The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  A chance to do what? wondered the Major. To have his name carved into the dark wood of Edward’s war memorial, a dead servant of His Majesty? But a nation must require all its people to participate. A just cause must be defended by everyone. There’s no room for young men who are “agin the government.” Believing, as the Major did, that the cause had been a just one and that throughout the world the great civilizing power of the British Empire had been at stake, it was right that Ripon should be held in contempt. Besides, Ripon was perhaps alive in the place of one of those destroyed men who came at night to plead with him in the agony of his dreams.

  The Major glanced at Edward. What a man to have such a son! How stiff and military he looked! When he moved, one half expected to hear the clinking of medals. The sort of man who in peacetime looks rather out of place, like a heavy fur coat on a hot summer’s day. But again he noticed that mild and disabused expression of the eyes which contrasted so strongly with Edward’s military appearance, that trace of self-mockery so firmly restrained that perhaps even Edward himself refused to acknowledge it except in his most private thoughts.

  “No you don’t,” Edward said, aiming a kick at a tall and rickety Afghan hound that was poking its long nose into one of the Major’s trouser pockets. “Come on then,” he added, addressing the multitude of dogs. He unhooked the cauldron and at the centre of a whirlpool of barking, yelping animals dragged it over to a shallow trough, saying over his shoulder to the Major: “You know, it smells so good I shouldn’t mind eating it myself.”

  The Major spent the rest of the morning trying to corner Angela. For a while he wandered the hotel aimlessly, meeting no one at all. He walked down corridors, through deserted rooms in twilight, often as not curtains still drawn from the evening before (perhaps even from many, many evenings before), up a staircase here, down a staircase there. Shortly before eleven o’clock, attracted by a smell of coffee, he found his way to the kitchens, which were chilly and cavernous, the whitewashed walls hung with an armoury of giant pots and pans (some of them big enough to braise an entire sheep, legs and all) which for the most part were rusted beyond recognition, so that they looked more like huge reddish-brown growths sprouting from the walls. In the middle of the table a tortoiseshell cat lay in a veined meat-dish, dozing.

  Here in the kitchens the Major was given a cup of tea (the coffee had been an olfactory illusion) stewed black and bitter by numerous reheatings, served to him by the extremely fat lady he had noticed at breakfast. She was the cook, he gathered, but though she appeared garrulous her accent was such that he could understand little of what she said. He did believe her to say, however, that “the mistress” might be found arranging flowers in the dining-room above.

  “The mistress?” he repeated, wanting to make sure (he had been trailing long enough through empty rooms). He pointed up at the ceiling. The cook nodded vigorously and began to speak again, rapidly and with considerable urgency. Evidently what she was saying was important. Her face was working with emotion; between volleys of words there were shuddering intakes of breath; her shoulders shook, causing the gelatinous layers of flesh on her arms to shiver. “Good heavens!” thought the Major with concern. “What can it all be about?” Here and there he recognized a word: “heaven”... and “poor creature”...and “gone to the angels”; but to capture the sense of what she was saying was impossible. Presumably the good lady was referring to Angela’s mother who also, come to that, might be described as “the mistress”—dead of an embolism, he remembered, on St Swithin’s Day, 1910. But the cook obviously thought that he had understood her tirade, so to show sympathy he nodded glumly as she stopped speaking and began to chop away with extraordinary speed and ferocity, using a kitchen knife as big as a bayonet. And then, to make things worse, he noticed that her eyes were streaming with tears. She was weeping without restraint! And it was all his fault. He swallowed his tea (making a face, it was as bitter as wormwood) and stole out of the kitchen. But a little later, as he felt his way along the damp, stone corridor to the stairs, it occurred to him that the cook had been chopping onions—a fact which might have contributed to her display of emotion.

  It took him a little time to find the right stairway to make the ascent to the dining-room. This was because he did not fathom immediately that it was necessary to go on down a few steps before joining the main staircase, from where one could go on up or down as the case might be (though God only knew where “down” might lead to). In other words, the kitchens were situated, for a reason that the architect alone could have explained, on a tributary staircase. Other similar staircases branched off here and there, but though he was curious to see where they led the Major was now hastening upwards to find Angela.

  He was not surprised, however, to find that there was no sign of Angela in the dining-room. He stood there for a moment looking round. It was very silent. Some of the tables, it was true, were decorated with fresh flowers. On one of the tables a bunch of carnations and feathery green leaves lay on a newspaper waiting to be arranged in vases. A pair of scissors lay beside them, giving the impression that they had perhaps been abandoned a moment before he had stepped into the room. It was, he presumed, out of the question that Angela was deliberately avoiding him, so, in theory at least, all he had to do was to station himself beside these cut flowers which she certainly would not leave for long before putting into water.

  A ponderous creaking began on the far side of the room. Ah, it was the dumb-waiter rising from the kitchen, he could see the ropes shivering as it rose. He walked over to have a look at it. Abruptly he had an intuition that there was something strange or terrifying on it: a decaying sheep’s head, for example, or something even stranger, perhaps the cook’s weeping head on a platter surrounded by chopped onions. The dumb-waiter stopped for a moment and then started again. When it reached the top he smiled at what it contained. It was the tortoiseshell cat he had seen in the kitchen, still sitting on the meat-dish. When the conveyance had come to a halt it jumped off and wound through his legs. The dumb-waiter started down again empty.

  A few moments later, with the cat cradled in his arms, he spotted Angela. She was on the next terrace below the tennis court carrying a spray of beech leaves and walking swiftly towards a flight of steps some distance away. Thinking that if he could find the entrance she was making for he might be able to intercept her, he set off rapidly, taking the cat with him for company. The cat did not like the idea, however, leapt out of his arms and vanished back the way they had come. The Major pressed on down the corridor he was following, relatively certain this time that he was going in the right direction. On his way he passed one of the old ladies he had been introduced to the evening before. She was leaning on a stick, arrested half-way between two sharp bends in a long section of the corridor without doors or windows. As he passed she murmured something indignantly but he merely nodded cheerfully, pretending not to hear. He was in a hurry. Excited, he turned another corner at the end of which, by his calculations of the exterior of the building and the distance he had walked, there should be a glass door through which Angela would enter at any moment. But there wasn’t. At the end of the corridor there was merely a blank wall and a musty, dilapidated sitting-room. “This is absurd,” he thought, half irritated and half amused. “To hell with her. I’ll see her at lunch.”

  But Angela failed to appear at lunch. The Major sat beside Edward, who was by turns morose and indignant about the state of the country. Another R.I.C. barracks had been attacked and stripped of arms; the young hooligans had nothing better to do these days, it seemed. They preferred shooting people in the back to doing an honest day’s work. But for all that, he hadn’t noticed many of them coming forward when Sir Henry Wilson had called for volunteers to join in a fair fight. At this the “friend of Parnell,” who was sitting at the next table, stirred uncomfortably and muttered something.

  “What’s that you say?” demanded Edward.

  “Thousands of Nationalists fought against Germany,�
�� the old man murmured, his voice still scarcely above a whisper. “Constitutional Nationalists who fought not only for France’s and Belgium’s freedom but for Ireland’s too. Not all Nationalists belong to Sinn Fein, you know...”

  “But they’re all tarred with the same brush. Sinn Fein demands a republic. Why? Because they hate England and sided with Germany during the war. Would they change their tune if Ireland was given Dominion Home Rule? Of course they wouldn’t! It would merely whet their appetites for more. There’s no middle of the road in Ireland, for the simple reason that the Home Rulers are playing right into the hands of Sinn Fein. Perhaps they mean well. Maybe they’re just fools. But the result is the same.”

  “They’re not fools!” cried the old man, raising his voice. A faint flush had crept over his gaunt cheeks and water slopped on to the table-cloth from the trembling glass he had been in the process of lifting to his lips. “Irishmen fought in the British Army in defence of the Empire. Those men have a right to a voice in the settlement of their country’s future.”

  “Exactly so,” agreed Edward with a contemptuous smile. “And you know as well as I do that the bulk of those who served and died came from the Unionist families of the south and west. Who have a better right to a voice than the survivors of the men who fought at Thiepval, their fathers, sons and brothers? And yet everyone seems to take it for granted that they can be suppressed or coerced just for the sake of a temporary peace or because a rabble of Irish immigrants in America have been kicking up a fuss. My dear fellow, it simply won’t wash. No British Government, not even one with a tremendous victory under its belt, could get away with being so rash and unjust. If you simple-minded Dominion-Home-Rulers got your way and tried to coerce Ulster we’d end up with a bloodbath and the Empire in ruins. I repeat, there are only two sides in Ireland. Either you are a Unionist or you support Sinn Fein, which means endorsing their mad and criminal rebellion in 1916, not to mention their friend the Kaiser...”

  “Who will shortly be tried and hanged in London,” spoke up a gentleman in heavy tweeds. “Lloyd George said so in the House yesterday.” There was a moment of approving silence and then the gentleman in tweeds went on to say that he’d met a man who knew personally one of the constables killed at Soloheadbeg quarry, a fine young man, “as straight as the day,” who had only been doing his job. If that wasn’t murder what was?

  The Major had listened to all this with detachment. After all, it was hardly any of his business (and would be even less of his business once he had managed to have a talk with Angela). Although he felt sorry for the “friend of Parnell” who, whitefaced and evidently upset, had pushed his plate aside, unable to swallow another mouthful, it seemed to him that Edward was undoubtedly right. The Irish, as far as he knew, had always had a habit of making trouble. That was in the nature of things. As for the aim of their unruly behaviour, self-government for Ireland, that seemed quite absurd. What would be the advantage to the Irish themselves? They were so ill-educated that they could not possibly hope to gain anything from it. The English undoubtedly knew more about running the country. The priests would presumably take over if the English were not there to see fair play. He was inclined to agree with Edward that the Republican movement was merely an excuse for trouble-makers moved more by self-interest than by patriotism. For the important fact was this: the presence of the British signified a moral authority, not just an administrative one, here in Ireland as in India, Africa and elsewhere. It would have to be matched by the natives themselves before self-government became an acceptable proposition. So thought the Major, anyway.

  But by now he had had more than enough of politics, so he decided against joining Edward and the others for coffee. Other considerations apart, the coffee at the Majestic was execrable, brewed as it was by the manservant Murphy according to some recipe of his own. Instead, he went to his room for some tobacco, passing on his way the fat cook he had reduced to tears earlier in the day. She was coming heavily down the stairs, panting slightly with the effort of negotiating the dangerously bulging carpet with a tray held in front of her. The Major peered at this tray: on it there was an entire lunch (cottage pie and stewed apple), hardly touched, pushed aside, one might suppose, by a person without appetite. The thought occurred to him that perhaps Angela was ill and this was her lunch. However, since she had been up and about during the morning it could hardly be anything serious. The cook nodded to him somewhat nervously and then stumbled on a loose stair-rod. For an instant it seemed that she must plunge headlong to the foot of the stairs. But she righted herself somehow with a rattle of plates and a slopping of water and continued on her way, leaving the Major to wonder in which room lay his pallid “fiancée.”

  Later in the afternoon, restless but with nothing to do, he walked into Kilnalough with the intention of finding out at the railway station at what time the trains left for Kingstown and Dublin. On his way there, however, he encountered Sarah, who was being wheeled by a very plump, voluptuous girl with dark hair and rosy cheeks (“All Irish girls are as fat as butter,” thought the Major). Hardly had this person been introduced (as “Máire”) when she whispered something urgently into Sarah’s ear and hurried away, leaving Sarah to wheel herself.

  “Well, am I as terrifying as all that?”

  “She’s shy. Also I expect she had some idea that I might... well, never mind. Shall I tell you who she is? After all, the sooner I tell you all the gossip the sooner you’ll find Kilnalough as dull as the rest of us.”

  “By all means.”

  “She’s the daughter of the wealthiest man in Kilnalough—yes, even wealthier than your friend Mr Spencer (not that I should think he’s all that wealthy, mind you, by the look of the Majestic)—the owner of the flour mill to be precise. You didn’t know that we had a flour mill here? How ignorant you are! On every single bag of Noonan’s flour sold in Ireland you’ll find a picture of Máire dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood carrying a basket. Isn’t that charming?”

  “I was hoping to hear something more scandalous.”

  “Very well then. Can I rely on you to be discreet?”

  “Of course.”

  “She and your friend Ripon have an understanding.”

  “An understanding? You mean a...sentimental understanding?”

  “On her part it’s sentimental. On Ripon’s I have the feeling it’s more commercial than sentimental, but as you know I have a habit of thinking the worst of people. In any case, there’s little chance of it coming to anything since their respective families can’t abide each other.”

  “Romeo and Juliet.”

  “It would be more true to say, let me see...Iago and Juliet. What’s more, Juliet is a snob.” The Major laughed and Sarah turned to him with a sweet smile. Her malice amused him and, really, it was quite harmless, intended to entertain rather than hurt.

  Sarah had declared her intention of buying some material at Finnegan’s and they were progressing slowly up the main street in that direction, the Major pushing and Sarah chattering, teasing him by turns about his “Englishness,” his “respectability,” his “ramrod posture” and anything else that came into her head. The Major was only half listening, absorbed in looking round at the men in cloth caps idling on doorsteps (so few of them appeared to have any work to do), at the women in black shawls with shopping baskets, at the barefoot children playing in the gutter. How very foreign, after all, Ireland was!

  Their progress up the street was now considerably impeded by a herd of cows (“How delightful, how typical!” thought the Major) which strayed not only over the road but on to the rudimentary pavement as well. Presently a motor car came up behind them with the driver sounding his horn, which did very little good since cows are inclined to panic; one of them almost charged straight back into the motor’s radiator but was diverted at the last moment by a lad in a ragged overcoat who was herding the animals with a stick. Sitting beside the driver the Major recognized the burly figure of old Dr Ryan wrapped in a trench coat and num
erous mufflers though the day was mild. He saw them and waved, telling the driver to pull in to the kerb to give the cattle time to move on. When they came level with him he said sternly: “Always in that chair, Sarah. You should be walking. You never do as you’re told.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. You’re always telling me,” Sarah replied petulantly and glanced helplessly at the Major.

  “You know, I think you like being in that chair.”

  “Oh you know everything, Doctor!” Sarah retorted, and for an instant the Major glimpsed a bitter, sly expression on her face.

  “Don’t be impertinent,” Dr Ryan said sharply. “And let me see you get out of that chair and walk over to me. Take hold of your young man’s arm.”

  Sarah made a face and for a moment remained seated.

  “Come on, we can’t wait all day,” snapped the doctor.

  Looking confused and miserable, Sarah pulled herself up and, leaning heavily on the Major’s arm and one of her sticks, she began to move forward. He was immediately surprised by how well she could walk. She was unsteady, it was true, but her legs seemed firm and strong. Dr Ryan, his aged head looking small and infirm on top of his great pile of cloth-ing, watched as she reached the car and started back to her chair, her slender fingers gripping the Major’s forearm with a strength which surprised him.

  “If you weren’t so spoiled you’d be out of that chair the whole time. You could walk perfectly well if you took the trouble. And as for you, Major, perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell Edward Spencer from me to stop aggravating his tenants or there’ll be trouble.” With that the doctor waved to his chauffeur to drive on.

  “What a dreadful old man,” the Major said. “He’s as sour as vinegar.”