THE ENGLISH SOLDIER

I

It was Cissie Dorgan who began it. Cissie was man-mad; a big, jolly,
ignorant girl who gave up courting for Lent as another might give up
cigarettes or sweets. Her escapades provided constant entertainment
for her friend, Mamie Donegan, a quiet, middle-aged woman of
unshakable virtue and principle who listened to the story of them with
awe and it may be the least trace of envy. But she paid for it,
because the craziest of them walked in her own door on a certain
summer evening long ago.

Mrs Donegan was sitting in the kitchen, reading a religious weekly,
when the latch of the front door was pulled up. She heard a loud
voice—Cissie’s voice—and after a moment’s pause a heavy step—a man’s
step.

‘Go on into the room,’ she heard Cissie say and the parlour door was
thrown open. ‘I’ll be back to you in a minute.’

The next instant Cissie was all over her; ‘Mamie,’ whispered she,
‘you’ll have to stand by me now or I’m ruined forever. A fellow I was
bringing home—what do you think I seen? Me da coming up Blarney Lane,
roaring drunk! Sacred Heart, he’d make chanies of the crockery on me!’

“When did he come home?”

‘Oh, don’t ask me, don’t ask me! With their bloody old war you
wouldn’t know Monday from Wednesday. We weren’t expecting him till the
end of the week.’

‘And what are you going to do with the man?”

‘Would you ever give us a cup of tea?’

‘I will, with pleasure.’

‘Oh, but, Mamie, Mamie, ’tisn’t that’s worrying me at all. Immaculate
Mother of God, you’ll kill me!’

‘What’s wrong with you, you crazy thing?’  asked Mrs Donegan severely.

‘On the spur of the moment I up and out with a thumping big lie.’

‘Well, well, what was it?’ asked Mrs Donegan crossly.

‘I told him this was my house.’

‘Your house!’

‘Ah, now, can’t you be quiet and listen to me!  He had me loony asking
me to bring him home to meet me mother. He had, honest to God!  That I
might be killed stone dead! All the bloody old scutter he had about an
Irish mother and an Irish home! So I took advantage of me old fellow
being away to promise him, and then just as we were going up Blarney
Lane who pops out of a pub but me da. He looks at me, and he didn’t
know me from the sky over me, and says he, “On my tombstone spread
some jam.”  Mamie, Mamie, how could I tell him that was me da?’

‘True,’ said Mrs Donegan primly, removing her spectacles, ‘it was an
awkward position.’

‘Listen, Mamie, love!’ the girl continued desperately.  ‘A cup of tea,
one cup of tea is all he’ll want. You needn’t say more than one word
to him, and after that you’ll never see him again.  To-morrow or next
day he’ll be off to the Front —and didn’t I often say you were more
than a mother to me? Didn’t I now? Ah, Mamie, you’d never disgrace
me?”

To Mrs Donegan’s recollection she had never said anything of the sort,
but there is something about the Cissie Dorgans of this world that
gets them their way. Weeping, laughing, praying, protesting and
cajoling, she got rid of Mrs Donegan’s scruples in far less time than
it would have taken to implant one in herself, and that poor decent
woman, the child and grandchild of rebelly men, went forth to play the
unaccustomed part of a mother with a marriageable daughter, receiving
an English soldier in her house.

‘Set down there now, mother, leave you,’ said Cissie unctuously when
she had enticed Mrs Donegan into the parlour. I’ll have the tea ready
in a minute. ... Amn’t I a good daughter?’ she asked archly as she
swept out.

Mrs Donegan meekly obeyed. She saw herself faced by a young man of
thirty-three or four, with a close-cropped, egg-shaped head. He was
fair almost to whiteness. He had a rather lined face with clear skin,
a good-natured mouth and grey eyes so pale of hue they seemed to
disappear when she looked at them. As he uttered some trifling comment
on the weather, he opened the neck of his tunic and threw off his
belt. To the day of her death she referred to that gesture. She said
little, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. At last she
remembered something she might be doing, and spread the
table-cloth. As if from far away she heard the English voice
commenting upon her cottage and its sloping garden with the view of
river and city below where evening mists were gathering about
chimney-stack and spire, and on its quietness, disturbed only by the
occasional melancholy clank of a tram from the valley, or the clink of
a convent bell.

All at once the quietness was broken by Cissie’s voice raised in song
and Mrs Donegan’s heart blazed up in sudden fury.

‘Excuse me,’ she said crossly, and left her guest in the middle of a
sentence.

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Cissie radiantly. ‘Don’t I look sweet
in your apron?”

‘Get out of my sight, you dirty thing!’ hissed Mrs Donegan. ‘Go in and
talk to him, and for the Lord’s sake get him out of my house! I want
no English soldiers. All the long years I was courting I could have
had soldiers by the score, and I married Tom Donegan without a boot to
his foot. ... Oh, God, what am I after doing?  Why did I ever listen
to you? Getting me a bad name!’

Cissie, unperturbed, carried in the tea-tray.  Mrs Donegan sat down,
her heart thumping furiously. It was only now the impropriety of her
position was coming home to her—too late.  She thought of putting on
her hat and coat and leaving the house altogether, but that would
leave her husband unwarned, and God alone knew what folly Tom Donegan
would perpetrate.

Then the kitchen door flew open and in tumbled her daughter Kitty with
little Josie Mangan.

“Where’s the swaddy?” asked Kitty.

“What swaddy?”

“We heard down the road there was a swaddy came in with Cissie
Dorgan.’

‘Go out and play, will ye!’ snapped Kitty’s mother. ‘And don’t leave
me see your face again this evening. Go out and stop out!’

‘But, Mrs Donegan,’ said Josie in a hurt and argumentative tone,
‘we’re collecting for the picnic.’

‘Ye’ll collect a fine sore bottom if ye don’t run away out of that,’
said Mrs Donegan, rising and grabbing a stick. ‘And don’t attempt to
ask a stranger for money! How dare ye! What manners! Go on! Out with
ye!’

From the room came the sound of the broken piano. Mrs Donegan
shuddered. Then came her husband’s step up the laneway.

She ran to the front door to meet him and signalled him to keep
quiet. She led him out to the back-yard before she would even tell him
the misfortune that had overtaken their happy home.  Then she began to
weep.

‘God in Heaven, what came over me? And only five minutes before I was
reading a sermon by Bishop Doherty on lying and deceit!’

The soldier played the piano for an hour or more. He left with profuse
thanks and apologies. He hoped he would have the pleasure of meeting
‘Mrs Dorgan’ again, and ‘Mrs Dorgan,’ doing further violence to Bishop
Doherty’s text, hypocritically replied that she hoped so too.


II

Her peace of mind had received a terrible jolt. Days passed and did
not weaken the impression. Her husband was inclined to keep it up as a
good joke and pretend it was herself the soldier was after. Mrs
Donegan, more anxious than he had ever seen her, kept on asking what
her father the Fenian would have said. What would he have said?

The only sympathy she got was from her crony and hanger-on, Maggie
Cullinane, who called regularly with a bundle of religious papers and
some cock-eyed report of the latest sermon of his Lordship the Bishop
or some eminent Dominican in St. Mary’s. Maggie was of the breed of
mediaeval palmers. She had a face like a wall; and a cast in one eye
gave a further blankness to her countenance.

‘Pray, Mrs Donegan, pray,’ she counselled.  ‘Pray, and get your
husband and your handsome daughter to pray, and Maggie Cullinane, the
least of God’s creatures, will pray too. Oh, the power of prayer, Mrs
Donegan! Look at Mrs Dwyer and she praying fifteen years for her
husband to go off the drink!’

‘And is he keeping good still?’ asked Mrs Donegan, her eyes brimming
with exaltation.

‘Oh, dear, Mrs Donegan, is he keeping good?”  chanted Maggie in her
harsh monotonous voice. ‘Is it on her head or her heels the poor woman
is? Is it herself knows whether ’tis a man or a spirit she have beside
her in the bed?  Is it thirty-eight shillings he gave for a new
costume of Donegal tweed for her? Is it or is it not? Oh, dear!
Strange are the ways of Divine Providence, honour and praise eternal
be to it!  What mortal mind would have thought a kidney attack would
turn a raging devil into a walking saint? And yet wicked people doubt
the power of prayer! Oh, dear!’

“Ah, the poor woman!’ sighed Mrs Donegan.

“The poor woman, that’s the very thing I say myself. The poor
woman. Every night I pray the change won’t be too much for her. The
shock, Mrs Donegan, the shock! Pray for her, you too, Mrs Donegan,
that it won’t stuff her up with spiritual pride and nonsense and turn
her against the ones that were good to her, and prayed the Almighty
for her every night on their two bended knees. The Lord giveth and the
Lord taketh away, Mrs Donegan, and maybe if she became proud and the
prayers of His poor ones got lukewarm, He might be giving her tally-ho
as He gave her before.’

Just then there came a knock at the front door. Tom rose, glad of the
diversion, and went to open. Mrs Donegan’s heart almost stopped
beating.

‘You’re Mr Donegan, I suppose,’ said the Englishman’s voice.

‘And you’re Mr Godfrey,’ replied Tom with what struck her as heartless
placidity.

‘That’s right.’

With one hand Mrs Donegan covered her mouth while with the other she
menaced Maggie. She felt she would forgive her husband every slight he
ever put upon her if now he showed himself a man. She raised her
clenched fists calling to Heaven for vengeance as Tom’s slow voice
replied:

‘I’m hearing a lot about you. Come in, can’t you?’

She looked round, angry and terrified, and there at the kitchen door
stood the English soldier. He leaned against the jamb, his woollen
gloves caught in his shoulder-strap, his outstretched arm supporting
himself against the door-frame, his cap slightly covering one eye, and
smiled down at her in an extraordinarily searching way. Something in
that smile of his frightened her more than ever. ‘Almighty God,’ she
said afterwards to her husband, ‘’twasn’t like a smile at all. ’Twas
like a ghost laughing.’

‘Nice evening, Mrs Dorgan,’ he said. ‘Is Cissie in?’

‘No.’

That was all she could say, boggling at him with dilated eyes.

‘I’m better be going,’ muttered Maggie.

‘Wait till I get you them couple of things,’ said Mrs Donegan, and
began searching about the house, collecting here a pair of old boots,
there a turnip and from the cupboard a half-loaf.

The soldier looked with undisguised interest at Maggie, who continued
to pour forth a stream of benediction.

‘That the saints of God may make your bed in glory, Ma’am,’ she
intoned, ‘that the angels and archangels, the cherubims and the
serubims, the powers and abominations may intercede for your salvation
before the throne of God, and Maggie Cullinane, the least of God’s
creatures, will pray for you as well.’

‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Tom, as with averted head the old palmer
pushed her way out past the soldier.

He hung his cap on a nail over the coal-hole, laid his cane on the
chair, and took his seat at the head of the table beneath the window
where his fair, smooth head was half in shadow.

‘I was out walking,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d just drop in.’ Already he
had loosened his collar and tossed aside the belt of his tunic.

‘You’re very welcome,’ said Tom, squatting on the table beside him and
taking out his pipe.

Thanks, There isn’t much to do in the city, and this locality is nice
and quaint.’

‘’Tis a homely locality,’ said Tom placidly, digging his forefinger
into his pipe.

‘Just so,’ said the soldier, and his grey eyes seemed to disappear as
he looked at Tom. ‘And the view from your garden is fine, the river
and hills and spires, particularly now when the sun is setting.’

‘There are times,’ said Tom, putting a match to his pipe, ‘there are
times when that view is something astonishing. Something astonishing!
After rain, now.’

‘I dare say,’ murmured the soldier, nodding his head
reflectively. ‘Yes, it should be fine.’

“You wouldn’t find the like of it anywhere,’ declared Tom
emphatically.

‘I never thought for one instant,’ declared Mrs Donegan later, ‘that
my Tom had such ould guff in him.’

And really, it was surprising how well he got on with the soldier. At
first, while she was making tea for them, she thought he was doing it
to save her face, but afterwards while they were drinking tea she
realised that Tom, who ordinarily hadn’t a word to throw to a dog, was
enjoying it, and this irritated her. All the while she sat silent with
a perfectly blank face, her lip hanging. She felt she would never be
at peace again. When the time came she took it out on the children,
who stole in and sat on chairs beside the kitchen door, intensely,
sculpturally quiet.

‘Out with ye!’ she shouted, waving her fist at them. ‘Bad cess to ye,
what are ye doing there? What brought ye in at all? Out to blazes to
ye!’

‘Let them stay,’ begged the soldier with his quiet smile. ‘Which of
you plays the piano?’

‘I do, sir,’ replied Kitty.

‘And do you sing?’

‘No, sir. She do.’

‘Oh, does she?’

‘And she dances.’

‘Dances too, does she? Will you dance for me?’

‘I will, sir,’ replied Josie.

Mrs Donegan grew scarlet. She felt that at any moment now the lie
would out. ‘Tom smiled with quiet malice. But the soldier asked no
further questions. They all went into the parlour.  Kitty played and
Josie danced jigs, reels and hornpipes. Then he played the piano for
them: popular tunes like the ‘Marseillaise’ and the ‘British
Grenadiers’ with lengthy variations of his own devising. To crown this
display of skill, he demanded a sheet. He draped the piano with it and
played the Chopin ‘Funeral March.’  It had a muffled, mournful sound.

Tom accompanied him as far as the North Gate Bridge. As they reached
Wyse’s Hill the night came down and they saw the city all dark under
the hills, but picked out with pale specks of light.

“That was an interesting old lady,’ said the soldier.

‘That one!’ said Tom and stopped dead.  ‘That wan is a thundering
rogue! That wan is the biggest rogue in Ireland, in my opinion!’

The two men fell into a slow stride as Tom explained his great theory,
a theory he had never yet divulged to anyone, but which he sometimes
chuckled at when he woke during the night and saw his wife asleep with
the rosary beads twined round her wrist.

‘Women,’ he said, ‘are more religious than men. And the reason is,
they try to take advantage of God on account of Him a man.’


He returned to find his wife in tears and the two children in the
horrors. Mrs Donegan was sitting on a low wicker-work chair with her
back to the fire while they faced her from the front of the
coal-hole. As he opened the front door he heard her voice.

‘And what’ll ye say if he asks ye who Cissie Dorgan is?’

‘Me sister,’ sobbed Kitty.

‘Again!’

‘Me sister.’

‘Again!’

‘Me sister.’

‘Erra, for the love of God what ails you, woman?’ he asked in
wonderment.

‘Tom Donegan,’ she said with a catch in her voice, ‘if that man comes
to this house again, the door will be locked in his face.’

‘Begor, it will not.’

‘I say it will.’

‘And I say it won’t. He’s as decent a young fellow as I met this many
a long day, and damn the bit of harm in him no more than a child.’

‘And what are we going to say to him?’ she snarled with more venom
than he had thought her capable of.

‘Say? Say, ‘Mr Soldier, I’m Mamie Donegan, and I’m no more to the
Dorgan girl than the man in the moon. If that suits you, there’s a
seat by the hob for you, and a cup of tea and a round of toast
whenever you like to come.’ That’s all you’ll say.’

‘Is it tell him that? Him? An Englishman!’

‘And why not?’

‘And have it going round that we’re all liars, is that what you want?’
she asked with gathering exasperation. ‘Is it? Is it, you gom? What
would he say but that the people of Cork were rogues to a man? What
would he think but that ’twas a dirty house we were keeping——?

‘Tut-tut-tut!’ said Tom in annoyance.

‘A dirty house,’ she repeated angrily, ‘and sending out the Dorgan one
for a decoy!’

‘Oh, very well, very well!’ he replied with a gesture of
surrender. ‘You’re Cissie Dorgan’s mother and I’m her father, and
there’s no more to be said.’

‘Oh, I’m ruined,’ she cried, springing to her feet and wiping her eyes
with her apron.  ‘Ruined, ruined I am this blessed and holy night, and
serve me right for telling lies! Oh, bad luck to you, Cissie Dorgan,
for making a deceiver of an honest woman that never made two bites of
the truth before! ... And the divil in hell sweep and melt you, Tom
Donegan,’ she shouted with another change of tone, ‘for standing there
and laughing at me with your fat fool’s face! I might be a clown in a
circus for all the nature you have for me!’

That night Mrs Donegan, with the assistance of Kitty, began a novena
for the removal of the English soldier.


III

But lest the novena should fail, she prepared a grand little story to
get rid of him—Cissie had taken a situation in the country. This was
partly Cissie’s own tale, for she refused pointblank to take Godfrey
away and explain. The truth was that Cissie herself was a little
frightened.

But the novena and the story went equally wide of the mark. One
evening when ‘Tom was working late he came again. This time the front
door was open and he walked in upon herself and Maggie Cullinane, who
was recounting in her cock-eyed way a report of a sermon given by an
Augustinian, while Mrs Donegan, with hands folded devoutly on her lap
and eyes shut, pieced the noble fragments together in her mind.

To her disgust the story fell flat. He asked no questions and
displayed no grief, and as though taking his welcome for granted, hung
up his cap and sat in his old place under the window. Again she saw
him loosen his collar and throw aside his belt. At that she gave
herself up for lost.  When it came to the point she could no more be
rude to him than she could fly. With a warning glance she bade Maggie
remain to protect her.

“Where’s Kitty?’ he asked.

‘Out somewhere with Josie Mangan,’ she replied.

“Where did she learn the piano?’

“The nuns taught her.’

‘She plays it very well,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Oh, very well!’

Maggie Cullinane’s face was turned to him, and it was only an accident
that she appeared to be looking intently at the fire. As certain
domestic utensils, kettles, pots and shovels sometimes seem to express
an almost human emotion, so Maggie’s wooden face for a moment took on
a look of respect.

‘’Tisn’t because I’m talking to you, ma’am,’ she said in her harsh,
expressionless chant, rocking to and fro, ‘nor because I want to
flutter you, for all knows the soft word is always furthest from my
mind, but your daughter Kitty is a miracle.’

‘She is a very intelligent child,’ said Mrs Donegan, her eyes
beginning to moisten.

‘How old is she?’ asked the soldier.

‘Fourteen,’ said Mrs Donegan.

‘And when she was no more than five years old,’ chanted Maggie, ‘she
was cleverer than many a grown man. To hear her read out
“Constantinople” would make the tears come to your eyes. The workmen
on the road used to mark the long words in the daily paper for the
pleasure of getting her to read them: “Constantinople” and
“procrastination”; “pestrification” and “mollycopology”.’

In some way she was never able to account for Mrs Donegan found
herself telling her life story to the English soldier, but it was
Maggie Cullinane who questioned the soldier about himself, for
Maggie’s curiosity took in the whole created world, and for many a day
to come the soldier would be featured in the gossip she brought into
the homes of all the other Mrs Donegans. It appeared that he had spent
the greater part of his life in Canada (Maggie instantly noticed that
he gave no explanation of how he got there); had joined a Canadian
regiment and been transferred to an English one.  Now he was waiting
his turn to go to the Front.

In Mrs Donegan’s mind Canada had but one connotation.

‘I suppose you weren’t there the time of the invasion?’ she asked.

“What invasion?”

‘The Fenian invasion, of course.’

‘Fenian invasion?’ he enquired mildly.

‘Yes, the Fenian brotherhood.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘You mean to say you never heard of the Fenian brotherhood?’

‘Never.’

‘Didn’t they make you learn history at school?’

‘I didn’t get much schooling,’ he confessed.

‘The Fenians,’ said Mrs Donegan defiantly, ‘were the glory of
Ireland.’

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. “Tell me something about them.’

This was one of the invitations that Mrs Donegan could not
resist. Forgetting her sorrow and shame, or rather merging them in
those of her country, she talked till she brought tears to her own
eyes of the ’98 with its half-hangings, scourgings and scalpings, the
Great Famine when the people lay by the roadsides eating grass, and
_The Times_ boasted that soon the Irishman would be as rare as the
redskin; the ’67 and the Land War.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Maggie Cullinane admiringly, ‘I always said you
should have been born a man.  Oh, dear, you should, for there was a
great missioner lost in you, ma’am, there was indeed.’

It was Josie and Kitty who got most out of the soldier. Taking their
father’s place they accompanied him to the foot of the hill among an
army of children they knew, and prompted him with a hundred questions
merely to show off his alien accent. They swung from his arms, they
strove to possess him to the last element of his being: secretly they
envied and hated each other for having to share him at all. In the
shop at the foot of Wyse’s Hill he bought them sweets and they leaned
over the railings by the river and ate them.  Twilight drew on and
pale lamps lit the crazy tenements at the farther side of the
river. Two drunken soldiers came out of one of them, and, followed by
a mob of shawled and screaming women, staggered down the quay.

The children’s hearts almost burst with pride when he promised to take
them to Queenstown to see the fleet. ‘They returned arm-in-arm, their
rivalry grown, so that it could no longer contain itself but
overflowed in an indiscriminate and maudlin affection. Kitty reached
home to find her mother angrier than ever. The Queenstown trip made it
worse, and it was she by her own folly who had made it possible. She
knew her emotions had betrayed her; she had handed herself over body
and soul to him.


IV

After the trip to Queenstown there was no further questions of his
position. Even to the neighbours he was ‘Donegan’s swaddy.’ ‘Two or
three evenings each week he came for tea. ‘Then he lounged about the
house, played the piano or sat in the garden in his shirt sleeves;
especially he liked sitting in the garden, for he never tired of the
view of the city, and the lanes leading down to it and the white
spires at evening. When Tom was there he sat with him, his elbows on
his knees, his pipe in his mouth and from time to time spat, always at
the same bush as though he had a grudge against it. The children
played in and out of the garden, jealously guarding him on all comers;
for weeks their lives were a long, ecstatic insecurity. Often a member
of their gang would creep slyly up the steps while the soldier sat in
the garden, or they would wake up to find Madge Mahoney at the wooden
gate with her finger in her mouth and a coy look on her sugary
face. With the most brazen insolence Kitty and Josie would order her
away.

‘I only wanted to know if ye were coming out.’

“Well, we’re not.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Madge would say, still coyly fingering the latch.

‘Go on away, now!’

‘I will if I like.’

‘Go on away or you’ll be made go away.’

‘’Tisn’t your gate anyway, Josie Mangan.’

And Josie, her face transfigured with rage, would stride down the
path.

‘Go away, leather-lips!’ she hissed, her nose almost touching Madge’s
through the uprights of the gate. ‘Go on now and get an English
soldier of your own!’

But the strangest thing was the way in which Mrs Donegan, whom he
still called ‘Mrs Dorgan,’ made her own of him. She couldn’t help it.
Never had she known so apt a pupil. Sometimes when he was sitting with
Tom in the garden she would join them, waiting her chance to introduce
a new lesson.

But an even greater project had begun to dawn upon her mind. It was
Maggie Cullinane’s phrase that gave her the idea, ‘there was a great
missioner lost in you.’ One evening she went out while he was sitting
alone in the garden. He turned from the view and, without rising,
smiled up at her. Something in his smile, something in his attitude,
the appearance of his brown arms bare under his rolled-up sleeves and
his brown throat with the grey army shirt thrown open, confirmed her
in her resolution. She drew her wicker-work chair nearer to his and
tidied her hair.

‘Mr Godfrey,’ she said in honeyed tones, ‘did I ever tell you about
the martyrs of the Faith?”

Low dark clouds swept past while the hedges rustled, the voices of
children playing in the road grew shriller, and mist covered up the
city.  They sat there talking till the light went and dew began to
fall.

Only occasionally now did she think of her deception and then merely
to defend herself.  ‘Donegan or Dorgan,’ she said to Tom, ‘there isn’t
so much difference. And for all anyone knows or cares mightn’t our
name be Donegan-Dorgan?’

One day he came early to tell them he had been ordered to the
Front. ‘The announcement produced a curious feeling of stiffness. For
the first time they behaved, all three, like new acquaintances. Only
the children gave them selves up to gloom, and after a while he took
them for a walk up the hill past the Fair Field.  Every day after that
Kitty, Josie and himself went somewhere, to Blarney, to Youghal or to
Crosshaven. He spent his leave in their company, and each evening the
children returned, sick and happy. But between himself and the
Donegans the feeling of strain persisted until the evening he came for
the last time. Then Mrs Donegan broke down and wept.

‘’Tisn’t anything else,’ she said between her sobs, ‘but I know if I
had you a bit longer you’d see the light. I know you would. Promise me
whenever you get the chance you’ll go and get yourself instructed.’

‘I promise,’ he said.

‘You won’t forget it?’

‘I won’t. I had my mind made up already.’

‘You had?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks be to God!’ said Mrs Donegan.  ‘And now you’ll be a candle to
light my soul to glory.’

Yes,’ he said. ‘We all need one.’

Tom took the children to the station to see him off. It was a
September morning, and they were halted at the gate where already a
large crowd had gathered. They heard a band playing for twenty minutes
before the soldiers appeared.  The two children, evading control, ran
up and down the marching ranks. Almost unrecognisable under his
heaped-up equipment, he saw them first and shouted. Josie rushed
towards him and he stepped out of the ranks to kiss her.  Unnerved by
the excitement she began to cry.  Then it was Kitty’s turn, and she,
not to be outdone, cried too. Tom had Godfrey’s hand and held on to
it.

The regiment trailed through the barriers, shouting and singing
drunkenly; a group of respectable sympathisers cheered and waved Union
Jacks, while some shawled women hooted and danced and screamed and
wept. One of them, her shawl ripped from her shoulders, her hair gone
wild, was trying to tear her way past the gates. Tom and the soldier
had to shout at one another. At the gate Godfrey kissed the children
again, and they noticed that he, ordinarily so smooth and cool, had
become red and wild-looking.

‘If you were ever on leave,’ shouted Tom across the barrier, ‘you
could stop with us.’

The soldier, being pushed and elbowed forward by his comrades and
still looking back, nodded, but in the same wild, blank way.  Tom did
not even know if he had heard. A sudden desire came on him to make it
quite clear. He shouted louder and louder and gesticulated wildly, and
the soldier looking back kept nodding, until the children, with their
quick sense of the ridiculous, realised that everyone had begun to
look. They pulled him energetically by the coat and trousers. When at
last he desisted he looked down at them angrily, his lower lip
beginning to droop from under his black moustache.

Seven or eight months later a wire came announcing the soldier’s
death. But even then they did not understand till they received a
letter and parcel, enclosing his watch, his bank-book, his will; two
letters from Kitty, one from Josie, a pair of scapulars and an Agnus
Dei which Mrs Donegan had had blessed for him.  His savings—which
seemed a fortune to them though they amounted to little more than a
hundred pounds—he left for Kitty’s education.  The watch was for
Josie.

It was Tom who drew attention to the fact that the name in the will
was Donegan.

‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ said his wife, weeping.  ‘And he knew our name all
the time.’

‘More than we knew about him,’ said ‘Tom.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘I always had my doubts,’ explained her husband patiently. ‘We’ll
never know now, but this watch ’ He pressed the spring and looked
again at the initials engraved on the back. ‘G. L.’ he said. ‘The G
stands for Godfrey I suppose, but isn’t it a strange thing, maybe
there isn’t a soul in the world will ever know what the other stands
for?’

(1934)

Source: _Bones of Contention and other stories_, 1936, (1978 reprint
Core Collections Books Inc., New York).