A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

otherwise along those fields.
    ‘How long will the war last, do you think, sir?’ said Clancy, scratching his ankle with his other foot. His nails were as long as Methuselah‘s, yellow and bony looking, and they had begun to curl back under the toes. They had been long days in their snug boots.
    ‘I hope not too long, anyhow,’ said Captain Pasley.
    Then nothing for a while.
    ‘It’s the farm I miss mostly,’ said Captain Pasley, as if the words arose from a private thought of his own. ‘It makes me jittery to think of all the work that needs doing at home.’
    He pulled at the grass under his hands.
    ‘And my brother John’s in now, South Irish Horse,’ he said.
    ‘Is that so, sir?’ said Clancy idly.
    ‘And the father’s not getting any younger, I suppose,’ said the captain. ‘You know, he needs us there really, to be seeing to the liming of the fields, that’s a big job just now. We only have one or two labouring men left, everyone else gone into the army, like the men of Humewood and Coollattin and the other estates. By Christ, boys, I am jittery to think of it.’
    O‘Hara nodded sagely enough. They liked him talking about his home place somehow.
    Captain Pasley stayed peaceful enough, despite what he said about being jittery.
    The kingfisher went firing back up the other way.
    ‘That liming is a big job,’ he said, pensively.

    But soon enough they were wearily in the line again - wearily, because they took over twenty yards of a trench that had been in the possession of some sad-looking Frenchmen, and by heavens their idea of a nice trench was a strange one. At least they had decent spades up here, and regulation army wire-brushes to get the clay that stuck like toffee off their boots.
    It was foolish to make too many banging noises in a trench. In this position the enemy was a comfortable three hundred yards distant, and there was no sense in waking them up to their duty. Willie Dunne’s spade bit quietly into the ragged trench. The spoil was thrown up conveniently behind to make a better parados, a line of heaped earth to prevent fire unexpectedly coming in from the back. Other loads were heaped into sacks and stacked up in front for a decent parapet. A fire-step was put in place below so a fellow could stand on that and make some fist of firing out into no-man’s land, or, in the worst case, stand there by the ladders before going over the top.
    The Algerians were just over to his right. The Algerians sang fine, strange songs most of the day, and at night now he could hear them laughing and talking in a sort of endless excitement.
    The trench was soon looking fairly smart.
    ‘That’s fucking better now,’ said the sergeant-major religiously.

    They did all that and then lurked in the perfected trench, getting muggy like old boxers. The poor human mind played queer tricks, and you could forget even your name betimes, and even the point of being there, aside enduring the unstoppable blather of the guns. What day oftentimes it was, Willie would forget.
    Then a different day arrived. Everyone had had a lash of tea, and there was a lot of farting going on after the big yellow beans that had come up around twelve. As usual after they had eaten, they were beginning to look at each other and think this St Julian wasn’t the worst place they’d been in. It was the essential illusion bestowed on them by full stomachs.
    A breeze had pushed through the tall grasses all day. There was a yellow flower everywhere with a hundred tiny blooms on it. The caterpillars loved them. There were millions of caterpillars, the same yellow as the flowers. It was a yellow world.
    Captain Pasley was in his new dugout writing his forms. Every last thing that came in and every last thing that went out was accounted for. Items and bodies. Captain Pasley, of course, was obliged to read all the letters the men sent home, and he did, word for blessed word. He thought it might break a man’s heart to read them sometimes;