Anne Bennett - The Child Left Behind

At the time, freedom and liberty were what many Irish people longed for, and so those words burned brightly inside Finn. And if he were to join this company, like he saw more than a few were doing, then Ireland would gain her freedom too; wasn’t that the promise given?

His feet stepped forward almost of their own volition and he joined the gaggle of young Irish men milling around, unsure what to do, until the company sergeant came forward to take them in hand.

‘Finn, what in God’s name are you doing?’ Tom cried. He had broken through the crowd at last and now had his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Finn shook him off roughly. ‘What’s it look like?’

‘You can’t do this.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ Finn declared. ‘You heard what the man said. They need our help and if enough Irishmen do this, Ireland will be free too.’

‘This is madness, Finn…’

‘Now then,’ said the sergeant beside them. ‘What’s this?’

‘I want to enlist,’ Finn said firmly. ‘My brother is trying to prevent me, but I am eighteen years old and the decision is my own.’

‘Well said,’ the soldier told Finn admiringly. He turned to Tom. ‘As for you, fine sir, you should be ashamed at trying to turn your brother from what he sees as his duty. As he is eighteen he can decide these things for himself. It would look better if you were to join him rather than try to dissuade him.’

Finn shot Tom a look of triumph, then said rather disparagingly to the sergeant, ‘Tom can’t join just now, for he has an urgent errand to run for our mother.’ And he dropped the coins their mother had given him into Tom’s hand. ‘I’m going to be busy for a while, Tom, so you must get the fish for Mammy.’

He turned away before Tom could find the words to answer him and followed behind the sergeant to find out what he had to do to qualify to join the battles enacted on foreign fields not that far away.

If Finn were honest with himself, he had joined more for himself than for anyone else. He was fed up being pushed around, barked at to do this or that because, as the youngest boy, he was at the beck and call of everyone. Yet he couldn’t seem to do anything to anyone’s satisfaction and he never got a word of thanks.

Even if he expressed an opinion, it was often derided and mocked. His father in particular seemed have a real downer on him, and then to knock him from his feet that morning for spilling a bit of milk—it was not to be borne.

According to the army he was a man and could make a decision concerning his own future. He was pleased when he saw that his best friend, Christy Byrne, had enlisted too. They had been friends all through school and they were of like mind. Both lads wanted excitement and adventure and were sure that the army could provide it.

By tacit consent, Tom never told their mother what Finn had done. Later that day Finn looked at his family grouped around the table eating the fish Tom had bought in Buncrana. He loved his father, whose approval he had always sought and seldom got. He loved his elder brothers too. He saw Tom was nervous because he knew what Finn was going to say and he hated any sort of confrontation and unpleasantness. Joe, on the other hand, was eating his dinner with relish, totally unaware of the hammer-blow Finn was going to deliver, and Nuala was at work. He wondered how his mother would react. She was often so bad-tempered and unreasonable, about little or nothing, and sometimes no one but his father seemed able to please her.

Still, he knew he had to get the announcement over with. There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I joined the army this morning,’ he said, as soon as there was a break in the conversation. ‘I enlisted,’ he emphasised, in case there was any doubt. ‘I’m in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and I am to report in the morning.’

Biddy and Joe sat open-mouthed with shock, but Thomas John leaped to his feet, his face puce with anger. ‘Are you, begod?’ he snapped, thumping his fist on the table. ‘Well, you are not. You will not do this. You are just a boy yet and I will accompany you tomorrow and get the matter overturned.’

‘This is the army, Daddy, not school,’ Finn said loftily. ‘And I am not a boy any more, not in the army’s eyes. I signed my name on the dotted line of my own free will and there is not a thing anyone can do about it.’

Thomas John sat back in his seat defeated, for he knew that Finn spoke the truth.

‘But why, Finn?’ Biddy cried out.

‘I am surprised that you can ask that, Mammy,’ Finn said, ‘for nothing I do pleases anyone here. And I began to ask myself why I was working my fingers to the bone anyway for a farm that one day will be Tom’s. I shall have nothing, not even a penny piece to bless myself with, because it seems to be against your religion to actually pay us anything like a wage.’

‘Finn,’ Biddy rapped out, ‘how dare you speak to me like that? Thomas John, haven’t you a word of censure for your son?’

Thomas John, however, said nothing. He knew he no longer had any jurisdiction over Finn, whom he loved so much, though he was unable to show it. Well, it was done now. The boy had stepped into a man’s world, only he had chosen a dangerous route and Thomas John knew he would worry about him constantly.

His brothers had a measure of sympathy for Finn, although Tom expressed concern for him.

‘Why worry?’ Finn said. ‘They say they fight in trenches, and a French or Belgian trench, I would imagine, is very like an Irish one, and those I am well familiar with. And if I pop off a few Germans along the way, so much the better.’

‘You don’t know the least thing about fighting.’

‘Neither do any of us,’ Finn said. ‘We’ll be trained, won’t we? And after that, I expect I’ll be as ready as the next man to have a go at the Hun. And there’s something else, Tom. They say the French girls are very willing. Know what I mean?’

‘Finn!’ Tom said, slightly shocked. ‘And how do you know, anyway? Just how many French girls do you know?’

‘God, Tom, it’s a well-known fact,’ Finn said airily. ‘Don’t get on your high horse either. A fighting man has to have some distraction.’ And Finn laughed at the expression on Tom’s face.

Much as he could reassure his brothers, though, Finn dreaded breaking the news to Nuala when she came home. He had missed her when she began work, more than he had expected and more than he would admit. She had always listened to him and often championed him. She did the same that day in front of her parents, but later she sought Fin out in the barn.

‘You will be careful, won’t you, Finn?’

‘Of course I will. I have got a whole lot of living to do yet.’

‘Will you write to me? Let me know that you’re all right?’

‘I will,’ Finn promised. ‘And I will address it to you at the Big House. That way I can write what I want, without worrying about Mammy possibly steaming it open.’

Nuala nodded. But she said plaintively, ‘Finn, I don’t think I could bear it if anything happened to you.’

Finn looked into his sister’s eyes, which were like two pools of sadness. He took hold of her shoulders. ‘Nothing will happen me. I will come back safe and sound, never fear. And it’s nice to have someone even partially on my side as I prepare to dip my toe into alien waters.’

‘I’ll always be on your side, Finn,’ Nuala said. ‘You know that.’ She put her arms around her brother’s neck and kissed his ruddy cheek. ‘Good luck, Finn and God bless you.’

The next morning, Tom told his father he was going with Finn as far as Buncrana. When Thomas John opened his mouth as if to argue the point Tom said, ‘He is not going in on his own as if he has no people belonging to him that love him and will miss him every minute till he returns.’