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How Many Miles to Babylon?: A Novel by Jennifer Johnston, John Keating |, Audiobook (MP3 on CD)×Uh- oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade. Overview. Whitbread Literary Award- winning novelist Jennifer Johnston's story of two young Irish men, whose defiant friendship spans class and, later, rank at the onset of World War I. Born to an aristocratic family on an estate outside of Dublin, Alexander Moore feels the constraints of his position most acutely in his friendship with Jerry Crowe, a Catholic laborer in town. Jerry is one of the few bright spots in Alec's otherwise troubled life. The boys bond over their love of swimming and horses, despite the admonitions of Alec's cold and overbearing mother, who scolds her son for venturing outside of his class.
When the Great War begins, he seizes the opportunity to escape his overbearing mother and taciturn father, and enlists in the British army. Jerry, too, enlists - not out of loyalty to Britain, but to prepare himself for the Republican cause.
Stationed in Flanders, the young men are reunited and find that, while encamped in the trenches, their commonalities are what help them survive. Now a lieutenant and an officer, Alec and Jerry again find their friendship under assault, this time from the rigid Major Glendinning, whose unyielding adherence to rank leads the two men toward a harrowing impasse that will change their lives forever. Advertising. Show More. Product Details. ISBN- 1. Publisher: Brilliance Audio. Publication date: 0.
Edition description: Unabridged. Read an Excerpt. How Many Miles to Babylon? A Novel. By Jennifer Johnston. OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA Copyright © 1. Jennifer Johnston. All rights reserved. ISBN: 9. 78- 1- 4.
How Many Babylon's Are There
How Many Miles To Babylon Answer
CHAPTER 1. Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person.
“How many miles to Babylon? Four score miles and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? There and back again. TV Shows: The Hour (Andrew’s episodes 1 & 3). (II), Lisa Schuster, Kate Binchy, Martin Burns (II), Moira Armstrong: Movies & TV. How Many Miles to Babylon [VHS] VHS. · British television chronicle of two friends, one of whom is tried for desertion during World War II. How Many Miles to Babylon?: A Novel and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more.
The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown.
So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what it is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that.
I have not communicated with either my father or mother. Time enough for others to do that when it is all over. The fait accompli.
On His Majesty's Service. Why prolong the pain that they will inevitably feel? It may kill him, but then, like me, he may be better off dead. My heart doesn't bleed for her. They are treating me with the respect apparently due to my class, and with a reserve due, I am sure, to the fear that I may be mad.
How alarmed men are by the lurking demons of the mind! Major Glendinning has not been near me, a blessing for which I am duly grateful. He will never make a man of me now, but I don't suppose he'll lose much sleep over that. There were moments when I almost admired him.
By now the attack must be on. A hundred yards of mournful earth, a hill topped with a circle of trees, that at home would have belonged exclusively to the fairies, a farm, some roofless cottages, quiet unimportant places, now the centre of the world for tens of thousands of men. The end of the world for many, the heroes and the cowards, the masters and the slaves. It will no doubt be raining on them, a thick and evil February rain. The padre comes to visit me from time to time.
He showed me yesterday the gold cross he wears under his viyella vest, pressing into the black hairs that seem to ramp over his chest.'Have you Faith?' he asked me. He didn't put it quite like that.
He had a more sophisticated way of phrasing things, and also a certain embarrassment in asking what he made sound like an almost indecent question.'I've never really thought about it.''Now is perhaps the time to think.'I wished that he would go away. I was not, nor am I now, in the mood for soul wrestling, that is a pastime for those who have time to spare.'It's a bit late now I fear, Padre. Faith is to comfort the living. It seems to me to be irrelevant for the dead.''You are alive.''Technically.''Comfort perhaps ..''I am comfortable, thank you. I .. I wonder always why you .. I put out my hand and touched his dog collar, 'well, representatives, seem to get such satisfaction in making us afraid of death. Be joyful in the Lord.
Come before his presence with a song. That's not quite right, I know, but the drift is there. I shall sing gladly.
How many miles to Babylon? Four score and ten, sir. Will I get there by candlelight? Yes and back again, sir ..'I croak rather than sing. He held a hand up in distress.'Your frivolity makes me uneasy.''I'm sorry. No need. We all must have our own way of dying.'He pushed the cross back in through his shirt and fastened it up.
He left soon after. I was sorry that I had distressed him. As a child I was alone. I am making no excuses for myself, merely stating a fact. I was isolated from the surrounding children of my own age by the traditional barriers of class and education. Not that I was educated in any formal way. A series of ladies taught me a series of subjects until at the magic age of ten I was handed over to the curate who, presumably to supplement his tiny income, spent several hours each day trying to teach me mathematics, English literature, a smattering of French grammar, and of course Latin.
Latin was his subject and his face would begin to glow with pleasure as the moment arrived for us to open up one of the numerous books we translated together. On days when I felt particularly unkind I would fumble and stumble over the words and watch maliciously the visible disintegration of his pleasure. He smelt delicately of peppermints. Once every hour or so two of his white fingers would probe into his waistcoat pocket and pull out the small white sweet which he would slip into his mouth almost as if he were performing some minor criminal act. There was also the piano teacher who used to come down once a week on the train from Dublin.
I remember little about him except for his ineffectiveness as a teacher and the reason for his going. My mother would come into the drawing- room towards the end of each lesson and sigh restlessly from her chair, fretted by my lack of progress.
He was a nervous man who became almost insane in her presence. His hands would shake, and he would begin to tear distractedly at the dark stains of hardened food that decorated the front of his jacket as he watched me play. The drawing- room smelt of apple- wood and turf, and, in the autumn, the bitter end- of- the- year smell of chrysanthemums which stood in pots massed in one of the deep bay windows, shades of yellow, gold, bronze and white, like a second fire in the room. The black ebony case of the Steinway grand reflected the flowers. The music teacher was ridiculously out of place. He rose and approached my mother, bowing at her as he crossed the floor.
Masses of golden birds flew in gigantic curves on the blue carpet under his sad shoes. It must have been autumn because the smell of the flowers and his words are tangled together in my mind.'Yes. Ah yes. He comes along very nicely .. You do notice .. yes .. I feel. I do hope you are being ..'His faded eyes twitched as he spoke. His finger picked and picked. Soon, I thought silently, there will be a hole.'..
He bent low over her as he spoke the word. She moved her head slightly away from him.'Oh, yes. Progress. Of a kind, I suppose.'She waved him away with her hand, and he straightened up. I sat at the piano unmoving. I had developed the technique of listening to a fine art. I could become at will as still and invisible as a chair or a bowl of flowers.'Such a deal of your talent, Mrs.
Moore, has rubbed off on the .. Overcome suddenly by the thought of the stains, he spread his grey long fingers out over the front of his coat, like two very dead starfish on a beach. I played an arpeggio softly and my mother waved her hand towards the door.'Your train, Mr. Cave. I mean you mustn't miss ..''No.
No. Of course not. Well ..' He paused and looked around the room as if he were trying to memorise it for use during his darker days. I'll be on my way so. Time and .. oh ha ..
He bowed once more to my mother. She smiled with her lips, but her eyes passed him by. He turned to me.'And you, young fellamelad .. Tuesday. Mind you practise now.'He moved towards the door.
Suddenly I felt some sort of emotion towards him. I no longer remember what it was, and I slipped off the chair and followed him out of the room and across the dark back hall. In the semi- darkness he reached out with a hand and squeezed my shoulder gently.'Such a beautiful woman, God love her. So ..' Words failed him.'What a lucky little fellamelad you are to have a beautiful mammy like that.''Have you a coat?'I pulled with both hands at the brass door- knob and the door came open letting in the east wind. Some letters fluttered on the long mahogany table, and shocked flames twisted for a moment out of the grate and then recovered their equilibrium.'Coat? No coat, sonny.' He gave a little laugh.
I never feel the cold.'A lie, I thought. He was a man, I'd have said, who had never felt warm in his life, or well, or momentarily gay. He stepped bravely out into the evening, and bowed once more before going down the steps. Father was in the drawing- room when I got back.
I stood in the embrasure just outside the door and listened to then voices.'.. But go he must. I simply can't bear the thought of having him in the house any more.''My dear Alicia, you are absurd.''No.
Not remotely.''But what can I say?''An excuse. You must be able to think of something. Anything. He has such an appalling smell.''I can hardly say that.
Come now.'I could hear her skirts swish as she moved across the room.'He must be ill. Some terrible disease.