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Also by Fergus O’Connell
Fiction
Call The Swallow
Starlight
Sunlight
Candlelight
Moonlight
Non-fiction
How To Run Successful Projects – The Silver Bullet, 3rd edition
How To Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations
How To Run Successful Projects In Web-Time
Simply Brilliant – The Competitive Advantage of Common Sense, 3rd edition
How To Do A Great Job – And Go Home On Time
Fast Projects: Project Management When Time Is Short
How To Get More Done: Seven Days to Achieving More
Work Less, Achieve More: Great Ideas to Get Your Life Back
Earn More, Stress Less: How To Attract Wealth Using the Secret Science of Getting Rich
What You Need To Know About Project Management
Zero Waste In Business
Books for children
How To Put A Man On The Moon If You’re A Kid
Sunlight
Part 2 of
THE FOUR LIGHTS QUARTET
by
Fergus O’Connell
Copyright © 2012 Fergus O’Connell.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of an audio recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use – other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews – without prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-9569706-2-6 (Epub edition)
ISBN 978-0-9569706-3-3 (Kindle edition)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Editing by Dan Leissner
Book design by Fiona Raven
Digital Edition January 2012
Published by Paper & Celluloid
The Boathouse, Moatstown House
Athy, Co. Kildare, Ireland
www.PaperAndCelluloid.com
Contents
You can contact me
Also by Fergus O’Connell
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Wednesday 1 July 1863
Prologue
1
2
Thursday 2 July 1863
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Friday 3 July 1863
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Saturday 4 July 1863
39
40
41
42
43
Sunday 5 July 1863
44
45
Monday 6 July 1863
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Epilogue
And while it’s still fresh in your mind …
For Sheila, Win, Doris and Edna – in loving memory
‘Es una cosa muy seria’ [This is a very serious business]
—The great war photographer Robert Capa, under fire on Omaha Beach, early morning June 6, 1944.
Wednesday 1 July 1863
Prologue
While they were still a few miles from Gettysburg the regiment halted and the colonel called the company commanders together for a conference. They stood in the road while the men settled in the fragrant grass and dusty earth of a meadow. One of them was playing ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’ in his head. Not the rousing, brass band version, but on the piano – slowly, tentatively as though the notes were only just occurring to him one by one. It had the speed of a funeral march and sad enough to be one too. His fingers touched imaginary keys on his thighs. God, how he missed that piano. Strange that, more than anything else – Ma, Pa, his brothers, sister, anything – that was what he missed.
He had the sense of seeing the world through a window and despite the warm day and the sun on his back, he felt cold. He had once seen a full eclipse of the sun and it felt like that now. His eyes told him sunlight and heat though he felt no heat.
Even though he had been living with these men for over a year, he suddenly couldn’t remember anybody’s name. A few feet away a man with thick sergeant’s stripes puffed on his pipe and read a letter that looked like it had been folded and unfolded many times. Another man with a glorious moustache chewed tobacco, spat out a stream of brown juice and cleared his throat. A butterfly flitted past. There was a line of woods not far away on the edge of the meadow and in it, birds were singing. A man sat on a fallen log. He had an elbow on his knee and one palm against his cheek, staring at the ground. Someone tenderly turned a page of the book he was reading. Tiny white cloudlets floated by way up in the sky.
The group of officers broke up, the captain coming in their direction. With the impeccable timing of an orchestra, a distant cannon opened up. The sergeant rose to his feet. After the first cannon thud, came a second and a third. Slowly and with exquisite care, the sergeant folded the letter and slipped it back inside his jacket. The captain said something and the sergeant nodded. A rustle, like the breath of a summer breeze, ran through the men. The distant artillery had already risen to a sustained cannonade of staccato, punching sounds.
The sergeant said gently, ‘Come on boys, time to go.’
It was what Ma would say, years ago when it was time to leave an aunt’s or grandmother’s. Or later on, one of the things landlords said in taverns, late at night when they wanted to get the drinkers out. Time to go.
‘Come on boys,’ said the sergeant again. ‘Time to go.’
His voice was kind with an edge of weariness on it. Men searched his face to see if he had any sense of what lay up ahead. But of course there was nothing. They would find out soon enough. Until then there was just the distant sound of artillery.
The man folded the lid of the imaginary piano and got up. He pulled on his pack and shouldered his musket. He had begun to shiver. They were all on their feet now. A man put a hand on another’s back, between the shoulder blades, and held it there, just for a moment. It was the tenderest gesture, thought the pianist; a sign worthy of a lover. Then, with the rest of his company, he formed a rank of four and began to march towards the sound of the guns.
1
‘Boss! Come on, boss! Wake up! You gotta wake up!’
He was in bed with Sarah. She lay on her back and he lay on his side beside her. They were both naked. His arm lay across her chest and his thigh was across her groin. She was as she
had always been – there but not there, intimately familiar yet a stranger, as close as she could be but as remote as the stars. His hand was cupped on her breast. He had said to her once – ‘let me be your underwear’ and she had laughed – that unladylike, yet so feminine laugh. He sensed her tuft of hair and her hidden wetness touching his thigh. He was inflamed.
‘Boss! Come on, boss!’
He couldn’t understand it – there was an acrid smell of urine and a sheet of blinding pain that ran right across his forehead and down to his eyes. He assumed that the voice calling him was part of a dream. He hoped all of this – especially the pain – was part of the same dream. And the urine – that had better be in the dream too. Though somewhere, a long way off, he felt some long forgotten sense of humiliation that it wasn’t.
Somebody was pulling at his shoulder, trying to rouse him.
‘Go to hell,’ he heard himself say.
Slowly, like swimming up from deep down, Gilbert Owens became aware that it wasn’t Sarah he was wrapped around at all. Rather it was a pillow that had become turned sideways sometime during the night. And now somebody had their hands underneath his body and had turned him over onto his back. A wave of urine smell washed over him. He heard the voice again.
‘Boss, wake up now. Come on, wake up.’
Gilbert was about to say something else – he was trying to find words stronger than ‘go to hell’ – when his face was suddenly wet, completely soaking wet, his face and his hair. He felt cold water trickling onto his neck and chest and into his armpits. Maybe all of this wasn’t a dream.
He opened his eyes. He was in a dark room. The place was warm and muggy. It was the summer. Wasn’t it? Was it? Somebody was standing over him.
‘Come on. We gotta hurry! Wake up!’
Gilbert Owens’ head felt swollen. He tried to roll back over, to rest his throbbing head on the pillow but he found that his legs were entangled in a blanket.
‘My head,’ he moaned. ‘I’m dying. Go away, Leonardo.’
The name had come from somewhere. There was something about Florence.
‘My name eez not Leonardo, boss. How many times I ’ave to say it? I am Roberto. And you’re not dying. You’re drunk.’
Gilbert let out a breath. It stank and sounded like the breath of somebody dying, but he was still alive after it. His eyes were full of sleep. He yawned groggily.
‘Wake up, boss. There’s been a battle.’
Gilbert felt himself being dragged reluctantly into the world.
‘Of course there’s been a battle. There’s a war on. That’s what they do in wars.’
He remembered there was a time when he used to make people laugh with some of the things he said. He had made Sarah laugh – she had said it was one of the things she loved about him. Sarah. Beautiful, beautiful Sarah. How could it be true that she was gone? Could he wake up and find that this had all been a nightmare? He tried to continue the joke as if doing it would somehow bring her back.
‘Why, what do they do in Florence? Sing arias from operas and pelt each other with cream puffs?’
The effort exhausted him. He heard the sound of a match being struck. Through crusty eyes he saw the inch high stub of candle on the bedside locker flicker warily into life. Outside in the street a carriage rolled past, horses clip clopping. There was the crack of a whip and a coachman shouted something unintelligible.
‘Jesus Christ, what does somebody have to do to get some rest around here? Blow that damn thing out.’
‘Boss, listen to me.’
Roberto sat down on the edge of the wooden cot, took Gilbert’s arm and shook it.
‘Are you awake, boss? Are you listening?’
‘No, I’m not awake and I’m not listening.’
‘There’s been a battle, boss. In Gettysburg. We need to go there. Take pictures. Get ’em back here. Make an exhibition. Sell copies. We’ll be rich.’
‘Gettysburg is a hundred miles from here.’
‘Seventy seven, boss.’
‘Oh go away. Just leave me alone. Go yourself and I’ll split the money with you. Or you take it all. I don’t care.’
With a supreme effort, Gilbert turned himself back over on his face, burying his throbbing head in the wet pillow. It stank – all the bedding stank – of him. How Sarah would have been appalled – everything in her house had been so spotless. He was angry. He turned onto his back again and opened his eyes. He had just begun to sit up and was in the process of saying, ‘You threw water over me, you stupid son of a bitch,’ when a second lot splashed right into his face and down the front of the shirt he had been wearing for who knew how long. Gilbert reached a sitting up position and as he did so, appeared to crack his head on an invisible beam. He put his eyes and forehead into his hands.
‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty.’
‘You listenin’ now, boss?’
The water had made the urine smell stronger. Gilbert lowered his hands to his lap and with some difficulty, focused his eyes on the other man, who had returned to sit on the edge of the cot. In the faint light of the candle, Gilbert saw cropped hair, good white teeth in an olive colored face and a smile that was ridiculously happy.
‘Tonight,’ began Roberto. ‘I go to a bar over on … well, you wouldn’t know it. I meet a man there. ’e say ’e works at the telegraph office in the War Department. We get to … Well, between one thing and the other, ’e tell me that a big battle ‘as started at Gettysburg. In Pennsylvania,’ he added.
‘I know where Gettysburg is,’ said Gilbert sourly.
‘Good. That’s good that you know.’
‘So then I think to myself, this is our chance to do Mathew Brady on it. You remember – Mathew Brady – last year in New York?’
Gilbert remembered. Mathew Brady’s exhibition entitled, ‘The Dead of Antietam’ had been a sensation last Fall. Nobody had ever seen photographs like them. Bloated corpses stiffened into grotesque positions photographed on the battlefield of Antietam in Maryland. That had been before Sarah.
‘The newspapers – they won’t know about this till Friday,’ Roberto continued. ‘Today is Wednesday. So right now, only me and the man in the War Department telegraph office know. And some generals of course and Abe Lincoln.’
The way he said the President’s name made it sound like ‘a blinken’ and it took Gilbert several seconds to work out who Roberto was talking about. He hurried to catch up with the conversation.
‘But they ain’t photographers, boss. So, we should get out the darkroom wagon, go to Gettysburg and take pictures. We’ll be first back. We’ll make loadsa money.’
Gilbert rubbed the palm of his hand across his forehead slowly as though it would wipe away the pain.
‘Can I ask you a question, Leonardo?’
‘Roberto.’
‘Roberto. Roberto, how did you get here?’
‘I walk back. Is a summer’s night, is nice, is a full moon, is easy to see ––’
‘No. No – I mean – How did you get here from – from …?’
‘Florence, boss?’
He knew there had been something about Florence.
‘That’s right – from Florence.’
Roberto smiled broadly as though the question was ridiculous.
‘I come on a ship, of course, boss.’
‘No, no. What I mean is – who are you? What are you doing here?
‘You mean you don’t remember?’
A look that was a mixture of disappointment and hurt crossed Roberto’s face.
‘No … I’m really sorry, but I don’t. Did I hire you? Did I bring you from Florence? You know … how did you get here?’
‘Okay. I explain. I’m living in Firenze – Florence. I wanna be a photographer. I ’ave my own camera. I take pictures – of babies, couples who’s newly married – you know the kinda thing.’
Gilbert nodded – the merest hint of a nod; really just a movement of his eyelids. He was afraid of the pain in h
is head.
‘Last year, I see some woodcuts of the Antietam photographs in an Italian newspaper. I think these are the kind of pictures I wanna take, the kind of fotografia I wanna do. So I get on a ship and come to United States. I come first to New York. Then I come ’ere to Washington and I go around the photographic studios looking for a job. I even try Mathew Brady’s place – ’e ’as a studio ’ere, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ Gilbert murmured in a dead voice.
‘I speak to a man with a beard. ‘e’s from Scotland. ’is name’s a Gardner. But ’e won’t give me no job. So then I find this place. And you are very nice and you give me a job.’
‘I gave you a job?’ croaked Gilbert incredulously.
‘Sure.’
‘Me? I did?’
Roberto’s face was suddenly very serious.
‘Sure. We ’ave a contract.’
‘We do?’
‘Sure.’
‘Will you stop saying “sure”?’
‘Sure. You wanna see it?’
‘Er, please … if you don’t mind.’
‘No,’ Roberto shrugged. ‘Why should I mind?’
Roberto reached into his back pocket and took out a bill fold. From that he carefully extracted a piece of folded paper, unfolded it and handed it to Gilbert. He frowned, looked at it, focused his eyes and scanned down. It was a contract alright. And yes, there at the bottom were two signatures – one he took to be Roberto’s, indecipherable but executed with a flourish and his own, a spidery scrawl that look vaguely familiar and was spattered with ink spots. Gilbert handed it back.
‘You say is a standard contract,’ Roberto explained, as he put it carefully away again. ‘You found it in a drawer downstairs. Is completely legal. I check it with a lawyer.’
Roberto’s smile returned as he said this.
‘Oh, you did?
Roberto nodded happily.
‘Sure.’
‘But it says there that I agree to pay you thirteen dollars a month.’
‘Sure – regularly on the last banking day of every month,’ he recited.
‘But I’ve never paid you ––’
Gilbert paused.
‘Have I?’
Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2) Page 1