‘You could argue that the Great War was, in historical terms, like the Big Bang – a singular event, for which none of our explanations is sufficient, but which at the same time our whole civilization is founded on. The force of it blew the century apart. From a strictly ordered regime where everyone knew their place, where everything was arranged in nice harmonious symmetries, the Western world entered a period of great turbulence and discord, what the poet TS Eliot called “an immense panorama of futility and anarchy”, which, arguably, we are still living in today. At the same time that Einstein was working on the theories that would completely overturn classical ideas of what space and time were, how reality worked, the war was reordering our whole concept of civilization. Empires centuries-old disappeared overnight, people lost faith in institutions they had trusted without even thinking about it, like a child trusts its parents. The old world fell and our modern world was born, as a direct result of the war – not so much from the outcome of the fighting, as from the terrible things the soldiers, ordinary men, had seen and endured.
‘So what was the war like for that ordinary soldier? To even get to the Front, he would have marched twenty miles a day, carrying equipment weighing anything from forty to a hundred pounds. While in the front line, he might spend an entire day standing up to his armpits in muddy water. He rarely slept for more than two hours at a time, and exhaustion was one of the major sources of trauma during the conflict. In fact, almost fifty per cent of the casualties during the war on the Western Front came not from battle but from the conditions the men were living in. Trench foot. Head lice. Rats. The war was a boom time for rats. Two of them could produce over eight hundred offspring in a single year, so soon there were tens of millions of them, flocking to the corpses…’
The boys listen with open mouths. They eat up details like this, the gruesomer the better – but what harm is that? Isn’t the main thing that they are actually interested? Although admittedly not everyone sees it that way.
‘I’m just wondering if this stuff is going to be in the exam,’ Jeekers Prendergast says in his twangy, nervous voice. ‘I mean, if it’s not covered in the book.’ The class groans, but Jeekers holds his ground. ‘It’s just that, ah, according to your lesson plan, we’re supposed to be doing the Easter Rising this week –’
‘Yeah, when are we going to do some Irish history?’ Jeekers finds an unlikely ally in the form of Muiris de Bhaldraithe, piping up disaffectedly from the back row.
Howard spreads his hands placatingly. ‘I promise, we have time for both –’ his head snaps round involuntarily at the sound of wheels on the gravel outside: could it be? – but no, it’s just Father Green, returning from one of his errands. He collects himself and returns to the boys. ‘We’ll get to the Rising in due course,’ he says. ‘The lesson plan isn’t set in stone. And anyway, Muiris, the war is Irish history. Aside from the fact that the Rising came out of the First World War, many Irishmen fought for the Allies, at the Western Front and elsewhere.’
‘Uh, not according to the textbook, sir,’ Jeekers says, the page of his own carefully laminated copy opened to the box giving the breakdown of war dead.
‘Well, the textbook is wrong, in that case,’ Howard says.
‘Yeah, my great-grandfather fought in the war,’ Daniel Juster says.
‘There you go,’ Howard says to Muiris. ‘I’m sure that many of you have relatives who fought in the war, even if you don’t know about it. And those who didn’t fight were still affected. The war transformed everything. So I think it’s worth spending some extra time on it.’ Also, though he doesn’t say it to Muiris and barely admits it to himself, he feels that keeping himself and the class immersed in the Great War somehow preserves a connection with Miss McIntyre.
After class he finds Ruprecht Van Doren and Geoff Sproke waiting behind.
‘Yes, gentlemen?’
There is a brief, tacit interchange between them, as if to decide who should pose the question; and then Ruprecht says carefully, ‘We were just wondering if you knew anything about the history of Seabrook – the older part of its history?’
‘Like from days of Yore?’ Geoff Sproke chips in.
‘That depends,’ Howard says. ‘Whenabouts in Yore are you talking about?’
Ruprecht meditates on this a moment, then, once again with some delicacy, ‘When the world was ruled by some kind of goddess?’
‘And they built these mounds?’ Geoff blurts, before he is silenced by a look from Ruprecht.
‘Hmm,’ Howard strokes his chin. ‘Sounds like pre-Christian times. Not really my field, boys, sorry. But what’s this about, anyway?’
‘Oh, you know,’ Ruprecht says vaguely.
‘It just seemed interesting, to find out more about the place our school is built on top of,’ Geoff adds, inspired.
‘I’ll ask around,’ Howard says. ‘And if I find anything out, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks, Mr Fallon.’ They hasten away, deep in discussion. The opacity of the fourteen-year-old mind: Howard smiles to himself and continues on his way.
Opening the door of the staffroom, he is greeted by an unusual hubbub. Teachers are thronged around the middle of the room, all talking at once in an uncharacteristically jubilant way. From the periphery the school secretary, Miss Noakes, turns to Howard. ‘He’s back!’ she says, beaming at him as though under the influence of some wonderful drug. The meaning of this is obscure to Howard, but it gives him a bad feeling. His own smile wilting like a neglected house plant, he squeezes through the knot of bodies to find at its heart, enthroned on the sofa, Finian Ó Dálaigh, the geography teacher.
‘Not too hard!’ he exclaims comically to the colleagues clapping his shoulder. ‘I’ve still got stitches!’ In his hand is a jar containing something roundish and grey and approximately the size of a golf ball, which someone behind him tells Howard is his gallstone.
‘Howard!’ Ó Dálaigh spots him; he steps forward, hastily re-affixing his smile. ‘What do you make of that, Howard?’ Ó Dálaigh wiggles the jar under his nose. ‘The doctor said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen.’
‘Really…’ Howard coos feebly.
‘Yes, and he said the gallstone was pretty big too!’ The company laughs indulgently, although this witticism is by now on its fourth or fifth outing.
‘Fantastic,’ says Howard through clenched teeth and a thickening glaze of unreality. ‘So… does this mean we’ll have you back at work soon? How long a convalescence are you looking at?’
‘Convalescence be damned,’ Ó Dálaigh declares, thumping his chest. ‘I was bored out my tree lying around there at home, watching the grass grow. Doctor says I’m fighting fit. Says he’s never seen anything like my powers of recovery. I’m going to convalesce right here, standing on my own two feet. Teaching geography!’ A raucous sally of approval from his colleagues. ‘Those little so-and-so’s won’t know what hit ’em!’ Ó Dálaigh, enjoying his moment, adds, to another cheer.
Howard pretends to join in, and when the noise dies down remarks, as if to himself, ‘So I suppose that Miss McIntyre won’t need to come back after all.’
But the name means nothing to the geography teacher; he shrugs, and then launches into a fresh account of his surgery for a new arrival. As for the others, few of them seem to hear him, and those who do merely blink at Howard distractedly, as if he’s mistaken them for his pupils, and started spouting on to them about some phantasmal figure from a textbook.