The Soldier's Song (37 page)

Stephen’s eyes followed him to the window as he rubbed a sore spot above his knee.
Must be my lowly origins showing through.

‘Sorry if I’m boring you.’ Rivers turned from the window and grinned, his hands in his pockets, ‘I do drone on a bit, at times. Comes of having been a teacher. I find it often helps if the patient understands a bit about his condition. All part of the therapy, in a way. But let’s not get bogged down in generalities.’ He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket and opened it to Stephen, who shook his head. Rivers put a cigarette between his lips and spoke into his cupped hands as he lit it, ‘Because it would be unwise to concentrate on the more peculiar aspects of your case. We would do better to look for the cause. I see from your file that you served with a tunnelling company for a while. Must have taken a bit of getting used to for an infantry officer, working underground. Miss the open spaces, did you?’

Well, this was a change from Hardcastle’s approach. Stephen didn’t know what he was getting at, but at least it was different. He nodded, following Rivers as he paced back and forth across the window. He found comfort in the sunlight that was pouring in around Rivers. It was strange, but even the mere mention of tunnelling had brought back sharp memories. Sitting in this airy room, with its bookcases and bright windows, he could visualize himself in the tunnel again. It was a very vivid sensation; he could even smell the earth.

Rivers nodded too. ‘I’ll bet you did. Nobody likes being closed in. It’s unnatural. I dare say Dr Freud would say it has something to do with the birth trauma. But that doesn’t concern me just at the moment. The really interesting thing, captain, is that in cases like yours the peccant trauma is often interment.’

Peccant. Now there’s a word.

Rivers eased himself back down in his chair. He sat back and took a long pull from his cigarette. In the stillness of the room, Stephen could hear the tobacco hissing as it turned to ash.

‘Interment,’ he repeated. ‘Burial. Have you ever been buried, captain?’

Buried.
The word hit him like a slap. He must have jumped an inch out of his chair.

‘I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?’ Rivers was looking at him keenly as he scribbled a hurried note in the file. Stephen felt as if the blood had drained from his face. His skin had that cold, clammy, crawling feeling. He hadn’t felt that in a while. The smell of earth became overpowering. All at once he felt his throat dry up, his senses deserting him. For a moment his eyes rolled upwards and the suffocating black engulfed him once again. He had the image of lifeless white fingers sticking out from fresh earth. It took an effort to bring himself back to the office, and when he opened his eyes again Rivers’s look had changed to one of concern. He was leaning forward, gazing at him.

‘Stay with me, captain. It might be unpleasant, but I think we’re making progress. And so quickly, too. I think we’ve hit the nail on the head. I should tell you that your experience is not as uncommon as you might think. Many of the cases I have seen have been buried at one time or another. Not as deep as you were, I dare say: usually a shell falling nearby, sometimes a trench or a dugout collapsing. But it always has a much deeper effect than it seems at first. Most men carry the trauma with them for months or even years before it finally declares itself.’

He stubbed his cigarette out in the brass ashtray at the corner of the desk and made another note in the file, then leaned back again, a satisfied look on his round face. ‘That’s half the battle, you see, recognizing the cause. Now, I want you to think back again. Ask yourself what happened. You may think you can’t remember, but that’s precisely the problem. It’s repressed, you see. It’s perfectly natural. Your own mind is trying to protect you by hiding the memory, but you must remember. You must bring it out into the light.’

He went on, but Stephen was hardly listening. He was back in the dark. It seemed a thousand years ago – was it really only a few months? The other side of the summer. He remembered the dank musky smell that built up when the ventilator was shut off. The smell of sweat and fear. They had stopped pumping and doused the lights. One of the listeners had heard something. Stephen crouched in the dark, straining his eyes and ears into the endless void. Terrified. And he was in charge, damn it, they were expecting him to tell them what to do.

The rush, when it came, was shocking. A flash of panic; he felt the breath knocked out of him as one of them cannoned into him in the dark.

‘Run!’ he hissed, ‘Jesus Christ! Run! They’re going to blow it!’

He was dazed, on his back, in pitch black. What had they heard? What tiny sound had transmitted all that information? They were crawling over him now, hurrying knees and hands. An electric lamp came on and he picked himself up and ran to the flickering light. Grotesque shadows filled the tunnel in front of him. Then he tripped over some inert body, fell headlong, and kept crawling on towards the light with the panted curses behind him. He knew he ought to take command, but flight was in the air now. There was no stopping it. He had to get out. He stumbled into a taller gallery, where he could stand up in a low crouch. Around he went, his mouth open to call back to the men behind him, and then it came; a dull thump, and the rending crash of falling earth.

‘. . . Most men are ashamed of their reaction,’ Rivers was saying, ‘but it really is the bravest ones who are the worst. A coward has no problem expressing the emotion of fear, although he may also feel shame. No, I have seen the stoutest hearts . . .’

It was closing in around him. The air vanishing as the earth dropped its cloak over his face. Still he thrashed forward, desperate, driven by the sight of the men in front of him staggering under the weight of tumbling soil. He was down on his hands and knees when he saw the light go out. The solid weight of a man came down beside him, and still he hurried forward, a frightened rabbit in a shrinking burrow. It enveloped him and he flailed wildly in the blackness, feeling the crushing weight, suffocating, until at last he felt air on his face and scrambled into it and ran, ran, headlong into the dark. Then he made the connection. The man going down beside him, engulfed by the falling earth. The hand, white fingers in the earth. A timber must have caught him. Stephen remembered the words. He had heard them above the rending noise; a cry, a little mewing voice as he fell, but the Irish accent plain even in the tumult.

Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

‘The flower of English youth has often crumbled . . .’

‘Irish,’ Stephen said.

Rivers stopped in mid-sentence. ‘What was that?’

‘I said, I’m Irish,’ he repeated in a stronger voice, tears scalding his cheeks.

THE SOLDIER’S SONG

‘It’s a great story . . . accessible, interesting and incredibly well-written . . .
The Soldier’s Song
speaks as a welcome new voice in Irish writing

www.theladylovesbooks.blogspot.com

‘A beautifully written, objective tale of one man’s war . . . Devoid of rants against the High Command and armchair generals, and with the interwoven love story remaining understated,
The Soldier’s Song
is a view of a changing world gone mad, and will stay with me for a long time’

Daily Mail

‘Monaghan is an engaging writer – he won the 2002 Hennessy New Irish award for the short story upon which
The Soldier’s Song
is based – and this is a well-paced and immensely readable novel’

Irish Times

‘It is craftsmanship of a high order’

Irish Independent

‘Impressive . . .
The Soldier’s Song
is a fine story well told’

Evening Herald

‘As with Faulks, Monaghan can expect comparisons to Barker, not least because he plans to write several books in this series. Based on this engaging, unsentimental debut, he’ll deservedly find a wide readership’

Sunday Business Post

‘The history, plot and characters are deftly handled and it’s well written, engaging and highly readable. And the Dublin setting obviously gives it great potential to be the first bestseller of 2010 for us’

Bob Johnston,
owner of The Gutter Bookshop in Dublin,
Bookseller

First published 2033 by Macmillan

This edition published 2033 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-33-24601-5 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-24601-8 EPUB

Copyright © Alan Monaghan 2010

The right of Alan Monaghan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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