Shamrock Green (25 page)

‘Davy?'

‘Donnaghy, my batman?'

‘I'm afraid I did, sir,' Gowry said. ‘I think you can take it he's dead.'

‘Damn, damn and blast! Where did you run into him? In the trench, was it, snared in the wire?'

‘Yes, sir. He took a direct hit.'

Soames was seated on an ammo box a few yards from the lantern that marked the steps of the field dressing station. Drawn up next to the station was a tea-stall with eight or ten men hanging round it. Gowry was too groggy to make out what unit they belonged to or to wonder why they were taking refreshment in the midst of so much activity. The raid had obviously been a disaster but at least the Germans hadn't counter-attacked and no-man's-land had remained deserted until after sundown.

A stretcher-bearer had discovered him and had guided him back as far as the British line and packed him off down the trench to the rear. He had cadged tea and a couple of mouthfuls of stew from a cook-up but had encountered no one he recognised and no one who recognised him. In due course he had emerged on a narrow road crammed with troops heading up to the front. Horses, horse-sleds and motor-ambulances were stuck in a mass of infantry with just two or three mounted officers to keep the column moving. Gowry reckoned that divisional headquarters had decided that the salient must be taken at all costs and a general attack was imminent.

More by luck than intention, he stumbled on the dressing station and found his commanding officer, Lieutenant Soames, seated by the steps.

‘Well, you're the first to come out of it, McCulloch,' Soames said, ‘and I expect you'll be the last.'

‘What?' Gowry said, wearily. ‘Have they all gone down?'

‘Like ninepins,' the officer said. ‘My fault, my responsibility.'

Gowry seated himself cross-legged on the grass at the lieutenant's feet. He still had his rifle but everything else, including his jacket, had been left behind. ‘I saw Ring too, sir. He won't be coming back either.'

Soames was sleek, round-cheeked and bull-necked. He had been a solicitor in London before the war and had returned to Dublin to join the Rifles only because his father had insisted on it.

‘How many of the Connaughts made it back?' Gowry said.

‘None, none that I'm aware of.'

‘Not even Sergeant Leonard?'

‘I don't know Sergeant Leonard. Is he a friend of yours?'

‘Used to be, sir,' Gowry said.

There were lights within the dressing station, doctors and medical orderlies moving about. Someone cried out, not moaning but yelling.

Gowry felt like a fraud. He had spent the whole day asleep under Fritz's nose and had been rescued by a stretcher-bearer who had risked his neck under murderous bursts of machine-gun fire to fetch him in. The stretcher-bearer was a true hero. He was nothing but a sham, even if he had killed a couple of Jerries hand-to-hand. The fact was, he had sniffed at glory and rejected it. Becky would not be proud of him or Maurice either for that matter.

‘How many did we lose all told, sir?'

‘One hundred and forty,' Soames said. ‘The majority on the first assault. Fritz was on to us from the first. Spotted us straight away and hung fire, sly bastards, hung fire until we were all caught in the open. Jerry knew the emplacements were impregnable.' He shook his head. ‘It wasn't so much an emplacement as a stronghold, fortified like a damned Crusader castle. Dear God, we couldn't have taken it with half a battalion let alone a raiding party.'

‘How did you get back, sir?'

‘On my belly.' Soames suddenly began to sob and shake. ‘I crawled away on my belly, on my damned, blasted belly. Oh, God! Oh, God forgive me.'

Gowry shouted, ‘Officer needs attention. Officer needs attention.'

An orderly came hastening down the steps from the dressing station and led the lieutenant away and Gowry, exhausted, slumped back on the grass.

*   *   *

At the end of the Easter month the staff in the Hulluch sector had more to worry them than clerical inaccuracies. The confusion over Private McCulloch's death was never officially explained and, after a brief exchange of letters, was dismissed as just another error in battalion administration.

When Gowry arrived back at his unit he found the division intent on counting its dead and evacuating its wounded. It was early afternoon before he was directed to the brewery on the south side of town where a field headquarters had been set up. He was relieved to see a familiar face. Major Keating was seated at a long deal table on the sward outside the brewery and several pay-clerks were packing up the money-boxes to return to Divisional HQ, for, it seemed, the rituals of army life continued unabated even while the dead were rotting in the fields.

The afternoon sun was hot and the stink of unburied corpses strong. Major Keating had a briar pipe in his mouth and a cloud of blue smoke around him and, even with that protection, held a khaki handkerchief sprinkled with peppermint oil to his nostrils. Behind the table, in the shade of the broken wall, a couple of signalmen in shirt-sleeves were contemplating a skein of wires from which they were expected to assemble a telephone system. As Gowry approached the major stirred, looked up and scowled.

Gowry could hardly blame the major for scowling at him, for he looked more like a scarecrow than a fighting soldier. He had been patched up at the dressing station and handed over to an NCO who had dug him out a battledress from a pile behind the tent and allocated him a billet in a barn along with a dozen other lost souls. In the morning he had been fed from a mobile cookhouse, given a pack, a full water bottle and a pencil map and sent back to join his unit twelve miles away. He had tarried long enough to ask if he might be permitted to see the handful of battered corpses that the stretcher-bearers had retrieved during the night but was told in no uncertain terms that his presence was unwelcome and that he had better make himself scarce. Thus, well fed and well rested, he had set out from the salient around the crater leaving his old friend Maurice, or what remained of him, behind.

‘Name?' Major Keating said.

Gowry reeled off his service number. ‘Private Gowry McCulloch, sir.'

‘You're too late, McCulloch. We've finished paying out.'

‘I'm reporting in, sir.'

‘Pay book.'

‘Lost, sir.'

‘Lost?'

‘Been on detachment, sir.'

‘Detachment? Oh, with Soames's lot.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Fortunate for you, what?' The major puffed on his pipe and released a cloud of dense smelly blue smoke. ‘Been all rather nasty round here, what?'

‘Yes, sir. So I've heard, sir.'

‘Flat broke, are you? Been wasting your portion with those wild men from Connaught, have you?'

‘Not exactly, sir,' said Gowry.

‘Seen anything of Lieutenant Soames?'

‘The lieutenant was wounded, I think.'

Keating took the pipe from his mouth and spat on to the grass. He dabbed his lips with the handkerchief and riffled the papers on the table.

‘Badly?'

‘Sir?' said Gowry.

‘Soames?'

‘I – I don't know, sir.'

‘Ah!' Keating tapped a forefinger against the paper. ‘There you are: McCulloch, Gowry. Got you now. Where are the others from your detachment?'

‘I'm the only one, sir, the only survivor.'

The major looked up quickly and then, too wily to show his feelings, sighed. ‘So you've lost your pay book, have you, McCulloch? Deuced careless, what? Have to get you another one, won't we? Can't pay you without a pay book. Where is the pay book, incidentally? Fallen into enemy hands, has it?'

‘I'm afraid it has, sir,' said Gowry.

‘Hmmm, pity! Still, you look fit enough to me. Are you fit?'

‘I am, sir.'

‘Tell you what, you toddle off to base. Do you know where it is?'

‘Not exactly, sir,' said Gowry again.

‘Down to the end of the high street and cross the highway to the river. You'll see the tents and some of your chums. Not sure who's currently OC but you'll be in bags of time for supper and I expect someone will take care of you.'

Gowry licked his dry lips. ‘What about my pay book, sir?'

‘I'll stamp one up and get it down to you, never fear.'

Keating eased his chair back from the table and got to his feet. He was very tall, enormously tall. He stared down at Gowry from an imposing height.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?'

‘Sorry, sir. I just wondered if I had any mail lyin' here.'

‘Good God, man!' Keating said, with a little snap of temper. ‘Mail! Is that all you chaps ever think about, apart from beer and women? All right, all right. Murphy,' he shouted. A corporal came running from within the brewery. ‘Fetch this man his mail. McCulloch, Gowry, 2nd Battalion, Sperryhead Rifles.'

‘Sah!' Murphy saluted and vanished indoors.

He returned a few minutes later and handed Gowry three letters, two from Saint-Emile, from Becky, the other from Dublin.

‘Happy now, McCulloch?' the major asked.

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,' Gowry answered. ‘Very happy now.'

PART THREE

Maeve

Chapter Thirteen

‘Look at him, the darlin',' Maeve said. ‘Isn't he lovely?'

She held the baby out in both hands but Gran McCulloch barely glanced at him, though he looked, Maeve thought, irresistible in his lace-fringed skirts and angora-wool shawl. She had put on the little bonnet Jansis had knitted and the tiny wool bootees Fran had brought in three weeks before her brother's birth. She had been puzzled by the size of the bootees for, given how big her mother was, sticking out in front like the sail on a yawl, she couldn't believe that the baby would be small enough to fit them.

He was nine weeks old now, little Sean, heavier in weight and squallier than he'd been when he was brand-new. He didn't appreciate being held out like a rugby football and flailed his tiny legs under the skirts and grizzled at his granny as if he couldn't stand the sight of her, which, Maeve thought, showed remarkable perception in one so young. She drew him back, cradled him in the crook of her arm and gave his nose a dab with the tip of her pinkie to get rid of the bubble that blemished perfection.

Gran McCulloch watched, unimpressed.

‘Where is he? Isn't he here?'

‘Who do you wish to speak with?' said Maeve.

‘The man. Hagarty. I thought he'd be here. I wrote him a letter.'

‘Did you? Fran never said anythin' about a letter.'

‘He isn't here then?'

‘No, he's not,' said Maeve.

She felt ready for anything with Sean in her arms and wasn't afraid of her grandmother who'd had so little to do with her over the years that she seemed like a stranger.

‘Would you not like to hold him?' Maeve said.

‘Why would I want to hold him?'

‘Well, he's your grand—'

‘He's not,' Kay McCulloch said curtly.

Maeve thought about it. ‘I suppose he isn't, not really.'

‘Where is Hagarty?'

‘He's awfully busy.'

‘Too busy to hear what I have to say?'

‘He left a message,' Maeve lied. ‘He told me to tell you he was sorry he had to go out. He'll talk to you another time.' Gran obviously didn't believe her but Maeve brazened it out. ‘What do you want to talk to Fran about anyway?'

‘Nothing that concerns you.'

‘Why not?' said Maeve.

‘Because you're only a child.'

‘I am not.'

‘What age are you?'

‘Twelve,' Maeve said. ‘Near enough.'

‘Where's your mother?'

‘Upstairs in her bed. She's not to be disturbed.'

‘Is she sick?'

‘Feedin' Sean takes a lot out o' her,' said Maeve. ‘Besides, she doesn't want to see you.'

‘Fetch her down here this minute.'

‘She won't come.'

‘Then I'll go up.'

‘No,'
Maeve said.

‘Is the man in bed with her, is that it?'

‘Fran's out an' Mam's restin',' Maeve said. ‘If you need a cup of tea before you start back I'll make one.'

‘Tea, I'm not here for your tea,' Gran said.

‘Why are you here then?' Maeve said.

Gran was seated in a corner of what had been the bar. It was a bar no longer, for the Shamrock's liquor licence had been revoked within a month of her father's enlistment in the British army. Mr Dolan had died of pneumonia in that winter's cold snap and Mr Pettu, full of apologies, had moved out soon after. The only guests who came in now were odd characters, friends of Fran's. They would stay for a night and move on. The old crowd, the convivial commercials, had been scared away by the peelers, for everyone knew that Mr Vaizey had the Shamrock under observation. Changed circumstances had raised Maeve's stock in school, however. Mr Whiteside treated her like a princess and was forever asking her what Fran was up to now. The minute her dad had gone off to fight for England his name had been mud and nobody who counted seemed to mind that Mam had taken up with Fran instead.

‘I'm looking after your father's interests,' Kay McCulloch said, ‘since nobody else seems to care enough to do it for him.'

‘Dad's in the army, fightin' for England.'

‘Does he write to you?'

Maeve pursed her lips. ‘No.'

‘He sends money, though, part of his pay, doesn't he?'

‘That's none o' your business.'

At first Maeve had cried because there had been no letters from Daddy. Every morning she would come running downstairs and ask Mam or Fran, ‘Is there a letter for me?' and Mam and Fran would shake their heads and Mam would give her a little hug to make up for the disappointment. She was hurt by his silence then she became angry and when Mam became pregnant more or less forgot about her father who, after all, had never given her a baby brother.