‘Of course, John’s still away, doing his best,’ he said.
Willie nodded and smiled. Then, almost without premeditation, he raised his right hand and laid it lightly on Mr Pasley’s left shoulder.
‘We called him George for to honour the old Queen’s son,’ he said. ‘In those former days.’
Willie softly patted the big farmer’s shoulder.
Mr Pasley didn’t flinch, or move at all, nor did he speak again for a minute or two.
For some reason they had given him a right old rigmarole of a journey back. He was to board the train to Belfast and cross from there. Maybe it was that the Ulster counties still tried to send soldiers, if they had any.
So he was on the platform in Dublin in the bright early morning, just stepping on. Of all the things in the world he expected to see, it wasn’t the little scrap of Dolly coming racing down along the platform.
‘Willie, Willie!’ she called, ‘Wait, I want to say goodbye!’
Dolly arrived up at his legs with her usual force and gripped him.
‘But Dolly, Dolly, you never came out on your own through the city, did you, Dolly dear?’
‘I did not, Willie. Annie and Maud are after taking me!’
‘But where are they, Dolly?’
‘They’re over back there by the gate.’
In the distance right enough stood his two sisters.
‘But why won’t they come down too?’ said Willie.
‘They said you wouldn’t mind if they stood back, and you’d understand.’
Willie waved. They waved back anyhow.
‘Of course and I do. I understand. Oh, Dolly, you’re the best.’
It meant the world to him after all. He kissed her, and hugged her, and the whistle blew then, and he kissed her again, and he kissed her, and then he stepped up on to the train.
‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ she called.
‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ called Willie.
Chapter Twenty-One
When he got back, Christy Moran was very appreciative that he had gone down to Tinahely.
‘You were using your loaf there,’ he said.
They had been tipped into a quiet sector and it was a time of tasks turning about and about, and mending the sides of things, and waterproofing the bottoms of things. They were in an old trench of the French and, as Christy Moran said, ‘it wasn’t fucking Kingstown’. It was no longer a continuous line, but what were called strong points established here and there, with many a gap between. But the machine-guns would cover those gaps if necessary, all firing from many points, so that a sort of weave of bullets could be imagined, like a huge magical garment that would protect them.
His birthday had come and gone like an ordinary day and there had been no parcel from home at any rate. ‘Like I had never been born!’ he joked to himself. Twenty-one, though; he was privately chuffed to be so old.
Sometimes now and then in queer moments he seemed to hear his father’s laugh — the bitter laugh that had frightened Maud.
There was a Christmas laid on all right, as if everything were still as it had been in the old world, but the little packets sent to them by the Queen had not the lustre and interest of former days. They sat together like the Ancients of Days in their huge coats and swaddlings and those that could still manage it prayed in remembrance of the birth of Christ, and those that could not sat in silence. Then 1918 came in, on dragging feet.
When the snow came it lay over everything in impersonal dislike. Noses and fingers were rubbed raw to keep the blood going round in them and in fast January one morning Christy Moran took a piss and it fell in a frozen yellow spike on the snow. You might attempt to speak a word or two and they too would be frozen into silence at the edge of the lips. They had a few old houses for billets, good old houses like Wicklow farmhouses but as if someone had gone in and scraped away every hint of woman, child or habitation. Though in truth they gloried in having quarters that shut out the bladed wind and drunken snow.
There was news from home that all the battalions there in reserve destined for Flanders were to be shunted to England. So Willie thought those boys of Dublin would have fewer targets for their spit and stone.
‘They think we’re all rebels now,’ said Christy Moran. ‘The bastards don’t trust the fucking Irish any more. They think we’re all going to rise up, lads, and slit their poxy throats for themselves. If someone doesn’t get that rum up here in a minute, we might oblige them.’
But Timmy Weekes, the Englishman, was as firm a mate now as Joe Kielty or Pete O‘Hara. Christy Moran was in charge of the platoon just for lack of a spare commissioned officer. There was a terrible drop in numbers in the battalions, everyone remarked on it. Half strength as they were seemed almost a good thing by comparison. They tried to join up brigades and battalions but it didn’t really make much difference. One of the rumours racing round was that the Yanks would be in promptly and make a difference. All those Irish lads that had gone out to America in the past, if they alone put on their uniforms and came out the poor Boche would find themselves clawing at the gates of Berlin to be let back in.
‘I had three great-uncles and an aunt went to America,’ said Joe Kielty. And I bet they had a few young ones in the interval. Yes, indeed.‘
Christy Moran looked at him for a full fifteen seconds and everyone laughed.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Christy Moran innocently, gazing about.
Of course, he wondered who had sent the letter to Gretta. He knew it could have been almost anyone, someone he had given offence to without meaning to, or even meaning to. Someone who might be long dead by now. He knew it couldn’t have been O‘Hara, though he had been on hand to witness his foolishness. It couldn’t have been O’Hara, because he had all the manner and care of a friend. You couldn’t do that to a mate of such degree, that was certain. So he didn’t know who it had been. But the man who had done it he thought had ended his life just as effectively as the bullet of a firing squad. He was half glad he didn’t know, because he knew if he did know he would be inclined to shoot that person. He would be inclined to take that person by the throat and squeeze the life out of him.
He did mention it to O‘Hara. He said someone had sent a letter to his girl about the night at Amiens and she had wed another. O’Hara said such a man deserved to have his bollocks sawed off. He said he had heard of such things and he was inclined to think there was nothing worse a soldier could do to another soldier.
But as the year grew in days, every day brought fresh news that things might be stirring unpleasantly on the other side. Major Stokes for a while became more and more anxious and Christy Moran was forever plunging into the dugout when the phone was doing its bird-like ringing. When nothing seemed to follow these false alarms, Major Stokes fell silent accordingly. There was a sense that something was going to happen but as it didn’t happen just then, it left a gap that could be filled with an odd fatalism. It was like waiting for the end of the world but at the same time planning for next year’s harvest. They were doomed, but not just today.
There were always shrapnel bombs being fired at them, just to keep the conversation going, as Christy Moran said. One of the English lads had his foot severed. He was what Christy dubbed a sixteener, he wasn’t eighteen anyhow. He was lying up the bank, his face the colour now of a dead dog-fish that the trawlermen might throw out in Kingstown Harbour, whitish-grey The shrapnel had cut through the ankle quite clean. The foot lay just a mere inch from the leg. The boy was out for the count anyhow, luckily.
‘Isn’t that supposed to be attached to him?’ said the sergeant-major curiously, in a dazed voice.
‘It is supposed to be, sarge,’ said Willie.
‘Well, put his boot back on him, Willie, will you?’
‘It is on him, sarge. His foot is in the boot.’
‘Where’s them stretcher-boys, where’s them stretcher-boys?’ said Christy Moran.
‘They’ll be coming up shortly.’
‘Would you tie a fucking turnakey about the knee,’ said the sergeant.
Then the stretcher-men came up, it was a sandy-haired lad called Allan from Glasgow and another man Willie didn’t know. They loaded up the English boy.
‘He don’t look good,’ said the unknown man.
‘You can say that again, Jimmy,’ said Private Allan.
‘You’re not going to leave that there?’ said Christy, pointing at the boot.
‘No point bringing it,’ said Allan.
So they went off and Willie and Christy and Joe Kielty were left looking at the boot.
‘Better feck it up on the field,’ said the sergeant. ‘His dancing days are over anyhow.’
‘Oh, ho,’ said Joe Kielty.
The boy had left a deal of his blood behind him too. It made the eyes ache to look at it.
Then with mighty incongruity the sergeant said, in a funny little whisper:
‘Happy days.’
The terror that came upon them had been foreseen but what difference did it make, when it was like a plague of the Bible flung against them?
It was Joe Kielty on sentry duty that morning. A fog had been on the land since daylight, and Joe thought he was lucky if he could see ten yards ahead of him. It was like being under the sea. Then suddenly there was the violent swell and noise of thousands of shells going overhead, falling, Joe did not doubt, on their artillery somewhere behind. Then in short order the massive trench mortars started coming in, tearing away vicious yards of trench, burying and killing as they came. The violent ruckus was screaming down behind them and before them. Hour after hour they cowered and cursed, all the while surrounded by that strange, linen-thick fog.
Christy Moran knew quickly that he had only a dead phone in the dugout. He had a box with two pigeons in it for such an emergency, but when Timmy Weekes, who kept pigeons at home in Blighty, took one out on his hand, the white bird wouldn’t go, wouldn’t go for love nor money Because Christy Moran was inclined to ask for assistance, as he felt in his old water that something evil was creeping up on them.
Even with the endless fall of shrapnel and mortar bombs, they peered out as best they could for whoever might be creeping towards them.
‘First man to spot a German gets the coconut,’ said Timmy Weekes.
‘What’s a coconut?’ said Joe Kielty.
‘You don’t know what a coconut is, you poor little man, you?’
‘Of course he does,’ said Willie Dunne. ‘He’s pulling your dirty leg.’
‘Right. Right,’ said Timmy Weekes.
So he and Joe Kielty were with their machine-gun and there was a lad from Shropshire to feed it and cool it with the water-pan. Truth to tell, he was a weedy little lad from Shropshire, and Timmy Weekes when first he saw him said for an instant he thought a rat had got into the trench disguised as a soldier. Be that as it may, they were glad of him as they stared ahead at the filthy fog in that clutter and amazement of shattering sound.
‘Did you ever get a bad feeling?’ .said Christy Moran to Willie, as they stood crouched in against the wall, Christy taking the trouble to employ his notorious mirror. He was damned if he’d get a bullet through the head now after all he’d been through. Willie Dunne was sick with dread, it never was any different. And now that he had all the time in the world to think about what might be coming, his useless, unfriendly bladder let go again and he was standing it seemed for the umpteenth time in pissy boots.
The fog swayed in Christy’s little mirror and it seemed after an hour or two that it was lighter and then there formed in it what looked like avenues of clear air, which would close and swirl at the will of some demon. Just as the barrage of mortar bombs ceased, he saw for a second in an opened avenue a solid mass, a pouring flood, of grey-uniformed men, moving along towards them at a queer old lick.
‘Fire away, lads,’ said Christy Moran, mostly to his machine-gun crew, but everyone got up on the firing step and did their best, although it was a tricky thing to kill a mist.
Other points in the defence arrangements were firing too, but at what was sadly debatable, because the fog had bunched up as foul and thick as ever. It was just that you knew they were there, those Germans, advancing, advancing.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Christy Moran. ‘Oh, the fuck.’
When the enemy became visible they were only fifty yards off. The machine-guns of three or four nearby points to right and left fired directly into them. There were, to their wild eyes, hundreds and hundreds falling.
‘We’re going to keep these fuckers off, lads,’ said Christy Moran. ‘Don’t let them say nothing bad about us! Keep firing, Private Weekes, Mills bombs lads, and when they’re close, feck them at the fuckers!’
Willie was firing and firing. His face was a bloom of sweat and the very sight of the Germans was an assault. The very vision of them was oppressive and terrible. You couldn’t be more terrorized than this, not if a gun was put to your head and the trigger pulled again and again to find the full chamber.
Then of a sudden Christy Moran seemed to change his mind.
‘Come on, lads, we’re pulling back.’
He said it in such a businesslike way, even in the midst of that furore, that Joe Kielty said: ‘Right, I’ll cover you, lads!’
And Christy Moran, Willie Dunne, Pete O‘Hara, Smith and Weekes went tumbling along the trench and into the supply trench, and as they belonged to a system of forward points, who were authorized to fall back, other sections of their company mingled with them, like a river gathering strength towards the sea.
They got into a wood they had not the name of, and yet the Germans were there too and came against them immediately. So they fired and they fell and they fought, and it was the second time in his life that Willie was so close to those soldiers. By whatever merciful chance, ‘nothing much to do with us’, as Christy Moran put it, the attack on them seemed to be quenched for the moment. Then it was lying in against the trees and panting, and wondering if they should be digging like moles, and what the cure for that violent thirst might be.
Pete O‘Hara had a hole in his side the size of a coconut. If only Joe Kielty hadn’t remained behind, he might have shown him the size of a coconut, he thought.
It seemed to be evening now or nearly. Of course, the Germans were in such numbers they would soon find them out again. They wondered what was happening to the rest of the division, spread about in that disastrous place. The stench of gas moved about the wood like the children and spirits of evil. They had nothing to eat but the few stumps of iron rations they had with them. They had sucked their water bottles dry long since. Through the trees and beyond on a little slope, the sun had gone down, leaving on the lower sky a long, crisp mark of yellow-green light, very bright and lovely.
Willie Dunne heeled himself like a cart in beside O‘Hara.
‘By the good fuck, Willie,’ said O‘Hara. ’Will they know where to come and get us?‘
‘Who?’ said Willie.
‘Mammy and Daddy,’ said O‘Hara.
‘What’s that?’ said Willie.
‘No, not Mammy and Daddy, no, I don’t mean that.’
‘That’s all right, Pete,’ said Willie.
‘I’m going to die, Willie, I wish Father Buckley was here to send me off.’
‘They’ll put a patch on that,’ said Willie. ‘It always looks worse than it is.’
‘It’s all right, Willie, I’ve had my run. You know, I’m too fucking scared to be at this war any more. It’s a stupid fucking thing to say, but I can’t fucking do it.’
‘Well, and you have to, Pete. Didn’t you sign up for the duration? Didn’t you promise the King of England, Pete?’
‘Ah, you’re right, Willie, I should hang on, for him. You’re making me fucking laugh now, Willie, that’s not fair.’
Then Pete O‘Hara went through a few minutes of panting hard like a dog.
‘Sure the King of England’s not the worst. You haven’t a drop of water, have you, Willie?’ he
said then.
‘Not a drop,’ said Willie.
‘You know it was me, don’t you, Willie?’ said Pete then.
‘Go way, it wasn’t, it was never you, Pete, you wouldn’t do such a thing.‘
‘I wouldn’t do such a thing, and I did it, it was a foul thing I did, Willie, and I want you to know, if I could’ve called back that letter the very next day I would’ve, I would‘ve, Willie.’
Of course, Willie Dunne knew what he was talking about. Ah, he had known all along, but couldn’t be thinking what he knew was obvious. This O‘Hara had caused him the chief grief of his short life. The darkest and the chiefest among all the wretched griefs. For a moment he thought he might stick his hand into O’Hara’s side and see how he liked it, pain beyond measure. He had lost Gretta for ever and ever, as Father Buckley would say, amen, and it was this bastard who had done it — this poor dying bastard, his friend.
‘Why did you send that fucking letter, Pete, in your rotten black writing?’
‘When I told you about that other poor girl, Willie, with no tongue, you remember, God forgive me, I was so fucking angry with you, I felt as small as a pin, indeed and I did, when you hit me. I said to myself — ’
But Willie Dunne never heard what Pete O‘Hara had said to himself. With his mouth open on the next word, with his eyes wide open, he died.
As the sun came up the shelling started again, though it was not directed absolutely at them. Them was Christy Moran and Timmy Weekes. There didn’t seem to be anyone else.
‘How’s O’Hara?‘ said Timmy Weekes.
‘Pete’s dead,’ said Willie Dunne.
He put his head back against the tree behind and inadvertently knocked his helmet down forward over his face. Then he was in a moment of exhausted, calm stupor. Then a huge noise ate him like a whale. Then, as if in the next moment, he awoke in a rattling room, which was not a thing he expected. A rattling room it was, though, and he was strapped down to a seat — or was it a stretcher on a seat? — and he was trembling and shaking and he had a feeling that his breast was aflame and his legs were screaming at him with real voices.