A Whispered Name (34 page)

The staff
officer said the firing party needed a rehearsal. So young Shaw and his eleven
comrades — six of them from the same ten-man section — were lined up in two
rows of six. ‘The rifles were left on the ground. We were told they’d be mixed
up while our backs were turned and a blank inserted into one of ‘em. Well,
everyone knew that was a waste of time. You can tell a live round from the
kick, you see. But it was a small comfort, I suppose. Anyway nothing was to be
said out loud. At a signal we’d all turn around, pick up a weapon and aim. The
OC firing party — our captain, Mr Crane —would drop his handkerchief, and then …
bang. But you know, Father, a handkerchief takes a long time to hit the ground.
When are you meant to fire? When he lets go, or when it lands? I didn’t say
anything, of course. I mean, I was just a kid, and these officers knew what
they were doing, but in the dry run, there was a string of clicks … not one
of us pulled the trigger at the same time.’

The
firing party spent the night in that barn. No one slept. They’d smoked, talking
intermittently of the poor blighter who was writing his letters and, hopefully
getting well drunk. Someone had said, ‘Not likely’. He’d met the lad. Didn’t
touch a drop. A teetotaller.

‘Did
you know his name?’ asked Anselm. Dread had been settling upon him. And he’d
remembered the censored page of a War Diary.

‘Joseph
Flanagan.’

Too
soon, Mr Crane turned up. By the look of him, he hadn’t slept either. His
cheeks were flushed and he spoke through the side of his mouth, as though to
hide the smell of his breath. Outside, in the field, watched by some cows, they
formed up in twos, ready for the short march to the other side of the woods.

A light
knock sounded at the door. Moments later, a nurse laid a tray of tea and biscuits
on the table. Alone once more, Anselm poured from the pot and heaped the sugar
for them both. Father Andrew’s great message to his monks was to know when to
speak and when to be silent. Here, there was no need to discern.

‘It was
still dark,’ said Mr Shaw ‘I’ll never forget it … but the birds were singing.
And I don’t mean tweet-tweet. It was one hell of a racket. We stood there, in
this clearing, just listening to them. I looked ahead from my line of six,
wondering if they’d ever stop. After a few minutes I peeped over my shoulder —
it was getting light now — and I saw this empty chair, an ordinary
common—or-garden chair, sitting among a heap of straw’

The
rifles were laid on the ground. Mr Crane shuffled them. The breeches snapped
into position. Then the escort arrived. Mr Shaw, facing the woods again, could
see nothing of the prisoner; he could only hear the movement of feet as they
took him to the chair.

‘My
stomach was turning like I was on the boat home. And then I heard Mr Crane
whispering, asking if anyone had a gun cloth or a letter. I found out
afterwards the medic had forgotten to bring a marker for the heart … hadn’t
known it was his job.’

Mr Shaw
sipped his tea as though it were too hot, though Anselm had been generous with
the milk. He put the rattling saucer on the table and he turned away his face
towards the window The grounds of the Birches were very pleasant. A brochure at
reception said that they boasted a rich selection of mature trees and
variegated shrubs. Anselm, however, looked at the arm raised in the air, and
the hand holding an envelope.

‘That
was the last time I held this thing in my hand.’

Chapter Forty-Two

A Handkerchief

Herbert crossed a field
and entered the woods, stepping carefully through the undergrowth towards the
clearing. He avoided the track because he did not want to be seen. Reaching the
trees’ perimeter, he knelt, hiding behind a large trunk gripped by ivy. In
front he could see a soldier, hands on his knees, vomiting. Behind him and the
firing party, only twenty steps or so away he saw Flanagan tied to a chair. The
light had gathered force. A sergeant placed a gas mask over Flanagan’s head,
the glass eyes facing the opposite direction. Tindall hovered nearby while the
strings were tied. Then he leaned forward and attached a white square of paper
over the left breast. He fiddled for a while, making sure it was secure.

Herbert
closed his eyes. He had only prayed once in his life —and that was the day
before — when he’d begged that this man’s life be spared. Could hope reach this
far, into this clearing? He’d once heard of a man to be shot in the prison at Poperinghe.
Apparently the squad was lined up and were ready to fire when a rider turned up
with an order commuting the sentence. Someone had made representations to the
Commander-in-Chief and the man was spared. Had General Osborne thought longer
about Herbert’s plea? He strained his ears, willing the sound of a gallop on
the road from Oostbeke. Prayers rushed into his mouth and he listened to his
whispering like a man at the door of someone else’s heart.

The OC
firing party spoke quietly ‘Turn.’

The men
obeyed and picked up rifles laid on the ground. The front six knelt; the back
six remained standing.

They
aimed. All the barrels wavered like poles in the wind. Herbert stopped
breathing. There was no sound in his mind or heart, or out there in the
clearing open to the sky Hope had fled. His prayers were over. A hush, so very
like that of the sanctuary, entered the space surrounded by the trees. Herbert looked
through the branches at one hand holding a pocket watch and the other a spotted
handkerchief, held high for all to see.

Chapter Forty-Three

The Wine beneath the Slate

Flanagan couldn’t breathe
easily. The canvas of the mask was close to his mouth. It billowed like a
diaphragm, in and out, matching the panic in his lungs. Any second now there’d
be a crash. Terror pumped into his mind. For an instant, time dragged …

For a
staggeringly sharp and clear moment, he heard himself. It was a voice made up
of all the good he’d ever known, however disguised its appearance: his mother
by his bed, his father in the field, Mr Drennan on defiance, Meg’s wail for the
land, High-Pockets on Expansionism … Father Maguire, Lieutenant Colonel
Hammond, Lisette, and more. None of them could be identified because it was
Flanagan’s voice now, and this voice spoke in a fantastic flash of speed and
accuracy: the grape had not turned bitter; he’d taken a boy out of the war who
would have been shot; he’d brought him to a woman who’d sent her son away a
woman who would not let herself love again, a woman who would have punished
herself for ever had she not received the chance to make a gesture of
reparation. He’d seen all this in the rain, listening to Doyle’s pathetic tale.
Though it would not be Flanagan, this woman would love again; and the boy in
Louis’ bed would grow to be a good man. All this was a blazing certainty. The
wine he’d never tasted was sweet. This was Flanagan’s reward. The voice crashed
upon his soul and in the shuddering aftermath time broke loose.

Flanagan
couldn’t breathe. The canvas had been sucked into his mouth. Something flared.
At the same instant, a wall seemed to smash into his chest. It threw him
upwards as lightly as a feather beaten from a pillow. Down he came in the air,
sweeping left, sweeping right, slowly falling to the earth. His landing was so
soft he hardly felt it.

Chapter Forty-Four

‘When the body flopped
forward, the medic walked over, you know, to check whether he was actually
dead,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘He wasn’t a very decisive man because he stared down for
a while as if he didn’t know what to do. Then the OC took out his pistol … I
turned away, but I heard that shot. I’ve heard it many times since, down these
long years. You don’t forget anything. Nothing. Not a sound, not a smell. We
were marched off, back to the barn, where the medic gave us some rum. He wasn’t
very happy I can tell you. No one could speak. Everyone looked at the ground.
It was covered in hay — this is where they’d got it from, for putting round the
chair. We stood on it, drinking rum, hardly able to move. Lots of the lads said
afterwards — long afterwards — that they’d felt the weaker kick, that they
were lucky ones who’d got the blank. I said so too. I even began to believe it
after a while.’

Mr Shaw’s
face was concealed behind his hand as he leaned towards Anselm. He shook his
head continuously as he spoke.

‘I don’t
know whether I hit him, Father, The gun was uncommonly heavy and I could hardly
hold it straight. Neither could anyone else. I didn’t even look. I pulled the
trigger and … well, you’ve seen the envelope: no one hit the mark.’

The
ordinary motion between Anselm’s heart and mind, the manoeuvring of emotion and
thinking, came to a standstill. He was like a winded man who no longer cared to
breathe. For Mr Shaw, the moment was alive once more, with the awful freshness
of a new calamity. He was crying with the tears of the young man who’d had to
turn away.

Anselm
reached over and held his hand.

‘Mr Shaw,
I know nothing of wars and what it does to men, and what men have to do,’ said
Anselm, very quietly ‘But when the world turns upside down, and you have to do
things you’d never do when it’s the right way up … well, there’s no blame.
You must not accuse yourself any more.

The old
soldier gently shook his head. ‘For the rest of the war, you know, I tried to
get shot. I walked upright into no-man’s-land. I ran at the bunkers, I went
straight for the machine guns … and I got these —’ he pointed to his chest
and the array of medals — ‘I wanted to die for my part in the killing. But I
kept surviving. And as for the execution … well, it served no purpose. We
didn’t need that kind of encouragement. And what of the lad? From what I heard
he’d been with his regiment since ‘fifteen. He’d seen the Somme. And yet we
shot him. I’m told he polished the regiment’s silver before he was strapped to
that chair. He was a volunteer, you know’

Anselm
closed his eyes, begging for words, but nothing came. The soldier cried and
cried, and Anselm gazed out on to the birches, the yew and the oaks. The lawns
were neat and bordered by flowerbeds covered with mulch and bark. A gardener
leaned on a rake. And this poor man beside me shot Joseph Flanagan.

Mr Shaw dropped his hand and
dried his face on a pressed handkerchief.

His
wife of sixty-three years had passed away and he’d never told her of that early
morning on the 15th September. He had three sons and two daughters. All of them
were married, and they all had children. They’d all done projects at school.
They’d all taken his medals into the classroom. He’d even lent one teacher his
bayonet. The British Legion had been his friend and family. And to none of
these — not one — had he spoken of that unforgettable day his sharpest and most
enduring memory of the war.

‘You
know, Father, I’ve felt like some kind of murderer all my life. There’s no
escaping the killing. You’re left with what you’ve done. But for a very long
time I was angry with the Army, for what they did. They picked us, you know
They were punishing us as well.’

‘In
what way?’

Mr Shaw
asked for some more tea, though it was cold. He ate a biscuit, the crumbs
falling on his regimental tie. The gardener’s rake scraped gently on the grass.

‘There’s
ten men to a section, see? And in my section was a lad my age who was always in
trouble with the Sergeant, the Lieutenant, the Colonel, everyone. He’d twice
deserted. On the third occasion, he wasn’t found. It was the best thing that
happened to the unit. He should never have been in the army — it was obvious to
us lot, but they wouldn’t let him go. Said he was fifteen but no one believed
him. But when he finally got away who did they ask to shoot a deserter, a
couple of weeks later? Us lot, The Lambeth Rifles. Most of the firing party was
taken from this lad’s section, and there were a thousand men to choose from.
That order must have come from on high because our CO was very upset about it.
They were sending us a message, even though most of our company lay dead on
Pilckem Ridge.’ He sipped his tea, leaning forward over the saucer. ‘Owen Doyle
he was called.’

I’ve
held his tags in my hands, thought Anselm. Herbert had
worn
them …
Herbert, who’d helped put Flanagan on that chair …

‘… the
fact is, you see, he was one of our own,’ continued Mr Shaw. ‘And even though
he was a deserter, we wouldn’t have wanted him tried and shot. But do you know
what happened? The lad was killed in a bombardment. You escape a firing squad
and then something hits you out of the sky That’s war for you, Father.’

Fresh
emotion disfigured the old man’s face: agony indignation, confusion,
compassion; they all belonged to a youth from 1917 but were raw once more,
decades later in a nursing home. Anselm had to say something. He had to reach
out to that youth who’d never forgiven himself.

‘Mr
Shaw, I can be very rude if necessary’ said Anselm.