An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Read online

  “There’s nothing complicated, Mrs. O’Reilly,” Hall said, taking out his packet of cigarettes and removing the silvery foil that lined the packet. He folded it into a strip half an inch wide and four inches long. “The mackerel thinks that this here’s a herring fry.” He ran the barbed end of the hook twice through the shiny strip close to one end.

  “I see,” Kitty said. “Clever.”

  Interesting the things you could use as bait, O’Reilly thought. Just took having the right appearance and many a fish would be hooked.

  “Now.” Hall lifted a heavy oval-shaped lead weight with split copper rings at each end. He worked the whipcord through the rings so the weight was now attached to the line about four feet from the hook. “Nearly all set.”

  O’Reilly reckoned he’d better pay attention to his steering. Coming up ahead was Grey Point, which jutted out into the lough, and the sea itself was not uncluttered. Hall Campbell had no monopoly on fishing for the migratory mackerel. Four herring boats like Hall’s, several small cabin cruisers, and even a red-and-white half-open kayak were all trolling off the point. He passed close enough to the kayak to see that the young man in it, who needed both hands to paddle to maintain trolling speed, had taken a turn of whipcord round his naked big toe. Presumably he’d be made aware of a strike by the sudden tug on his toe.

  Behind the boats, a flock of herring gulls, the adults grey and white, the adolescents tawny and speckled, hovered over the wakes, swooping and screeching. Periodically they would alight upon the water to bicker over the fish guts that had been thrown overboard from boats already cleaning their catch. Gliding above the herring gulls, a solitary black-backed gull, too aloof to indulge in petty squabbles, waited until one of the smaller birds tried to fly away with a beakful of food. The big robber swooped on its victim until the terrified bird opened its beak, at which point the scavenger caught the entrails in midair and made off.

  “Put her out til sea past everybody else, Doc,” Hall said.

  O’Reilly put his helm down and swung the boat’s head.

  “Do you know about Grey Point, Mrs. O’Reilly?” Hall said. “We’re just passing it.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “Used til belong til Lord Dufferin, but the army bought it and built a fort there in 1907. They put two breech-loading six-inch guns in for til defend Belfast Lough. They only ever fired once in two world wars, and that was a warning dummy shell across the bows of a Belfast-bound freighter that hadn’t been warned about the guns and didn’t pay attention til a challenge from the fort.”

  “The folks who lived round the lough’ll tell you the guns made ferocious rows practising twice a week shooting at drogues towed by tugs,” O’Reilly added.

  “Aye. And apparently they usually missed them,” laughed Hall. “The powers that be took the guns out in the ’50s and closed the fort.” He lifted the prepared fishing set. “Now, Mrs. O’Reilly,” he said, “we’re on the fishing ground. Time for work. There’s only one important thing til remember. Always, always, put the hook in the water first. Never the weight. If it goes in and you’re holding the line between it and the hook, the pressure of the flow of water on it will rip the line through your fingers and you’ll hook yourself. And we don’t want that.”

  “No, we don’t,” she said. “I may be a nurse, but I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to remove a fishhook.”

  “Hall told Jenny Bradley last year how to do it. It sounded painful.”

  “Sit here, Missus,” Hall said, indicating a place on the bench at the stern on the port side. When she did, he took the gear, put the hook over the side, then the weight, then unreeled about thirty feet of line. He handed her the line. “Hold you that there and if you feel a tug, jerk hard to set the hook, then haul the line in hand over hand.” He stood beside O’Reilly. “I’ll take her now, Doc. We’ll get you set up, sir, once Mrs. O’Reilly catches her first fish.”

  O’Reilly surrendered the tiller, happy to let Hall deal with bringing the boat on a parallel course with all the others yet avoiding the other boats and the lines that, like Kitty’s, would be streaming out behind. O’Reilly watched Kitty sitting facing aft, hand held in front of her, the line running from the wooden square, up through her fist, and out over her bent index finger. He smiled to see the look of concentration on her face.

  She whipped her arm back so her hand was level with her ear. “Got one.” Her smile was enormous and she bent to hauling in the line hand over hand, letting the wet coils fall into the boat’s cockpit. The lead weight came over the taffrail, the highest plank of the vessel’s stern.

  O’Reilly glanced into the water to see a silver, torpedo-shaped fish being pulled along, then leaving the water as Kitty hauled. Its silver scales flashed brilliantly and its dorsal stripes were that intense blue-green seen only on a mackerel or the head of a mallard drake in bright sunlight.

  She boated the fish at Hall’s feet. It thrashed, making a rattling noise on the deck, and gasped. Single scales like sparkling sequins patterned the deck’s planks. Hall bent and thumped it once on the head with a short wooden cudgel that O’Reilly knew was loaded with lead at its tip and known locally as a “priest” because it gave fish the last rites. The mackerel lay still. “Nice fish, Mrs. O’Reilly,” Hall said.

  “Golly,” Kitty said, “that was exciting.” She grinned, then her smile faded. “I can’t help feeling just a bit sorry for the fish, though.”

  “Aye,” said Hall, “but you’ll get used to it, Missus, particularly after you’ve grilled one or had it smoked and eaten it cold.”

  “We’ll ask Kinky,” Kitty said. “We didn’t catch many mackerel down in Tallaght, so I don’t have a clue.” She must have seen Hall’s puzzled look. “It’s an inland suburb of Dublin where I grew up.”

  “I heard you were a Dubliner, Mrs. O’Reilly. Well, welcome to the wee north,” said Hall, then looked at O’Reilly. “Can you steer again, Doc?”

  O’Reilly took the tiller, and Hall unhooked Kitty’s mackerel, then produced an old Erinmore Flake tobacco tin and from it took a single safety razor blade. The silver paper on the hook was in tatters so he ripped it off and threw it away. He used the razor blade to slice two thin strips from the fish’s silvery belly, put one on Kitty’s hook and gave the other to O’Reilly. “You know what to do, sir.”

  “I do in soul,” said O’Reilly.

  “I’ll take her,” Hall said, reaching for the helm.

  O’Reilly set to work baiting his hook. Soon he and Kitty had their lines in the water. “Thanks for taking us out, Hall,” O’Reilly said. He felt the steady pressure of line on finger, the gentle motion of the boat, heard her engine and the cries of the gulls, both plaintive and belligerent. In the cusp of the low hills of both sides of the lough, the waters and all they contained lay calmly waiting for the soft gloaming as the summer sun slid down the gentle sky. The last quarter of a waning moon swung gently, waiting in the wings to play her bit part after the night had come. “Got one,” O’Reilly yelled as the line jerked and tugged at his finger.

  As he happily hauled his first fish in he thought, All it takes is the right technique and the right bait. Then a kernel of an idea began to form. He’d come here to relax to put the concerns of the practice behind him for a few hours and had done, but it was the second time he’d thought of bait, and fish weren’t the only animals that might be lured.

  The shining, twisting mackerel had mistaken a strip of belly for a herring fry and been hooked.

  How could O’Reilly devise a bait that would catch Lenny Brown and get it through his stubbornness that the best gift ever he could bestow on Colin was the opportunity for a scholarly education? He’d been off to meet Alan Hewitt last night. Alan was a workingman, but his daughter, Helen, was a medical student who’d just completed her first year. Could that be used in any way?

  O’Reilly boated his fish and thumped it with the priest. And if bait wouldn’t work with Lenny, he thought, might there be another way to
drive sense into his head?

  18

  Fathom Deep I Am in Love

  Ma wore a green cardigan over a ruffle-fronted white blouse. She and the armchair she was in were as straight-backed as the Victorian lady she was. “Come and sit beside me by the fire, Deirdre. It’s horrid outside,” Ma said.

  The burning turf was cosy and filled the lounge with a peaty smell that pleased Fingal. All the electric lights were on to banish the gloom.

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Reilly.” Deirdre moved from Fingal’s side where they had been standing in the bow window of Ma’s lounge watching the gale. It was blowing through the old elms at the bottom of her garden, making them thrash and fight back with bare-clawed branches that tried to rake the lowering sky.

  “It’s been so nice having you, Deirdre, and you, Fingal, to stay. It’s just terrible how the time flies. I can’t believe it’s been nearly two weeks since you came.”

  Fingal was back in uniform for the first time in ten days. “It has, Ma,” he said, listening to sheets of rain rattling against the panes. The sound reminded him of Warspite’s quadruple half-inch machine gun mounts letting go. “And it’s been ten wonderful days of your cooking and Bridgit’s. I’m going to miss that…” And, he thought, I’m going to miss pre-dinner pints with brother Lars in the Portaferry Arms. Two brothers, old friends, catching up. Eleven marvellous nights in a soft bed, no bugle calls and alarms in the middle of the night, no stink of fuel oil. Nothing tossing and pitching underfoot. “And I’m going to miss you, Ma.”

  “Thank you, son,” she said.

  And ten wonderful days with Deirdre. Fingal looked at her sitting demurely, knees together, feet firmly on the ground, her hands in the lap of the grey skirt of her tailored suit. She’d not been so demure when they kissed and caressed on their long walks over the drumlins and round the shore. They’d cuddled in the back stalls of the Art Deco Tonic Cinema in Bangor where they’d gone to see The Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn and David Niven and The Ghost Goes West with Robert Donat and Jean Parker.

  He sighed then smiled as he pictured her delight on the day when they’d startled a pair of teal from a brown peat pool practically underfoot. In return the birds’ sudden noisy appearance had startled Deirdre. Their wings had clattered as they sprang into the air, the little drake with his chestnut head and iridescent green teardrop round his eye venting his displeasure with a harsh quacking. Deirdre’d squealed, then clapped her hands, and giggled like a ten-year-old getting an ice cream. God, he thought, but I’m going to miss how she takes limitless pleasure from the simplest thing. How she can laugh at herself.

  “Your father used to say it, Fingal, usually at the end of a holiday, ‘All good things must come to an end.’” Ma inhaled deeply. “He was right of course, but I hate you having to go back to the war.” She pursed her lips and looked at an ormolu clock on the mantel. “Lars should be here soon.”

  Fingal walked to Ma’s chair and dropped a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll still have Lars and Bridgit and all your new friends here, and your work with Lady MacNeill.”

  Ma nodded, brightened, then said, “We’ll be presenting a Spitfire to 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, next month. You’ve both seen the newsreels of what those horrid stukas did in Poland last year. Laura and I think raising five thousand pounds to buy a first-class fighter is well worth it.”

  “Good for you, Ma,” Fingal said. “From what I’ve read and heard on the radio, not much is happening except at sea. Our side call it the ‘Phoney War’ and the Nazis the ‘Sitzkreig.’ But Hitler’s going to have to move against France soon and when he does we’ll need all the fighter planes we can get. Thank you, Ma.”

  “Don’t thank Laura and me. Thank all the others who’ve contributed time and money to our Spitfire fund,” she said, turning to Deirdre and changing the subject. “I hope, Deirdre, while Fingal’s away, you’ll not be a stranger even if it is a fair journey from Belfast to Portaferry. There’ll always be a bed for you here.”

  “I will try to get down, I promise,” Deirdre said.

  The phone in the hall rang. Brigit would answer it, Fingal knew.

  “I think,” Ma said, looking Fingal straight in the eye, “that you are a very lucky young man. I’m just sorry you’ll not be able to make me a mother-in-law soon, but I understand.”

  Fingal looked at Ma then to Deirdre. “It’s a sentiment we all share, Ma, and we’ve been talking about it. Haven’t we, pet?”

  Deirdre nodded. “Fingal’s hoping to be sent on a course to learn about anaesthetics. He might be home, at least in England, for three months and—”

  “Seize it,” Ma said. “Life’s too short. If you mean to get married then, do it. Do it the minute you can.” She cocked her head and grinned at Fingal. “The sooner you make me a granny the better.”

  He swallowed. Was Ma, straight and proper Ma, was she hinting what he thought she was?

  She became serious. “Being in love is wonderful and everything, and I mean everything, about love is wonderful. I envy you young people. Don’t waste it.”

  Fingal nearly whistled. He certainly blushed. Ma could hardly have been more explicit if she’d said, “Hurry up and make love to the girl.” He said, “Thanks for everything, Ma,” and was relieved when Bridgit, who was now more a companion for Ma than a maid, came into the room and said, “Mister Lars was on the telephone. He is coming in his motorcar to run the lieutenant and Miss Mawhinney to Belfast.”

  Fingal didn’t want Deirdre to go back to the nurses’ home tonight. They could breakfast together tomorrow before he caught the boat train to the morning ferry. The plan was for Lars to drive straight to Belfast today, where Fingal had reserved two rooms at the Midland Hotel. It would be unreasonable to expect his brother, in these days of petrol rationing, to make the detour to Ballybucklebo where Fingal and Deirdre were going to visit Fingal’s old principal Doctor Flanagan. Once they had registered, he and Deirdre would take the train. Fingal wanted to keep his option open to return to the practice after the war, and was very aware that the old adage “Out of sight, out of mind” was true.

  Bridgit said, “He says it’s still bucketing down out so he’ll honk when he arrives and will you please go straight out.”

  “Thank you, Bridgit,” Fingal said.

  She shyly offered him a brown-paper-wrapped parcel. “It’s one of my cold pork pies, sir,” she said. “It’ll maybe do for your lunch, bye, on the train in Scotland, hey.” That soft Antrim brogue she’d never lost was in pleasing familiar contrast to the Babel of English and Scottish accents on Warspite to which he would be returning.

  “That’s very thoughtful, Bridgit,” O’Reilly said. “Thank you again.”

  She smiled and bobbed her lace-capped head.

  Ma stood. “Give me a kiss, Deirdre.”

  Deirdre rose, hugged Ma, and pecked her cheek. “I will come and see you, I promise, Mrs. O’Reilly.”

  “And I think,” said Ma, “we know each other well enough by now. Please call me Mary.”

  “Thank you—Mary.”

  Fingal hugged his mother. “So long, Ma. I hope it won’t be too long until I get home again. I’ll write.”

  “See you do.”

  There was a blast of a car’s horn from outside.

  “Now run along and both of you take care of yourselves.”

  As Fingal stood aside to let Deirdre go first, he heard his mother say sotto voce so only he could hear, “And I meant what I just said. Don’t waste time. There’s a war on.”

  * * *

  “Doctor Fingal O’Reilly, as I live and breathe, and Miss Mawhinney.” Deirdre had been invited to Doctor Flanagan’s home several times for a meal since Fingal and she had become engaged in July. “As welcome as rain in a summer of drought you are, so.”

  “Mrs. Kinkaid,” Deirdre said. “How are you?”

  “Grand, so.” Mrs. Kinky Kincaid, Doctor Flanagan’s housekeeper from County Cork, stood in the open doorway of Number One, Main Street, B
allybucklebo. Her silver hair, as ever, was done up in a tight chignon, her floral pinafore dusted with flour and, Fingal thought, the beginnings of a double chin seemed to have increased since he’d left here last November. She beamed, and dimples came to her cheeks as her agate eyes looked Fingal up and down from head to toe, frowned, then said, “But those uniform trousers could use a pressing, bye.”

  Fingal laughed and shook his head. “They’ll need it a lot more after I’ve been on the Scottish train for hours, and anyway, Deirdre and I came to visit Doctor Flanagan and yourself, not to have my trousers ironed.”

  “Well, come in. Come in.” She stood aside, closed the door after them, and helped hang their sodden hats and coats on the coatstand. “Doctor Flanagan was so pleased when you phoned yesterday and he’ll be sorely vexed that he’s missed you, sir,” she remarked. “He said to apologise, but you’ll remember Agnes Alexander?”

  Fingal frowned then said, “Red-haired lass. I saw her once or twice last year. Early on in a pregnancy. Husband’s Fred, a shipyard plater?”

  “That’s right, sir. You’ve a powerful memory, so. Anyroad, she did go into labour six hours ago and the midwife sent for Doctor Flanagan an hour since.”

  “Oh,” said Fingal, rather at a loss. He had wanted to pay his respects to his senior colleague, but not spend too long. This, after all, was his last time with Deirdre and he wanted her to himself. No one could predict how long a labour might take, so there was not much sense hanging about for what could be hours. Perhaps they’d made the trip for nothing.

  “And you’ve come all the long way from Belfast City by train.” Kinky shook her head and tutted.

  It was only about six miles, but to country folk, who mostly walked or cycled, it would seem a long way, and he knew from experience that villagers always found the big city intimidating.