Shamrock Green (21 page)

‘Asked? What do you mean by asked?'

‘Has no one, no man ever tried to…'

‘Oh, that! Yes, of course they have.'

‘But you didn't…'

‘I most certainly did not,' said Becky.

‘Weren't they attractive enough? Was that it?'

‘No, that wasn't it,' said Becky. ‘They were nice, some of them.'

‘Well?'

‘I wasn't in love with any of them.'

‘But you don't have to be in love to – you know.'

‘I believe you do,' said Becky. ‘That's where you and I differ, Angela. It's none of my business if you choose to make a fool of yourself with a married man but I couldn't possibly do that sort of thing with someone I didn't care for very much.'

‘Are you telling me,' said Angela, ‘that you've never been in love?'

‘Not to my knowledge, no.'

‘Now that,' said Angela, ‘is sad.'

Becky lay back on the bed, forearm across her eyes.

‘I thought I was in love once,' she said, ‘a long time ago.'

‘With whom?' said Angela, not pressing.

‘My cousin.'

‘No harm in that,' said Angela. ‘Cousins may kiss, you know.'

‘Robbie hardly knew I existed,' Becky said. ‘He went off to school in Edinburgh while I worked in the kitchens in his mother's house. I might have been his cousin but I was still a servant, you see.'

‘So you loved him from afar?'

‘He didn't treat me badly. He just didn't seem to – I mean, I thought perhaps when we were older, when he'd grown up, but…' She sighed. ‘Robbie was killed seven months ago. In Picardy.'

Angela moved to her friend's bed and lay beside her, one foot on the floor.

‘Who was he with?' she asked. ‘What regiment?'

‘The Gordon Highlanders.'

‘In those wonderful kilts he must have looked very dashing.'

‘I never saw Robbie in uniform,' Becky said.

‘You dream about him, though, don't you?' Angela said.

Becky took her forearm from her eyes. ‘How did you know that?'

‘A guess, just a guess,' said Angela. ‘Did he know you were over here?'

‘Probably,' Becky said. ‘Yes, he did. I'm sure he did.'

‘Perhaps,' Angela said, ‘he dreamed of you.'

‘Well, it's a lovely thought.' Becky lay back and stretched her arms above her head. ‘A lovely thought, even if it is nonsense.'

She had a sturdy little figure, Angela realised, not dainty but robust. She could well imagine Becky on a farm somewhere, scattering seed from a basket, like one of the illustrations in
Country Life.
Becky Tarrant was no farmhand, however. She was a highly trained surgical nurse and, Angela reminded herself, not so young as all that.

‘Don't you dream about your Irishman?' Angela said.

‘I pray for him,' Becky said, ‘but I don't dream about him.'

‘Why ever not?' said Angela.

‘Because he isn't dead,' said Becky.

*   *   *

The trench was a stinker. Paddy Morgan, Burke and he had been detailed to locate the source of the smell and remove it. The source of the smell remained elusive, however, and no amount of sniffing at sandbags, peering into dugouts or probing in pools of slime brought it, as it were, to light.

The shelling was unrelenting and indicated that Johnny Hun was up to something in the enemy trenches just a few hundred yards away across the flat, waterlogged terrain. Gowry heard from the boys who brought up the water buckets that Jerry was shifting men out of the quiet sector to reinforce the armies that were gathering along the Somme and was covering the withdrawal with heavy bombardment and a lot of vicious sniping.

It was around mid-morning when Sergeant Rafferty came round and asked what the hell they thought they were doing. Paddy Morgan told the sergeant they were looking for a smell and the sergeant went into one of his tight-lipped fits and said that if that soddin' Nervous Nellie, Lieutenant Quinn, wanted every soddin' stink tracked down then he'd better soddin' come and do it himself. Still muttering, the sergeant went off along the trench to the accompaniment of several
spangs
and
snits
from sniper bullets.

Paddy Morgan sat down and lit a Woodbine. Private Burke went off to find a corner in which to ease his stomach cramps, and Gowry McCulloch took a pad of greenish-grey notepaper and a chewed pencil stub from his pocket and began another letter to Becky.

Gowry's life these days was not exciting: trenches, billets, training fields, movement up and down the lines, in and out, back and forth, stand-to every morning, muster late in the afternoon, night attacks designed to keep Jerry jittery and the lads who wore the shamrock from becoming too complacent.

Soon it would be Easter, however, and the battalion would be pulled back for the Catholics to take a special mass.

Gowry wondered what it would be like to have a priest like Father Coyle hand you the wafer and the wine and if the wafer and the wine really did transform themselves into something powerful inside you and if you felt better afterwards. He was tempted to ask Becky if she would be taking mass but the question seemed too intimate for paper lovers. Paper lovers were all they were so far but, squatting on the firing step in a trench in the Hulluch sector, he felt quite optimistic about their future prospects.

‘McCulloch, what do you think you're doing?'

He had been half asleep, the notepad flopping on his lap. He blinked and looked up. Lieutenant Quinn, hands on hips, glowered down at him.

He was young, was Quinn, and spoke a quaint brand of English, all clipped and nasal. He had schooled in England and served in the regiment there, and though his father was only a muckrake landowner in Sligo the lieutenant fancied himself as good as any Englishman. He certainly had the bearing and the right sort of moustache and, so Gowry had heard, had turned up in the officers' mess one night wearing a monocle and got laughed at for his pretensions.

The men regarded Lieutenant Quinn as dangerous, a Nervous Nellie so agitated and rash that he'd lead the platoon over the top with a whistle in his mouth and a revolver in hand, egging them on like that damned king at Agincourt. More to the point, he wouldn't let them back again, wouldn't retire. Miraculously unscathed, he would perch on a hummock and yell out in a voice as shrill and nasal as a whistling shell, ‘Stand to me, damn you. Stand to me,' while the lads dropped around him like flies.

‘I'm writing a letter, sir,' said Gowry.

‘Did I tell you you could write letters?' Quinn said.

‘No, sir,' said Gowry.

‘Have you found the source of that appalling stench yet?'

‘No, sir,' Gowry said. ‘We have not.'

‘Where's Burke?'

‘Gone to relieve himself, I think.'

The lieutenant swung round and round and with his hands still on his hips, looked as if he were about to break into an Irish jig. He bent forward and peered at Paddy Morgan. Old Paddy was dead away, sleeping sound as an infant, the Woodbine smouldering in his fingers. The lieutenant knocked him with the toe of his boot until with a snort and a start Paddy awoke.

‘Napping on duty, Morgan, are we?'

‘Not me, sir. I ain't on duty.'

‘Did I not give you an order?'

‘Didn't think it was a order, sir, exactly,' Paddy said.

‘Then what, pray tell me, do you suppose it was?'

Paddy shook the remnants of the cigarette from his fingers and got reluctantly to his feet. Gowry eased himself from the firing step, tucked the writing pad into his jacket and tried to appear attentive. The lieutenant had looped the loop, of course, everyone knew that, but he was still an officer and officers had to be obeyed.

‘You are a working party,' Lieutenant Quinn said. ‘I have detailed you as a working party. For your information, Morgan, the condition of our section of the defences has not gone unremarked by the divisional commanders. We are fast becoming a laughing-stock for the state of our trenches. Look around you. Aren't they disgusting, man? Are they not disgusting?'

‘They are, sir, aye, they are,' Paddy agreed.

‘Then do something about it,' Quinn snapped. ‘Find the body.'

‘Pardon?' Paddy said.

‘Find the body. There's a body buried here. I can smell it. Can't you smell it, McCulloch? Surely you can smell it?'

‘I believe I can, sir, now you mention it,' Gowry said.

‘Then find the blessed object and do the decent thing with it.'

‘An' what would that be now?' Paddy said.

‘Christian burial. Give the chap a good Christian burial.'

‘What if he's a Hindu, sir?' said Paddy.

‘Do not be insolent, Morgan. I know he's a Christian and deserves a Christian burial.' The lieutenant took his hands from his hips and, just as Burke came tottering round the corner, leaped up on to the firing step. ‘How do I know he's a Christian? By the smell, man, by the smell.'

‘Catholic, sir, or Protestant?' said Paddy.

‘Catholic, of course,' the lieutenant said. ‘So once you find him you had better fetch the priest. Do the decent thing. Do the…'

The object on the top of the trench was sufficiently hard to deflect the sniper's bullet and reduce its velocity and the lump of metal tore a huge hole in Lieutenant Quinn's throat. He let out a gurgling cry, lifted his hands to his face, pitched from the firing step and landed in a heap at Paddy Morgan's feet.

‘Jaysus!' Paddy said, wide-eyed.

‘He dead?' said Burke, coming forward.

‘Aye, he's dead,' said Paddy. ‘Poor bastard.'

‘Now what do we do?' said Burke.

‘Send for a priest?' Gowry suggested.

‘Nah, wait for the sergeant,' Paddy said and, seated cross-legged at the officer's feet, lit another cigarette while Gowry, shaking just a little, fished out his notepad and resumed his letter to Becky.

*   *   *

The sky shone like polished plate and a warm breeze from the river bore the fragrances of spring. On the lawns of the Ecole the grass had returned, bulbs burst out in neglected flowerbeds and the budding leaves of the oak trees fluttered valiantly as a party of off-duty nurses set out for town.

Saint-Emile had suffered some loose shelling, a German aeroplane had crashed behind the tiny twelfth-century church, and a row of cottages at the bottom of the hill had been smashed. In spite of the damage cafés, taverns, cheese shops and fruit-sellers did good business and, hidden behind the wagon-lairs, the brothel where queues formed from dusk until dawn.

The nurses walked in twos and threes, arm-in-arm, lighthearted because they had an afternoon off and a holiday spirit was abroad. Becky and Angela, a shade more dignified than the others, brought up the rear.

Men were everywhere, not just elderly French shopkeepers but hordes of soldiers hopping on sticks or resting their bandaged heads while they bathed their throats with good strong beer. They cheered and whistled at the nurses, for hospital discipline did not extend beyond the school gates and here, in April sunshine in a battered little French town, Mars and Venus met on equal terms.

‘Bong-joyer, Madam-yo-zell.'

‘Bong-joyer yourself, Raymond.'

‘Parl-lez vouz l'amour?'

‘Ah, Monsieur Soldat, si je le parlais vous ne me comprendriez pas.'

‘Par-dong?' The soldier shrugged his thin shoulders and glanced helplessly around. ‘What'd she say? What'd she say?'

‘Told you to bugger off, sonny.'

‘She what?'

‘Told you to bugger off or she'd stick another horse pill up your arse.'

‘Yay, I've had enough o' those t' last a bleedin' lifetime.'

The nurse, a probationer, fashioned an unladylike gesture with forefinger and thumb then, chuckling, followed her friends on down to the chocolate shop, while the soldiers outside the tavern continued to rib the young Casanova.

Two or three minutes later Angela and Becky passed by.

‘What about 'er then, Raymond? You not 'ave a fancy for 'er?'

‘Not me! She'd eat me for breakfast. 'Sides, she's Bracknell's bint.'

‘What about 'er chum then? She looks like she could use some fun.'

‘She's a staffie.'

‘Maybe she is, but sure an' she's got a nice little bum.'

Becky and Angela were well aware of the soldiers' intentions and glanced at each other and smiled. For a moment Becky even fancied that Gowry might be seated among the wounded – but Gowry was at the front, of course. She'd had a letter from him yesterday and would have another tomorrow, perhaps. She would open it carefully, slitting the censor's seal, and sit on the bed and read it over and over and tell herself that she couldn't possibly mean as much to Gowry McCulloch as he meant to her, that he had a wife, a daughter, a life in Dublin and that she was no more to him than a pleasant little diversion.

‘Oh, look,' Angela said. ‘It's Bobby.'

‘Where?'

‘There in the courtyard. See.'

‘Did you know he'd be here?'

‘Oh, don't be silly.' Angela gripped her elbow and drew her towards the courtyard café where the officers were seated. ‘Come along. We're just as entitled to be here as they are.'

‘Angela!'

‘Well, we are, ain't we?'

If the officers were displeased to have women intrude on their leisure they gave no sign. With almost Teutonic formality Captain Bracknell rose from his chair at the rickety iron table, clicked his heels and bowed.

‘Ladies,' he said, ‘good afternoon.'

‘Good afternoon, Captain Bracknell,' Angela said. ‘May we join you?'

Becky was dismayed to see that Bobby Bracknell's companion was none other than Surgeon-Major Sanderson. She flushed and began to apologise but Mr Sanderson smiled and told her to sit by him. He looked different in the broad light of day, older, wearier, less rather than more relaxed. His cap and gloves were upon the table next to a plate of greasy black sausages and a basket of bread rolls. Becky felt dreadful about interrupting his lunch.