Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Jeremy said, ‘I don’t think anybody can predict these things. There’s no science or art about war. The weather can upset the best planned campaign. The British have been saved by their notoriously bad weather before. Probably the Romans pissed off and left them on account of the lousy climate. Already this invasion thing’s been put off because of bad weather. Maybe the good weather they’re hoping for will never come.’

  ‘I think there’ll be invasion, man.’

  ‘All right, then. What d’you want to consult me about?’

  ‘If the English are licked, ould Ireland will be free at lasht.’

  ‘Don’t you think the Huns will grab Ireland, too?’

  ‘Let ’em troy! We’ll foight ’em on the beaches . . . we’ll foight ’em . . .’ The vociferation trailed off as it dawned on Shamus whom he was quoting.

  Dryly Jeremy rubbed it in: ‘In the bogs.’

  Recovered, Finnucane replied as dryly, ‘Exactly!’

  The grandstand gave some refuge from the vociferation across the way. Still, with little bursts of wind that Igulgul dragged after him, it came — There’ll always be an England . . .

  Shamus took a deep breath, exhaled: ‘We would doy foightin’ wit’out chains . . . those Chains of Ulster we’ll niver shake off till the stuffin’ that makes an Englishman is knocked out av him.’ He sighed again: ‘But the throuble is to stand by and see’em licked. They’re foightin’ the way we’ve fought ’em for four huntret years. ’Tis the God’s truth that they’ll niver give in. They put us in chains . . . but havin’ lived so long in chains oursen, we don’t wish it on another . . . and particularly on Ould England. That’s what I mane when I say the heart’s bein’ torn out av me. Niver in me long loife have I been so confused and bewildered . . . in the wan breath wantin’ to see ’em go down, wit’ the next wan prayin’ for the spalpeens to win. And niver so lorn. No wan in the woide wurruld to tahlk to, not ayven the woife av me bed. Begorra, man, ’tis for that rayson I’ve shtopped drinkin’. I was startin’ to drink too much . . . just settin’ be me radio . . . listenin’ and drinkin’ and seein’ the dingbats craypin’ on me if didn’t put meself together. It’s been fair droivin’ me mad, man . . . the unsartinty av it . . . what wit’out havin’ annywan to tahlk to. Manny’s the toime I thought of droivin’ out to you and throwin’ meself on your mercy . . . as the son of me ould friend, who’d’ve been feelin’ the same.’ Shamus stopped with a sigh.

  As Jeremy said nothing, the brogue went on: ‘I know ye be no lover av ould Ireland, Jerry, me boy . . . but ye love your own counthry as if ’twere the Ould Sod itself . . . and as of times ye’ve said yeself, ’tis the same chains that shackle it, the same slander of disloyalty livelled at annyone that’s loyal to it as a native son should be. ’Tis for that rayson that I’ve wanted to confess and relieve meself to you . . . and whoy I’m now doin’ so.’ There was a quaver in the voice. Jeremy glanced to see tears glistening in the eyes.

  It took a moment for Shamus to find further voice for it. ‘I was hopin’ the Races would be cahlled off . . . in fact suggested it to Martin. I had hopes when I got the message this ayvenin’ that such would be the case, and they’d ahll be goin’ home tomorrow. I wasn’t reckoning on the British lunacy, or whatever it is. Och, man . . . they’re goin’ to make another Dunkirk out av this! Ye may think I’m mad . . . but ’tis more than I can shtand . . . wit’out somewan to turrn to.’

  Jeremy, from another contemplation of staring Igulgul, looked again at Shamus, who laid a hand on his arm, saying almost shyly, ‘Would ye do me the grace, Jerry, me boy, to let me see this thing through in your company?’

  Jeremy looked surprised. He murmured, ‘How d’you mean, Shamus?’

  ‘Well, there’s this mad death-watch thing they’ve organised. I can’t very well absent meself from it entoirley. There’s suspicion and fear and British bullyin’ abroad. You can see it in in the oyes of men ye wanst trusted. No one will expect you to take part in annything. What was your intintion for tomorrow, annyway?’

  ‘Hadn’t thought of it. My mob will want to be in it, of course. I suppose I’ll spend most of the time in the stable, as I usually do Race Time.’

  ‘Ah . . . then would ye be after havin’ me wit’ ye . . . and we could drink a drop . . . and ye could kape an oye on me so’s I don’t overdo it?’

  The great face was working with emotion. For a moment Jeremy regarded it, then murmured, ‘Okay.’

  The great hands seized one of his, pumping and squeezing. ‘Thank ye, me boy, thank ye . . . you don’t know what it means to me.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  Finnucane leaned eagerly. ‘You do?’

  But Jeremy was not committing himself further. He released his hand, and hearing what the wind brought, said, ‘Sounds like they’re winding up, over there . . . so we can get back and have a sleep.’

  They were singing God Save the King at the Hall, and not making the usual skimpy mere declaration of what was called Loyalty, but really beefing it, giving it in its fullness:

  Oh, Lord our God arise, scatter his enemies,

  And low them bring.

  Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks,

  Smash them to bloody bits.

  God save the King!

  Jeremy said as they went back down to the crossing, ‘There’ll be some dry gullets after all that. You’ll have to hurry and open up, or they’ll have the door down.’

  Shamus whooped for joy, slapped Jeremy’s back: ‘Ah, Jerry, me boy, God bless ye! ’Tis the firrst toime I’ve had a laugh since Dunkirk.’

  They parted at the Lily Lagoons camp, with arrangements to meet early next morning, when Finnucane would bring along his radio, which he hoped to bribe one of the service technicians to hook up to the main set.

  Thursday morning’s trooping across the river to the Racecourse looked like any other in all the years of Beatrice Race Meetings — of course with the usual increase in numbers and greater disturbance of the peace and the purity of the atmosphere with the advance of humanity towards ultimate complete disuse of pedal appendages. For an hour the region lay under the pall of dust that was as ever just so much thicker than last year. The reek of gasolene was just so much more powerful. The small creatures of the surrounding bush scuttled away just that bit further, and the smothered trees drooped a little lower to the ordeal.

  But how strange and new the Initiation of Proceedings as the Committee had termed it. On the stroke of 1000 hours CST a military bugler, standing on the grandstand steps, sounded Reveille, while a sailor beside him ran the bundled bunting to the masthead on the roof and broke it out in true naval style — of course the Union Jack, Flag of Freedom, as Winston Churchill recently had described it to the world. Another Jack draped the table in the President’s box, where now stood Captain Toby, alone and rigidly at attention. He came to the salute as the Band on the flat before him struck up God Save the King. Likewise all other servicemen. Male civilians doffed their hats, even the black ones when they saw what their betters were doing. Even the horses, all now out in the centre paddock, were in it, crowding the rails, heads high, eyes and nostrils wide, beside themselves with curiosity over the antics of their masters. A couple of dogs sang to the band. Of all the gathering, the only ones who were At Ease, to put it in military terms, were Jeremy and Finnucane, seated in cane chairs in the human section of the Lily Lagoons stable. That they were not at ease literally was shown by Jeremy’s hasty reaching to turn down the volume of the radio, connected as it was to the general amplifying system. He turned it up when the music ceased and Captain Toby began to speak:

  ‘Comrades . . . as no doubt you are aware, the modern method of specifying warlike action is by means of code-names that can easily be abbreviated. Our own action is to be styled Operation Beatrice Ear-watch, abbreviated to OBE.’

  Jeremy groaned. Finnucane took a gulp of Tullamore Dew from the glass beside him.

  The megaphone voice went on. No doubt it coul
d have been heard from here even without electronic boosting: ‘The letters, of course, also mean Order of the British Empire, being that honour bestowed on individuals by our Gracious King . . . but in our case they mean no less than that. With the use of it we are acknowledging the Great Honour bestowed on us by birth, the grand and glorious Order of British Citizenship. I call on you one and all to initiate this action of ours by raising caps and voices in a cheer that will ring as far as our beleaguered Motherland . . . as, without exaggeration, I assure you it will, because I intend to make a despatch of this action, which eventually will reach the British Admiralty and Winston Churchill and His Majesty the King himself. Stand by to cheer!’

  Jeremy remarked, ‘He’s probably after the the OBE himself . . .’

  His voice was drowned by the thunder of the cheering. When the echoes had died, the sharp-eared might have heard the cockies complaining as again they shifted camp. The horses had vanished into dust and mirage. All the flies seemed to have come for refuge with those two solitaries in the Lily Lagoons stable. Shamus had to fish several drunk as Donnybrook Irishmen out of his Tullamore Dew.

  Whether by accident or design, the Action was timed nicely for reception of the final regular news-bulletin of the day from the BBC, that is of yesterday in local terms, it still being Wednesday Over There. The broadcast was typical of the period, given in that ’varsity drawl which long ago had given the enemy the impression that vanquishing the English was a walkover and which still must puzzle him with reporting the life-or-death struggle as if it were a jolly old game, don’t y’know — ‘Score at last postin’, one hundred and forty-eight for twenty-two. But as Jerry heads for home after that last nasty bit of sneak-bowling, he’ll be running into bright moonlight . . . so look forward to good opening figures for tomorrow’s innings. Today’s bag again . . . one hundred and forty-eight . . . not runs, but Huns, which means wickets, of course . . . for twenty-two of our bowlers. Rather foul havin’ to twist the jolly old rules round like this, I must say . . . but you all know what I mean, knowing the game. Jerry should have learnt the jolly old game before he took us on, what?’

  Then followed the Churchillian speech that had sparked off Captain Toby’s Action, its typical ponderosity so much at variance with what had gone before as surely to puzzle the enemy still more: ‘Whenever the weather . . . is favourable . . . waves of German bombers . . . often three or four hundred at a time . . . surge over this Island by daylight . . . to be met by our fighters . . . and their losses average three to one in machines and six to one in men.

  ‘This effort . . . of the Germans . . . to secure daylight mastery of the air over England . . . is the crux of the whole war. So far it has failed conspicuously. There is no doubt . . . that Herr Hitler is using up his fighter force . . . at a rate . . . that if he goes on . . . will wear down this vital part of his Air Force. That will give us great advantage.

  ‘For him to try to invade this country . . . without having mastery of the air . . . would be a most hazardous undertaking. Nevertheless, all his preparations . . . for what he calls Operation Sea Lion . . . which means invasion . . . move steadily forward. Every Continental harbour . . . from Norway to the Bay of Biscay . . . is crammed with vessels for this purpose. No one should blind himself . . . to German thoroughness and method.

  ‘This invasion cannot be long delayed. The weather will break at any time. Besides . . . he cannot keep these gatherings of ships and men . . . waiting indefinitely . . . expecially when we continually harass them from the air . . . and from the sea.

  ‘Therefore we must regard . . . the next few days . . . as perhaps . . . the most important . . . in our history. They rank with the days . . . when the Spanish Armada was approaching our shores . . . and Drake was playing . . . his famous game of bowls . . . or when Chatham stood between us and the Dutch . . . in the very Thames Estuary . . . or Nelson beat off the might of Napoleon . . . at Trafalgar. But what is happening now . . . is on a far greater scale . . . and of far more consequence to the life and future . . . of the world . . . and its civilisation . . . than what took place . . . in those brave old days.

  ‘As I told you . . . after the tragic Fall of France . . . the whole fury and might of the enemy . . . will be turned upon us. Herr Hitler knows that he will have to break us . . . or lose the war. If we can stand up to him . . . the life of the world may move forward . . . into broad sunlit uplands. But if we fail . . . then the whole world as we know it . . . and care for it . . . will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age . . . one made more sinister by the lights of perverted science.

  ‘Therefore . . . let us brace ourselves to our duties . . . and so bear ourselves . . . that if the British Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say . . . “This was their Finest Hour!”’

  The session ended with God Save the King, for which everybody leapt to their feet, except the pair lurking in the stable and a few of the more disloyal and somnolent of the dogs. When it was over, a strange silence fell on this region which had just now been so vibrant with electronic sound, so that anyone not deaf could have heard the cockies. Finnucane poured himself another whisky, gulped it, muttered, ‘Their foinest hour, begob! ’Tis loike a drame.’

  Jeremy said nothing, only looked at the troubled face with its ordinarily fearsome eyebrows rumpled again in misery.

  Again Captain Toby spoke from the bridge, but now with what might be called a parsonical note in the megaphone, as if he were standing cap-underarm, hymn-book-in-hand, delivering Sunday Service at Sea: ‘We will all join in singing the Doxology . . . will you oblige at the piano Mrs Cullity?’

  Finnucane uttered a whimpering sound — perhaps because involvement of his flesh and blood added to his burden, as suggested by still more miserable rumpling of those formerly fearsome brows. If so, it was his own fault, since it was on his recommendation that the piano was brought over from the pub, so as to lend some of the old-time flavour to the singing. A shrewd move, no doubt, not merely politic, but to cramp the martial style of the band. Another reason for it may have been Andy McDodds’s attempt to get into the act with his bagpipes as the proper instrument to cheer a beleaguered garrison. The fact that Captain Toby showed little or no respect for McDodds’s offer of service caused the old fellow to button his face up tight and retire to his store and stay there. Still, in practice it must have run deeply counter to anything Finnucane could have envisaged in his pride in his daughter’s playing music of sentiment so different from what was being demanded of her now. Something similar might have been felt by Jeremy, too, when later he heard that sweet boy’s soprano in which lately he had much delight, singing the airs of There’ll Always be an England:

  The Empire, too, we can depend on you.

  Freedom remains, these are the chains

  Nothing can break . . .

  While the crowd beefed the choruses.

  As the day wore on, with glimpses in fantasy created out of electronically translated words spoken of what was happening on the dark side of the world, Prindy’s singing became more and more in demand. There was not only the attraction of his voice, but of his appearance, since while he was leaving the Barbu booth to his father-in-law and wife, he was dressed as usual at this time of year as King of the World. That the demands on him were more in the nature of relief from the strain of belligerence was evident in the requests not for war-songs so much as those reminiscent of old times — Danny Boy, The Road to Gundagai, The Wild Colonial Boy. The yearning for what had been was expressed when during intervals newcomers asked about Prindy and in telling of his doubtful origin the old-timers conjured up the Shade of Daddy-o Cahoon in a guise so sentimental that, had the Sisters Cahoon been there and not fled the country, they could not have been but pleased. That silver soprano was sure proof, some of the old-timers said, of those claims old Dinny had often made in drink — for listen to that bull-frog croak of Martin Delacy!

  Prindy was also in demand for singing duets with those famous for their singing at
Race Time: Eddy McCusky and Constable Stunke and Bridie and Rifkah. He also sang trio with Rifkah and Chief Petty Officer Pickles, who had a goodly tenor, and who evidently had practised with the pair at the Mission. It was also evident that the CPO had a crush on Rifkah, the way he tried to shoulder off other men interested in her.

  So the nightmarish day wore through, its distant murder and mayhem, destruction and devastation, described ball-for-ball by several seemingly blasé BBC types, who occasionally had to raise their voices, wearily, above a background of cannonade that beat the sound-proofing of their watch-stations: ‘Well, that makes the bag for tonight forty-eight . . . Come on, you Raff cads, make it an even fifty before day breaks and brave old Frankenstein cuts and runs for home. I say . . . I wonder whether Aunty Hermann doubles his count of what gets home, so’s not to start Uncle Adolf chewin’ up the jolly old carpet in a fit, as they say he does when things go wrong, by telling him the truth about our baggin’ ’em . . . what?’

  Then the sirens came in joyfully sounding the All Clear.

  The last news dealt with the weather, which apparently was still not the kind to encourage invasion. Day was dawning over there, while here the West was gilding. The last item of warlike information was given with a yawn: ‘Usual enemy reconnaissance just shot down over Guildford. When will they ever learn that we’ve given up goin’ to bed since they forced us to adopt the twenty-four hour time system? Well . . . I expect that wraps it up for the night. Be seeing you . . . Good luck meantime.’

  Thereupon Captain Toby declared End of Watch for Day. All hands on deck tomorrow, 1000 hours — unless Red Warning sounded.

  By then Finnucane was well and truly drunk, slouched in his chair, muttering to himself, ‘Out’n their feet . . . poor bastards . . . dead, but won’ loy down . . . hic! Foinest Hour, says he . . . t’hour o’ their death, says I . . . poor bastards . . . now and at hour o’ death . . . Amen . . .’ Tears were trickling down the fleshy ruddy cheeks.