A Long Long Way (24 page)

‘Oh,’ said Willie, and shook his head, as if to say, No matter.

‘Yeh. He’s not a bad fella — you know, his nibs inside there. Quiet, shy sort. Someone should have a word in his ear. If he’ll act the white man now, well, they’ll surely spare him.’

‘Have you talked to him yourself, sir?’ said Willie.

‘Oh, I’m forbidden talking to prisoners. That’s not allowed.’

‘Oh,’ said Willie.

‘They don’t want you to be, to be swayed, talked round into something you might regret, because, well, this is as near to death row as bedamned. Where you from?’

‘Second battalion, RDF.’

‘No, where in Ireland?’

‘Oh, Dublin, sir, Wicklow. You know, Dublin mostly.’

‘Yeh, well, that’s good, isn’t it?’

But Willie didn’t know any more if it was good or not. He supposed it was.

‘Yeh, well,’ he said.

‘I’m told he got upset when they started shooting those fuckers in Dublin,’ said the corporal. ‘But I wouldn’t get upset.’

‘No?’

‘No. Fucking jubilant, me. Bastards. I never spoke to him but the once. He was begging me to tell him what was going on. This would have been that first time they had him here, around May it was. And he’s been in the clink since, I believe. Or Field Punishment. And back again now. Worse this time it’ll be. Major Stokes, a bit of a bollocks really. Wouldn’t think twice about shooting an Irishman anyhow. Says we’re all fucking rebels. Me, that never crossed the fucking road in the wrong place.’

‘Where’s Major Stokes in this, sir?’ said Willie. He remembered the man well enough. A kind of crazy man at the end of his tether, right enough.

‘Chairman, what’s the what’sa, of the court martial. The main man and all that. Yeh, so your man there, he was begging me, begging me, back in May, and you know, I can’t say anything, mustn’t speak, but one evening — all right, I felt sorry for him, it was the middle of the month by then, and maybe I was a little, just a little tad upset myself, like all the lads, at the news from home, but fuck him, there’s a war on here, so I just stand there, in the darkness, and I say the names, and the dates, you know, 8 May, Kent, Mallin, Colbert, Heuston, and so on, and so on — Yeh, and how did I remember them, well, I don’t know, burned into the fucking brain, and I said all the names and the dates, and he just stands there looking at me, like I fucking shot them myself. And I could have been court martialled myself for that, so don’t say anything about it, Private.‘

‘I won’t, sir.‘

‘Fucking business. We’re getting shot to hell by the Hun, aren’t we, boy, and this boyo in here’s all tied up in his own stupid guts, bellyaching, making a holy show of himself. It’s his mother and father I think about. What’ll it be for them if they shoot the stupid bollocks?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No more does he himself,’ he said, then spins on a sixpence : ‘But a nice lad.’

Then Father Buckley poked out his sleek head and beckoned Willie. He nodded to Willie and patted him on the shoulder and nodded again, as was his way, and stepped out into the anteroom to let Willie go through.

The little lock-up was dark enough, with only a sprinkle of light in a corner, from a small window. Maybe that was why they chose it as a clink, because there was no way out that Willie could see, except past the philosopher at the door outside. Somehow or other he felt he was going to talk to a man he knew all his life, which was a strange thing, since he met him only the once.

In the corner on a narrow cot lay Jesse Kirwan, with his wheat-coloured hair. The uniform on his small form was surprisingly neat, as if the little man hadn’t moved about much. He didn’t look like a rebel anyhow, or a person that had refused to obey an order. He looked like a small stone figure carved long ago by a not especially gifted carver. There was a metal cup of water on a stool at his head. There was a bowl with some decent-smelling stew in it and a spoon in the bowl, but the food hadn’t been touched.

There was even a nice hunk of black bread that Willie would quite like to try. But he went over to the cot and stood there looking down.

His eyes grew more used to the murk and he could see Jesse Kirwan’s face a little better. The pallor of the skin was quite yellow and damp, and Willie frowned to see that.

‘Are you all right? Are you getting on all right?’ he said.

After a full half-minute, Jesse Kirwan turned his head a bit and squinted up at him.

‘Hello, yourself,’ he said. ‘That’s Willie Dunne, isn’t it? Because the old eyesight isn’t the best.’

‘Yeh, it’s me.’

‘My old mate from the streets of Dublin.’

‘Well.’

‘No, I just wanted to see you before — well, of course, they’re going to have to shoot me. But I don’t know, we had a right day of it in Dublin.’

‘Father Buckley asked me to see you to tell you not to be disobeying and to be contrite and the like, so they won’t have to shoot you.’

‘No, but they do have to shoot me. I want them to.’

‘Why in the name of Jesus do you want them to do that?’

‘It’ll be all the same, Willie. They’ll just put “Died of Wounds” or “Killed in Action” on my sheet and send that home with my uniform.’

‘Why do you want them to do that?’

‘Because an Irishman can’t fight this war now. Not after those lads being executed. No, indeed.’

And what about your father and mother?‘

‘They would understand me, if I could explain it to them, which of course I cannot.’

‘What’s the use in dying, when no one will know why, or anything?’

Ah, yes, it’s a private matter, between me and my guardian angel. See? But look it, that’s all decided. I just wanted to see you again, so someone will know what happened, and why.‘

‘Do you want me to get in touch with your father?’

‘No, no, nothing like that, Willie. Definitely not. Just so that someone knows, just that, is why I asked to see you. One living person. Well, they asked me if someone would speak for me, and I don’t know a soul out here that knows me well enough to do that. But somehow or other your face and name swam into view. I hope you don’t mind, Willie?’

‘I don’t know what you want.’

‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Why did you come out to the war, Jesse, if you felt like this?’

‘I thought it was a good thing. It seemed like a good thing. But it’s not a good thing now. I’m not making a big thing of it. The army just thinks I’m a mystery. That suits me. I know I can’t get out any other way. I signed up for the duration. But I won’t serve in the uniform that lads wore when they shot those others lads. I can’t. I’m not eating so I can shrink, and not be touching the cloth of this uniform, you know? I am trying to disappear, I suppose.’

Now Jesse started to shake. It might have been just because he was weak in his body, but it looked like plain fear. Willie was fearful of that fear, if it was fear. The little man continued to tremble. Maybe he was even sobbing a little.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ said Willie.

‘You see, what it is, Willie, I want a witness to my plight, but not a witness that will say a word about it, and I know you can do that.’

‘Do you want me to speak at the court martial, give a character thingamabob?’

‘It won’t do me any good. I don’t mind if you’re to be there. So you can witness, you know. But they will shoot me. It’s just army regulations. One thing leads to another thing.’

‘Well, I won’t be there unless I’m to say something. But what will I say?’

‘Say you saw me crying in the streets of Dublin. Did you think I was afraid? I wasn’t afraid. I was thinking, They’ve ruined everything. Now we won’t have a country at all. Now everything you and me and the others were trying to do is useless. And maybe I could have dried my tears then and got on with it. But then they started shooting those poor men, and that was a filthy business. Why did you volunteer, Willie?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ah, well.’

‘Because I never reached six feet.’

‘What’s that, Willie?’

‘The reason.’

‘You’re a strange one, Willie.’

‘I know.’

‘Keep all this under your hat and if they let you into the court martial, well and good.’

‘All right.’

‘All right?’ said Jesse Kirwan

‘ All right,‘ said Willie Dunne, and even started to go. But something kept him; he didn’t know what it was. A dread of moving forward into the next moment, a dread of history and a dread of the future. And the coin of — what? — strange friendship maybe, spinning in between, in this bleak room.

‘Look it, Willie,’ said Jesse Kirwan. ‘Millions of lads have died out here. Maybe millions more will yet. Heaps and heaps of us. I will acknowledge my mistake, Willie Dunne. I thought it would be a good thing to follow John Redmond’s words. I thought for my mother’s sake, her gentle soul, for the sake of my own children, I might go out and fight for to save Europe so that we might have the Home Rule in Ireland in the upshot. I came out to fight for a country that doesn’t exist, and now, Willie, mark my words, it never will. Don’t think I am not gob-smacked by that news. I know you don’t think like me. I don’t know what has brought you out here. Maybe you think that Ireland is just fine as she is and you are fighting for that. Well, Willie boy, that’s an Ireland that maybe did exist two years ago as you set out, but I doubt if it will much longer.’

‘Can’t you just eat your maconochie like the rest of us, Jesse, and to hell with Ireland and this Ireland and that Ireland? You’d give a saint a headache with that talk, man dear. Didn’t you have the winner of the Grand National? That’s what we should be talking about.’

‘Did I, did I? I never even thought to look. Lord Jesus, I hope I still have the docket.’

‘That’s the right sort of talk. That other talk of yours is lousy talk.’

‘I know, I know. You’re a gentleman to put up with it. And I got the habit from my father. Such a self-torturing, complicated, mad-thinking man you never met. Better he had been an accordion player and handed me down an accordion. Don’t you know? But it had to be this song, this rigmarole, this torment of talk of freedom. I knew it would do for me in the end!’

‘Come on, Jesse, say the good word and when we meet again you can talk as much nonsense about Ireland as you please. Come on now.’

But Jesse Kirwan only turned a weary smile on him, and raised up a shaky hand. And took Willie’s right hand in his, and shook it very nicely.

‘ All right,‘ said Willie, ’then, I brought you this.‘

And he fetched into one of his pockets and brought out the little Bible that Maud had got for him.

‘I’ve taken out the letters I had in it and a photograph.’

‘I have a Bible, Willie,’ said Jesse, but he took it right enough.

‘Yeh, well, there’s one without my piss stains on it.’

Then Willie Dunne came out again to the curious priest and the curious sentry. But he didn’t say anything to them. He felt like there were lice in his blood; his arms were uncomfortable. He had wanted for a moment to embrace Jesse Kirwan like you might a child, but he hadn‘t, and so his arms were aching.

Father Buckley walked him back to billets. The ordinary business of war proceeded around them; they were bringing up lorry-loads of munitions in a great and endless snake. Some cavalry regiment was billeted back here and there were a thousand horses or so all saddled up and ready, in two seemingly infinite lines in a broad field. They were beautiful, like beasts out of fables. There were peaceful enough woods far over to the right with tall black trunks and an air of simplicity and the force of a storybook.

‘He knows that Jesus loves him, he said to me,’ said Father Buckley. ‘His mother is a great believer, he told me. A convert, as a matter of fact. What did he say to you, Willie? Do we have any chance of saving him?’

Willie stopped on the gravelly road. Some fellas only recently had cast the gravel over it, to counteract the unsea sonal rain. The Engineers it might be, or the Chinese coolies. But the July sun was piercing and heroic now. It was like a music in itself. A prayer.

Anyway, Willie looked at Father Buckley. Of course, now he was under a sort of promise to say nothing. To be a queer sort of witness that witnessed and said nothing. For what?

Willie had a sudden desire to be drinking, to be happily whoring, to be doing anything but this, walking along with this morose padre, with his serious and rather ugly face. He didn’t understand Jesse Kirwan. He had met him only the once, more or less. Why should he pay him any heed in the upshot? There had been thousands of deaths just in the last days over by the ruinous river. Two thousand Irishmen of the 36th alone. He thought Jesse Kirwan was all twisted up in a rope of his own making; he knew he was. He had made a trap for himself in the wood of his own heart. He was the snare, the rabbit, and the hunter all in one.

‘Why doesn’t he just buckle down to the job and see it through and go home then and think his thoughts as he likes?’ said Willie.

‘I wish he would. It’s not the time for that, maybe. People of all sorts are having notions. Maybe it’s a time for notions, Willie. When death is all around. Well, we can pray for him. God is good.’

Willie shook his head and they moved on together.