‘I am sure he did not like that!’ said Willie Dunne.
‘No, and he did it all with a grudge and a moan, and I was told that he spoke on certain unwise topics to the fellows in his company, liberty and freedom and the like, and rebels, and he spoke I am told a double Dutch of such matters on his own in the dark, as if his wits were astray. He has stopped dead and will not obey an order, any order. He gave rank abuse I am told to his commanding officer, a young fellow from the rich vales of County Dublin that probably never heard a proper curse in his life till now. Now he will not eat, he will not say an earthly word to anyone. I spoke to him for an hour in his cell, a little room they have him in, beside of all things an old abattoir, and he never said a thing, until I asked him if he knew anyone that would speak for him, and he said, just those three words, Private William Dunne, and by a miracle, a miracle, Willie, of course I knew you, in all the armies of the King.’
‘Well it might have been another Willie Dunne he meant,’ said Willie, ‘because I knew him only the day.’
‘They’ll court martial him now in a little while,’ said Father Buckley, ‘and I don’t know what will happen to him, only I wouldn’t like to think, in that they are making examples of fellows now in wartime, and there have been those two men shot you know among the Irish divisions for desertion, and I can tell you, Willie, they were fine men, I knew them both, and one of them was out here a year and came through flames, literally flames, at Hooge, and had his whole company just seared away by the flame-throwers. And the other man left three children and I can’t bear to think about that, those three little chaps, and all the death around us already.’
‘I know, Father, but I don’t know why he said my name. Why didn’t he give the name of his sergeant or the other lads in his platoon, or someone close to him?’
‘Well, because, Willie, he has bitten his sergeant’s head off more or less, and I don’t know but that the other boys have despaired of him. Will you come and talk to him anyhow? Captain Sheridan said it will be all right.’
‘I don’t know, sir. Did you ask my sergeant? Did you speak to him?’
‘I didn’t speak to him, but I could speak to him. Do you want me to?’
Willie Dunne didn’t know what he wanted.
‘They might shoot him, Willie, and even at the very least they will give him a prison sentence, and that is a very terrible thing.’
Willie passed only the once a man chained to a gun, a stricken-looking Tommy like a ruined Christ. But you turned your face away from such atrocious shame.
‘Look it, Willie,’ said Father Buckley, ‘I can well understand, being the chief superintendent’s son, you would be reluctant to do a thing like this, when a man is on a charge. But quite frankly now, I need to know what’s amiss with him, if I am to help him at all. You do not need to speak for him in court if you do not wish.’
Willie still said nothing. He was flummoxed.
‘I don’t expect a man to be a’saint out here, do you, man dear? Willie, now and then we know, and you have seen it, there is a touch of hell out here. And my occupation in the matter of war is to bring a man, any man, to a safe place, if I can, where his soul might flourish, and I do not think God expects us all now to be earthly saints.‘
The chief superintendent’s son. It was certainly not that that held him back. Why, his father would be the first man to urge him to the task! No, it was that — well, he had no words for it, but the truth was he was weary in his spirit. It was emptying out and thinning and he felt less than ever he did. There was a section of him so tired and yet he was fit enough in his bones and sinews. He ate his grub with a will. He could dig in the ground three hours without a stop. But he was afrighted in the place of — wherever that essential business indeed so prized by his father resided, but Willie did not know the word exactly. Because what he really wanted was to marry his Gretta and row with his sisters and build buildings for Dempsey. He did not want to be visiting snaky-looking Corkmen in their cells. And he would not do it. And yet, and yet, Father Buckley had used a phrase that Willie knew well from his childhood, when the old steward his grandfather used to address him so, even as a boy of five or six — man dear.
‘I suppose I am appealing to your compassion, Willie,’ said Father Buckley.
‘I am sorry to make such a trouble over it,’ said Willie. ‘It is not me after all is in the lock-up.’
‘Then you will come and talk to him?’
But Willie could not say he would or would not. He fell silent now too, but not as silent, no doubt, as Jesse Kirwan. He was trying to remember what Jesse Kirwan had said about himself. He could not remember a thing. But the narrow face and the funny broken nose, and him weeping in Mount Street, that eerily returned. He did have a temper on him, certainly, leaping at Willie’s throat like he had. But Willie also sorely wondered what in the world was the matter with him that he refused to obey orders? Orders were not such a great thing in the upshot. It was a way for things to go forward, to advance. Perhaps that was not the fitting word.
Father Buckley held Willie’s left arm a moment in a gesture of friendship and equality and then let the arm go and nodded at Willie. He had a mouth, Willie saw, of long yellow teeth. The teeth, top and bottom, glimmered in the light of the oil-lamps like two tiny brass fenders. The serious, wounded eyes were as black as a caught trout’s.
The weary priest was smiling at the weary soldier. So Willie knew he had said yes without saying anything.
At last army clashed against army but it was not for them this time to be involved.
It was the Ulstermen of the 36th Division who went over ist July.
Terrible brave news came down to them, the men of the 16th in cosy billets. There’d been two thousand fellas killed and dying of wounds, and another two or even three that were wounded. Some mad battalions reached the enemy trenches, but had no further men coming up to back them. The guns and counter-attacks ate them.
But O‘Hara looked at Willie Dunne and he looked at Dermot Smith and Smith looked at Kielty. It was a strange time. They knew what two thousand corpses looked like, that was a fact.
There were villages in Ulster would have no men in them now. They would never come back to guide the plough and curse the Pope on a Sunday, more was the pity.
It had been a dark ruckus and the news of it confounded their hearts. There was odd love there for the brave Ulstermen; what could a man do against that love? Nothing at all, only add to it by thinking and weeping privately. Maybe there were some there, many, that didn’t give a tuppenny damn about the fucking Ulstermen, or anything else in these changed and muddied days of the war. Maybe so.
That very day 3rd July of the savage news, Willie went with Father Buckley to the rear of the rear lines where Jesse Kirwan was held captive, a kind of underworld of an underworld.
Yet the fields there were bright enough, and the French farmers were hoping to take a harvest anyhow at the end of the summer, if the war would only progress the other way, Germany-wards. The poplars along the white roads rattled their merry leaves; there were geese standing in the wet margins like swollen ducks.
Jesse Kirwan was being held in the privy of a working abattoir. Willie and the priest passed through the big concrete hall where there were dozens of bullocks standing in pens. Willie saw a bullock led through some iron railings, goaded with a metal stick to make it stumble forward properly. A fine, handsome fellow felled it with a stun hammer, driving a good blow to the temple. The bullock knelt like a praying animal and fell dead like an actor, without a speech, only a truncated yowl, horribly like a dog.
Willie never heard such a sound from a bullock in his born days. Then the cleavermen moved in, the beast had a hook attached to its leg muscles, it was hoisted up, and the cleavers sliced it in two. There was a Niagara Falls of curtainy blood, it drenched the yellow coats of the men, it poured out over their heads. You would think they might hang the animal first and bleed it for the good of the blood, but there was a sense o
f ugly haste. Battalions, divisions indeed, to be fed.
The head was sliced off expertly, the heavy front legs, the enormous rear legs, the little ruined bollocks, the tail, there were insides ripped out and down, there were parcellers to gather the different bits, thrown into big tin carts like imperial prams, and wheeled away all busy-like.
Why they were holding Jessie Kirwan in such a place Willie did not know. But how many things did Willie Dunne know? Not many, these times, he thought.
Perhaps it was not a privy, strictly speaking, or was a privy in its civilian days. Certainly there was a metal plate saying ‘Hommes’ above the door, but when he went in with Father Buckley there was no sign of pissers or places to shit. There was a soldier though, on a chair like one of those folding chairs you would be given at a concert in the park - or one of those green tuppenny chairs in St Stephen’s Green, for which the keepers would gather the coins in the sleepy weeks of summer, among the geraniums and the nasturtiums in their rich, black beds. The soldier rose smartly when Father Buckley appeared, a regimental newspaper falling from his lap. He saluted the priest accurately, trimming his arm and timing his hand perfectly.
‘I’ll go on through and talk to him,’ said Father Buckley. ‘See how he fares. You wait here, Private, with the corporal.’
All right, sir,‘ said Willie, and stood where he was like a pony.
Father Buckley waited for the corporal to turn the key in a small metal door, ducked his tall figure down, and disappeared through. The corporal looked at Willie in a neutral way.
‘I’ve only the one chair,’ he said, in an Irish accent.
‘Oh,’ said Willie, and shook his head, as if to say, No matter.
‘Yeh. He’s not a bad fella — you know, his nibs inside there. Quiet, shy sort. Someone should have a word in his ear. If he’ll act the white man now, well, they’ll surely spare him.’
‘Have you talked to him yourself, sir?’ said Willie.
‘Oh, I’m forbidden talking to prisoners. That’s not allowed.’
‘Oh,’ said Willie.
‘They don’t want you to be, to be swayed, talked round into something you might regret, because, well, this is as near to death row as bedamned. Where you from?’
‘Second battalion, RDF.’
‘No, where in Ireland?’
‘Oh, Dublin, sir, Wicklow. You know, Dublin mostly.’
‘Yeh, well, that’s good, isn’t it?’
But Willie didn’t know any more if it was good or not. He supposed it was.
‘Yeh, well,’ he said.
‘I’m told he got upset when they started shooting those fuckers in Dublin,’ said the corporal. ‘But I wouldn’t get upset.’
‘No?’
‘No. Fucking jubilant, me. Bastards. I never spoke to him but the once. He was begging me to tell him what was going on. This would have been that first time they had him here, around May it was. And he’s been in the clink since, I believe. Or Field Punishment. And back again now. Worse this time it’ll be. Major Stokes, a bit of a bollocks really. Wouldn’t think twice about shooting an Irishman anyhow. Says we’re all fucking rebels. Me, that never crossed the fucking road in the wrong place.’
‘Where’s Major Stokes in this, sir?’ said Willie. He remembered the man well enough. A kind of crazy man at the end of his tether, right enough.
‘Chairman, what’s the what’sa, of the court martial. The main man and all that. Yeh, so your man there, he was begging me, begging me, back in May, and you know, I can’t say anything, mustn’t speak, but one evening — all right, I felt sorry for him, it was the middle of the month by then, and maybe I was a little, just a little tad upset myself, like all the lads, at the news from home, but fuck him, there’s a war on here, so I just stand there, in the darkness, and I say the names, and the dates, you know, 8 May, Kent, Mallin, Colbert, Heuston, and so on, and so on — Yeh, and how did I remember them, well, I don’t know, burned into the fucking brain, and I said all the names and the dates, and he just stands there looking at me, like I fucking shot them myself. And I could have been court martialled myself for that, so don’t say anything about it, Private.‘
‘I won’t, sir.‘
‘Fucking business. We’re getting shot to hell by the Hun, aren’t we, boy, and this boyo in here’s all tied up in his own stupid guts, bellyaching, making a holy show of himself. It’s his mother and father I think about. What’ll it be for them if they shoot the stupid bollocks?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No more does he himself,’ he said, then spins on a sixpence : ‘But a nice lad.’
Then Father Buckley poked out his sleek head and beckoned Willie. He nodded to Willie and patted him on the shoulder and nodded again, as was his way, and stepped out into the anteroom to let Willie go through.
The little lock-up was dark enough, with only a sprinkle of light in a corner, from a small window. Maybe that was why they chose it as a clink, because there was no way out that Willie could see, except past the philosopher at the door outside. Somehow or other he felt he was going to talk to a man he knew all his life, which was a strange thing, since he met him only the once.
In the corner on a narrow cot lay Jesse Kirwan, with his wheat-coloured hair. The uniform on his small form was surprisingly neat, as if the little man hadn’t moved about much. He didn’t look like a rebel anyhow, or a person that had refused to obey an order. He looked like a small stone figure carved long ago by a not especially gifted carver. There was a metal cup of water on a stool at his head. There was a bowl with some decent-smelling stew in it and a spoon in the bowl, but the food hadn’t been touched.
There was even a nice hunk of black bread that Willie would quite like to try. But he went over to the cot and stood there looking down.
His eyes grew more used to the murk and he could see Jesse Kirwan’s face a little better. The pallor of the skin was quite yellow and damp, and Willie frowned to see that.
‘Are you all right? Are you getting on all right?’ he said.
After a full half-minute, Jesse Kirwan turned his head a bit and squinted up at him.
‘Hello, yourself,’ he said. ‘That’s Willie Dunne, isn’t it? Because the old eyesight isn’t the best.’
‘Yeh, it’s me.’
‘My old mate from the streets of Dublin.’
‘Well.’
‘No, I just wanted to see you before — well, of course, they’re going to have to shoot me. But I don’t know, we had a right day of it in Dublin.’
‘Father Buckley asked me to see you to tell you not to be disobeying and to be contrite and the like, so they won’t have to shoot you.’
‘No, but they do have to shoot me. I want them to.’
‘Why in the name of Jesus do you want them to do that?’
‘It’ll be all the same, Willie. They’ll just put “Died of Wounds” or “Killed in Action” on my sheet and send that home with my uniform.’
‘Why do you want them to do that?’
‘Because an Irishman can’t fight this war now. Not after those lads being executed. No, indeed.’
And what about your father and mother?‘
‘They would understand me, if I could explain it to them, which of course I cannot.’
‘What’s the use in dying, when no one will know why, or anything?’
Ah, yes, it’s a private matter, between me and my guardian angel. See? But look it, that’s all decided. I just wanted to see you again, so someone will know what happened, and why.‘
‘Do you want me to get in touch with your father?’
‘No, no, nothing like that, Willie. Definitely not. Just so that someone knows, just that, is why I asked to see you. One living person. Well, they asked me if someone would speak for me, and I don’t know a soul out here that knows me well enough to do that. But somehow or other your face and name swam into view. I hope you don’t mind, Willie?’
‘I don’t know what you want.’
‘I
don’t want anything.’
‘Why did you come out to the war, Jesse, if you felt like this?’
‘I thought it was a good thing. It seemed like a good thing. But it’s not a good thing now. I’m not making a big thing of it. The army just thinks I’m a mystery. That suits me. I know I can’t get out any other way. I signed up for the duration. But I won’t serve in the uniform that lads wore when they shot those others lads. I can’t. I’m not eating so I can shrink, and not be touching the cloth of this uniform, you know? I am trying to disappear, I suppose.’
Now Jesse started to shake. It might have been just because he was weak in his body, but it looked like plain fear. Willie was fearful of that fear, if it was fear. The little man continued to tremble. Maybe he was even sobbing a little.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ said Willie.
‘You see, what it is, Willie, I want a witness to my plight, but not a witness that will say a word about it, and I know you can do that.’
‘Do you want me to speak at the court martial, give a character thingamabob?’
‘It won’t do me any good. I don’t mind if you’re to be there. So you can witness, you know. But they will shoot me. It’s just army regulations. One thing leads to another thing.’
‘Well, I won’t be there unless I’m to say something. But what will I say?’
‘Say you saw me crying in the streets of Dublin. Did you think I was afraid? I wasn’t afraid. I was thinking, They’ve ruined everything. Now we won’t have a country at all. Now everything you and me and the others were trying to do is useless. And maybe I could have dried my tears then and got on with it. But then they started shooting those poor men, and that was a filthy business. Why did you volunteer, Willie?’