A Long Long Way

by Sebastian Barry

  It was the Dostoevsky that had made that winter near Ypres well-nigh bearable. Willie didn’t cry then. He felt proud, somehow, and loving towards Timmy Weekes. The King of England was a gentleman and his soldier Timmy Weekes was, too. The war was a fucking folly and it had ruined the lot of them and even the living were ruined, and it would never be any different, but Timmy Weekes was a gentleman.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Sarge,’ said Willie Dunne.

  ‘I just thought you might like to have it,’ said Christy Moran, in elegant tones not entirely characteristic of him.

  ‘How in the world did you get out of that, Joe?’ said Willie next day, crouched down together in the daylight in a manner that now seemed immemorial.

  ‘ Ah, well,‘ said Joe, ’it just came round in a handy way.‘

  ‘How so, Joe?’

  ‘I was trying my best to kill those poor fellas, rushing towards me. I was going along not so well, when somewhere behind them they began firing these huge shells, big mortar jobs that fell straight down from the blessed heavens, and they came short of me anyhow, and killed a rake of their own fellas. You lads were gone a good half-hour and there was a big gap in the lines coming at me, and I thought to myself, Is that enough time now to give you? And I saw this great horde of grey jackets come streaming in the distance, yelling like madmen, so I said to myself, It is! and went galloping off after ye, but it was days and days till I found the sergeant.’

  ‘You deserve a big medal for that, Joe.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Joe.

  The summer of 1918 passed and Major Stokes was found hanged in a little haybarn three miles from a recent battlefield. His fine black motorbike was found neatly propped outside. His note to his wife mentioned the stresses of the war and apologized for his apparent cowardice. He put on record his love for his three sons. He hoped they would be spared such a war in the future. He didn’t mention Jesse Kirwan.

  Now the regiments of the Yanks had done their long training and were putting their polished toes into the blood and wastelands of the war. It was their coming in — and the very resplendent look of them, fellas that seemed inches taller, and wider, and stronger, and generally larger, like giants in a storybook fed on beef and turkeys — it was their coming in that eased the anxieties of the government, and so feared conscription was let go by in Ireland. There’d be no new hordes of Irish lads following in behind, against their will or willingly. Whoever was out there already was all there was, and all there would be, of Ireland now in the fields of Flanders.

  And yet those were soon the days when the army surged forward, lost many more thousands to Hades and heaven, offered here and there the long-desired sight of the cavalries cantering over spreading farms — in their dull khaki certainly, but the horses putting out the flags of their manes, and all those men surging at last on those epic creatures, and the grey and darkening men of the Kaiser driven fiercely towards Germany.

  And here and there along the roads Willie’s lot shared the way now and then with American units, astonishing tall lads, they seemed to him, any one of which his father would have been proud to have as a son, if height were the measure of a true son. King Death maybe eyed them differently. Why, in the space of a few weeks they lost three hundred thousand men, it was said, and that was a dire slaughter to equal any of the suffering nations.

  They passed on and on through Flanders. And that was almost the first time in the long years that Willie got a tincture again in his heart of the impulse that had brought him out, to put his hand to freeing old Belgium. And he was astonished to feel it again.

  All that wild day they pressed on after the fleeing Hun. But it was a strange business, that fleeing. They never did see the vanishing army, hastening back to their homeland. What country would they find there? What greeting would they have? Maybe they will be stoned, maybe they will be greeted like heroes. Maybe their country too had changed behind them and was no more, was another country altogether. Starving in their shoes, the officer had said. It was rumoured the old Kaiser would be killed, or he would pack up and go and be Kaiser no more. The men generally would have liked him to be captured. Maybe to be hung up alive in a public place and his guts put out for himself! After all the sear death and dark griefs he had brought to the nations!

  As they followed in the wake of the German divisions, moving it must be like deer and rabbits back through the unopened woodlands, the neglected fallow fields, it was dismaying to Willie to see everything had been levelled and destroyed. How had they found time to crush down the buildings of Flanders, to burn the aching fields? They feared to drink from the rivers and wells for dread of poison. It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.

  Past every building Willie in his mind built them up again, he forced himself to see the scaffolding poles lashed up, and the masons and the carpenters come again, and everything being made anew. They would be busy hereabouts, the armies of the sacred building trades.

  He could feel the ending in his bones. He followed Christy Moran like he had done now for three years. He was light in his bones, the sergeant-major, he hadn’t changed much. He still whistled brief Dublin songs and still muttered to himself, cursing and coining dark phrases. He could have been put, Willie thought, to be King of Ireland. He could not be discouraged. If the Boche had had him for Kaiser ... The wrong men were up and the wrong were down. That thought had turned Russia on her head, and made the brave French fellas down guns and tools in ‘17. A thought that had brought out the men in Dublin, and that had killed Jesse Kirwan into the bargain.

  He knew he had no country now. He knew it well. Finally the words of Jesse Kirwan had penetrated deep into the sap of his brain and he understood them. All sorts of Irelands were no more, and he didn’t know what Ireland there was behind him now. But he feared he was not a citizen, they would not let him be a citizen. He would have no pride to be walking through Stephen’s Green, he would not have the mercy of youth or the hastening thoughts of age. They may stone him too when he returned, or burn the house of himself to the ground, or shoot him, or make him lie down under the bridges of Dublin and be a lowly dosser for all the rest of his days. He went on through the widening farms. He had fought for all this in his own manner. He had crouched in the murderous trenches, he had miraculously — so said Christy Moran — come through the given battles, and almost alone of his comrades he was alive. No, he did not understand Jesse Kirwan entirely, but he would seek to in the coming years, he told himself. At least in the upshot he would try to know that philosophy. But how would he live and breathe? How would he love and live? How would any of them? Those that went out for a dozen reasons, both foolish and wise and all between, from a world they loved or feared, but that equally vanished behind them. How could a fella go out and fight for his country when his country would dissolve behind him like sugar in the rain? How could a fella love his uniform when that same uniform killed the new heroes, as Jesse Kirwan said? How could a fella like Willie hold England and Ireland equally in his heart, like his father before him, like his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, when both now would call him a traitor, though his heart was clear and pure, as pure as a heart can be after three years of slaughter? What would his sisters do for succour and admiration in their own country, when their own country had gone? They were like these Belgian citizens toiling along the roads with their chattels and tables and pots, except they were entirely unlike them, because, destitute though these people were, and homeless, at least they were wandering and lost in their own land.

  About midday they came to a hilly place where it seemed a contingent of some Bavarian soldiery had decided to make a stand. At least they were trying to hold a rickety bridge, or so it would appear in the distance. Someone read the map and said it was called St-Court. They must have had a few pieces of artillery with them too, because there were big shells being lobbed suddenly into the woods behind. Strangely, the force and nature of the old war returned. Perhaps they
would all dig in again, and be at this for another thousand years. This would be their country for ever more, these few hills, this bridge, these autumn-tormented trees. He would ever look out on here from a neat trench that he would make with his entrenching tool, and they would fashion, him and Christy Moran and the other lads, some nice revetments from the hazels in the wood, and keep everything as trim as they could, and pray for good weather. And those Germans in the distance would become a rumour, the ghosts of a rumour, another world, but a close world, the dark moon to their bright sun. And so it would be for ever and ever more.

  Darkness fell and the guns continued to fire, the fierce yellow lights going away some kilometres behind. They were such big guns, they could fire back ten Irish miles if they wished. Perhaps that was why the Germans had stopped, because they were loath to leave their guns. Perhaps they had been forbidden to leave them. Perhaps they had no officers left and they did not know what to do, except fire and fight.

  Then as the slight coin of the moon appeared above the hills, like something thrown in a game of penny-push, everything went quiet. He and Christy Moran and about three hundred other men were spread about, waiting for orders to come up from headquarters now so far behind. There would be a runner scurrying through the dark world, to reach the colonel and ask what to do. He could see the officers gathered in a little lean-to, like a shepherd’s hut. Maybe they would decide for themselves. No doubt they would wait for first light and push on then against the little bridge. Maybe they were bringing up their own artillery along the muddy roads.

  A local owl sounded across the river marsh. Willie could see the rushes with their thick brown heads. They would be sinking now into winter soon, feeling the fingers of the frost touching them greedily. He could hear the human music of the river, and see the pleasing pewter of its colour as it pushed along between its incurious banks.

  Then he heard singing from the German section. He found he knew the tune well, though the man was singing in German. Perhaps he was singing now in an ironical frame of mind, for the song was ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’. Silent night, holy night. The song of that first, far-off friendly Christmas truce in ‘14. It was not a night that was holy. Or was it? The voice was as simple as the river, it seemed to Willie. It came from the throat of a man who might have seen horrors, made horrors befall the opposing armies. There was something of the end of the world, or rather, he meant, the end of the war in the song. The end of the world. The end of many worlds. Silent night, holy night. And indeed the shepherds were in their hut and their flocks were scattered round about in these lovely woods. The sheep lay down in the darkness fearful of the wolves. But were there any wolves in the upshot? Or just sheep against sheep? Silent night, holy night. Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. Heilige, holy, a word he had not looked at in his mind since Father Buckley was taken. Holy. Could they not all be holy? Could God not reach down and touch their faces, explain to them the meaning of their travails, the purpose of their long sojourn, the journey out to a foreign land that became a sitting still among horrors? So far, so far they had come that they had walked right out to the edge of the known world and had fallen off into other realms entirely in the thunder and ruckus of the falls. There was no road back along the way they had taken. He had no country, he was an orphan, he was alone.

  So he lifted up his voice and sang back to his enemy, the strange enemy that lay unseen. They shared a tune, that was still true. A single shot marked its own note in the easy dark, hushing the busy owl.

  Joe Kielty caught him. Joe Kielty didn’t want him falling to the ground, although a small man mightn’t have far to fall.

  Willie saw four angels hanging in the sky. He did not feel it was unexpected. They might have been painted there, old Russian icons. Angels of God, of earth, or just extremity, Willie couldn’t know. One had the face of Jesse Kirwan, one Father Buckley, one his first German, whom he had killed, and one Captain Pasley.

  Maybe in the passing drama of the earth some of them were given lesser lights. But all of them were captains of his soul.

  A soul in the upshot must be a little thing, since so many were expended freely, and as if weightless. For a king, an empire and a promised country. It must be that that country was in itself a worthless spot, for all the dreams and the convictions of that place were discounted. There was nothing of it that did not quickly pass away. Nothing of worth to keep. Some thirty thousand souls of that fell country did not register in the scales of God.

  Under that heaving swell of history was buried Willie and all his kindred soldiers, in a forgotten graveyard without yews or stones.

  He saw four angels, but angels in those days were common sights.

  Dublin Castle.

  October 1918.

  My dear son Willie,

  I thank you for your letter of the last instance from the bottom of my heart. I liked to read your letter and what you said. I want to go and see Father Doyle now up in Wexford Street because I know I have done a stupid thing. I was forgetting that about the old days. My head was gettingfull of stupid dark thoughts. I was forgetting the easier things to think. How I love you, Willie, and what a good son you are. How you did go out to fight for Europe as you said, and how brave you are to be there. And if it was bad here these last years how bad was it out in Belgium? No one knows but you, Willie. I had no right to be getting cross with you. But that is all over now. I have read your letter over and over and Willie I have learned something from you. I will not be so stupid again and I will ask God to forgive me. Will you forgive me, Willie? Forgive an old man stuck in other days. I lived my life in the service of the Queen and when she was dead of the two kings that came after. I wanted to keep order in this old city but in answer to your question I also wanted to remember your mam and do what she bid me which was to look after you all. I cannot have the first thing make me forget the second thing. I must always as far as lies in my power look after you all though you are in your prime now and maybe I am not the man I was in those old days. When you come home Maud and Annie say they will make a tea for you you will not forget. Dolly will make the rooms look good she says. You won’t find us cold ever again. I am sorry Willie and there is not a man alive should not say he is sorry when he does wrong. So I am sorry. Keep safe Willie and I am so glad to learn you are over the trembling.

  Your loving father,

  Papa.

  This letter was returned with Willie’s uniform and other effects, his soldier’s small-book, a volume of Dostoevsky, and a small porcelain horse.

  When Dolly, some years later, emigrated to America, she brought the Dostoevsky with her as a keepsake.

  Willie’s father’s world passed entirely away in the coming upheavals. In the upshot he lost his wits and died a poor figure indeed in the County Home at Baltinglass.

  Somewhere in the earth of Flanders Christy Moran’s medal still lies. His medal for gallantry — ‘gallivanting, more like’, he had said. It had been seared black by the old explosion.

  Maybe the helpful, acidic earth has eaten into the blackness and the quiet medal is clean and brown, showing, if only to the worms, its delicate design of a small crown, and a small harp.

  They had to bury Willie as quickly as they could because now the Germans had broken away at last, and they were obliged to follow.

  They put him in near the spot where he had fallen and got up a wooden cross with his details on it. Joe Kielty said a few heartfelt words. Christy Moran was anxious that the particu lars were correct, and for safety’s sake he made a note on his map of the position of Willie’s grave, in case everything got swept away.

  Then they went on without him.

  William (Willie) Dunne, Private,

  Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

  Killed near St-Court,

  3 October 1918.

  Aged 21.

  RIP

  Acknowledgements

  The following books are part of a growing shelf of pioneering works on the First World War and Ireland, and this n
ovel could not exist without them:

  Ireland and the Great War by Keith Jeffery, Cambridge, 2000

  Irish voices from the Great War by Myles Dungan, Irish Academic Press, 1995

  They Shall Grow Not Old by Myles Dungan, Four Courts Press, 1997

  Orange, Green and Khaki by Tom Johnstone, Gill and Macmillan, 1992

  Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers by Terence Denman, Irish Academic Press, 1992

  A Lonely Grave by Terence Denman, Irish Academic Press, 1995

  Irishmen or English Soldiers? By Thomas P. Dooley, Liverpool University Press, 1995

  Ireland and the Great War edited by Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta, Manchester University Press, 2002

  Dividing Ireland by Thomas Hennessey, Routledge, 1998

  Far from the Short Grass by James Durney, 1999

  FOR MORE FROM SEBASTION BARRY, LOOK FOR THE

  Annie Dunne

  “Annie’s passionate observations and shifting moods — rendered in dense prose that’s close to poetry — fuel this fine novel.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  “A subtle but powerful novel of a spinster’s life in the Irish countryside rises to great emotional heights ... This is a deliciously poetic book.” — The Washington Post