An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War (27 page)

“Let's do it,” Fingal said, and drank.

“Tom? You in?”

“Suits me.”

“Fine,” said Richard.

A young, round-faced surgeon lieutenant came in peering around as if he were looking for somebody he knew. His uniform was spotless and the two stripes on his shoulder straps were wavy, indicating he was Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The cloth between the gold was red—medical branch—and Fingal noticed that, like his own legs, those of the newcomer were white. Troops who had been out here for some time were wont to belittle newcomers by listing their own service postings and ending with a scornful, “And
my
knees are brown,” implying that they'd been here long enough to get a suntan.

“Can we help you?” Richard Wilcoxson asked as the young man moved nearer.

“Thanks. I'm a bit lost, actually.” His smile was engaging. “Just got here the hard way from England and it seems my ship has left.”

“You're one of us. A sawbones,” Richard said. “Join us if you're all alone.”

“Thank you.” The young medical officer took a chair.

Richard introduced himself, Fingal, and Tom, and told the young man that, just as in the mess, titles of rank were not used among officers on shore leave. He explained that they were all off
Warspite
. He beckoned to the waiter, who materialised with all the speed of a genie popping from his lamp. “Four more Blue Ales please.”

“Yes,
effendim
.” The man vanished.

“Steptoe. Patrick Christopher Steptoe,” the young man said. “HMS
Hereward
—or at least I'm supposed to be.” He laughed. “She left for the—” he hesitated. “Well, for points unknown and won't be back until later this month.” Fingal guessed that he and the newcomer were about the same age. His accent though, like Richard's, was strictly upper-class Brit.

“
Hereward
?” Tom said. “H-class destroyer. Launched in '36, I believe. Four quick-firing four-point-seven-inch guns.”

For a second Fingal glanced at the civilians. He'd been surprised by Tom's disregard for security, but then it dawned on him that the destroyer, built in '36, would have been described in detail in
Jane's Fighting Ships,
which annually listed and described every warship worldwide. The Germans' naval intelligence service, the Abwehr, would already know all about her specifications.

“Apparently, but I've never been aboard her.” Patrick laughed again. “I'm a bit new at this. I qualified from Saint George's Hospital Medical School in London last year. Did a locum, but then I really thought I should volunteer when war broke out.”

“Good for you. Tom and I are regulars and Fingal's a reserve officer.”

“I see.”

“And?” Tom prompted.

“After a bit of preliminary training I was told to report to
Hereward
. I got here yesterday so I'm billetted at the Naval Base Hospital. They expect to have a job for me by tomorrow, at least until my ship comes back.”

The waiter appeared with the beer.

“Cheers,” Patrick said, “and thanks. This is very welcome. The beer and the company.” He drank.

“So,” said Richard, “you're at a loose end this evening. We're going for a walk after we've finished these drinks, then back here for dinner. If you'd care to join us?”

“That would be terrific. I'd like that. I'd like that very much.”

“If you've just left Blighty, you must have up-to-date news from home,” Fingal said.

“'Fraid not. I came by ship. Took me quite a while to get here. Ages in fact, and most of it was a bit boring to be honest. Lots of waiting with not much to do. So I don't have anything to report.” He looked around and said, “But I've hardly been out of England before, and from what I've seen, this Egypt's a most interesting place.”

*   *   *

Overhead, the sun baked down and after the coolness in the hotel the heat outside, even at this hour, hit Fingal; and then there were the flies. They buzzed everywhere.

On the pavement outside the hotel, a
gulli-gulli
man in jellaba and fez had attracted a small crowd and was performing feats of sleight of hand, hoping for a few coins. Similarly dressed dragomen, the official interpreters and guides of Alexandria, offered their services in barely accented English.

Fingal's group didn't need a guide. They had Richard. “This square that we're crossing is Saad Zaghloul Square. Two of Cleopatra's needles once stood here before they were shipped off, one to London and one to New York. Actually they had nothing to do with Cleopatra. They were erected a thousand years earlier by Thatmose III.”

“I believe,” Fingal said, “that massive concrete road between us and the sea is the Corniche.” Across the road he saw a shore where date palms swayed.

“Right, and that's the inner or eastern harbour ahead,” Richard said. “It's too shallow for ships.”

The sheltered bay was full of moored dhows and feluccas. Fingal and his friends had to dodge the traffic to get across the Corniche to the promenade.

“It's about a mile-and-a-half walk to the palace,” Richard said. “I suppose I wouldn't do it in the heat of the day, but it's not too far for late afternoon.”

“‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,'” sang Fingal. “Ooops. Sorry, sir.”

“No offense taken, Lieutenant,” said Richard, laughing. Then Richard himself began to sing in a surprisingly rich baritone. “‘It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see, That though the British are effete, they're quite impervious to heat.' Noel Coward.”

“In my case,” Patrick Steptoe said, “I suppose I should start singing his ‘Has anybody seen our ship? The HMS
Peculiar
.'”

All four men laughed. “Are you musical, Patrick?” Tom asked.

“Actually, yes. At one time I was going to be a musician. Piano.”

“Terrific,” Tom said. “We'll have to invite you aboard, let you loose on the one in the wardroom anteroom.” He smiled at Richard. “Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt the guided tour.”

The three men continued walking and Richard took up his commentary. “The Corniche runs up the right side of the Ras el Tin peninsula and continues west past where we're going. The peninsula divides the eastern harbour from the western one where the dockyard and the fleet are.”

A train's whistle screeched as a small locomotive hauled several freight wagons along a single rail line running along the dockyard side.

A sea breeze was blowing in from the main harbour, for which Fingal was grateful. He inhaled a heady mixture of smells: cinnamon, the salt of the nearby sea, drying fish, horse apples from the beasts hauling innumerable gharries. “Where's the spicy scent coming from?”

“The Ramsis Bazaar's a couple of streets over and to our left. They sell lots of spices there,” said Tom.

It really all was very exotic. He thought of Dorothy's line in last year's wildly successful film
The Wizard of Oz
: Something like, We're not in Kansas, Toto. And he chuckled. War, it seemed, had some compensations. He'd certainly never have had the chance to visit Egypt if it weren't for the navy.

Fingal fell into step with Patrick, letting Richard and Tom lead the way through strolling knots of people.

In the harbour, a felucca had hoisted a dazzlingly white lateen sail on a yard lying at thirty-five degrees to the short single mast and was scudding across the water.

“I saw great big two-masted versions of those called
boums
in the Indian Ocean on my way out from England,” Patrick said.

“You said it took you a while to get here, Patrick?”

“Mmm.” That smile again. “Troopship in convoy from Liverpool, stopped in Santa Cruz de Tenerife—”

And for a moment Fingal's thoughts strayed to a certain Kitty O'Hallorhan who had gone to Tenerife to work with orphans of the Spanish Civil War. He wondered if she was still there and hoped she, like him, had found a new love.

“Then on to Durban.”

“How long did that take?”

“Liverpool to Durban? Six weeks. Convoys, as you know, have to zigzag. Adds hundreds of miles to the trip. About ten thousand miles to Durban, I estimated. And then we had to get to the Suez Canal from there.”

“God, it must have seemed like a lifetime.”

Patrick shrugged. “For a fellow who'd never been out of England…” His voice trailed off. “To be honest, I've been feeling pretty homesick. But there were some compensations. Have you ever seen a whale?”

“No.”

“Lots of them off Tenerife, especially. Mammoth blue whales and smaller black-and-white ones called orcas. Beautiful creatures.”

“I'd have liked to see that,” Fingal said.

“Golly,” Patrick said, “they sing. It's a most eerie noise and they can keep it up for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Then there's the tropical nights and the sunrises and sunsets.” His eyes widened and Fingal heard the awe in the man's voice. “You have to see them to believe them.” He smiled. “We did get a couple of days to go ashore in Durban. Spectacular beaches.”

Fingal thought about his promised trip back to Blighty. It was going to take a while, but perhaps, like Patrick, he'd have some memories to share with Deirdre.

“They finally landed me in Port Tawfiq in Suez City. Then I managed to hitch a lift in an Avro Anson with an RAF squadron leader who was heading this way.”

“How long did the whole journey take?”

“Two months, twenty days, eight hours,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but I'm not quite sure how many minutes. It really did rather seem to go on and on, but it appears that there are German U-boats in the Med and their Lordships of the Admiralty felt the long way round was preferable for all the soldiers on the ship and one junior MO—me.”

“And you did make it. Good for you. I'm happy to know you, Surgeon Lieutenant Patrick Steptoe.” Fingal lengthened his stride. “Let's catch up with the others and take a look at this Ras el Tin Palace. I can see its dome quite clearly. Then get back for dinner. I'm starting to feel a bit peckish.”

*   *   *

After onboard meals, the bounty of Egypt had produced a wondrous feast at the Cecil. Another gharry ride through the red-light district had offered new sights and sounds. Flashing neon lights were everywhere; clearly no blackout was in force here. Pimps beckoned from shady doorways, and two soldiers were having a punch-up and being wrestled apart by two of the ever-present red-capped MPs. Provocatively dressed, heavily made-up women leered invitingly, and a man in a jellaba and fez ran alongside the gharry yelling, “You want my sister,
effendi
. Very clean, very pretty.” Fingal smiled. At least no one was offering a piece of the true cross. His ears were assailed by blaring jazz, and from somewhere came the rhythm of small drums and the tinkling of finger cymbals. Presumably someone was belly dancing.

Fingal had been glad of the quiet as the pinnace headed back to the ship, the only sound the puttering of the boat's engine and the slap of small waves against the hull. Overhead, inset in a sky carved from ebony, the constellations looked uncaringly down on Fingal and his friends. The same stars would have shone on the Egyptians, the Macedonians, the Persians, the Byzantines, the Mamelukes, the Ottoman Turks and their Bashi-Bazouk mercenaries, and the British, each race in its turn, ruling Egypt and this city.

Now he sat at his table. His cabin's porthole was open and the ship was rowdy with the whirring of innumerable fans trying to circulate the hot air. A tiny breeze wriggled into the room, panted, and expired.
My darling Deirdre
, he wrote,
please do me a favour and get Ma a present
. That would let her know roughly where he was.
The weather today is sunny and some friends and I
—the censor would not permit the use of names—
had a wonderful run ashore
.
I met a very friendly young MO newly out from England. I'd love to have had you with me to see the sights. I'm told that there are some marvellously private beaches here and all I could think of was swimming there with you—
and, he thought, making love on the beach in the warm sun. He closed his eyes and pictured her reading it, God knew when, because getting and sending mail was no easy business in the middle of a war. She was far too clever not to be able to read between the lines. He wrote two more pages of uncensorable trivia and, damn the censor's prying eyes, finished with
and this comes to you with all my longing and all my love. It won't be long until autumn when I'll hold you and kiss you and tell you I love you, my pet. Fingal.

25

He Haunts Wakes, Fairs

“Come on, Fiona, you can do it,” O'Reilly said with a grin as a chubby girl of twelve astride a small, equally rotund, piebald pony approached a low jump. Fingal wondered how the pony could even see the red-and-white-striped cross bars. Its silky mane hung in front of its eyes much like the fringe of an old English sheepdog. Girl and pony could have been subjects for the cartoonist Thelwell, whose sketches of such sights had given the English language the expression “Thelwell Pony.” She'd already taken two of the obstacles. “Think she'll clear this one, Kitty?”

As was traditional, the Marquis of Ballybucklebo had loaned his ten-acre field for the annual Ballybucklebo Garden Fête and Horse Show. By long-hallowed custom, it was held during the famous Twelfth Holiday Fortnight on the first Saturday in July. The garden fête was organised jointly by the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches with the proceeds being split.

Kitty said, “I hope so. She seems to have a good seat.”

O'Reilly surreptitiously patted Kitty's behind and whispered in her ear, “So do you, Mrs. O'Reilly. Great legs too.”