The Last Journey
A lonely stranger holds a secret from the past
Ireland, October 1941… “England? What is wrong with you, child?” my grandfather shouted, glaring at me. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“It’s because there is a war on,” I said. “Nursing is the best way I can help. They have a shortage of trainees.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised, of course. Wasn’t your other grandfather, Francis Fitzgerald, one of those traitors who signed up in 1914?” “He believed it was right.” “Believed in taking the English King’s shilling, you mean,” my grandfather sneered.
“The poor man was gassed on the Somme. Mammy said his health was never the same.”
“Nor his mind!” he growled. But his voice softened. “Come and kiss me goodbye.”
The following afternoon, I scurried along the platform, lugging my full suitcase. The Irish Sea was hurling itself against the coastline, fuelled by a storm coming in.
There was one other passenger on the platform. A soldier. I surveyed him from under my lashes. He was deathly pale, with a broad forehead and a thin mouth beneath an oldfashioned moustache. His uniform was old and grubby. I could not shake the feeling I had seen him somewhere before. He didn’t acknowledge my presence as I passed. His forbidding frown unsettled me as I looked out to the white-crested waves roaring towards the beach. The crossing to Holyhead later would not be pleasant.
The Dublin train pulled in, just as the heavens opened. The soldier looked up and smiled at me. I shuddered, for his eyes were the palest I had ever beheld. Uneasy, I made for the nearest carriage.
I awoke with a crick in my neck, wondering if the train was near Dublin yet. A flash of lightning illuminated the carriage and, to my amazement, the soldier from the platform was sitting opposite me, his gaze fixed on the passing countryside. I treated him to an unfriendly glare. Had he deliberately followed me?
He coughed, but it was no ordinary sound. His lungs crackled. Another spasm ensued, but the more he suppressed it, the worse it became. His entire body shook as he spluttered, gasping for breath. My displeasure vanished, replaced by pity.
“Can I help you, sir?” I asked, in what I imagined was my best nurse-like voice. As his distress eased, he shook his head and wiped the tears from his face with a faded linen handkerchief. The initials “FF” were embroidered in the corner.
“Thank you, but no, miss,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
I sought a suitable response, the need to make polite conversation
almost a compulsion in my family. “Are you travelling far?” I asked.
“Bless you, miss, I am going back to France,” he said, a ring of pride in his voice.
Was the army so desperate for men that they would send a sick man to fight, I wondered. Then an alarming notion came to me. What if he was an escaped German prisoner from the Curragh Camp?
“You are fighting with the British Army, then?”
I probed.
He gave me a quizzical look. “Dublin Fusiliers, miss, and proud of it. A great
Irish regiment.”
Then he inhaled deeply and turned his attention back to the passing landscape, and I watched the rain streak across the glass. When we entered a tunnel, all light was sucked from the compartment, but I sensed those pale eyes on me again.
“There’s some as won’t go back to the trenches, but I signed up to see this through to the end,” he said into the dark, as another bout of coughing began.
“How brave you are,”
I said, my voice shaking. “Forgive me, sir, but that cough doesn’t sound good.”
“Don’t you worry, miss.
The hospital discharged me. It will take more than poison gas to stop me. Said I was fighting fit again, they did,” he said, then laughed.
White-faced, vacant-eyed, they were doomed to make that final journey repeatedly
That laugh made my stomach turn over with fear. The man wasn’t well – not just physically, but I suspected mentally, too. Gas? Wasn’t that only used in the Great War? But then, this soldier must know more about these things than me.
With relief, I realised the train was coming to a stop. I stood and said goodbye. But he jumped up and pulled my case down from the rack. I muttered my thanks. A sad smile softened the austerity of his face. He held out his hand. For a split second I hesitated, but it would be churlish not to respond. This could be his last journey – the poor man may never return home. As his fingers curled around mine, an icy numbness spread up my arm. Startled, I withdrew my hand.
As I stepped onto the platform, the air before me began to ripple and shimmer. The train blurred and transformed. The carriage I had left was now full of troops, as white-faced and vacant-eyed as my travelling companion. They pressed their ghastly faces up against the windows. Instinctively, I knew they were not living men, but a regiment of the dead.
Prisoners of fate, they were doomed to make that final journey repeatedly.
And there was my soldier. He pressed a palm to the glass and, in that instant, I knew who he was. He pointed to my right hand. I opened my fist to find his faded handkerchief, embroidered with his initials. Tears streaming down my face, I stared back up at my grandfather.
He held my gaze for an instant, the ghost of a smile flickering in his eyes as the train slowly steamed out of the station.