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

getting a promotion soon and that’ll mean a bit more cash to be put by for when we can get married.” He glanced at his single cuff ring with its central upward loop called a curl. Once he’d reported on board, he’d get a second plain ring added beneath and red cloth between them to signify medical branch. Good thing he’d kept his old 1930 uniforms. Bloody war, and just when he was finding his way in a practice in Ballybucklebo that he loved, with marriage to the woman he loved supposedly in their very-near future.
    He felt the pressure of Deirdre’s hand on his. “You will take care of yourself, darling, won’t you?” Frown lines marred her usually smooth forehead.
    He tried to make light of it and to soothe her fears. He glanced round to be certain he was not being overheard. “My ship has a fourteen-inch armour belt and eight fifteen-inch guns. Each shell weighs nearly a ton. And she’s got a great gross of secondary armament and antiaircraft guns. There are one thousand two hundred men on board, not counting me yet.” He wondered if his old friend, Tom Laverty, was still on her as a navigating officer. “It’s not me that’ll have to take care. It’s bloody Adolf Hitler’s navy. His nice new Bismarck won’t dare show her face. Not to my ship.” He laughed.
    â€œI suppose it sounds encouraging. I mean, all those guns and armour and so on. And you’ll hardly be alone.” She smiled, looking a little reassured. “But I’ll still worry.”
    He turned his hand so he held hers and looked into a pair of piercing blue eyes. “No need. Honestly. I promise.” He saw no reason to tell her that in the First World War at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, Warspite had sustained massive damage, fourteen killed, and sixteen wounded. His smile faded. “But maybe I was wrong asking you to marry me with the world getting more topsy-turvy every day,” he said. “I never thought I’d be going off to fight in a world war and we’d have to delay things.”
    She shook her head. “Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. Since the day I met you in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital I knew I was going to fall in love with you.” She squeezed his hand. “But you were such a shy, hesitant old bear. The other trainee doctors weren’t so bashful.” Her laugh was throaty.
    My own ineptitude cost me my first love. Kitty O’Hallorhan, as far as he knew, had stayed on in Tenerife after the Spanish Civil War ended in April, continuing at an orphanage for children who’d lost their families in that war. She’d kept in touch with Virginia Treanor, one of her nursing cronies in Dublin, and she, an old friend from their student days, had told Donald Cromie, now a trainee surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital. He’d mentioned it to Fingal en passant. After he and Kitty had parted, Fingal O’Reilly had decided to emulate his bachelor brother Lars and have nothing to do with the fair sex—until that summer day in 1937 when a student midwife with the most amazing blue eyes—all he could see of her face over her sterile mask—had walked into the delivery room.
    In the background, the ensemble had switched to “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and Fingal sang along for a bar or two.
    I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,
    That this heart of mine embraces …
    Then he said, “We danced to that in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin last year, the September night I finally plucked up the courage to tell you I loved you,” and he looked at her and saw a petite, newly qualified midwife crying softly at their table and saying, “Oh Fingal, I’m so happy.”
    â€œI always will love you, Deirdre, no matter how far away I am.” And he wondered how many times men—men on both sides—had said that to dear ones. War? Bloody lunacy. Fingal popped the rest of his