A Whispered Name (31 page)

‘Well,
now,’ said the priest, his mind made up, but seeking permission. ‘Do we break
our vow?’

Flanagan
heard a crashing in his mind as Mr Drennan clattered down the steps to kick
down the door. He imagined an almighty scuffle with the sentry and the Fenian
rising victorious with the keys held high. ‘Now is the time, boy’ the phantom
said. ‘You have brought the pink lands to their knees, now drink to their
everlasting destitution.’

‘No,’
said Flanagan, no longer frightened — at least not in the same way ‘I leave it
to Mr Moore.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Pity the Disordered Mind

Army HQ was located behind
ornamental gates and at the end of a sweeping drive: a manorial dwelling with
several weathervanes black against the night-blue sky They were all pointing in
different directions. Sentries positioned at both the gates and by the huge
front door checked Herbert’s name and purpose, the last refusing him entry
until a Colonel in full uniform appeared, bustling with importance and
exhaustion in equal measure. On hearing Herbert’s demand he refused to disturb
the army commander, be he known to the family or not. Instead he woke up the
senior staff officer, a Major General, who eventually stood before Herbert
resplendent in burgundy slippers and a capacious dressing gown, the hairs on
his legs standing proud as if they were scared of the body from which they grew
Rousing him had not been a wise move.

‘What
the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘It is
a matter of the utmost urgency Sir.’

‘Damn
your urgency. Your appearance is a disgrace.’ His greying hair stood on end
too.

‘Sir?’

‘Your
boots … your buttons …’ He couldn’t speak any more because of his
indignation. ‘What rabble do you come from? Which regiment—’

‘It’s
all right, Lionel,’ said a voice with studied patience. ‘Send him up.

Standing
at the top of a magnificent staircase, blocked by his outraged staff officer,
was the General himself, one hand on the balustrade. He, like the Colonel at
the door, was still in uniform, though the jacket was open revealing his braces
— a deplorable state of affairs that would have broken Lionel had he turned
round to honour his master’s voice. Instead he glowered at Herbert’s cuffs and
collar, snorted, and marched through a pair of double doors held open by a mute
Captain who closed his eyes as the wind swept past.

‘Take a
seat,’ said General Osborne, closing his office door and pointing towards a
hearth lit by a fire burned low. ‘It’s safe now, the lion is back in his den:

Herbert
had met his army commander several times, but only two occasions stood out as
important now: the first was at Sandhurst before receiving his commission, the
second was at Keswick when his parents had decided to show Colonel Maude what
they were made of. The General hadn’t changed in the slightest since that last
encounter. His lower jaw seemed slightly advanced, suggesting a constitutional
determination; the pencil moustache highlighted an uneven mouth; hair parted in
the centre showed precision as his crowning trait.

‘You
said your errand is of an urgent character?’

‘Yes,
Sir:

The
furnishings were limited to the essentials: a desk with a black ledger in the
middle; a large oval dining table covered with Intelligence Reports; another
desk to the right of the General’s, occupied by a typewriter; and a variety of
chairs, closely arranged by the fireplace, into one of which Herbert slumped
while the General poured them both a large glass of whisky.

‘Your
father is well?’ said General Osborne.

‘I hope
so, Sir.’

‘Your
mother?’

‘She
too, I hope, is well.’

‘You’ve
been back to see them?’

‘No,
Sir. I won’t go home until the war is over.

The
General handed him the glass, but drew back just as Herbert was about to take
it. ‘I think you ought to visit them. The winning is not immediately in view.

Herbert
gulped the whisky and the General sat directly facing him, legs crossed.

‘How
can I help you?’ General Osborne’s face barely moved. The effect was of a man
wholly concentrating on a decision made or yet to be made, all other impulses
subordinate to the mental processes involved; no gesture was wasted; his gaze
was both calculating and assured. In his mid-fifties, he was much the same age
as Herbert’s father, though the regiment had only held on to one of them.

‘Sir, I
sat on a court martial,’ said Herbert, leaning forward in his seat. ‘The man
was found guilty and condemned to death. The sentence was confirmed and he will
be shot in three hours. I think this is a mistake.’

General
Osborne made no movement — either to stop or continue the argument — so Herbert
pressed on.

‘Sir, I
have got to know this man. He is a dreamer. A man of susceptibility. I believe
he’s been rattled by what he saw at Messines last June. He was very shaken by
the other side’s casualties. And now it’s as though he’s lost his wits while
apparently remaining sane.

The
General permitted himself a trace of a smile and instantly Herbert knew that he
was thinking of Lionel. But his eyes were grave and unfeeling, his intellect
locked on to Herbert’s submission. ‘You are speaking of the Irishman?’

‘Yes,
Sir.’

‘He
talks of the island he comes from as though it were a land of make-believe,
somewhere his mind has run to, away from the ghastly realities of front-line
duty He’s mesmerising to listen to and somehow he dredges your own memory,
stirring your own sense of loss, whatever it might be, and he brings you back
to what you’d rather forget —’ all this was true; it had caused Herbert pain,
and on that account he’d cut short every conversation, wanting to know more,
but scared that Flanagan would undermine his own resolve —’but I’ve come to
think, Sir, that he’s not fully responsible for his actions — not then, not
now, not any more.

‘This
is the soldier who may or may not have gone to Étaples with another Irishman?’
The General looked at Herbert’s glass, and Herbert noticed that it was empty —
he had no recollection of having tasted anything, though his throat was
burning.

‘Yes,
Sir, and that is the point, Sir; this Irishman, Flanagan, is no deserter. He
did
go to Étaples with a kinsman. But he was
not
avoiding any special
duty. He was fulfilling another kind of obligation —’ the General took Herbert’s
glass — ‘a duty recognised by a disordered mind, Sir.’

The
General poured Herbert a larger whisky than last time. His own stood untouched
on a graceful three-legged table.

‘Sir,’
said Herbert, ‘Flanagan took someone to Étaples who’d twice been condemned by
an FGCM and spared the ultimate sanction.’

The
General produced a handkerchief from his pocket, saying, ‘Yes, and twice I’d
recommended that he be shot.’

‘Sir,
that other soldier was not a
man.

‘Really?’
The tone was even, not mocking.

‘No,
sir, he was a
boy.
Someone who should never have put on a uniform.’

General
Osborne’s face remained expressionless for a very long time. Revealing nothing
of his thinking, he said, ‘Was this Flanagan medically examined?’

‘Not
that I’m aware of, Sir.’

‘You
say you got to know him? That you spoke with him about his island?’

‘Yes,
Sir, I did,’ replied Herbert, not daring to show any eagerness.

‘In
your judgement,’ asked the General, reaching for his glass, ‘would it have made
any difference to the trial if he had been so examined?’

Herbert
didn’t want to reply: because it would involve him closing the one door that
had just begun to open. But the truth was, an examination by Tindall back then
would have achieved nothing. Just like an examination now would. not change the
direction of the machine moving towards Flanagan. All that Tindall would
conclude was that his patient was completely sane, as normal as any other man
in the regiment. But in that, he would have been wrong. Blinking rapidly his mouth
aflame, Herbert acknowledged that he, himself, was the man who’d lost his
senses … along with Duggie, Chamberlayne, Joyce, Elliot and the Major General
in his pyjamas. Flanagan had recovered his wits. His was not a make-believe
world. It was the world no one else dare look upon or think about — ironically
what they were fighting for, what each side was fighting for, shorn of someone
else’s imperialism and, what did that ranting teacher call it? The politics of
tenure?

‘No,
Sir,’ said Herbert. His throat burned and again he saw an empty glass in his
hand. ‘There is nothing medically wrong with Flanagan. He was in complete
control of all his faculties.’

‘He is
sane, then?’

‘Yes,
Sir, he is completely sane.’ It sounded like an unforgivable offence. The world
had turned upside down and Herbert’s mind reeled. We will shoot a man at dawn
for having rushed headlong towards his humanity; for having reclaimed it from
the barbarity of war and the monstrous scale of killing. ‘But he took a boy out
of the war, if that is madness.’

General
Osborne had still not tasted a drop of whisky He held the glass more like a
prop in a serious drama, a gentleman who’d never taste the real stuff for fear
he might fluff his lines. ‘Why have you come to me?’

‘Because
you are a man who gives unworthy men a second chance.’

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Father Andrew, the Prior,
called the meeting because he believed strongly in communal discernment when
resolving a problem. Sometimes, in Larkwood’s life, these gatherings simply
traversed the obvious (to the irritation of all) but at others, a breakthrough
would take place, often through the surprising contribution of someone judged
insensitive to the matter in hand. And so a week after Anselm’s return from
Bolton, the Prior invited Sarah and David Osborne to Larkwood. He wanted them
to be present when Martin Reid shared the outcome of his research into the
background of John Lindsay They were also members of the loose community that
had gathered around the trial of Joseph Flanagan.

For the
meeting Anselm prepared a fresh dossier. All the participants were given a
copy and brought to the large parlour. There were two bottles of water on the
table but no glasses, an unfortunate Gilbertine touch to what might have been a
fairly impressive performance. Anselm brought with him the
Manual of
Military Law
as a kind of relic, conscious that no one was likely to open
the cover.

The
Prior thanked everyone for attending. ‘I seek your patience and your help,’ he
said, eyebrows bristling, his gaze roving and kind. ‘We’ve come to an
understanding of the past. Perhaps it is flawed. If so, correct us. We don’t
know what step to take next. If you can, guide us: He raised a hand to Anselm.

Anselm began towards the
middle of the story.

He
began with the first certainties of the matter: Joseph Flanagan had left his
section at or about midnight on the 26th of August escorting a wounded officer.
By 1.45 a.m. he’d reached the Regimental Aid Post and by 2.00 a.m. he’d set
off on the return journey.

Anselm
unrolled the map showing the Ypres Salient and the disposition of the British
troops. ‘We also know that a soldier named Doyle, a private in The Lambeth
Rifles, was with his unit immediately behind the Northumberland Light
Infantry, and that he and his comrades were due to follow through the assault
when the order was given. Doyle, however, lost both his nerve and his senses,
seemingly at the last minute. He was noted to be absent at roughly one a.m. I
say lost his senses because he didn’t run backwards and neither did he head
sideways … he went
ahead,
drifting — I imagine —directly into the
return path of Flanagan.’ Anselm pointed to an imagined spot, somewhere between
the British front line and Black Eye Corner. ‘I picture a very frightened and
disorientated individual, not least because this runaway had nowhere left to
go. He was, I imagine, just waiting to be caught.’

Whatever
the nature of that meeting, at 3.49 a.m. Doyle was registered as injured at
the NLI Aid Post — the place Flanagan had left an hour and half earlier with
two field dressings. ‘One of the important questions is what was said at this
accidental meeting. I’ll return to that in a moment, but now, I think, we
should hear something about the person Flanagan met: Owen Doyle, or, to be precise,
John Lindsay He was born in nineteen hundred and one. Would you please turn to
page thirty-two in the bundle.’

Everyone
did.

‘These
are entries taken from a Punishment Book.’

The key
date was August 1908, Anselm said, when Owen Doyle died from TB. Before then
Lindsay’s offending was broadly limited to comportment and cleanliness;
afterwards he graduated to theft and all manner of insolence. ‘Here, aged seven
onwards, we no longer have a scamp but a very angry boy. We next hear about him
in the courts.’ And with that cue, Anselm left the narrative in Martin’s hands.