The Canal Bridge: A Novel of Ireland, Love, and the First World War Read online

  Also by Tom Phelan

  In the Season of the Daisies

  Iscariot

  Derrycloney

  Nailer

  Copyright © 2005, 2014 by Glanvil Enterprises, Ltd.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First North American Edition

  First published by The Lilliput Press, Dublin, Ireland

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Phelan, Tom, 1940–

  The canal bridge : a novel of World War I / Tom Phelan. — First North American edition.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-62872-314-4

  1. World War, 1914–1918—Veterans—Fiction. 2. World War, 1914–1918—Ireland—Fiction. 3. Male friendship—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS6066.H37C36 2014

  823’.914—dc23

  2013036113

  Printed in the United States of America

  In loving memory of my brother Con Phelan

  To Patricia, Joseph and Michael with love

  and

  To the men of my hometown of Mountmellick who were in uniform during World War I:

  Michael Aherne Peter Fingelton Arthur Hill Neale

  Michael Brennan George Harris Joseph Newell

  Thomas Culliton John Joseph Johnson Perpe Newell

  Patrick Deegan James Johnston George O’Neill

  Christopher Dempsey William Keegan James O’Rourke

  Joseph Dempsey William Keegan Jr. George Payne

  Michael Dempsey Michael Kirwan John Phelan

  Patrick Dempsey Patrick Lalor Samuel Pim

  Michael Duggan Thomas Lalor Edward Reddin

  Michael O’Connell William Lalor “The Gong” Ryan

  Thomas Dunne George McGee Christopher Shea

  William Dunne Patrick McGee Victor Smith

  Patrick Fallon Joe Molloy John Staunton

  Thomas Fallon Seamus Farrell Oliver Moran and hundreds of others unknown to me

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  GOING AWAY

  Missus Fitzpatrick

  Kitty Hatchel

  Missus Hatchel

  Ralphie Blake

  Kitty Hatchel

  Missus Hodgkins

  Matthias Wrenn

  Matthias Wrenn

  Con Hatchel

  Con Hatchel

  Con Hatchel

  Matthias Wrenn

  THE WAR

  Dennis Hayes

  Father Kinsella

  Matthias Wrenn

  Con Hatchel

  Matthias Wrenn

  Ralphie Blake

  Matthias Wrenn

  Con Hatchel

  Matthias Wrenn

  Missus Hodgkins

  Con Hatchel

  Matthias Wrenn

  COMING HOME

  Billy Simkins

  Jer Meaney

  Kitty Hatchel

  Kitty Hatchel

  Kitty Hatchel

  Billy Simkins

  Kitty Hatchel

  Missus Hodgkins

  Kitty Hatchel

  Kitty Hatchel

  Matthias Wrenn

  Kitty Hatchel

  Ralphie Blake

  Kitty Hatchel

  Missus Hodgkins

  Sarah Hodgkins

  Ralphie Blake

  Kitty Wrenn: 1970

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  Selected Bibliography

  Author’s Note

  For readers who are unfamiliar with the Irish vernacular, a glossary is provided at the back of the book.

  GOING AWAY

  Missus Fitzpatrick

  Matthias and Con were still in nappies. They’d be standing there staring across the Canal at each other, each with the tip of a finger against his bottom lip. Maybe they thought they were looking in a looking-glass, each seeing himself on the far bank thirty feet away, neither one saying a word. They could have been twins.

  I suppose lads that young don’t know what to say, don’t even know yet how to call each other names.

  Then one summer I was going along the bank to Missus Conway’s, and I declare, three of them were out: Con and his little sister, Kitty, on the far side, and Matthias on this side, and it only eight o’clock in the morning. About a year after the girl’s appearance, I heard that singy-songy thing of theirs for the first time. The minute I’d step around the corner of the Canal Stores at the Harbour near the Windlass, there it would be on the water—My side, my side—the girl’s voice as strong as the lads’. She was every bit as cheeky as the boys. When they’d see me coming in the distance, they’d stop the singing. But at that age they didn’t know how voices carry on water, and I’d hear one of them saying, “Here’s Redfingers Fitz,” or “Here’s the old washerwoman,” or “Here’s the old one going to Conways’.” And the little girl imitating them, “Here’s doul wan.” “Here’s Redfingers going to wash Missus Conway’s dirty drawers.”

  Then, when I’d be coming home around six with Missus Conway’s shilling in my pocket and my hands red and raw, they’d still be there like they hadn’t moved all day. But, surely to God, they must have gone home to get a bite during the day, a cut of bread or a potato. And I always heard them before I saw them. I’d still be at the Dakeydocks when the ghosty song would come rippling along the top of the water, all childish stuff about how the flowers and the grass on my side are better than on your side.

  The little girl would still be out there instead of being at home with her mother, as country-looking as the two lads in her boots and poor excuse for a dress. But her hair was always as neat as a pin and her face shiny as an apple after a rub on the wetted corner of her mother’s apron. She had the kind of eyes you’d think could see into your head; she never seemed to blink.

  I’d be afraid to let a child of mine near water of any kind by himself for fear he’d fall in. One day I said as much to Missus Wrenn, may the Lord have mercy on her soul, a terrible death she had, and she said, “Matthias knows if he gets too close the Bogeyman will stick his hand out of the water and pull him into the Canal by the shoelaces.”

  Bogeyman, my foot! And me with my own two eyes after seeing the three of them children on a hot day with their shoes off and their feet dangling in the Canal, they all trying to splash the water higher than the other. The Bogeyman never frightened them lads, and nothing at all would frighten the young one. I got to thinking she was more of a boy inside those clothes than a girl.

  “Hello, Missus Fitzpatrick,” they’d say when I was passing them, like they were little angels after falling out of a holy picture, and then of course, they’d start talking too soon after I was gone by.

  “She’s terri
ble fat, like an old sow,” one would say. “Did you see the red hands of her, like carrots?” “And the thick legs of her, like stumps?” “Her real name is Missus Redfingers.” The sweet voices sailed along the top of the water like snowflakes blowing on ice in wintertime. Little children say terrible funny things.

  The boys were born on the same day, Missus Ward running down the far bank to the Bridge to get to Missus Wrenn’s house on this side just after pulling out Con Hatchel. The way Missus Ward told the story, I could nearly hear Missus Hatchel popping like a bottle after the cork comes flying out; there she was with Con in her hands and he dripping all the cleanings off him and the mother still looking like a disgrace when there was a knock at the door and a child calling her to go to Missus Wrenn’s.

  “Missus Wrenn wants Missus Ward quick.”

  Missus Ward always put in the part about running down the far bank, like she was a hare or something, and she just about able to waddle like a too-fat duck. But the way she told it, you could see her tearing along the bank with her clothes and hair flying in the wind, her arms pumping her along, to cross at the Bridge. She made it sound like she went into a dive and skidded on her belly across the Wrenns’ bedroom just in time to grab Matthias before he hit the floor after shooting out of his mother.

  Then the little girl was born less than a year later—the Hatchel twins they were called, Con and Kitty, when they got to be the same size nearly. But Kitty would always say, “We’re not twins. I’m the baby,” like she was defending a title.

  I saw them getting older and bigger every Monday when I was coming and going to Missus Conway’s. And in all those years, I never once saw the three of them standing together. It was like they never found out why the Bridge was built. They spent days fishing, or skipping stones across to each other, or trotting along talking to the bargemen, but I never saw them on the same bank.

  Then, of course, there was the dreadful fire, and Matthias was put in the Workhouse, and that was the end of them. It was like some fixture that you always thought would be there was suddenly gone, nothing but a hole left. I got crippled with rheumatism the same year as the fire, and I never walked the Canal bank again.

  The washing soda Missus Conway used to buy was terrible caustic on the skin, lumpy stuff like bits of broken glass. My hands always felt as if they’d just been scalded.

  Kitty Hatchel

  School of the Poor Servants of the Holy Cross, Maryborough Entrance Examination, Part IV: English Composition

  Instructions: You must finish your composition in exactly one hour. There is a clock with a second hand over the blackboard. If you have your pen in your hand when the hour is over, you will be disqualified.

  Your composition must be about your town, or part of your town, or some aspect of your town.

  My name is: Katherine Ann Hatchel

  The name of my town is: Ballyrannel

  Today’s date is: 24 March 1909

  The Grand Canal at Ballyrannel

  They started building the Ballyrannel branch of the Grand Canal in 1827. From where it branches from the main canal to where it ends in front of the Canal Stores in the Harbour in Ballyrannel, it is six miles long. It was ready for barges in 1831.

  Each barge is sixty feet long and ten feet wide and can carry forty tons. If the load is heavier than forty tons, the bottom of the barge will get stuck on the bottom of the Canal and won’t be able to go anywhere. Boats full of cargo travel at three miles an hour.

  A horse, in a set of draughts and a singletree, pulls the barge with a rope so thick you can’t get the fingers of your two hands to meet around it. Another word for pull is “tow,” and the horse’s path beside the Canal is called the Towpath and the thick rope is called the towrope. Wherever a road crosses the Canal there is a bridge. The underside of the bridge is shaped like a half-moon made out of cut stones, and the space under the bridge is only wide enough for the barge and the Towpath. Under the bridge, the Towpath is made out of smooth stones that weigh a ton each. They are called coping stones.

  The grass on the Towpath along the Canal is always half dead from the horses’ feet, but in the narrow track between the worn path and the Canal, special plants grow because they need a lot of water. There’s yellow iris, lilac cuckooflower, pink valerian, and meadowsweet with its beautiful smell and white silky spikes. In the shallow water near the banks, deep-green delicate mare’s tails and horsetails grow. My brother Matt draws the flowers on the inside of cigarette boxes he finds on the road going to school, and my mother hangs them under the mantelpiece in the kitchen with tacks. The children pick meadowsweet and iris for the May altar with the statue of the Blessed Virgin on a white cloth.

  There are eight kinds of fish in the Canal. One of them is the eel and it wiggles like a snake. It will even keep wiggling after its head is cut off. My brother Con fried and ate an eel once, and he said it was lovely, but no one else would taste it, except for Matt. The others are bream, carp, roach, rudd, pike, perch, and tench. A pike has such a big mouth and terrible teeth it could bite off your toe. Nobody likes tench because they eat dead dogs, and when a boy catches one he won’t touch it. He cuts his fishing line and loses his hook. When a perch is pulled out, it raises its sail, and it could stab you if you were too near. Roach are gold and red. They are nice to look at, but my mother won’t eat them because they smell too fishy, and she won’t eat perch because they are full of bones as fine as the hairs on a mouse’s belly.

  Two kinds of birds live on the Canal and build their nests in the tall green reeds near the bank: swans and waterhens. Waterhens are black with very yellow-red legs and beaks. When there is something dark behind the waterhen, all you can see are the legs and the beak. Sometimes you would think waterhens are walking on the water like Jesus, but they are really walking on lilies and broken reeds and weeds. Swans can kill a person with their wings, and young swans are called cygnets and are not white. Girl swans are called pens. My father’s Uncle Martin said boy swans should be called pens and girl ones inkwells.

  Where the Canal is twenty-four feet wide it is four feet and nine inches deep. But then the bottom slopes up to the banks for another three feet on each side. So, the Canal is thirty feet wide altogether, except under the bridges.

  The water in the Canal is dead because it does not flow anywhere, and if you drink it you will die. People throw things in the Canal to get rid of them. The worse thing is to see a drowned dog floating in the Canal. My father found a drowned man once, and he said it was not as bad as looking at a drowned dog.

  One winter a man who liked to show off because he had lived in America said he could ride his bike on the Canal ice from the Harbour to the Bridge and back in ten minutes. Some men made bets. When the man got to the Bridge the ice was not so thick because it was sheltered. Himself and the bike went down through the ice, and they kept going under the water long enough to end up under the thicker ice at the far side of the Bridge. The men left standing at the Harbour were calling him an eejit behind his back. But when they saw him disappearing they ran all the way to the Bridge. They got my father’s hatchet to break the ice to make a hole to get the man, but he was dead. His neck had hit the edge of the broken ice, and his head was nearly cut off, only held on by the skin of the back. When they put him down on the bank, his head was facing one way and his body the other, and Paddy Conroy had to twist the head around the right way and rub the blood off on the seat of his own trousers. Paddy Conroy didn’t sleep for a week. They never found the man’s false teeth, and my father said a tench ate them.

  The water in the Canal is kept at a certain level by special little rivers called supplies. The Supply that flows into the Canal beyond the Bridge, but this side of the Dakeydocks, is a good place for boys to fish for perch, because the perch are always waiting there for fat worms to come floating in from the countryside. If a boy puts a worm on his hook, a perch will swallow the hook and get caught.

  The Aqueduct is where the Canal is built across the Johnnies Ri
ver, but everyone calls it the Dakeydocks. Big drops are always falling from the bottom of the Aqueduct into the river. Only one girl will walk in the river under the Canal because it is so dark in there, and the boys think the Aqueduct is going to collapse any minute.

  Telephone poles march like giants along the Canal bank to Dublin. The telephone lines are attached to white delph cups on crossbars on the poles. But they only look like cups turned upside down, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. The boys and a girl use the cups as bull’s-eyes, and every cup between the Harbour and the Dakeydocks is broken. When a stone smashes a cup, the people on the phone in Dublin hear a huge explosion that nearly deafens them. The thick pieces of delph fall down, and sometimes when a girl is walking in the grass in her bare feet she gets cut on the sharp edges. One girl had to get stitched and she had a limp for months and she nearly bled to death. She was white by the time she got to the doctor and her eyes were rolling around in her head like a saint’s.

  Boys in the summer, and some girls, put on homemade swimming togs in the bushes and jump off the coping stones under the Bridge, into the Canal. When the children were younger they wore nothing. If they were ever caught by a Canal inspector they would have to pay the judge one pound and half a crown. They make you pay the same if they catch you washing yourself in the Canal. If they catch you letting your dog swim in the Canal, or throwing him in by the scruff of the neck to drown his fleas, you have to pay the judge eleven shillings. Uncle Martin once saw a fox lowering herself, tail first, into the Canal to make all the fleas run up along her body. She had a piece of sheep’s wool in her teeth, and when all the fleas ran into the wool to save themselves from drowning, the fox let the wool float away. If a farmer takes water out of the Canal for his animals when it hasn’t rained for a long time, he will be put in jail. That’s what the Canal rules are.

  There’s a Canal Song that sounds better sung at the Canal than written down on paper, because it doesn’t rhyme like a normal song. When it is sung at the Canal and floats along the top of the water, it is lovely. Some of the words of the song are: