A Whispered Name (28 page)

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 uniform —’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.’