Beneath the Earth (4 page)

‘What do you suppose it is?' asked Stephen as he, Marie, Mr Devlin and Émile stood at all four corners of the kitchen table, staring at the tube as if it was an unexploded bomb.

‘There's only one way to find out,' said Mr Devlin. ‘Would you not open it, Stephen, no?'

‘Ah I don't know about that,' said Stephen, shaking his head and frowning. ‘Sure you'd never know what might be in there.'

‘Oh for pity's sake,' said Marie, taking the bread knife from the counter and picking up the tube to slice her way down the tape. ‘We can't just stare at it all night.'

‘Be careful there, Mrs,' said Mr Devlin, standing back as if he was afraid that it might blow up in all their faces.

‘Will Mrs Devlin not have your tea on?' she replied, taking the cap off the tube and giving it a shake until the rolled-up sheets of paper eased their way out into her hand. ‘Should you not be getting home?'

‘The food is always burnt to a crisp as it is. A few extra minutes won't make it any less edible.'

Marie sighed as she held the posters out for everyone to see.

‘What's this now?' asked Mr Devlin, leaning forward and reading them for himself. ‘This has something to do with the war, is it?'

Stephen picked up the tube and shook it again and a note fell out. His eyes moved back and forth across the lines, his lips mouthing the words quietly to himself.

‘Goodnight, Mr Devlin,' he said a moment later, turning to the postman.

‘There was something else in there, was there?' he asked, pointing at the note. ‘Is it an explanation of some sort?'

‘Goodnight, Mr Devlin,' repeated Stephen, opening the front door and standing there with his hand on the latch until the postman gave in and made his way towards it.

‘There was a time when a man got a cup of tea when he visited a house,' he announced in an insulted tone as he left. ‘Those days are gone now, it seems. Goodnight all!'

‘What's in the note?' asked Émile, when there was just the three of them left.

‘Maybe you should go to your room,' said Stephen.

‘Who is it from?' asked Marie.

‘James.'

‘James who?'

‘James, my cousin James.'

‘In Newcastle?'

‘Yes.'

‘And what does he say?'

Stephen cleared his throat and began to read.

Dear Stephen
, he said.

I'm sorry I haven't written in so long but I'm not a man for letters, as you know. All is well here but it's raining today. Here are posters that you can paste around your town as we need as many
soliders
soldiers as we can find or we're going to lose this war. I know all you Irish don't know which side to stand on but you'll be better off on ours. We'll see you right for it in the end, I'm sure of that.

I have bad news. Do you remember the Williams twins who you used to pal around with when your dad brought you over to see us when you were a lad? Both killed at Verdun. And Georgie Summerfield, who lived next door to us? Well he's been in hospital these last few months, they say he can't stop shaking or hold a sensible conversation. It's a rotten business but
–

He stopped reading and put the letter down.

‘Oh,' said Marie, her forehead wrinkling a little as she thought about this.

Émile wondered why Georgie Summerfield couldn't stop shaking but guessed it had something to do with the war. It had been going on for almost three years now, since July 1914. His parents and his teachers never grew tired of talking about it even though it was happening across the sea in Europe, which was
miles
away from West Cork. A boy he knew, Séamus Kilduff, had an older brother who'd signed up to fight with the Brits and half the town said he was a traitor for taking sides with a bunch of Sassenachs who'd been making life hell for the Irish for years. The other half said he was very brave to put himself in danger for people he didn't even know and that the only way to secure peace was for everyone who believed in the freedom of nations to do their bit. There was fierce debate over it and everyone took a side. Émile heard stories about fights in the local pub and a rule being made on the GAA team that no one could discuss Séamus Kilduff's brother before a match as it only led to trouble. But then word came that he'd been killed in the Battle of the Somme and the whole town turned out for his funeral. Father Macallie said he was a credit to his family, a credit to his religion and above all a credit to West Cork, which would one day achieve independence from the rest of Ireland and be allowed to manage its own affairs as God intended.

A copy of the
Skibbereen Eagle
appeared in their cottage most evenings and Marie pored over it, engrossed by every piece of information that she could find. Her own country, after all, was being overwhelmed by fighting. Her two brothers had fought to keep the Germans out of their home town of Reims but both had been arrested and she hadn't heard from them in a long time. Émile had learned not to mention their names, as she would only start crying inconsolably.

But Marie wasn't the only one who read the papers. Émile did too. He'd become interested the previous Easter, when all the trouble had been happening up in Dublin and a group of men had barricaded themselves into the General Post Office on O'Connell Street demanding that the Irish be left alone to look after Ireland and the English had come along and said,
sorry about that, lads, but no chance
. And there'd been lots of shooting and lots of killing and one of the men from the GPO had been brought out in a terrible sickness, barely knowing who he was or what he was doing, and was tied to a chair so the English could turn their guns on him for showing cheek to their King.

‘Why would they fight for the English?' he asked now, looking down at the letter on the table.

‘They?' asked Stephen, turning his head quickly and staring at his son; it wasn't often that he had a flash of anger like this. ‘Who's this
they
that you're talking about, son?'

‘The Irish,' said Émile quietly.

‘The Irish are a
they
now, are they?' he asked.

‘Stephen, stop it,' said Marie.

‘Stop what?'

‘Just stop it.'

‘Come on ahead,' said Stephen irritably, shaking his head. ‘I'll not be having
they
s in this house.'

Émile looked from his father to his mother and back again, angry and upset at being spoken to like this. ‘Well I don't know, do I?' he cried, trying to hold back tears. ‘You're English, Mum's French, sometimes you tell me I'm Irish, other times you tell me I'm half English and half French.'

‘You're Irish,' said Stephen. ‘And don't you forget it.'

But he wasn't fully Irish, he knew that. The boys at school picked on him and said he was only a blow-in and that if your family hadn't lived in Ireland since before Cromwell had started his slaughter of the innocents then you had no business being here anyway. And why did he have to be anything, he wondered? The Irish hated the English, the English hated the Germans, the Germans hated the French, so it seemed that if you lived in a country, you had to have someone to hate. But then Cork people hated the Kerry people, and the Kerry people hated the Dubliners, and the Dubs were split in two by the Liffey, with the families who lived in the tenements in the city centre hated by all. It seemed to Émile that you weren't allowed to be alive unless you had someone to hate and someone to hate you in return.

‘You're right,' said Stephen, reaching forward and pulling Émile's head into his shoulder for a moment. ‘I'm sorry, son. I shouldn't have snapped.'

Marie stood up, gathering up the posters and taking them over towards the fireplace.

‘What are you doing?' asked Stephen, staring at her.

‘The sensible thing,' she said, peeling one off, folding it in half and then half again, before reaching its corner into the flames and letting the fire take a catch of it before she allowed it to sink into the hearth and burn. Then she unpeeled the second one and started to fold it too but Stephen was too quick for her; he was on his feet in a jiffy, pulling the posters out of her arms.

‘Stop that now,' he shouted.

‘Why?'

‘They're not for burning.'

Émile reached over for the letter, wanting to know what else it said, but Marie pulled it out of his hands and put it on the top shelf of the dresser, next to the key for the outside lav.

‘Did no one ever tell you not to read other people's letters?' she asked, staring down at her son. Émile said nothing in reply but looked at his father instead.

‘What does James want you to do with those posters?' he asked.

‘Paste them up around the town. See if any of the men here will sign up.'

‘Do you think they will?'

Stephen shook his head. ‘Probably not,' he said.

‘Then there's no point doing it,' said Marie.

‘Oh, I'll do it all right.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's the right thing.'

‘The right thing for who?'

Stephen shrugged his shoulders. ‘If the Germans win,' he said, ‘if they conquer England, where do you think they'll go next? Have a think about it, love. What's the next country along?'

Marie threw her arms in the air. ‘If you put those posters up around here,' she said, ‘our neighbours will call you a traitor. Like they did with Séamus Kilduff's brother.'

‘Who everyone said was a hero in the end.'

‘They said he was a hero when they were putting him in the ground. They didn't say anything like that when he was walking above it.'

‘You're not going away to fight, are you, Dad?' asked Émile, his eyes opening wide in horror at the idea.

‘I don't know, son,' replied Stephen. ‘But it's something that I've been thinking about. After all, the sooner the war is over, the sooner we can all live in peace.'

‘No!' shouted Émile, jumping up. ‘No, you can't. Mum, tell him he can't.'

‘Stephen, you're upsetting the boy. And throw those things away before they land us all in trouble.'

‘It's only a few posters. Those who want to take an interest can and those who don't, well they don't have to.'

‘Don't be so naive,' snapped Marie as Émile rushed to her side and pressed himself against her. ‘You have no idea what will happen to you if you put them up around town. To us. To all of us.
Irishmen – To Arms
,' she added, laughing bitterly. ‘They want us on their side when they need help, that's for sure. But when they don't—'

‘Us! Them! You! Me!' shouted Stephen. ‘If you ask me, we all choose our pronouns depending on what suits us at the time!'

And that was the end of that. Marie stormed off to her bedroom, Stephen stayed in the front parlour for a smoke, and Émile grabbed the key for the outside lav and ran down in the cold night air. He'd been desperate for a pee ever since Mr Devlin had arrived with the post but he couldn't leave the front parlour when there was so much going on.

Émile went with his father when he placed the posters in prominent positions around town, and when the townspeople saw them, there was an outcry. A meeting was held in the church and Émile listened as Stephen made the case that here was something bigger than the argument between England and Ireland – that, he said, could be returned to at a later date and hopefully with wiser, more peaceful heads, but in the meantime there was a bigger fight being played out across Europe – and the Irish couldn't stick their heads under their blankets forever because sooner or later it would come their way. ‘We've spent centuries trying to win the land back for ourselves,' he told them. ‘And we're this close. You can feel it. I can feel it. We're on the cusp, lads. Now tell me, all of you, what if we win our country back and lose it all over again to someone else? Where's the victory in that?'

Donal Higgins' father had fought the opposite case. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' he said. ‘Did you never hear that line, no? Why on earth would we spend all this time trying to get the English out of Ireland only to help them in their hour of need? Could someone please explain that to me, for it makes no sense as far as I can see!'

‘But look, if we help out now, maybe that'll be the difference between victory and defeat,' argued Stephen.

‘Let them be defeated!' cried Donal Higgins' father.

‘And then what? If this war doesn't end soon and with fairness on all sides, you can mark my words that there will be another along before too long and you'll be too old to fight in it and I'll be too old to fight in it but our sons won't! Your Donal will be of an age. And my Émile. So think on before you say we should just ignore what's going on.'

There was an almighty debate and Émile couldn't hear any of the arguments any more as voices were raised so high, and finally Father Macallie had to take to the altar and call the meeting to an end, for it was clear that there was never going to be agreement between the sides and if it didn't stop there'd be a fistfight in the church.

Émile sat at the back and tried to reason it through in his mind. He could see both sides of this. But brave young soldiers who were fighting on the Continent to make sure that everyone got to live as they wanted to live – it seemed to him that this was the side worth fighting for.

When he thought about it for too long, however, it made his head hurt, that was the truth of it.

But the posters went up, and Stephen's part in it – that couldn't be denied. And a few nights later, the brick came flying through the front window, waking up the house and causing Émile to reach out so quickly that his grandfather's watch smashed on the floor.

Six weeks later, when Émile found out that Stephen had signed up to fight for the British Expeditionary Force, he felt frightened and proud at the same time. But he knew that the whole town was in a quandary over it because everyone liked Stephen. He'd grown up among them, after all. He'd married a woman they all respected, had a son who was a fine fellow altogether and had never done a moment's harm to anyone in all his life. Yes, the English were the enemy, but at least they all knew who the English were. If the Germans won, then it was anyone's guess what might happen to Ireland next.