A Long Long Way (6 page)

Later that night Willie Dunne’s hands were shaking. He was looking at them, these hands of eighteen summers. They were shaking slowly, but he was not causing them to shake.

Willie was not thinking of the killed supply party exactly. But his hands were.

‘Jesus,’ said Christy Moran, ‘I wish I was meeting some girl at the monument on Kingstown promenade.’

He lit a lovely woodbine and sucked at the skinny cigarette. He hoped tomorrow some weary bollockses would make it up to them with supplies, because he had only thirty fags left, and that wouldn’t do a man a night.

‘If I was, I tell you, I wouldn’t be minding if it was skelting down rain, mud or anything, because I’d be thinking of the dress on her, and how clean and good and sweet-smelling and everything, and the neat coats that girls do have.’

There was another violent pull of the fag.

And I wouldn’t be failing myself to have polished boots that I’d have spat on for a good ten minutes and racking the elbow at them, you know? Ah fucking yes.‘

He scratched his inner thighs in a concentrated manner.

‘Not that I’m against soldiering, no. I like these white bastarding lices crawling around my bollocks, and the fucking rations blown to kingdom come and general muck and mayhem, and pissing into a thunderbox that smells of all you bastards’ shite.’

The fellas near him laughed.

‘But it’s a nice enough thing to meet a girl and go and have a cup of tea in the Monument Creamery, and try not to talk with curses, and working up to a decent kiss at some point in the proceedings.’

Christy Moran had himself wedged in under a bit of an overhang to try to keep himself out of the cascading rain that had suddenly fallen. Willie wondered if he put his head above the parapet, would he see the rain walking across the buckled and wrenched fields, or would he just get his face shot to pieces?

The rain stopped as suddenly as it came and Captain Pasley emerged from his dugout. The men bestirred themselves.

‘Evening, Sergeant-Major,’ he said.

‘Evening, sir,’ said Christy Moran, saluting nicely. ‘What can we do for you, sir?’

‘Did the lads get their food?’

‘It didn’t come up, sir.’

‘Ah, did it not, lads?’ said Captain Pasley, and looked around at the faces. But the faces were smiling encouragingly enough.

‘We had the few tins left, sir,’ said Christy Moran.

‘I’ll phone down for double rations tomorrow,’ said Captain Pasley.

‘That’ll hit the spot, sir,’ said Christy Moran, taking a last drag of his woodbine and flicking it away into no-man’s land. It soared like a firefly. Willie Dunne half expected a shot from the other side.

All right, Sergeant-Major,‘ said Captain Pasley. Anyone stirring over there?’ he said.

‘Divil a one,’ said Christy Moran.

Captain Pasley incautiously stepped onto the fire-step and raised his capped head with alarming indifference so he could peer out.

‘Careful, sir,’ said Christy Moran, flustered despite himself. ‘Don’t you want to use the mirror, sir?’

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Captain Pasley.

So Christy Moran was forced to stand there, his brain rattling a little, expecting a shot.

‘Such beautiful country,’ said Captain Pasley. ‘Such a beautiful night.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Christy Moran, who had not noted particularly the beauty, but was willing to allow it might be there.

‘You can see the river glinting away over to the right. I am sure it is absolutely full of trout,’ said Captain Pasley in a dreamy, distant voice.

Christy Moran was further disconcerted. ‘I hope you’re not planning to go out there and try your luck with a rod, sir.’

Captain Pasley stepped down again and looked down at his sergeant-major. ‘Do you have everything you want?’

‘Everything we want, bar stew,’ said Christy Moran, immensely relieved. ‘Isn’t that right, lads?’

‘Yeh, yeh,’ said the lads dutifully.

‘It is a lovely night, a lovely night,’ said Captain Pasley, leaning back his head now, and lifting the rim of his cap, and gazing upwards. ‘Would you look at those stars?’

‘At least we can look at the stars still, sir,’ said Christy Moran, on the brink of euphoria.

‘I take your point, Sergeant-Major. I’m sorry if I gave you cause for concern.’

He smiled. He was not a handsome man and he was not an ugly man, the captain, and Willie was not in any way against him because he had an air of confidence, which was a good air when you were all stuck out in foreign fields, and even the birds did not sing the same run of notes.

No man in truth regretted being raised above his fellows, that was a human fact, Willie supposed. But the raised-up ones needed to be of the ilk of Captain Pasley for it to make sense.

You couldn’t take against Captain Pasley.

‘We’ll have to go out later anyhow,’ he said, with a sigh.

‘Oh, yeh, sir? Ah, we thought so, sir,’ said Christy Moran. ‘Didn’t we, lads?’

Ah, we thought so, we thought so,‘ they said in chorus.

So they rose up like shadows of the dead from their lair at the bulking of the night, a fierce frieze of stars rampant above.

Willie saw the sudden vista of no-man’s land, the dark openness of it, the lurk of the old fences and field corners. There was barbed wire everywhere, put in by scores of successive wire parties, going out on nights like these, under stars like these, with hearts like these, German and Allied, pounding and leaping into throats.

Willie didn’t know where the enemy trenches lay exactly, but he hoped Captain Pasley did, from his map and the numbers on the map.

Up the moist clay they went, Captain Pasley ahead, Christy Moran quietly following like a scowling wife, and Joe Clancy was in this group and Johnnie Williams, and also a red-haired lad called Pete O‘Hara.

Willie knew they were to check their own wire along a four-hundred-yard stretch because the captain thought during the day he had seen a gap here and there. And they didn’t want even jack-rabbits or rats getting through. Or, slipping with horrible creeping murderousness upon them in the dark, great muscled engines of Germans who would leap down on them and drive their fine-honed Dresden bayonets into their Irish chests. They didn’t want that.

So now they had to creep along themselves, slightly hunched, arms sloping, being so careful, as indeed signally recommended in their soldier’s small-books, not to betray themselves by a snapped twig or a cough or a stumble.

And Captain Pasley, who was a small man, a miniature man in some ways, with a head like a nicely rounded turnip, he walked quite erect and purposefully, getting them to follow with little shakes of his right hand. O‘Hara and Williams carried a light enough roll of wire between them for repairs, and Willie Dunne had big wire-cutters like something you might imagine a mad dentist would possess to torture you with, and he had to carry his rifle also. It was up to Clancy to dart along carefully in his captain’s wake, peering into the murky tangles, like sad brambles that would never bear berries in any known September of the world.

Meanwhile, the Boche threw up, now and then, the dreaded star-shells, festive enough things except they banished the night-time. But when these shells were heard going up, at least the little party knew their sound by now, and flung themselves into the grasses and the clays, Captain Pasley too, like a fellow diving off the rocks at the Forty Foot swimming place in Sandycove, in Dublin, in that vanished world behind them.

Then they went on, and now they found one of the captain’s gaps, and set to, Willie snipping off a length and them all pulling the awkward, snake-like object like a mythical creature out of a Greek story into its place. And Christy Moran bound the new to the old, and it was a wonder no one else heard him cursing, although maybe now the German lads were grown used to his cursing and thought it was some kind of wild bird’s calling, out there in abandoned Belgium.

‘The fucking cunting thing is after biting the thumb off me,’ he said, ‘the fucking bastarding cunting piece of English shite.’

‘Moran, leave off the giving out, man, a bit of god-forsaken ciuneas, if you will,’ said Captain Pasley.

A bit of what, sir?‘ said Christy, sucking the little berry of blood off his finger.

‘Quiet, quiet. Do you not speak any Irish, Sergeant-Major?’ said Captain Pasley in a friendly way.

‘I don’t fucking speak Irish, sir, I don’t even fucking speak English.’

‘Whatever it is you speak, Moran, don’t.’

All right, sir,‘ said Christy.

‘God bless you, Sergeant-Major,’ said the captain, perhaps humorously, they didn’t know. ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ now he said, hunkering down. ‘Whisht, lads, down.’

And they all dropped like Wicklow sheepdogs. The mucky ground was decorated with red pebbles, Willie could see them. He had slightly pissed himself; he didn’t mean to. Now when he looked up he could see, much too clearly, a few heaps of figures passing along a hundred feet beyond them, like fellas out for a starry walk, unconcerned, but silent, and Willie felt the warm piss seep again onto his legs, and he cursed himself for a fool.

He could feel Christy Moran lying in against him as tense as a piece of dried timber, ready for God knew what, to spring up and gain a Victoria Cross, some awful act of valour that would get them all killed, and only a medal left of them to clank in a biscuit tin with other cherished nonsense. Might he not smell the smell of the piss anyhow?

But no, Christy Moran stayed where he was, maybe as afraid as Willie in the upshot, and they could all hear Joe Clancy’s slightly chesty breathing as if miniature pigs were living in his mouth, and it was not a relaxing sound. Then Willie became conscious again of his rifle in his hands, and he gripped the smooth wood and the oiled barrel, and suddenly, despite the pissing, he knew he was not afraid. He was afraid but he knew he could rise now and meet the danger and wrestle with the enemy party and do what was called for.

It was a wonderful feeling; he was entirely surprised by it. He had not been out before on the cold night land, the blotchy skies with a touch of forgotten frost, still with a breeze of doubting cold. He was grinning now like a real fool, but a happy one.

The unknown figures passed on and away, themselves at some similar task put upon them by fate, ordered as one might say to wander in that dangerous nowhere for an hour or two, and risk everything for that, a roll of wire, a scrap of intelligence about a hole other men had maybe dug afresh.

Willie grinned and grinned, he put a hand down into the clay and scrabbled a cold fingerclasp of it, and put it to his damp cheeks and rubbed it in gratefully. The little red stones rasped along his skin. He had hardly a true idea who he was in that second, what he was thinking, where he was, what nation he belonged to, what language he spoke. He was as happy in this absence of fear, fear that he had feared would stop him dumb and numb, happy as an angel, as a free bird, as that doomed man to the right of Christ must have felt when the King of the Jews Himself said that for his kindness he would be saved, would be seated at Christ’s right hand in heaven, that though the three would die, two would not die, bound one to the other by kindness.

‘What in the name of the good fucking Christ are you grinning at, Willie Dunne?’ said Christy, lying now on his side on an elbow, quite in the country and at his ease. Willie knew Christy Moran was itching to unhitch the fag in his ear and have another pleasing smoke. Have a pleasing smoke and fuck the world and her wars and her cares.

‘I don’t know, Sarge, I don’t know.’

‘Fuck me to heaven,’ whispered Christy Moran, ‘if I didn’t think I was going to have to drop dead from the fright those buggers gave me. Can they not make a bit of noise when they’re going about so someone can shoot them?’

‘Come on, lads, we’ll shimmy back and have a can of evil-smelling tea,’ said Captain Pasley.

‘Just the job, Captain,’ said Christy Moran. ‘We’ll come with you, right enough. No bother, sir.’

‘Everyone shipshape?’

Shipshape, and alive.

Chapter Four

Now Willie was gone all those months. Dublin he supposed was just the same, and he wondered what spring would be looking like, sitting in the trees along Sackville Street, the real Sackville Street and not just a trench, and cheering up the starlings.