He had some time in hand so he sat on the bench and read his newspaper. The window above was open, and now and then snatches of conversation drifted down to him, but no voice he recognized. He concentrated on his newspaper: the new Russian government was standing firm with the Allies, but there were reports of mutinies in half a dozen Russian regiments. They’d be in a right fix if the Russians packed it in. On the other hand, the Americans were starting to arrive. General Pershing had landed in Liverpool and would be received by the King. Maybe they would turn the tide. Maybe even the sight of them would push the Germans to sue for peace. It couldn’t go on like this forever. Somebody had to get an advantage sometime, and when that happened the whole bloody thing would crumble. If the Russians went first, the Germans would have it. If they held on and the Americans came in, then it would be the Allies. It was all about holding on. But the French had already had a mutiny. How long before the British army had one too? How long before somebody decided enough was bloody well enough?
He took a breath and carefully folded the paper and set it down beside him. This wasn’t the time to be getting worked up about it. He slit his eyes against the sun and watched the swifts whirling around the sky for a few moments, and then the door to No. 39 opened and a tide of students flowed down the steps.
The ones who recognized him from last week nodded their acknowledgement. A few moments later a solitary figure came out; there was mutual recognition, but no polite nods. MacIntyre loped down the steps two at a time, pulling his jacket on and scowling at Stephen as he tramped past him on his long, bony shanks.
Then Lillian came out, pinning her hat and smiling as she came down the steps. Her face darkened as she caught sight of MacIntyre’s retreating back. ‘Sorry I kept you. I had to have a word with Mr MacIntyre.’
Stephen stood up and watched him walk out of the square. ‘Is he still smarting from the other day?’
‘He’s threatening to complain to the dean.’
‘Oh? I’m sorry if I got you into trouble.’
‘Oh, not at all.’ She took his arm and they started to walk across the square, ‘If it wasn’t you it’d be something else. His real problem is that he doesn’t like being taught by a woman. But I wouldn’t worry about it. Professor Barrett already has the measure of him. If he’s going to start raising ructions he’ll find himself out on his backside soon enough.’
They walked out of the college and past the provost’s house to Nassau Street. As they reached the Empire Café he had a rather queer feeling when he looked in the window and remembered sitting in there with Billy on Easter Monday. I don’t want to burden her came ringing back to him. Then they were inside, amidst a hubbub of voices and clattering crockery.
‘I’m afraid this won’t be quite what you remember,’ Lillian warned him, as they found a table near the window. A waitress passed bearing plates with translucent rashers of bacon and yellowish pats of potato. ‘You need to have relatives in the country to get any decent food these days. I don’t know how Billy managed such a fine dinner the other night.’
‘Some of his clients are farmers,’ Stephen explained. ‘He says he’s not above taking payment in kind.’
Lillian smiled, but then her eyes widened and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Oh my goodness. Isn’t that Alfred Devereux?’
The name hit him like a blow and his mouth went dry. Slowly turning in his chair, he followed her gaze towards the back of the café. Devereux was in a wheelchair, hunched and slumped sideways, but there was no mistaking his powerful frame and his uniform. He was facing them – his head tilted to one side as if he had fallen asleep – but his eyes were open and his lips were moving in an irregular pursing motion, as if he was trying to whistle.
‘Christ Almighty,’ Stephen muttered under his breath. He didn’t know which was more shocking: the mere sight of him or the frightful scar that cleaved his forehead. He remembered the last time he had seen him – jolting down the trench on a stretcher, his head a lumpy mass of field dressings, and he himself still with the sour taste of vomit in his mouth, his knees trembling. In the light of a dying flare the doctor’s hands were black with blood, as if he was wearing gloves. He was wiping them on a rag like a butcher would.
He felt the blood drain from his face as Devereux’s eyes rolled lazily around and met his. The scar had puckered the skin of his forehead, twisting his face into an unwholesome leer, with a flat, glabrous cast to it. The flesh seemed pale and lifeless, but the eyes were strangely alive, darting up and down as if they were trapped in a dead face. Stephen met them as best he could, but then a woman moved between them, crouching down with her back to him and offering a spoon to Devereux’s moving lips. She was wearing white kid gloves and her lustrous black hair was coiled up under a dainty hat.
‘The poor man,’ Lillian whispered, ‘you said he was wounded, but I never pictured him in a wheelchair. God love him. He was always so athletic, so fit, but look at him now.’
Stephen turned back to face her, glad she had spoken. He could feel the cold sweat rolling down the small of his back and his throat was dry. Suddenly the café seemed very loud, the clatter and noise beating on his ears and the sun glaring in the window at him. It was very warm, and yet he felt a shiver shake his spine. His trembling hand found a glass of water and he gulped half of it down.
Lillian was frowning at him. ‘Stephen, are you all right? You look very pale.’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ He set the glass down and clamped both his hands around it to keep them from shaking.
‘Are you sure? Do you want to get some—?’
‘It’ll pass.’ He tried to grin but it came out more like a grimace. He could feel the sweat on his forehead now. He was trying to breathe normally, but his chest felt constricted. Talk, you fool.
‘Is that . . . ?’ he began, then coughed as the words caught in his throat. ‘Is that Mary D’Arcy with him?’
‘Oh no! That’s his sister – I think her name is Susan. She looks after him now. They must be staying at their town house up on Earlsfort Terrace. Did you not hear about Mary? She took off to London when she broke off the engagement.’
‘She broke it off?’ He laughed giddily. Should have guessed. Mary was hardly the type to be pushing a wheelchair and spoonfeeding. ‘When did that happen?’
‘A few months after the rebellion. She— Stephen, are you sure you’re all right? You’re as white as a sheet.’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the metallic taste rising in his throat. His mind was racing, seeing flares screeching up, shells thumping into earth and snow, and bits of brick blown into dust. Some small part of him managed to latch onto what she had said.
‘You mean last year? Before he was wounded?’
‘Yes. September or October, I think. Didn’t you hear about it?’
He tried to think back to that time. Christ, it seemed a lifetime ago! September or October? That would have been about the time Devereux transferred to the front.
‘No, not a word. What happened?’
Lillian was still looking at him warily, but she explained: ‘There was a dreadful scandal. She had an affair with a major who was charged with committing atrocities during the rebellion – an older man with a wife,’ she broke off and looked around, as if she was embarrassed to be gossiping. ‘I’m telling you, Stephen, you wouldn’t see the likes of it in a penny dreadful. God knows how she got involved with him. He was a very good-looking man, by all accounts, but quite mad. After the rebellion he was charged with murdering some prisoners, but his defence claimed he was shell-shocked and he had a good war record, so they reduced the charges to brutality and conduct unbecoming. Nobody knew a thing about him and Mary until she turned up at his trial and got into a fight with his wife. After that her father stepped in and packed her off to London as quickly as he could. I imagine her poor fiancé only found out about it in a letter.’
Stephen followed all this as best he coul
d while casting glances over his shoulder and at the same time trying to calm himself. Poor bastard. No bloody doubt he got a letter, and no bloody doubt that was what made him give up his cushy berth on the staff. He hadn’t been lying after all, when he said he volunteered.
‘Was he injured in the same raid where you got your medal?’ Lillian asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ He’d been looking towards Devereux, watching his sister stand up and hand her bowl to the waitress with a grateful smile. She was a young girl, quite good-looking. Was this her life now? Wheeling her crippled brother around and feeding him soup? Looking into that dreadful face and trying to brighten it with a smile?
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.’ He sighed as he turned back. It was passing. His mind was calmer, though the metallic tang was still in his mouth and there was a mild throbbing in his head.
‘Was it the same raid where you got your medal?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was.’
How much more could he tell her? Did she really want to know that Devereux was the one who went looking for a medal, but he was the one who got it? That Devereux had ended up lying on the firing step with his brains hanging out, twitching like a dying fish. What would she think if he told her? But maybe if he did it would be easier. Maybe then he wouldn’t hear Devereux’s breathing snorting in his ears, loud and wet as if he was drowning. ‘He wasn’t supposed to be—’ he began, but stopped as a waitress appeared beside the table.
‘I do beg your pardon. Are you Lieutenant Reilly?’ The voice was young but sounded tired. Not a waitress, but Susan Devereux. Stephen looked up sharply. Viewed this close she had the look of her brother, but more kindly, softer. She seemed hesitant, embarrassed, as she bobbed her head to Lillian, ‘Forgive me if I’m interrupting your lunch.’
‘It’s Captain Ryan, actually,’ Stephen answered, and as he started to stand up her gloved hand restrained him.
‘No, please, don’t get up, captain. I won’t detain you. You see, I saw you come in, and the colour of your hatband is the same . . .’ She gave a nervous laugh and more words tumbled out. ‘I’m terribly sorry to intrude. My name is Susan Devereux. I wonder do you know my brother, Alfred?’ She pointed to the wheelchair. Devereux was staring at them in his lopsided way, one eye fixed, the other moving. ‘He was with the Dublin Fusiliers, you see, and he seems to think he knows you.’ She opened her hands to reveal a little notebook with odd words and sentences scrawled across it in pencil. Just above her finger he could see the words ‘Tell Reilly’ written in an uneven, childlike hand.
‘Do you remember him at all? Ryan, you say? Perhaps he has made a mistake, but you can see he has written Reilly here quite clearly. I dare say he’s mistaken you for somebody else. The poor soul often gets confused. Sometimes he doesn’t even know where he is.’ Again the nervous laugh, betraying the horror. ‘Look,’ she turned the notebook around so he could read the whole message, ‘he’s got it into his head that you came here especially to see him. He says you shouldn’t have bothered!’
XII
The loud crack of the shot brought him awake with a start. His eyes snapped open and he cast around wildly before he saw it was only Nightingale glaring angrily over the sights of his revolver. The tiny dugout was half filled with gun smoke, but Nightingale wasn’t finished. He followed the sleek black rat as it bounded along the back wall and jumped into the knee-deep puddle that covered the floor. It started to swim for shelter under the rudimentary plank bed where Stephen was lying, but Nightingale fired again and the rat disappeared with a splash.
‘For Christ’s sake! Do you mind?’
‘Sorry, old man!’ Nightingale grinned sheepishly, ‘I thought you were asleep.’
Asleep? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept properly. The best he could manage was a fitful doze. Seven days they’d been here, seven days of continuous shelling. The noise was unbearable – the constant thunder of shells roaring overhead had stretched his nerves to breaking point. That they were British shells made no difference. Hour after hour, day and night, they ripped through the sodden sky. As he lay in the leaky dugout he could feel the thumping, pulsing air pressing him into the mud, pushing him down and down until he gasped involuntarily, unable to breathe.
He didn’t say anything more, but rolled back on his plank, staring up at the roof. Rough-hewn logs and corrugated iron – it couldn’t even keep out the rain, let alone the shells. Water dribbled in through the holes, splashing and plinking into the puddle that covered the floor. It had been raining for seven days too – nonstop, day and night. Everything was sopping wet. The wooden walls of the dugout, cobbled together from Huntley and Palmer biscuit boxes, were starting to swell and warp. One had cracked earlier on, and a black tongue of mud was oozing down towards the floor.
This was the price of their success. When they detonated the mines at Messines they had attacked from well-built trenches of three years’ standing. The ground they had taken was the very ground they had been shelling for all that time and the intricate network of streams and ditches that had kept it dry had long since disappeared. While the Germans had fallen back on a carefully prepared line of concrete outposts, the Allies now had to face them from a morass, sheltering in a broken chain of shell craters that were slowly filling with the unending rain.
The rats were the worst he had seen. They were big and fat and seemed to know no fear. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another one scramble in under the gas curtain and plunge into the yellow scum that floated on top of the puddle. Gas residue – he might live to regret that little dip. But he swam on, scrambled out, and darted through the gap between two boards. Nightingale let him pass because he was busy painting his feet. Now that he’d taken his boots off – no easy task in itself – Stephen could see how bad they were. They looked like the feet of a corpse, blanched dead white with mottled patches of green and brown. Nightingale was painting them with the gentian violet the doctor had given him. The smell was horrendous.
Stephen closed his eyes again. The need for sleep was overpowering but he knew it wouldn’t come – not even now that there was a lull in the shelling. His nerves were stretched to breaking point and even in the near silence it was all he could do to lie still without grinding his teeth. He slid his hand down to his pocket and felt for the little square box. Still there. He’d had it in that same pocket ever since he came back to France, carrying it like a touchstone, a reminder of what he’d missed. Or worse, he thought bitterly, a reminder that you’re a bloody coward.
Sometimes he almost convinced himself that it wasn’t really his fault. He tried to blame it on Devereux – poor bloody Devereux with his crooked face and his long-suffering sister. That’s what had kicked him off – seeing them in the café that day. Just when he thought he was the better of it, a fit came on him again. He saw the wounded and the maimed, their grey, bloodless faces at every table, leering at him like Devereux, beckoning to come and join them. Then the fear deadening his limbs: the cold hands, cold feet, the shakes. It was worse than going into bloody action. Susan Devereux was still prattling away when he suddenly stood up and said he had to leave. As he marched to the door he heard Lillian apologizing for him, then running after him. She caught his arm outside.
‘Stephen, are you all right?’
‘Yes – no, I . . .’ The headache had him in its grip now. The bright sun seemed to magnify it. He felt his temples throbbing. The pain was intense, but there was anger there too, a sort of giddy malevolence. He felt the urge to lash out, to strike something. Maybe that would make it go away. ‘I’m just not feeling . . . can you leave me alone for a few minutes, please? I just need some peace and quiet.’
And he walked away, just like that. It was so easy it made him sick to think about it. When he thought of her standing there on the pavement, watching him leave, he wanted to cry. His hand came back up and clutched the gas mask against his chest, holding it like a child’s toy. Flaming awful thing. More like a hideous rubber
parasite than a toy. The thought of putting that obscene snout back on – the sweaty heat and the faint smell of death – turned his stomach. He had lived in it half the night and he could hardly bear to put it back on. His throat was raw and his ears and neck were chafed and bloody from the straps. It wasn’t worth it. If the whistles blew for another gas attack he would throw it away and take a lungful. Get it bloody well over with.
But he knew he would never do that. Not with mustard gas. If ever there was a fate worse than death, it was a dose of that stuff. It burned the skin and seared the throat, melting the lungs inside your chest. Even with the mask on and every inch of flesh covered up you could feel it prickling, tingling, burning. It lingered in corners and oozed out of the ground in a foul yellow mist. He had seen what it did to Gardner. Poor bloody Gardner – he’d held him in his arms as he thrashed and screamed through his scorched throat, clawing at the sleeve of his coat in his agony. When he finally stopped, the glass eyes of the mask were splashed with his spittle, flecked yellow and red. That was no way to go.
He’d become so used to the noise of the shelling that when it stopped – or paused, for it was only a lull – the near silence made him uncomfortable. The little sounds irritated him; the drumming of the rain and the plink-plink of it dribbling into the puddle, the tuneless whistle as Nightingale painted his feet. He was relieved to hear squelching footsteps approach, and then the gas curtain flapped open and Wilson splashed in, pouring water from the creases in his cape. Acting major now – he was supposed to be the battalion adjutant but they’d been hit so hard he was running the whole bloody show. The number of men they’d lost just sitting here was appalling – and they hadn’t even started the attack yet. Only Wilson knew when that would be, but if he’d heard anything over at Brigade HQ, he wasn’t saying. He took off his helmet and Stephen realized he looked bloody shattered. It had been a long week’s wait, but he still managed to smile. He sniffed deeply and wrinkled his nose.
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