A Long Long Way (34 page)

Jesus, they might go all the way this time, blast the poor Hun off this ridge entirely and drive them down into the plain behind. Let loose the horses and witness a thousand riders stream across open ground. That would be a sight, manes flying.

Then, quick as a curse, the sappers were up behind them with rolls of wire and all sorts and they were already making everything as it should be and had to be.

‘Where’s Moran, Private?’ said Second-Lieutenant Biggs. ‘Where’s your sergeant-major?’

‘He was just ahead with Joe Kielty and another few men,’ said Willie. ‘Just ahead there.’

‘I’ll follow them up. They’ve gone on too far. I’ll go up the rise there and see if I can see them. Hold on to this lot here, Private.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Willie Dunne, astounded. He had never been asked to do anything like that. Of course, he was the most experienced man there, though Private Smith was maybe older. He didn’t relish it for a minute.

An hour went by and Willie wondered if they should be pulling back. Or even going on. The place was filling with sections of other battalions. He didn’t know what to do. There were gangs and gangs of German prisoners being moved down to the starting trenches and beyond, gangs of them, trainloads. But anyhow, wonderful amounts of water came up to them and the fetchers seemed to think it was destined for them as well as the rest. They were like men in the dry desert, sucking at the necks of those bottles. It was a thirst like the thirst of babies, the first thirst, that you almost couldn’t satisfy.

Then Christy Moran came back down. He was very quiet. Joe Kielty, Timmy Weekes and the other four were with him as right as rain. It was hard to tell if they had used the machine-gun; it didn’t look like it. How they had carried the blasted thing up that slope and down like a stray sheep was beyond Willie. Those machine-gunners were grown a queer bunch all right.

Willie was suddenly exhausted.

‘How is everything up there, Sarge?’ he said.

‘Fucking great,’ said Christy Moran. ‘We walked right into that fucking village. Where were you cunts?’

‘We weren’t meant to go on. Biggs said so. He went up to fetch you back.’

‘Is that what it was? We saw him. A great big fucking yoke came down and landed on him. I don’t even know what it was. There was just these fucking stars bursting out of him. It must have been a flare of a thing. Killed the poor bugger.’

‘Jesus,’ said Willie Dunne.

‘All the fucking lads up there. You should see the place. It’s just a flat fucking few acres with little spots of white dust on it where the fucking houses were. And those devious Ulster lads from the 36th milling about and calling us wonderful fucking Paddies, that’s what they said, and shaking our hands. And Australians and all kinds of mad bastards. And hundreds and hundreds of fucking Boche surrendering and shouting out that fucking Kamerad thing they do, and you couldn’t blame them. What a fucking to-do. You wouldn’t see it in Dublin on a Saturday night in the fucking summer, Willie. We’re after winning this one. Isn’t that a fucking how-are-you for the books?’

It was true they went about for the weeks after in a different state of mind. They were all quite buoyed up. The general was pleased, though they didn’t see him. It all seemed a right job of work well done. Of course, it was sad about Biggs, on his first job too. But they gave him some kind of posthumous medal. There were a good few medals flying about. Even Christy Moran got a medal and it was noted down in his soldier’s small-book. Major Stokes pinned it on him at a little ceremony. For valour in the field. For putting holes in Germans, Christy said. They liked that sort of thing, he said. If he got another, he said, he and Willie could play toss-the-medal, he said. Winner takes all.

Christy said much, much later it was a pity they didn’t leave it at that, them that knew about these things, as if.

Then Willie was away off for a day on a bayoneting course, and he came back to find Christy in a right good state.

‘You’ll never fucking believe it, Willie,’ he said.

‘What, sir?’ said Willie.

‘The King was here,’ said Christy.

‘What king?’

‘The fucking King of England.’

‘No, not here, sir.’

‘He was, the beggar. King George himself. Came up in a nice big car, got out, and was over chatting. Chatted about everything under the sun. The flaming King of buggering England.’

‘But, Sarge, you hate the King of buggering England, you often said so,’ said Willie, a bit disappointed himself he had been away. Just for the curiosity of it.

‘Ah, well,’ said Christy Moran.

‘What do you mean, “ah well”, Sarge?’

‘Ah, well,’ said Christy Moran. Then he said nothing for a few moments. He was thinking, Willie supposed. There was a happy, faraway look on the sergeant-major’s face. It was very odd. ‘He was very polite,’ said Christy Moran, as if that explained everything. ‘It kind of suits an Irishman to curse the King of England, all things considered. But he spoke to us, man to man. It wasn’t like an officer even. Like he was one of us. Like he was a fella like ourselves. Yeh. Said we were brave men to be bearing up so. Said he knew just how fucking hard it was for us out here.’

‘He didn’t go cursing?’

‘No, he didn’t, Willie, he didn’t. That’s just me. He wanted to know if we were tired of the fucking maconochie. Well! He said he knew we would carry the day in the end, because God was on our side and our cause was just. That’s what he said.‘

‘What did you say?’

‘I said to say thanks to the missus for the Christmas boxes she sent out to us last year.’

‘For the love of Jesus, Sarge. And what did he say?’

‘He said he would.’

Christy Moran hummed some tune then tunelessly.

‘A gentleman, a gentleman,’ said Christy Moran.

It was only the next month when they were on the move again and by the grace of the good Lord if they weren’t being shifted down near Ypres again.

‘I’ve spent longer in Ypres than I have in bloody Ireland,’ said Christy Moran. ‘They’ll have to make me an honorary citizen next. If I could speak bloody French.’

And then the ‘good’ general was gone and there was another general now that Christy Moran referred to as the ’Mutineer‘. Gough the Mutineer, he called him, because he had led the mutiny of the officers in the Curragh camp, years ago it seemed like now, when he said he would not march his men against the loyal Ulstermen, should it be asked of him in a time of crisis, that time they formed themselves into the Ulster Volunteers to resist Home Rule. That all seemed like three hundred years ago. Now he was going to pick up where the good general had left off. That was the plan, anyhow.

‘The best-laid plans of mice and men,’ said Christy Moran ominously, in a bad Scottish accent.

Chapter Eighteen

The whisper went round among the companies, and even if not everyone knew the name, soft words were said, and heads were dipped, in the proper funereal manner. But many knew the name, and many knew the story of the man in his fifties who had insisted on going up the line and into danger, a person with a thousand advantages, the brother, as Willie had put it, of ‘your man’, the leader of the Irish Party at Westminster, whom Willie’s own father had deemed a scoundrel. But it didn’t seem so to Willie. The whisper went round and when it was said to Father Buckley, the priest openly wept. In fact, he burst into tears right in front of the corporal who said it to him. Then it became like a common death, like a person close to them all had died. For Willie Redmond was dead. He died in an old style, twice wounded, roaring at the disappearing backs of his men to keep going and watch out in the attack. Stretcher bearers attached to the 36th Division took him to their regimental aid post. Ulster accents eased him into death, minds that maybe before the war would have looked on such a person with traditional horror.

Willie Dunne bumped into Father Buckley in the shit-house. Of course, a shit-house had no roof, so could you call it a house, but there it was. The priest had his usual penance of mild dysentery, so Willie Dunne had to wait while the man strained over the hole in the ground, and shot out streams of thin yellow shit. At last relief seemed to return to the anguished features.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Father,’ said Willie.

‘I’ll offer it up, Willie. Not much choice.’

‘Well, I meant, you know, that poor man dying, Father. The MP.’

Father Buckley looked at him. His face broke into a smile.

‘We were talking about him only the other day, weren’t we, Willie?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Everyone says he was a fine man. And he was. I had dinner with him one time, Willie. He was full of fun and stories. A most sincere and gentle man. You know I walked into Whytschaete myself to see what I could see. And there they were, back-slapping each other, North and South, and it was a grand moment. It was Willie Redmond’s moment, if only he could have seen it. But he was killed. He was killed. That is the pity of it.’

‘Of course, Father.’

‘We have to keep our chins up, as the English fellas say. It’s hard sometimes. But we’ve got to try. It’ll all turn out right in the end. It’s God’s will.’

‘I hope so, Father.’

‘I hope so too, Willie.’

But the talk didn’t seem to be over.

‘Are you all right, Father?’ said Willie.

‘I will be all right - when this bloody war is over.’

‘Of course,’ said Willie.

‘Yes,’ said the priest.