Collected Plays and Teleplays (Irish Literature) (17 page)

(
All resume their drinks, which are nearly full, the
SERGEANT
standing very aloof with his back to the counter. He appears to be engrossed in his notebook.
)

PETER:
Well, maybe that’s right, we might as well be hung for sheep as lambs.

MR. C.:
(
Dismally.
) Yes, indeed, a drop of malt is what I need at the present time because I’m not very happy at all perished with the cold all day and now I have a breach of the closed hours on me hands.

JEM:
True enough, the cold was something fierce today. Desperate. You’d want mufflers around your legs as well as around your neck.

PETER:
(
Drinking.
) Well the summer won’t be long now.

MR. C.:
The summer? Aye. Do you remember last August? Do you Sergeant.

SERGEANT:
(
Non-committedly, still studying his book.
) I do and I don’t, Mr. C., I do and I don’t.

MR. C.:
(
With enthusiasm.
) Ah but sure it was a grand month of summer weather. I was out in the forty-foot twice on the bicycle. The water was like soup. And begob the heat of the rocks would nearly burn the feet off you.

JEM:
I never fancied the water at all, never had anny time for it. It’s not a natural class of a thing to be getting into. It’s alright for fish, o’ course.

PETER:
Yes, I remember the heat alright. It was one of the best months we had.

MR. C.:
(
Caressingly.
) Ah, but sure it was grand . . . bright . . . hot . . . healthy . . . weather, great weather for youngsters. It was very hot. Do you know, it put me in mind of the last war, when I was out beyond in Messpott fighting for small nationalities. That’s a quare one, Sergeant. Brought me back to the last war.

SERGEANT:
(
Non-committedly.
) The last war was a desperate and ferocious encounter.

PETER:
(
Encouragingly.
) I suppose it was very hot out there?

MR. C.:
Hot? HOT! I don’t believe there was heat anywhere like it before or after. It was a class of heat that people in this part of the world wouldn’t understand at all. (
His voice falls confidentially.
) Do you know Sergeant, a bird never flew on one wing and when your back is turned there there’s many a strange thing a man would do . . . to keep himself in the air.

(
The
SERGEANT
takes no notice and
MR. C
.
quickly refills his own drink and pulls three stouts, the third of which he places on the counter between himself and the
SERGEANT
.)

JEM:
Aye, sure we might as well be old sheep as young sheep.

PETER:
(
Piously.
) We must pack up and go home.

MR. C.:
(
Reminiscently.
) Yes, it’s twenty-five years ago and more. And I can still feel that sun beyond in [BLANK].

JEM:
Ah, begob that’s very handy.

PETER:
(
Seriously.
) I suppose there was plenty of sunstroke among the troops and all that sort of thing.

MR. C.:
Wait ’till I tell you. On the 24th of May, 1915, we landed off the troop ship at [BLANK], nearly three thousand of us! (
Gasps.
) We thought the heat in the boat was bad and so it was, we were packed there like cattle and the sweat rolling off us in rivers. But do you know, the sea all around us was keeping us nice and cool although we didn’t know it at the time. (
He drinks.
) Well, when we were shunted onto dry land, we knew all about it. God, I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.

JEM:
I’m not feelin’ so cowld now meself.

MR. C.:
The first thing I feel walking down the gangway is . . . a bloody big rush of hot air up my nose. The heat was beltin’ up out of the ground like smoke out of an engine. We couldn’t draw breath for five minutes with this heat pumping out of the ground. And when we did get our breath, damn the bit of good it was to us. Because, do you know what I’m going to tell you, the air was so thin and so hot that you wouldn’t feel yourself breathing it. It was . . . stretched out, d’you know, thinned out by the heat coming at it out of the ground and out of the sky and all sides. It was dried and no moisture in it at all, like a withered pea. It was like putting your head into an oven and taking a deep breath.

JEM:
(
Incredulously.
) I see.

PETER:
I wouldn’t fancy that at all, bad as the weather is in Ireland it is better than that.

MR. C.:
O, it was worse than that. Far worse. I couldn’t tell you how bad it was. We weren’t finished gasping for breath, standing there lined up on the quay, when another desperate thing happened! The lads were hours coming off the boat and the rest of us was lined up there standing by waiting for kit and rifles and all this class of thing. Well, do you know what happened?

JEM:
No?

MR. C.:
I got tired standing on me feet, if you know what I mean, and went to change me weight from one foot to the other. Do you understand me? Well, do you know what I’m going to tell you? Me feet were stuck to the ground.

(
Here the
SERGEANT
slightly turns his head as if to look at
MR. C
.
to find out whether he is in earnest.
)

PETER:
Stuck to the ground! Lord save us!

JEM:
Begob you must have had spikes in them.

MR. C.:
Spikes bedamned! Weren’t we all standing there in our tropical rubber-soled shoes and wasn’t the rubber melting under us. Just imagine it, a thousand men lined up there on the quay and not one of them able to budge! Oh my God it was fierce. FIERCE! And do you know there was a stink off the rubber.

JEM:
Did you ever throw a bit of rubber into the fire by accident? Begob, the hum off it would destroy your nose altogether.

(
He is ignored.
)

MR. C.:
Of course, we were soldiers, you know. No question of (
he clicks his fingers a few times like a schoolboy in class
) ‘Please Sir, I’m stuck to the ground, Sir, me shoes is meltin’, Sir, what’ll I do, Sir?’ None of that class of thing at all. O no. It was just a question of standing there waiting for the order to quick march.

PETER:
I see. Well, that was a nice mess to be in.

MR. C.:
Don’t be talking man. You should have seen us when we got the order. Do you know what it was like? Did you ever see a fly trying to walk off a fly-paper?

JEM:
O I know what you mean, buzzin’ and roarin’ and twistin’ and workin’ away with the legs, up to his neck in sticky stuff.

MR. C.:
(
Ignoring
JEM
.) Well, it was just like that. It was just like flies on a fly-paper. It was a march of two hundred yards to our quarters but it was the dirtiest . . . sweatiest . . . stickiest . . . and driest march we ever had, the skin was worn away from the top of our feet from pullin’ at the shoes, we were in a desperate condition altogether by the time we got there, every man in a lather of sweat, his clothes sticking to his skin, and his tongue hanging outa him like a dog’s.

(
Here both
JEM
and
PETER
take long and resounding slugs from their cool drinks. The
SERGEANT
fusses uncomfortably with his book as if determined to take no interest in
MR. C.’S
recital.
)

JEM:
(
After another gulp.
) Begob, you’d want to keep drinkin’ for the rest of your life to make up for that!

PETER:
I spent a few days over in Dover once and it can be very hot even there.

MR. C.:
(
Moving very quickly to pull three further stouts—one for himself this time.
) Well, begging the Sergeant’s pardon and kind indulgences, I’m going to have one last bottle of stout meself because I feel the want of it after thinking about me days as a soldier out in [BLANK].

JEM:
And we can all do with one, I feel sort of a tickle in me throat.

SERGEANT:
(
Ponderously.
) I’m finishing up me notes here and when me notes is finished we’ll all have to say good night and go home to our beds and thank God we have homes to go to. There might be murders and all classes of illegalities goin’ on behind me back but what I do not see I do not know, the law is a very queer intricate thing, nobody knows it better than meself.

MR. C.:
Spoken like a sensible man and we’re all very grateful, we know you’re only doin’ your duty. Just the same as we were when we were in the King’s uniform out in [BLANK]. Before it was burnt off our backs with the heat.

PETER:
I suppose you had many a bad time after the day you landed in the rubber shoes?

MR. C.:
Bad times? BAD TIMES? Oh Lord save us! (
He takes a gulp from his stout.
) We had some desperate times out in the desert. The heat out in the desert was so bad that only half the lads survived to tell the tale. We were never in action at all in that particular place but the casualties were fifty per cent.

JEM:
Right enough. It’s a desperate thing to get the sun on the back of your neck, you can get all classes of strokes from that.

MR. C.:
(
Dropping into a tone of gentle reminiscence.
) Ah yes, I remember it well. No man that lived through will ever have the memory of it off his brain. There was a detachment of Arab madmen sighted away out in the desert near some watering place or other. They were camped there and musterin’ together to get ready to come in and attack us. Maybe there was a thousand of them in it, and others comin’ in on camels to join them there. So the order comes down that we’re all to march out and go for them before they had a chance to get themselves in battle-order. Yes, that was the way it was. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.

PETER:
Were they far out in the desert?

MR. C.:
They were twenty-five or thirty miles as the crow flies. At six o’clock in the morning we get the order. (
He adopts brassy Sergeant-Major’s voice.
) GET READY TO MARCH IN TWO HOURS! (
Normal voice.
) On with the rubber shoes and the packs and the belts and the water-bottles. And the bloody big rifles! It was a load that would kill a man in his health even here. Then out on parade. Quick March! Left, right, left, right! Away out into the wilds with us, a straggling string of men staggering out into the burning sand just when the sun was getting into form. We were expected to meet the enemy, if you don’t mind, in the middle of the next night.

JEM:
Well, that’d be good goin’. (
He drinks noisily.
)

MR. C.:
Yes. A twenty-four hours forced march. Fair enough, you might say. But we were bet after the first hour, bet to the ropes. Wait till I tell you. (
He gulps his drink noisily.
) The first thing that went wrong with us was the shoes again. When I was walking along, the grains of sand were so hot that they let off sparks when my shoe rubbed them together. There was a sort of fire of sparks under my feet every time I put them down. Then the rubber began to melt again and give out little puffs of smoke and between that and the smell of the rubber burning I was in a desperate condition. Soon the feet began to be roasted like two joints with a fire under them!

PETER:
Lord save us!

(
The
SERGEANT
moves his head involuntarily in
MR. C.’S
direction but corrects himself in time from betraying any interest.
)

MR. C.:
Don’t be talking man! When I’d get an extra special stab of heat in the feet I’d give a lep into the air with the pain of it but when I’d come down on the sand again I’d get worse roasting from the weight of the lep, showers of sparks flyin’ left, right and centre and half of the lads letting squeals out of them. And do you know what was happening all this time?

JEM:
I suppose the enemy lads were lyin’ in wait behind the trees with all the artillery standing by to blow the whole lot of you to hell.

MR. C.:
(
Shocked.
) What trees?

JEM:
Wouldn’t there be all classes of palm trees about the place?

PETER:
Not at all, there’s nothing in a place like that only sand as far as the eye can see.

MR. C.:
(
Continuing.
) Well, I’ll tell you what was happening all this time. I declare to God the sun began to come down on top of us out of the sky! (
He looks around at each listener and pauses sullenly.
) Every minute that passed it seemed to be lower and lower. Down, down, down on top of our heads. The heat. The heat gentlemen. (
He puts his hands to his head as if crazed.
) Oh my God, the heat.

JEM:
It must have been bed alright. (
He smiles noisily.
)

MR. C.:
Lord save us, I can nearly feel it still. I kept on staggering across the sand with the others. After a while I felt a queer thing happening. I began to dry up. Every bit of me began to get dried up and withered. The first thing that went out of order was the tongue and the mouth. My tongue began to get dry and cracked. And it began to get bigger. It swelled out till it nearly choked me and got as hard and dry as a big cinder. I couldn’t swally with it! The whole inside of me mouth got dry and cracked the same way and so did me neck and all inside me. The heat was getting down inside me and burning everything up. It was like being grilled except that there was no gravy. Then my nose began to dry up and get cracked and wrinkled like a thing you’d see on a mummy.