‘You don’t want to say a prayer?’ asked Donovan. ‘No, chum,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it would help. I’m ready, and you boys want to get it over.’ ‘You understand that we’re only doing our duty?’ said Donovan. Belcher’s head was raised like a blind man’s, so that you could only see his chin and the top of his nose in the lantern-light. ‘I never could make out what duty was myself,’ he said. ‘I think you’re all good lads, if that’s


what you mean. I’m not complaining.’ Noble, just as if he couldn’t bear any more of it, raised his fist at Donovan, and in a flash


Donovan raised his gun and fired. Te big man went over like a sack of meal, and this time there was no need of a second shot. I don’t remember much about the burying, but that it was worse than all the rest because


we had to carry them to the grave. It was all mad lonely with nothing but a patch of lantern- light between ourselves and the dark, and birds hooting and screeching all round, disturbed by the guns. Noble went through Hawkins’s belongings to find the letter from his mother, and then joined his hands together. He did the same with Belcher. Ten, when we’d filled in the grave, we separated from Jeremiah Donovan and Feeney and took our tools back to the shed. All the way we didn’t speak a word. Te kitchen was dark and as we’d left it, and the old woman was sitting over the hearth, saying her beads. We walked past her into the room, and Noble struck a match to light the lamp. She rose quietly and came to the doorway with all her cantankerousness gone. ‘What did ye do with them?’ she asked in a whisper, and Noble started so that the match went out in his hand. ‘What’s that?’ he asked without turning round. ‘I heard ye,’ she said. ‘What did you hear?’ asked Noble. ‘I heard ye. Do ye think I didn’t hear ye, putting the spade back in the houseen?’ Noble struck another match and this time the lamp lit for him. ‘Was that what ye did to them?’ she asked. Ten, by God, in the very doorway, she fell on her knees and began praying, and after looking


at her for a minute or two Noble did the same by the fireplace. I pushed my way out past her and left them at it. I stood at the door, watching the stars and listening to the shrieking of the birds dying out over the bogs. It is so strange what you feel at times like that that you can’t describe it. Noble says he saw everything ten times the size, as though there were nothing in the whole world but that little patch of bog with the two Englishmen stiffening into it, but with me it was as if the patch of bog where the Englishmen were was a million miles away, and even Noble and the old woman, mumbling behind me, and the birds and the bloody stars were all far away, and I was somehow very small and very lost and lonely like a child astray in the snow. And anything that happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.


WAR D 71


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