Two stretcher-bearers came running down the trench. ‘Can you ’ear me, mate?’ one shouted at Page. Page just looked at him blankly, his head lolling. What the hell had happened? He’d had twelve men down there. If Page and Murphy got out that left ten unaccounted for. But they didn’t bear thinking about. He remembered the roof coming down, timbers hitting him, crumbling earth spilling over his shoulders. He could hardly believe he’d got out himself. Anybody behind him must have been buried.
Macmillan came back with his tool bag and a pair of electric flashlights in his hand, a rope coiled over his shoulders. ‘All set?’ he asked, and pushed a gas mask into Stephen’s hands. Stephen looked at it and felt his courage ebbing. Sometimes the Germans pumped gas into a breach – as if suffocation wasn’t bad enough.
When he stood up his knees were trembling, but Macmillan wasn’t much better.
‘After you,’ he cried with forced levity, and Stephen clenched his teeth as he stepped into the hole. His feet found the familiar top step and he started to descend mechanically. It was only when his feet thumped onto solid earth at the bottom that he realized he was holding his breath, and that he had his eyes closed.
Macmillan missed the last two rungs and stumbled against him. ‘Sorry, old man,’ he panted, and they switched on their lamps. The beams cut through the still air, motes flashing and disappearing as they swept the gallery. Not a breath, not a sound. The brand-new detonating wires hung from the roof like bundles of sinews, but otherwise it looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed for years. Stephen slipped his revolver from its holster and nodded to Macmillan before he set off along the tunnel.
Down they went, down and down, deep into the earth, cleaving the darkness with their lamps. How many times had he walked this path in the last four months? But it felt different now, more hostile. Even the air seemed menacing and black; cold on his face and closing in again behind him. Every few minutes he stopped and listened to the dark, but the only sound was the pounding of his heart in his chest. He could feel cold sweat running down his back and with every step forward he had to fight the urge to turn and flee.
Quite suddenly they came to the site of the collapse. A dense, uneven wall of blue soil filled the tunnel and swallowed the tangle of detonating wires dragged down by the collapse. Splintered timbers stuck out like straws, and the moment he stopped he could hear the roof creaking and groaning as if it hadn’t made up its mind whether to fall in.
‘Christ Almighty,’ Macmillan whispered. ‘How far are we from the charge, would you say?’
How the hell should I know? Stephen wondered silently, but he shrugged and found his voice after a moment. ‘I’m not sure. A hundred feet, maybe? It’s hard to tell.’
‘All right. I’ll test the circuit here. If it’s broken we’ll have to dig.’
He set to work and, for want of anything better to do, Stephen held his flashlight for him and watched his nimble fingers as they connected the battery and voltmeter. He saw the needle on the voltmeter stay doggedly still and knew what it meant when Macmillan shook his head.
‘Blast,’ he hissed, and the roof cracked and showered them with stones and lumps of clay. Stephen felt his knees go weak, but Macmillan just looked up and smiled, ‘I’ll get to work. Do you think you can find something to shore that up?’
They had passed some shoring timbers not twenty yards back. Stephen walked up the tunnel to fetch them, dry in the mouth and sorely tempted to keep walking. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, leave somebody down here alone in the dark. When he came back he had three stout timbers under one arm and a paraffin lamp in his free hand. Macmillan was kneeling at the wall, gently parting the earth around the wires. Stephen lit the lamp and eased the tallest timber under the sagging roof, inching it sideways until it was almost vertical. When he stood back in the circle of light it looked like a match in the mouth of a crocodile.
Macmillan looked up and nodded. Then back to his meagre excavation. ‘You wouldn’t give us a hand here, old chap?’
As he knelt down beside him the roof groaned again, but then seemed to settle onto the timber. It took an effort to look away – his throat felt tight and he shuddered as he thrust his hands into the cool earth.
It was easier if he concentrated on the work. They both dug until their fingers bled. Eventually, they had excavated a little burrow around the vanishing wires that was only big enough for one, and then they took turns until it was so deep that one had to pull the other out by the ankles.
When he wasn’t digging Stephen sat in the yellow globe of lamplight and stared into the darkness. The light gleamed on the leather of Macmillan’s boots sticking out of the earth as he worked at full stretch inside. Suddenly he heard muffled cries and Macmillan’s feet flailed wildly. Stephen dragged him out gasping for breath, shock all over his grimy face.
‘What is it?’ he demanded, and Macmillan made a sign that he should look for himself.
One flash of the torch and he could see what had startled him. Three fingers stuck out of the earth at the end of the burrow, curled upwards as if they were beckoning him on. They were white and lifeless, like the hand of a Greek statue freed from the earth. Stephen looked at Macmillan, holding his ashen face in his hands, and then took a deep breath and crawled in. It was one of his men, after all. Gently, he scraped away at the soil beneath the hand, folded it back into the earth, and placed a scrap of timber over it. He was suddenly aware that he was inside the earth, a burrow in a burrow, cold clay pressing all around him. He felt panic rising in his chest but fought it back and started to dig furiously, chasing the wires. Beads of sweat rolled down into his eyes and the heat of his breath huffed around his ears, but he dug harder, deeper. All at once his scraping hands felt something solid, and he quailed at the thought of an arm or a leg, an ivory face in the throes of suffocating death. But it was timber – a solid baulk, one of the main roof beams. He pulled at the wires, plunging down underneath, and saw clean copper ends glinting in the soil like traces of gold. That had to be it. He scrambled back out on his elbows and let Macmillan in with his battery and wire cutters.
Waiting again, he thought of the hand he had seen, following the limb to the elbow, the shoulder, finally finding the face. Whose was it? He hardly knew his men to look at. He was so used to seeing them in the half-dark that he knew them better by sound of voice. But that one wouldn’t speak again. And there must be others, all jumbled in with the earth and timbers. With a jolt, he realized it might be worse – they might be still alive and lying in pitch black on the other side, breathing shallow to spin out the dying air.
Eventually Macmillan scrambled back out, pouring sweat, but grinning. ‘All set,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got four out of five circuits, but the last one will go up when we blow the others. Come on, we’ve got two hours left. Best make sure of the wiring from here to the surface.’
Two hours? Stephen looked at him dully. He had no idea of the time because his watch had stopped. He pointed to the wall of earth, suddenly barely able to string the words together. ‘What if there are men still alive?’ he asked. ‘What if they’re trapped on the other side?’
Macmillan shook his head and the silver discs of his spectacles glinted in the light of the paraffin lamp.
‘There’s no reason to think they are,’ he said sympathetically, ‘and besides, we simply don’t have the time to dig them out. This mine is going up in two hours, whether we like it or not. On the bright side, if they are alive, then at least it will be better than asphyxiation. One moment, and it’ll be all over. They won’t know what hit them.’
It took them over an hour to get back out, Macmillan brushing the wires where they hung low, like Theseus and his silken thread. Every time they reached a turn he would stop and connect his battery. Then he would nod, satisfied, and they would move on again. Stephen kept looking back into the darkness as they went, listening keenly. Hearing nothing.
They emerged to find the trench packed with soldiers. Some of them parted to ma
ke way, but Stephen stopped for a moment and stood among them, feeling the jostling human warmth and drinking in the wide open sky. He could hardly credit that he’d been down so long. Night had come and gone, but the morning was only waking up. The eastern horizon was tinted orange, the blue-streaked sky still flecked with silver stars. In the dull, milky light the men looked like ghosts, as if they weren’t fully there. But he clearly saw the shamrocks on their shoulders and heard the familiar murmur of Irish accents.
‘Are you Sixteenth Division?’ he asked a small group, and a young man with red hair and a thick Cork accent answered.
‘Why yes, sir. Second Battalion, Munster Fusiliers.’
‘Are the Dublins in this attack?’
‘Sure, of course they are, sir,’ he nodded towards the rising sun, ‘They’re over that way, on our right.’
Stephen looked wistfully in that direction, thinking of Wilson, Kinsella and all the others. They were in for quite a show.
‘Well, the best of luck to you, lads.’
‘Are you going to blow the mine, sir?’ the soldier asked, and his mates were all agog to know too.
‘Is it big? They told us it’ll be like a heavy bombardment, only all in one go.’
‘Oh, it’s big all right,’ he assured them. ‘They won’t know what hit them.’
He passed along to the firing station. Even though they were only whispering, these men seemed very noisy after the dead silence of the tunnel. They were in high spirits, almost ebullient, chatting and whispering to one another. Somewhere behind him a hoarse laugh barked out and just as he reached the station he passed a group of men saying the rosary.
Macmillan was already at the station, kneeling to his boxes and batteries. The place was packed with senior officers – divisional staff, engineers, artillerymen, brass of every description. Suddenly Stephen was aware of the extreme filth of his uniform, to say nothing of the grime streaking his face. But they paid him scant attention. All eyes were on Macmillan, who was screwing snaking wires to the terminals on a little wooden box. They peered over his shoulder, intrigued, excited. Stephen shielded his eyes as the sun peeked over the horizon and flooded the crowded trench with warm yellow rays.
‘We might not change history, but we shall certainly change the landscape, eh?’ a colonel cracked, and everybody laughed. Stephen found himself following the rosary, muttering the half-remembered words under his breath, but before long it finished with a final emphatic amen. The troops turned to face the rising sun, contented, ready to do their work. They won’t know what hit them.
‘I make it a minute to zero,’ the same colonel said, staring intently at his wristwatch. Macmillan nodded, licked his gritty lips, and twisted the handle out of his little wooden box.
‘Stand by!’ The signal was shouted down the trench in both directions. The troops shouldered their rifles and put their fingers in their ears, then stood waiting with their mouths hanging open, trying to make each other laugh. Stephen covered his ears and waited. The colonel never took his eyes off his watch.
‘Fire!’ he barked, and with a wrench and a grunt Macmillan plunged the firing handle back into the box.
XI
He woke with a start, instinctively curling up and huddling on the edge of the bed. He never heard the blast – the dream never got that far. But it was bad enough while it lasted: shapeless things chasing him, cleaving out of the earth to hound him down endless gloomy tunnels. On silent wings they flew, reaching out their blanched white hands to grab him and pull him back into the ground. Sometimes they caught him and he woke suffocating as the earth swallowed him up. Sometimes he escaped to the surface where they could not follow, but they sent their screams instead, unearthly noises that wrapped around him like smoking tendrils, stinking of the shattered ground and pulling him back. Then he would beg Macmillan to fire, for God’s sake, to blow the mine, to save him. And Macmillan would smile behind his opaque silver spectacles as he pushed the plunger, and the invisible electricity in the wires would jolt him awake.
He gasped, and instantly the memories of the explosion crowded in on him. The sound of the detonation was deep and muffled, felt as much as heard as the ground bucked beneath his feet. Then came the hot breath of wind on his face as the whole hillside bulged up into the air, slowly, slowly, like a great green balloon, until it finally cracked and burst into a towering cloud of smoke and fire that blotted out the rising sun. It took a moment for the roar of the blast to reach him, but when it came it washed over him like a wave, and brought with it a shower of stones and sods of fractured earth.
He could still hear it when he opened his eyes. The room was strange – he was in a big bed, well sprung, with smooth sheets and soft pillows. So soft it was as if they were holding him down. He thought he was still dreaming – a dream within a dream – but then he heard the insistent ticking of the clock, the twittering of birds outside the window. He raised his head and saw a shaft of white light piercing the gloom through a chink in the curtains. A horse and cart clip-clopped down the road outside and the delicate rattle of china on a tray came from downstairs. He sagged back against the pillows and waited for his heart to stop racing. It was real, he was safe.
Safely home. He remembered last night – coming in on the Holyhead packet and the thrill as the land suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead. No lights with the blackout – just an absence of stars low on the horizon, and then the sense of safety as the arms of Dublin Bay reached out to pull him in. It had taken him a night and a day to get from France, and now that he’d finally arrived he couldn’t quite believe he was home. It was nearly midnight when he finally came down the gangplank, but there was Billy, leaning on his cane with a crooked smile and a tip of his hat.
‘There was no need to come and meet me,’ Stephen chided after they’d shaken hands. ‘It’s the middle of the night. I could have got a cab.’
‘Oh, shush, Stephen. It’s the least I could do. You are my guest, after all. Besides, I wanted to show you my motor car.’
He gestured at the black Ford parked on the quay, and Stephen gave him a disbelieving look. A junior barrister could hardly afford a motor car. But Billy knew this as well as he did.
‘Actually, it’s not mine, as such. It’s Uncle Tom’s – but I have the use of it. In fact, I have the run of the place now that they’ve decamped to Galway for the summer.’
‘Galway?’
‘Yes, they’re staying with my parents. Auntie Joan thought it would be safer there. She seems to think Dublin is liable to be bombed by Zeppelins.’ He gave his friend a wicked grin. ‘Heaven knows how she got that idea into her head. But, anyway, off they’ve gone down to the country, leaving yours truly holding the fort. I have the house to myself, and you are my first houseguest. So let’s have none of your complaining, lieutenant.’
‘Captain, actually.’ He heaved his valise into the back seat and then brandished his cuff at Billy, showing him the triple crowns.
‘Captain? Since when?’
‘Since last week.’
‘Blimey, Stephen. Medals, promotions.’ He gave him a playful nudge, ‘You’re not half bad at this soldiering lark after all.’
After he’d admired the car, Stephen helped Billy start it by winding the handle, and then sat up beside him as they chugged into the city. They reached O’Connell Bridge and swung across it, but Stephen twisted around in his seat to look back at Sackville Street.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’
Even after a year, the ruins had still not been cleared. Piles of shattered masonry lined the roadway, broken windows gaping blackly from the few remaining buildings. He knew the damage was bad – the place had still been burning when he left Ireland just after the rebellion, but somehow this was worse. The more unsound buildings had been knocked down and their absence seemed to reveal a gaping hole at the heart of the city. He stared at it, aghast, remembering the elegant boulevard that used to be there, with its bright shop windows and criss-crossing tramlines. Now it
just reminded him of Ypres.
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ said Billy, changing gear with a loud grinding crash. ‘Oops, sorry about that. Our very own war zone, right in the middle of the city. It’ll turn into a bloody shrine to the rebellion if they don’t watch out. Not that they need one. The fickle folk of Dublin have already taken the rebels to their hearts.’
Stephen detected a note of bitterness and turned back around in his seat. ‘Why? Are they popular?’
‘Popular? I’ll say. They’re flaming heroes. I’m afraid they make old Johnny Redmond and his high hopes for Home Rule look rather anaemic by comparison. It’s independence or nothing now, and the Unionists will just have to lump it!’
Billy’s aunt’s house was a big Victorian villa on the Rathgar Road. Stephen had a vague impression of high ceilings and heavy furniture, but it was one in the morning and he could hardly stop yawning. After Billy had shown him to his bedroom and wished him goodnight he’d practically fallen into bed. Now he pushed himself up and looked blearily around. There was a bedside table, an armchair with his uniform draped across it and a chinoiserie screen in the fireplace. He was a million miles from plank beds and bombed-out farmhouses, but his eyes were still gritty, and there was a throbbing in his temples.
He felt better after a bath and a shave. More wonders: a proper bathtub, and hot water on tap. When he dressed and went downstairs, Billy was in the dining room, sitting at the end of a long polished mahogany table with a steaming cup of coffee and a newspaper. In the next room, a clock told the hour with musical chimes.
‘Stephen, there you are. Did you sleep all right?’
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