A Long Long Way (14 page)

The girls of Dublin were out in force again at any rate, just like the year before, waving little Union Jacks. The soldiers in the transports were laughing and shouting at the talent on offer.

Willie Dunne strained above the heads of his taller fellows to see if he could catch a sight of Gretta. It would be difficult to see her among the crowds, but she had told him exactly where to look for her, if she managed to concoct an excuse to get away from her work. The bossman Mr Casey was a pious bastard and if he thought she was going to wave off a soldier there’d be no chance at all.

His new pal Jesse Kirwan had somehow got himself on the same lorry but he didn’t seem to want to be gazing out much on the passing sights. He was hunkered down against the side of the lorry, not even perching his bum on the rough benches.

‘Won’t you look out at old Dublin?’ said Willie Dunne.

‘Ah, it’s not my town.’

‘Can’t you take a gander at it even if it isn’t? There’s rakes of girls just as pretty as anything.’

‘Are there now?‘ said Jesse Kirwan, and hauled himself up after all, and peered out across the planking. ’Well, by God and all, Willie, you’re right there.‘

‘Now, see, you were missing the sights,’ he said.

‘I was, boy. How are you, girls?’ Jesse Kirwan called out. ‘Never mind these Jackeens! Don’t you know the better thing when you see it? Up Cork!’

But there was little chance such raillery could be heard above the engines of the transports. Black smoke as ugly as death belched from the fretting engines. The transport boys were notorious for letting any type of engine out of the garages.

Well, Willie saw no one he knew. Of course, his father had told his sisters not to risk coming down to see him off. These were different days, he said. The spring sun ran along the river like a million skipping stones.

Then he saw her, just where she had said, on the steps that led down to the ferryboats. Gretta, Gretta! He waved like a maniac now, screaming her name, Gretta, Gretta. My God, she looked everywhere but at his transport, everywhere, and he was sick at heart suddenly to think she wouldn’t spot him.

‘Look, look,’ he said to Jesse Kirwan, ‘there’s my girl!’

‘Where, where?’ said Jesse. ‘Give us a look, boy!’

‘There,’ he said, ‘there, your one there with the yellow hair!’

But it was no damn good, they were past, she hadn’t seen him, and Jesse hadn’t seen her either. Oh Jesus, he thought, strike him dead. But just as she nearly vanished from sight, she saw him, and jumped up and down in her drab blue coat, maybe calling, he couldn’t tell, but he waved again, he waved and he waved.

But happiness was general. There was a happiness in the new men, who had been released from what were truly the dull repetitions of the camps. Now they had the elation of actors on a first night, all hope and effort in their faces. Willie Dunne smelled the spit and polish on their boots, their uniforms in many cases just cleaned and ironed by careful mothers, their chins shaved whether requiring shaving or not, their different-coloured hair all sleeked and ready for the adventure. Many of these men had been born and raised in these very streets, played marbles along these very gutters, kissed those very girls maybe.

Gretta had come out to see him go, and that was as good as a letter - as good as ten letters.

‘I’ll tell you something, Willie Dunne, you have beautiful girls in Dublin.’

‘They’re famous for it,’ said Willie.

‘They ought to be,’ said Jesse Kirwan. ‘Lord above, they’re beauties. Euterpasia or Venus bright,’ he sang briefly. ‘You know that one?’

‘I don’t,‘ said Willie, ’and I know a powerful lot of songs.‘

‘Or Helen fair, beyond compare, that Paris stole from her Grecian’s sight ...’

‘It’s a good one,’ said Willie.

‘I don’t know, boy, it’s just a song that my father sang.’

‘Well, you must teach it to me some time. Some of the old songs have very complicated words, that’s true enough.’

‘Ah, it’s not a singing song, not a singing song for soldiers, I’d say.’

‘What does your old fella do, Jesse?’ It was very hard to hold a conversation over the noise, but Willie was intrigued by the man who was almost the size of himself.

‘Well, what does your old fella do?’ said Jesse, countering, and the transport swayed them both, making Willie bite his tongue from the crazy swaying.

‘Policeman,’ said Willie, through the pain.

‘That’s a queer sort of a job,’ shouted Jesse Kirwan.

‘What’s queer about it?’

‘My father wouldn’t think much of that. My father doesn’t hold much with laws and policemen and the like.’

‘What the bugger is he then, a robber?’

‘A lithographer.’

‘And what in the name of God is that?’ shouted Willie.

Jesse Kirwan slapped him on the shoulder then and they laughed like proper eejits, enjoying the general mayhem.

The open sea showed its dancing vistas, the wooden lighthouse in the sound of the river, the drowned man all swollen with salt water that was the peninsula of Howth. Willie could well-nigh feel pity for Jesse Kirwan, coming from mere Cork.

But in the next second Willie’s head was banging. He feared, he feared to tell Jesse Kirwan what awaited him. He feared to tell himself.

The officer in charge, a florid-faced captain with a patch on one eye, lined them up, ready to embark.

Willie remembered he used to be down here as a little fella with his father, to watch the Irish lambs being loaded on, for the English trade, his father checking the manifests so that the numbers tallied. It was a caution against smuggling.

The one-eyed officer was very dissatisfied. He was shouting now at the corporals and the sergeants as if it was all their fault. The boys of Ireland were willing to embark, but it was mighty awkward hauling everything up the gangplanks. There were whistles and shouts and the civvy dockers were putting their hands to the ropes suggestively, and the engine-room was thrumming as if a thousand giant bees were milling there.

Suddenly Willie didn’t feel so bad. Things were as they were; if you couldn’t change a thing you had better lump it. All the din and to-do was strangely cheering. The sea air filled his lungs and unexpectedly he found himself ready enough to go.

Then an army messenger came up on horseback, from the city itself it looked like. His horse made a noise on the wharf like shipbuilders working at rivets. Eyes fell on this flustered soldier, with his air of urgency and a dispatch bag flapping on his leather coat.

Then soon there were officers re-emerging from the ship’s bowels, and the soldiers were ordered back out onto the dockside. Had they been rejected at the last minute? Was the war over maybe?

‘What’s going on?’ said Willie to another baffled private, one of the older men, his head as bald as a spoon — he had knocked his helmet back to scratch it.

‘Don’t know, bless me,’ said the man.

In minutes there was a haphazard, thrown-together column marshalled on the dock.

Suddenly Willie got an elbow in the ribs, but it was only Jesse Kirwan, appeared out of nowhere, and put in to make four.

Now here were the soldiers, marching back! You might think they were arrived at last in France, thought Willie, with a sad laugh, as he marched along himself.

They approached the city like very ghosts. Few citizens could be seen and the crowd that had cheered their passing had melted away.

‘What’s afoot?’ said Private Kirwan, as if Willie Dunne, being not a recruit but an experienced man, might know.

‘I haven’t a notion,’ said Willie.

‘Do you think they’re to disband us or what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m one of Redmond’s men, the Volunteers. You know?’ he said, as if maybe this was something else that Willie wouldn’t understand, something in the line of lithography.

‘What’s that got to do with the price of bacon?’ said Willie.

‘If the war’s over, I’m not staying in the army,’ said Jesse Kirwan. He sounded quite angry. ‘I only came in as a Volunteer.’

‘Sure we’re all volunteers,’ said Willie, a touch sardonically.

There was the O‘Connell Monument now where his father paused just three years ago, ready to charge the mob. The bank-holiday crowd looked something similar to the crowd that had come out for Larkin. It was very peculiar, anyhow. Some of them were actually running from the direction of the Rotunda Hospital. At the same time there were groups of a dozen or so gathered in spots, looking back up the street.

Their column was fiercely halted and things took place now that no one could understand the purpose of.

For here now, as real as a dream as one might say, a little contingent of cavalry was drawn up just under the awnings of the Imperial Hotel, and at a shout from the officer in front, they drew their swords, pointed them forward, and went clattering and hallooing up Sackville Street.

It was the most astonishing thing Willie Dunne ever thought he would see in his native place. It was one of those dragoon regiments, with all the old plumage of the last century in place. But this was just Dublin in the modern day with all of modernity raging peaceably there in the principal street of the country, the second most important street in the entire three kingdoms. The wonderful short jackets of the dragoons clasped their waists, the dark black plumes streamed from their polished helmets, they looked like old Greeks, they were shouting now their calls of battle, the officer in front, who had the bent aspect of a heron about him, by far the loudest.

The groups of Dublin citizens suddenly broke out into cheers, as if moved beyond silence by being spectators in a battle. On they galloped like heroic figures in a vast painting.

Then, even more bizarrely, rifle shots crackled out from the General Post Office, in a most queer moment of ill-fitting likelihood, and then horses and riders started to go down, just as if it were some old battlefield, and there were Turks or Russians in the portals of the Post Office. With roars of pain from the riders and strange shrieks from the wounded horses, which hit the cobblestones with that shocking implication of bruise and broken bone, the charge broke up, and the surviving riders careered away down Henry Street or crossed back madly into Abbey Street, presumably to take their horses and themselves out of the range of fire.