All heads turned as he walked into the bar. The silence hung in the air like cold mist on the Liffy. The smell of sweat combined with stout was overwhelming and the air was thick with tobacco smoke. The place was shabby and the gas lighting dull, there was a scattering of sawdust on the wooden floor. He thought the floorboards were short of a bit of caulk and shuddered at what might have dropped through them. It took Freddy a second or two to adjust to his surroundings before he ordered a pint and took it to the table by the fire.
He nodded a greeting and gave a thin smile to the old boy on the other side of the hearth but received no response. The huddle of men standing at the bar, stopped talking and turned to watch him until he sat down. Other than that no one moved.
Trying not to look self conscious, Freddy lifted his glass, took a sip of his stout, licked the froth from his top lip, and with great deliberation, put it back down on the table. He wished he had a newspaper. It was long before he got on the boat from Holyhead, that he had heard any news. Still no one moved. Just an exchange of glances between the group of men and the old bloke opposite. Glances that didn’t escape Freddy’s attention. He began to feel uncomfortable.
Content he appeared settled, the men turned back to face the landlord, busy polishing glasses, and continued their debate in hushed tones.
Freddy rubbed his hands over the smouldering peat and began to relax as the heat got through to his bones. After all, it was heat he was seeking.
He had just spent six months at Woburn Abbey, which had been turned into a hospital and convalescent home for soldiers injured at the front. The shrapnel had left deep wounds on his legs. When the shell hit, there was an enormous boom, much louder than the constant pounding of artillery and clatter of machine guns. He felt the pain in his legs, the warm blood seeping through his trousers and then silence. Loud, lurid silence. He looked up to the sky, it was overcast and threatening rain but the hush made him think he must be in heaven. And then the blackness descended and he knew no more. No more, until he awakened to find he was on his way to Woburn.
Freddy’s time at Woburn was blissful. Being bathed and deloused. The luxury of clean white bed linen. The nurturing of the angels. Strolls around the estate when he was strong enough to walk. Friendships formed, the exchanges between other survivors, the romances bound not to last and taken for what they were, all made him consider his good fortune at being injured rather than blown to bits.
Eventually he became well enough to return to the war. A Great War, a war to end all wars a war in which his regiment, The Norfolk Regiment, had been wiped out. The war which was in such a state of disarray that he was ordered to join another regiment. Any regiment. Freddy born and bred in Norfolk was ordered to affiliate himself with a regiment of his own choosing.
Freddy couldn’t face the thought of going back to the bitter, drenched ditches of Belgium or France. The mud, the lice, the trench-foot and the stench of dead comrades. He’d been told that The Royal Dublin Fusiliers was due to be despatched somewhere warm like Turkey or Greece.
He decided to join the Dubliners and head for the sun.
He met a brave Irish lad, Liam O’, Something, Freddy couldn’t pronounce, in France. He had been a sniper. They were looking for men who were good shots with a rifle and Liam volunteered. He left the comparative safety of the trench and crawling in the darkness, found a tree close to the enemy lines and hauled himself up it.
‘Never shot anyone, never saw anyone to shoot.’ he said, ‘Just sat up there for days and days. Then I finally decided to creep back and I found my pals were all dead, gassed.’
Freddy and Liam developed an affinity and shared confidences. Freddy told him about Susan, and their baby, Irene. Irene, born shortly before the war started. Irene was planned to allow Susan to flee a miserable and violent childhood.
Susan, at fourteen was sent into domestic service, with a local family. Their youngest daughter, a sweet girl called Bessie, had been friendly with Susan when they were at the village school together. Susan found the task of cleaning for her friend’s family humiliating and more so when she was expected to wear a uniform singling her out from those considered to be her betters. She refused and was sacked. She joined her mother working in the laundry. The days were long, hot and gruelling. They returned home, day after day to the torment of a brutal father and equally brutal twin brothers.
And so, when Susan started seeing Freddy they planned her escape. She would become pregnant. Susan wanted freedom and Freddy wanted Susan. He was under no illusions; deep in his heart he knew Susan would never love him the way he loved her. Now she was free and he wondered if she would wait for him. Freddy spoke of these feelings with Liam. Liam assured him she would. It was this assurance that kept Freddy sane, waiting for this relentless war, that should have ended in weeks, to be over.
Freddy checked the time, he would give himself another half hour and another glass of stout. It was a about half mile to the barracks.
The sound of Freddy’s chair scraping on the floorboards as he got up, startled the old boy, snoozing at the other side of the fireplace. He jumped up. His movement signalled a warning to the assembled debate and the constant mumbling that had provided the background to Freddy’s musing stopped. Silence fell, as it had when he first walked in.
Aware of how loud his footsteps sounded, Freddy crossed the floor. He’d had segs hammered into the heels and toes of his new boots to make them last longer. Until they wore down, he walked with a rocking movement, and now, as he click-clacked his way across the room he sounded like a tap dancer and earnestly hoped he didn’t look like one. He made it to the bar, ordered another black glass and took it back to his seat.
Those next few minutes felt like hours. All eyes were on him and the old boy, having almost lost his concentration, was now on alert and stared, almost afraid to blink, right into Freddy’s face. For a moment Freddy thought he was going to say something.
Suddenly there was a spurt of activity as the door to the street opened and a thin scraggy woman dressed in a tattered coat buttoned up to the neck, rough skirt hanging down below the hem and a scarf pulled across her hair dashed in almost falling headlong. Her gaunt, long face was red and smeared with dirt and her breath came in short bursts as if she had been running.
‘Will you be giving me a drink?’ she spluttered. It was not a question. She clung to the bar as the landlord pulled the cork from a bottle and poured her a short glass.
Freddy thought she must be drunk as he watched the performance. She downed the drink in one gulp and passed the glass for another.
‘Jesus.’ she said, ‘We’ve done it, Pearce and Connelly have taken the Post Office.’
The men crowded her and put their fingers across their lips gesturing towards Freddy. She took the other drink. Her breathing subsided and she clambered onto a high stool, leaned one elbow and rested the side of her face in her hand, the other hand clutched the glass, her knuckles clenched and white. Freddy thought her a slattern with no pride, comparing her with his lovely, proud Susan. Then once again the deafening quiet.
He checked his watch, it was time to leave. He had twenty minutes to get across the city. Liam had told him a short cut from the docks. He rose from his seat, this time acutely conscious of the scraping and the click-clack. He fastened his khaki jacket, heaved his kit-bag onto his shoulder and lugged his great coat over his arm before making his way across the room and out. It seemed an interminable distance. Finally, he reached the door and grabbed the knob to pull it open. The woman at the bar swivelled around on her stool to watch him leave. As the door opened and before he stepped out into the lonely, damp evening, she called out,
‘It’s a brave young man who would walk the streets of Dublin today, dressed like that!’
Tags: Fiction, Life, Short stories, Short story, Writing