An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (14 page)

“And you must be starving,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Come on.” He had her to himself and he wasn't going to share her with Marjorie Wilcoxson. Not yet. Besides, he thought, she'll need a little time before she meets Marge, who, for all her kindness, could be a formidable woman. He'd been told of just the place for lunch. A pub with private booths was less than a five-minute drive away.

He hurried her into the station where the stationmaster, resplendent in a sleeved waistcoat with gilt buttons and a peaked cap, took her ticket. “Welcome to Fareham, Madam. I hope you have a pleasant—”

“Thank you,” Fingal said, then hustled Deirdre out to David's car, chucked her suitcase in the back, helped her in, and rushed round to the driver's side. He'd barely closed the door behind him when he'd leant over and kissed her again. “Darling. Darling. Darling.”

She smiled at him, that “Slow down, you great Labrador puppy” smile, and said, “I do love you so much, Fingal, but—”

“But you've been on ferries and railway trains forever and would kill for a decent cup of tea?”

“You're a mind reader, and a considerate one at that,” she said. “And it's one of the reasons I love you.” She patted his thigh, sending electric shocks everywhere. If she'd let him, he'd take her now in this cramped little car.

He looked at her and saw his beautiful girl. But she did look as if she could use a fortifying cup of tea, not a quick tumble in the back of an Austin Seven, and he berated himself for being a randy fool. “Right,” he said. “Right. I'll have you to a pub in no time.” He started the car and drove off, narrowly missing a cyclist.

“I can't believe I'm here with you.” Deirdre stared at him. “You've lost weight.” He heard her concern. “You've not been sick, have you?”

“Only lovesick,” he said, “and the grub on the troopship left a certain amount to be desired.” Desired. He managed a glance at her. He knew what he wanted more than life itself.

“We're here,” he said, driving across a wide courtyard and braking beside a clematis-covered wall, a few late-season flowers the size of tea plates dotting its thicket of vines. He trotted round, opened her door, helped her down, and took her hand.

A few paces brought Fingal into a low-ceilinged bar room redolent of tobacco smoke and beer. He led her down two carpeted steps toward a long bar where two men who must have been locals, one wearing a farm-labourer's smock, sat nursing dimpled pint glasses and playing dominoes. They were keeping score on a cribbage board. A dartboard was studded with darts on a far wall and he tried to remember which ancient English king had decreed that men should play darts on Sundays in lieu of archery practice. The longbowmen had been England's battle winners, at Crecy and Agincourt.

“Afternoon, Lieutenant.” The barman who, Fingal guessed, just like Mister Dunleavy back in Ballybucklebo, was probably mine host too, stood behind his counter polishing a glass. The man had a face pocked with acne scars and sported an Old Bill moustache.

“We wondered if we could get a cup of tea for the lady, and perhaps lunch?”

The man turned and shouted through a hatch behind him, “Pot of tea, please, Mabel.” He grinned at Fingal then said, “Only be a tick.” He pointed at a chalk-lettered blackboard. “'Fraid the menu's a bit restricted, sir, but it's on the board. You're only allowed to spend five bob each on each meal.” He sighed then said, “Blooming rationing.”

“Darling?” Fingal said.

“Let's order later,” she said. “I'm not very hungry.” She squeezed his hand. “I'm too excited, and a bit…” She covered her mouth with one kid-gloved hand.

“Are those real Melton Mowbray pies? From Leicestershire?” Fingal asked.

“That they are, sir.” There was pride in the man's voice.

“Pint of bitter for now,” Fingal said, and remembered a promise made in
Warspite
's anteroom, to “have a pie” for Richard Wilcoxson.

“Would you like to have a seat in a booth, sir, and I'll see to it?” The barman took hold of a beer pump handle and started pulling Fingal's pint. “We're a tied house, sir.”

Fingal understood the expression. Tied houses were controlled by breweries and had to sell that brewery's beer. Free houses could sell what they liked.

“I hope you like watered Worthington's. The government makes the breweries dilute the beer because of the war, and I have to close the bar from three to six thirty.”

“Fine,” Fingal said. As long as the beer was wet and bitter he didn't care. His Deirdre was here and that was what mattered. Still holding her hand, he led her to a booth. It was not as ornate as the ones he remembered in Belfast's Crown Liquor Saloon, but it was in a private nook and overlooked the courtyard.

She sighed. “Thank you, Fingal. You don't know how lovely it is to sit on something that's not moving. I'm afraid I didn't get much sleep last night. The bunk was damp and lumpy, and the cabin pitched and tossed all night and stank of fuel oil. But I'm here.”

He'd made Channel crossings from Larne to Stranraer and was familiar with British wartime rail travel too, in crowded compartments or standing in the corridor, but he said, “No. But I do know how lovely it is to sit down,” he took a seat opposite, “and stare at the most beautiful girl in all the world.” The wind on the platform had tossed her hair, she had dark circles under her eyes, and she wore virtually no makeup, but she
was
the most beautiful girl.
His
most beautiful girl.

She smiled at him. “You're sweet.” She held up a hand to forestall any more protestations of love and said, “Now, before I forget, Ma sends her love. She asked me to tell you that she and Bridgit are both very well and that Ma's busy as a bee raising money for a second Spitfire. Apparently the RAF bent the last one.”

Fingal laughed in spite of himself, feeling for the fighter pilots, the Brylcreem Boys, who had “bent” a large number of their aircraft—and themselves—defending the home island after the fall of France in June.

“And Lars is collecting scrap aluminium. He came and saw me off in Belfast.” She opened her raincoat and pointed at a wilted purple flower in the buttonhole of her suit jacket. “He gave me this orchid.” She took a deep breath. “They're both sorry, but travel restrictions—” She clearly was yawning now behind her hand. “—won't let them come to our wedding. I don't even know what day—”

“Your tea, madam.” A heavyset woman wearing a floral pinafore over her dress set a tray on the table. “And your pint, sir.”

“Thank you,” Fingal said, and his gratitude wasn't only for the drinks. Deirdre had been stopped from asking about their wedding date. He would tell her about the uncertainty, but not yet. He became aware of a commotion outside and looked through the window. “Look at that,” he said, thankful for yet another distraction.

Three columns of older men in civilian dress, each with a weapon sloped over his left shoulder, were marching in step into the courtyard. The weapons ranged from double-barrelled shotguns to pitchforks to scythes, and Fingal was certain he saw one flintlock, and, good God, a blunderbuss. A man in First World War uniform, his trousered calves wrapped in puttees, not modern gaiters, marched to one side. The three stripes of a sergeant were sewn on the upper sleeves of his khaki tunic and good conduct stripes adorned the lower. He gripped his pace stick under his arm.

“Lef' right, lef' right. Companeeeeeee … Wait for it. On my order, company will halt—Halt.”

“Golly,” Fingal said without looking at Deirdre, “the Home Guard out training.”

The men halted, not with the precision of a Guards regiment, but pretty much together. Their sergeant marched to halfway down one side of the column. “Company will turn to the right. Riiiiight. Turn.”

To a man they turned to face him.

“Company will dismiss. Diiiiis—miss.”

Fingal shook his head and smiled. He knew he shouldn't laugh. Out there were brave old men, many probably survivors of the trenches, who had volunteered to be their country's last line of defence if the Germans did invade. By the way that, to a man, they were heading to the pub's door, he reckoned they had other things on their minds right now, and if he and Deirdre wanted to eat they'd better order. He looked at her, and bless her, she was leaning against the side of the booth, eyes closed, mouth open, breathing in small gasps and making a whiffling noise.

He shook his head. Typical of both of them. He'd been so sure he knew what she wanted, what was best for her—a stop at a pub for a restorative cup of tea before she met Marjorie. Rubbish. In reality, he'd just wanted her to himself for a while. And Deirdre had been too much of a lady to disagree, always willing to put her needs after his. He loved her willingness, her selflessness—and at this moment despised his own selfishness. He should have known what someone who'd travelled here for thirty-six hours from Belfast needed. A bath and a few hours of sleep.

He polished off his pint in two gulps, stood, bent, and kissed her forehead.

She stirred. Her eyes opened. She blinked then said, “I'm sorry. I must have nodded off.” She sat up straighter. He knew her smile was forced and that she was probably worrying he hadn't had his lunch. “We really must order.”

“No,” he said. “You must finish your tea. I'll settle up and then I'm taking you to Marge's for a bath and a sleep. And we're invited for dinner tonight.”

She yawned and this time made no effort to cover her mouth. “You are a pet, Fingal,” she said. “So thoughtful. It's why I love you so much.”

And inside him his heart swelled and nearly burst out in a flood of happy tears. He cleared his throat and said as he headed for the bar, “I'll be back in a jiffy, darling. Don't go away.” Don't ever go away.

 

9

To Remember What Is Past

“I think,” said O'Reilly, craning to look to the top of an ornate Corinthian column, “your man Christopher Columbus there is facing the Americas, all right.” Pointing west, with his raised right arm extended toward the Mediterranean, stood the statue of a determined-looking fellow in fifteenth-century robes.

Kitty was already consulting the guidebook and had shown only a passing interest in the popular Barcelona landmark. “It's less than a mile to the Picasso Museum from here. We head along here, the Passeig de Colom,” she said, beginning to walk. “We'll turn left onto the Via Laietana, right at the Carrer de la Princesa, and right onto the Carrer de Montcada.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “I'm really looking forward to seeing the paintings. I've always wanted to.”

Her pronunciation sounded flawless to his ear. He wasn't surprised. She'd worked at a small orphanage in Tenerife just before and in the early part of the war with only a fellow nurse her sole English-speaking colleague. But he could also hear nervousness in Kitty's voice that hadn't been there yesterday.

“I remember seeing a print of Picasso's
Guernica
before the war. Powerful, very powerful.” He was eager to keep her chatting. She'd been her usual self since they'd arrived, and for the first two days it had been a second honeymoon for them. But since rising this morning there'd been this brittleness to her. Still, they'd enjoyed stopping at a small tapas bar for a late lunch on La Rambla
,
Barcelona's wide, pedestrian-only street.

This excursion to the museum would be a good diversion before they met this woman, this Consuela Rivera y Navarro, née Garcia y Rivera, who was the closest thing Kitty had ever had to a child. “I will go wherever you lead me, love,” he said, taking off his sports jacket and tie, and opening the neck of his shirt. The midafternoon sun here in Barcelona was a damn sight hotter than it would be, if it were shining at all, in Ballybucklebo.

This was what they had come to Barcelona to do—to meet the daughter of the man Kitty had loved and lost when she'd had to return to Ireland in 1941.

“The original's in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid,” she said, taking a deep breath and frowning.

Damn it, the mere mention of Madrid, where Mañuel Garcia y Rivera had been born and had died four months ago, must have jogged a train of memories that she probably didn't want to face just yet. There would be time enough for that when she met Consuela. Perhaps he could distract Kitty by asking her a question about the artist.

“Pablo Picasso rolls off the tongue easily enough, but do you know his full name?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I do. It's Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula—”

“Whoa,” he said, laughing. “Enough.”

“But there's more, I just can't remember them,” she said, her smile turning into laughter. “I think his parents were really hedging their bets naming him after all those relatives and saints.”

He was relieved to see that his laughter had brought on hers. “And I thought Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was a mouthful.”

“Eeejit,” she said, “but thank you.” She squeezed his hand and her eyes smiled at him as if to say, I know what you're trying to do, Fingal, and I'm grateful. “We'll get through this—together.”

He squeezed her hand in return and they made their first left turn, and although they were now walking away from the harbour, gulls wheeled overhead, mewing and screeching, relatives of the same birds that would have flown in the wakes of Columbus's
Niña, Pinta,
and
Santa Maria
. The same species had been the feathered forebears of the scavengers that followed fishing boats off Ireland, and in the war, battleships off Alexandria on this same Mediterranean Sea. The last thought brought up his own string of memories, and he paused to look out to sea before putting a protective arm around Kitty's shoulders and continuing along the Via Laietana
.