Fall of Poppies

by Heather Webb

  “Don’t move,” the photographer said. “Look at the birdie, don’t blink, hold your body really still.”

  Clive held his breath and did not let go until the flash went off and the man came out from behind his huge blanketed box.

  “Good luck, son,” he said, coming over to shake his hand. Before Clive was out the door, the next uniformed soldier was already getting into place.

  “Money is no object,” his father had said to the photographer’s secretary, a plump young woman who was wearing thick spectacles and far too much rouge. “We’ll have two prints, one for his mother to put on the mantel while he’s gone and the other one for his sweetheart.” Then he winked at the girl and said, “Although he’s got more than one, I’m sure. We might need half a dozen to cover them all!”

  Clive didn’t know where to look. The secretary laughed and winked at him, but it was a hollow gesture. She didn’t mean it; she was just being polite.

  Clive didn’t have a sweetheart but his father hadn’t noticed that. He had just assumed his son had a girl tucked away somewhere. The same way he assumed that Clive wasn’t afraid of going to war.

  Three days later, his father went to collect the pictures, leaving Clive and his mother in the house. His train would leave from Victoria that afternoon, but when Margaret went up to her son’s room to pack his things, she found his bed already made and his kit folded, ready to go in the bag. His boots were by the door, tongues pulled back, ready for him to step into. They were so shiny she could see the reflection of her sad, worried face in them. Four months ago her son had never made his own bed or known one end of an iron from the other. The army had stolen her son from her. Now, it also seemed, it was to deprive her of the pleasure and purpose she found in doing for him.

  Clive came in and found her looking at his boots.

  “I’ve nearly just finished packing, Mum. You go downstairs and I’ll straighten up in here.”

  She smiled weakly and part of him wished he could turn the clock back a year. His mother had hoped the war would all be over before he turned eighteen. It was the first thing she had said when war was declared. He had not thought about it himself one way or another. He knew he would either go into the army or get a starter job in the civil ser­vice. Either way it was just the way things were. When the war didn’t end Clive was conscripted on his eighteen birthday. His mother had tried to hide it but he knew she was unhappy about it. He pretended he wanted to fight but secretly Clive hoped they would keep him in the training barracks and give him a desk job, or put him in the kitchen like they did with some of the younger lads. But they decided to send him to Ireland instead.

  “I’ll make you a sandwich for the train.”

  “No need,” he said. “There’ll be a mess car. They feed us well anyway.” Then, seeing his mother’s devastated expression, he added, “Not as well as you though, Mum. Any of that delicious currant cake leftover from yesterday?”

  Margaret was placated but when his father came home and presented her with the photograph, she got upset again.

  It didn’t help when George said, “Something to put on the mantelpiece. To help you remember what he looks like.”

  “You make it sound like he’s going to die . . .”

  “Don’t be so stupid, woman,” Jack said. “He’s only going to Ireland.”

  George laughed as if the very idea of Clive dying was ridiculous. But his laugh was as shallow as the girl’s in the photographer’s studio.

  Margaret couldn’t hold it in any longer. “He’s only a boy, George!” his mother cried out. “He’s too young.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Clive said. “I can look after myself.”

  It was what you said to keep the women calm. It was what you tried to make them believe.

  “You’re being hysterical, woman,” his father said, raising his eyes to heaven at his wife’s foolishness, then nodding across at Clive. “Look at him. He’s as much of a man as I am. Anyway, all he’ll be doing is keeping a few Irish peasants in their place. Bloody lucky he’s not over in France, although I’d say that’s where he’d rather be, wouldn’t you, Clive? Out in the trenches, fighting the real enemy instead of just popping it to a few Paddies?”

  George Postlethwaite slapped his son hard on the back and Clive said, “Of course, Dad,” and smiled brightly at them both. Nobody had asked him if this was what he wanted or what he felt about being a soldier. Everyone just assumed. He was a man now and men went to war. After three months of training, Clive had muscles on his arms and legs from fitness training twice a day. He knew how to march, how to form fours and about turn. He knew how to make his bed and clean his kit and shine boots and shoot a gun. But Clive didn’t know how to kill a man, and from what he had heard from the other lads, the Paddies were as dangerous as the Germans. Sneaky, too, and fearless. They had snipers, picking off uniformed soldiers as they went about their daily business. There was nearly as much hatred toward the Irish among the soldiers as there was for the Germans. More, in fact, because while the German army comprised soldiers like them, the Irish were rebels who had chosen to rise up at a time when the British Army had been weakened by the Great War. Many Irishmen had signed up to fight in the British Army, and these soldiers had the respect of their peers. The ordinary Irish ­people were British, as much as the Scots and the Welsh were, anyway. But after the Uprising their lads had come down hard on the rebels, executing fifteen of the ringleaders in one go. It was only then that the Irish ­people had risen up in force.

  Although it was not as bad as the trenches, Ireland was not an easy billet. The newspapers didn’t always reflect what was going on, but word filtered back from the regiments to the training camps on the worst places to get sent. Ireland was among them. Not for the bloodshed or the conditions but for the hatred. In the trenches you mixed only with your own—­you were altogether. Everyone was on the same side. Although it was hard, the enemy was across the field, bombing and shooting at you. It was honest warfare. In Ireland you were in another man’s country and on another man’s soil. You were living among them and yet you could never be quite certain who the enemy was.

  George offered to take the bus with him to Victoria Station, but Clive said he would prefer to go alone.

  “I’ll be back before you know it,” he said to his mother as they embraced at the door. “Just think like I’ve stepped out to the shops.”

  “You’re a good boy,” she said, holding back her tears and putting her hand to his face.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” his father said, “the photograph for your sweetheart.”

  He pushed across a pocket-­size print in a velveteen mount.

  “He doesn’t have a sweetheart, you stupid man!” Margaret snapped.

  George looked crushed. When Clive saw the glimmer of sadness in his father’s eyes, he wanted the bravado and the bad jokes back. Clive reached out and took it from him anyway.

  “Thanks, Dad,” he said, and, winking, added, “Just the one will have to do I suppose.”

  George turned to his wife and said, “See there, woman, that’s why he won’t let us go to the station with him. He’s meeting his girl . . .”

  Clive laughed, then clicked his beret at his parents and headed off in his best soldier’s swagger down the street.

  As he walked away from his parents’ house the fear began to take him over. Clive felt the bile reach up from his stomach to his throat. He barely managed to make it around the corner, out of their sight, before retching his mother’s tea and cake into the gutter.

  Dublin, July 1918

  FUCKING REBEL BASTARD. He deserved it.”

  Billy was mouthing off again.

  “I gave it to him, right here”—­he tapped his temple—­“with the butt of my rifle. Went down like a lamb he did. Should have shot him, too—­would have if Carter hadn’t been such a fucking poof and stopped me.”

/>   Everyone was afraid of Billy Jones, except Clive. Billy was rough and a little crazy, but Clive knew how to handle him. He and Clive had been trained together. They were from the same part of the East End so they knew each other vaguely from school, although they were from very different families. Clive was an only child and George worked in an office. Billy was from a family of ten whose father spent more time drinking than working. They lived on the charity of neighbors and whatever Billy could steal.

  The two boys had met on the train up to Slough and ended up bunking together in the training barracks. That first night was the first that Billy had slept in a bed on his own. He had fallen out of the top bunk and, still half-­asleep, cried out for his mother. A ­couple of the lads had come over ready to put the boot in, but Clive had stopped them. He had been terrified himself standing up to the yobs, but regardless, Clive wouldn’t stand by and see anyone get bullied. “Steady, lads,” he said. “Give him a break, yeah? It’s our first night. We’re all allowed to miss home for one night, ain’t we?” Clive had a calm, sure manner that deflected their male bravado and they had shrugged and gone back to bed. Billy was street tough but his family were close-­knit and he missed them. He never forgot the kindness and called Clive “my army brother.” No matter what nonsense Billy got up to, Clive knew that he always had his back. He did not particularly want “mad” Billy Jones as a brother. However, he was glad Billy was on his side and not against him.

  Three months after arriving in Dublin, Clive had settled into life at the barracks. Almost straightaway Clive had been given a job in the post room—­replacing somebody who had been struck down with tuberculosis. They were taken to a sanitarium in case they infected the whole barracks and Clive’s name was picked out of the list of new recruits. Clive enjoyed the work, sorting and delivering letters to the five thousand men who occupied the biggest barracks in Dublin.

  Although the Uprising itself seemed to have been settled with the execution of the rebel leaders, the war in Ireland had gone underground. The word was that the republicans were consolidating, putting together an army bigger and better than the last one. Only an idiot would believe the determined Irish would do otherwise.

  As a result of this, British Army active duty was essentially patrolling the streets, making sure that the rebels could see who was boss. This was a task that Billy and his chums took up with some gusto. They said they were angry at the Irish for deflecting attention from the Great War but Clive could see they were angry because they believed that the soft job of babysitting the Paddys made them second-­class soldiers. Sometimes they were given information about rebel houses, and they attacked them, dragging the owners out and interning them for questioning. Other times, keen to justify themselves, they simply wandered the streets in uniformed gangs attacking anyone they didn’t like the look of.

  Clive knew that his job as post boy meant that most of the other young men had him down as a shirker. Sometimes Clive pretended he would prefer the guns and the street squabbles, but in truth, he was not cut out for fighting and he knew it.

  Patrol duties aside, the soldiers were encouraged to stay inside the confines of the barracks as much as possible. All their needs were provided for within its walls. There were extensive exercise yards, games rooms, canteens—­they even showed movies in the mess hall on Saturday nights to encourage the soldiers to stay on site.

  Generally, Clive was happy to do this. However, on this sunny summer day, with the prospect of another afternoon listening to Billy and his friends bragging about rifle-­butting rebels, he decided to go out into the city. He wanted to clear his head—­empty it of all the war talk. He wanted to see if he could feel “normal” again.

  Clive waited until the others had gone down to the recreation hall, then he went back to his bunk. He put on a blue cotton shirt over his army trousers and stuffed a woolen peaked cap in his pocket in case of rain. He didn’t wear his army coat.

  After signing out at the front entrance, Clive followed the River Liffey until he reached the center of town. The sun was warming the back of his neck as he walked across along the busy streets. He noted how many of them were still decimated from all the bombing. On foot, Dublin seemed a lot like the East End, with street sellers with their goods piled high in strollers, on wheelbarrows, or on anything else they could transport them in. There were gangs of youths in flat caps smoking on every street corner, just like at home. However, although it looked the same, it felt different. Menacing.

  Clive began to grow nervous. The ­people, the crowded noisy streets were the same as home yet he did not belong here. He was an intruder. He began to believe he was being followed. There was a man in a tweed Gatsby hat he had passed when he was leaving the barracks, and there he was now again, smoking on a street corner over to his left. Or was it the same man at all? Maybe he was being paranoid. Clive’s nerves began to get the better of him. Any one of these ordinary-­looking men could be following him, waiting to spike him with a knife or pull a gun on him. Clive kept walking quickly, careful not to make eye contact with anybody lest they guess from his face that he was a British soldier. Part of him wanted to turn and go back to the barracks but it was too late. In any case, he told himself, he was just being silly. The thought of being imprisoned for another single day with Billy and his cohorts drove him forward up a side road toward a pretty square of quiet parkland.

  Away from all the ­people, Clive started to relax. The man in the hat was nowhere to be seen. He had been imagining it after all. This was a grand part of town, full of Georgian buildings. It felt affluent here, quiet. English, but in a posh way. Clive stopped outside the National Gallery. His mum had once took him on the tube down to the National Gallery in London. She liked to think she was a bit posh, his Mum. He had not liked it much, but he remembered it was quiet in there, peaceful, like a church. That had been boring to him as a child but today it seemed like the sort of place he’d like to be. There was an old woman selling apples from a baby carriage at the entrance gate and Clive reached into his pocket for a tuppence and bought one from her. “Ta, love,” he said and she gave him a toothless grin.

  This place was all right after all.

  He headed toward the door of the gallery with a slight swagger to his step. As he entered the gallery Clive realized that, for the first time since he had been drafted into the army six months ago, he felt somewhat free.

  EILEEN WAS LEAVING for work. She straightened her hat in the hall mirror, then cocked her ear toward the narrow stairs to listen for her brother. It was force of habit. More than a year later, she still expected Padraig to call down, “Don’t forget to bring me home an apple, Eileen!”

  Every day she had brought her brother home an apple from the lady with the baby carriage outside Merrion Square. Nobody else got one. Just him.

  It had been over a year since he had been killed and she still could not believe her darling brother was dead. She kept thinking he was just in another room. Padraig had taken part in the attack on Mount Street during the Easter Rising. It was mostly English soldiers who had died that day. More than two hundred of them and only a few from their side. Padraig had been unlucky.

  Padraig was her older brother, but only by nine months. They were called “Irish twins.” They had slept curled up together in the same narrow bed until they were nine and ten. Even after that Padraig and Eileen were inseparable. When he joined the Republican Brotherhood it had seemed to his younger sister like a sort of a game. He was so excited, a boy playing at war. She believed he would be safe. How could she have possibly thought otherwise? Her parents were confident, too, that the older men would look after him. The organizers of the revolution were honorable men; poets, intellectuals, idealists. Two of the leaders had come to the house after he was killed. They held their caps in their laps and cried. “He died an honorable death,” they said. “You should be proud.” But honor and pride wouldn’t bring him back. Dublin was being razed to th
e ground. Her brother was just another dead boy under the rubble.

  Their younger brother, Seamus, who was seventeen, cried tears of confusion that quickly turned to rage. He had wanted to leave that night with the rebel leaders and join the cause, but they would not take him with them.

  “They’re decent men,” her father said after they left. Her mother said nothing.

  Later, Eileen had stood beside her mother at the kitchen table as they peeled potatoes. They cried quietly. Tears ran down their faces in streams as they sobbed silently. Together but apart, they scooped up the hems of their aprons to dry their faces.

  If there was anger about Padraig’s death it was buried deep. The rebel war had thrown a veil of quiet sadness over the O’Haras’ home. The cause he fought and died for was bigger than any individual loss. They knew that.

  Eileen called out good-­bye to her parents and younger brother before walking out the door and then straight out onto the quays. Their house was in the city center, not far from the museum where she worked—­less than half an hour at a ladies’ pace across town. The inner city had been ruined by the war, and every time Eileen passed by Sackville Street, where the heaviest fighting took place, she thought of Padraig. Today, however, with the sun shining, Eileen felt a lightness come over her. For the first time since her brother died, she had the sense he might be watching over her. She stopped and checked herself briefly in a shop window and as a man passed behind her in the glass, she imagined it was Padraig’s spirit. Then she turned up the side street and walked the back route to Leinster Lawn and the National Gallery, where she worked.

  The gallery was quiet that day. Eileen was in the cloakroom when she turned and saw the figure of a young man in the entrance hall with his back to her. She heard the crunch of an apple being bitten and her stomach lurched. Padraig? No. Padraig is dead.

  The young man turned. He was about her age, large blue eyes and quite delicate features, almost like a girl. His hair was very short and dark. He looked lost. Not many young men came in here. Certainly not on their own. He was wearing ordinary clothes, not the expensive fashions worn by foreign art students.