by Jana Petken
Groaning with frustration, he left the wall and headed to the mess area, hoping to find some food left and someone around, amusing enough to distract him from his dark thoughts. Making his way back down the trench with his tin full, he found Jack sitting against the wall on his groundsheet. He’d finished his dinner and was smoking a cigarette and reading a letter with a smile on his face. He looked like a contented man who had just gotten home from a day’s work.
“Jack, you look as though you’re enjoying yourself.”
“What would you have me do, son, sit here and cry for my own bed and hearth when I know they’re a million miles from here and in another world entirely?”
After he’d eaten, Danny spread out his own groundsheet next to Jack and sat down. “That must be a good letter you have there,” he said.
“It is. My eldest daughter is pregnant.”
“Bloody hell’s bells, just how old are you?” Danny blurted out.
“I’m thirty-eight and proud of it. I can still shoot a fly off the arse of a cow at fifty yards. Ah, Danny, I hope it’s a fine boy who’ll never have to live through something like this.” Jack looked at Danny’s hands fumbling with his bag buckle and frowned. “You’ve got trench tremors. When did they start?”
“When we got back from the front. I was all right up the line, but when I went into that funk hole, I started thinking about terrible things. I try, but I can’t stop seeing horrors, Jack.”
“And you’ll never stop seeing them till the day you die.”
“What can I do about my hands? I can’t fire my rifle like this. It’ll wave all over the bloody place.”
“There’s only one thing to do when that happens, Danny, and it happens to the best of us. You have to take your mind off everything. I manage to do that for a short while when I read letters from home and immerse myself in them. The trick is to read them over and over again and picture the person writing to you sitting there, right in front of you by the fire, telling you all the gossip from home. I learned that in the Second Boer War. Of course, we didn’t get mail very often, not like nowadays, but still, I remember my letters being my biggest joy in Africa – I know what I’m talking about, son. It was bad there. We often endured severe daytime heat, and then at night we slept out in the open with only overcoats to protect us from the freezing cold. And by God, was it cold. We were trekking most of the time and had no shelter, nothing like these walls here. Get your mail out, son.”
“I had to throw a few of them away. My pack weighs over sixty pounds as it is. I’ve kept the most important ones, though,” Danny said.
“They would be from your lovely, Anna?”
Nodding, Danny pulled out a mud-stained picture from his pocket. Anna had sent it to him whilst he was still in training. He spat on it and then wiped it with his jacket sleeve. There she was in her wedding dress and veil, looking so white and ethereal with that cloud flowing over her black hair and around her beautiful face. And he was standing proud behind her chair, looking like a real gentleman in his new suit – he wasn’t a bad looking man, all being said.
“My Anna’s the best thing that God could have sent me on this earth, apart from Ireland’s declaration of independence, of course,” he said.
“If I were you I wouldn’t be spouting off about that situation,” Jack said good-humouredly.
Jack was already aware of Danny’s political leanings, but no man there knew about his involvement in the uprising. If there was one thing other than Anna that was keeping his spirits up, it was the continuing success of the Sinn Féin, who had swept to victory in January in four by-elections. Who would have thought that a year ago – or when he was a prisoner in Frongoch?
“I won’t. Sure, I’m not for fighting the British anymore,” he said. “I still don’t want my country to be under the empire’s rule, but I’ll never say I dislike an Englishman again. I don’t know how or when I changed my mind about hating you lot, but I did. I’d die for any man in this trench, apart from that Scotsman McCallum. If I have to suffer listening to any more of his poems by that Rabbie Burns eejit, I’ll bloody shoot him myself.”
A ragtime tune was playing from a gramophone. The sound wafted up from the officers’ dugout.
“I went in there once,” Danny remarked after Jack commented on the tune. “There were three officers sitting in armchairs playing cards and getting served whiskies by their orderlies. Bloody grand life they have.”
“They do that, but remember that they lead the charges. Their life expectancy is even shorter than ours.”
“That’s true, I suppose, but they get more leave to compensate for that misfortune.”
Danny took his six remaining letters, shuffled them, and then selected one at random. “I forgot about this one,” he said. “I kept one from my granny. She’s a fountain of information. She knows more about what’s going on in this war than we do. Never is her nose out of the newspaper.” His hands still shook. He looked up. There were hundreds of men in the trench. From where he sat, he could see at least fifty. All of them were doing something or other to keep their minds and bodies active. It was dark, and soft flickering lights were dimmed by the rain that was starting to fall steadily. It made quite a racket hitting tin and wood, groundsheets and helmets, rifles and bullets …
“If this rain comes down any heavier, we’ll be floating down the trench on our sheets,” said Danny.
Jack took off his greatcoat, took a candle and a box of matches from his pack, and then all but disappeared under his coat.
Danny did the same, trying to protect the candle from getting wet by placing it inside his mess tin and covering his head and body with his coat. Drips of water would get through eventually when it got soaked, but he’d have time to read one letter. He trusted Jack. He’d try to become immersed in his granny’s gossip.
Dearest Danny,
You know that the first thing I want to ask is how you are faring. You’re always on my mind. I am immeasurably proud of you, as is your poor mother, who is beside herself with worry for your safety.
So much is happening. It would appear that at last we are seeing changes to the landscape of this war, although not all the changes are good. There is a terrible development on the Italian front. The Germans have been amassing a whole army, troops withdrawn from the Russian front, where nothing is going on. The Huns have broken through the Italian front line and have taken Gorizia, which cost so many Italian lives when they took it from the Austrians. German troops are ravaging the Venetian plane and heading towards the sea. We are all worried because that proves that they still have resources and men to fight us. It’s just dreadful.
Last Thursday there was a big raid over London. I suppose the Germans chose it as a perfect night because of the full moon. We were awakened by prolonged whistles being blown and shouts of “Take cover!” Your Anna, mam, and I ran outside, but when we heard guns burst into the night, we realised that most of the noise was coming from north of the river, so we went back inside. We didn’t stay long, though. My God, Danny, there was a moment when I thought we were going to be hit when the din of our guns were overpowered by the deep drone of a raider. It was so loud that it pervaded the house, despite all the windows and doors being shut. It brought back memories of the night we were together and poor Jenny was hurt.
Anyway, we heard the shells dropping and sounding like howling wolves. That’s the only way I can describe the noise. It was creepy. Your mam was crying her eyes out, and Anna was comforting her. I love your wife very much.
Apart from that ugly incident, things are quietly carrying on. Jenny has come to visit us quite often. She is getting on very well at the hospital and looks very strange without her wig. Her own hair is unreasonably short, sitting just below the ears and touching the nape of her neck. But it is a mass of curls, and no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t see her bald patch, just a glimpse of her poor deformed ear.
Your mother and I seem to be forgiven for our debacle regarding Kevin, whose
whereabouts, according to Patrick, are still a mystery, but I feel sure that he is alive. Patrick has not seen Kevin’s name on any lists, other than one, which put him with the Fifth Army in Flanders. You must let us know if you hear or see anything of him.
Although I in no way condone your political ideology, I do have news of the situation in Ireland, which should cheer you up. The Times reported last week that seventeen hundred Sinn Féin delegates attended a convention in the Mansion House. Apparently, De Valera replaced your Arthur Griffith as the organisation’s president and is pushing for an independent republic ...
Danny felt his chest swelling with pride. He’d had a long conversation with Éamon de Valera after joining the republican movement. He was the commander at Boland’s Mill during the uprising, and after his arrest, he was sentenced to death, along with the other leaders. He was the only one of them not to be executed – maybe because he was an American citizen or maybe not. That hadn’t helped Tom Clarke, one of the other great men, had it? Also holding American citizenship, he’d been shot, poor bugger. Or it could have been because De Valera was held in a different prison to the others. He’d been put in the Ballykinlar Internment Camp, and when he was given a life sentence, he was sent to Dartmoor in England. He was released the previous July, so Jimmy Carson had written in a letter.
So, my darling boy, I must end now. I want to put this letter with Anna’s. She is going to the post office this morning with a letter for you, and I will not encroach on her news.
Your mother sends her love and wants you to know that she will write to you when she feels a little better. I forgot to mention that she is suffering with a cold that seems to have gone to her chest. I think she probably caught it when we stood outside in our nightclothes during the raids.
We love you, my dear boy,
Minnie
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jenny closed the book she had been reading to a patient and quietly rose from her chair. The man in the bed had mercifully fallen asleep, and for a while at least, he could forget his pain. She waved to Anna, waiting for her at the door of the ward, said goodbye to the nurses on duty, and left to begin her afternoon off. She’d been looking forward to this day for over a week. Patrick was home, and not just for one or two days, but for ten. It was the first real leave he’d had since joining the navy.
“Anna, you look very fetching,” Jenny said, kissing her cheek. Dressed in a thick black coat, which she had borrowed from Jenny, and topped off with a black bowler hat with a red ribbon around its brim to give it a feminine touch, she looked quite the lady. Her wide smile was full of expectation. Jenny loved Anna’s cheerfulness. Her sister-in-law had genuine enthusiasm for just about anything and everything she did, and since coming to London, she had blossomed from a shy country girl into an extremely resourceful and innovative young woman. Not content with delivering laundry, she had also managed to turn Minnie’s back green into a potato and turnip garden.
Under strict orders to hurry, Jenny changed quickly, but she was not at all worried about being late for their luncheon date. Anna was under the illusion that they were going to take various modes of public transport to Central London. That journey would take them almost two hours, but Jenny had other ideas. Having not had a free afternoon for two weeks, she refused to spend this one waiting for buses and walking the heels off her boots. It was extravagant, and as cabs were not easy to come by, she had paid a little extra by insisting that the driver pick them up from the hospital entrance. A small luxury occasionally wasn’t going to send her to the poor house, she’d thought the previous evening, when she’d reserved the cab.
Jenny asked the driver to take them to a ladies’ clothing shop situated behind Leicester Square. Before meeting Patrick, she wanted to purchase a scarf for Minnie, whose seventy-fifth birthday was the following day. Regrets that niggled at her every so often surfaced when she thought about how old her granny was. She, Jenny, had not spoken to her mother or Minnie for three months after the row that had left her tense relationship with the women in tatters. She had forgiven them long before that time, but the anger had lingered. Years of pent-up resentment had surfaced that night, and had Patrick not warned her to halt her tirade, she was sure she would have carried on for hours longer. Perhaps anger was too strong a word, she thought. Hurt was a more apt description for how she had felt about their deceit.
As though reading her mind, Anna asked, “Is there still no news from Kevin?”
“No. I was stupid to think that he would answer my letter.”
“No, you weren’t stupid at all. What you did took courage.”
“It was too little too late, I’m afraid. It’s been months since I sent it. I’m guessing he took one look at my address written on the back and ripped it to shreds. I can’t blame him.”
“Perhaps he didn’t receive it – or something dreadful has happened to him.”
Jenny’s throat constricted. Anna had a habit of saying exactly what was on her mind. That facet to her character was probably why they got along so well, although her words were not always tactful or comforting.
“I’m sorry, Jenny. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Jenny patted Anna’s hand. She too had thought about the possibility that something terrible had happened to Kevin. He might hate her, but he loved Patrick like a brother. He wouldn’t ignore his letters, yet Patrick had heard nothing.
For the rest of the journey to Central London, Jenny steered the conversation away from the man occupying her thoughts and instead listened to Anna blether on about Danny’s last letter. He was well, cold, homesick, and dreaming of her. Jenny was sure that there was a lot more Danny didn’t say, but Anna seemed satisfied that her husband was coping well in the trenches. She took the letter out of her purse and began to read excerpts from it. When Danny was the subject of conversation, Anna could talk for hours without wetting her dry throat.
The two women found Patrick waiting for them at a quiet corner table in the restaurant in Piccadilly. He was reading a typed letter and concentrating on it so hard that Jenny had to call out his name twice before he lifted his head.
“Darlin’, how are you?” he asked, almost suffocating her with a burly hug. Next he moved on to Anna, who received a more respectful peck on the cheek. “It’s wonderful to see you both. We have a lot to talk about, and for once there is good news. Jenny, I can’t wait to see your face when I tell you about it.”
A jug of water arrived at the table. Patrick suggested they try a new dish, never before seen in the country. It was called Jack Tar Tuna Fish. Apparently, it was very tender and tasted like chicken. He ordered three, with potatoes.
The conversation led to Minnie’s house and Anna’s fascination with Susan’s and Minnie’s cooking.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Anna said. “I know why there has to be rationing and I understand why fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to find …”
“Did you read in the newspaper about butchers selling dead cats?” Jenny asked.
“No, I did not! But it brings me back to my point. Your mam and granny are making bread from ground-up turnips, and the other day your mam tried to make a cake out of rotten potatoes.”
Patrick laughed. “I didn’t know Mam liked to cook.”
“Be serious, Patrick,” Anna continued. “Why do you think I was so excited about coming here to meet you? I’ll be honest in saying that I’m afraid to put anything into my mouth nowadays.”
Before dinner arrived, Jenny told Patrick about her job and the terrible injuries she saw every day. “I do love going to work every morning, Patrick. I am fulfilled with the experience,” she said.
Patrick smiled. “And how is your friendship with Dr Thackery?”
Jenny said, “We enjoy a comfortable relationship. I like his wife, as well. She often comes to the hospital to have cups of tea with me.” After Jenny had told him her news, she asked for his. She’d noticed that he hadn’t stopped smiling since they’d gotten there, which was not t
hat unusual in itself, but his nervous laugh and wringing of hands were telltale signs of something out of the ordinary happening.
“Please don’t keep us in suspense one minute longer,” Jenny said.
Patrick took a sip of water and cleared his throat, exaggerating his need for attention, and began. “I’ve just come from Dad’s lawyer’s office. I’ve been having dealings with him for the past sixteen months regarding a legal matter. I won’t go into all the details now, because I want us all to go to Greenwich as soon as we’ve had lunch. Mam should be the first to know about how this all came about.”
“Was it about his will? I thought that was void because of all the debts,” Jenny said.
“It was, but it would appear that he was in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin with regards to his research, and I have just reached a settlement with them. Dad owns the critical acclaim for the work, and he funded a part of it as well. It will be studied and used all over the known world and farmed out to other colleges and universities. The college in Dublin is already benefiting financially with new donors.”
“Do people have money for that sort of thing?” Jenny asked.
“Oh, yes, you have no idea. The war has not stopped the pursuit of science. On the contrary, it seems to have spurred it on. And that’s why I have been fighting for a financial settlement. I put it to the college board that as Robert Carmody’s dependents, we should also have a share of the benefits – Mam, of course, being the main beneficiary.”
