A Whispered Name

by William Brodrick

‘You tell the OC firing party. He takes care of any complications.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Obvious really. Right-o. What time did Duggie say?’

  ‘The where and the when are being revised as we speak,’ said Herbert. ‘Chamberlayne will let you know within the hour.’

  Tindall nodded, lowering the lamp’s wick a fraction. He closed one eye as if to be absolutely sure of the measurement. The light dipped with the loss of flame. ‘Funny, isn’t it; I’ve handled the RAP at harvest time but I still don’t want to do this. Even though I feel nothing for the blighter, it’s different, somehow.’

  Herbert nodded. It was very different.

  ‘You know, I always wanted to be a vet.’

  ‘Yes. Goodnight, Oliver.’

  ‘Just one thing, old man … none of this is your fault, you know. You’ve done your duty, that’s all.’

  Herbert left the medic and went in search of Father Maguire. He wasn’t in his billet, or the abbey, so Herbert went back to Duggie’s office. Somehow or other, all this charging around helped, as if the frenzy might, by some miracle, prevent the inevitable.

  2

  Chamberlayne was sitting on the edge of his desk, the telephone mouthpiece thrust against his mouth. He was listening, one foot tapping gently on the floor. Duggie sat with his legs crossed, one hand scratching a cheek. Quietly, he said, ‘It’s Brigade.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t make it any clearer,’ said Chamberlayne, sympathetically. ‘The Company Commanders refuse. All of them.’

  Chamberlayne listened, nodding. ‘I’d have thought various offences meet the bill: Mutiny, Dis obedience, Scandalous Conduct—’

  Pause.

  ‘Murray, I’ve made a habit of never joking with intellectual subordinates; it causes untold complications, and now is not the time to make an exception. Let me try again. The officers of the eighth Battalion, Northumberland Light Infantry, refuse to organise a firing party, don’t you understand? You’re not going to arrest them all, are you?’

  Pause.

  ‘Good evening, Major. I’m terribly sorry but Lieutenant Colonel Hammond is engaged with Father Maguire, the Chaplain, and I’m most reluctant to interrupt their conversation. It’s a spiritual matter, I believe.’

  Pause.

  ‘Indeed, Sir … of course, Sir … frequently, Sir … in those circumstances, might I be impertinent and offer some advice? I’m grateful, Sir. The problem is quite simple. Flanagan has been with our battalion since nineteen fifteen. He’s been in action countless times. He’s never taken home leave. He’s one of the survivors, Sir. Good moral is not served, I respectfully suggest, by asking other veterans or the new boys to shoot him, even if – in the end – he did let down his own side.’

  Pause.

  ‘Disgraceful is the only word, Sir.’

  Pause.

  ‘Quite. You are wise, Sir. I suggest another regiment, Sir … I’ll tell him directly, Sir … goodnight, Sir.’

  Chamberlayne put the phone down and said, ‘Major Ashcroft will handle the firing party. But we have to send the RMO. He says if the battalion hadn’t been wiped out in August and we weren’t due back in the line, he’d tell Pemberton immediately. As things stand, he’ll let the matter drop.’

  Duggie stood up, hands behind his back. He knew that his tolerance of dissent was a failure of leadership; that Pemberton would find out eventually; that his military career was probably over. ‘Fine. And now, gentle men, understand something.’ His gaze jumped from Chamberlayne to Herbert and back again. ‘This is my battalion. It is my pride. There is nothing else I can do for Flanagan. I’ve done too much already, you both know that. We must all, now, stand side by side. Flanagan will be shot tomorrow morning. We will then thrash the Lancashire Fusiliers. And we will then go back into the line and do whatever is required of us, at whatever cost.’ Duggie’s neck swelled with blood and his voice became spare. ‘We will lead our men in the memory of those who’ve gone before. Flanagan may rank among them, as far as I’m concerned. Look to him in any way you like. But from now on he’s an example.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Vigil Begins

  1

  Chamberlayne told Herbert that the Chaplain had gone to the cellar where Flanagan would spend his last night. On a practical note, a detail from D Company had checked out the woods referred to by Herbert. They’d followed the track and found a clearing open to the sky. A fence post had been procured from the carpenter and sunk into the ground. Unfortunately it kept falling over when leaned on, so a chair had been taken from the music depot and placed before it – rendering the timber quite useless, but, to quote Chamberlayne, an aesthetic quality had been retained that was wholly proper to the proceedings.

  It was now 8.50 p.m. Herbert walked briskly towards the village school in Oostbeke. The land being so flat, his attention was drawn to the sky. A deep indigo announced the coming night, washed out in places and streaked above the trees with that fresh green found in young peas. It seemed wrong, the beauty of it, since the sky was polluted with steel. He passed the abbey and the closed-up barn and shortly nodded at the guard before the cellar steps. After the door had been unlocked Herbert entered a gloom lit by a candle.

  Flanagan was sitting on a chair, his chin propped on one hand, the elbow resting on the knee like a pillar. The jaw was pushed to one side by the weight of his head. His eyes were closed, presenting a picture of resignation and powerlessness that Herbert could not bear to contemplate. He was like a king in the moments following his abdication. Herbert shook Father Maguire’s hand, waiting for Flanagan’s eyes to open, but they remained closed.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go,’ said Herbert to the Chaplain, all at once feeling his presence to be blindingly inappropriate. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. I just …’

  Flanagan opened his eyes. ‘No, stay, so.’ He stood up and raised a hand in salute. Without a belt his trousers slipped right off his waist and he looked like a clown.

  ‘Stop,’ said Herbert, flinching.

  He stepped further into the room. The walls were brick, like upstairs. The candle’s flame threw the shadow back; it was like a quivering canopy over them all.

  ‘I wish you’d got home by Christmas, Private,’ said Herbert.

  ‘Aye, me too.’

  The three men were silent. Herbert sensed he’d brought the Army into the cell; that he represented its code, its requirements.

  ‘You know, Sir, I joined without a noble thought in my head,’ said Flanagan. He spoke to the system, wanting to have a last word, before its wheels rolled forward. ‘I just came over with the lads. But I hadn’t expected –’ he shifted in his seat – ‘this tearing up of the land, with us all floundering in the holes, in a fight without end.’

  Herbert sighed a yes. Whenever Flanagan had spoken of ‘the land’ before, it was always in relation to Inisdúr. This was the first time he’d used that term when talking of the world beyond his island’s shores.

  Father Maguire strode behind Flanagan. Close-shaven with hair like silver wire, he had a stern reserve, save for something generous in the wide gestures of his arms. He placed two huge hands on the sides of the prisoner’s shoulders and rubbed them as if the muscles had cramped and his palms were laced with ointment. ‘You’ve done your part, my boy, so you have. You have a nobility none can see.’

  Herbert realised that they were speaking English on his account. It humbled him, for their linguistic habitat was Gaelic. He’d heard them in the reserve trench beneath the rain; he’d listened to them squabble over the off-side rule.

  ‘I want to ask you a question,’ said Herbert. Apart from the chaplain’s stool, there was nowhere to sit and he felt awkward, hovering with all his authority … his English weightiness. ‘Why didn’t you go home?’ He spoke for the family whose names he’d heard, and the crowd who’d stood around the slip.

  ‘Hah …’ breathed Flanagan – Father Maguire kneaded the shoulders, pressing deep into the muscle beneath the uni
form – ‘I couldn’t, sure, that was impossible.’

  ‘But why?’ pleaded Herbert, seeing a route of escape abandoned.

  ‘If I’d as much as seen those three fields –’ he gnawed a lip and his brow tightened – ‘I’d never have come back to Flanders.’

  ‘And no one would have been able to bring you … to this.’ Herbert’s strained face showed all he’d learned of the island. No one could have crossed from the mainland to bring Flanagan back to his unit. They’d have been stoned, like the taxman.

  Flanagan nodded, and like a father the chaplain moved his warming hands on to the neck and head. ‘But, you know, Sir, I wouldn’t leave Major Dunne, the RSM or the new boys.’

  ‘They know that, Joseph,’ said Father Maguire, his hands gripping the shoulders again.

  Herbert wanted to push down the walls, to bring fresh air into this darkening pit. Surely Muiris, Flanagan’s father, the man who’d made the fields, or Róisín, a mother famed for her quilt work, surely one of them had fallen on their knees and begged him to return – in a letter or a message. He didn’t know how to raise their names without wounding the man who’d never see them again.

  ‘Since nineteen sixteen, it’s been difficult for Irish soldiers,’ said Father Maguire, his face dark, his spiky hair catching the candle’s flare. ‘There’s been a rising, you know that.’

  Herbert did, but it hadn’t influenced his outlook on individual troops. He’d heard the odd remark from Staff Officers, functionaries away from the firing line, but not in the 8th. Staff Officers were full of that kind of thing: always in ‘the know’, like Tomlinson, and slightly aloof, hinting they were privy to the Field Marshal’s current strategic view. The Irish battalions were first class, one gloved Colonel had said, but one has to watch the wind towards England. What had that meant? It was plain nonsense. A Captain from a cavalry regiment: ‘The fact is, we’re roast beef and Yorkshire pud and they’re bacon and cabbage. You have to keep an eye on the kitchen.’ More nonsense.

  ‘Trust is the question,’ said Father Maguire, ‘here and in Ireland. Some dare not go home on leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s possible they might be killed, for being in the British Army … on the mainland, at least. There’s a place for them in London.’

  Herbert hadn’t known. No one had ever mentioned it to him. He looked down at the prisoner, understanding everything: Flanagan didn’t go home because he knew he’d never come back; he couldn’t go home, even if he wanted, because his world had turned off its axis. Flanagan had been trapped: by himself and by his people. And now we are going to shoot him. ‘He’s never taken home leave,’ Chamberlayne had said to Major Ashcroft at Brigade. Where, then, had he gone? Herbert dared not ask … because it no longer mattered, nothing mattered. Flanagan’s life was draining on to a cellar floor, like one of the wounded in the helpless arms of Oliver Tindall.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Herbert said. He had to leave and yet he knew he could not keep away. ‘May I return? Later?’

  Father Maguire whispered something in Gaelic, a soft phrase that made Flanagan smile. ‘The door is always open,’ he said.

  2

  Herbert ran down the road towards the Divisional camp, not knowing where he was going or what he would do. But his mind searched for a lever, a switch, a spanner to throw at the cogs now moving, but there was nothing he could find. Flanagan was to be an Example. To the 8th. The whole Brigade. To the Division. To the Corps. To the Army. To the whole BEF. That was quite an honour. And no one would be watching, and no one would be remotely persuaded that they ought to fight that little bit harder.

  Out of breath, Herbert came to the abbey. He pushed open the gate and passed through the white door at the end of the corridor. Staying at the back, he recovered his breath. Up there, near the little light, he’d prayed – for the first time in his life and with desperation. ‘What can I do?’ he said, helplessly. ‘I still don’t know why Flanagan went to Étaples. He went with someone from another battalion in another brigade, but he came back … because he wouldn’t leave his comrades.’

  Herbert looked right and left, to the statues of the men and women. Their heads were bowed in confident supplication despite the prevalence of tragedy. The scent of wax and fading incense seem to creep upon him, increasing its concentration. While it was soothing, Herbert felt a most suffocating responsibility for what was now unfolding. Major Ashcroft had been on to another regiment. There will have been a hell of a row, with the unfortunate CO finally wading in to give Duggie an earful. Meanwhile, a detail of sixteen soldiers will have been formed. Minutes before, any of those men were probably playing Brag or Pontoon. They, like Herbert, would now be marked for life by something quite different from the horrors of front-line fighting. Inner disgust swelled in Herbert’s lungs. He quickly made for the door and the cool air of evening. If he was to do anything to save this man, the reason lay in the Étaples fiasco. It was now 10.20 p.m. He would have to go back to the cellar and ask Flanagan – beg him – in the name of Muiris and Róisín, to explain why he’d returned when Doyle had stayed away.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Muiris and Róisín

  ‘Won’t you tell him what you’ve done and why?’ repeated Father Maguire in English. ‘It’s the only thing that remains to be done. You should release the man from his burden.’

  ‘But then he’ll be trapped,’ said Flanagan. ‘The CO will have to be told and then Lisette will be arrested … and maybe Doyle, if he’s still there.’

  ‘I assure you, Seosamh, that officer is not going to say anything to anyone. Come here, will you?’

  Flanagan stood, one hand bunching the material at the front of his trousers. He dragged the chair a few feet towards the table and sat down again, leaning towards the candle. Father Maguire sat facing him. Between them, in the pool of light, was the letter for Lisette. The priest reached over with two hands, and Flanagan took them in his own. They gripped each other like in a game of strength.

  ‘Have you written to your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘No, sure … how could I?’

  The night before Flanagan left Inisdúr his father banged on the bedroom door. He was a big man, a man of authority, a man who knew every rock on the island. He was much respected. The mainland was unknown to him, save as a place that sent forth priests and doctors. He’d only ever rowed to another island – Inismin, where he’d met Róisín at a dance. The matchmaker had said it was perfect, for while Muiris could be obstinate like rock, Róisín had the strength of the sea.

  ‘Here is what’s yours by right, boy,’ said Muiris, standing in the doorway. He held out the money promised after the argument when Seosamh had said his mind was made up. Towering by the door, Muiris was blocking the idea of any true departure.

  Seosamh took the money … a thick wad of notes, more than he’d ever seen; he hadn’t the faintest idea where his father had kept it. The paper was damp and the edges mouldy.

  ‘Won’t you stay?’ asked his father, this bull of a man, weakened by something he dared not understand.

  ‘I can’t say any more,’ mumbled Seosamh, feeling the chill in the money.

  ‘Seosamh, we have three fields, our fields, your grandfather made one of them, I made the other … and we … we made the third. That one is ours.’

  The seaweed had been dried on the flat rocks. They’d dragged it by cart up a track to the farm and spread out the black life-source, before descending to the cove, to haul out more weed for the drying and the dragging. They’d made endless trips, up and down, and then heaved up the sand, in sacks and with the cart. Always up, up, up, towards the flat space that captured the sun. In silence they’d raked and sifted and gently turned the growing soil. Often, when he’d woken in the morning, Seosamh had found his father carrying a rock to the field, for the wall yet to be built. A bowed man he’d been at such times, with a great stone on his shoulder.

  �
�The fields are made,’ Seosamh said.

  But Muiris wanted another. For Brendan, who was listening from the corridor.

  ‘And a man has no other needs, save a wife, a good woman, and my eye is open for you, boy.’ Muiris had swelled with anticipation. ‘The matchmaker has confidence.’

  The Matchmaker. Old Tomás Ó Broin, a broker of fates over poitín. Seosamh hadn’t appreciated that his father had made soundings.

  ‘Are you not happy, son?’ Muiris could be gentle, his big limbs incongruous with his lightness of tongue. He moved from the doorway and sat on Seosamh’s bed. ‘The farm, the fishing … is it not enough?’

  Seosamh couldn’t reply. He wanted his father to leave, to go back through the low door. He hated himself for rejecting this man who loved him. But their worlds were different. Seosamh wanted to cross the sea.

  ‘If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.’

  He’d said the same thing by the fire before their argument, quietly puffing his pipe, when Seosamh had said he wanted to walk for miles without sight of the sea. He may as well have spoken in English. How could Seosamh even begin to talk of Mr Drennan’s map?

  ‘Why labour on someone else’s land?’ pursued Muiris.

  Seosamh unrolled the money. Some of the notes were stuck together. He’d have to dry them out carefully. ‘It’s not the labouring that’s important.’

  ‘Because there’s things to be seen beyond three green fields?’ added his father, like a man citing a learned poem he’d never understood. And yet, in that slight mockery, Seosamh discerned a refusal in his father: a refusal to look upon an unknown that had perhaps once attracted him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s that teacher, isn’t it? This is Drennan’s doing.’

  ‘No,’ shouted Seosamh, rising high, and angry, ‘This is my doing.’ He stabbed his chest with each word, and then his hands fell. He was penitent, but resolved to sin.

  Until then, when left alone – for his father stooped beneath the door’s beam and trod heavily away, striking the walls with his fists – he hadn’t realised the great gulf between the rough and the smooth, between Muiris and Róisín.