A Whispered Name

by William Brodrick

  ‘You come in the wake of Kate Seymour,’ said David, having introduced himself with a vigorous handshake. ‘I understand you’ve met.’ He placed a cup of tea on a side table near Anselm. ‘Martin effected the introduction. Said she was a private researcher and, like you, wanted to trace the missing pieces in Joseph Flanagan’s trial.’ He fell back in an armchair. ‘Frankly, we got the impression she was connected to the family and wouldn’t say so.’

  Which was hardly astonishing, he stressed. Often the relatives weren’t told about the execution of a husband, father or son. It was just ‘died of wounds’ if they were told at all. They found out, though, when a pension was stopped; when there was no ‘dead man’s penny’. That’s when the shame began, and a great silence without any commemoration.

  While he spoke gently, using modest hand gestures – offering a plate; cake? More tea? – Anselm could feel the tenacity of the advocate in David’s voice. He was an Osborne soldier, too. Anselm felt vaguely at risk.

  ‘Sometimes a relative asks why granddad’s name isn’t on the memorial,’ continued David. ‘Questions are asked. The stitching gives way. They get a fresh perspective on the army that won the war.’

  ‘Nine out of ten had their sentence commuted,’ said Sarah, eyes closing.

  ‘One in ten was shot,’ corrected David. ‘The weak were sent to the wall.’

  The strong win wars, guessed Anselm.

  There was a pause while father and daughter regarded each other across the divide of statistics and interpretation. In the hush, and not for the first time, Anselm tried to craft a ninth Beatitude: Blessed are the strong for they … He couldn’t work out what might come next.

  ‘We went to my study,’ said Sarah, changing the subject. ‘I dug out all my files for the period September to December nineteen seventeen. This included all Ralph’s extant notes, letters and diaries, along with material sent to him or retained by him. We drew a complete blank. The name Flanagan does not occur, presumably because at the time Ralph had a war in mind, along with the lives of a hundred and fifty thousand men.’

  Blessed are the strong, suggested Anselm, for they are not yet weak.

  ‘Before she left,’ began David, ‘I wanted to help her … to try and loosen the grip of this tragedy on the family. I said that finding the missing papers wouldn’t explain why Joseph Flanagan’s sentence was confirmed. That he’d been a victim of a system that thought in straight, brutal lines.’ He shrugged his dissatisfaction. ‘All she said was that this trial was different … that it had a meaning. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever confronted. The wounded looking for meaning in the one place it cannot be found.’

  Tea, sandwiches and cake don’t go well with this kind of conversation, concluded Anselm. Any more than beer and crisps. When the trolley had been rolled to one side, he asked a question out of politeness.

  ‘Why are you sure that Flanagan was shot? The file, to my mind, was ambiguous.’

  ‘Two reasons,’ said David. ‘First, there was a degree of anxiety in the High Command about the effect of contemporaneous events on the troops.’

  ‘There’d been a rebellion in Ireland in nineteen sixteen,’ explained Sarah. ‘And nineteen seventeen was a bad year: in spring the French were dazed by mutiny; in September some of our lot took to the streets of Étaples. Meanwhile, Third Ypres had to be won. Flanagan was tried and condemned in that climate.’

  ‘And in that climate, I think the top brass were looking for an example,’ resumed David, ‘which brings me to the second reason. This was a time when the British attitude towards the Irish was often tainted by antipathy and—’

  ‘Wasn’t it Meredith who said that the Irish provided the English with her soldiers and generals?’ quoted Sarah, wanting to dissociate herself from the coming argument.

  David paid no heed to Meredith. He shrugged himself forward and said, on the edge of his seat, ‘There seems to be a correlation between recruitment figures throughout the empire and death sentences passed on regiments from individual countries. For example, sixty-seven per cent were recruited in England and sixty-five per cent of death sentences were imposed on English regiments – and, in passing, I’d point out that almost half of those who were subsequently shot came from the working class north – but it’s the pattern I’m stressing now.’

  ‘And that pattern holds for other countries?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘Indeed it does,’ replied David. ‘For Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand …’

  David paused and Anselm said, ‘And Ireland?’

  ‘That’s the one exception to the rule. The Irish recruitment figure stood at two per cent, but the convicted Irishman was four times more likely to get a death sentence. That was Flanagan’s real problem, as much as his conduct. He was born in the wrong place and he was tried by the wrong people at the wrong time.’

  Anselm dabbed his mouth with a napkin, though his lips were dry.

  ‘You won’t find a shred of paper that reveals a deliberate policy,’ said Sarah, wearily. ‘Not an instruction, a memo, a letter, a memoir. Nothing.’ She stood up and smoothed her dress. ‘Father, would you like to see what I did find? It may not take you much closer to an understanding of Joseph Flanagan, but it will shed a little light on Herbert Moore.’

  2

  Sarah’s study looked on to the undulating fields of Cambridgeshire. Anselm’s attention, however, was with the rows of box files covering the life of General Osborne. Each was labelled with a year, beginning in 1860 through to 1953. For the period 1914–1918 there was an entire shelf for each year. Pebbles of various sizes, chunks of driftwood and shells covered the borders of Sarah’s desk, surrounding a blue folder and a black ledger.

  ‘I’m writing this biography for my father,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t do it himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was very close to its subject. Ralph lost his son in nineteen seventeen and David lost his father in nineteen forty-four. Both killed in action. Of course, with that first death, David had lost his grandfather, and with the second Ralph had lost a grandson. Unexpressed grief bound them together for the sixteen years they shared this house. Unexpressed because dying was a family tradition. We were prepared for it.’ Anselm noticed that Sarah had almost left herself out of the reckoning, though the cost of war had determined the focus of her life. She was a military biographer. A regular visitor to the PRO. ‘My father was the first to refuse the uniform,’ she said, not quite sadly but with pity, ‘and his rage and sadness have settled on the cause of those who were not prepared and who had no one to speak for them. We agree more than he admits, actually. Here, look at this.’

  Sarah sat at her desk and opened the blue folder. She gave Anselm a memo from General Osborne to all three Divisional Commanders under his control. It was entitled ‘Desertion and Drunkenness’.

  ‘After Kate Seymour’s visit, I read the Flanagan file for myself,’ said Sarah. ‘I then went back to my own records. This memo was written on the 10th September nineteen seventeen – the very day Ralph gave his recommendation to reduce Flanagan’s death sentence to a term of imprisonment.’

  While reading the text, Anselm wedged himself on to a sofa loaded with books. Strips of white paper hung out from the ends like so many tongues panting at his elbow. The general was concerned about a spate of recent cases in which drunkenness was the cause of absence from duty. He wrote:

  Intoxication is increasingly presenting itself as an excuse when a soldier appears unrepresented at a court martial. Please warn all ranks that such offenders will be liable on conviction to the full penalty for desertion.

  ‘By implication,’ resumed Sarah, ‘Ralph was for commuting Flanagan’s sentence, but then sent out a warning to say he’d be the last. And since Ralph was the most senior voice in the review process, there’s every reason to suppose that his opinion carried weight.’

  Anselm had read the warning. It was set out in the Adjutant and Quartermaster General’s diar
y. On reflection it had saddened Anselm. Drunkenness must have been a means of escape from the hallucinations brought on by war, and even that route, at times, had to be blocked.

  ‘Flanagan remains, as ever, elusive,’ said Anselm, disingenuously.

  ‘As does Captain Herbert Moore.’

  She tidied the blue folder and opened the black ledger.

  ‘Ralph kept a daily journal throughout the war, covering more personal matters,’ she said. ‘The entries are spare. For example, when his son died in August nineteen seventeen he simply wrote, “Bernard killed at St Julien. Twenty-two yrs seven m two d nine h. Am heartbroken.” So he was not a man of many words. This is what he penned on fourteenth September – two weeks after the trial and four days after his recommendation on Flanagan. I’ve made a copy for you, but here is the original.’

  Anselm took the ledger carefully and placed it on his knees. The General’s handwriting was, of course, familiar, very small and perfectly legible. He read the passage identified by Sarah’s finger.

  Woken up at 1.37 a.m. Herbert Moore wanted interview. Broke some regimental crockery long ago. Mended. (Served with father at Spion Kop.) Came on matter of conscience rather than law. Did what I could. Fitful.

  ‘Whether this refers to Flanagan or not I don’t know,’ said Sarah, hands behind her head. ‘Most personal war diaries are annoyingly cryptic because noting the detail was forbidden. But sometimes you can read between the lines … and I sense the conclusion of Flanagan’s review process.’

  Anselm wished David farewell and then joined Sarah between the pillars of the portico. A family’s history added shadows of experience to her face, a generational mark from events she had not known, but which had touched her nonetheless. He sensed, correctly, that she wanted to say something, to state her case on the troubled question of military justice in action. After all, her great-great-grandfather had recommended the extreme sanction on several occasions. He was implicated in a process that had become, for some, a scandal. She, like her father, was an advocate.

  ‘The problem with a morally necessary war is that morally unnecessary things happen,’ she said, steeled to the reality of her own remark. ‘No one is proud of that. But we have to remember, also, that the rank and file stared a senseless death straight in the face and went on, for love of king and country. On the day of any execution you care to mention, four hundred men were killed in action. We can’t take anything away from their resolve.’

  Anselm nodded, fumbling for his car keys. He agreed entirely. They did their duty, while others, for whatever reason – be it choice or illness – did not. But he had a squint of his own on to the past: some of those others had been executed; and defending them now, late in the day, did not prosecute the achievement of those who’d fallen nobly. It was a thought Anselm would keep to himself. Sarah didn’t seem to accept that tragedies never compete for pole position. There needn’t be a winner.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Heavens Open

  On the 13th September the preliminary bombardment opened up. Herbert looked from the mock battlefield to the savage sky over Ypres and the Salient. Even from this distance the noise was terrific, not through volume but depth. He tried to imagine the amount of ironware screaming through the air and the devastation it would unleash. Theoretically, the German defence zone was being ripped apart, inch by inch: wire, men and soil being thrown high into the air. According to Tomlinson, revealing another secret not to be shared with the Kaiser, the pounding would increase every day, building up to Zero hour on the 20th.

  ‘It’ll be bloody hell,’ he disclosed, speaking exactly. ‘Furthermore, twice daily, at fixed intervals, the artillery boys will rehearse the barrage scheme that will protect the advancing attack brigades.’ And as if answering the cocky Australian officer who’d implied there would be no element of surprise, he added, ‘Of course, Jerry’ll know we’re coming –’ he paused for effect – ‘but he’ll be in no fit state to organise a welcome party.’

  The thunder went on and on. The battle drill became tense, and voices were raised. There were no more jokes. Men crouched by their line of coloured tape knowing that soon it would all be real. That evening, the riot of crumping fell on the pitch, and the men played wildly, some awful force having entered their limbs. They sweated and grunted after the ball, and Elliot laughed hysterically. Pickles yelled at Flanagan to keep behind the back feet of his own defenders, but he kept running forward, off-side. And Herbert kept looking up at the sky, awed by the awful weight it was carrying. The bellies of the Observation Balloons flashed with sallow light from the inferno on the ground. They were tethered over the entrance to Hell. What could they see?

  In the darkness of his billet Herbert lay on his bed, listening to the haemorrhage of steel. Fear settled upon him, for what was to come. And he panicked for what he might leave behind, for he was no closer to understanding Joseph Flanagan. The Irishman was either detached from his circumstances or resigned to them: it was impossible to say which. Either way, he seemed indifferent to the fact that his sentence was under review and that a decision on his life would arrive without warning. The only way to explain such indifference was to entertain the unimaginable: that Flanagan was following a chosen path, fully appreciating the direction it would take.

  Herbert, on the other hand, felt the increasing pressure keenly. He’d got nowhere in understanding the trial, and time was running out. And he’d got nowhere because Flanagan only spoke about his life before he joined the army. Everything after enlistment was vague, as if it hadn’t really happened, or as if Flanagan hadn’t been there. In rest moments during training, or on the way to the football field, Herbert had talked innocently of Étaples or Abeele and the tremendous bond between Irish lads in the army, but Flanagan had left the bait, in each case, completely untouched. On the other hand, when Herbert had asked him, again, why he’d left labouring to join the army, he got a comprehensive answer.

  When Flanagan got to Tyneside he knocked on the door of Mr Drennan’s friend: a fervent nationalist named Power who loathed England. Mr Power gave him a room in the attic and a job at a shipyard where he was foreman. Of a night, Flanagan would join the family at table. Talk turned frequently to the war and the men from the docks whose names had appeared on the casualty lists. Many of them were Irish. In a strange way, Flanagan was moved by these countrymen, away from their country, who’d died for another country. And it struck him that these people somehow or other fell outside the Drennan code of honour; that his old teacher, for all his revolutionary credentials, had, in fact, turned his back on a great struggle. He’d barely mentioned the war. Here, in Tyneside, that was inconceivable.

  Shortly afterwards, Flanagan met Eamon O’Brien. He was a tall Kerry man with flaming red hair. Everyone called him High-Pockets. He was going to enlist, he said. This was a world war, he said. There were Turks involved. Germany was expansionist, he added, getting his mouth stuck on the length of the word. But he understood what it meant. And High-Pockets was going to do something about it. ‘Fine, so’ said Mr Power, when he told him, ‘but I can’t keep your job open.’ To Mr Power’s astonishment, Flanagan resigned too. There and then. And with High-Pockets and four lads from Kerry, all shipyard men, he went to a recruitment booth on Grey Street and joined the NLI.

  Only it wasn’t that simple … for Flanagan wasn’t that simple. Herbert had listened, noting once more that characteristic, profound disobedience. Just as the islander had cut loose from his people’s expectations, so had he cut loose from Mr Drennan’s. Flanagan had become his own master, a rebel and a freeman; a soldier before his chosen Colours. But Herbert had also listened, wondering how events could unfold such that this man, of all men, would one day be tried for desertion? Flanagan had given no clues. He’d only mentioned the trial once, stunning Herbert by his abruptness. ‘Sir,’ he’d whispered, when Herbert had awarded a penalty against him, ‘I hold no resentment against you.’

  The guns thundered over Ypres and Herb
ert’s stomach rolled. Fear was always a fresh emotion; it always brought a pure havoc to the mind and body. Holding himself tight, he closed his eyes. And there, plain as day, he saw Quarters, helpless and expectant. Herbert shot bolt upright, his chest pounding. The farm machinery seemed ready to pounce, the angled limbs spiked and sharp. After he’d calmed down, he lay slowly back, remembering that night in August when he’d seen Flanagan and Father Maguire huddled in the rain. They’d spoken Gaelic in hurried tones. And Flanagan had then gone to Étaples with Owen Doyle.

  ‘What happened over there?’ whispered Herbert. ‘Why did you come back?’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Parting Words

  1

  Lisette crouched by Flanagan’s chair, the candlelight bright in her eyes. They were alone now. Doyle was asleep upstairs in Louis’ bed. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner, the heavy strikes sounding hollow in its box.

  ‘Is it true?’ she whispered. ‘Will you stay?’

  Exhaustion laid hold of Flanagan. He wanted to lie down for ever.

  ‘Won’t you run to me?’ said Lisette, touching his hand.

  Her skin was warm and Flanagan couldn’t take his gaze off her nails. They were cut short for the serving and cleaning, though some were still split and ragged.

  ‘I have to go,’ he muttered, at last. ‘The boys are waiting at Black Eye Corner.’ He struggled with another explanation, because it was so obvious, but it was important. ‘The war hasn’t ended.’

  Lisette folded herself over until her knuckles touched the floor. ‘Don’t join Louis, I beg you. There are plenty of other soldiers for the front. They don’t need another one.’

  Flanagan looked down upon the woman he’d never touched. When he’d first met her, he’d been deadened by the war. The very sight of her had drawn him back to the sensations of ordinary living. But it was because his sensibilities had recovered that his nerve snapped during the burials last spring, and again after the mines at Messines. He’d been defenceless. But, being exposed, important truths had slipped home; and they’d brought him here, on this night, with a purpose: a purpose that would save Lisette as much as Doyle. Slowly, Flanagan reached down towards the bunched black hair.