene back in Ulster?

  I have modified time reporting from the civilian clock I used in An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War. While for simplicity of understanding it has been retained in pure narrative, in battles reported by Tannoy, the military twenty-four-hour clock is used, as it would have been in real life.

  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.

  PATRICK TAYLOR

  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 oth
er 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.”