Free A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry Page B

like water in his mouth.
    But he liked the bolts to be loosened on his concerns like any other soldier. He liked the warm swill of the beer and the heat in his stomach and the thoughts it prompted.
    ‘Well, Pete, this is not so bad now!’ he shouted to O‘Hara above the din of the estaminet.
    ‘What’s that?’ called O‘Hara.
    ‘Not so bad now!’ shouted Willie.
    ‘Not so bad!’
    This wasn’t a spot he could have brought Gretta, anyhow. He wished so deep in his heart that she had been able to take up her pen more often - or even once, for the love of Jesus - and write to him. Maybe she had written and the letters had gone astray, as any letters might in the strange ‘streets’ and ’avenues’ of the trenches. The first time he ever saw her she had been writing, so he knew she had the alphabet and all the rest; of course she did, she had brains to burn.
    ‘More beer, Willie, more beer!’ shouted O‘Hara.
    ‘More beer, more beer!’ called Willie.

    The ruined face of Captain Pasley hung over all like a moon. The man in the moon was Captain Pasley with his twisted arms and his dancing hands.
    Willie’s head was rushing now.
    Maybe there was a poison in this tepid water. Maybe there was worse than poison, maybe there were dead men’s destroyed dreams milled down into powder and scattered in these bitter glasses.
    Now the room was a wash of colours, as if the room itself were a glass of suspect beer. The khaki jackets smeared in long trails, the laughing, shouting faces likewise, like the balls of comets foretelling neither good things nor bad, empty omens, horribly empty men.
    How could this estaminet be spinning like a great wheel, the songs going round and round, in a great trail of stars and colours? It was beautiful, after a fashion. O‘Hara was dancing now with a girleen, it seemed so gay and good, and now Willie was being dragged to his feet, ’No, no, I do not wish, I do not, non, non,‘ but he was laughing, the truth must be told, he was kind of raging within, he was laughing and crying, Gretta was dancing in his daft head with Captain Pasley in a silver trail of stars, in the tail of a comet that promised heaven to the world, and good purpose to all things, and the loving chanting of God.

    They were danced, O‘Hara and himself, into a deeper room. Willie went crashing down onto a mattress that had lived a long and ruinous life - there were fearsome gashes in it all over and the hair of a dozen horse tails was spewing out. The room stank of powder, something like oil, and other odd, fierce smells.
    But the girl who had pulled him up to dance was a beauty right enough. Truth to tell she was. He lay on the ancient bed and looked up at her. She wore only a loose shift and a long petticoat like a queer metal, and he glanced hastily at her fat, trim breasts, in case she would take offence at his staring. From the crown of her head dropped hair as black as a dark corner. Thick, thick black hair like a smudge of night she had, and clear, clever eyes the colour of the dark blue feathers in a magpie. My God, he thought, she was like a goddess. She seemed to Willie more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen.
    ‘Money for fuck?’ she said.
    ‘Hah?’ he said. But he knew what she had said, because she had said it very clearly, through her small, sharp teeth.
    ‘Shillings,’ she said. ‘Fuck shillings?’
    He looked over at O‘Hara and he had wasted no time at all and had climbed up on the other girl. His bare arse was pumping in and out, but his trews were pulled only down to his knees. Two little footballs of lard, it looked like. Two other soldiers were at the same work indistinctly in other corners. The girl leaned down and took the hem of her petticoat in her brown hands, and slowly raised herself again, her breasts tumbling about a little in a way that made Willie’s pecker so hard it was trying to strangle itself on his under-drawers. As she straightened, the hem was raised, and her