A Long Long Way (21 page)

And in Latin, yeh, we know,‘ said the sergeant-major. ’But isn’t the fucking mass in Latin? Sure we all know our bit of Latin, don’t we, lads?‘

‘Yeh, come on, Willie, boy!’ Smith shouted, maybe to shift himself out of his sentimental state.

So Willie started to sing the Ave Maria‘. Well, it was the very selfsame song he had sung for the singing competition, when his father witnessed his undoing. But he had heard that twiddly bit between the verses now, and he knew he was ready for it.

‘Aaaaaaveeee Mariiiiiiiiaa,’ he sang in the long drawn-out notes of Schubert, ‘gratia pleeenis.’

It was true what his mother believed about him. He sang like an angel might sing if an angel were ever so foolish as to sing for mortal men. His voice was strange and high, but not a counter-tenor. It just seemed to put a knife into the air, the notes were so clear and strong. Like a true singer, he could sing soft with strength, and sing loud without hurting the ears. But the ‘Ave Maria’ was all the same firm tone of things. The Latin itself allowed the men to keep the song from catching in the nets and snares of memories. It was all new and of the present. It seemed to be about their courage, and their soli tariness, and the effort they made in desperation to form a bridge from one soul to another. And that these bridges were bridges of air. The word ’Maria’ they knew, because it was the name of the Mother of God. From mother’s knee to now, they had been inculcated with all the promises and warnings of their Catholic faith. Few had gone further than the teachings of school, and their faith was bare in its bones but strong for all that. They thought of heaven as the next stop without question. They knew it was so because their mothers, their fathers and their priests had told them so.

Willie crossed the gap between the verses with a leap, without a hitch. O‘Hara didn’t even notice. If that bloody judge could have heard him now! First prize with a fucking ribbon to prove it.

Ave Maria, gratia plenis, full of grace, and many of the men caught that it was just the Hail Mary all dressed over in another lingo, the prayer of their childhoods and their country, the prayer of their inmost minds, that could not be sundered, that could not be violated, that could not be rendered meaningless even by slaughter, the core inviolable, the flame unquenchable.

And Willie sang, and maybe in truth he was an amateur, his breathing O‘Hara noted was jagged and awkward, but the admiration of his dead mother was in it — indeed, as Willie’s mind now leaped to think, to remember, the tone of a child in a room in Dalkey singing to his mother, after the birth of his sister Dolly that killed her, his father sitting sternly back in the scullery and going out for a sudden walk into the dark, God knew where, and Willie aged eleven sneaking in to see her, a thing he had forgotten till this moment of singing, to be with her, and him singing that song to her, with the pennies on her eyes, and the midwife cleaning the baby in the front parlour, and no one there in the bedroom, only the distant heave of the Dalkey sea, and his song, ’Ave Maria, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,‘ and his mother’s face not listening and listening, and similarly now he sang for these ruined men, these doomed listeners, these wretched fools of men come out to fight a war without a country to their name, the slaves of England and the kings of nothing — in Christy Moran’s secret, bitter words.

Chapter Eleven

Royal Dublin Fusiliers,
Belgium.
3 May 1916.

Dear Papa,

Thank you for writing back, Papa. I am very glad everyone is safe, very much so. It is a great relief The Dublin Metropolitan Police taken off the streets! It was terrible to read about the Countess Markievicz shooting the unarmed recruit at Stephen’s Green. I am sad to think of Sackville Street blown to nothing. The men here have the papers going round and we all try to have a read of them, especially now we are back in the reserve lines, thank God. Maybe at home some of the lads might be getting into trouble with you and your men! Here I have to say they make fine soldiers. Nothing is too hard for them, they will dig all hours, and you would not think city boys would be able for a hard march, but they are masters. They are wonderful lads. They say it is from walking everywhere in Dublin, down to the Shelly Banks in the summer to swim. They have been through a lot just recently. They are really wonderful men.I am to leave this aside for a while and I will add to this tomorrow before it goes with the other post.

‘They’re shooting those buggers in Dublin,’ said O‘Hara, scanning a newspaper. It was funny in the Irish papers to see the advertisements for saddles, for soap, for wigs, for shotguns, for poultry, for furniture polish, scullery maids, footmen, apples, and all the paraphernalia of that eternal Irish life. New things were casualty lists, men who would not be coming home to saddles, soap, wigs et cetera, ever again.

‘What’s that?’ said Private Quigley, the miracle man, who went off gassed rightly to an English hospital but who had arrived back as right as rain. He was playing a game of cards with Joe Kielty, one of the gentlest and nicest men that ever lived, as far as Willie was concerned, who would do anything for you if it was in his way to do it. He was the best builder of revetments in the company, he had a knack for it, and no wooden revetment put in by Joe Kielty ever fell down on a man unless it was a bomb that did it. Those Mayo men were sweet as nuts. And even when he had lost his cousin Joe McNulty in the gas attack, he took it with a great solemnity that did him credit. But Willie saw him in the little graveyard alone by Joe McNulty’s grave, saying things that no one could hear. He was a small man too, like Willie, with a plate of black hair it looked like on his crown, and he was a man who had been out in all weather since he was a little boy, working beside his father on a few windy acres in Mayo between the lakes of Callow.

So now Joe looked up from his cards when Quigley spoke. They stuck together maybe because they were both miracle men, since Joe Kielty took the same blast of smoke that his cousin did, and yet his lungs thought nothing of it, which was very strange, and rare. They were pals now in that army fashion.

‘Shooting them,’ said O‘Hara, matter of fact, but not matter of fact. ’Court-martialled the lot of them, all the leaders that signed that bit of unholy paper, and dozens and dozens more. They’re all to be shot by the military and they’ve made a start now yesterday morning with three of them. They’d be the high-ups, I suppose.‘

‘Well, good enough for them,’ said Quigley. ‘I was worried the Mam would be caught in the crossfire. She’s a terrible one for going out when it doesn’t suit her.’

‘We were all worried,’ said Willie, with feeling.

‘Did they have officers then and all the rest?’ said Quigley, more lightly.

‘Bedad and they did,’ said O‘Hara. And platoons apparently and companies and I don’t know if they had regiments but.’

‘Sure, Pete, there was only a few of them,’ said Quigley, ‘you can’t make a regiment out of a handful.’

‘No, no, rightly, but battalions they had, for sure. Well, I mean, they were all Irish Volunteers, that broke away from Redmond, and then the other lot with them, the Citizen Army it’s called, that James Connolly used to drill. I mean, Jaysus, there used to be Volunteers in Sligo marching with hurleys and bits of uniforms their mothers stitched up for them. They didn’t look too menacing. The little scuts in Sligo used to jeer them. But there’s three of them shot anyhow. About a hundred of them killed in the fighting itself, and about two hundred of our soldiers and some policemen, too.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Willie Dunne.

‘Yeh, Willie,’ said O‘Hara. ’A few of your father’s lads done in, and some Royal Irish Constabulary men and the like. Dozens of ordinary Tommies mown down, mown down I was reading, at Mount Street Bridge. Just like here. Advancing shoulder to shoulder and mown down like, like what‘s-it? Stalks of them yokes.’

Somehow Willie didn’t want to say anything, to describe what he had seen and done at that very Mount Street. He didn’t know why exactly. It was as if he wished he had never been through there, seen those things. It was foul enough where he was betimes without having to think back to other foul things — confusing, awful things. He was sure he had told O‘Hara all about it, but maybe not. It must have run out of O’Hara’s head anyhow, what with all the goings on. It was a wonder they had thoughts at all still in their heads. Brains poached and scrambled by noise, terror and foul deaths.

‘Wheat,’ said Joe Kielty.

‘Yeh, Joe, wheat,‘ said O’Hara. ‘Thank you, Mr Kielty. Anyhows, they shot the first three in Kilmainham. Firing squad, short straw, blindfolds and all. And I tell you, the fella writing here is delighted. Nothing could suit him better you would think. But he’s right, I suppose he is.’ He paused a moment. ‘That’s the funny thing.’

No one said a word for a while. Joe Kielty and the Miraculous Quigley attended to their cards again.

‘I think the Mam’s mind is gone entirely, that’s what it is,’ muttered Quigley. ‘You can’t keep her in the house.’

Willie looked out through the billet window at the vague terrain of fields and hedges. The hedges were growing up wild and there was no one hereabouts now to give them a hair-do.

‘Pearse, Clarke and McDonagh,’ said O‘Hara almost to himself. ‘Fancy.’

After a very long time Joe Kielty said, in his mild Mayo voice: ‘I hope three will be enough for them, Pete.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ said O‘Hara.

It was in the canteen later that day and it was just O‘Hara and Willie on their own.

‘The queer thing is,’ said O‘Hara, ’the queer thing is, they were hoping the fucking Germans would help them.‘

‘Who, Pete?’ said Willie.

‘The fucking rebels, Willie.’

‘Oh yeh, I know,’ said Willie. ‘I know. Sure it was written on their piece of paper. Gallant allies in Europe, it said, wasn’t it?’

‘So that means, like it or lump it, we’re the fucking enemy. I mean, we’re the fucking enemy of the fucking rebels!’

‘That’s it, more or less. That’s how I understand it anyhow,’ said Willie.

‘You see, I think that’s very queer indeed,’ said Pete.

‘It is, very,’ said Willie.

‘I mean, whatever way you turn it, I would like to believe, I would like to anyhow, that what we’re doing out here has a reason, to push the Hun back and all that, even if it doesn’t have a reason.’

‘I know,’ said Willie. But he didn’t completely know.

‘So, what can we call that?’

‘I don’t know, Pete.’

‘So where does it leave us?’

It was the very same question Jesse Kirwan had asked. Willie hadn’t known the answer then. He thought he knew the answer now.

‘Sitting here, Pete, is where,’ he said.

‘Like eejits.’ And then Pete O‘Hara said nothing for a little while. ’But I wish they hadn’t shot those fellas all the same.‘ It was almost a whisper.

‘I wish they hadn’t too, Pete,’ said Willie, surprised at this change, ‘to tell you the truth. So what does that make us?’

‘Even bigger eejits!’