“Thanks a million for everything, Doctors. And a safe drive home,” Reggie said as he closed the door of the farmhouse and O’Reilly and Barry headed for the Rover.
* * *
The two men were quiet as they headed back to Ballybucklebo. The car was still frigid inside, but some of the warmth and scent of the Kearneys’ turf fire and the closeness of the Kearney family seemed to have taken the edge off the iciness in the Rover. And O’Reilly, now assured that there was plenty of time for a side trip to the Duck, was driving at a more leisurely pace.
“Thank you, Fingal.”
“For what,” O’Reilly said nonchalantly, keeping his eyes on the road.
“For putting up with my grouchiness on the way in.”
O’Reilly nodded. “Apology accepted.” He let it hang to see if Barry wished to explain, although O’Reilly was damn sure he knew the underlying cause.
Barry sighed, shook his head, inhaled, and finally said, “I know it’s stupid, Fingal, but I still can’t stop worrying about Sue. Since you and I talked about it back in November I’ve tried to take your advice. I’ve managed to phone her twice, but you know what getting long-distance calls through to Europe is like. The calls have always been cheerful—she’s having a wonderful time—and her letters too, but…”
“But you still can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong?” O’Reilly could sympathise. He remembered only too well the frustration of wartime long-distance communication, when it could take more than two months to get a letter from home.
“Right. Something just feels wrong. As if there’s something I just can’t see. As if I’m peering through some kind of fog.”
“And is that feeling coming from Sue, or is it coming from inside you? I remember something my brother Lars quoted to me back in September. ‘It’s not love, but jealousy that’s blind.’”
Barry managed a weak smile. “Jealousy. You’re right. I am jealous and it’s colouring everything. All of my thoughts and my conversations and letters with Sue. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m still worried about Sue and that blasted Frenchman, Hamou. He took her to Aix-en-Provence last weekend to see the cathedral and they had lunch in some famous brasserie, the Trois Garçons or the Deux Garçons.”
“I’m no world’s authority on conducting illicit affairs, believe me,” O’Reilly said, “but do you suppose if, and perish the thought, Sue was being unfaithful, she’d keep telling you about this Hamou?”
“Nooo. But,” another sigh, “then why is she going on about him? Does it not occur to her that I might be worried? Does she take my love for granted so much that she doesn’t realize how this comes across? I don’t know, but seeing Lorna and her baby and Reggie grinning from ear to ear … Bloody hell, Fingal, I’m almost twenty-seven. I’ve had bad luck with girls, but one day, one day soon, I’d like to settle down. We’re supposed to be getting married in March when Sue comes home for good. I’d like to start a family. I’m worried, Fingal, and I get cross with myself. I know I should trust her. I know we’re engaged but,” he shrugged, pursed his lips, “I’m terrified about what she’s going to say when she gets here.”
“I understand.” O’Reilly felt a tiny pang still. “I never did,” he said quietly, “never did have a family.” Barry didn’t need to know why, but maybe one day O’Reilly would tell the lad. “And Kitty and I are just a bit over the hill for childbearing.” He laughed.
Barry managed a smile. “I dunno, you’re not Methuselah yet, and four years ago Charlie Chaplin was a daddy at seventy-three, and Pablo Picasso managed it at sixty-eight.”
O’Reilly decided to try to keep the mood light. He changed down and passed an exhaust-belching Bedford lorry that had chicken coops piled up in its back. “I think,” he said, “given Kitty is a tad—em—mature too you might have to invoke Abraham as well.”
“Abraham?”
“‘And Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said, shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear—’”
“Genesis, I believe,” Barry said, and laughed.
“Nice to have the old Barry back,” O’Reilly said with a smile, “but, frankly if I’d had a son as impertinent as you were before we got to the Kearneys’…” And in truth, Barry was the next best thing to having a son of O’Reilly’s own.
“What would you do … Dad?”
O’Reilly braked outside the Duck and parked the car. “What would I do?” He lowered his voice and nodded rapidly several times. “What would I do? I’d tell him I hear his pain, his worries, that I do understand. I’d tell him to hang on, that she’ll be here in Ulster in four days, I’d tell him that the five-pound bet is still open because I know I’d win. I just know.” He grasped Barry’s upper arm, squeezed and let it go before dismounting and, as Barry appeared on the other side of the car, said, “And I’d tell him, the first pint’s on him and maybe the second.” O’Reilly realised that there was prickling behind his eyelids and it nearly got worse when Barry looked O’Reilly straight in the eye across the frost-rimed roof of the car and said levelly, “I think, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, you’d have made a wonderful father.” Then he grinned. “But you’d have had to get used to buying the first round, and I think tonight’s as good a time as any to start learning.”
46
To Change What We Can
Gulls wheeled and dipped over the small boat–busy waters and the relentless sun shone on Alexandria’s palm trees, minarets, domes, houses, bazaars, souks, brothels, narrow lanes, and the broad, ever-bustling Corniche. It looked so peaceful—and would be until the enemy mounted another air raid.
“This report on Matapan makes impressive reading,” said Tom Laverty. “Sorry it’s taken me more than a month to get it to you, Fingal, but there’s been one or two little matters to occupy us.”
“Like the Germans coming to the support of the Eyeties in Greece and Rommel’s lot running amok in Libya,” said Fingal. “Tobruk under siege. Never a dull moment.”
The two men were sitting in comfortable chairs in the navigating officer’s cabin high up on the bridge structure. By late April, temperatures in Alex were in the mid-seventies and already both men’s clean white shirts were damp in patches. The view from the window was out over the big guns where their crews were carrying out maintenance work. Beneath the barrels of A guns, sailors swabbed the foredeck stretching past the breakwater. The huge chains that kept Warspite moored started from their cable lockers, ran to the bows, and down into the waters where her anchors, clawing the mud and seashells, held the great ship in Alexandria’s harbour.
“You miss most of the fun deep in the ship when we’re at action stations,” Tom said. “I can see why you need help keeping your war diary up to date. It can get pretty hairy up here; convoy runs to Malta, Luftwaffe units now based in Greece and Libya bombing the bejasus out of us, and us with bugger all air support. We chased Italian convoys and shelled Tripoli a couple of days ago.” Tom shrugged then sighed. “You won’t know, but A.B.C.’s getting worried. He doesn’t think we should have weakened the desert forces by sending troops to Greece. He told us this morning that the situation’s so bad now that we’ve no hope of beating the Germans there, and that the navy’s going to have to try to get fifty-five thousand of our men from the mainland to Crete. My guess is we’ll be doing another bloody Dunkirk from that island too before long.” He tried to force a smile, but Fingal could tell that Tom was concerned.
Fingal said, “We should heed what they say. ‘If you can’t take a joke…’”
“‘You shouldn’t have joined.’”
They both laughed, but it was wry laughter.
“I tell you,” said Tom, “I’m not sorry to be back in Alex. Maybe get a chance for a decent meal in the Cecil Hotel. And I could do with a couple of Blue Light Ales and a bit of peace and quiet.”
“Any word from Ulster?” Fingal glanced at a framed photo of a pretty woman carrying a six-month-old baby.
“Carol’s well and young Barry’s going from str
ength to strength. Roll on my home leave. I’d like to see my son while he’s still in short pants. I envy you those months in England, Fingal. I really do. How is Deirdre?”
Fingal smiled. “She’s well—I think, but the last letters I got earlier this month had been written in January. Those Cape of Good Hope convoys are too slow and too few.”
“I hear an airmail service is getting started,” Tom said. “The army are already getting letters that way.”
“We’re not,” Fingal said. “Damn it.”
“Their lordships in the Admiralty probably still favour carrier pigeons and semaphore, but our turn will come.”
“Can’t come soon enough for me,” said Fingal. He hesitated, then told himself, Why should you be embarrassed about confiding in Tom? He’s your friend. “Her most recent letter was dated January the twenty-third. She’s—she thinks she might, just might, be expecting.” Her normally regular-as-clockwork period had been ten days late on the day the letter had been written. He savoured the words in her letter once again.
I mustn’t get too excited, darling, but I do believe I have a part of the man I love to distraction growing in me now.
“Well done, Fingal O’Reilly, you salty old seadog,” Tom said, and his voice was filled with happiness. “That’s wonderful news.”
“It is, isn’t it? I literally danced a jig when I read her letter. Swore to myself to tell nobody.” But the news had been bubbling in him like steam in a cylinder and the safety valve had just let go. “But I’m glad I told you, old friend.”
“So am I, Fingal. So am I. And she’s due in…?”
She’d be nearly four months now, but he had no way of knowing. “I reckon late September,” Fingal said, “and, I don’t mean to be ungracious, Tom, but I am a doctor. I know how many miscarriages happen in the first three months. It’s pretty early yet. Could we hold the celebration until we hear she’s got past three months? I don’t want to tempt Providence.”
“All right. We’re all the same, us bloody Irish, aren’t we? Superstitious as hell.”
“We are,” said Fingal, fingering the pipe in his pocket that Deirdre had said the sidhe had put a protective spell on.
“But let’s have a drink anyway,” Tom said. “Let’s drink to A.B.C.’s pasting of the Eyeties at Matapan. I’ve got the facts here.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Listen.”
Fingal unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and opened his now dog-eared war diary. “Fire away,” he said.
“We damaged one brand-new battleship, sank three—three, mark you—heavy cruisers, Pola, Fiume, and Zara, and two destroyers. They shot down one torpedo bomber. Do you want the casualty figures too? We lost three men on the plane.”
And the Italian losses were probably in the thousands, Fingal thought. He’d never forget seeing those blazing ships being pounded to their deaths, vast chunks flying into the night sky like the pieces in some malevolent ogres’ game of tiddlywinks, nor hearing the next morning about the utterly confused melée of opposing destroyer forces that had taken place during the night after the main battle was over. “I’m sure they were pretty grim,” Fingal said. “No. No thanks.” He hated to think of comparing our losses to theirs like some kind of sporting contest where whoever collected more bodies won the cup. “Dammit, Tom, war’s not a seven-a-side rugby match, and for what?” Every single death had been a young man, not an abstract point on a scoreboard. Fingal quoted,
“But what good came of it at last?”
Quoth Little Peterkin.
“Why that I cannot tell,” said he
“But ’twas a famous victory.”
“Remember learning that at school? Robert Southey. ‘Battle of Blenheim’?”
Tom nodded and said, “But I can’t spout it like you. And what’s come of Matapan is more than just a ‘famous victory,’ Fingal. It’s a complete shift in the naval balance of power in the Med in our favour.” Tom wandered to the windows. He pointed to where two other battlewagons swung at anchor. “All our big boys are still intact. Mussolini’s had three of his sunk at Taranto, then one badly damaged by us at Calabria. Now add Matapan.”
“I’d hope they’d learn. Stop getting their sailors killed for nothing,” Fingal said.
“Well said, and if it’s any consolation, our side behaved like gentlemen after it was all over. The Italian skipper tried to scuttle the Pola, but she was still afloat. Our destroyer Jervis went alongside, put a gangway across, and rescued two hundred and eighty-five men. By morning our ships had pulled another nine hundred out of the water, and we’d’ve got more if the Jerries hadn’t tried to bomb our ships. Even then A.B.C. radioed the position of the survivors to the Italians before we buggered off out of range of the bombers. Gave free passage to a hospital ship.”
“He’s a humane man, Cunningham,” Fingal said, “and I’m no pacifist, I just…”
“Hippocrates and Mars aren’t such a good mix?”
“That’s about it.” Fingal rose. “Anyway, thanks for the details. Someday when this lunacy is over and we’re all back home in Ulster, Deirdre and I will have you and Carol round for an evening, and I’ll fish this out,” he held the notebook high, “and we’ll do the ‘old men reminisce’ act.” He closed his pen. “But for now I want to go to my cabin, write a few letters.”
“See you at six,” Tom said, “and the first one’s on me.”
* * *
“There,” Fingal said, and sealed the final envelope and added the missive to a pile on his desk. Lord knew how long it would take, but in the fullness of time Ma—and he’d been neglecting her dreadfully—Lars, Angus Mahaddie, Marge Wilcoxson, and Bob Beresford all would have letters from him. So would Flip Dennison, the burned pilot who had kept his promise to stay in touch and who in his last letter said he was recovering very well. And last, but most certainly not least, Deirdre would be hearing from him. He did the letters up with a red rubber band.
He tried to ignore the all-pervasive smell of fuel oil, the humming of machinery. The thrumming of air intake fans underscored the usual sounds of metal on metal as sailors chipped rust, and the occasional bawled order by petty officers. Fingal had been back on Warspite for nearly three months and had slipped so easily into the shipboard atmosphere it was as if he’d never left. As if the time with Deirdre, the flat at Alverstoke, even his time at Haslar, had all been a dream.
He grabbed his cap and picked up the letters. He’d drop them off at the outgoing correspondence office on his way to the mess and the drink with Tom. But first he intended to get a bit of fresh air. He closed his cabin door, followed a corridor, then went up a companionway heading aft until he arrived in the open air beside X turret.
A gunnery CPO and—he squinted into a flash of sunlight—yes, it was Alf Henson, were coming the other way. “Afternoon, Chief,” Fingal said. He was eager to talk to the younger man, but he couldn’t realistically expect any conversation from Henson. Regulations insisted that the petty officer would do the talking unless Fingal asked a direct question of the junior rating. “Henson. A word.”
The CPO and leading seaman halted and came to attention.
“Stand easy,” Fingal said. “How are you, Henson?”
“Fine, sir.”
“’E’s a darn sight better than that, sir,” the CPO said. “We’ve just come from our gunnery officer, Mister Randall, ’im what took over from Mister Wallace ’oo left the same time as you, sir. Leading seaman ’Enson ’ere’s getting a mention in despatches and ’e’s up for promotion next go round.”
“Well done, Henson,” O’Reilly said, and thought, That’s a step closer to getting married to your Elsie. Good man.
“You saved Formidable at Matapan, didn’t you, Alf?” the CPO said.
Fingal was intrigued. “You did what?”
Henson glanced at the CPO then looked down.
The chief said, “You remember, sir, that after the battlewagons had pasted the wop cruisers all ’ell broke loose with both sides’ destroyers goi
ng at it hammer and tongs?”
“I knew something serious was going on,” said Fingal, “but couldn’t see anything from my station.”
“Well, sir, old Formidable, wot we nicknamed ‘The Ship that Launched Herself’—”
“I was in Ballybucklebo when that happened at Harland and Wolff in August 1939.” He remembered because it was a month before he’d proposed to Deirdre. “A supporting cradle collapsed and she took off by herself. Of course,” he shrugged and turned his palms, “we built the Titanic too.”
Both seamen laughed at the black humour.
“Anyway, sir, the night was black as old Nick’s hatband, we could see sweet Fanny Adams. The aircraft carrier’d pulled out to starboard. She was about five miles away when our searchlights caught her. Our crew hadn’t fired a shot and we was all keyed up and raring to go. We got our guns dead on target when Henson yells, “Mister Randall, that’s Formidable. Don’t shoot, sir. Don’t shoot.’ You should’ve seen the officer’s face. ‘Well done, Henson,’ says ’e, and Mister Randall ain’t one to give out praise for free.”
Fingal said, “I don’t like to think what our six-inch shells would have done—”
Bugles blared from Tannoys and the warning bells set up their jangling clamour. An air raid. Action stations. Not again, for Christ’s sake. Please. Not in the harbour.
The CPO and Henson led Fingal in the dash for’ard, the gunners heading for their six-inchers on this deck and he for the medical distribution station three decks down. As he ran, he heard the clamour of the anchored ships’ antiaircraft ordnance, the thrumming of German aeroengines, the shrieks of falling bombs. From one deck above, Warspite’s four-inch AA guns bellowed at the foe, and the soft scents of the Levant—palm oil and coffee, animal droppings and garlic, cumin and kumquats—were strangled by the obscene stench of bursting high explosive.