A Long Long Way (23 page)

‘You mean they tied Private Kirwan to a gun-wheel,’ said Willie, ‘and left him out in the open for a month?’

‘Now, that is how we properly understand a Field Punishment number one. It is only for two hours a day and it is only three days in a row. I say only, though I understand the shame of it,’ said Father Buckley. ‘But, Willie, that’s all done and he is facing far worse than that now.’

It was late evening and Father Buckley had come to the billet to find Willie Dunne and have a private word. He had asked Willie how his father was and Willie had said his father was well. He had asked Willie then if he remembered a private called Jesse Kirwan from Cork City and Willie had to think only a moment and the little man came back into his mind, from the awful doings in Dublin. And Father Buckley said that Private Kirwan was locked up and waiting for a court martial and that Father Buckley had been to talk to him at the request of the CO. And that he asked Private Kirwan if there was anyone who knew him and could speak for his character. And Private Kirwan had given Willie Dunne’s name.

‘But I only knew him a day or so,’ said Willie Dunne. ‘That one day mainly. And what has he done, Father?’

Usually you heard of a fella arrested for talking bad to an officer, or shirking. Or the military police might find an eejit wandered into some forbidden part of a town or a village, or doing any number of foolish things the army didn’t like, such as not saluting an officer or the wrong thing uttered in the wrong place. For no matter what mayhem was afoot in the ruined fields of the Lord, the army was deeply attached to its regulations, always allowing for the fact that the staff officers didn’t see battles, didn’t understand what happened in battles, and probably didn’t want to. It was line officers only that knew the drear paintings and the atrocious music of the front line.

But just now and then a man was arrested for something pretty dark and there were bad deeds done in the back towns, there were girls done in and murdered by rummy men, there were twisting, turning parts of men that the war maybe brought to the fore. It was often said that the Chinese fellas in the labour corps would slit your throat as soon as look at you, and that they ran little sidelines of opium all through the service, and that that was how they survived the shocking tasks given them. And you heard odd whispers of murders, and even dark acts of carnage on prisoners. Hearts turned black like the hearts of slaughtered cows, the bright blood congealing into a night-time character. So maybe this Jesse Kirwan had become one of that dread number, but all the same Willie Dunne would be surprised if it was so — though he only knew him the day or so.

Father Buckley’s face looked as haggard, deeply haggard, as an old, old man’s. If there was ever freshness there it was now historical. Yet Willie didn’t think the man was too much past forty, which was old enough for a soldier — but then, he was not a soldier. His hair under his hat looked like old wire, tangled up, and useless.

‘His charge is disobedience, Willie. There is something deeply amiss with him. He has refused, Willie, refused to go on. And got his Field Punishment for that. Then he would not do as he was bid, even by his sergeant, and declared he would not be a slave. His friends had to quell him and tie him forcibly to the wheel. Then he would cry out and caterwaul, and shout out at the passing soldiery. And even when he was not tied, but required to swill out his billet and empty the pots — ’

‘I am sure he did not like that!’ said Willie Dunne.

‘No, and he did it all with a grudge and a moan, and I was told that he spoke on certain unwise topics to the fellows in his company, liberty and freedom and the like, and rebels, and he spoke I am told a double Dutch of such matters on his own in the dark, as if his wits were astray. He has stopped dead and will not obey an order, any order. He gave rank abuse I am told to his commanding officer, a young fellow from the rich vales of County Dublin that probably never heard a proper curse in his life till now. Now he will not eat, he will not say an earthly word to anyone. I spoke to him for an hour in his cell, a little room they have him in, beside of all things an old abattoir, and he never said a thing, until I asked him if he knew anyone that would speak for him, and he said, just those three words, Private William Dunne, and by a miracle, a miracle, Willie, of course I knew you, in all the armies of the King.’

‘Well it might have been another Willie Dunne he meant,’ said Willie, ‘because I knew him only the day.’

‘They’ll court martial him now in a little while,’ said Father Buckley, ‘and I don’t know what will happen to him, only I wouldn’t like to think, in that they are making examples of fellows now in wartime, and there have been those two men shot you know among the Irish divisions for desertion, and I can tell you, Willie, they were fine men, I knew them both, and one of them was out here a year and came through flames, literally flames, at Hooge, and had his whole company just seared away by the flame-throwers. And the other man left three children and I can’t bear to think about that, those three little chaps, and all the death around us already.’

‘I know, Father, but I don’t know why he said my name. Why didn’t he give the name of his sergeant or the other lads in his platoon, or someone close to him?’

‘Well, because, Willie, he has bitten his sergeant’s head off more or less, and I don’t know but that the other boys have despaired of him. Will you come and talk to him anyhow? Captain Sheridan said it will be all right.’

‘I don’t know, sir. Did you ask my sergeant? Did you speak to him?’

‘I didn’t speak to him, but I could speak to him. Do you want me to?’

Willie Dunne didn’t know what he wanted.

‘They might shoot him, Willie, and even at the very least they will give him a prison sentence, and that is a very terrible thing.’

Willie passed only the once a man chained to a gun, a stricken-looking Tommy like a ruined Christ. But you turned your face away from such atrocious shame.

‘Look it, Willie,’ said Father Buckley, ‘I can well understand, being the chief superintendent’s son, you would be reluctant to do a thing like this, when a man is on a charge. But quite frankly now, I need to know what’s amiss with him, if I am to help him at all. You do not need to speak for him in court if you do not wish.’

Willie still said nothing. He was flummoxed.

‘I don’t expect a man to be a’saint out here, do you, man dear? Willie, now and then we know, and you have seen it, there is a touch of hell out here. And my occupation in the matter of war is to bring a man, any man, to a safe place, if I can, where his soul might flourish, and I do not think God expects us all now to be earthly saints.‘

The chief superintendent’s son. It was certainly not that that held him back. Why, his father would be the first man to urge him to the task! No, it was that — well, he had no words for it, but the truth was he was weary in his spirit. It was emptying out and thinning and he felt less than ever he did. There was a section of him so tired and yet he was fit enough in his bones and sinews. He ate his grub with a will. He could dig in the ground three hours without a stop. But he was afrighted in the place of — wherever that essential business indeed so prized by his father resided, but Willie did not know the word exactly. Because what he really wanted was to marry his Gretta and row with his sisters and build buildings for Dempsey. He did not want to be visiting snaky-looking Corkmen in their cells. And he would not do it. And yet, and yet, Father Buckley had used a phrase that Willie knew well from his childhood, when the old steward his grandfather used to address him so, even as a boy of five or six — man dear.

‘I suppose I am appealing to your compassion, Willie,’ said Father Buckley.

‘I am sorry to make such a trouble over it,’ said Willie. ‘It is not me after all is in the lock-up.’

‘Then you will come and talk to him?’

But Willie could not say he would or would not. He fell silent now too, but not as silent, no doubt, as Jesse Kirwan. He was trying to remember what Jesse Kirwan had said about himself. He could not remember a thing. But the narrow face and the funny broken nose, and him weeping in Mount Street, that eerily returned. He did have a temper on him, certainly, leaping at Willie’s throat like he had. But Willie also sorely wondered what in the world was the matter with him that he refused to obey orders? Orders were not such a great thing in the upshot. It was a way for things to go forward, to advance. Perhaps that was not the fitting word.

Father Buckley held Willie’s left arm a moment in a gesture of friendship and equality and then let the arm go and nodded at Willie. He had a mouth, Willie saw, of long yellow teeth. The teeth, top and bottom, glimmered in the light of the oil-lamps like two tiny brass fenders. The serious, wounded eyes were as black as a caught trout’s.

The weary priest was smiling at the weary soldier. So Willie knew he had said yes without saying anything.

At last army clashed against army but it was not for them this time to be involved.

It was the Ulstermen of the 36th Division who went over ist July.

Terrible brave news came down to them, the men of the 16th in cosy billets. There’d been two thousand fellas killed and dying of wounds, and another two or even three that were wounded. Some mad battalions reached the enemy trenches, but had no further men coming up to back them. The guns and counter-attacks ate them.

But O‘Hara looked at Willie Dunne and he looked at Dermot Smith and Smith looked at Kielty. It was a strange time. They knew what two thousand corpses looked like, that was a fact.

There were villages in Ulster would have no men in them now. They would never come back to guide the plough and curse the Pope on a Sunday, more was the pity.

It had been a dark ruckus and the news of it confounded their hearts. There was odd love there for the brave Ulstermen; what could a man do against that love? Nothing at all, only add to it by thinking and weeping privately. Maybe there were some there, many, that didn’t give a tuppenny damn about the fucking Ulstermen, or anything else in these changed and muddied days of the war. Maybe so.

That very day 3rd July of the savage news, Willie went with Father Buckley to the rear of the rear lines where Jesse Kirwan was held captive, a kind of underworld of an underworld.

Yet the fields there were bright enough, and the French farmers were hoping to take a harvest anyhow at the end of the summer, if the war would only progress the other way, Germany-wards. The poplars along the white roads rattled their merry leaves; there were geese standing in the wet margins like swollen ducks.

Jesse Kirwan was being held in the privy of a working abattoir. Willie and the priest passed through the big concrete hall where there were dozens of bullocks standing in pens. Willie saw a bullock led through some iron railings, goaded with a metal stick to make it stumble forward properly. A fine, handsome fellow felled it with a stun hammer, driving a good blow to the temple. The bullock knelt like a praying animal and fell dead like an actor, without a speech, only a truncated yowl, horribly like a dog.

Willie never heard such a sound from a bullock in his born days. Then the cleavermen moved in, the beast had a hook attached to its leg muscles, it was hoisted up, and the cleavers sliced it in two. There was a Niagara Falls of curtainy blood, it drenched the yellow coats of the men, it poured out over their heads. You would think they might hang the animal first and bleed it for the good of the blood, but there was a sense of ugly haste. Battalions, divisions indeed, to be fed.

The head was sliced off expertly, the heavy front legs, the enormous rear legs, the little ruined bollocks, the tail, there were insides ripped out and down, there were parcellers to gather the different bits, thrown into big tin carts like imperial prams, and wheeled away all busy-like.

Why they were holding Jessie Kirwan in such a place Willie did not know. But how many things did Willie Dunne know? Not many, these times, he thought.

Perhaps it was not a privy, strictly speaking, or was a privy in its civilian days. Certainly there was a metal plate saying ‘Hommes’ above the door, but when he went in with Father Buckley there was no sign of pissers or places to shit. There was a soldier though, on a chair like one of those folding chairs you would be given at a concert in the park - or one of those green tuppenny chairs in St Stephen’s Green, for which the keepers would gather the coins in the sleepy weeks of summer, among the geraniums and the nasturtiums in their rich, black beds. The soldier rose smartly when Father Buckley appeared, a regimental newspaper falling from his lap. He saluted the priest accurately, trimming his arm and timing his hand perfectly.

‘I’ll go on through and talk to him,’ said Father Buckley. ‘See how he fares. You wait here, Private, with the corporal.’

All right, sir,‘ said Willie, and stood where he was like a pony.

Father Buckley waited for the corporal to turn the key in a small metal door, ducked his tall figure down, and disappeared through. The corporal looked at Willie in a neutral way.

‘I’ve only the one chair,’ he said, in an Irish accent.