Friends Indeed

by Rose Doyle

  anything like enough payment for my kindness. Nor for the risk I'm taking.' He began buttoning buttons. I told myself it was my imagination that he became more officious with each closure. 'I'm sticking with my condition that we meet again. When you're more rested and we have more time.'

  'You want me to come back to the camp?'

  The lines of huts, the towers, churches and rutted roads; they all at once seemed to me part of a spider's web, ready to trap me if I came in from the plains to meet this man.

  'Is the prospect of spending time with me so terrible?' he said.

  'Of course not.' I put spiders and webs out of my mind. 'It's just that I won't be around. Once Sarah and her private make arrangements to get married I'll be…'

  'Things may not happen as quickly or as easily as you imagine, Miss Buckley.' There was a warning in his voice. 'I'm not asking you to be my mistress, though that would be pleasant, I'm sure. I'm merely requesting your company.'

  'I'll meet you in two days' time,' I said, 'by the Gibbet Rath at midday. We can walk on the plains.' I felt sure he wouldn't agree to this.

  'And if it's raining?'

  'We'll talk in the shelter of the Rath.'

  'I'll be there. Do you ride?'

  'No.'

  'A pity.' He buttoned the last button and straightened his shoulders. 'Now, as you've been reminding me, Private Vance awaits.'

  Walking through the rows of identical huts, each one identified by a letter of the alphabet, I asked if he really hadn't known, when he asked where I'd travelled from, that I lived with the wrens.

  'No,' he said, 'I asked because you looked on the point of collapse. I would have believed whatever you told me.

  'How long have you been stationed in the camp?'

  'Three months. I was in India before. It's very different.'

  'I'm sure it is.' I didn't want to hear about India, or about his career in the army. I just wanted to meet Jimmy Vance and go back to the nest and sleep there for two days.

  'He's in Row D,' said Captain Ainslie, more observer of tired irritability than mind-reader, 'just a few minutes more.'

  The ground underfoot was muddy and to keep my balance I took his arm. 'The men complain that the camp is as bad as Sebastopol when it gets like this,' he said.

  Soldiers sat on the steps of the wooden huts, which were long and low and not nearly so solid-looking as the single hut occupied by Captain Ainslie. I was trying to keep my skirts clear of a water-filled hole when my companion said, 'Private Vance, you have a visitor.'

  A soldier, tall and slim and very young, lifted his head from the piece of wood he was whittling. He stood, staring at me and twisting the half-carved whistle in his hands.

  'Miss Buckley, tell me how Sarah is.' He spoke as he came towards us, ignoring Captain Ainslie. 'Tell me about my son.' When he stopped I thought for a minute he would take me by the shoulders and shake me.

  'I think it would be better, soldier, if we went inside.' Captain Ainslie was sharp. Jimmy Vance hesitated. Then he nodded and turned and led the couple of steps to the door of a hut which he pushed open. We followed him inside.

  Instead of a fireplace this hut had a lopsided stove with a hole in the roof for a chimney. The windows were smaller and there was no way the men who lived there, and slept on the straw pallet beds, could have had the remotest privacy from one another. Even on that mild day I felt a breeze blow through the planks which made up the walls. But it was clean and we were the only people inside.

  'Excuse me, Captain, sir,' Jimmy Vance hurriedly saluted his officer and turned to me. 'I know you're her friend from childhood. She spoke of you all the time. I'm glad to meet you.'

  'And I you.'

  He took my extended hand and I took a proper look at Sarah's love. He had a pleasant, open face with hair that curled as if to spite the short haircut. It was easy to imagine him a beloved son and brother. Far easier than it was to see him as the father of James.

  'How old is my son? What did she call him? Why didn't she tell me she was carrying my child? Is she well?' His questions fell on top of one another as he dropped my hand.

  'He's nearly six weeks old and he's called James,' I began.

  'She gave him my name . . .' This fact seemed more than he could deal with and he set his jaw and walked to the window. He stood there for a full minute, a small muscle ticking at the side of his eye. 'I'm sorry.' He left the window and pulled three chairs close together. 'We should sit.'

  Captain Ainslie refused the chair offered him, preferring to lean against the wall, but Jimmy Vance and myself sat opposite one another while I told him as much as I thought he should know of Sarah's story. Sarah could fill in the details herself.

  'I got letters from her all right,' he said when I'd finished, 'but none telling me she was with child.'

  'She wrote telling you three times,' I said.

  'I got three letters,' he agreed.

  His hands hung loosely between his knees, the half-carved whistle in one of them. He became very quiet. A long silence stretched. A soldier came in, took a look at Jimmy Vance's face and went out again; the mood in that hut was not good and it got worse. Jimmy Vance moved at last, folding his arms and looking me in the eye.

  'I can't read,' he said, 'Sarah's letters were read to me.'

  'Were they censored?' Captain Ainslie moved to the window and stood with his back to us, looking out.

  'There were no lines through them, if that's what you mean.' Jimmy Vance brought his hands together and snapped the whistle in two. 'They were misrepresented to me,' he looked at what he'd done, 'by another soldier. A man who wouldn't want me staying behind if the regiment goes to India.'

  'This man is a friend of yours?' said Captain Ainslie.

  'He was,' said Jimmy Vance.

  There was another silence after this. The same soldier came back into the hut. Detecting an even worse mood he saluted Captain Ainslie and went out again quickly. Jimmy Vance dropped his broken handiwork to the floor.

  ‘I’ve nothing to bring my son,' he said. 'Where is he?'

  'With his mother,' I said, 'in a shelter on the plains. They're both waiting for you.'

  'Sheltering on the plains? What do you mean?' He said the words slowly. His upper lip was beaded with perspiration.

  'They're with the wrens,' I said, 'or maybe you know them as bushwomen.'

  For an eternity of time he stared as if at a grave into which he intended flinging himself. He was seeing me as I really was, my tiredness and dishevelled state, and he was at last understanding how things really were.

  'What have I done to her . . .' He seemed to grow thinner and younger as he stood there.

  'She came to the Curragh to find you. She's waiting,' I said.

  He stood to attention. 'Captain Ainslie, sir, I'm glad for what you've done for me so far. But you would have my gratitude for life, sir, if you would . . .'

  'You know the commandant's views about soldiers who keep company with bushwomen?'

  'As well as you know them yourself, Captain.'

  'Go to her, Private Vance,' Captain Ainslie said, 'and repay your debt of gratitude by seeing that Miss Buckley gets safely to her own shelter in the wren village. I'll get a horse car to take you both.' He moved from the wall and his voice hardened. 'I want you back here in an hour, soldier. Any longer and you will create difficulties for me. You wouldn't want to do that.'

  Alexander Ainslie came with us to where the carmen were lined up waiting for hire. He chose a driver he knew and paid him enough for the man not to protest about the destination. He spoke in my ear as he helped me up into the car.

  'Until the Gibbet Rath,' he said.

  I nodded as Jimmy Vance got in beside me.

  'Sarah was on the plains for last night's rain?' said Jimmy Vance as we moved quickly out of the camp.

  'She and James have been there for more than a week now,' I said.

  'I wrote to her too,' he stared ahead, his hands cupping his knees, 'the man who wrot
e my letters for me was the same one who read Sarah's to me. He took them with his own letters for posting. Did she get letters from me?'

  'Never.'

  'Sarah never trusted John Marsh. She thought him all for himself.'

  I looked back as we left the camp. Captain Ainslie, standing where we'd left him, raised his hand in salute.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sarah

  The days, then weeks, of that summer became altogether different once I was with Jimmy again. I knew I was fooling myself. That the mornings were no brighter, the nights just as dark and the great sea of green no more a lily pond than it was the Atlantic. I didn't care.

  I saw him coming, the day Allie brought him back to me, when he was a good half-mile away. The rain in the night had sharpened the green and flattened the dust. So I was able to see him quite clearly, sitting upright beside Allie in a horsecar, wearing his soldier's uniform.

  I walked out of the village to meet him. When he saw me he jumped from the car and ran the last bit of the way.

  We stood in the road while he held me and James close against him. Even James was silent for those few minutes. I felt Jimmy's heart, and his breath on my hair. I thought that if lightning struck us down, or God's hand, we'd be together forever, the three of us. I almost wanted it to happen.

  What happened was that James, who'd been fretful and colicky since early morning, began to cry. Jimmy took him from me.

  'He's got a look of my mother about him.' he said.

  I'd always thought James resembled Mary Ann. He was becoming fairer by the day and his face was round and mostly smiling, as hers had been. He wasn't smiling for his father. His face was distorted with the pain in his small stomach.

  'So your mother suffers from colic, does she?' I said.

  'I don't blame you being angry at me,' Jimmy put James across his shoulder. 'But there wasn't a day I didn't think of you, Sarah, and that's the God's truth.'

  'I know it is,' I said.

  I did too. All I'd needed was to hear him say it. The rest of the truth could wait a little longer.

  Allie travelled on to the wren village in the horsecar while Jimmy and I, with James still across his father's shoulder, left the road and walked out across the soft grass. There was nowhere else for us to be alone; the sheep couldn't be counted as company. When we found a sheltered spot by a low hillock I took James and comforted him until he was quiet again.

  'I was wrong.' Jimmy examined his son's peaceful face. 'It's me he looks like.' I hadn't the heart to take this away from him so I said nothing. I still thought James looked like Mary Ann.

  We sat on the drying grass and Jimmy took off his jacket and put James lying on it. He liked it there and lay quietly, kicking his legs. I put my head on Jimmy's shoulder and he put his arms round me and his face in my hair again. We said nothing for a long time.

  Then Jimmy said, 'You can't go on living with the bushwomen. There's talk about them in the camp. They're not . . .'

  'They took me in when I came here to look for you,' I said.

  It was one thing for me to find fault with the wrens and the way they lived. It was another for Jimmy to do so.

  'They did,' he agreed, 'but we're together now and you must leave them. I'll find lodgings for you in Kildare town. You can stay there until we're married.'

  'When will that be?' I trusted Jimmy. I did not trust the army.

  'I'll go straight away to the provost marshal, tell him I want leave to marry the first day I'm not needed for a parade or route march. We can do it by licence or after banns, whichever you prefer . . .' He saw my distrust and stopped.

  'It'll be all right, Sarah, I promise you.'

  Jimmy had always made things sound easy. 'I've been in Kildare town, Jimmy,' I told him, 'wrens aren't welcome there.'

  'Newbridge then,' he said, 'we'll go to Newbridge tomorrow and find you a room.'

  'And Allie? What about her? She came here on account of me. I can't leave her alone in the wren village.'

  'We'll find a room for Allie too. She's been a good friend to the pair of us.' He stopped, remembering something. After a minute, sounding like someone not sure that he'd heard right, he said, 'she told me the two of you went visiting the major general.'

  'We did,' I assured him, 'and if I ever see that amadan again it'll be too soon. He's not worth our time talking about.'

  But Jimmy insisted and so I told him a little of what I thought of his major general, and of his army's attitude to the mothers of its soldiers' children. He didn't disagree with me. He said the major general had a wife who dressed in black to be like the Queen. Unlike the Queen they had no children.

  'He took command a year ago and he's a great discourager of wives and families in the camp. But the provost marshal's a good sort and if Captain Ainslie sticks with us we'll be all right, in spite of Ponsonby,' he said.

  'Why would Captain Ainslie turn against us?' I asked.

  'Because he's an officer. Officers do what they please and when it pleases them,' Jimmy said. 'What amuses Ainslie today, Sarah, may be of no interest to him tomorrow.'

  'You're talking about Allie, aren't you?' The sun might have gone in, I felt so chilled.

  'He's very taken with her,' Jimmy agreed.

  I knew he was. 'Allie's not taken with him.' I prayed I was right. 'She'll be gone from here as soon as we're married.'

  Jimmy turned my face up to his. 'You don't have to look out for her on your own any more, Sarah,' he said, 'I'm here and I'll be a friend to her too. I owe her.'

  The sun warmed up again.

  'Do you know the wren village?' I said. 'Have you ever been there?'

  Jimmy reddened and sat away from me. 'If you mean have I been a caller there, Sarah, then the answer is no, I have not,’ he was stiff with insult.

  'That's not what I meant.' I shook my head. 'I just wondered if you'd ever stopped in passing, as some soldiers do, or driven out with the water wagon.'

  I swatted a bee hovering near James. The Curragh was alive with insects of all sorts. Ellen had told me the butterflies everywhere were Wood Whites. She was very interested in that sort of thing. I didn't notice Jimmy's upset until he stood up.

  'How could you think, Sarah, that I'd go with a prostitute?' He took a cigarette from his tunic pocket. He hadn't smoked when I knew him before. 'I was always waiting to get back to you. I've never even thought about another woman, not to mind a prostitute . . .'

  'Prostitutes are women, Jimmy,' I pointed out. 'It was a prostitute took me into her kip house when my father put me out in the street. That same prostitute gave me work when no one else would. And none of the women in the wren village, prostitutes or others, have ever made me feel ashamed of our child in the way your commander did.'

  He said nothing for a while, just stood pulling on his cigarette, the smoke making a thick cloud in front of him. It would be hard for Jimmy to accept women like Beezy and Clara Hyland. Or the girls in the kip house, if he'd ever had to meet them. None of the women I knew who were prostitutes had much regard for men. Men sensed this very quickly too and, depending on their type, were either frightened or wary of them. Jimmy, who was a boy in many ways and saw life plainly, would find them more frightening than most.

  I watched my baby watching the butterflies and waited for his father to say something.

  'It was a soldier fought in the Crimea gave me my first one of these.' He spoke at last, examining the cigarette as he did so. 'He got the habit from the Turks.'

  'Beezy Ryan uses cigarettes,' I was not having him change the subject, 'and she got the habit from a soldier too. It could even be that he fought in the Crimea.' I paused. 'Beezy's the prostitute gave me a home and work when I was carrying James.'

  'I don't want to fight with you, Sarah.' Jimmy dropped the cigarette and ground it with his heel into the grass. 'All I've thought about these months was seeing you again and getting you to change your mind.'

  'Change my mind about what?'

  He sat b
eside me again, but a little apart and without putting his arms about me. 'About wanting to finish with me. That's what I thought was the matter, that you'd grown tired and didn't want to see me.'

  And so, at last, I heard and understood how the wretched John Marsh, Jimmy's best and jealous friend, had conspired to keep him away from me.

  John Marsh had read to Jimmy, from my letters, that I wanted to end our friendship because my father had found out about us. In John Marsh's version of my letters I told Jimmy that in any event my feelings had changed.

  John Marsh had also, as a good friend would, sat down with his pen and written Jimmy's replies asking to meet me. God alone knows what he'd really put down. Or even what he'd done with the letters. Written rubbish and burned them, most likely. Jimmy had even gone to Dublin and haunted the house in Haddington Road for two whole days, hoping to see me.

  'Why didn't you tell me you couldn't read?' I said.

  He looked away. 'I thought it more important to tell you you were the only woman I could ever love.'

  'Tell me again.' I took his hand and made him look at me. His eyes were bright with tears. 'Tell me again that you love me,' I said.

  A good while later, when James became impatient with us, I told Jimmy everything that had happened to me. It was hard to get him to understand how fine a person Beezy was, how good, in their way, the girls in North King Street had been to me. How companionable the women in the Magdalen.

  'That's all in the past, Sarah,' he said when I'd finished. 'You can't go on living with outcast women.'

  'I'm an outcast woman myself,' I pointed out.

  'You didn't choose to be.'

  'Do you think the wrens choose to be as they are?' I tried to hold back my anger. 'They did not. They were decent, most of them hardworking, before disaster and poverty and abuse left them without choices. For some of them life's kinder here, living free on the plains in the summertime, than anything they've known.' I paused. 'The winters are different. The winters are hell itself and the women who stay on have no place else to go.'

  'They could go to the workhouse.'