An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

by Patrick Taylor

  The blue eyes sparkled and her blonde hair, which she usually wore shoulder-length, was done up in a fashionable reverse roll. A simple narrow band of gold now encircled her ring finger beside the little solitaire diamond engagement ring he’d given her fourteen months ago. He glanced behind her and caught Marge surreptitiously wiping away yet another tear. As matron of honour, the woman had taken the wedding on as if Deirdre had been her own daughter.

  “… you shall have a white wedding,” Marge had said with a measure of authority when Fingal had been visiting Twiddy’s two weeks ago. “I presume you can use a sewing machine, Deirdre, because I’m going to need your help.”

  Marge and Deirdre had been making plans for the big day, the three of them drinking Camp coffee in the armchairs round the log fire with Admiral Benbow serving the function of a canine hearth rug. A vague aroma of singed hair was in the air, the result of a stray piece of smouldering wood that had fallen onto his long coat.

  “Of course,” Deirdre had said, “but with rationing I don’t know where on earth I’d be able to get the material.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Marge said, then rose and left.

  Fingal took the opportunity to lean over and kiss Deirdre. “Love you,” he said.

  She laughed. “Behave yourself, Fingal. Marge’ll be back in a minute,” but she took his hand and squeezed it, then planted a warm kiss on the back of his right wrist. “I wonder what kind of a rabbit she’s going to pull out of the hat this time?”

  “More likely to be a hedgehog.” A much larger Riddle than the bundle Fingal had met on his first visit trundled across the carpet toward the kitchen.

  They both laughed.

  Marge returned bearing a long cardboard box smelling of camphor mothballs. She opened it and pulled out a floor-length dress of white satin. “Take the train,” she said to Fingal, who rose and pulled the material out to its full eight feet.

  “Marge, I couldn’t possibly—” Deirdre started to say.

  “And I’m not meant to see the bride-to-be in her nuptial finery before she walks up the aisle,” Fingal said.

  “Fiddlesticks to you both,” Marge said. “You’re spouting superstitious Celtic Twilight stuff and nonsense, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, and nothing would bring back happier memories of my own wedding than to see you in it on your big day, my dear Miss Mawhinney, so stand up please.”

  Deirdre did as she was told and Marge held the dress against her. “Mmm. I’ll need to get a tape measure. It’s not bad for height, but I think I outscored you in the enbonpoint department even when I was a gel.” She pointed at her considerable bustline and rear. “Certainly in the flying bridge and quarterdeck.”

  Fingal had found himself helplessly laughing. Marge Wilcoxson really was one of a kind.

  The Reverend Evans’s voice brought him back to the present as the chaplain droned on, “Likewise the same Saint Paul, writing to the Colossians, speaketh thus to all men that are married: Husbands love your wives and be not bitter against them…”

  Fingal looked at Deirdre, who gave him another brilliant smile that melted him. How could anyone, never mind her new husband who loved her to distraction, be bitter about anything she did? She had charmed Marge and Pip, making strangers into lifelong friends in a matter of days. Both women looked teary but smart in neat tailored suits and hats with half veils. Marge had scoured the neighbourhood and managed to find six late-blooming roses for Deirdre’s bouquet, filled out with some feathery ferns and branches of lavender from Pip’s mother’s knot garden.

  Between them, Marge and Deirdre had done a magnificent job of altering the Edwardian dress with its fitted bodice and lace-edged three-quarter-length sleeves. The train had been carefully removed and the necessary nips and tucks taken so it fitted Deirdre perfectly. It would be returned to Marge after the ceremony in case—as Marge had said wistfully—“… my sailor man son ever gets round to proposing to the honourable Philippa Gore-Beresford.”

  Tony had not got around to it on his most recent visit, but he had brought peace offerings: six pairs each of the new nylon stockings for his mother and Pip. The much-sought-after hose were unavailable in Britain, but he’d managed to buy these in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when his destroyer had been docked there after sustaining damage to her steering in a violent gale. Pip and Marge had each given Deirdre a pair for her trousseau.

  “And in his epistle to the Colossians, Saint Paul giveth you this short lesson: wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands…”

  Fingal hid a smile. Saint Paul was backing a loser with that one today. Deirdre, while considerate and accommodating to other people’s needs, would no more submit to anybody than Winston Churchill would bow down to Adolf Hitler when she knew what she wanted and had the right to ask for it.

  He could picture her last Monday, neatly turned out in her Land Army uniform, standing by his side in front of Admiral Creaser, who sat at his desk surrounded by piles of paper. How she’d managed to arrange the appointment, Fingal wasn’t sure. He suspected Angus had been involved.

  After a few social preliminaries, and the admiral’s congratulations to Fingal on his imminent promotion, she’d looked the senior man in the eye. Deirdre never played eyelash-fluttering maiden-in-distress games when she wanted something. She simply said, “Admiral Creaser, we have a very great favour to ask of you.”

  He smiled. “Miss Mawhinney, if it is within my power…” He looked at Fingal. “I believe I owe it to you, O’Reilly. It was my forgetfulness that almost prevented you two from getting married.”

  Fingal lowered his head in acknowledgement. It was the closest an admiral could come to apologising to a junior officer.

  Deirdre continued, “None of my family nor Fingal’s can come over for the wedding, and I don’t know anybody here who can help.”

  The admiral leaned forward. “Help with what?”

  “I need someone to stand in for my dad and give me away on Friday.”

  “Friday?” The admiral’s face broke into a broad smile. “Why, it just so happens I’ll be hauling down my flag the day before. Turning over command—and all of this”—he pointed to the papers on his desk—“to Admiral A. B. Bradbury. He’s a countryman of yours from Maze, County Antrim. Friday will be my first day of freedom and I can’t think of a more delightful way to spend it. It would give me the greatest pleasure, Miss Mawhinney.”

  She bent over the desk and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  And the admiral had blushed like a schoolboy and grinned from ear to ear.

  The Reverend Evans continued, “Saint Peter doth instruct you very well, thus saying…”

  “Your chief is a great teddy bear of an admiral,” Deirdre had said to him after the appointment. It was a side of the commanding officer that Fingal had yet to observe, but then Deirdre could bring out the teddy bear in any man. He’d been so proud of her minutes ago, walking up the aisle on Admiral Creaser’s arm.

  “… whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.” The chaplain beamed at the happy couple and Fingal realised that the instructions were over and that by a slight wave downward of his hand the chaplain was indicating that Fingal and Deirdre should kneel.

  They did so, and once the final prayer blessing the marriage was done, the priest held up his first two fingers and intoned, “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” And from behind them, the little wedding party, consisting of a few of the medical staff Fingal had befriended during his month here and their wives; Admiral Creaser; the Matron, Miss M. Goodrich; and Angus’s wife, Morag, replied: “And also with you.” Damn it, but he wished Ma and Lars and Deirdre’s father, mother, and younger sister Daphne from Antrim could have been here. Once this blasted war was over and they were all back in Ireland, they’d have one hell of a ta-ta-ta-ra. One that would be talked about for years.

  Fingal helped Deirdre to her feet as the smiling priest came toward them and said, “Let me
be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant-Commander and Mrs. O’Reilly.”

  “Thank you,” Deirdre said.

  And Fingal O’Reilly, happier than a pig in the proverbial, just stood and grinned and grinned as the choir of uniformed QARNNSs, VADs, SBAs, medical officers, and eight boy trebles who’d been let out of school early to perform for the ceremony gave a spirited and harmonious rendition of “Jerusalem,” William Blake’s poem set to music. It suited the occasion, rousing and patriotic. He would have liked something Irish, but the rousing Celtic songs were all about rebellions. And although Fingal regarded himself and Deirdre as Irish as any Dubliners, his allegiance until cessation of hostilities was to Britain and her titanic struggle.

  * * *

  Conversations rising and falling and punctuated by gusts of laughter came from the guests at the reception in the Medical Officers’ Mess behind and to the left of Saint Luke’s Church. At Fingal’s request there was no head table. Instead, the round tables and chairs were unassigned so guests could sit with their friends. The bridal party and the Reverend Evans had dined together.

  As always happens at parties, as if on some telepathic signal, everyone stopped talking at once and a single voice could be heard clearly. “… thought he’d show a bit of swank, brought his destroyer in at fifteen knots…” pause for effect then, “nearly swamped the admiral’s barge, and shortened the pier by twenty feet…” Not only the naval officers and their wives at the speaker’s table, but those sitting nearby roared with laughter at some poor wretch’s misfortune. “Admiral gave poor old Willoughby no end of a bottle.”

  Fingal took a pull on his beer and smiled. He had no difficulty picturing the scene, and as long as no one had been injured, it had a certain slapstick appeal, at least to those with naval backgrounds. Certainly Marge, Pip, Angus and his wife, the minister, and Admiral Creaser were chuckling. Only Deirdre looked puzzled and said to Fingal, “Poor chap. He must have got into awful trouble.”

  “I think it’s the ‘pride comes before a fall’ aspect that everyone finds amusing. Nobody likes show-offs. And he did deserve a telling off.”

  “Oh. I see.” And Deirdre’s smile seemed to light up the whole reception, where the noise level had risen again.

  “Fingal’s right,” Marge said. “Don’t waste your sympathy on the young clot. My Tony’d not do a silly thing like that. Much too sensible.” She sighed and said, “He’s back at sea again.”

  “Destroyers, isn’t it, Mrs. Wilcoxson?” Admiral Creaser asked.

  “He’s skipper of one of the Hunt-class boats. HMS Swaledale.”

  “Lucky man,” the admiral said. “I hear they’re great sea boats, not like the old L-class torpedo-boat destroyer Lawford that I was on in the first war. She took on so much water with a sea running that the crew said she was a prototype submarine.”

  Everybody at the table laughed. Of course they did, Fingal thought. The man’s an admiral.

  Deirdre was on her feet. She held a Kodak Brownie camera that Marge had brought in her handbag and given to Deirdre after the ceremony. “I wonder, could the gentlemen stand behind the ladies? I’d like to get a couple of snaps of the wedding party and I’m sure there’s enough light in here. I’m using a very fast film and a slow shutter speed.”

  Fingal and the men rose and went round the table and waited until the ladies had moved to sit close to each other.

  This interest in photography was something Fingal had learned about only last year when she’d confessed to him—and no one else—that she’d taken first prize at a major photography competition in Belfast. Deirdre thought that her taking candid snaps would be much less intrusive than hiring a professional.

  “Now,” she said, sighting through the viewfinder, “nobody move but everyone say ‘Cheese.’”

  Click went the shutter.

  “And again.”

  Click.

  Angus moved over to her. “Give me the camera, Mrs. O’Reilly, and go and stand with your husband. I’m sure you’d like one of the two of you together.” He’d also taken snaps of the bride and groom leaving the church.

  From the waist up, Angus was properly attired in his formal uniform jacket, white shirt, and black tie. Below his cummerbund, though, he sported a kilt in his clan’s tartan, a whiskery sporran, and woollen knee socks, down one of which was stuffed a skean dhu, a black knife with a bone handle. How it fitted naval regulations, Fingal did not know.

  Deirdre stood at Fingal’s side and he put his arm around her waist. Angus had no need to ask for a smile. Fingal was grinning like a Cheshire cat, and dear love her, Deirdre, it seemed, nearly always had a smile on her face.

  “Right,” said Angus, handing back the camera. “Back to your places, everyone.”

  When he was seated, he said, “Looks like everybody’s well fed by now.”

  Fingal glanced at a long table at one end of the room. A cold buffet now lay in ruins with little left but a couple of curled-up cucumber sandwiches and a few slices of bread covered in fish paste, shreds of smoked trout from the nearby River Test, and one lonely Robertson’s jelly.

  Angus said quietly to Fingal, “I’m sure you’re busting to get away with your bride.”

  Fingal nodded.

  “So I’m going to get the formalities over and done with.”

  “Remember, no speeches,” Fingal said.

  “Agreed,” Angus said. “Leave it to me.” He stood and called out, “May I have your attention?” He rattled a spoon on a glass. Gradually the hum of conversation began to subside. The mess servants circulated. Lord knows where the caterers had managed to find it, but every one of the folks was being offered a glass of champagne to drink the health of the bride and groom.

  “Aye, just so. Settle down now, settle down. Ladies and gentlemen, as best man it falls to me to be master of ceremonies at this reception to celebrate the wedding of Lieutenant-Commander Fingal O’Reilly and his lovely bride…” He had to wait until a respectful round of applause had died away. “Thank you. His lovely bride Deirdre, now Mrs. O’Reilly.” Angus lifted his glass. “As is naval custom there is no need to rise for the loyal toast. Admiral Creaser, ladies and gentlemen, I give you his Majesty King George the Sixth. The king, God bless him.”

  Fingal’s voice boomed out with the rest.

  Angus said, “You may now smoke.”

  Matches scraped, lighters clicked, and flames flared as cigarettes and pipes, including Fingal’s, were lit. Smoke twisted up in lazy blue spirals to the high ceiling.

  “Now,” said Angus with a bow to Reverend Evans, “let me give you the order of service. At the request of the groom, there will be no speeches.”

  Cheers rang out and somebody started singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and the assembly joined in.

  “Aye, just so,” Angus said. “As I was saying, all that will be done is as follows. I’ve here”—he held up a sheaf of paper—“some telegrams from friends and family who cannot be with us today. They will be read. After that, I will propose the toast to the bride and groom, and finally, although it is Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander and Mrs. O’Reilly’s big day, I have their permission…”

  Fingal nodded.

  “Also to propose a toast to the health of Admiral Creaser, who is leaving Haslar after three years of unremitting work and service.” He set all but one telegram on the tabletop. “If you feel like applauding, I’d ask you to wait until every one of these has been read.” He began, “‘Every happiness for your big day and forever. Stop. Welcome new O’Reilly. Stop. Much love. Stop. Mother, Lars, Bridgit.’”

  Fingal nodded.

  “‘All our love to you both. Stop. May your future burn brightly. Stop. Father, Mother, Dolores.’”

  Fingal glanced at Deirdre and saw how her eyes glistened. She’d be missing her family today, he knew.

  “‘It’s about time you made an honest man of him, Deirdre. Stop. I’d love to give you a big kiss, but duty calls. Stop. Your hotel will be paid for, my gift t
o you. Send me the bill. Stop. All my love to you both. Stop. Bob Beresford.’”

  Typical Bob, Fingal thought, no expense spared—none of the abbreviated sentences usually used because telegrams were charged per word, and a most generous gift. He’d write to Bob first thing tomorrow.

  “One from your friends at the Ulster Hospital in Belfast, Mrs. O’Reilly, ‘Our love to you on this happy day. Stop. Party for you when you get back. Stop. All your midwife friends.’”

  “That’s sweet,” Deirdre said.

  “And finally, one from Cromie and Charlie, two more old friends and classmates of the groom. ‘Brandy makes you randy and whiskey makes you frisky but…’” Angus’s cheeks reddened. “And I think I’ll leave it at that.” As the guests applauded, he handed the telegrams to Fingal. “You may want to keep these as souvenirs.”

  “Thank you,” Fingal said, and as Angus got on with toasting the bride and groom, he glanced at his friends’ message. Cheeky buggers, he thought, shoving the flimsies into his inner pocket as the crowd shouted, “To the bride and groom,” and someone who may have celebrated rather too much added the wish, mostly heard at ship launches, “May God bless them and all who sail in them.”

  The admiral was duly toasted, hugs and kisses exchanged, and Deirdre fled to Fingal’s room to change into her going-away outfit. Then it would be Fingal’s turn, and then they’d be off in the little Austin that David White, who was now on his way to join HMS Illustrious, a new carrier, had sold to Fingal for seven pounds ten. They’d be driving in it to an inn in the New Forest for their one-week honeymoon.

  * * *

  Fingal admired the cut of Deirdre’s best suit and the ridiculous product of the milliner’s art that perched on the side of her head, adorned with a pheasant’s single tail feather. He took her gloved hand and helped her climb into the passenger seat of his recently acquired car. As she climbed in, her skirt rode up and he was granted a glimpse of creamy thigh above a dark nylon stocking top. He made a guttural noise in his throat and hoped that there’d be an enormous four-poster bed in their hotel room.