by Anne Bennett
Finn knew he had for he had found the love of his life and he would soon have a child to provide for. Just the thought of holding a child of his own made him quiver with excitement. He said to Gabrielle, ‘You must write to me often, for we can do that now. I want to hear all that you are doing, and when the child is born I want to hear all about him or her too. Tell me everything.’
‘We haven’t got all day, Sullivan,’ the sergeant remarked sarcastically, and Gabrielle and Finn went towards him hand in hand.
Father Clifford and Christy were already there, and Finn suddenly realised that he hadn’t a ring. However, Gabrielle’s mother understood this and she slipped a gold ring from one of her own fingers and passed it over to Gabrielle.
‘This was given to Maman by her mother on the day she married my father,’ Gabrielle said, dropping it into Finn’s palm. ‘She has told me often that I would be given it on my wedding day.’
‘And it will do perfectly,’ Finn said. ‘But I intend to get you a proper wedding ring as soon as I can.’
EIGHT
To Finn, the wedding felt almost like a nonevent, because Gabrielle returned to St-Orner with her parents, and Christy, Father Clifford and Finn himself set off to catch up with their battalion, who were regrouping at Lille.
‘You a married man,’ Christy said to Finn as they walked along. ‘I can scarcely believe it.’
‘Neither can I,’ Finn replied. ‘I mean, it doesn’t really feel any different. Whenever I thought of marrying someone I never imagined it like this.’
‘That’s because there was no Nuptial Mass and we weren’t able to celebrate it in any way,’ the priest said. ‘That’s often how it is in wartime. But you are still just as much married, so don’t you forget it.’
‘You have no need to remind me of that, Father,’ Finn said. ‘I have no need of any other woman when I have such a prize waiting for me in St-Omer, and one too that is carrying our child. I am concerned about Gabrielle, though. Whatever she said, her father must be a vicious bully of a man to batter her the way he did and I’m not there to ensure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘You have to see things from his point of view,’ the priest said. ‘That must be the very worst news a daughter can give her father.’
‘Yes,’ Finn conceded. ‘But, Father if he had been a more reasonable man in the first place, I could have called at the house and asked to walk out with Gabrielle, in the normal way of going about. Then we wouldn’t have had such a hole-in-the-corner relationship, and maybe if they had allowed us to get engaged, she wouldn’t be in this situation now.’
‘These things happen, Finn,’ Father Clifford told him. ‘And at least you did your duty and married the girl.’
‘I never had any intention of letting her down,’ Finn said. ‘I just wish, at least, until the baby is born, she was away from her father and maybe give him time to get over it.’
‘Perhaps she will go back to her aunt in Paris,’ Christy suggested.
‘She didn’t say so,’ Finn said. ‘But I would feel happier if she did that.’
Pierre Jobert too would have felt happier if Gabrielle had gone back to Paris, and in fact he almost expected that to happen but Bernadette and Raoul, who had stood in for them at the bakery that morning, refused to take her.
Pierre was quite surprised, but Bernadette said, ‘She would be the talk of the place and that would impinge on Raoul and me. Respectable doors would be closed to us.’
‘But she has marriage lines now.’
‘And what would be the good of those in Paris?’ Bernadette said. ‘People would think it odd that there was no talk of marriage when she was there just a few days ago. And when her stomach begins to swell, they will know the real reason we returned to St-Omer in such a hurry. You know very well the most stupid people in the world can count up to nine when it matters.’
Pierre sighed. He had hoped to hide Gabrielle away so that he wouldn’t have to think of what she had done. Now, it seemed, he was stuck with her. Well, there was no way he was going to have her at the front of the shop, proclaiming her shame for all to see. Yvette had done well enough when Gabrielle had been in Paris and she could carry on in the shop, and Mariette could lend a hand when they were busy. Gabrielle could work in the bakery with him where he could keep an eye on her.
‘Go out and buy a big coat for that brazen hussy to cover herself when she goes to Mass,’ he told his wife that night. ‘I’ll see to it that she will go no other place and the first thing I will do tomorrow is fit bars to the bedroom window and have that tree cut down.’
Mariette was upset and disappointed at what Gabrielle had done, but she knew that it had hit Pierre harder. He’d had plans for Gabrielle, though she wasn’t sure what they were, but whenever they discussed the future for their daughters he would always say that Gabrielle was intelligent, charming and very beautiful. She could have the pick of the town. But Mariette knew what Pierre meant was that he would have the pick of the town, choosing someone who might be beneficial for him in the business.
Now Gabrielle had pre-empted him and married a man of her own choice, someone of a different nationality and a different culture, and a common soldier, he considered that she had thrown her life away. Mariette didn’t know whether she had or not. Only time would tell, but the deed was done now and Gabrielle and her Irish soldier were married for life, whether Pierre liked it or not. She sighed and could only hope that he would get over it soon because when he was in a bad mood they all suffered.
Pierre had had someone in mind for Gabrielle and the man’s name was Robert Legrand. He was a big, beefy sort of man, fifteen years Gabrielle’s senior, a widower with a small son called Georges, who was being raised by his late wife’s parents thirty miles away. This meant that Robert seldom saw the boy. He was after a wife who was easy on the eye and who would be a new mother for the child so that he could have him back again, and he had a fancy for Gabrielle.
He had confided all this to Pierre when they met in the bars in the town on a Saturday evening. Pierre knew that it must be terrible for a man to be separated from his own son. At first he wasn’t sure that he was the man for Gabrielle. Then one night Legrand said that if he were to marry Gabrielle, he would move into the bakery where Pierre could teach him all about making the bread and cakes he was so famous for. Then he would sell his house and that money could be used to modernise the place.
Pierre was sold on the idea, but he advised Robert to wait until Gabrielle was eighteen at least before he approached her. ‘Gabrielle is gone to her aunt’s house in Paris at the moment,’ he had told Legrand just days before. ‘When she returns I will speak to her.’
When she returned, however, it was to find that she was carrying another man’s child and the dreams Pierre had for the bakery crumbled away like dust. And he still had Legrand to face. He felt that he could never hold his head up again.
Rumours about Finn’s marriage had spread amongst the other Inniskilling Fusiliers and many were amazed by it, and told him so when they all met up again in Lille. As they were preparing to make camp for an early start in the morning, Lieutenant Haywood sought out Finn.
Finn stood to attention by his bed.
‘Well, Sullivan,’ the lieutenant said, ‘I have been talking to Captain Hamilton, and he told me that he made it clear to you that you were to give Mademoiselle Jobert a wide berth.’
‘Yes, sir. He did, sir,’ Finn said.
‘He said he would have soon put a stop to that if he had known.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Finn said.
‘Got her in the family way too,’ the lieutenant snapped, giving vent to opinions he’d been unable to express before, with the Joberts themselves present. ‘Damned fool thing to do in wartime.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Finn said. ‘It wasn’t meant to happen, sir.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ the lieutenant said sharply. ‘The point is that has happened and you don’t need much imagination to know how her fa
mily and maybe the entire town will make her suffer for this. You saw her face.
Finn didn’t say anything, because every word the lieutenant said was right. The blame was always laid at the girl’s door.
‘Well, the damage is done now,’ the officer said. ‘And you must do the job that you came to do, because what do you think will happen to your wife and child if the Germans are allowed to reach St-Omer? You know of the atrocities that they committed in Belgium. Do you think the people of France will fare any better?’
Of course they wouldn’t. Finn knew he would gladly lay down his life for his beloved Gabrielle and the child that she was carrying. So he squared his shoulders and faced the lieutenant as he said, ‘I enlisted to fight the Germans, sir, and I will do whatever I am asked to do to the best of my ability.’
‘And so will I, Sullivan,’ Lieutenant Haywood said. ‘May God be with the pair of us.’
‘Are you writing to your parents?’ Christy asked Finn that night, seeing him put pen to paper.
Finn shook his head. ‘Writing to my parents will need careful thought. I don’t know how they’ll take the news at all.’
‘They’ll likely not be pleased.’
‘Well, no, but it’s more than that,’ Finn said. ‘I’m under age. I won’t be twenty-one until next year. I gave a false age to Father Clifford because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have been allowed to marry Gabrielle. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. So is the marriage legal or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Christy said. ‘Does it matter?’
Finn shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it might. If it ever comes out.’
‘That would be just awful for Gabrielle.’
‘You’re right, it would,’ Finn said. ‘My parents were totally against me enlisting, and now if I just write to say I’m married and they realise that I didn’t ask permission, then they could easily make a fuss. That would be catastrophic for Gabrielle, and our child would be a bastard.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Not write to them until I have to,’ Finn said. ‘When we are going for this Big Push they keep talking about, I will write then in case anything happens to me. I’ll tell them all about Gabrielle, and when Europe is a safer place maybe she can go over and see them and take our child to be reared where I was.’
‘What are you on about, talking that way?’ Christy said. ‘You and I are going to get through this in one piece. You will be able to take your Gabrielle home on your arm, and I will be there along with you.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Finn replied. ‘But in case…’
‘Don’t even think that way.’
‘I must,’ Finn said. ‘I have Gabrielle and a child to think about. And so I will leave that letter and my marriage lines with Father Clifford to send to my parents. Should anything happen to me the authorities will inform Gabrielle, as she is my next of kin, but I would like Father Clifford to write to her too.’
‘Won’t he think it odd that you haven’t written to your parents before?’
‘How will he know?’ Finn said. ‘I will let him assume they know everything. He won’t open any letter I give him to keep.’
‘No, of course not,’ Christy said. ‘So you think that this is the way to play it then?’
‘God, Christy, I don’t know,’ Finn sighed. ‘But it is the best that I can do for the moment.’
By the middle of May the company were on the move again, heading further south, according to Finn’s compass. The spring had been quite wet and cold up until then, but the morning that they set out, the sun was already up, despite the early hour. The sky was blue with little fluffy clouds scudding across it, driven by the breeze that riffled through the fields and hedgerows. Finn was glad of the breeze by mid-morning. Without it the heat could have been quite uncomfortable, as they kept up a steady marching pace, hard enough to do with a heavy kitbag on his back.
The only blot on this beautiful spring day was the muffled sound of gunfire, which had been an almost constant backdrop, and got louder with every step they took. The increased sound caused a knot of nervousness to form in Finn’s stomach. He knew that their period of inactivity was coming to an end. Soon he would meet the enemy for the first time and he was a little afraid.
He knew many might be feeling the same way, but no one spoke of it and he would hate to let this fear take hold of him or, worse still, display it and mark himself out as a coward. That was something that he had never considered before.
As they camped that night he wrote a few lines to his family explaining the route march and the countryside he had passed through; painting a picture of where he was but leaving out any names of places they passed, for he knew the censor would cut them out. He didn’t mention the gunfire at all.
Gabrielle got a similar letter, but in hers Finn expressed again how much he loved her and longed for them to be together, and he urged her to take care of herself.
She always wrote cheerful replies and she never mentioned the fact that her father was making her work from dawn till dusk and seldom spoke at all unless it was to bark out an order. She didn’t tell him either that she wasn’t allowed across the door unless to Mass, and even then she would be marched to the cathedral and back and forbidden to exchange pleasantries with anyone. It was the thought of Finn’s letters that kept her going, and the realisation that soon she would be holding his child in her arms.
Finn was worried that he had made no financial provision for Gabrielle and now, with the child, it was even more important. However, he had no idea how to do this and sought out Father Clifford.
‘I see what you say, Finn,’ he said. ‘As soon as we are settled somewhere, as far, that is, as anyone can be settled in war, I will find out for you. I think there is something like a separation allowance that the wives in Britain get, and money for the child when it is born, though I don’t yet know how this works in France.’
‘We won’t be here long then?’
‘No,’ the priest said. ‘This is more a collection point. You must have noticed the battalions of soldiers that are arriving regularly. By tomorrow we will be on our way further south. I am no military man, but I think this is all for the Big Push the officers have been talking about for weeks.’
‘I should say you have a good grasp of it, Father,’ Finn said. ‘The sound of the artillery fire is certainly closer than it was.’
‘And it will be closer yet, I should say,’ Father Clifford said grimly.
The priest was right. Neither Christy nor Finn had seen so many soldiers gathered together in one place.
‘And what do you think of these pals’ brigades?’ Christy asked Finn one day.
‘I’d never heard of them before now,’ Finn said. ‘I met some from a place called Barnsley and they were telling me that they are called pals because they take all the young men from that area. I suppose,’ he mused, ‘if they had introduced conscription in Ireland, like they threatened to do, they could have rounded up all the men from Buncrana and the farms and villages and such.’
‘Maybe they did it that way so that they could look out for one another,’ Christy suggested.
Finn shook his head. ‘I’d like to think that,’ he said. ‘I mean, I would like to think that you and I will watch out for one another. It’s what we said, isn’t it? But I have a feeling that when we are sent over the top, it will be every man for himself.’
‘You could be right.’ Christy added, ‘Anyway, I am hitting the sack. The word is we are all setting out early tomorrow.’
‘So what’s new?’ Finn said with a grin. ‘We always set out early. I’m not sure that bugler goes to bed at all.’
And they did set out early the next morning, but still the sun was well up and the day a very pleasant one. They kept up a good pace and by the second day they realised the area was slightly different from the flat land they had seen when they had first arrived in France, more undulating and wooded in places. It was easier on the eye and more interesting
to walk through, and the following day they marched through a town called Albert.
It was obvious that the small town had been shelled heavily. Many buildings had been destroyed and there were piles of masonry or gaping holes. People came out into the streets to see the soldiers pass, and while there were some who gave a desultory wave, others just looked resigned. Finn thought he could hardly blame them. More soldiers to them probably signified more fighting, more loss of life, and perhaps more heartache for them all.
With the town in the distance, however, Finn and Christy had their first sight of mile upon mile of trenches, scorching into the green fields before them, like gigantic white snakes, illustrating how chalky the soil was. Finn remembered the white cliffs of Dover they had seen from the boat when they had first sailed.
He thought he knew all about trenches, but Ireland’s trenches were mere ditches to these monstrous constructions. Sergeant Lancaster said the chalky soil meant the trenches would be easy to dig, but, he imagined, they would be easier to crumble away too.
Eventually they stopped for the night, and after a meal of stew and potatoes, which everyone was ready for, Finn and Christy went to inspect the nearest trenches and saw they were reinforced with hundreds of sandbags and wood with wooden duckboards laid down to walk on. There were intersections too where one trench joined another, making little bays, and ladders at intervals along the length. Finn wondered how he would feel when he had orders to go up one of those ladders.
The next day, 108th and 109th Brigade were marched further on still until a halt was ordered west of a village called Thiepval. There Finn and Christy saw dugouts for the first time, which they found were living and sleeping quarters built underneath the trenches.
Finn’s stomach quailed at the thought of entering the dark tunnel that opened up at the side of a trench, for he was no lover of confined or enclosed places. But he swallowed his panic and followed the others. The steps appeared to go on and on until he felt as if he was descending to the bowels of the earth, and when they emerged into a sort of corridor Finn wasn’t the only one to sigh with relief.