‘If I was, I tell you, I wouldn’t be minding if it was skelting down rain, mud or anything, because I’d be thinking of the dress on her, and how clean and good and sweet-smelling and everything, and the neat coats that girls do have.’
There was another violent pull of the fag.
And I wouldn’t be failing myself to have polished boots that I’d have spat on for a good ten minutes and racking the elbow at them, you know? Ah fucking yes.‘
He scratched his inner thighs in a concentrated manner.
‘Not that I’m against soldiering, no. I like these white bastarding lices crawling around my bollocks, and the fucking rations blown to kingdom come and general muck and mayhem, and pissing into a thunderbox that smells of all you bastards’ shite.’
The fellas near him laughed.
‘But it’s a nice enough thing to meet a girl and go and have a cup of tea in the Monument Creamery, and try not to talk with curses, and working up to a decent kiss at some point in the proceedings.’
Christy Moran had himself wedged in under a bit of an overhang to try to keep himself out of the cascading rain that had suddenly fallen. Willie wondered if he put his head above the parapet, would he see the rain walking across the buckled and wrenched fields, or would he just get his face shot to pieces?
The rain stopped as suddenly as it came and Captain Pasley emerged from his dugout. The men bestirred themselves.
‘Evening, Sergeant-Major,’ he said.
‘Evening, sir,’ said Christy Moran, saluting nicely. ‘What can we do for you, sir?’
‘Did the lads get their food?’
‘It didn’t come up, sir.’
‘Ah, did it not, lads?’ said Captain Pasley, and looked around at the faces. But the faces were smiling encouragingly enough.
‘We had the few tins left, sir,’ said Christy Moran.
‘I’ll phone down for double rations tomorrow,’ said Captain Pasley.
‘That’ll hit the spot, sir,’ said Christy Moran, taking a last drag of his woodbine and flicking it away into no-man’s land. It soared like a firefly. Willie Dunne half expected a shot from the other side.
All right, Sergeant-Major,‘ said Captain Pasley. Anyone stirring over there?’ he said.
‘Divil a one,’ said Christy Moran.
Captain Pasley incautiously stepped onto the fire-step and raised his capped head with alarming indifference so he could peer out.
‘Careful, sir,’ said Christy Moran, flustered despite himself. ‘Don’t you want to use the mirror, sir?’
‘I’ll be all right,’ said Captain Pasley.
So Christy Moran was forced to stand there, his brain rattling a little, expecting a shot.
‘Such beautiful country,’ said Captain Pasley. ‘Such a beautiful night.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Christy Moran, who had not noted particularly the beauty, but was willing to allow it might be there.
‘You can see the river glinting away over to the right. I am sure it is absolutely full of trout,’ said Captain Pasley in a dreamy, distant voice.
Christy Moran was further disconcerted. ‘I hope you’re not planning to go out there and try your luck with a rod, sir.’
Captain Pasley stepped down again and looked down at his sergeant-major. ‘Do you have everything you want?’
‘Everything we want, bar stew,’ said Christy Moran, immensely relieved. ‘Isn’t that right, lads?’
‘Yeh, yeh,’ said the lads dutifully.
‘It is a lovely night, a lovely night,’ said Captain Pasley, leaning back his head now, and lifting the rim of his cap, and gazing upwards. ‘Would you look at those stars?’
‘At least we can look at the stars still, sir,’ said Christy Moran, on the brink of euphoria.
‘I take your point, Sergeant-Major. I’m sorry if I gave you cause for concern.’
He smiled. He was not a handsome man and he was not an ugly man, the captain, and Willie was not in any way against him because he had an air of confidence, which was a good air when you were all stuck out in foreign fields, and even the birds did not sing the same run of notes.
No man in truth regretted being raised above his fellows, that was a human fact, Willie supposed. But the raised-up ones needed to be of the ilk of Captain Pasley for it to make sense.
You couldn’t take against Captain Pasley.
‘We’ll have to go out later anyhow,’ he said, with a sigh.
‘Oh, yeh, sir? Ah, we thought so, sir,’ said Christy Moran. ‘Didn’t we, lads?’
Ah, we thought so, we thought so,‘ they said in chorus.
So they rose up like shadows of the dead from their lair at the bulking of the night, a fierce frieze of stars rampant above.
Willie saw the sudden vista of no-man’s land, the dark openness of it, the lurk of the old fences and field corners. There was barbed wire everywhere, put in by scores of successive wire parties, going out on nights like these, under stars like these, with hearts like these, German and Allied, pounding and leaping into throats.
Willie didn’t know where the enemy trenches lay exactly, but he hoped Captain Pasley did, from his map and the numbers on the map.
Up the moist clay they went, Captain Pasley ahead, Christy Moran quietly following like a scowling wife, and Joe Clancy was in this group and Johnnie Williams, and also a red-haired lad called Pete O‘Hara.
Willie knew they were to check their own wire along a four-hundred-yard stretch because the captain thought during the day he had seen a gap here and there. And they didn’t want even jack-rabbits or rats getting through. Or, slipping with horrible creeping murderousness upon them in the dark, great muscled engines of Germans who would leap down on them and drive their fine-honed Dresden bayonets into their Irish chests. They didn’t want that.
So now they had to creep along themselves, slightly hunched, arms sloping, being so careful, as indeed signally recommended in their soldier’s small-books, not to betray themselves by a snapped twig or a cough or a stumble.
And Captain Pasley, who was a small man, a miniature man in some ways, with a head like a nicely rounded turnip, he walked quite erect and purposefully, getting them to follow with little shakes of his right hand. O‘Hara and Williams carried a light enough roll of wire between them for repairs, and Willie Dunne had big wire-cutters like something you might imagine a mad dentist would possess to torture you with, and he had to carry his rifle also. It was up to Clancy to dart along carefully in his captain’s wake, peering into the murky tangles, like sad brambles that would never bear berries in any known September of the world.
Meanwhile, the Boche threw up, now and then, the dreaded star-shells, festive enough things except they banished the night-time. But when these shells were heard going up, at least the little party knew their sound by now, and flung themselves into the grasses and the clays, Captain Pasley too, like a fellow diving off the rocks at the Forty Foot swimming place in Sandycove, in Dublin, in that vanished world behind them.
Then they went on, and now they found one of the captain’s gaps, and set to, Willie snipping off a length and them all pulling the awkward, snake-like object like a mythical creature out of a Greek story into its place. And Christy Moran bound the new to the old, and it was a wonder no one else heard him cursing, although maybe now the German lads were grown used to his cursing and thought it was some kind of wild bird’s calling, out there in abandoned Belgium.
‘The fucking cunting thing is after biting the thumb off me,’ he said, ‘the fucking bastarding cunting piece of English shite.’
‘Moran, leave off the giving out, man, a bit of god-forsaken ciuneas, if you will,’ said Captain Pasley.
A bit of what, sir?‘ said Christy, sucking the little berry of blood off his finger.
‘Quiet, quiet. Do you not speak any Irish, Sergeant-Major?’ said Captain Pasley in a friendly way.
‘I don’t fucking speak Irish, sir, I don’t even fucking speak English.’
‘Whateve
r it is you speak, Moran, don’t.’
All right, sir,‘ said Christy.
‘God bless you, Sergeant-Major,’ said the captain, perhaps humorously, they didn’t know. ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ now he said, hunkering down. ‘Whisht, lads, down.’
And they all dropped like Wicklow sheepdogs. The mucky ground was decorated with red pebbles, Willie could see them. He had slightly pissed himself; he didn’t mean to. Now when he looked up he could see, much too clearly, a few heaps of figures passing along a hundred feet beyond them, like fellas out for a starry walk, unconcerned, but silent, and Willie felt the warm piss seep again onto his legs, and he cursed himself for a fool.
He could feel Christy Moran lying in against him as tense as a piece of dried timber, ready for God knew what, to spring up and gain a Victoria Cross, some awful act of valour that would get them all killed, and only a medal left of them to clank in a biscuit tin with other cherished nonsense. Might he not smell the smell of the piss anyhow?
But no, Christy Moran stayed where he was, maybe as afraid as Willie in the upshot, and they could all hear Joe Clancy’s slightly chesty breathing as if miniature pigs were living in his mouth, and it was not a relaxing sound. Then Willie became conscious again of his rifle in his hands, and he gripped the smooth wood and the oiled barrel, and suddenly, despite the pissing, he knew he was not afraid. He was afraid but he knew he could rise now and meet the danger and wrestle with the enemy party and do what was called for.
It was a wonderful feeling; he was entirely surprised by it. He had not been out before on the cold night land, the blotchy skies with a touch of forgotten frost, still with a breeze of doubting cold. He was grinning now like a real fool, but a happy one.
The unknown figures passed on and away, themselves at some similar task put upon them by fate, ordered as one might say to wander in that dangerous nowhere for an hour or two, and risk everything for that, a roll of wire, a scrap of intelligence about a hole other men had maybe dug afresh.
Willie grinned and grinned, he put a hand down into the clay and scrabbled a cold fingerclasp of it, and put it to his damp cheeks and rubbed it in gratefully. The little red stones rasped along his skin. He had hardly a true idea who he was in that second, what he was thinking, where he was, what nation he belonged to, what language he spoke. He was as happy in this absence of fear, fear that he had feared would stop him dumb and numb, happy as an angel, as a free bird, as that doomed man to the right of Christ must have felt when the King of the Jews Himself said that for his kindness he would be saved, would be seated at Christ’s right hand in heaven, that though the three would die, two would not die, bound one to the other by kindness.
‘What in the name of the good fucking Christ are you grinning at, Willie Dunne?’ said Christy, lying now on his side on an elbow, quite in the country and at his ease. Willie knew Christy Moran was itching to unhitch the fag in his ear and have another pleasing smoke. Have a pleasing smoke and fuck the world and her wars and her cares.
‘I don’t know, Sarge, I don’t know.’
‘Fuck me to heaven,’ whispered Christy Moran, ‘if I didn’t think I was going to have to drop dead from the fright those buggers gave me. Can they not make a bit of noise when they’re going about so someone can shoot them?’
‘Come on, lads, we’ll shimmy back and have a can of evil-smelling tea,’ said Captain Pasley.
‘Just the job, Captain,’ said Christy Moran. ‘We’ll come with you, right enough. No bother, sir.’
‘Everyone shipshape?’
Shipshape, and alive.
Chapter Four
Now Willie was gone all those months. Dublin he supposed was just the same, and he wondered what spring would be looking like, sitting in the trees along Sackville Street, the real Sackville Street and not just a trench, and cheering up the starlings.
He thought how beautiful Gretta was, like the statue of the Grecian lady in the Painting Museum in Merrion Square. But she was no great hand at the letter writing, that was sure. The fella would come by with the letters and if he was lucky there’d be one from his father. Weeks and weeks and weeks he had waited for a letter from Gretta. It could be said that just now and then he was angry about it, humiliated. Even Christy Moran’s wife, never mentioned by Christy, wrote to Christy, because Willie had seen him hunkering down hungrily to read such letters. Joe Clancy had a girl that wrote to him right enough and regularly into the bargain.
He knew the captain had to read all the letters that they themselves wrote, so that an eye would be cast over everything, for information that might give help to the enemy, in case the letters were lost in an attack. He was always a bit nervous so writing to Gretta, to declare those few words that had been said he knew those countless times in all the languages of mankind. But it had to be risked. He loved her. And he knew, he hoped, she loved him because she had said so at their parting. And though the occasion may have driven the words into her mouth, he knew and hoped and prayed that they had started their journey in her heart, as they had in his.
Sometimes he could manage quite a long letter and sometimes for some reason when he tried to fetch out the proper words, there were only a few of them.
He thought how young she was in truth and how young he was and all their possible long days ahead, if they could only get their hands on them, and nothing standing between.
Of course, he remembered that she had not been able to give her word that she would marry him. He had felt awkward asking her in the dark of the stairwell of her father’s tenement, but she had not felt awkward saying no.
‘No, Willie, I won’t undertake such a thing,’ she had said, like a lawyer or the like.
And well he understood why not, what with her so-called beau going against her wishes and off to war with him seemingly without a care. That was the story then.
But it was every day now he cared, for her and for all the things he had left behind.
How beautiful she was, he thought, how beautiful.
Royal Dublin Fusiliers,
Flanders.
April 1915.
Dear Gretta,
I am thinking and thinking of you, Gretta. There are Chinese diggers everywhere and black lads and the Gurkhas looking fierce, the whole Empire, Gretta. And I don’t know what nation is not here, unless it is only the Hottentots and the pygmies stayed at home. But maybe they are here with us too, only we can’t see them so low in the trenches. I should talk! I am longing for furlough so I can go home and tell you all that I have seen here at the war. I love you, Gretta. That’s a fact.
Your loving friend,
Willie.
He wrote that. And then he tried to erase the ‘friend’ and put in something better. But it became a smudge, so he wrote in ‘friend’ again and hoped it would do the trick. He was very nervous writing the letter all right. The captain might think it was stupid; and worse than that, she might think it was stupid.
Some toiling days later they were on the move again, pushing on further up country to near St Julian. He was getting the hang of the new words, and anyway St Julian wasn’t much of a mouthful, it was almost English.
At first they considered things to be much improved. There was a river near the reserve lines where they were billeted, waiting to go up into the line, with weeping willows along the banks, and the same river was known to meander out between the lines eventually, and to carry into the German lines themselves, so it amused them to set little paper boats on the water, with violent messages written on them in bits of German, in the hope that somewhere a German hand would fish them out.
They supposed they would have to say it would soon be summer, as summer was said to come early, in those parts.
Clancy, Williams, O‘Hara and Willie Dunne asked permission one fine day to swim in the river, and Captain Pasley didn’t say nay, in fact declared he would join them.
It was a pleasing stretch of country there when they reached the elected spot. The glistening blue bullet of a kingfisher fi
red along and away under the lowering trees. The water was dark black silk.
Once the uniforms were stripped off, no one was so obviously a private or an officer. It was curious to Willie and his pals how slight and young Captain Pasley looked.
They ran about in their long-johns kicking a sick-looking football, and there was a fresh and excited laughter in their voices under the trees.
It was a laughter almost painful in their throats, and the willows seemed to float now in the breeze, like green clouds, and the river water was a piercing blue, the blue of old memory, and although being young they did not know exactly the privilege of being young, yet even after long hardships their bodies felt fine, and the blood was flowing round them well, and after all in the horrible mathematics of the war, they were alive.
Then Clancy did a running dive into the river, and Williams arrowed in after him, and then Willie, and then Captain Pasley went in with a belly flop.
Then they were out again smartish as the water was still quite chill and they lay back on their uniforms, arms behind their heads. They were naked as babies. A little breeze played about in the willows. The five penises lay like worms in their nests of pubic hair. It was like, thought Willie, an old painting in the window of a pricey shop in Grafton Street that a person might gawp at in surprise.
It was not that the war receded; they could hear it clearly enough, coming over to them in the still air, the shocking repetition of the high-explosive shells, and shrapnel bombs that even at that distance made a mean little insect noise.
An airplane careered overhead, going about its business of photographing and intelligence-gathering. The head of the pilot was quite plain, jutting up from the canvas of the craft. The colours and the big letters of the Royal Flying Corps gave the airplane an air of the circus.
A Long Long Way Page 4