Shamrock Green (22 page)

‘What will you have, Nurse Harrison?' Bobby Bracknell enquired.

‘What's that you're drinking?'

‘Plonk,' the captain told her. ‘It's palatable, though.'

‘A glass of that would be perfect.'

Angela had the enviable confidence of good breeding and was quite at ease in male company. She sat back and looked around.

‘What about you, Rebecca?' Mr Sanderson said.

‘I've no head for wine,' Becky said. ‘Is there tea to be had, sir?'

‘The tea's undrinkable but the coffee's not bad.'

‘Coffee then, if you please.'

The surgeon signalled and a young girl in a floral apron came scurrying out from under the awning. She had pinched, sallow features and looked fevered. From the cavernous shadow behind her came the hiss of a steam urn and a waft of beer fumes. Mr Sanderson spoke quietly to the girl in French. He was gentle with her, almost tender, for he, like Becky, knew that she was ill. He touched her skinny forearm as if taking her pulse, and made sure she understood what was required before she hurried back indoors.

‘Tubercular?' Becky said.

‘Probably,' Mr Sanderson said.

‘Should she be serving food and drink?'

‘Probably not,' said Mr Sanderson. ‘But what else is she to do?'

The café had been a gatehouse at one time. The windows were boarded over now and the doors had been removed. Becky could see little of what lay within, only a figure in an apron, the glint of a hot-water urn and the flicker of a stove. Beyond that, nothing. She wondered if the Germans had ever held Saint-Emile, if German nurses had sat where she was sitting now.

‘Ah.' Captain Bracknell broke off his conversation with Angela. ‘Now here's a little lady who might be able to shed some light on the mystery.'

Becky looked up. ‘What mystery's that, sir?'

‘Why the Irish are here,' Bobby Bracknell said.

‘I'm Scottish,' Becky said, ‘not Irish.'

‘Ah, but you consort with the Irish, don't you?'

‘We all consort with the Irish,' said Becky.

‘I think, Robert,' Mr Sanderson said, ‘that we might let our argument lapse now ladies are present.'

‘Why shouldn't we be friends with the Irish?' Becky asked.

‘Because they are lazy, insolent and interested only in drink,' Captain Bracknell said. ‘Look at the fiasco with the gas masks.'

‘Robert, Robert, please,' Mr Sanderson said.

‘They're so ill-trained and ignorant they don't even know where to find the hole to stick their heads in,' Captain Bracknell said. ‘Then they come crying to us to help them out of a jam entirely of their own making. Typical!'

Becky bridled. ‘Typical of what, sir?'

‘They don't want to be here. The vast majority would be much happier rampaging through the streets of Dublin. They're trouble-makers, born trouble-makers. What sticks in my craw is that they aren't awfully good at it.'

‘At what?' said Angela.

‘Making trouble.'

Mr Sanderson sighed. ‘Would you include the Ulsters?'

‘Certainly not. The Ulsters are loyal to the crown.'

‘Robert, you're a bigot,' Mr Sanderson said. ‘Change the subject, please.'

‘I'm no bigot,' Bobby Bracknell said. ‘I'm a realist, if anything.'

Becky heard herself say, ‘There aren't any conscripts in the Irish brigades, Captain Bracknell. They are all volunteers. If they volunteered to fight for king and country surely they deserve to be treated with more respect.'

‘I know how I'd treat them,' the captain said. ‘I'd shoot the damned lot.'

‘What do you have against the Irish, Bo— Captain?' said Angela. ‘The regiments are full of them. Surely there are some decent soldiers among them.'

‘Those from the north, yes,' said the captain. ‘It's all this nationalist twaddle I can't stand. Baying for freedom, freedom, as if we didn't look after them properly.'

‘You are in a mood today,' said Angela.

Mr Sanderson examined a sausage, prodding it cautiously with a fork. His gaunt cheeks had a dusky tinge and Becky knew that he did not share the captain's prejudices. She watched the thin, black sausage slither on the plate while the serving girl brought coffee, a cup not a pot, and a tiny glass jug of boiled milk. Captain Bracknell crossed one leg over the other and shifted his chair on the cobbles. Angela propped her plump elbows on the tabletop, not in the least embarrassed by her lover's remarks.

‘Aren't you Irish, Captain Bracknell?' Becky heard herself say.

‘What if I am?' the captain said. ‘Surely that gives me the right to criticise, don't you think?'

‘Kerry,' said Mr Sanderson, ‘is a far cry from Belfast, Robert.'

‘Am I to be held responsible for where I happened to be born?'

‘Are they?' said Becky, quickly. ‘The Irish volunteers, I mean?'

‘What do you know about it? You're a Scot, for God's sake.'

Mr Sanderson put the sausage out of its misery by cutting it in half. He transferred a portion to his mouth, slipped it into his cheek and let it stay there.

‘Robert,' he said, ‘I do believe you're worried.'

‘Worried? What do I have to worry about?' Captain Bracknell said. ‘I'm having the absolute time of my life.' He glanced at Angela, then quickly away. ‘When the show's over I'll go back to Buckingham to cut and stitch those dear ladies who are in need of repair, but if the Sinn Feiners have their way I won't be able to go home to Ireland ever again. Damn it all, I'll be an outcast in my native land and the war –
this
war will count for nothing.'

‘Robert, that's nonsense,' Mr Sanderson said.

Becky recalled Gowry's accounts of mountains and plains and remote whitewashed cottages and wondered if his view of Ireland was a total illusion. There was something desperate and despairing in Captain Bracknell. She studied him from the corner of her eye and noticed that Angela was doing the same.

‘Oh, I know what you're thinking,' the captain said. ‘You're wondering if poor Bobby Bracknell has lost the place entirely. Not so. There is trouble brewing in Ireland, serious trouble.'

‘When is there not?' said Angela.

‘I believe,' the captain said, ‘that the nationalists are trying to make a pact with the Germans.'

‘Surely not?' said Mr Sanderson.

‘If there is an armed insurrection and the Germans support it then every last Irishman will come under suspicion.'

‘They wouldn't shoot
you,
Bobby, would they?' Angela said.

‘Of course not,' Captain Bracknell said. ‘But I would be stigmatised along with the rest. All of us.'

‘Except the unionists?' Mr Sanderson put in.

‘That's true,' said the captain. ‘The unionists would be heroes, a situation that would suit the British government very well.'

Becky listened as the argument opened up again. She knew no more than anyone else what it really meant to be Irish. She had always thought of Ireland as a larger version of Mull. Now she realised how naïve she'd been, that Captain Bracknell – Gowry too perhaps – were men divided against themselves and that the captain's anger was justified.

She sipped coffee and said nothing while Mr Sanderson wearily tried to calm his deputy. Soon they would be sweating over the damaged souls that the stretcher-bearers brought out of the darkness, working together as a team, anonymous in sterilised gowns and masks. Would it matter then what views they held, what prejudices?

There had been no division in her dear cousin Robbie. He had gone willingly to fight and die for a cause in which he believed. Were the Irish so very different? she wondered. And listening to Captain Bracknell, that stiff, surrogate Englishman, she realised to her dismay that they were.

Chapter Twelve

The theory that Kaiser Bill had organised a Sinn Fein uprising in Dublin gave the boys in the line a laugh, if nothing else.

The newspapers were full of German machinations and the big war had been wiped from the headlines. Among the Irish in the line there was much speculation about the timing of the rebellion and its eventual outcome. They were still sore and disgruntled when, on a fine April morning just after Easter, Fritz launched another gas attack.

Gowry counted himself fortunate to have been out of the sector on that particular morning. He had had enough gas to last a lifetime. He had in fact been sent to the west of Heuvert with a small detachment from the Rifles to join a Rangers' raiding party. Raiding was the latest bright idea to come down from GHQ, the first tweak of a policy of aggression, and the Connaughts had been training behind the lines for several weeks and imagined they knew how stunting worked.

Led by Lieutenant Soames, the little detachment from the Rifles arrived in the Rangers' support trench about two in the afternoon. They were fed, given time to rest, briefed on their role in the raid, then guided through a series of communications trenches to the front line. It was a fine evening, the sky streaked with skimpy cloud. Dipping below the wasteland the sun shot long bars of radiant light into the trench and, dazzled by the glow, Gowry didn't notice Maurice at first.

‘You, soldier, smarten up. Look at those buttons. Look at that badge. Disgraceful. I don't know what me owd mother would be thinking of you now.'

‘Maurice,' Gowry said, grinning.

‘You, what's your name?' a Connaught officer barked.

‘Private McCulloch, sir.'

‘Do you know this man, Sergeant Leonard?'

‘I do, sir, I do.'

‘Good man, is he?'

‘One of the best,' said Maurice.

‘Not another bloody Boy Scout then?'

‘Been in khaki since the beginning, sir.'

‘Thank God for that,' said the lieutenant. ‘One never knows what will come piddling up from the reserve these days. Be bloody Girl Guides next.' He peered at Gowry for a moment longer then turned to greet Lieutenant Soames.

‘I didn't know you were in the neighbourhood, Maurice,' Gowry said.

‘Been out since February. Have you heard from me mam lately?'

‘I had a letter last month.'

Maurice nodded. ‘You've no fresh news from Dublin then?'

‘Only what the officers tell us. You?'

‘Nothing definite. I hear they've caught that bastard Roger Casement, though. Soddin' traitor. Hangin's too good for him.'

‘Who told you Casement had been caught?'

‘Our lieutenant.'

‘What's he like, your lieutenant?'

Maurice shrugged. ‘Steady enough, I suppose.'

‘He's not a regular then?'

‘Straight out o' college in 1914.'

‘He'll take us in, will he?' Gowry said.

‘Aye, an' bring us out again,' said Maurice. ‘Some of us at any rate.'

‘When's the muster?'

‘Midnight,' Sergeant Leonard said.

*   *   *

At a quarter past the hour the wire-cutters slipped stealthily over the parapet into no-man's-land. Gowry waited in the trench, listening for the
tric-trac
of machine-gun fire that would indicate they'd been spotted, but no sound came from the German lines ninety yards away.

Maurice was somewhere to his left, along with Lieutenant Soames. He had been allotted a flank position and would go out with the second wave. He didn't know the man beside him and all he could see was a shape grafted on to the wall of earth below the breastwork. He could hear the man breathing, though, panting. He wanted to make conversation, to crack a joke, share a blessing, but knew he'd be punished if he uttered a sound. Spoken commands had been replaced by hand signals and he had been told that he must count to fifty before he went over the top. He rested the rim of his helmet on the earth and tried to concentrate. He found himself thinking of Becky, though, and wondered what it would be like to lie with her, to feel her body against his. If I'm killed tonight, he thought, what a waste it will be, what a shameful waste.

Shapes stirred beside him. Someone punched his arm. Clink and clatter of equipment. Muffled scrabble of boots on the steps. Shapes above him silhouetted against a dark blue sky. Bad night for a stunt. Far too clear, the moon well up over the horizon. He wondered where Maurice was. He moved left, shuffling along a duckboard strewn with straw. Things moved in the straw. Living things. He was afraid of the darkness below, and looked up at the sky. He began counting. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. He ran his hands over his webbing. Bayonet, water bottle, field-dressing kit, butt of his rifle, smooth and stiff. Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one. He was wheezing again. Forty-five, six, seven. He thought of Father Coyle and crossed himself like a Catholic and for an instant was one with Becky.

Then he gripped the ladder, found the step, and slithered over the top.

*   *   *

At first it appeared like a simple gunshot wound, the path of the bullet obvious. In Captain Bracknell's opinion a flaccid abdominal wall indicated no gut lesion but Mr Sanderson preferred to err on the side of caution and the patient, a sandy-haired private, was immediately prepared for surgery.

The ache had returned to Becky's spine but she was steady enough on her feet and clear in the head as she arranged the instruments required for the laparotomy, a procedure that called for both speed and delicacy and that carried a high risk of infection. Sister Congreve was acting anaesthetist and Angela and another theatre nurse made up the team.

As soon as the patient had been rendered drowsy, Captain Bracknell prepared the skin surface for the first incision while Becky counted swabs and packs and laid them on a sterilised tray. Counting took her mind off the rivet in her spine. She brought out saline bags and a drip blood stand and positioned them, then she gowned and gloved Mr Sanderson.