An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War (5 page)

They had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, to say nothing, and simply keep her under observation. Which was why Barry had reexamined her and had happily, as expected, found no change. O'Reilly knew that about 20 percent of women had been found to have fibroids of which they had been blissfully unaware. He had been convinced they were not putting Irene at any risk and saw no reason to worry her by telling her about it as long as it was asymptomatic and her doctors kept a regular eye on her.

“Don't mind me,” he said, grabbed the other patients' chair, swung it round, and sat legs astraddle, arms draped over its back. He waited while Jenny completed the standard social history concerning her age, twenty-eight; occupation, housewife; and religious persuasion.

Jenny went on to ask about illnesses in the patient's family, previous illnesses, had O'Reilly's information about her tonsils confirmed, and rightly sought details of the two normal pregnancies.

“Last thing, Mrs. Beggs.” Jenny swung in the swivel chair to face the patient. “I need to know about your periods.”

“The monthlies? You could set your watch by them, so you could. Every twenty-eight days, a few cramps on the first day or two and they last for five days.”

“And,” said Jenny, “when was your last one?”

Irene frowned and started to count on her fingers, then she smiled. “It was four days after them Frenchmen fired one of them statamelites intil outer space.”

O'Reilly kept a straight face. Ulster folks were prone to producing pronunciations of their very own, like “bisticks” or “biscakes,” both of which meant “biscuits.” “That was on the seventeenth. So your last was the twenty-first of February?” he asked.

“Aye.” She smiled. “I'm pretty sure I'm up the spout. See my Davy? See him?” She lowered her voice. “He only has to hang his britches at the end of the bed and I'm in the family way again. I was going til ask about it while I was here, but I wanted a smear too.”

Jenny must have been doing the necessary calculations while Mrs. Beggs rambled on about her ease in falling pregnant. “That means you are eight weeks pregnant now and due on November the twenty-eighth,” Jenny said.

“Aye. I guessed it would be about then.” She smiled. “We're looking forward to it. Davy and me loves weans, so we do.”

O'Reilly was trying to decide whether knowing the woman had a fibroid should force them to examine her now. Probably not unless it was causing pain, and she hadn't complained of any. “Now we know you're pregnant you'll need more than a Pap smear, Irene, but doing a full antenatal checkup for you now would take too long. I know Doctor Bradley doesn't want to keep her other patients waiting.” He looked at Jenny, who nodded.

“Could you come back in four weeks and we'll arrange for you to have both at once? I'm sure we can get Doctor Laverty to see you for the pregnancy, and Doctor Bradley, if you'd not mind…” Young doctors could be touchy about their spheres of influence. “I'm sure he's learned to do smears and could save you the trouble.”

Irene frowned. “Right enough, you could kill two birds with one stone, like.”

“We could,” O'Reilly said. He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You come and see us or send for us before that if you're worried about anything.”

“I will,” she said, “and thanks very much.” Irene rose. “Bye for now,” and let herself out.

He watched her go and as she did the sun as it moved around the firmament began blazing in through the bow windows.

He heard Jenny cough, turned, and could tell by the way she was frowning and shaking her head that he had ruffled her professional feathers by suggesting Barry take over the case.

“I can do antenatal visits perfectly well, you know, Doctor O'Reilly. I fail to see why we need to involve Doctor Laverty…”

“Whoa, Jenny.” O'Reilly held up his hand. Lord, he thought, preserve me from professional sensitivity. “You can indeed,” he said. “But there are two things you need to think about. First, you'll not be doing her ongoing care or delivery…”

“But I could. I'm fully trained.”

“Jenny, you're here to run a clinic, not run obstetric services.” O'Reilly kept his voice quite level.

“I suppose.” She sounded a bit less tense.

“And second, she has a small anterior fibroid that you don't know about and that Barry and I have both had the opportunity to examine.”

“Oh,” said Jenny, clearly distressed. “I should have—I could have—”

“No, you couldn't. You haven't seen her old notes because the patients don't make appointments in advance, and you'd no idea who was coming today and couldn't look at her medical history beforehand. And like an eejit I'd locked the filing cabinet after morning surgery the way I always do. You'd no reason to suspect anything much in a healthy young woman and reckoned you'd find out about anything unusual when you took her history for the well-woman form.”

“You're right. And if I'd been worried I'd have asked you to unlock the files,” Jenny said.

“I'm sure you would. Now look, because it's not going to make any difference to her care, it didn't really matter that you didn't know. And I didn't want to mention the fibroid in front of her. There's no reason to worry her.”

“Oh,” said Jenny. “I see. That makes sense.” She nodded, smiled. “Sorry, Fingal. Sometimes I can be a bit touchy.”

“I understand.” And he did. It would have been much harder for a young woman at medical school. She'd have had to fight her own battles, he was sure, but Jenny was not using that as an excuse now. He admired that. “Warm in here,” he said, and he wasn't only referring to the heat of the sun. “Let's get a bit of fresh air.” He went to the window and opened it. For the moment there was no traffic noise on Main Street and from the trees of the churchyard opposite a series of twice-repeated notes rang loudly and sweetly. “Hear that?” he said. “The song thrush is back.”

“It's a beautiful song,” Jenny said.

“It is that,” said O'Reilly, “and I'd be happy to listen to it all day, but I think, Doctor Bradley, perhaps I'd better go and get your next patient.”

“Thanks, Fingal,” she said quietly, and he knew what he was being thanked for.

As he left, the bird began again and the purity of its song reminded him of a caged bird in a hotel lobby, long ago.

5

Cry “Havoc!” and Let Slip the Dogs of War

Fingal had finished handing his suitcase and their coats to the cloakroom attendant. The caged budgerigar in the lobby of Belfast's Midland Hotel tweedled, pecked at its cuttlebone, and for no apparent reason announced, “Get up. Get up.”

“Poor wee thing,” Deirdre said as they passed it on their way to the hotel's palm court dining room.

“Indeed it is,” Fingal said. “And far from home. Its ancestors came from the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Madeira.”

“And you're going to be far from home too, Fingal,” she said.

He was. Nazi Germany's jackbooted armies, panzer columns, and squadrons of stukas with their “Jericho Trumpet” dive sirens screaming had smashed into Poland on September 1, 1939. The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany two days later. By early October, Poland had been carved up between Hitler and Stalin. The Russians, signatories of a secret pact with Germany, had taken the hapless Poles from the rear. Polish cavalry against tanks. By November, mobilization in Great Britain was still in full swing and Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, Royal Naval Reserve, was one of the hundreds of thousands being called up. Today, he would be leaving Ulster. His friend of Trinity days, Bob Beresford, had already volunteered and been accepted into the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Fingal held Deirdre's chair, saw that she was seated, took his own place, and as soon as the waiter arrived ordered a cream tea with assorted pastries for two. “I never thought I'd be wearing my bloody uniform again,” he said, glancing down at his undress jacket with its three groups of three gilt buttons and a single gold stripe on each cuff. “I told you, Deirdre, I'd only joined the Royal Navy Reserve for the money. Back then, in 1930, I was twenty-two and needed cash to go to medical school. And we really did think the Great War had been the war to end all wars. I reckoned joining up was money for old rope. Never
ever
expected to be called up.” He looked fondly at her.

“You look very handsome in blue, Fingal,” Deirdre Mawhinney said, her own blue eyes smiling.

The waiter reappeared and set Delft cups and saucers, a silver teapot, hot water jug, and sugar and milk on the table's pristine damask cloth, then placed a multiple-tiered silver cake stand between Deirdre and Fingal. She poured. He offered her a pastry. She took a scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam. He helped himself to a fig roll then sipped his tea.

She leant forward and covered his hand with her left one. It was warm on his and the little gold band with its tiny solitaire diamond encircled the third finger.

Fingal looked at it for perhaps a moment longer than necessary. It had been a bright, cloudless July day when he'd put it on her finger. While they'd walked hand in hand through Strickland's Glen and back to the car they'd happily made plans for a May wedding in 1940 when Fingal would have saved enough. Mister bloody Hitler and his gang of nasty Nazis—in his head Fingal pronounced it “Naaahzees,” the way Winston Churchill did—had put the kibosh on that, and he knew how much it was costing Deirdre to try to be cheerful on this their last time together until—until when?

She followed the direction of his gaze. “And we thought,” she said, “that when Mr. Chamberlain announced ‘Peace in our time' last year that things were going to settle down in Europe. I know the Japanese have been at it in China for years. Nobody knows how that's going to end. But it's an awfully long way away and doesn't really concern us, and yet…” She shrugged. “Not many people, except perhaps Mister Churchill, expected this horror to happen so close to home. Not again.” She took a small bite from her scone.

“True on you,” he said. “Too bloody true.” And because of the war today he must say good-bye—no, damn it, not good-bye,
au revoir
—to the girl he loved, and God alone knew when he'd see her again or the familiar things of his home in Ulster. He finished his fig roll and glanced around the palm court of the fashionable hotel, where other couples and family groups were taking afternoon tea. Several aspidistras, each in its brass pot, were arranged around the walls. The scent of expensive cigar smoke flavoured the air. As was expected in polite society when dining out, conversations were kept hushed. Over the low murmurings he heard a little boy in short pants and a Methodist College blazer yelling, “But I wanna Jaffa cake, so I do,” and the stern masculine admonition, “Little boys should be seen and not heard. You've already had one. Put it down, Patrick.”

Fingal grinned. He wasn't a little boy. There was a chocolate éclair on the top tier of the silver cake stand. It would go nicely with the Jacob's fig roll he'd just finished. He remembered how the girls who worked for the factory in Dublin had been called Jacob's Mice when he'd been a student there in the early '30s. It might be some time before he saw another chocolate éclair. He reached for it, put it on his plate, and finished his tea.

A string quintet serenading the patrons finished a sedate rendition of last year's hit “Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)” and moved into Franz Lehar's “Vilia,” a piece that Fingal found too saccharine. Afternoon teas, string bands in palm courts, school blazers, he thought. On the surface here in Ulster in November 1939 life appeared to be going on as usual, but already the shipyards at Harland and Wolff were on a wartime footing, with full slips and riveting guns hammering twenty-four hours a day. Short's Aircraft factories were turning out Sunderland flying boats for antisubmarine patrol, and despite the “Careless talk costs lives” posters drawn by a cartoonist known as Fougasse and scattered all through the city, he'd heard rumours that Short's was developing a four-engine bomber called the Stirling.

“Another bloody war,” he said, scowled, and took an enormous bite.

The British Expeditionary Force was in France on the Belgian border and Whitley and Wellington bombers from the Royal Air Force had dropped millions of propaganda leaflets over Germany. The Royal Navy was at war stations and many vessels were already escorting convoys bringing vital supplies to Britain. A group of cruisers hunted the German
Admiral Graf Spee,
which was loose somewhere in the vastness of the South Pacific, bent on commerce raiding.

“Still,” he said, “it's not as if I'm going to the far side of the world.” He knew enough not to mention his exact destination—“careless talk” and all that. “Scotland's not far.”

“It'll feel a world away to me.”

“I'll write,” he said, “but I know it's not the same.”

“No. It's not,” she said quietly. He noticed that her cup was empty. “More tea? Another scone?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you.” She looked away into the distance. “I've never been to Scotland. Maybe I could go there for a long weekend and you could get a few days off?”

“I honestly don't know,” he said. “Might be possible.” He'd received orders and a travel warrant from the Admiralty to report to his ship at the naval base of Greenock on the River Clyde in Scotland. The Home Fleet had been moved there from Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands after what they had thought was an impregnable anchorage had been penetrated by a U-boat. The old battleship
Royal Oak,
a twenty-five-year-old
Revenge
-class ship, was torpedoed and sunk on September 14 by the German U-Boat Ace Günther Prien. It had been a morale-shattering start to the war. “I'm sure I'll get a bit of leave and be able to get back to Ulster.”