An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

  “We have indeed,” said Pixie, a slight, fair-haired woman of medium height whose sharp retroussé nose and laughing green eyes had probably been the source of her nickname. “Kitty knows a great deal about painting and she was able to tell me all kinds of things. You really brought the exhibition alive.”

  Kitty smiled and lowered her head. “I’d glad you enjoyed it.”

  “The exhibition was to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising,” Pixie said. “There were two paintings that I really liked, Kilmainham Jail by Maurice MacGonigal and Go Lovely Rose by John Keating. Kitty says his best painting is called Men of the South and is in a gallery in Cork.”

  “She knows her Irish artists,” O’Reilly said, “and she’s a dab hand with a brush and a palette knife too.” O’Reilly was rewarded with a smile from Kitty. “She’s exhibited at the RHA, but I’ll bet she didn’t tell you that.” Kitty had always been one for hiding her light under a bushel, and while he wanted everyone to know what a talented woman she was, he also loved her modesty.

  “I didn’t know that,” Pixie said, and there was admiration in her voice.

  “Fingal,” Kitty said, and shook her head. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  A discreet cough announced Diarmud’s arrival.

  “Pints,” he announced, “and menus.” He set the glasses in front of the men and handed the menus around. “It’s not changed much since you was here last, gents,” he said.

  “Lovely,” O’Reilly said. “I’m so hungry I could … come on, Diarmud, tell us what a real Jackeen would say.”

  Diarmud hesitated and looked at Pixie and Kitty.

  “It’s all right, Diarmud, the ladies are broad-minded.”

  Diarmud shrugged and said, “Take your pick from ‘I’m so hungry I could eat an oul’ one’s, ahem, derrière through a blackthorn bush,’ or the same bit of the anatomy of a farmer through a tennis racquet.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “I’ll be back for your orders.” Diarmud left.

  “Sláinte,” said O’Reilly, and took a drink from his pint.

  “Cheers.” Everyone else raised their glasses.

  “Mother’s milk,” he said, wiping the white froth from his upper lip. “There’s no Guinness in the world, not even ones poured up north, to compare with a well-pulled Dublin pint. Mind you, it only cost ten pence in 1931.”

  “Fingal,” said Kitty, and he heard a serious tone to her voice. “May I ask you a favour?”

  “Anything.”

  “You probably didn’t notice when you came in, but Doctor Fitzpatrick’s here. He’s sitting all by himself and he looks forlorn. He’s over there to your right, but don’t look now.”

  “Serves the gobsh—” The way Kitty frowned and slitted her eyes cut O’Reilly off short.

  “He was in your year. And he practises in the Kinnegar, very near us.”

  “And you think we should ask him to join us?”

  “Wellllll…” She inclined her head.

  When Kitty had that tone in her voice, O’Reilly would have handed her his heart on a silver platter—and asked if she’d like salt and pepper with it.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll go and invite him, if that’s all right with everyone else…?”

  “Go ahead,” said Pixie and Charlie together.

  “But if Diarmud comes back I’d like steak and kidney and chips.” O’Reilly rose, glanced right, and saw the man. He had a book in one hand, his pince-nez on the tip of his nose and a small sherry on his table for two.

  O’Reilly walked over to the table. “Hello, Ronald,” he said. He knew the man hated to be called by his second name, Hercules, which, considering his aesthenic build, was rather overstating the case.

  “O’Reilly?” By the way he was frowning it seemed as if the man were perplexed.

  “We saw you were all alone and wondered if you’d care to join us?” O’Reilly noticed that the book was a well-thumbed How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

  “Gosh,” said Fitzpatrick, picking up the book quickly and tucking it into the side pocket of his blazer. He whipped off his pince-nez and looked up at O’Reilly. “Golly. That would be quite lovely.” His weak pale eyes looked down and then up again when he said in a whisper, “I was feeling a bit, well, a bit—”

  O’Reilly sensed the next word was going to be “lonely” and that the man was having trouble spitting it out. So he forestalled him by saying, “Come on then, and bring your drink.”

  * * *

  “That hit the spot,” O’Reilly said, looking wistfully at his now empty plate, save for a few flakes of pastry and streaks of gravy. The steak and kidney, which had been made with a pastry shell instead of a ceramic pie dish, was very nearly up to the standard of his housekeeper’s. The cooking of Kinky Auchinleck, who had been Kinkaid, was the yardstick by which he measured every other chef.

  “I think,” said Kitty, “it’s a good thing it wasn’t a Willow pattern plate. You’d have scoffed the weeping willows and pagodas too.”

  Everyone laughed. And he knew it was because she and Fitzpatrick had been discussing matters Oriental that she had come up with that image. “Would anybody like tea? Coffee? Dessert?”

  “Tea would be nice,” Fitzpatrick said. “If that’s all right?”

  Charlie and the two women nodded.

  “I’ll go and ask for a pot and five cups,” Charlie said, rose, and headed for the bar.

  O’Reilly sat back contentedly and looked at the little company. Perhaps the book Ronald Hercules Fitzpatrick had been studying had influenced its reader. He had been quite reasonable company, and Kitty had played and was still playing a superb part in drawing the man out. When she’d asked, “And do you have any hobbies, Ronald?”—titles having been dispensed with very early in the meal—he had blushed and said, “I collect netsuke.”

  O’Reilly had no idea what Fitzpatrick was talking about. He had a recollection of the P. G. Wodehouse character Gussie Fink-Nottle, whose hobby was collecting newts. O’Reilly was choking back a laugh at the resemblance between Ronald and Gussie and wondering if netsuke was also some kind of amphibian, when Kitty said, “Which do you prefer, katabori or men-netsuke?”

  “I have a collection of anabori and obihasami, katabori.” To which O’Reilly had to ask, “I had two—but the wheels fell off. Do you know what these two are blethering on about, Pixie?”

  She shook her head.

  “Please explain, Ronald,” Kitty said.

  Deftly done, O’Reilly thought.

  The man had smiled. “I hope I’ll not be boring, but in seventeeth-century Japan, men wore kimonos which had no pockets. Anything they wanted to carry was put into a container and suspended from their belt or obi by a cord. The little toggle at the end of the cord for fixing to the belt was carved from any of a number of materials like ivory or boxwood, boars’ tusks.”

  O’Reilly was surprised that a dry old stick like Fitzpatrick could be interested in something so arcane.

  “Fascinating,” Pixie said. “I’d never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it’s more than twenty years since the war and it’s all right now to be interested in Japanese things again.”

  O’Reilly, who reckoned he had more reason than any at the table to resent the old enemies, said, “Why not. The war’s in the past. Life is for living.”

  Kitty patted his hand and said, “Well said, Fingal.” She smiled and continued, “Some of the netsuke are exquisitely beautiful. I learned about them in a course I took years ago. They’re highly collectable and quite valuable—if you know what to look for. And clearly, Ronald, you do.”

  “I am very much an amateur,” he said, and lowered his eyes before looking up and saying, “But I appreciate their beauty.”

  “What got you interested, Ronald?” Charlie had asked.

  Fitzpatrick, who by now had opened up like a blooming rose, said, “My parents were missionaries to Japan, and I was schooled there. I left in May 1931 to
come to Dublin so I could go to Trinity in September. My mother’s sister Beatrice lived in Rathmines. She’s getting on now, but I went to visit her yesterday, before the reception.”

  Kitty looked long and hard at Fitzpatrick before asking, “What happened to your parents? Do you mind me asking?”

  The man’s Adam’s apple oscillated furiously, he shook his head, whipped off his pince-nez, put them back, then said, in a studiously steadied voice, “I don’t mind. I had a letter from Mummy written in September of that year—1931. Japan had invaded Manchuria. My parents thought war with the West was inevitable, and they were going to try to get out through Hong Kong…”

  O’Reilly realised that they must not have made it. He put a hand on Ronald’s shoulder and said quietly, “It must have been hard on you. You were very young.”

  The man nodded, pursed his lips. “It was. I never got another letter.”

  That struck a chord with O’Reilly. He saw the glint behind the pince-nez and squeezed Ronald’s shoulder, but said nothing. There were no words, he knew.

  “Thank you, Fingal,” Fitzpatrick said.

  The conversation was less lively after that, and now here was Charlie with a tray carrying the teapot, silver jug of boiling water, milk, sugar, and cups. He set them on the table more or less at random, with the water jug near Fitzpatrick.

  “I’ll be mother,” Pixie said. “Who takes what?”

  O’Reilly demurred, but everyone else had a cup according to their taste. Fitzpatrick took his without milk or sugar, as the Japanese would.

  It wasn’t until Charlie asked for a second cup that O’Reilly had his second surprise of the afternoon.

  “Pass the hot water jug, please, Fingal,” Pixie said.

  “Jasus. That’s bloody hot.” O’Reilly flapped his fingers then blew on the tips. The silver jug’s heat seemed only a few degrees lower than the inside of a working blast furnace.

  Despite that, Ronald lifted it as if it had been filled with ice water and slowly passed it across.

  O’Reilly caught Charlie’s eye and saw his friend raising an eyebrow before saying, “Did you not find it hot, Ronald?”

  Fitzpatrick, who had by now collected himself, shook his head. “Temperature doesn’t bother me.”

  O’Reilly saw blisters on the man’s fingertips. Dear God. He couldn’t feel that he was being burned. Loss of temperature appreciation and an inability to feel pain were symptoms of a number of nervous diseases, none of them trivial. He looked again at Charlie, who inclined his head and frowned. He must have noticed it too. And Charlie was a neurosurgeon.

  Fitzpatrick was a doctor. He should recognise that he was sick, but perhaps, like many physicians, he refused to believe that illness could strike him and denied its existence. But those symptoms were serious. O’Reilly glanced again at Charlie, who made a rapid shaking of his head.

  O’Reilly’d understood. Let matters pass—for now. But he and Charlie would discuss what to do as soon as they could. “Right,” O’Reilly said. “I don’t want to rush anybody. It’s been a lovely lunch. Thanks for joining us, Ronald, and for the lesson in net…?” He deliberately stumbled over the word.

  “Netsuke,” Ronald said, and smiled.

  “Netsuke,” O’Reilly said. “Now if you’ll all excuse us…” He rose. “Kitty has an overwhelming desire to visit Clerys department store on O’Connell Street…” And I have a similar desire to get her alone back in our hotel room, he thought. “And then we’ll all need to change into our formal gear again. We’ll see you in the foyer about six thirty.”

  “See you then,” Charlie said.

  “Thank you,” Fitzpatrick said.

  Both men rose when Kitty stood.

  “Come on, then,” O’Reilly said to Kitty, and offered her his hand. “Next stop Clerys, so you can buy whatever you need to look beautiful tonight.” He mock growled and said, “And, I’ll have to look like a flaming naval officer—again.”

  4

  England’s Green and Pleasant Land

  Fingal lengthened his still-rolling stride and turned onto a privet-hedge-lined lane at the end of which was a cottage right out of the pages of Country Life. Behind the cottage, a sward swept down to the pollard willows along the edges of the Wallington River as it ran toward Fareham Lake. With metronomic regularity a man was casting a fly into the river’s limpid waters. Farther downstream, a pair of swans looked haughtily at their own reflections.

  Fingal stopped and took a deep breath. The warm September air was filled with the sweet smell of hay. A flock of sheep grazed nearby, woolly puffballs on a green carpet. In a distant field, a girl in what looked like the uniform of the Land Army was driving a horse-drawn reaper, making hay. The reaper’s blades clattered in the distance and he could hear the song of a thrush rising above it.

  A local call to Mrs. Wilcoxson last night had been greeted with pleasure and she’d said she’d be delighted to see him today—for lunch perhaps?

  Fingal fiddled with the knot of his tie and smoothed his uniform. From behind a church with a squat Norman spire came the lowing of cattle, the sound drifting in the still air. It was a picture captured in a line from William Blake’s “Jerusalem.” “England’s green and pleasant land.” The contrast struck Fingal with a force he hadn’t been prepared for: the pastoral beauty of the countryside and the dismal shades of London’s grey and black, the stinking filth of the wanton destruction he’d seen yesterday.

  For a brief moment Fingal wondered where his old Warspite colleagues were, could feel the sway of the great ship beneath him, but the lowing of the cattle brought his thoughts back to the present. He was in Hampshire, a few short miles from the English Channel. He straightened his cap.

  So, he thought, surveying the picture-perfect cottage. This was the home of Surgeon Commander Richard Wilcoxson and his wife, Marjorie. Three first-floor latticed windows jutted from beneath a thatched roof. A varnished wooden door with a massive black metal ring for a handle was offset to the right side of the whitewashed front wall and was flanked by three windows, one to its right, the others to its left. The window frames were all painted bright red. A yellow climbing rose ran up a trellis on one side of the door. Its scent mingled with that of the newly mown hay. On the other side a wooden plaque read TWIDDY’S COTTAGE 1741.

  England was a place of great antiquity, of deep roots, hallowed traditions. A place worth fighting for. How dare the bloody Nazis from their upstart Third Reich come and bomb Britain’s ancient treasures, its stoic people? He surprised himself at the intensity of his emotion, shook his head, and rapped on a brass knocker.

  “Coming,” a voice called.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman of medium height. She wore her silver hair in a chignon, instantly reminding Fingal of the housekeeper, Mrs. Kincaid, at Number One Main Street back in Ballybucklebo. Behind spectacles, blue eyes shone, and laugh lines spun webs at their corners. Mrs. Wilcoxson’s voice was soft, cultured. “You must be Surgeon Lieutenant O’Reilly. Richard has told me a great deal about you. All very good.” She chuckled. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Wilcoxson?” Fingal said. “And please, call me Fingal. I’m very much off duty.”

  She wore a well-cut grey tweed suit and he noticed a small gold pin in the shape of a sheepdog on the shawl collar. A single string of pearls was round her neck. Peeking out of one of the side patch pockets of her jacket was what appeared to be a small baby bottle.

  “Do come in, take off your cap and coat, and unsling that ridiculous gas mask.”

  “Thank you,” he said, stooping under the door lintel—men had been shorter in the eighteenth century—and entered a hall floored by flagstones. Black beams supported the ceiling above and dark wood panelling covered the walls.

  She hung up his things and ushered him into a long, bright room. The far end was arranged as the dining area, and to his left a large fireplace was filled with logs on black andirons. Above it hung a print of Turner’s
The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up. 1838.

  An English sheepdog lying in front of the fire raised its shaggy head and peered at Fingal through its eye-obscuring fringe. It made a questioning “Arf?”

  Marjorie Wilcoxson bent and stroked its head. “This is Lieutenant O’Reilly,” she said. “Say hello, Admiral Benbow.”

  The dog sat up, raised one paw, threw back its head, and—Fingal could only describe the noise as yodelling.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” she said briskly. “That will do very well.”

  The dog flopped back into a woolly heap on the hearthrug.

  “Richard has named all the dogs for admirals,” she said. “We’ve a couple of foxhounds out in their kennels. They’re Nelson and Drake. Mind you, we don’t usually use their ranks. We don’t want them getting ideas above their station.”

  Fingal had heard of how ditsy the English upper classes could become about animals, and several sardonic rejoinders came to his mind, but he decided to let the moment pass. “So I’m well and truly outranked,” was all he said instead, and laughed.

  “Only by the dogs. We’ve a Shetland pony mare called Boadicea—I named her. Tony has clearly outgrown her, but I can’t bear to part with the little beast. And last week I found three baby hedgehogs whose mother was killed by a fox. I’ve named them Riddle, Mee, and Ree. They’re living quite comfortably in a cardboard box by the kitchen range.” She reached into her pocket, drew out the baby bottle, and looked at it. “Ah, I’d wondered where that had got to. I’m bottle-feeding them.”

  That explains the bottle, he thought, and smiled. “Animals are good company. It can be lonely when one’s family is so far away.”

  “Quite so, Fingal,” she said.

  She led him to one of two comfortable rose-patterned chintz armchairs separated by a side table. They were arranged to face French windows looking out over a tiny formal English garden in front of an extensive vegetable plot. “One is supposed to ‘Dig for victory,’” she said. “It was once all flowers out there—I do so love gardening—but needs must when the devil drives. My gardenias and dahlias are all gone…”