Fingal nearly choked on his first mouthful of soup.
“Really, Elly,” Michelle said, “you’ll embarrass Fingal. Pay no attention to her. Elly Simpkins is the greatest tease in Alexandria. And she’s daft about Chris and the boys.”
“You and Chris have children…” Fingal was tempted to say “Mrs. Simpkins” to restore a little formality to the conversation, but instead stuck to “Elly.”
“Two perfectly rambunctious sprogs,” she said. “Martin’s nine and Geoffrey’s eight. They both board at a frightfully expensive prep school back in England and spend the hols with my mummy and daddy.”
“You must miss them,” John said.
“I do, but Chris needs me here and it’s always been the fate of us British in foreign parts to send the kids home for schooling. You get used to it.” She smiled at Fingal. “Chris’s Touareg’s at sea quite a lot too. It does rather leave one with time on one’s hands, if you know what I mean. One can get a trifle bored.” She sipped her wine.
I’m bloody well sure I know what you mean, he thought.
Hanif began setting dishes for the fish course on the table. “I’ve prepared some samak makly fried local fish. The grouper was still alive when I bought it in the souk this morning and there is also some calamari.”
“Thank you, Hanif,” Elly said.
Fingal’s nose was assailed by the most wondrous aromas.
“Help yourself, everybody,” Elly said.
Fingal waited for Michelle to serve herself then took a portion of fish and several pieces of calamari, which he knew to be squid. The flesh of the fried grouper was white and flaky with a delicate flavour and contrasted nicely with the rubbery squid. “This is wonderful,” he said.
“Glad you’re enjoying it, Fingal,” Elly said, “and there’s lots more to come.”
Little was said as the fish course was devoured.
“Now,” said Elly, “would anybody like to smoke before the next course?”
“Funny isn’t it?” Michelle said. “The very idea used to be so infra dig, but ever since we found out Queen Elizabeth does, it’s all the rage now.”
John offered his Player’s.
Fingal shook his head. “Anybody mind a pipe?”
“Go right ahead,” Elly said, helping herself to a cigarette and fitting it into an ivory cigarette holder.
“Just like Marlene Dietrich,” John said.
“Not a bit,” Elly said, and let go a blue puff. “I’ve never boxed in a Turkish trainer’s gym in Germany, and I much prefer men to women.” She smiled at Fingal.
“Rumour has it,” Michelle said, “she had an affair with James Stewart.”
“Now,” said Elly, “there’s a boy whose slippers I’d not mind finding under ‘the field.’”
“You are incorrigible, Elly,” Michelle said, and laughed. “Pay no attention to her, Fingal. She’d flirt with her shadow. Everyone knows Elly’s a one-man woman.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, but he wondered, and asked himself, did he really want to find out if it were untrue?
As Fingal sat quietly letting the small talk pass him by, Hanif began bringing in more dishes. Each was covered by a silver dome. He cleared the dirty plates on his return trips to the kitchen and finished by placing a decanter of red wine in the centre of the table beside the vase of Egyptian lotus flowers.
“Shall I pour the claret?” John asked.
“Please do,” Elly said. “It should be passable. It’s a Chateau Lafite Rothschild.”
Typical English understatement, Fingal thought.
“Now,” said Elly, stubbing out her smoke, “main course time,” and lifted the first dome. “Kebda Iskandarani,” she said. “Seasoned fried liver.”
“It smells delightful,” Michelle said.
“And that’s deep-fried falafel,” John said when Elly lifted the lid from a plate piled with brown balls. “Ground chickpeas if you’ve not had it before, Fingal.”
“Pretty much all new to me,” Fingal said, smiled, finished his second glass of white, and sipped his red. It was exquisite.
“And those are lamb kebabs,” Michelle said. “They should be cooked over charcoal, but Hanif does something magical in the kitchen.”
“He’s a gem without price,” Elly said. “Now, this is your vegetable course,” and she uncovered a tureen. “Mashi, which is seasoned rice stuffed into aubergines and put in this pot and covered with lemon juice.”
Fingal’s tummy rumbled. “It certainly beats naval cooking. It’s my first real taste of the local cuisine. Thank you, Elly.” He swallowed more claret.
She inclined her head to him, smiled, and said, “Now everybody tuck in.”
As plates were being filled, John said, “Just be grateful you’re having your first taste in a civilised house. A few of us went out into the desert and were entertained by an Abadan sheik.”
“Abadan?” Fingal said.
“They’re a Bedouin tribe,” Elly said.
“I see.” Fingal bit into a mouthful of the liver. Wonderful. Perhaps if he got the recipe from Hanif, Mrs. Kincaid would be able to make the dish. Doctor Flanagan’s housekeeper in Ballybucklebo was a good cook and Fingal fully intended to return to the practice post-war.
“They invited us to dinner—the Beduoins are renowned for their hospitality,” John said. “You all sit in a huge tent on carpets round an enormous circular brass plate piled high with rice. Everybody uses their right hand to indulge themselves in a kind of lucky dip into the rice. It is considered polite to give delicacies to guests and very impolite to refuse.” He paused.
Fingal had just pulled a piece of lamb from the kebeb skewer and popped it in his mouth.
“I truly cannot recommend sheep’s eyeballs,” John said in a deadpan voice. “Not one bit.”
For the second time that night, Fingal nearly choked on his food. He looked up to see Elly smiling at him and felt a pressure on his foot, then his ankle. “I’m not sure I’d like eyeballs,” she said, “but I do think it is polite for the host or hostess to offer the best the house has to offer.”
Perhaps it was the whiskey and three glasses of wine, perhaps it was the faint taste of her perfume, the pressure on his ankle, the invitation in her voice, or a simple physical longing, but before he could stop them the words were out. “I believe, John, you did say it would be considered impolite to refuse.” And as he spoke, he lifted his other foot and placed it on top of Elly’s.
29
Scare Me with Thy Tears
O’Reilly took the stairs of Number One two at a time. He had come back from Belfast after another meeting with Charlie and Cromie to sort out more last-minute arrangements for the reunion at Dublin’s Trinity College and Shelbourne Hotel in September. Barry was on call and downstairs in his quarters, and Jenny out with her young lawyer, Terry Baird.
He charged into the upstairs lounge. “I’m home, love,” he said, heading for the decanter of Jameson on the sideboard. “How was your day?”
Kitty had pulled a chair into the bay of one of the bow windows and was sitting with her back to him, apparently enjoying the view over the church steeple, the village, on over Belfast Lough, and beyond. She half-turned to him and said, “It could have been better.” Her voice was flat. She turned back to face the window.
He crossed the room, ignoring Lady Macbeth, who was curled up in front of an unlit fire, and stood behind Kitty, hands on her shoulders, gently massaging. “One of those ‘Mother said there’d be days like this’ days, pet? Nursing can be pretty tough sometimes. I know. Did you lose a patient?”
She looked up and he saw a tear slip down her cheeks as if in a hurry to get away and hide its embarrassment. Her eyes were red so she must have been crying, and that wasn’t like Kitty. Whatever was troubling her was a damn sight worse than the way she’d said, “It could have been better.”
“Darling, what’s wrong?” O’Reilly moved round the chair and hunkered down in front of her as he would have with a f
rightened child. He clasped one of her hands in both of his and looked straight into her grey eyes.
She said quietly, “Fingal, I got a letter today…” Her voice trailed off then she said, “It gave me quite a shock.”
“A letter?” O’Reilly frowned. Whatever was in it must have indeed been upsetting, but why had it taken Kitty until now to weep? The post was delivered in the morning.
“It had been addressed to the old Bostock House nurses’ home on the grounds of the Royal. I used to live there during and after the war, before the Broadway Towers flats opened a couple of years ago. All mail for the hospital site goes to a central mail room. Someone there had used her head, knew me by sight, guessed who it was for, and brought it to Ward 21 just before I left for home. The letter had a Spanish stamp.”
“Spanish? From someone you knew in Tenerife?” O’Reilly frowned.
She swallowed and nodded. “Sort of. I didn’t open it until I got home. I’d just finished reading it as you came in.”
He could see two light blue sheets of air mail notepaper clutched in her right hand. Perhaps one of her colleagues from the orphanage where she’d worked during the Spanish Civil War or one of the orphans, who would be in their thirties now, was in trouble? “Do you want to tell me what it’s about?” he said.
She nodded, pulled a hanky from her sweater’s sleeve with her free hand, dried her eyes, blew her nose, and straightened her shoulders. “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s about a past that I thought was long forgotten—” She took a deep breath. “—but it’s not.”
O’Reilly frowned but kept his voice low. “Kitty,” he said, “I love you. If something’s bothering you I want to know what it is.” He squeezed her hand, and waited.
“And I love you, Fingal. I’d not hurt you for the world. It’s a long story and I’m not particularly proud of it. But what’s done is done.”
The backs of O’Reilly’s knees were starting to hurt, but he didn’t want to stand up. Not yet. Give her time, he told himself.
“When I left you in 1936 I was hurt, angry. I hid in my work. The children needed love, I did too, and looking after them filled my days and my nights when I was on duty. San Blas, where the orphanage was, is on the southeast corner of Tenerife. It was only a tiny place. There wasn’t much to do when I was off duty.” She looked him in the eye. “There was a fishing village, Los Abrigos, about a mile away. I used to walk there along the coast. It was such a pretty little place with the houses painted in bright colours and the fishing boats all reds and blues. There was a good fish restaurant … it was always busy, overlooking the harbour…” She managed a smile. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had bocarones?”
He returned her smile. “You’d be right.”
“They’re filletted anchovies pickled in vinegar, them and a plate of gueldes—you’d have had them here as whitebait, deep-fried herring fry straight from the sea—and a glass of local vino blanco…” She sighed.
O’Reilly wondered where all this was leading, heard one knee creak, but hung on waiting. He sensed that the preamble was how Kitty was readying herself to tell him what she must. She was like a wild duck that had been offered bread, swimming from side to side, drawing up the courage finally to dart forward and take it.
“… and some of the sunsets over the Atlantic. I’ve never seen anything like them.” She stared at the floor. “I’d been in Tenerife for a year, still missing you, but perhaps not quite as much as at first.”
And although that wounded O’Reilly’s pride, he recognised that it should not. Their romance had been well and truly over. She had been free to do exactly as she saw fit. He was able to say, “I understand.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, I was in Los Abrigos. I’d finished my meal and was having a second glass of wine. I remember it so clearly. The sky was all reds and scarlets shot through with chrome yellow and topped by these little dove-grey clouds. The sky above them was velvety and there was one tiny star alive.” She smiled and made a huhing noise before saying, “I know it must sound corny to you, Fingal, but the owner of the restaurant used to sing and play a guitar. That night he was singing a Mexican song, “Granada” …”
And something important happened, O’Reilly knew. He knew. People rarely remember any given moment in such minute detail unless, unless there’s a damn good reason. And he realised that it must be a man. Had some man written to Kitty? After all these years? To his surprise, the thought rattled O’Reilly.
“A voice said, ‘Disculpe Señorita, no hay más asientos, aqui estoy mtired. ¿Puedo sentarme en su mesa?’ I looked up. It was a dark-haired man who had piercing brown eyes and a scar beneath the right one. By then I knew enough Spanish to understand that he was asking if he could sit at my table.”
She does remember the exact details, O’Reilly thought, after thirty years, and he sighed.
“He seemed to be terribly out of breath. He was a complete stranger.” A smile came and went on her lips fast as the flicker of a candle in a breeze. She took a deep breath.
O’Reilly stood, perhaps because the ache in his knees was becoming unbearable; perhaps, he recognised, he needed to step back emotionally to prepare himself for what might be? No, damn it, what was going to be coming next. And that need was stupid, he told himself. She owed you nothing. Nothing. So why is your hand trembling?
“I said, ‘Si señor, pero yo no hablo mucho Español. Soy Irlandés.’ He sat and said, ‘Thank you. I speak English, but no Irish.’ That made me laugh. He introduced himself, ‘Mañuel Garcia y Rivera.’ He had a lovely smile and he really was having trouble breathing. I thought he might be asthmatic.” She sighed. “It all seemed so innocent.” She stood. “Fingal,” she said, “I want to tell you everything, but…”
He frowned. But what?
“I’d like you to take me for a walk on the beach and I’ll try to explain it to you there.” She rubbed the back of one hand across her eye. “I got such an immediate jolt about what I read in the letter it made me cry and I still feel … I feel hemmed in … I need to get some fresh air. Will you give me five minutes, darling, to wash my face then we’ll go? I’ll tell you all about it then.”
“Of course,” he said.
She pecked him and fled.
He shook his head. This Garcia y Rivera must have played a pretty important part in her life, and he resented that. He’d no right to, but he did. O’Reilly nodded. He hated to see anyone upset, and Kitty O’Reilly, née O’Hallorhan, wasn’t just anybody. He glanced at the sideboard to where a two-thirds-full decanter of Jameson’s whiskey stood. He shook his head. His pre-dinner tot was going to have to wait. They were going for a walk. Now don’t, he told himself, let your imagination run riot until Kitty’s ready to explain. She knew a man in Tenerife years ago. She’s had a letter from someone in Spain and the letter has upset her. That’s all you know. It might not be from him. And she’s not keeping anything from you. Don’t go putting two and two together and getting five. There’s probably some perfectly innocent explanation and, anyway, you’re going to find out the whole truth very soon. So why are you pacing up and down in front of the fireplace not even bothering to light your pipe, disturbing Lady Macbeth?
Grateful for the distraction, he watched as the little cat yawned, stood, arched her back, stretched her front paws out in front of her, lifted her haunches, and stuck her tail straight up in the air before taking a few leisurely paces, jumping onto an armchair, and curling up to fall fast asleep.
“There,” Kitty said. She’d put on a head scarf and a light cardigan. “That didn’t take long.” She managed a small smile.
“You look grand,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true. Although she had repaired her makeup and brushed her hair, the telltale red lines had not left the whites of her eyes. “Are you ready, and are you sure you’d not rather stay here?”
She nodded.
He kissed her and said, “Come on then,” and held the door for her. “I think,” he said when they reached the hall a
nd he moved to the front door, “perhaps we should leave Arthur at home.” There might be some serious things said and O’Reilly wanted no distractions.
“No, Fingal. He hasn’t had his walk today. We should bring him.”
He smiled, said, “Fair enough,” and thought, You are a considerate woman, Kitty. O’Reilly turned and headed for the back door.
30
Merely Innocent Flirtation …
“Oh, dear,” said Elly, regarding the empty decanter as everyone finished their main course, “I do think the claret’s kaput again. What would everyone like with dessert? Something sweet?”
The pressure of her foot increased on Fingal’s ankle. He cleared his throat and told himself, Slow down on the drink, boy. He had a vivid picture of a naval signal flag, quartered in red and white for the letter U. It meant, “You are standing into danger.” Even so, it was amusing and indeed arousing to be flirted with by such an attractive woman—provided it went no farther.
“A nice Château d’Yquem Sauternes, perhaps?”
“Sounds lovely,” Michelle said.
“Have we one chilled, Hanif?”
“Of course, madam.” The manservant vanished, only to reappear with a bottle. He showed the label to Elly, who nodded, waited for Hanif to uncork the bottle, sniffed the cork, and sipped the splash he put into her glass. “Splendid,” she said, poured for Michelle, and continued, “Hold out your glass, Fingal.”
“Um,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind, Elly, but to be honest I’ve never really liked sweet wines.” Which was true. He had always thought them sickly.
“Oh dear, Fingal,” she said, and the pressure of her foot lessened. She canted her head to one side. “You know, ‘Fingal’ seems dreadfully formal. I think I’ll call you Finn.”
Fingal could imagine her in a pet shop admiring a puppy and remarking, “I think I’ll call you Fido.” “The only one who does is my elder brother,” he said with a smile, “but your Eleanor has been shortened to Elly, so why not?”
“Thank you, Finn, and as you don’t like sweet wines, is there anything else I can tempt you with?”
An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Page 24
