An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Page 11

“Aye, aye, sir,” Paddy O’Rourke said. “And Doctor O’Reilly?”

  “Yes, Paddy?”

  “Well done, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Fingal knew he shouldn’t feel gratified. Damn it all, he’d nearly killed ERA Stewart, but there was a satisfaction to having given his first-ever anaesthetic for an open abdominal operation and having got away with it.

  “Come on, then,” said Richard to Fingal, heading for the changing room, “we’ll get changed and head for the mess.” The door to the operating room closed behind them.

  “Bit hairy, was it, gassing the victim?” Wilcoxson asked.

  “Honestly? It was bloody terrifying,” Fingal said, stripping off his surgical shirt.

  “I know and I’m sorry. None of us knows much about anaesthetics, I’m afraid. But look, if you’re interested I may be able to change that.” He dropped his slightly bloody white trousers round his ankles. “They’ve set up a training scheme for military doctors in Oxford. I hear it’s very well subscribed. I’d like one of my medical staff to be absolutely up to date with the latest in anaesthetic techniques.”

  “I didn’t know about the unit in Oxford,” Fingal said.

  “Mmm. And the navy’s going to do the same at Haslar.”

  “The hospital at Gosport near Portsmouth?” Fingal struggled into his uniform pants.

  “Right. How’d you feel about going on a course there?”

  “Me?” Fingal’s mind was spinning. “For how long?”

  Richard knotted his tie. “Dunno. Could be two or three months if we added your learning a bit about the treatment of battle trauma.”

  “I’d love it, but why me? I’m the new boy?”

  “Because I’m expecting Davy Jones to be promoted out of Warspite soon. He’s earned it and I’ll be sorry to see him go. But if I start working on the skipper about this right now, he can arrange for you to stay here with me when you’re fully trained. In any fleet action, battleships act as hospital ships. We’ll need the best-trained personnel. And,” he added, “it won’t hold up your promotion.”

  “I see.” Fingal’s mind raced. Three months would be long enough to get married if he could get Deirdre over from Belfast. He continued dressing. “I have a little surgical experience already, Richard. I did one year of gynaecology training, but I’d like it very much to be better qualified all round.”

  “Good. I’ll see what I can do. Mind you, it might not be for a year or so. These things take time.” He shrugged into his jacket and glanced at his watch as he picked it from a nearby shelf. “And there are more pressing things at the moment. Like that pink gin you owe me.”

  Fingal put on his jacket. He’d only been parted from her for two days, but what had he said in the Midland Hotel? “I’ll write.” He’d get his first letter off to her as soon as he’d eaten. He missed her and wanted to write, but the travelling and the work had yet to give him much of an opportunity to put pen to paper.

  “We’ll take one more quick look at the patient, then we might even be able to get a bite.” Richard strapped on his watch.

  Fingal’s stomach gave its imitation of one of the bubbling mud pots of New Zealand. “I hope so,” he said, “I truly do.”

  * * *

  Fingal sat at the table in his cabin, staring at a blank sheet of writing paper. How to begin? Every piece of mail, even the officers’, was opened and censored lest information of use to the enemy’s military intelligence would slip out. The slogan “Loose Lips Sink Ships” was everywhere throughout the navy. He couldn’t even tell her where he was. Next time he was home he’d be sure to have worked out a code for them along the lines of, “Give my love to Aunt Jessy,” who did not exist, to mean that Warspite would be crossing the Atlantic. “Can you get Ma a birthday present from me?” Warspite in the Med. And he’d certainly not want the censoring officer reading any intimate thoughts. Perish the thought.

  But for this one? He started,

  My dearest darling, I’ve got to where I was going. My boss is a gentleman and I think I’m going to enjoy working here. I gave an anaesthetic this evening and he says in perhaps a year I may get a chance to go on a course in England for three months so I can become a better anaesthetist and I hug the thought as I think of hugging you, I think we could get married then. I am missing you so dreadfully already and …

  He hesitated, knowing how much more he wanted to say, then got up, rummaged in his suitcase, and brought out her photo. He stared at it, whispered, “God, I do love you so much, Deirdre,” and turned back to his writing of the first of what would become a torrent of letters.

  13

  Plan the Future by the Past

  “My turn to be late, Fingal, Charlie. Sorry,” Sir Donald Cromie said as he entered the booth in the Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street. “Shove over, Fingal.”

  O’Reilly slid along the cubicle’s horseshoe-shaped black leather benches. He brought his half-finished pint with him. “It’s good to see you, Cromie,” he said. None of the three practising physician friends would ever ask for an explanation of tardiness. It often unavoidably went with the job.

  “Fit and well you’re looking,” said Charlie Greer. “And you’ve a pint in the stable. Fingal set up the first round. I’m sure Knockers recognised you as soon as you—”

  “One pint of Mister Arthur Guinness’s elixir of life, Sir Donald,” said the barman, Knox Ritchie, known to one and all as “Knockers.” “I’d just finished pouring this one for a fellah I’ve never seen in here before when I seen you come in. The young lad can wait a wee minute, no sweat.”

  Typical, O’Reilly thought. All good Irish pubs looked after their regulars first, and as far as he was concerned, rightly so.

  “Thank you, Knockers,” Cromie said. “I should let you get back to your customers, but how’s the back?”

  Six months ago when they’d met in here, Knockers had wrenched his back manoeuvering a full keg of Guinness.

  “Och, it gives me the odd twinge, but a couple of them Panadol you give me, sir, and I can thole it rightly, so I can. Nice of you til ask.”

  “You’d expect an orthopaedic surgeon to be interested in bones,” O’Reilly said absently.

  “It’s still nice of Sir Donald to ask, sir.” Knockers made to leave, but before going said, “Just buzz if youse need anything.”

  “When we do, it’ll be for three more pints,” Charlie said. “My shout.”

  “Right, Mister Greer.” Knockers left.

  “Your job to ring, Fingal,” Cromie said. “You’re nearest the bell push.”

  The ceramic-and-brass bell push was mounted in one of the vertical posts supporting dark wooden panels inset at their tops with small stained-glass windows. Several other booths were occupied. A snatch of an unusually loud conversation came from the one next door.

  “See them Americans? See them? They put an unmanned spaceship called Surveyor on the moon yesterday, so they did.”

  “Bully for them. Do you think it is green cheese?”

  “Nah. Probably acres of dust and a wheen of boulders like my mother-in-law’s front garden in Lisburn.” The speaker cleared his throat. “Do you think they’ll make Landing on the Moon Day, June the third, a holiday from now on? Like their Groundhog Day in February?”

  “They might. Them Americans, they’re powerful ones for holidays, so they are. I hear tell they celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with parades and green beer and all.”

  “Green beer? Away on.” The scorn in the man’s voice was palpable. “I tell you, never mind green beer, roll on the Twelfth Fortnight here. That’s a real holiday, so it is.”

  Traditionally most places of work in Ulster, particularly the two big industries, shipbuilding and linen, closed for the two weeks surrounding the Twelfth of July, when the victory of the Protestant King William over the Catholic King James on that day in 1690 was celebrated with parades and bonfires. Over in Scotland, the city of Glasgow and the Clyde shipyards ground to a virtual standstill at the same
time, and many Scots holidayed in Ulster.

  “Did you hear that about the Twelfth?” Cromie asked.

  Both O’Reilly and Charlie nodded.

  “Last year I’d a patient I’d to tell he’d only got two weeks to live.”

  “Och dear,” O’Reilly said. “I hate to hear that kind of thing.”

  Cromie took a pull on his pint. “Actually he took it rather well. Do you know what he asked me?”

  “No.” O’Reilly was intrigued, and it wasn’t until Cromie continued that Fingal realised he and Charlie were having their legs pulled.

  “‘Two weeks? Boys-a-dear, that’s desperate, so it is,’” said Cromie, assuming a Belfast working-man’s accent. “‘Look. It’s December now, so if it’s all right with you, sir—could you please make them the Twelfth Fortnight next year.’”

  “Eejit,” O’Reilly said, but his and Charlie’s laughter rose to mingle with the hum of conversation from other booths and the men standing at the bar below an etched-glass pane announcing Bonders of Old High Class Whiskies and Direct Importers of Sandeman’s Port.

  “All right, all right,” said Charlie. “Enough codding about.” He produced a file. “Here’s where we’re at in the reunion planning. It’s pretty well put to bed.”

  O’Reilly and Cromie leant forward.

  “We agreed last time that we’d hold the affair on the weekend of September twenty-third,” Charlie said.

  O’Reilly, whose job it had been to arrange accommodation, said, “And I’ve got a tentative block booking for those dates at the Shelbourne Hotel on Saint Stephen’s Green.” He paused. “And you may be interested to know that it was built by putting together three adjoining townhouses, by Martin Burke in 1824. Alois Hitler, the Füher’s half brother, once worked in the place, and the Irish Constitution was drafted there in 1922.”

  “Lord,” said Cromie with a chuckle, “if the Encyclopaedia Britannica ever goes out of business we can get answers from Fingal O’Reilly.”

  “You’ll never change, O’Reilly,” Charlie said, “but more to the point, it looks like you can change that tentative booking to a definite because we’ve had thirty-two affirmative replies, and considering that we started in ’31 with forty-one men and six women, that’s a pretty good percentage. I’m happy to say that one of those women is Hilda Bronson.”

  “Who?” Cromie asked.

  “She was Hilda Manwell, remember? Married an Australian bloke,” Fingal said. “She’s the one who wrote to Charlie to suggest the whole thing.”

  “It’ll be great to see Hilda again and the rest of the mob…” Cromie said.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, but is Ronald Hercules Fitzpatrick coming?” O’Reilly took a pull from his pint.

  “He is,” Charlie said.

  “Well, perhaps it won’t be so bad. Last time I saw him was at a party and the old gobshite was cracking jokes,” O’Reilly said. “He’s still a dry old stick, but I suppose we’ll be able to put up with him.”

  “Or lose him in the crowd. I never thought we’d get that many out,” Cromie said.

  “I estimated we’d get about twenty-five. I’ll have to ask the Shelbourne for more rooms.”

  The three men had been sipping their pints. All their glasses would soon be empty. O’Reilly quietly shoved the bell push and lit his pipe. His blue tobacco smoke drifted up to join the cirrus cloud from cigarettes and more pipes.

  “The hotel will lay on a welcoming cocktail party and dinner too, on Friday night. Black tie of course, long or cocktail dresses,” O’Reilly said, “and uniforms,” thinking of how much use he still got out of his old number-one blues.

  Cromie nodded.

  “We’ve had a pretty good response from our more academically minded colleagues,” Charlie said, “so we’ll be able to put on a full day’s programme of talks on the Saturday.”

  “Which,” O’Reilly said, “should keep the tax man at bay when we all claim the thing as a deductible scientific meeting and write it off.”

  “Maybe youse can, sirs,” said Knockers, coming in with the three pints, “but this here’ll be seven and six, please.” As he set the glasses on the table, Charlie counted out three half crowns. “Thank you, Mister Greer,” Knockers said, and left.

  “The hotel will provide a conference room, projectors, pointers, that kind of stuff,” O’Reilly continued. “We’ll pack it up at three thirty, give folks a bit of time on their own, then I’ve booked the banquet, black tie too, on the Saturday evening. Cocktails first, then grub. The folks at Trinity will be letting us use one of the dining halls and doing the catering. The main hall was built in the eighteenth century, in case you two don’t know,” O’Reilly said.

  “And I suppose you were there personally for the grand opening, Fingal, you old fart,” Charlie said.

  O’Reilly laughed, shook his head, and took a pull on his pint. “Maybe, Greer, it’s time we put on the gloves again. Had a rematch.” He rubbed his bent nose, which Charlie had broken in a boxing match back in their student days.

  Charlie shook his head and patted a not inconsiderable potbelly. “I think,” he said, “those days are over.”

  “Aye,” said Cromie, reflexively rubbing his pate, which was merely fringed by a corona of greying hair. “Hard to believe it’s thirty years since we qualified.”

  For a long moment no one spoke, each man, O’Reilly guessed, lost in his own particular memories. Finally Cromie broke the silence. “I’ll not bore you with the details, but I’ve managed to whip up the funding to pay for the social events, and that includes a farewell breakfast on Sunday morning. Several of the pharmaceutical companies have been generous—they will of course receive full recognition on the printed programme, and I’ll be taking care of getting that done. Now,” he said, “this was your job, Charlie. How about a guest of honour? Have you managed to get one?”

  “Indeed,” Charlie said. “I tried Doctor Micks first…”

  The mere mention of his name made O’Reilly purse his lips. Doctor “Robbie” Micks had looked after O’Reilly’s father during his terminal illness in 1936.

  “Unfortunately while he was very flattered to be asked, he won’t be able to make it. He’s got another conference that weekend. Seems the class of ’41 are having their twenty-fifth and got to him first.”

  “Did you try Vincent Millington Synge?” O’Reilly asked, remembering the ENT surgeon’s primrose Rolls-Royce and private aeroplane.

  “No luck there either,” Charlie said. “He’s seventy-three now and completely retired from matters medical and is living in Rockbrook, County Dublin, but I think you’ll be pleased to hear that Mister Kinnear, the surgeon from Sir Patrick Dun’s, will be delighted to come and give the after-dinner address.”

  “Mister Kinnear?” O’Reilly said. “He let me do my first appendicectomy.”

  “And he’s not going to be Mister much longer,” Cromie said. “He’ll be appointed Regius Professor of Surgery next year.”

  “Good for him,” O’Reilly said.

  “A remarkable man,” Cromie said. “I found out recently he’s Jewish…”

  “I don’t see what being Jewish has to do with anything,” Charlie said pointedly.

  “In which case, old chum, you’d be wrong. This time it means a great deal,” Cromie said. “Nigel Kinnear volunteered for the British Army in the war—”

  “Lord,” said O’Reilly, “that really took courage.”

  “You fought, Fingal,” Charlie said.

  “Yes, I did. And I’d have been a prisoner of war if I’d been taken. If Mister Kinnear had been captured, he’d have been sent straight to the concentration camps if not simply shot on the spot.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Charlie said.

  “He did go there,” Cromie said. “He was one of the first British officers into Bergen-Belsen in ’45 when the British and the Canadians liberated the camp.”

  “My God,” O’Reilly said, setting down his half-finished pint from which he
had been going to drink. “How absolutely awful for him.” And O’Reilly thought about how it wasn’t only the Nazis who had been guilty of atrocities. His best friend and the man who had been the fourth of the Four Musketeers of Trinity days, Bob Beresford, had died of starvation and brutal ill treatment at the hands of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. The wealthy, debonair Robert Saint-John Beresford had had an eye for the ladies, a weakness when it came to the racetrack, and a dry wit that O’Reilly missed to this day. He’d also been a kind and devoted friend and a first-rate medical research worker.

  “Aye,” said Cromie. “Nigel told me about it a couple of years ago at a Royal College meeting. He is a remarkable man.”

  “I was thinking,” said Fingal, “about another remarkable man, our old friend…”

  “Bob Beresford,” Charlie said, who must have been pursuing a similar train of thought.

  “Aye, and I’ve a notion.” O’Reilly paused. “I think if this reunion’s a success there’ll be others.”

  “Most likely,” Cromie said.

  “It’s up to Mister Kinnear what he talks about, but I reckon his address should have a title,” O’Reilly said.

  “And?” Charlie said.

  “What would you feel about calling it the ‘Robert Beresford Memorial Oration’?”

  O’Reilly watched Cromie look at Charlie and Charlie look back. Finally Charlie said, “I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard all night.”

  “Hear, hear,” Cromie said.

  “Fine,” said O’Reilly very quietly, and raised his glass. “To absent friends,” he said, and drank. “We still miss you, Bob.”

  “To absent friends.”

  14

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

  O’Reilly was lighting his pipe in the shelter of Y turret as he stood beneath the massive guns’ barrels. The tobacco was burning well. It needed to be because Warspite was making twelve knots, and here on the exposed quarterdeck, with nothing but a narrow twin 20 mm Oërlikon antiaircraft cannon for shelter, the wind of her passage would have defeated any attempt to relight it. He’d been told this part of the ship’s upper decks was reserved, apart from the crew whose duties brought them there, for off-duty officers, and in warmer climes could be a pretty crowded place. Today he and Tom Laverty had it nearly to themselves. Tom had moved to the port side of the taffrail.