My Son, My Son

by Howard Spring

  The player didn’t find it easy; the song hadn’t yet got fully into that triumphant swing that swept it over England and France; but the men made a go of it, and Maeve shuddered. “Come on!” she implored, dragging on my arm. “Come and see your flat.”

  As we went the station echoed to the deep, spaced coughs of a departing train, and the cheers of the men, and the called good-byes of the women.

  *

  It was inevitable, as we lived in the same building, that Maeve and I should occasionally take a meal together. At last we developed the custom of always lunching with one another, sometimes in her flat, sometimes in mine. It depended on the caprice of Annie Suthurst, who treated us both as children subject to her discipline. On a Wednesday in March, when lunch was over, and Maeve, on the point of departing for a matinée, stood at the door with her face framed in grey fur, upturned about her ears, she said: “If you want to see Oliver, be at Charing Cross about half-past three.” She closed the door quickly and ran down the stairs.

  This was the first time she had mentioned either Livia or Oliver. I was not aware that she knew anything of their movements, nor do I know now whence she obtained this information. I put on my overcoat and walked to Charing Cross, with my collar turned up about my ears, as Maeve’s fur had been, for it was a day of cutting wind. At least, I told myself that was why my collar was up, but why, also, was the brim of my hat pulled down in front? That was not a fashion I was accustomed to. I admitted an instinctive attempt at disguise. I had come to spy on my son, as I had spied on him that day in Holborn, and throughout that long bitter night in Camden Town.

  The wind was harsh and gritty, the sky was as hard as flint, as I crossed Trafalgar Square under the façade of the National Gallery. When I came out into the Strand a policeman was holding up all traffic, and men and women were lined deep on the pavement outside the station. I took my place with the rest and watched the long procession of the ambulances come into the Strand. I had never known such a silence in a great city. The policeman stood with his arm still as the arm of a signpost. The men took off their hats. The white vans with their blood-coloured crosses filed out one by one. The drivers had a rigid look, taking no notice of the crowd standing there. Ten, twelve, I counted; and then something happened to the head of the convoy, and everything slowed down, stopped. It was an infinitesimal delay. In a second or two all was in motion again, but in that brief suspension of movement, breaking into the utter silence, there came from the van that stood half in and half out of the station gateway one deep groan, followed by a choked-back sob. Like a winter wind suddenly moving through frozen branches, a swift responsive sigh passed through the crowd, and men and women looked into each other’s faces, and shuffled their feet, like the helpless spectators of some supreme tragedy.

  When the ambulances were all gone, and the crowd was fluid again, I passed into the station with that groan still in my ears, and all the devils of imagination showing me the proud head that had been held so high on Waterloo Bridge lying as low as Oliver’s feet.

  But that was never to be his fate.

  When I saw him that afternoon there was already a change from the boy whose eyes I had seen looking ahead with intensity of speculation as he marched with his comrades. Now he was here, in the present moment, and enjoying it. It was Livia whom I saw first. She was better dressed and better looking than I had ever seen her. Her cheeks glowed with health and happiness, and with a possessive pride that she did nothing to conceal she looked up now and then into the face of the man who overtopped her by several inches.

  He had grown a small golden moustache. The exercise of the last few months had broadened and toughened him. His blue eyes gleamed out of a face that was tanned by weather. Brown boots, shining like chestnuts, were laced up his calves, and the skirts of a well-cut overcoat swung as he strutted. I could not avoid the word: he was strutting; and when private soldiers passed and saluted the single pip he wore upon his sleeve, a little cane that he was carrying in a gloved hand went negligently to his cap. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying those salutes though he never looked at the men who gave them. He was enjoying having Livia there to look upon his glory and, in turn, to be looked upon as an adjunct to his splendour.

  I was proud of him. How, even then, I would have outdone the father in the parable who, when his son was yet a great way off, ran! How I would have run, and abased myself before this young, jocund Mars whose body, pink and soapy, I had held in my arms, whose love had once been as unquestioningly mine as the sunshine and the rain! But I knew that I could as soon call back Nellie from the grave as hope to see those blue eyes smile at me, as they were smiling now at Livia, not turn to cold indifference.

  So I lurked behind the bookstall, with my collar up and my hat-brim down, and saw two other youngsters dressed as he was, but with nothing of his size and presence, join him, and selfconsciously salute Livia, and stand there talking and casually returning salutes. Then they all made for the barrier, passing so close to me hunched furtively there that the skirts of an overcoat brushed the back of my legs, sending a shiver of excitement through me. I turned when they were gone, watched their backs disappearing through the barrier, and knew that I was looking my last on Oliver before the war swallowed him—to fashion him into what unknown similitude? I could feel the blood pulsing in my temples and overworking my heart. I pressed towards the barrier and stood there looking down the vista of the train until all the emotional activity that was strewing the platform alongside it was separated out into those who were aboard and those who were left standing to see them go.

  I did not see him again. The station was filled with the deafening shrillness of escaping steam. That stopped. The engine strained and panted beneath white spreading clouds that obscured the roof, and I saw Livia Vaynol running as if to escape into the city from a scene that was unbearable. I turned my back as she came through the barrier. She did not see me as she hastened away, not smiling now, but with loneliness and desolation upon her unmasked face.

  29

  That was in March, 1915. In memory the year is strewn with fragments like bits of wreckage seen on a beach long ago. The Dardanelles, Tipperary, Rupert Brooke, go easy with the matches, S.S. Clyde, Keep the Home Fires Burning, put one of these saccharine tablets in your coffee, it’s as good as sugar, we’re lucky to get coffee, anyway. When it’s with You it’s Wonderful, It’s a bit thick: if you work in an office everything’s gone from the shops by the time you get home, we’ll have rationing soon, I suppose, If you were the Only Girl in the World, Defence of the Realm Act, Let the great big World keep turning, put that light out, George Robey, Violet Lorraine, Maeve O’Riorden, When it’s with You it’s Wonderful, casualties, shells, casualties, Lusitania, white feather, if a German raped your sister, PUT THAT LIGHT OUT, casualties, casualties, blessed was it in that dawn to be alive, no fraternising this Christmas, some say Good Old Jerry, CASUALTIES, men in bright blue suits and red scarves hobbling through the parks, being led through the parks, being wheeled through the parks, It’s the blind ones I can’t stand seeing; My dear, you don’t have to look at them, PUT THAT LIGHT OUT!...

  We had got used to everything. We had got used to the ambulances, to the men in blue, to gas warfare, to the trains departing full of spick and span youngsters with polished buttons and the trains arriving full of men caked with mud, cluttered with uncouth accoutrements, who rushed from the stations as though rushing upon life, to seize it frantically for their few permitted days. There’s nothing you can’t get used to. It’s the new thing that shakes you up. And the new thing came.

  Dermot rang me up on Monday, the 17th of April, 1916, and said he was coming round to have lunch with me and Maeve. Maeve, for once, had not intended to have lunch. She had been out in the country on the Sunday, had come home early, and gone to bed, complaining of being tired. Annie Suthurst had brought me a message in the morning saying that I must lunch alone, as Maeve wanted to spend the day in bed. But when she heard that her fathe
r was coming, she got up and came down to my flat. “Don’t ask me how I am, Dutch uncle,” she exclaimed defensively as she came through the door. “I’m just suffering from ten years of overwork. That’s all. I shall get over it.”

  She sat sideways in the window-seat, so that she could get a squint into Berkeley Square, where the leaves were unfolding on the plane trees, delicate and beautiful against the brown prickly maces of last year’s fruit. Those leaves outside, and on the round polished table in the middle of the room, a cut-glass bowl full of daffodils, reflected as if in a peat-dark stream.

  “Leaves,” said Maeve, “and flowers; and yesterday there were lambs—white tottery things—so lovely. We saw them in a meadow that went down to the Thames.”

  “Who were we this time?” I asked.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know,” she said wearily. “I only met him myself on Saturday night. Someone brought him round to my dressing-room, and he besought me to come out with him on Sunday.” She got off the seat and stood up, looking out of the window. “You never saw such a boy,” she spoke over her shoulder. “He looked about sixteen, with blue eyes and smooth round cheeks. He’s been out once, and he’s going again today. In the Air Force. I wished him luck, and d’you know what he said?”

  I shook my head.

  “He said: ‘I’ve lasted longer than Freddie and Bunnie, anyway, so I feel lucky.’ Freddie and Bunnie lasted a week. They were at school with him a few months ago.”

  I almost wished she would cry, or show some emotion. But she went on in a flat voice: “When he saw those lambs, he said: ‘Christ! Isn’t that pretty? My mother’d like to see that.’ He’d borrowed someone’s car for the day and was awfully proud of his driving. He insisted on a big hotel for lunch and ordered champagne. He wasn’t very used to it. It made him talk about Bunnie again. He said: ‘Those lambs made me think of something Bunnie said. It was the first time we ever saw anti-aircraft shells bursting. Bunnie said: “That’s a pretty sight—like white lambs in a blue field.” Old Bunnie was a bit of a poet. Or d’you think that was a dappy thing to say?’”

  Suddenly I stopped her. “For God’s sake, Maeve, shut up,” I shouted. I hoped it would be like a slap in the face. It was. She spun round in surprise, looked at me for a moment dreadfully hurt, then collapsed into my arms and cried. I let her have it out, then led her back to the window-seat and sat her down. Presently she became calmer.

  “Look, my dear,” I said, taking her hand and fondling it, “d’you think you ought to do all this promiscuous going about with men? It’s such a strain. I know how you feel, and what you hope to do for them; but you can’t go on being the pillow for everyone’s sorrowing head. Your work’s enough.”

  “The work’s a fraud, a swindle,” she said sadly. “Oh, Man! You don’t know how I feel standing there singing that song that makes me everybody’s woman. Because, you know, that’s what it comes to. They think I look so marvellous—oh, God knows what they think and dream about me. And then you can’t avoid meeting some of them. And what are you to do? What are you to do?”

  What could she do? I knew she was living as she would never have wished to live. Her life was being fevered by a hundred casual contacts that could mean nothing for her but wear of nerve and body. No comfort, no tranquillity. She was racketing about: suppers after the theatre, dances, lunches, dinners, week-end jaunts like the one from which she had just returned, giving bits of herself, tearing herself to tatters for strangers, because they were strangers, who lived in the shadow of death.

  Presently she smiled and patted my hand in the old affectionate way. “Don’t worry, Bill,” she said. “It’s the penalty of being a famous woman. It’s the penalty of having a Bill Essex at my side making me a grand actress through all these years. You see, the poor boys are bucked to pieces at having personally met Maeve O’Riorden. It’s something for them to swank about. And you needn’t worry about my virginity. I can look after that, for what it’s worth.”

  I had not heard her talk so recklessly, thoughtlessly, before. It was the back-kick of her stifled emotion. There was nothing more I could say. I could only think; and as we sat there in the window-seat waiting for Dermot to come, my thoughts were just two words: “Dear Maeve! Dear Maeve!”

  *

  Annie Suthurst put the coffee on a table in front of the window-seat. It was a big seat—room for us all. When Annie was gone Dermot put on his spectacles and took a letter from his pocket. “I haven’t shown this to Sheila,” he said. “She’ll know soon enough.”

  He unfolded the letter and handed it to me. Maeve hitched herself up close to my side and read with her chin resting on my shoulder. The letter was from Rory.

  “MY DEAR FATHER,—I wouldn’t be such a fool as to post this to you in the ordinary way here in Dublin. We don’t trust the Castle, you know, and just now, I think, they’re particularly busy steaming open letters. A friend I can trust is crossing to England and will drop this into some inconspicuous letter-box.

  Well, I think I ought to let you know that before long now anything may happen. I’m only having a guess. I know you think I’m no end of a person in the movement, but I’m small beer really, and I’m kept pretty much in the dark. But there’s something in the air, more marching in uniform than usual, more attacks on public buildings. You know we do that as an exercise, everything except the actual shooting and rushing the buildings. In that way, we’ve taken half Dublin over and over again! The Castle does nothing about it. One of these days the fools will be surprised.

  Well, there’s so much of this sort of activity, we’re being keyed up so keenly to concert pitch, that I reckon they’re going to use us soon. There’s plenty of ammunition flowing in. I know that.

  Another thing that makes me feel we are on the verge of something is this. Donnelly is so gay and yet so secretive. Of course, he’s at the heart of things. He’s away attending conferences all day and half the night, and he’s singing at the top of his voice. But not a word out of him. I’ve tried to get a hint, without being insubordinate or impertinent, but he won’t give me a word. Except once. He said: ‘Rory, my lad, there was a damned good English soldier called Julian Grenfell. He was killed, and he left a poem that’s a glory.’ Then he recited the poem right through. It ended: ‘If this be the last song you sing, sing well, you may not sing another, Brother, sing!’ Then he said: ‘Remember that, Rory, and keep your rifle clean.’

  You know, my dear Father, last August I was with the multitude that followed the body of O’Donovan Rossa to his grave at Glasnevin. I was one of those who fired the volley over his grave—the grave of a martyr. It was a scene I shall never forget. Padraic Pearse was there, wearing his uniform, and he spoke with his hand on the hilt of his sword. He said: ‘I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them to strive to overthrow them.’

  I thought, as I heard those words, that they were the very heart and soul of all that you yourself have ever taught me. I shall go into battle remembering them and remembering you.

  One thing more. I hope to come out of this alive. The chances that Donnelly will do so are slenderer than mine. If our attempt is made, and if it should fail, no mercy would be shown to Donnelly. I have learned to love him, Father, and I wonder if you know that I love Maggie, too? She is so brave and patient and uncomplaining. I shall marry her some day however this matter turn out, but if Donnelly should be taken from us I shall marry her at once.

  Give my love to my Mother. Kiss Eileen. Kiss Maeve.

  RORY.”

  The sheet trembled in my hand as I put it down on the coffee table. For a moment no one spoke. Then Maeve said to Dermot: “Well?”

  He sat still, looking straight before him, one hand outspread on each knee.

  “Well—are you happy?” Maeve demanded more sharply.

  Still Dermot did not move. She got up and moved across the room till she faced him. “I ask you,” she said, her voice rising shril
ly, “are you happy now? You’ve got what you worked for. Does it please you? You—you bogus creature! You’re on a level with the white feather girls who hound other people on to satisfy their bloody instincts. Two generations of you—your precious Uncle Con living in luxury five thousand miles away, and you—you— And what does it come to, all you’ve done between you? You’ve killed Rory, that’s all. You’ve killed Rory! You’ve killed Rory...”

  She broke down hysterically. Dermot put his hands before his face and murmured weakly: “Don’t, Maeve, don’t!”

  I got my arms round her shoulders and led her, weeping, upstairs to her own flat. When I came down again Dermot was gone. Rory’s letter lay on the floor. I picked it up and put it into a drawer of my desk.

  *

  So you see, when the new thing came—that Easter Monday rebellion in Dublin—Dermot and I were not surprised. It flamed into the headlines of the newspapers, it staggered the unsuspecting English public; and few people knew what a pitiful, bungled, lamentable affair it was. Few guessed that a little group of professors and aspirant politicians and poets had been haggling and chaffering, ordering and countermanding orders, deciding to proceed, deciding to withdraw, for a week before the outbreak, and that when at last some sort of decision came to their vacillating minds, it was too late. The heart was gone out of an army that had been ready to spring; and only a remnant paraded on the fatal morning when the visionaries at last set out on their brief pilgrimage to the grave.

  One of the remnant was Michael Collins, a thick-set play-boy with a wing of black hair tumbling over his brow, almost unknown, but destined to learn that day and in the few days that intervened before Padraic Pearse handed in his sword that not thus must Ireland be fought for. Not with windy proclamations and the pretence of uniformed might. No more marching save the stealthy march at night of two or three; no more parades save the parade of the faithful few rendering account in secret; no more uniforms save the pulled-down brim of the black felt hat and the uniform steel of eyes that looked along the barrels of trusty guns. Get out of the daylight, burrow, get underground. All this became clear to Collins and to one other of the remnant who paraded on Easter Monday—Rory O’Riorden.