An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

  The admiral glanced up and, by the look on his face, seemed to be registering the same thought. “I see you are being sent here to learn anaesthesia and trauma surgery. We had a signal about you so we’ve been expecting you,” said the senior medical officer. “Our next course will start on Monday, September the thirtieth, so you’re a couple of days early. That’s good. We appreciate punctuality here.”

  Fingal said nothing.

  “I’ve read your confidential report from Richard Wilcoxson. He’s a very good man. Fine judge of character.” The admiral cocked his head sideways and pursed his lips. “Richard says you are a first-class physician. Perhaps you get a bit too involved with your patients—but you are young yet—”

  “I’m almost thirty-two, sir.”

  “If I want information, O’Reilly, I’ll ask for it.”

  “Yes, sir.” I hope I’ll never get old, Fingal thought, if it means not treating patients like human beings.

  “Richard also says that you are more interested in your trade than naval customs and dress, not shy about questioning a senior’s decisions if you think it’s in the patient’s best interests?”

  Fingal said nothing, even though the last sentence had been posed as a question. I’d question His Majesty himself were he a doctor and not giving his patients his best, he thought.

  The admiral coughed. “I don’t think Richard means that as a criticism, although perhaps he should have. I know that he does not run what we’d call a taut ship. I think he’s suggesting to me that I should warn you that here we run this place along strict naval lines, and I can see what he means. You look a disgrace to the uniform.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “We’d appreciate it if in future you try to pay a great deal more attention to those matters.”

  Fingal was tempted to snap out a sarcastic salty, “Aye aye, sir,” but simply nodded.

  “Good. And he says I’ve to remind you to visit his wife at Fareham.”

  “Yes, sir.” Fingal suddenly had an overwhelming need to escape this small, stuffy room. He started to rise, then realized he hadn’t been dismissed. “W-will that be all, sir?”

  “No, it will not be all,” said the admiral. “And you have not been dismissed. Now we’ve dealt with the formalities, let me welcome you to Haslar. All newcomers get the lecture.”

  “Thank you, sir.” This admiral was a bad-tempered bear, Fingal decided. One to be avoided as much as possible during Fingal’s stay here. Maybe he could get the information he needed from a friendly surgeon captain and not bother this man.

  The admiral rose, but said, “Don’t get up,” and walked to a picture hanging on a wall beside the window. “These are Haslar’s first architectural plans. They were published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. It’s a venerable old building, you know. The foundations were laid in 1746 and the first patients admitted in 1753.”

  “I’m impressed, sir,” Fingal said, and he was. He was fascinated by history.

  “And the place has some pretty famous alumni. James Lind, who discovered that lime juice prevents scurvy; Sir John Richardson, who had been to the Arctic with Franklin looking for the northwest passage. T. H. Huxley was an assistant surgeon here. Do you know what they called him in his later years?”

  “Yes, sir. ‘Darwin’s Bulldog,’ because he defended Darwin’s theory of natural selection.”

  “Well done.”

  Fingal lowered his head, but was warmed by the praise. Perhaps he was making some reparation for getting off on the wrong foot.

  “Now, would you know who Edward Atkinson might be? He was once the vaccinator in the pathology department here.”

  Fingal debated. He did know the answer exactly, but didn’t want to seem cocky. “I think, sir,” he said, “Atkinson might have been on Scott of the Antarctic’s last expedition?”

  “Well done again.” The admiral hitched his backside onto a corner of the desk, crossed his arms across his chest, leant back, and regarded Fingal before saying, “Good man. I’ve always thought us doctors tend to be too specialised. You strike me as well rounded—”

  “Thank you, sir.” Fingal instantly regretted his interruption.

  “—if a trifle impertinent to your seniors, and remarkably scruffy. All right. Enough history. We have accommodation arranged for you at the hospital in the medical officers’ mess. I would suggest you go there and get yourself looking like an efficient naval officer.”

  “Sir.”

  “You might want to get a bit of rest too. It’s a bloody awful train journey from Liverpool to here. I do know, and I go first class.”

  The words were spoken as a kindly uncle might address a favourite nephew. Was the admiral intimating that he understood why Fingal looked like something pulled through a hedge backward and wasn’t quite as angry as he had originally seemed?

  “I imagine you might be a bit peckish, too. The officers’ mess steward will find you something. By the way, we do dress for dinner. Just because there’s a war on is no need to let standards slip.”

  “My mess kit is being sent on, sir.”

  “Very well. We’ll make allowances. The working rig here is the same for everybody. It’s called ‘Tiffies’ rig. The officers, petty officers, and warrant officers have gold buttons, and please understand we are a shore establishment, but run as a ship. Right is starboard, left port, and the lavatories are the heads. When we leave the premises we ‘go ashore.’”

  “I’ll tr—” Fingal cut himself off from saying “try to” sarcastically and simply said, “I’ll remember, sir.”

  “Good. Now, your course won’t start until Monday, so I suggest you familiarise yourself with the setup here. The leader of your course is Surgeon Captain Angus Mahaddie. He’s a highland Scot and eats Sassenachs for breakfast, but he might warm to a fellow Celt.”

  “I’ll try to keep on his good side, sir.”

  “See that you do. And use your free days to attend to your non-naval duties. Letters home are a good idea. And each officer is permitted three phone calls through the switchboard during the week of their arrival.”

  Deirdre and Ma and Mrs. Marjorie Wilcoxson. The calls he’d promised on his last day on Warspite—to Tom Laverty’s wife Carol to congratulate her on the birth of a son, Barry, and to Wilson Wallace’s parents in Portstewart—would have to wait. Once “ashore” he’d find a pay phone and fulfil his obligations.

  “Getting about in Portsmouth and Gosport can be a chore, so most young officers own a small motorcar, or at least buy shares in one. You can get a used one for about ten or fifteen pounds. Petrol is rationed, but a gallon of the lowest grade only costs ten pence.”

  “Thank you, sir. That’s good to know.”

  “And don’t forget, boy, you’ve to visit Mrs. Wilcoxson. Fareham’s not that far. There’s a train.”

  “Yes, sir.” Another bloody train.

  “And that’s it, unless you have something to ask?”

  Fingal blurted, “I want to get married, sir.”

  “Do you indeed? Do you have someone in mind, or is this just a sudden fancy since arriving in England?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I do have someone in mind. Very much, sir. We got engaged last July and would have been wed by now, but…”

  “For the war. I understand.” The admiral stroked his chin with the web of his hand. He muttered, “Uh-huh,” nodded his head, glanced at his watch, picked up the phone, dialled, and said, “Leading Sick Berth Attendant Willis, come to my office, please,” and replaced the receiver.

  What the hell had that to do with Fingal’s request? He fidgeted in his chair and waited.

  “You’re young to be thinking of marriage. It can inhibit a junior officer’s prospects.”

  Fingal took a deep breath. He’d have to risk his superior’s good opinion further. “With all due respect, sir, I’ll be thirty-two in a few weeks, and although I am RNR, the navy’s not my career. There’s got to be some—” He almost stamped his foot.

 
“Young man.” The admiral slipped off the desk and stood looking down on the seated Fingal. “Do not presume to tell the navy that there has ‘got to be’ anything.”

  Fingal clenched his teeth, tried to calm himself. This wasn’t a boxing match to be won by battering his opponent into submission. Admirals did not submit to mere lieutenants. Ever. Diplomacy was required. “I’m sorry, sir. With your permission, may I rephrase that?”

  The colour that had flushed the senior officer’s cheeks seemed to be subsiding. “Very well, you may try.”

  There was knocking on the door.

  “Wait outside, Willis.”

  A faint, “Aye aye, sir.”

  “I know the navy does nothing without a good reason, and I’m sure that for career officers, suggesting that they delay marriage until they reach a certain rank is probably wise.”

  “It is.”

  “But this is wartime and I’m not a career officer. Is there not some way round it?” Fingal held his breath and crossed his fingers.

  “What was your rank when you were called up?”

  “It had been sub-lieutenant when I did my year on HMS Tiger back in 1930, but in view of my time since qualification as a doctor, the Admiralty gave me a lieutenancy—with four years’ seniority, sir.”

  “Did they? Interesting.” The admiral raised his voice. “Come in, Willis.”

  The door opened and a man entered. “Willis, take Lieutenant O’Reilly’s case and show him to the officers’ mess.”

  Rank titles would be used in front of other ranks here. Nothing as informal as Warspite’s medical branch, Fingal thought.

  “Aye aye, sir.” The man moved to obey.

  Fingal rose. “But sir—”

  “You are dismissed, Lieutenant O’Reilly,” the admiral said, “and I’m late for a meeting.”

  Fingal’s shoulders sagged. He took a deep breath and began to follow the SBA when a voice from behind him, the same avuncular voice of moments ago, said, “I make no promises, Lieutenant O’Reilly, but I’ll see what I can do. The navy has a drill for everything—and that includes promotion.”

  3

  Gentlemen of Japan

  “Not far to the boozer now,” said O’Reilly to Charlie, and lengthened his stride, forcing his friend to keep up as they left the Trinity College grounds and walked through the throng along Nassau Street. The two men had attended the Saturday morning lectures while Kitty and Pixie, Charlie’s wife, enjoyed an exhibition organised by the Royal Hibernian Academy in the premises of the National College of Art on Thomas Street. The women were to meet their husbands in the pub.

  Overhead, starlings whirled against the patches of blue that could be seen between the roofs of the eighteenth-century buildings. Pigeons strutted along the gutters. The stink of vehicle exhaust fumes filled O’Reilly’s nose and, just as in the old days, the westerly wind bore the faint smell of roasting grain from the Guinness Brewery at Saint James’s Gate.

  “Shall we walk to the light and cross there?” Charlie said, eyeing the busy road.

  “Och, come on, Charlie. We’re not so old that we can’t get across Nassau Street without a light. I’ll race you.” O’Reilly led off, dodging between the bikes and motorcars. On the other side he said, “Just as busy as when we were students, and just as many bikes.”

  “Aye,” said Charlie, puffing, “but I’ve only seen a couple of horse-drawn drays since we’ve been down here for the hooley. Guinness still use a few.”

  “Aye,” said O’Reilly, wondering what might have happened to one of his old patients, Lorcan O’Lunney, who had made his living pulling a handcart. “And not a tugger in sight.”

  “Never mind tuggers, or the rag-and-bone men like Harry Sime they worked for in the Liberties and on the Northside. There’s hardly a tenement left standing since our days, Fingal,” Charlie said as they turned right into Duke Street. “The Dublin City Council have done quite a job of slum clearance.”

  “It was a great interest of my ma’s, God bless her. She knew they were terrible sources of disease—TB, cholera, scabies, fleas,” said O’Reilly, having to stop himself from reflexively scratching in memory of the times he’d picked up some of the little devils. “But I heard it broke the hearts of a lot of tenement dwellers when the old neighbourhoods were scattered to the new housing. People, friends for years, and even families lost touch.” O’Reilly smiled. “I did enjoy working there, you know, way back when.” And, he thought, they were good people, folks like one-armed Sergeant Paddy Keogh; John-Joe Finnegan, a cooper with a Pott’s fracture; and a little boy with an infected foot, Dermot Finucane. He could picture each one, and wondered what had happened to them. Where were they today?

  “Change does happen,” Charlie said, holding open the door on the right side of the narrow front of Davy Byrnes Pub, “but this place? None of your ‘All changed, changed utterly…’”

  “Yeats,” O’Reilly said, “‘Easter 1916.’”

  Charlie guffawed. “Same old Fingal. Walking bloody encyclopaedia, but what I’m trying to say—” They went into the pub. “—nothing ever seems to be any different in here. I like that.”

  “Me too,” said O’Reilly, taking in the atmosphere.

  It was still the same long, narrow room of their student days, with tables to one side, mostly occupied. He could see Kitty at one near the back of the room, waving at him. He waved back. He and Charlie were approaching a marble-topped bar with a brass rail beneath, running the length of the dimly lit room with its familiar smell of beer and tobacco smoke. The muted hum of conversation filled the air. O’Reilly noticed that no longer were there any brass spittoons. Shortly after the war, all over Britain and Ireland, a massive public health campaign had helped control the spread of tuberculosis by, among other things, stopping people spitting in public. That had been a change for the better.

  A middle-aged, rotund, double-chinned man in an apron was standing behind the bar. He stopped drying a straight glass as his eyes widened, and he said in a loud voice, a grin splitting his open face, “Holy Mary Mother of God and all the saints, stop the lights. Stop the feckin’ lights and stall the ball there. Look what the cat’s dragged in. Charlie Greer and Fingal Flahertie O’-feckin’-Reilly.”

  As the barman lifted the horizontal flap and came round the bar, hand outstretched, O’Reilly saw heads turning in their direction, sensed the unspoken questions.

  “Jasus, lads, Jasus Murphy, lads, me oul’ segotias, it’s feckin’ lovely to see youse both. Absolutely gameball.”

  “Terrific to see you too, Diarmud.” O’Reilly shook the proffered hand and said, “It’s been a while. How the hell are you?”

  “I’m grand…” He shook Charlie’s hand. “Grand altogether and all the better for seeing you two oul’ bowsies.”

  A voice from behind O’Reilly said, “Can your estate sue if you die of thirst in a pub?”

  “Arra be wheest, Kevin Haughey, you bollix. Isn’t your pint on the pour behind the bar? Christ, you’ve been coming in here for ten years. Do you not t’ink I know your feckin’ habits by now?”

  “Sorry, Diarmud.” The voice sounded contrite.

  Diarmud, who, as O’Reilly well remembered, was another member of the always keep the upper hand school, went on, “And aren’t these two men that used to be students here t’irty odd years ago, now great learnèd medical men up in the Wee North, and haven’t I not seen them since they were down here in ’64 to see Ireland play Scotland at the rugby…”

  “We lost six to three, remember?” O’Reilly said sotto voce to Charlie, who nodded.

  “And haven’t I the feckin’ right to greet my old friends?”

  “You have, Diarmud,” Charlie said. “It’s been a while and it’s very good to see you. What have you been up to?”

  “For starters, as you can see, I’m still on this side of the feckin’ grass and I’m still bar manager here. Have been for the last ten years. Seems like a donkey’s age since I started workin’ here as a bar porter in
1930. I always remember because it was the year the R-101 airship crashed in France.”

  O’Reilly shook his head. It was as if he and Charlie had come in for a jar straight from Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in 1936. There was a great feeling of coming home. The place, the cadence and expressions of the Dublin man’s speech, and the familiarity of Diarmud, who had grown up with them. And O’Reilly liked it. He liked it very much.

  “But if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, that Kevin Haughey’s as thick as pig shite and he has a great lip for the stout,” Diarmud said, not bothering to lower his voice.

  “I heard that, Diarmud. I’m not feckin’ deaf, you know.”

  “Nah, you’re only a buck eejit, Kevin.” The barman grinned like an impish child, and O’Reilly had heard the affection hidden in the apparent insult. “I’d better get him his pint. I’ll maybe get a chance for a bit of craic with youse later, Docs.”

  “Away you go,” said O’Reilly, “and when you’ve a minute…”

  “Two pints,” Diarmud said. “Kevin’s not the only customer that I know what they drink … and the first two’ll be on me. I’ll bring menus when I bring your pints and—” Diarmud stopped. “Kitty O’Hallorhan. That’s who it is sitting with that other nice lady at the back. I knew she looked familiar. I reckon Kitty’s wit’ you, Fingal? Just like she was the night you all came in here after you’d passed your final exams. And I tell you, she was a fine bit of stuff back then—and she hasn’t changed a bit. Not one bit.” And with that he winked and left.

  “Regular rock of ages, our Diarmud,” O’Reilly said. “You could never be offended by that man. He’s got a heart of corn.” He looked down the room and said, “Come on, let’s join the girls.”

  As O’Reilly parked himself between Kitty and Pixie Greer, he said, “Afternoon, ladies. I see you have drinks.”

  “We’re both having a nice white Bordeaux,” Kitty said.

  Charlie sat at the opposite side of the table and simply grinned.

  “We’ve had a lovely time,” Kitty said, “haven’t we, Pixie?”