A Long Long Way (10 page)

There was a long silence then as the listeners imbibed this notion.

‘Well, there you are, Sarge’ said Pete O’Hara.

And winter came in then like a hawk to afright the mice in the fields, like a wolf to test the stamina of his foes. Like a travelling salesman it brought all its white cloths and laces and spread them everywhere, on mucky trench sides, on battered roads, on the distant stubbled fields, it laid its stores of rime and frost in little luckless pockets, in turns of earth, it tried to go one better than the spring, giving the girlish trees long coats of glistening white, tenderly and murderously gilding the lily of everything, the autumn’s wildflowers bravely putting out a few mad flags of red and yellow. Thunderously without a whisper it drove the sap back in every green thing such as remained after the long destruction of the warring men.

Now Willie’s lot were shunted back almost to the edge of the true world where there were quite peaceful-looking farms all frosted and beautiful under the moon, crisp and familiar as some stretch of Irish midlands under the struggling light of day. Even woods were impressively standing. The roads were all cobbled with mere fieldstones as you might find in a Wicklow yard, and they were rough ways to walk upon, in your hobnailed boots. But they marched the roads in three stages, and although they were weary from the stretch in the trenches, nevertheless they took some pride in their marching. Exhausted boys were carried by their pals, so as not to hinder the rate of progress. It was good to get the blood going round and it was better than sitting in trenches with the frost threatening fingers, toes and noses without cease. There was a timetable for everything and it pleased the men to make their distances on time.

Maud had sent him out a sheepskin jacket for his nineteenth birthday and Willie wore it gratefully in the fierce air. His legs thumped along the roads. He thought time and again of the gangs of men that would have lain these cobbles in. He wondered did they batter up a mix of clay and ashes like they would at home, and spread out the slush till it rose about two inches from the required level, and then on their knees, had they pressed in the cobbles and tamped them level with a decent floor beam? He didn’t think there could be a hundred ways to do such a job. He began to think indeed that the methods of building were common to men everywhere, the ways of the ants and the ways of the bees were known to ants and bees wherever they might range about. He saw that the roads had been given a nice camber, so that the rain would run off quick and not cause mischief. There were miles and miles of it, with oftentimes highly pleasing stands of poplars for miles also.

The people in the farms seemed indifferent to them.

O‘Hara marched beside him, and O’Hara wasn’t a bad fellow by any gauge. His red hair burned out from under his helmet.

Captain Sheridan, the new man in after poor Pasley, had a very merry way about him. He might have been thought handsome but that he had two queer-looking blooms of red, broken veins or the like, on his cheeks, which gave him the air of a circus clown at first sight. But he liked to hear the men singing anyhow.

And it did Willie Dunne more good than food to open his mouth and heart and sing ‘Tipperary’, the long line of men bawling it out.

Every man Jack of them knew ‘Tipperary’ and sang it as if most of them weren’t city-boys but hailed from the verdant fields of that county. Probably every man in the army knew it, whether he was from Aberdeen or Lahore. Even the coolies sang ’Tipperary’ while they dug; Willie had heard them.

The men near to him liked to hear Willie sing because his voice reminded them of the music hall. It was as good as any of those tuppenny tenors they had there. Pete O‘Hara too, it was noted, had a decent voice.

Then they sang ‘Your Old Kit Bag’. And they sang ‘Charlotte the Harlot’, which was a good song, and they sang ‘Take Me back to Dear Old Blighty’, even though none of them were from dear old Blighty, but how and ever.

‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ was a favourite but not on a march; that was for some quiet evening in the reserve trenches.

Then, by request of the captain, they sang ‘Do Your Balls Hang Low’. It had been a revelation and an especial delight that Captain Sheridan, unlike Captain Pasley, who had been a little restrained in such matters, favoured this song above all other marching songs:

Can you sling them on your shoulder
Like a lousy fucking soldier
Do your balls hang low?

Like Dan Leno dancing the fucking clog dance, Willie sang it - with infinite passion. It was a wonderful odd thing to see Captain Sheridan up on his horse, his head thrown back, bawling out those happy words to the lowering winter sky. Under his hat he looked like a boy, did Sheridan. And that passed a mile or two just nicely.

The only thing different now was that when Willie sang too mightily he felt a dire need to cough. It was the little bit of gas remaining, he thought, in his chest, some little whirling marble of wretched gas that was upsetting his means of singing. But the men didn’t mind a bit of spluttering and for the most part he got through without too much impediment.

He was gay enough, in such singing times. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being knackered, knackered somewhere deep in himself - something going wrong, in the very centre. In the corner of his eye there was always a black shadow now, something, someone, some afflicted figure looming there, like an angel or a meagre spectre. He couldn’t quite make out the features of the spectre but he thought it might be Captain Pasley. It chilled him. And in general terms now he found it impossible to get truly warm, which was, he knew, an affliction of old men.

The sorrow he had felt at the death of his captain, and Williams and Clancy, something had happened to that sorrow. It had gone rancid in him, he thought; it had boiled down to something he didn’t understand. The pith of sorrow was in the upshot a little seed of death.

Sometimes he wanted to cry out against his officers, his fellows, even his own heart, and he didn’t know what stopped him, he didn’t.

Chapter Five

They were adjudged to have been through a bit of bother and then a long time left in trenches and were being rested conscientiously in Amiens. It would not last more than a few days, and they had to make the most of it.

Willie Dunne and O‘Hara went forth one evening from their billet to see what they could see. The sun was falling off the edge of the world like a burning man. The sergeant-major had given them good directions and they had a scrap of paper with the name of a street on it, which brought them to the best estaminet in Amiens, for a private soldier, anyhow. And it was bursting with private soldiers, of many different regiments, strangers to Willie and Pete O’Hara, but also, being marked by the shadows of the same war, not strangers. The drink of the place was a shit-coloured beer.

Willie Dunne had not been a man for drinking in his short life and yet he had taken his ration of bleak rum now every day this last few months, and he found the beer was like water in his mouth.

But he liked the bolts to be loosened on his concerns like any other soldier. He liked the warm swill of the beer and the heat in his stomach and the thoughts it prompted.

‘Well, Pete, this is not so bad now!’ he shouted to O‘Hara above the din of the estaminet.

‘What’s that?’ called O‘Hara.

‘Not so bad now!’ shouted Willie.

‘Not so bad!’

This wasn’t a spot he could have brought Gretta, anyhow. He wished so deep in his heart that she had been able to take up her pen more often - or even once, for the love of Jesus - and write to him. Maybe she had written and the letters had gone astray, as any letters might in the strange ‘streets’ and ’avenues’ of the trenches. The first time he ever saw her she had been writing, so he knew she had the alphabet and all the rest; of course she did, she had brains to burn.

‘More beer, Willie, more beer!’ shouted O‘Hara.

‘More beer, more beer!’ called Willie.

The ruined face of Captain Pasley hung over all like a moon. The man in the moon was Captain Pasley with his twisted arms and his dancing hands.

Willie’s head was rushing now.

Maybe there was a poison in this tepid water. Maybe there was worse than poison, maybe there were dead men’s destroyed dreams milled down into powder and scattered in these bitter glasses.

Now the room was a wash of colours, as if the room itself were a glass of suspect beer. The khaki jackets smeared in long trails, the laughing, shouting faces likewise, like the balls of comets foretelling neither good things nor bad, empty omens, horribly empty men.

How could this estaminet be spinning like a great wheel, the songs going round and round, in a great trail of stars and colours? It was beautiful, after a fashion. O‘Hara was dancing now with a girleen, it seemed so gay and good, and now Willie was being dragged to his feet, ’No, no, I do not wish, I do not, non, non,‘ but he was laughing, the truth must be told, he was kind of raging within, he was laughing and crying, Gretta was dancing in his daft head with Captain Pasley in a silver trail of stars, in the tail of a comet that promised heaven to the world, and good purpose to all things, and the loving chanting of God.