War Children

by Gerard Whelan

  ‘As well not to,’ Statia told her. ‘You know the way Mrs Cafferty loves a gossip. She’ll want to know all.’

  ‘Aye,’ her mother said. ‘And I knows the way Statia Mulligan loves sitting doing nothing in the field at the butt of the Drop, too, washing her feet in the river. But you’ve earned a rest this week, putting up with your father. I should know – I’ve put up with him longer nor any of youse.’

  And with a grin she turned back, not looking at Statia’s flushed face. Statia felt found out. But it was true that she did love the peace and quiet in the field by the Rasheen, and that she’d sit there on her own for hours daydreaming. She even had a private place there, her only private place in all the world. It was a flat little bit of the riverbank, hidden from outside by a cluster of hazelnut trees and sciocs that grew in the field near the bridge. Statia had found the place several years before, chasing a new pup that hadn’t yet learned to come when she called. She’d seen him disappear into the bushes and, never thinking, had pushed through after him. She’d expected to hear a splash as the pup fell in the water, and was already hoping she wouldn’t have to go in after him. The Rasheen wasn’t deep or dangerous, but she didn’t fancy getting her clothes wet because of any stupid dog. But there had been no splash, and to her surprise she’d found the pup, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling, sitting on a little flat bit of the bank between the nut trees and the water. It was a sunny little nook hedged in by the scraping branches of the low trees, invisible except from the other side of the river, hardly noticeable even from there: a couple of square feet of grass hidden from the world.

  It had been a sunny day, like today, and when she’d sat beside the dog – there was just about room for her, even then – she’d found she was at exactly the right height to dangle her bare feet in the cool water. The pup had pressed against her, his tongue lolling, looking up into her face. Statia had almost imagined he looked proud.

  See the fine place that I found for you, she’d imagined him saying. Aren’t I a grand dog?

  And she’d almost replied to his imagined question, and reassured him that he was. The little place – its peace, its privacy – had enchanted her from the start. When she was younger, and had less work to keep her busy, she’d often gone there. Nowadays – even before this week – she seldom found the time. As soon as she heard of the need for someone to go to Caffertys’ she pictured the river as it must be today, sparkling and rippling in the hot sun, gurgling cool over the stones below the little bridge. She imagined the trout rising, leaving ripples on the spangled water. The idea of sitting there for half an hour, in her secret, private spot, with the sun shining down and her feet trailing in the water, and no-one looking for anything off her, or bossing her, had filled her with a sudden hungry yearning. She should have known her Ma would see it on her face – her Ma could read her like a book.

  There was no need to be embarrassed, she told herself. Hadn’t Ma said she understood? She even approved. It was a rare thing to do something nice that your Ma approved of. Statia felt suddenly free. She took a deep breath and relaxed. The day was hers. The house, with its stormy man and big bostoons of brothers, could look after itself for the afternoon.

  It was a lovely day. The birds sang in the roadside hedges. The air was alive with the buzzing of bees and flies. The ass clopped along the road at his own pace, and Statia lost herself in dreams. After a while she came to the lip of Mulligan’s Drop and started down the steep hill. It was very quiet, and over the roll of the wheels and the clop of the ass’s hooves you could hear the water of the Rasheen clucking in its stony bed. The ass dug in his heels against the slope, no longer pulling the cart but pressing back against it as he descended the straight road. Statia got down and took hold of his harness, speaking softly to him and yanking back when he seemed about to give in to the weight of the cart and pull forward.

  ‘Come on now, a mhic,’ she said mildly. ‘We’re nearly down. You’re doing grand. Good lad!’

  The ass’s ears twitched at her soft tones. He shivered with the strain. At least he wouldn’t try and stop here, with the weight pressing him on.

  At the foot of the Drop the road levelled out before climbing very slightly for maybe ten yards towards the hump-backed stone bridge. The water in the river chuckled and gurgled, inviting her to dawdle. But Statia got back up on the cart and went on, humming to herself. She’d seen nobody since leaving home except for one old man driving a few dozy-looking cattle. He’d saluted her briefly, raising the switch in his hand to the peak of his tattered cap. Statia had greeted him in return. She didn’t recognise him, but she knew that men like this weren’t what her mother meant by ‘strangers’. This was only a farmer like themselves.

  * * *

  At Caffertys’ Statia was welcomed. Simon Cafferty had bought three sacks of hen-meal only the week before.

  ‘I usually only buys the two,’ he said, ‘but I got a good price on these, and I knew the extra one wouldn’t go astray.’

  He was glad to lend one to the Mulligans, and Statia had to assure him that one would be enough. Simon even loaded the sack in the cart for her while Statia was given tea and bread and butter and had a chat with his wife in Caffertys’ kitchen.

  ‘I’ll call up when I get the time,’ Simon said to Statia when she was leaving, ‘and see if I can do anything for youse. And if there’s anything in the meantime, youse have only to let me know.’

  Then he leaned forward and, looking up into Statia’s face, said in a lower voice: ‘There was an Auxie patrol out on the roads this morning. If you see them coming …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Statia said. ‘Me Mammy have me warned about them.’

  ‘And so she should,’ Simon Cafferty said. ‘You wouldn’t be the first person they left dead on the roads behind them. They’re worse nor the Tans, them fellows.’ And he spat on the ground in disgust at the thought of the foreigners.

  Statia set out on the road home, glad to have the business end of things over with. By the time she got back her brothers would have started mooching around the house, wondering when their tea would be ready.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said to the ass, ‘we had a bit of a day out anyhow. And the best bit is to come.’

  She’d decided from the first to save her visit to the river for the return journey. She’d been tempted, on the way, by the cool-looking water clucking over the smooth stones, but she’d known that the business of the corn would weigh on her mind. Now, with the sack safe in the bed of the cart, she could relax. It would give the ass a rest, too, before the long haul up the Drop. That would make it all the easier to persuade him up. As the summer sun beat down, Statia found herself nearly dozing on the cart. Once when she’d sat with her feet in the Rasheen – on a day much like this one, come to think of it – a trout had come and nibbled curiously at her toes. The river was sniving with them at this time of year. Maybe it would happen again today. Her brothers, if something like that happened, would have tried to catch the fish; but Statia wouldn’t dream of doing that, even though she loved a bit of fried trout. She’d often watched the fish stirring dreamily in the Rasheen, darting along or staying still with just the odd flip of their tails. She’d envied them sometimes, with all day to dream. She could dream for a while herself, now.

  She was coming up to the hump-backed bridge again when, above the rushing noise of the water, she heard the sound of approaching motors. She looked up towards the lip of Mulligan’s Drop. The cab of a lorry appeared over the brow of the hill. Then the rest of the lorry came into view, looming from a great cloud of dust. It was a police tender, the back full of Auxiliaries. There was a Lewis gun mounted on the top of the cab, and an Auxie stood behind it with the ribbons of his Glengarry cap fluttering.

  The tender came down the slope towards her, followed by another. They were both full of armed men. Statia’s heart dropped even quicker than the lorries coming down the hill. She felt a cold fear in her belly at the sight of the dark, dusty uniforms. Don’t
look at them, she told herself. Get down off the cart this minute and don’t even look at them. But it was hard to tear her eyes away from the lorries. They bristled with gunbarrels, dark and dangerous. They were like big hunting animals completely out of place in this quiet countryside. And when Statia did finally look away, staring towards the river for some familiar, comforting sight, she was shocked to see there a man she didn’t know. He was standing up over his knees in the waters of the Rasheen near the bridge, and he was waving at her frantically. Statia, taken by surprise, stared at him. She frowned. The man waved both arms at her, as though hooshing her back the way she’d come. What was he at? She –

  The whole world dissolved in a big bang and a flash like the end of time. Statia was sure that she screamed, but she could hear nothing. She was flung, stunned, from the cart. She lay on her back in the dust of the road, dazed and blinking. When she looked around she could see hardly anything. It was as though she was in the middle of a cloud.

  I’m blinded! she thought. Blinded altogether!

  But she wasn’t blinded. She really was in a cloud. The cloud was made of dust, she realised, as it thinned and settled. Dust and smoke. She could see the donkey now, still between the shafts of the cart but lying stretched out on the road with his mild eyes closed and his great head between his outflung forelegs. His back legs had buckled under him, and his rump was in the air. He looked like he was bowing down to the sight before him. And when Statia looked, that sight was surely strange enough to bow down to. There was a shimmering twinkle of lights from the Auxie tenders, which had come to a halt ahead of her, across the bridge. And the bridge …

  Statia shook her head to clear it. There was a ringing in her ears, but no other sound. She stared ahead. The bridge over the Rasheen … she squinted at it, unsure of what she was seeing. The bridge hadn’t entirely disappeared, but a great ragged chunk of it was simply gone.

  A mine, she told herself. They mined the bridge!

  She said this to herself almost calmly, but she was more dazed than calm. She couldn’t quite believe that any of this was real. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly, and in complete silence. She remembered the man in the river. She turned her head to look to where she’d seen him. The man was still there, but there were two other men standing with him now. They climbed up on the bank and were scrambling onto the roadway ahead of her. They were carrying rifles. As Statia watched, they lay down flat in the roadbed, sheltered by the amputated stump of the hump-backed bridge, and started firing their rifles towards the Auxiliary tenders. One of them – the man who’d been waving at her – turned and waved again. There was no mistaking his message this time: he was telling her to go away.

  All of this took place in a world that for Statia was absolutely silent except for the ringing in her ears. She could still see the tenders, trapped between the blown bridge and the steep hill behind them. The rear one was still on the slope. The twinkle of lights that she’d seen still went on, and she realised finally that the lights were gunflashes. As she watched, the Auxies abandoned their tenders. They jumped out and lay in the road. But some of them stayed in the tenders. Those would be the dead. Statia looked back up at Mulligan’s Drop. From the top of it she saw more flashes coming from the hedges and bushes. And still all was silent.

  Statia tried to guess how many Auxies had been in the tenders, but she couldn’t. That they were in a very bad position, whatever their numbers, even she could see that. The foremost tender was only a few yards from the wrecked bridge. Its cab was burnt out and smoking, caught full-on by the explosion of the mine. The windscreen was gone, and a dark, burnt, motionless figure slumped over what was left of the steering wheel. The Auxies on the road were exposed to a raking fire from the high ground above them, and when Statia looked she saw more gunflashes coming from this side of the river.

  She was still sitting beside the cart. There wasn’t a stir out of the ass: he was either insensible or dead. His fall had dragged the cartshafts down till their front ends were on the ground, so that the back of the cart itself stood raised to the sky. Statia put a hand out and rested it on the cart, to push herself up. Something smacked into the wood a couple of inches from her fingers. She stared, puzzled. It happened again, even closer to her hand this time. A big splinter of wood flew from the cart, raking the back of her hand in its passing. Blood welled in the long, shallow scrape. Suddenly understanding, Statia jerked her hand off the wood as though from a hot pan. Those were bullets that were hitting the cart. Statia scrambled round the back of the near wheel and into the shelter of the cart’s raised body. She curled into a ball and closed her eyes and listened to the ringing in her ears, suddenly glad of her deafness.

  She’d no idea, afterwards, of how long she lay there. It felt like forever, but it could have been no more than a few minutes. Gradually her hearing came back. She heard the storm of gunfire and the cries of shot men. She heard curses roared. The sounds were all mixed up with the endless clucking sound of the river, that sound which had always seemed peaceful to her before. More explosions came – grenades or bombs, she guessed – and more screams. One scream in particular went on and on, like the sound of the river itself. It was an endless wail that spoke of an agony Statia didn’t even want to think about. Anybody feeling such pain should be dead – they’d be better off dead. But the wail just went on, rising and falling, endlessly.

  They were feared men, the Auxies, and hated – more feared and hated than the Tans in a way, precisely because they had the discipline the Tans lacked. There was more cold cruelty in their acts, and more thought. But now as she listened to their cries Statia heard only the sound of the pain, and she wanted it only to stop. She covered her ears with her hands and she lay there, shivering, wanting to scream herself.

  Go away! she thought. Go away, all of you, this minute!

  They didn’t go away. The intensity of the gunfire, though, did begin to lessen. Statia started to believe that it might even end. She didn’t care who won, so long as it all stopped. But then there was a new sound, a sound she didn’t notice at first over the diminished shooting. It was the sound of another motor. Suddenly the firing grew to a fresh crescendo. A machinegun opened up, and there were repeated volleys of rifle fire. Bullets smacked off the ground around the cart, and off the cart itself. Statia heard a strange, animal whimpering. It came from very close by. For a moment she thought that it must be the ass; but she’d noticed a pool of blood growing around the still figure of the poor brute between the shafts, and she knew that the ass was dead. She realised that the sound was coming from herself. She tried to stop it, but she couldn’t. Her mouth had become like a stranger’s, beyond her control.

  Running footsteps approached. Statia saw several sets of flying feet go by. One set stumbled, and a man fell full length on the road with his face only a couple of feet from her own, staring at her from wide-open eyes. His mouth was open too. He had long yellow teeth, and several of them were missing. With his wide eyes and his open mouth, he seemed almost to be laughing. But there was no life in his eyes, and she realised he was dead. He wasn’t an Auxie. His cap lay in the roadway, and the rifle that had dropped from his hand. Someone came and picked up the rifle, then ran on. The dead man lay grinning at Statia, like someone who’d been frozen in the act of playing ‘peep’ with her.

  Peep! said the dead man’s grin. I sees you there.

  Statia stared at the man’s face for a very long moment, at the wide, staring eyes, dead and cold, like a fish staring back at her. Then she shrieked and scrabbled out from under the cart. She crouched there like an animal on the open road, whimpering, then risked a look up towards the scene of the ambush.

  At the brow of Mulligan’s Drop she saw the cab of another Auxiliary tender. A Lewis gun on its roof was sending burst after burst of machinegun fire into the hedges lining the roadway down the Drop, and into the fields on either side. Lumps were flying off the hedges, and puffs of dirt spitting out of the ground. Dark-uniformed men were
already in the fields, shouting and shooting. At the foot of the hill, the surviving Auxies from the first two tenders had regrouped. Some of them, she saw, were making for the river, to ford it. There was no sign of any answering gunfire. The attackers had cut and run: they’d been taken by surprise, and ambushed in their turn. A few of them lay dead or wounded in the field and on the road. She saw an Auxie with a pistol standing over one wounded man. As Statia watched, the Auxie reached out the pistol carefully and shot the man in the head.

  Statia stared goggle-eyed at the scene across the bridge. The hedges were blackened and burning, the very road stained with blood and oil and black, twisted wreckage from the burning tenders. There were no birds singing now. She realised that the wailing man, whether ambusher or Auxie, had stopped his noise – dead now, no doubt, and probably glad of it. The ambush was over: her wish had come true.

  Then a bullet tore a great gouge in the side of the cart near her face. She saw it happen even before she heard the shot. When she looked she saw the Auxie who’d fired. He was standing in the middle of the river, in almost the same spot where she’d first seen the ambusher only a little while before. The Auxie was still pointing his rifle at her, and she saw several others raise their weapons too. This was not a wild shot, she realised: the man had quite deliberately fired at her. He had meant for her, Statia, to die.

  They’re going to kill me, she thought. They think I was in on it, and they’re going to kill me.

  It was the last straw. Her brain froze. Her stomach clenched. Pure animal fear drove her scrambling across the road and over the ditch. None of the Auxies had reached this bank of the river yet. They were moving carefully, wary of ambushers who might still lie in wait. Statia didn’t move warily at all. She fled pell mell over ditches and stiles, through stands of trees and thorny hedges, down narrow, twisting, half-overgrown lanes between fields. She had no plan beyond putting as much distance as possible between herself and the ambush scene, and even to say that she planned that was wrong: she fled as any other animal might, the last vestiges of her sense cracked by the thought that these frightening men meant to take her life.