An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œAnother 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.
    â€œStill,” 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.”
    â€œIt’ll feel a world away to me.”
    â€œI’ll write,” he said, “but I know it’s not the same.”
    â€œNo. 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?”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œI do hope so,” she said. “I’m going to miss you, Fingal.”
    He squeezed her hand. “And I you, pet.” He forced a smile. “And cheer up,” he said, “it’ll be a pretty safe billet.”
    He was to join HMS Warspite, a super-dreadnought. In light of his earlier naval experience, their lordships said, and his medical qualifications, he had been promoted from sub-lieutenant to surgeon lieutenant with four years’ seniority and an expectation of another rise in rank to surgeon lieutenant-commander within one year or so.
    â€œAnd I’ll be