Shamrock Green (24 page)

‘Good God! Is that all you two did – talk politics?'

‘We – we didn't do anything else, anything wrong,' Becky said.

Why did this man, this hybrid, have to make chastity sound like a vice? He thought her naïve; that was it! He thought her naïve because she had never yielded to a man. Oh, what a grand excuse the war had become for Bobby Bracknell and his ilk.

‘What regiment is he with?'

‘The Sperryhead Rifles,' Becky said.

‘Well, they'll be in the thick of it soon.'

‘What do you mean? What have you heard?'

‘The Germans have been targeting the Irish divisions,' the captain said. ‘I reckon the Irish will be pushed forward, partly to test their loyalty, partly to keep them from brooding on what's happening in Dublin.'

‘What does that have to do with Gowry, with Private McCulloch? He isn't a nationalist. You said so yourself.'

‘Oh, we're all nationalists at heart,' the captain said. ‘If you make a deep enough incision in any Irishman you'll find a pocket of nationalism somewhere inside him.'

‘Even you?'

The captain sighed. ‘Even me.'

‘Why are you telling me this?'

‘If anything should happen to your sweetheart, Rebecca, and you feel the need of a shoulder to cry on…' He had the decency to pause. ‘I'm always available. After all, we're much the same, you and I.'

‘Are we?'

‘Strangers in a strange land.'

‘Oh, for God's sake!' Becky said.

‘No, really! Really, we are.'

‘Is that the story you spun to get into Angela's bed?'

He shrugged. ‘I didn't have to spin Angela any sort of story. She got what she wanted, all that I have to give.'

‘And what is that?' said Becky. ‘And don't tell me it's love.'

He laughed, a furry sound in the back of his throat, and leaned closer.

In the night air she could hear restless sounds from the wards and the plaintive drone of the chaplain's voice praying over the soldier at the terrace's end. The captain whispered in her ear. His suggestions brought Gowry vividly to mind. She realised then that she wanted him, wanted to have him within her. There was no vagueness, no wavering in her resolution. Suddenly she felt as light as smoke in the air of the night.

‘What do you say, Rebecca?' Captain Bracknell murmured.

She sluiced away the dregs of the tea with a twist of the wrist and thrust herself boldly against him, pressing her breasts against his chest. He seemed, she thought, alarmed by her response and looked down his long autocratic nose at her while he awaited an answer.

‘Sod off, Captain Bracknell,' she told him, then, with a little skip, went off down the terrace to refill her tea mug and stuff down a bun before she returned, refreshed, to the next order of business that the war brought in.

*   *   *

Gowry lay on his belly and peered into the trench. Sure enough it was a dummy, a false arm of the main trench, wired and sandbagged to deceive observers. There were no signs of Rangers trapped there, only three or four dead Germans, and one Irish corporal – Soames's batman – who was trying vainly to extricate himself from the tangle with a pair of wire cutters.

From the waist down his body was encased in the wire and he snipped away at the strands with astonishing patience and even when Gowry's head appeared above him seemed disinterested in the possibility of rescue.

‘Are you stuck?' Gowry said.

‘Sure an' I'm stuck. I'm bleedin' to bloody death down here.'

‘Is that you, Donnaghy?'

‘Aye, Gowry. It's me.'

‘Where's your man? Where's Soames?'

‘Gone chargin' off with the others.'

‘An' the Jerries?'

‘We shot a few, the rest scarpered.'

‘Anythin' I can do for you?' Gowry asked.

‘Could do with some water, you got any spare.'

Gowry unstrapped his water bottle, dangled it into the trench and released it. There wasn't much by way of light but the oily blue mud on the bottom of the trench gave off a faint sheen and he could see that it was all pretty hopeless as far as Donnaghy was concerned.

The batman's sleeves were torn to shreds, his hands and arms bleeding. If Soames had abandoned him there was nothing to be done. If they took the Jerry emplacements and held them Soames would send a party to bring Donnaghy in but that, Gowry knew, was a long shot and he suspected that the batman would be dead before then.

‘There's more behind me,' Gowry said. ‘They'll get you out.'

‘Aye, sure an' they will,' Donnaghy said.

‘I'd better push along.'

‘You'd better,' Donnaghy said; then, ‘Gowry?'

‘What?'

‘Good luck.'

Perhaps he should have stayed to look out for Donnaghy or have gone back to the clamshell and told the others that it was safe to advance, but instead he pressed on. He was on a parallel extension to the Maxim's position and so far the gunners hadn't spotted him. He wondered where Soames's party had got to and how he could link up with them. Crouched low, he picked his way along the top of the trench towards the machine-gun.

There was one almighty racket coming from the line now, the party in full swing. He couldn't see the moon any more. He kept inside the wire, glancing down now and then into the main trench in case he ran on to Jerry. He had made about thirty yards when the second phase of the bombardment began. Field guns, heavy stuff pounding away, the British gunners seeking the range. What the artillery thought they were doing targeting a salient occupied by a raiding party he couldn't imagine. Breakdown in communications, most like. Hardly mattered. One gun was much the same as another. When the shells came whistling over Gowry dropped his rifle and threw himself down on the dirt.

The explosion deafened him and the blast ripped over him with such force that he thought it would strip him bare. He opened his mouth and gasped as air was forced out of his lungs. The air around him turned searingly hot and a rain of debris came down around him, great chunks of earth, metal fragments, rocks, pebbles and wire thudding and pattering around him, striking his body like firm little blows from a boxer's fists. Then dust, acrid, choking dust. A viscous hissing filled his ears and the ground seemed to be flowing away from under him – then stillness, everything dimmed and reticent, just the distant chirrup-chirrup-chirrup of the Maxim, faint and far away.

Gowry had no idea whether he was out for seconds or minutes. Couldn't have been much longer than a minute or two, though, for the machine-gun was still singing and the sound had grown loud again. He lifted his head and spat out dirt. His mouth was bleeding. He explored with his tongue, found a gash on the inside of his cheek and a big, mousy bruise on his lip. When he tried to get up his legs failed him and he promptly fell down again.

He lay motionless, willing his head to clear.

Clouds of dust settled over the crater where the raiders had been. There was nothing much left of them: no raiders, no heroes or cowards, no batman, only bits of cloth attached to an arm or a leg, and a pair of boots, curiously upright, with wet ragged red tops in lieu of stockings. Gowry got up, groped for his rifle and pushed on towards the emplacement.

At least the bombardment had ceased. Stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Perhaps someone had got a message through to the gunners. Maurice was out there somewhere. Soames too. They couldn't be far away. Smoke and darkness, blinding flashes of light along the skyline. Something had gone badly wrong in the planning and the Jerry strongholds were still intact.

When the German soldier bellowed at him Gowry fired without thinking. The man vanished. Another German appeared. Gowry fired again, saw this one vanish too. It was becoming awfully interesting all of a sudden, Gowry thought. He felt bright and alert, almost sprightly as he stepped to the rim of the trench and peered into it.

Someone fired a shot, one shot.

Gowry started firing into the trench, not caring. Then they were swarming up at him, surging out of a dugout.

Gowry stepped back, dropped on one knee and rammed the bayonet upward. He felt resistance and rammed the bayonet in again. The German fell against him, a ton weight hanging on the blade. He had only used the bayonet on sandbags until now and the German didn't feel like a sandbag. He dangled on the end of the bayonet, shrieking, young, big-jawed, like Trotter, remarkably like Turk Trotter. Gowry dragged out the bayonet and let the German fall and when a second Jerry came at him swung and struck again, twisting and pulling out the blade. Simple stuff this killing, he thought, then there were six, eight, ten Germans fighting each other for the ladders and a grenade went off and Gowry knew it was time to go.

He turned and ran for home.

19
th
April 1916

My Own Dearest Son,

I know you have not heard from her for I have been telling her she should do the decent thing and tell you herself from her own lips what has happened here. It was none of my doing and I have not written before because it was not for me to interfere between a husband and his wife. She has told Charlie it is nobody's business but hers and the man's because you left her in the lurch.

If I had not been staying with Forbes I would have seen what was going on and would have tried to put a stop to it before it got too far but it is difficult for me because I have been in Glasgow and none of them thought to drop me a line with the news. It is all the German Menace here and I have been well out of it at Forbes insistance and did not see the true state of affairs until I came back when Your Father was ill in the New Year. He is better now. It was nothing but stones the doctor said but to hear him talk you thought he was at death's door. She has had a child. She will not be giving it up although she knows it is not yours. She will not be giving it up although I told her to. The man is staying in the house with her but he is not there when I am and will not come to discuss it with me although I have written him several times. They say they do not want you to know because you are fighting for England and left her to fight for England. It is left for Your Mother to write you with the news. I am sorry.

Your Loving Mother

Kay McCulloch (Mrs)

*   *   *

When the sun came up the rats fell asleep. They had been in the shell hole when Gowry had arrived around half past two in the morning, sharing it with Tom Ring, a lance corporal with the Rifles whom Gowry had known since training days in Fermoy. Ring had been smashed up pretty badly and it wasn't until daylight that Gowry had been able to identify him. By that time the rats were all over him. Gowry had tried to chase them off by pelting them with stones but the creatures would not abandon the shell hole. When sunlight crept into the crater they scratched out shallow burrows and, with their paws curled over their noses and whiskers twitching, fell asleep.

Gowry shovelled dirt over Tom Ring's body. When that wouldn't do he took off his jacket, spread it over the lance corporal's face and weighted it down with earth. The rats watched him warily but when he sat down they settled again too. At least it wasn't raining, Gowry thought, and the shrapnel wound in his upper arm wasn't serious. He had attended to it immediately, of course, for the soil itself was polluted and he had no desire to pick up an infection. He had cleaned the gash with spit and disinfectant powder from his field dressing pack and had bandaged it tightly. He was pleased when it began to throb. He took that as a sign of healing.

The little crater smelled as if it had been disinfected. The reek of lyddite from high-explosive shells was heavy in the air and there was no water, not so much as a patch of dampness in the chalky base. He wouldn't drink puddle water anyway, no matter how bad his thirst. Drinking puddle water could kill you as surely as a Jerry bullet. He searched round Tom Ring's body for a water bottle but didn't find one. He wondered what had happened to Donnaghy. Now, now, now, he told himself sternly, I
know
what happened to Donnaghy. The poor beggar was buried alive. I know what happened to the others as well. Blown sky-high. Direct hit probably. Nothing much left of any of them, just bits and pieces of skin and bone.

Missing in action: what would it be like, he wondered, to have your hubby, your son or your sweetheart reported missing in action? Do you continue to wait for the rap on the door, the whistle in the letterbox long after the war ends, after the kiddies have grown up, after you have taken another man or borne another son to another man? He couldn't imagine what that would be like. Come to think of it, he couldn't imagine a time when the war would be no more. And when it was over – if ever it was – what would he do then? Go back to Maeve and Sylvie and the Shamrock? Drift down to Maggie's cottage in the Galtees and look for farm work? Set off in search of the nurse who had been nice to him, who wrote him letters every day and who, now, right now, lying in a shell hole in no-man's-land, he wanted so badly it made his groin ache worse than his arm.

Hell's bells, he thought as he sprawled in sweltering spring sunshine waiting for nightfall, the war really has changed your perspectives. Thirty yards from the German line with a swelling corpse at your feet and blood drying on the point of your bayonet and all you can think of is what a wee Scots lassie will feel like under her clothes.

What's become of you, McCulloch? What
has
become of you?

Soon after, still dreaming of Becky, he joined the rats in sleep.

*   *   *

‘Good God, McCulloch, is that you?' Lieutenant Soames enquired.

‘It is, sir, it is,' Gowry answered.

‘Are you all in one piece?'

‘Aye, sir, more or less.'

‘Did you see anything of Davy out there?'