‘It’s just on the top there. There was no need to hide it. I told my father all and he advised me. He said he had said to you to know your own mind and you didn’t. He said because we lived in these quarters it didn’t mean we had to wait for men that went with whores. Sure Willie, there are whores enough all along Monto and Gardiner Street, you didn’t need to go to Belgium to have one.’
It was just a short letter with the address he would have put himself on it. It was written in long, snaking black scrawls, a curious document. The writer said he felt bound to inform her of the conduct of a certain Private William Dunne known to her, that he had to the writer’s certain knowledge bedded a prostitute of Amiens notorious for disease and the writer felt it was his Christian duty to inform her insofar as he was in possession of such information which weighed heavily on him. It was a mournful duty which he had now performed. It was signed, yours ever, sincerely, A Soldier.
Even if he tried to lie to her now, what good would it do? She was married and she had the child. Even if he had received her letter, what good would it have done? He would have had to lie and would she have believed him, and if he had told the truth would he not have lost her anyhow? He was dizzy now with thoughts. He looked up from the awful letter and looked into her face. His own beloved whom he had rightly lost.
‘I am sorry, Gretta. I am very sorry. And I am very sad to think I’ve lost you. I did go with a poor, ruined girl. And I did confess to a man now gone himself. And I never got any letter from you about it. And I would have walked over the cold deep sea to find you if I thought you knew about it. And if I caused you grief, and hurt your heart, I am so deeply sorry. I couldn’t begin to tell what that war is, Gretta. I was even just thinking as I came down this way that all might be well in the end, because I loved you and we could be married.’
To his astonishment, as he might only recently consider himself a grown man and might therefore know two good things in the world, she was crying. She was crying in that strange grey light of Dublin.
‘You have a good man now, Gretta, to look out for you?’
‘I have, Willie, a very good man. He’s working with the Da. They’re putting in the granite setts all up Sackville Street where they were disturbed by the fighting. My da slipped away from the Curragh camp last year because he said he’d rather be shot for a deserter than live as a British soldier. He needs to know his own mind, Willie, as you know You won’t be telling on him now?’
‘No, no, Gretta. And that’s well and good.’
‘I’m sorry, Willie, too, it turned out like this. I don’t suppose it was such a very terrible thing you did, but at the time it broke my heart to read it. I hope it all goes well for you, Willie. I couldn’t be against you, not you, Willie.’
‘I thank you, Gretta, I do. That is a comfort such as you couldn’t imagine. Your father was right. I didn’t know my own mind.’
He stood there another while. He felt like a ghost, a person returned from some dark regions, no longer a human person. He felt like just wisps and scraps of a person. She was so beautiful sitting there; the child was meek and sleeping now. Gretta smiled at him her old smile, the smile he should have carried everywhere with him, if he was of any worth, and held up as a shield against the wretched temptations of a war. He turned away from that essential, living place, and out again into the glowering town.
He knew he would have to fetch up at some kind of dosshouse for that night, and did accordingly. It was full of . tramps, and wrecked drinkers, and, ominously, other sad soldiers back from the war.
Chapter Twenty
He took the train down to Tinahely the next morning, because he had to do his duty by memory. At Westland Row station under the great canopy of iron and glass, he felt wearier than he ever had in the trenches. Some evil spirit had tricked the youth out of his body. In the night that same spirit had harrowed and raked him, and planted in him mocking seeds of granite and flint. At the centre of his body he thought something had perished. Like an old ash-tree he feared he would slowly hollow out, the rot taking him inwardly ring by blackened ring, until the winter wind came and blew him down.
Dublin was no longer like a city intent on the war. There were few uniforms about of men on furlough. In the streets he had seen troops, right enough, but they were soldiers about other matters, shipped in from England. Walking down Sackville Street, he had viewed the remnants of the uprising, the houses shelled away by the gunboats on the Liffey Where the wide street had been torn up, right enough, there was a gang of men repairing setts, no doubt Gretta’s father and husband among them. But he didn’t look too long that way; he didn’t want to see. The great street had been wounded in a cataclysm; it had erupted, spewing its mortar and stones to the heavens. They could put it all back stone on stone but there were many things that could never be put back.
In the corner of his eye he saw a little clump of boys in one of the side-streets that went down to Marlborough Street. He even saw the throwing arm of one of the boys shifting down in a throw, but he was still surprised and affronted when the stone hit him on the arm. He stooped and picked up the missile and it was a bit of granite from the setts, which a mason had cut with his hammer and bolster to make a piece fit. It was a little extra remnant of the city The boys surged forward and the smallest and bravest of them ran out onto the pavement and launched such a gob of spit at him that he couldn’t duck before it splashed against his cheek. The boys broke into wild laughter.
‘Fucking Tommies, fucking Tommies, fucking Tommies, go home!’
He stopped on the pavement but he didn’t feel inclined to run after them.
‘I am at home, you little bastards,’ he muttered.
Of course, the little laughing group was skittering away down towards the Pro-cathedral. That was the church that stood in for a Catholic cathedral; it wasn’t a cathedral in itself, it was instead of a cathedral. They were going to build a proper cathedral some day. That was where his father went to pray among the other Catholics of Dublin, loyal or not. He had sat there himself every Sunday with his three sisters and his father as trim and polished as a yacht. He could walk in there in his mind and sit down amid the smell of polish and the Italian statues, but in his mind the statues had been taken away and there were no ladies now to polish and scour the floor. Of course, that wasn’t true, he supposed, things would go on a while longer, till another earthquake maybe shook the deep roots of the city, God knew when, and it all fell down. He wondered should he put the bit of stone in his pocket as a keepsake, but then he threw it roughly to the ground. Let it lie there to be thrown at another fool, he thought, another fool passing.
He got out at the little station at Tinahely, which had been put for some reason in an awkward place well below the town, maybe at the whim of a landlord. Maybe even the Fitzwilliams miles away over in Coollattin for at one time their power had stretched everywhere. For this was all country he knew. Not so many miles away lay the old realm of Humewood, where his grandfather had been steward. His grandfather was still alive and he wondered if he should go over to Kiltegan also, where he kept the vigil of old age in one of the lodges of the estate. But he thought, if his father was angry with him, how much angrier would be his grandfather, who had spent his whole life at the head of an army of estate workers, gardeners and farmhands, and was the vicar of the landlord on this earth, and as loyal as a wife. Of course, he was sure his father would have said nothing to him, because the two of them met only at funerals and weddings. In Willie’s own presence the old man had often avowed that his son was a fool, and all his children were fools, but of those fools, James was the biggest of them. And he had put him into the police ‘with the other fools of Ireland’. A fool, and the father of a fool certainly, was Willie’s sad thought.
But the sunlight was easy in the hedges along the path; the rowans were heavy with their bright red berries. As he passed the gates down to Kilcomman church he found himself admiring the lovely trim of granite blocks, the expertise and the r
ightness of them, and the black gates as suitable as a suit. He wasn’t exactly sure in his memory where the house of the Pasleys was, though he knew it was this side of the town, so he hailed the rector who just at that moment was inserting letters in the postbox, and asked him where the Mount was.
Just up the hill there,‘ said the rector. ’You can see the roofs sticking above the beech trees.‘
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ said Willie.
‘Have you been overseas?’ said the rector.
‘Yes, sir. To Flanders, sir, these last few years.’
‘ Are you going up to talk to the Pasleys?‘
‘I am. Because I knew their son, the captain.’
‘I was afraid you had more bad news. You know the other son’s in France, too?’
‘No, I didn’t know that, sir.’
‘ Ah yes. I am delighted to see you hale and hearty We have lost seventeen men from hereabouts. Very terrible and sad it has been. And what is your name, Private, if I may ask?‘
‘Dunne, sir. William Dunne.’
‘Ah yes,’ said the rector, and Willie by old experience knew how the rector’s brain was whirring, registering the name that would be unlikely to be a Protestant one, though the first name maybe betokened a certain deference to the powers that be. But, to give the man his due, his tone didn’t alter. His own name was written in gold lettering just behind him as it happened, on the black notice that said the name of the church and the rector-in-charge. ‘Well, my friend, you will find them at the top of the hill. I’ll bid you good day and God bless you.’
‘Thank you, Rector.’
‘Thank you, William, for taking the time to talk to me.’
Willie felt curiously heartened by the words of the rector. In fact, he was close to weeping as he trod on up to the house among the trees.
He had enough sense to know he must approach the house from the lane that ran up to the yards. There was no purpose marching in through the fine gates and traipsing up the avenue.
He wondered then was he mighty foolish not to have sent a letter first, and how would he say why he had come? And why had he come, now he considered it? He had little idea but the notion of how the captain had stayed in him, the little history he knew of the captain still vivid in his mind. He was walking now in the captain’s world that he knew nothing of. He hadn’t even known he had a brother in the army, or had he? Had it seemed unimportant and had he just forgotten? There seemed something vaguely unforgivable about that, in those days without forgiveness generally.
He knocked at the kitchen door just off the fine, trim yards. There were maybe two dozen outhouses of varying kinds, fowl houses and piggeries and turf houses, calf byres, loose boxes for the horses. It was a grand operation. And yet the house did not loom over him with grandeur or embellishment — it was low and simple, with a peaceful air. The sun was content to lie on the pack-stones of the yard; even the three sheepdogs didn’t bother with him, but stayed sleeping in their chosen suntraps on their chains. He knocked with his bare knuckles and after a little while he heard feet coming, and the door, which was already open a few inches, was pulled inward. There was a stout woman there in a blue overdress, just the same as his grandmother would have worn over in Kiltegan. He thought it must be a servant, the cook maybe, or the principal maid, because she was elderly enough.
‘How’re you doing, ma’am?‘ he said. ’I’m looking for Mrs Pasley. My name’s Willie Dunne and I was in the army with - with the captain.‘
To his dismay, he found he could not remember the captain’s first name, but the woman rescued him, whether she knew it or not.
‘George, you were in the army with George, oh bless me, come in, Mr Dunne, come in.’
Then she drew him into the kitchen. It was like the kitchen of any farmhouse, with a big fire of turf and logs, and a scrubbed deal table, and the flagstones a little wet from the mop, and the old clock going at its work. But there was a door open into the rest of the house and Willie could see the genteel transformation there, with flatter plaster walls and pictures, and an old red carpet, and by another much bigger entrance a brass box of sticks and umbrellas. It gave him a strange pleasure suddenly to think of Captain Pasley walking there, and sitting, not as a captain but the son of the house, a farmer and a living man.
‘Sit down there, Mr Dunne,’ she said, with true kindness. ‘We won’t go into the sitting-room if you don’t mind it. I have all the covers off the chairs and it looks like the end of the world. Let me give you some tea.’
Her accent was a Wicklow accent but he didn’t think any more she was a servant. The way she arranged her words and offered them was not the music of a servant, not at all.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I am George’s mother, Margaret Pasley. George was my eldest son. Now his father is down in the lower fields, but he should be up in a while, Mr Dunne. Did you come to, to - you’re very welcome, whysoever you came, but - was there something to say to us?’
‘No, no,’ said Willie, panicking suddenly. He had walked into rooms where maybe grief had been deep and constant. Yet her manner was bright enough. He was fearful now, treading in the shadows and the briars of the captain’s own world.
‘Did you know him particularly?’
‘I did, I did, ma’am. Let me tell you — ‘ But what should she let him tell her? She handed him the beautiful blue china cup brimming with the soft coin of tea. He drank it with real thirst and drained it to the leaves.
‘My heavens,’ said the captain’s mother.
‘You see,’ said Willie, ‘he was my captain in the first months of my service, and, as you know, he was — ’
‘He was killed, yes, at Hulluch. Were you there?’
Now she spoke with an eagerness like his unexpected thirst.
‘I was,’ he said. ‘Not just in the moment of his death, because — ’ Oh but, again, how could he tell her that Christy Moran, himself and the others drew back, while the captain elected to remain? Was that why he had come? Not to say that to her but to himself? The captain had stayed and they had withdrawn — run away was the worse phrase for it. And the captain had elected to remain, though everyone knew it was only death to do so. And then coming back and finding the poor captain like a twisted hawthorn in the fuming trench. What was that? Not something to say to a mother.
‘I can see,’ she said, ‘it is all happening still behind your eyes.’
Then his eyes were full of tears again. What a fool indeed he was.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘His commanding officer did write, you know. Yes, it was a good letter. He said he died bravely. I suppose they always say that. I didn’t mind that, I wasn’t thinking of courage in that moment, I was thinking I would never see him again. He was a very nice fellow, you know, a great friend to me. He was a bit stubborn and we had our differences, and he was very finicky about things, but — truly a fine son. You can tell me anything you like.’
‘But that’s what I came to say, that he was a fine man, that’s what I thought about him, and we had other officers since, and some of them killed too, but the captain, and I call him the captain, he was Captain Pasley, and — ’
‘You missed him when he was killed.’
Willie Dunne said nothing then; why would he need to? He missed him when he was killed. He missed them all. He missed them when they were killed. He sorrowed to see them killed, he sorrowed to go on without them, he sorrowed to see the new men coming in, and to be killed themselves, and himself going on, and not a mark on him, and Christy Moran, not a mark, and all their friends and mates removed. Some still stuck in the muck, or in ruined yards, or blowing on the blessed air of Belgium in blasted smithereens.
He had come, he had thought, to comfort the captain’s parents. How could there be comfort in a fool sitting in the kitchen with his tongue tied and his heart scalded?
‘Do you know,’ said Mrs Pasley, ‘it means the earth to me to see what he meant to you.
It does.’
At length Mr Pasley was heard coming in. He entered the room gingerly because he was covered from head to foot in a grey dust. He looked like a grey ghost. His face might have been a carved statue.
‘I’m going to have to have a good bath, Maisie,’ he said. Maybe the voice was a little like the captain‘s, the same accent anyhow.
‘He’s been liming all day,’ said Mrs Pasley to Willie. ‘This is a lad come from George’s regiment, Pappy,’ she said.
‘How do you do, young fella?’ said Mr Pasley. ‘I won’t shake your hand. I’ve been liming all day you see. Down at the Kilcomman end.’
‘It’s a big job, that liming,’ said Willie Dunne.
‘Aye, it is,’ said Mr Pasley. ‘It is.’
After a fine old tea, it was time to be moving along.
‘I’ll walk you down the hill,’ said Mr Pasley.
‘Ah, don’t worry, sir,’ said Willie.
‘Ah, I want to look over the hedge at the fields anyhow.’
So the two of them strode down the hill again. At the bottom Mr Pasley went up on his toes and peered into the lower whitened fields.
‘That’s grand,’ he said.
When they got to the graveyard at Kilcomman, Mr Pasley brought Willie quietly in. He brought him over to a bright new stone, with its carving excellently done.
‘There you are,’ said Mr Pasley. ‘Of course, his body doesn’t lie here, more’s the pity. But you know all about that.’
It said the captain’s name and that he had died ‘in the empire’s service in the cause of righteousness and freedom’. Willie nodded his head. He didn’t think that Mr Pasley would be too sorry that Home Rule would not be coming after all, as people said. He didn’t think he would be, no. In the cause of righteousness and freedom — and farming, they might have put, he thought. And liming.
Mr Pasley loomed beside him, looking down at his son’s gravestone.