A Long Long Way (39 page)

‘Thank you, Rector.’

‘Thank you, William, for taking the time to talk to me.’

Willie felt curiously heartened by the words of the rector. In fact, he was close to weeping as he trod on up to the house among the trees.

He had enough sense to know he must approach the house from the lane that ran up to the yards. There was no purpose marching in through the fine gates and traipsing up the avenue.

He wondered then was he mighty foolish not to have sent a letter first, and how would he say why he had come? And why had he come, now he considered it? He had little idea but the notion of how the captain had stayed in him, the little history he knew of the captain still vivid in his mind. He was walking now in the captain’s world that he knew nothing of. He hadn’t even known he had a brother in the army, or had he? Had it seemed unimportant and had he just forgotten? There seemed something vaguely unforgivable about that, in those days without forgiveness generally.

He knocked at the kitchen door just off the fine, trim yards. There were maybe two dozen outhouses of varying kinds, fowl houses and piggeries and turf houses, calf byres, loose boxes for the horses. It was a grand operation. And yet the house did not loom over him with grandeur or embellishment — it was low and simple, with a peaceful air. The sun was content to lie on the pack-stones of the yard; even the three sheepdogs didn’t bother with him, but stayed sleeping in their chosen suntraps on their chains. He knocked with his bare knuckles and after a little while he heard feet coming, and the door, which was already open a few inches, was pulled inward. There was a stout woman there in a blue overdress, just the same as his grandmother would have worn over in Kiltegan. He thought it must be a servant, the cook maybe, or the principal maid, because she was elderly enough.

‘How’re you doing, ma’am?‘ he said. ’I’m looking for Mrs Pasley. My name’s Willie Dunne and I was in the army with - with the captain.‘

To his dismay, he found he could not remember the captain’s first name, but the woman rescued him, whether she knew it or not.

‘George, you were in the army with George, oh bless me, come in, Mr Dunne, come in.’

Then she drew him into the kitchen. It was like the kitchen of any farmhouse, with a big fire of turf and logs, and a scrubbed deal table, and the flagstones a little wet from the mop, and the old clock going at its work. But there was a door open into the rest of the house and Willie could see the genteel transformation there, with flatter plaster walls and pictures, and an old red carpet, and by another much bigger entrance a brass box of sticks and umbrellas. It gave him a strange pleasure suddenly to think of Captain Pasley walking there, and sitting, not as a captain but the son of the house, a farmer and a living man.

‘Sit down there, Mr Dunne,’ she said, with true kindness. ‘We won’t go into the sitting-room if you don’t mind it. I have all the covers off the chairs and it looks like the end of the world. Let me give you some tea.’

Her accent was a Wicklow accent but he didn’t think any more she was a servant. The way she arranged her words and offered them was not the music of a servant, not at all.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I am George’s mother, Margaret Pasley. George was my eldest son. Now his father is down in the lower fields, but he should be up in a while, Mr Dunne. Did you come to, to - you’re very welcome, whysoever you came, but - was there something to say to us?’

‘No, no,’ said Willie, panicking suddenly. He had walked into rooms where maybe grief had been deep and constant. Yet her manner was bright enough. He was fearful now, treading in the shadows and the briars of the captain’s own world.

‘Did you know him particularly?’

‘I did, I did, ma’am. Let me tell you — ‘ But what should she let him tell her? She handed him the beautiful blue china cup brimming with the soft coin of tea. He drank it with real thirst and drained it to the leaves.

‘My heavens,’ said the captain’s mother.

‘You see,’ said Willie, ‘he was my captain in the first months of my service, and, as you know, he was — ’

‘He was killed, yes, at Hulluch. Were you there?’

Now she spoke with an eagerness like his unexpected thirst.

‘I was,’ he said. ‘Not just in the moment of his death, because — ’ Oh but, again, how could he tell her that Christy Moran, himself and the others drew back, while the captain elected to remain? Was that why he had come? Not to say that to her but to himself? The captain had stayed and they had withdrawn — run away was the worse phrase for it. And the captain had elected to remain, though everyone knew it was only death to do so. And then coming back and finding the poor captain like a twisted hawthorn in the fuming trench. What was that? Not something to say to a mother.

‘I can see,’ she said, ‘it is all happening still behind your eyes.’

Then his eyes were full of tears again. What a fool indeed he was.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘His commanding officer did write, you know. Yes, it was a good letter. He said he died bravely. I suppose they always say that. I didn’t mind that, I wasn’t thinking of courage in that moment, I was thinking I would never see him again. He was a very nice fellow, you know, a great friend to me. He was a bit stubborn and we had our differences, and he was very finicky about things, but — truly a fine son. You can tell me anything you like.’

‘But that’s what I came to say, that he was a fine man, that’s what I thought about him, and we had other officers since, and some of them killed too, but the captain, and I call him the captain, he was Captain Pasley, and — ’

‘You missed him when he was killed.’

Willie Dunne said nothing then; why would he need to? He missed him when he was killed. He missed them all. He missed them when they were killed. He sorrowed to see them killed, he sorrowed to go on without them, he sorrowed to see the new men coming in, and to be killed themselves, and himself going on, and not a mark on him, and Christy Moran, not a mark, and all their friends and mates removed. Some still stuck in the muck, or in ruined yards, or blowing on the blessed air of Belgium in blasted smithereens.

He had come, he had thought, to comfort the captain’s parents. How could there be comfort in a fool sitting in the kitchen with his tongue tied and his heart scalded?

‘Do you know,’ said Mrs Pasley, ‘it means the earth to me to see what he meant to you. It does.’

At length Mr Pasley was heard coming in. He entered the room gingerly because he was covered from head to foot in a grey dust. He looked like a grey ghost. His face might have been a carved statue.

‘I’m going to have to have a good bath, Maisie,’ he said. Maybe the voice was a little like the captain‘s, the same accent anyhow.

‘He’s been liming all day,’ said Mrs Pasley to Willie. ‘This is a lad come from George’s regiment, Pappy,’ she said.

‘How do you do, young fella?’ said Mr Pasley. ‘I won’t shake your hand. I’ve been liming all day you see. Down at the Kilcomman end.’

‘It’s a big job, that liming,’ said Willie Dunne.

‘Aye, it is,’ said Mr Pasley. ‘It is.’

After a fine old tea, it was time to be moving along.

‘I’ll walk you down the hill,’ said Mr Pasley.

‘Ah, don’t worry, sir,’ said Willie.

‘Ah, I want to look over the hedge at the fields anyhow.’

So the two of them strode down the hill again. At the bottom Mr Pasley went up on his toes and peered into the lower whitened fields.

‘That’s grand,’ he said.

When they got to the graveyard at Kilcomman, Mr Pasley brought Willie quietly in. He brought him over to a bright new stone, with its carving excellently done.

‘There you are,’ said Mr Pasley. ‘Of course, his body doesn’t lie here, more’s the pity. But you know all about that.’

It said the captain’s name and that he had died ‘in the empire’s service in the cause of righteousness and freedom’. Willie nodded his head. He didn’t think that Mr Pasley would be too sorry that Home Rule would not be coming after all, as people said. He didn’t think he would be, no. In the cause of righteousness and freedom — and farming, they might have put, he thought. And liming.

Mr Pasley loomed beside him, looking down at his son’s gravestone.

‘Of course, John’s still away, doing his best,’ he said.

Willie nodded and smiled. Then, almost without premeditation, he raised his right hand and laid it lightly on Mr Pasley’s left shoulder.

‘We called him George for to honour the old Queen’s son,’ he said. ‘In those former days.’

Willie softly patted the big farmer’s shoulder.

Mr Pasley didn’t flinch, or move at all, nor did he speak again for a minute or two.

For some reason they had given him a right old rigmarole of a journey back. He was to board the train to Belfast and cross from there. Maybe it was that the Ulster counties still tried to send soldiers, if they had any.

So he was on the platform in Dublin in the bright early morning, just stepping on. Of all the things in the world he expected to see, it wasn’t the little scrap of Dolly coming racing down along the platform.

‘Willie, Willie!’ she called, ‘Wait, I want to say goodbye!’

Dolly arrived up at his legs with her usual force and gripped him.

‘But Dolly, Dolly, you never came out on your own through the city, did you, Dolly dear?’

‘I did not, Willie. Annie and Maud are after taking me!’

‘But where are they, Dolly?’

‘They’re over back there by the gate.’

In the distance right enough stood his two sisters.

‘But why won’t they come down too?’ said Willie.

‘They said you wouldn’t mind if they stood back, and you’d understand.’

Willie waved. They waved back anyhow.

‘Of course and I do. I understand. Oh, Dolly, you’re the best.’

It meant the world to him after all. He kissed her, and hugged her, and the whistle blew then, and he kissed her again, and he kissed her, and then he stepped up on to the train.

‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ she called.

‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ called Willie.

Chapter Twenty-One

When he got back, Christy Moran was very appreciative that he had gone down to Tinahely.