Free Taken Away by Celine Kiernan Page B

her smile, my sister has a core of steel that not even Shamie’s charm can melt.
    Jolly passes between us, his back to me as he hands Shamie a cuppa.
    â€˜â€™Ere you go, Wee Paddy.’
    Shamie smiles gratefully up at him. He doesn’t climb out of his niche, just curls out an arm and brings the cup into himself. He’s crouched like a little mud gargoyle in that snug cell. He closes his eyes in bliss as the petrol-scented steam rises up into his face.
    The sun is blazing down for once. We’ve finally stopped steaming under its glare, and now every one of us is pale-grey cracked mud from the knee up. From the knee down, we’re still caked in heavy slime and trench slobber. Jolly flops down beside Shamie and gestures at me.
    â€˜Been writing ’ome then, Big Paddy? Reminding them to send you some burfday cake next week?’
    I nod and smile. Jolly’s a decent bloke. They’re all decent blokes, our new trenchmates. Them being the ragged ends of three Lancashire-Pals Regiments; and Shamie and I, the last men standing of the Meath Volunteers.
    Jolly looks around and sucks his teeth. ‘Wot a place to celebrate your burfday,’ he sighs. ‘Dunno why yer here, anyroad. Shouldn’t you be off home in t’ Em’rald Isle, burning down post offices and blowing up peelers like good Irish rebels?’
    It’s said with no rancour, and despite how unintentionally cutting his words are, I just smile. Jolly is a Marxist and doesn’t believe any of us should be here. He skates the thin ice of insubordination every minute he’s alive. If we weren’t blessed with such a decent sarge, most any day would see us marching Jolly out before dawn to meet his maker.
    Shamie feels the sting of Jolly’s remark as deeply as I do, but we smile and roll our eyes tolerantly at each other. If you’re Irish, you must be a rebel – even if you’re side-by-side with a bunch of Tommies in a trench full of mud, fighting the Kaiser in the name of the English King.
    My expression amuses Shamie and he grins. His mud-mask cracks into crazy lines and dust puffs up from his cheeks. This makes me laugh, and I feel my skin stretch and pull under its own coating of mud. Shamie’s grin widens. His eyes sparkle over the rim of his cup, and his monkey-faced delight breaks his mask into a million flaking pieces.
    I sit forward, a cold feeling growing in my chest. What’s wrong with Shamie’s face? He looks so old.
    Jolly says, ‘Give us a song, Wee Paddy.’
    Shamie nods, boyish shyness incongruous on his suddenly ancient face.
    It’s a trick of the mud , I think. It must be.
    â€˜None of your black Mick rebel songs, now,’ Jolly tells him. ‘Sing summat nice.’
    I feel the world tilt as Shamie cocks his head back and begins to sing. He’s launched into his favourite hymn, the ‘Panis Angelicus’. Coming from an old man’s throat, his voice is bell-clear; a swallow in May, it soars over the squalor of the trench. Soldiers, like clay statues of men all up and down the section, have paused in eating their dinners and are looking at him with wistful expressions. But the ground is heaving beneath me, and the air around Shamie is filled with dancing grey spots, like ash. My tin cup slips from my fingers. It clatters to the duckboards; the precious tea splashes onto my gaiters and over my boots.
    Jolly looks over as I slide from my perch and land on my knees in the clay. There’s something dribbling from my nose. I can feel it, cold, running in thin rivulets from each nostril. I raise my hand to brush it away, embarrassed. But it is only water. Shamie’s voice is lifting easily into the highest registers of the song, and Jolly is leaning across as if to reach for me. I open my mouth to tell him that I’m fine, but choke on the sudden gush of seawater that comes pouring from my throat and nose.
    I fall forward.
    There’s