The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  “There’s no luck in Ireland,” agreed Edward, winking at the Major, who was thinking: “Such detail is intolerable,”—the design of the carpet over which the shrinking white feet of the patient still continued to patter day after day, morning and evening, to perform her ablutions...till the day inevitably came (he had been waiting for it with despair), till the page inevitably came when the pitcher and the bowl and the sponge came to her over the carpet and the carpet dropped out of her world and she too prepared to drop out of her world. “Such detail is quite obviously intolerable,” thought the Major as Edward reached out in the gloom to feel whether the teapot’s plump belly was still warm, at the same time absent-mindedly handing the sugar-bowl to the doctor, who did not need it and was muttering incoherent words to the effect that if Edward or anyone else laughed at what he was saying it was because he or they, was or were, British black-guards and fools (some part of the Major’s brain had remained on duty to straighten out the grammar while he thought: “Really, when I arrived and attempted to kiss her hand she flinched away from me as she might have flinched from some uncouth stranger.”).

  “Those were the days,” declared Edward absently, perhaps still thinking of the day he had bowled a cricket-ball up Dawson Street.

  “They certainly were not!” snapped the doctor.

  So why should she write all this? Page after page to someone she scarcely knew. The relentlessly regular handwriting lapped rhythmically on. Only on the last few pages did it begin to waver a little.

  I shall not die now.

  Brendan, if I die who will look after you when I am gone?

  And there were a number of other observations, feebly scratched out, which the Major had not the heart to decipher.

  “People are insubstantial,” murmured the doctor, as his bowler-hatted head drooped sleepily on to his chest. “They never last. Of course, it makes no difference in the long run.”

  It was signed, without the usual qualification about the “loving fiancée,” quite simply: Angela.

  “The old chap’s fallen asleep,” Edward said. “Such a lot of rot he talks...I’m afraid he’s becoming a bit you-know-what.”

  Getting to his feet he shouted deafeningly to Murphy to bring more candles because it had become infernally dark. The Major returned the letter to his pocket. Glancing down, he noted with dismay that his own flies were undone. He fumbled with them hastily before Murphy arrived with more candles.

  “Can I have some peacock feathers?” demanded Padraig stubbornly. “You promised.”

  “Of course, of course,” Edward told him genially. “Look, why don’t you go and ask the twins for some; I’m sure they have lots of that sort of thing. Murphy, show this young man where he can find the girls.”

  When Padraig had departed with Murphy the Major asked: “What are the twins doing at home? Shouldn’t they be at school?”

  “They were sent home,” replied Edward sombrely. “A spot of bother at school.” He sighed but did not elaborate.

  They waited in silence for Padraig to return. Presently they heard the thrashing and rustling of his advent. A few moments later he appeared out of the darkness. The Major stared at him. His face was flushed and indignant and he seemed close to tears. His hair had been ruffled and his shirt was hanging out at the back. In one hand he clutched a bunch of peacock feathers.

  Edward looked at him with concern, seemed about to say something but changed his mind. At length he sighed again and said that he thought it was about time to wake the doctor and send him home.

  Before leaving, the doctor, who had been restored by his brief nap and now remembered why he had come, said: “For the last time, Edward, will you come to some arrangement with the farmers about the land, for your own good as much as for theirs?”

  “So far I have received two threatening letters. Both of them I have given to the District Inspector. There happens to be a law in the land which protects a man’s private property and I have no intention of giving in to threats.”

  “Is that your last word?”

  “Yes,” Edward replied curtly.

  * * *

  LENIN AND POLAND

  “To be delivered from her Oppressors”

  The Paris Matin says: “A wireless message has been transmitted from Moscow announcing in glowing terms that the whole of Russia is rising to fight Poland. On May 6th the majority of the Moscow garrison of 120,000 men left the Soviet capital for the Dnieper front. Lenin and Trotsky addressed the troops. Lenin said: ‘We do not want to fight Poland but we are going to deliver her from her oppressors. Death to the Polish landlords! Long live the Polish Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic!’”

  * * *

  LAWLESSNESS NEAR KILKENNY

  Ladies Terrorized by Armed Men

  Late on Monday night considerable excitement was caused in Kilkenny by the news of the “hold up” at Troyswood a mile outside the city, by masked men armed with revolvers, of a number of motor cars and horsed carriages which were taking ladies and gentlemen, in whose number were included Major J.B. Loftus, D.L., J.P., Mount Loftus, and Sir Hercules Langrishe, Bart, Knocktopher Abbey, to a ball at the house of Captain J.E. St. George, R.M., Kilrush House, Freshford, about ten miles from Kilkenny City. A barricade of large stones was placed across the road.

  Some of the cars did not pull up immediately when called upon to stop and several shots were discharged, but no one was injured, although some of the passengers say that the bullets whizzed very near them.

  All the parties, who were in evening dress, were huddled together under a ditch while the destruction of the engines was carried out, and some of the ladies were very much frightened. Other horsed carriages came on the scene shortly afterwards and the raiders decamped, leaving their victims to get home as best they could.

  Yesterday morning six motor cars were lined up on the side of the road, and the engines appeared to have been smashed with some heavy, blunt instrument. In the corner of the field where the drivers and passengers were placed there were remnants of chocolate boxes and cigarette packets.

  * * *

  Little had changed in Edward’s study since the Major had first seen it on his first day in Kilnalough when they had come to arm themselves against “the Shinner on the lawn.” There was the same solidly tangled mass of sporting equipment on the sofa. The drawer containing ammunition still lay on the floor, though the Persian cat (wisely disdaining the community in the Imperial Bar) had forsaken it for the superior comfort of an enormous greyish-white sweater that lay in one corner like a dead sheep. From under the window there came a steady creaking sound: the Major leaned out to investigate. In the yard below was a circle of brick surmounted by a huge horizontal cartwheel with worn wooden handles; against these handles two men were toiling, heads bowed with the exertion, round and round, straining like pit ponies.

  “What on earth are they doing?”

  “Pumping water up to the tanks on the roof. The other well by the kitchens is for drinking water, fills up from an underground spring. Lovely water...though for some reason it makes a weird cup of tea. You may have noticed, Brendan, that we sometimes get peculiar objects in the bath-water. Can’t be helped. One of the old ladies was complaining she had a dead tadpole the other day. Better than a live one, I suppose.” Without changing his tone he added: “Life has been hell these last few months.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about Ripon. I heard they were living in Rathmines.”

  “Ripon is a wash-out,” Edward said bleakly. “I don’t want to hear his name mentioned again. It’s not that he took up with a Catholic girl, it’s not just that. I’m not so narrow-minded that I don’t know there are decent fellows among the Catholics in Ireland and plenty of ’em. I’d have put a stop to it if I could, of course, because mixed marriages don’t go down well in this country, with one lot or the other... Besides, I don’t want grandchildren of mine to be brought up believing all that unhealthy nonsense they teach them. All the same, if that’s what the
boy had set his heart on I wouldn’t have stood in his way. He could have come to me and talked it over, man to man. He knew that. I may be an old fogey but I’m not a tyrant...” Edward paused and moodily looked at his watch. For a moment there was silence, then he said: “Come along to the lodge with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

  They put on their hats and set off down the drive. The day was mild, overcast; although it had not been raining there was a smell of damp grass which the Major now always thought of as the smell of the Irish countryside.

  “Ripon’s a wash-out,” Edward repeated. “I suppose everyone knew that except me. I suppose you realized it, Brendan, as soon as you set eyes on him...”

  “Well, no,” murmured the Major diffidently, but Edward was not listening.

  “Going behind my back and doing what he did...playing the cad with an innocent young girl (and a Catholic at that!), getting her in trouble as if she were a common housemaid, that’s something I’ll not stand for. He’s disgraced me and he’s disgraced his sisters.”

  They walked on in silence. The Major could hear the dull continuous roar of the sea from somewhere behind the trees which were thickening into dense woods, matted with undergrowth and strung with brambles like trip-wires. They reached the end of the drive and the ruined lodge came into sight. Edward led the Major through some low bushes to the side of the building that faced the road. Here, high up on a part of the wall that had not been engulfed by ivy, a notice had been stuck.

  “How d’you like that for cheek?”

  The Major stepped forward to read it.

  1. Whereas the spies and traitors known as the Royal Irish Constabulary are holding this country for the enemy, and whereas said spies and bloodhounds are conspiring with the enemy to bomb and bayonet and otherwise outrage a peaceful, law-abiding and liberty-loving people;

  2. Wherefore we do hereby proclaim and suppress said spies and traitors, and do hereby solemnly warn prospective recruits that they join the R.I.C. at their own peril. All nations are agreed as to the fate of traitors. It has the sanction of God and man.

  By order of the G.O.C.

  Irish Republican Army

  The Major had read of these posters in the newspapers but this was the first he had seen with his own eyes.

  “The ruffians slip in during the night when they think they’re safe. Murphy should be here in a minute; I told him to bring along something to scrape it off with.”

  “But what I don’t see,” said the Major with a smile, “is why they should think that ‘said spies and bloodhounds’ are anxious to conspire in your drive. After all, they could surely have found a more visible spot.”

  “We have a few young chaps staying at the hotel at the moment,” Edward told him. “Ex-army officers brought over from England to give a hand to the R.I.C. They’re supposed to be the first of a new auxiliary force they’ve started recruiting. You won’t have seen them about yet, I expect, because I’ve quartered them in the Prince Consort wing by themselves. They didn’t get on with the old ladies. The Prince Consort wing is over the stables, can’t see it from here, of course. They have their own mess there and so forth. We had them in the main building at first but they were rather boisterous, just schoolboys, really (though they’ve done their bit, mind you, they’ve been in the trenches)...Trouble was they kept teasing the old girls; one of them kept on whipping out a bayonet and pretending to cut their throats...But they’re not a bad lot of chaps. Expect you’ll run into them round about. They use the tennis courts a bit. Ah, there’s Murphy.”

  Murphy had appeared, carrying a hoe. Edward directed him to scrape off the notice and the old manservant advanced on the lodge feebly brandishing his implement. But the notice had been stuck well up on the wall and was out of his reach.

  “We need something to stand on,” the Major said.

  “Right you are,” said Edward. “Come here, Murphy. Major, you hand me the hoe and I’ll climb on Murphy’s shoulders.” He gave the hoe to the Major. “Come on, man, we haven’t got all day,” he added to the decrepit manservant, who was shuffling forward with every sign of reluctance. The Major looked dubiously at Murphy’s frail shoulders.

  “Maybe we’d better get a ladder from somewhere.”

  “Nonsense. Now hold still, Murphy. Hang on to the trunk of this tree while I’m getting up. For God’s sake, man, we’re never going to get anywhere if you’re going to wilt like that every time I touch you.”

  But time and time again, just as Edward seemed on the point of throwing his glistening shoe and beautifully trousered leg over the old servant’s thin shoulders, he would begin to wilt in anticipation. Edward stormed at him for having no backbone and ordered him not to be so faint-hearted—all to no avail. In the end they had to leave the notice where it was. Edward stalked angrily up the drive. Murphy, relief written all over his cadaverous features, vanished into the trees. And the Major was left to his own devices.

  He spent the afternoon in the company of the twins. There was a row going on between them and Edward; he did not know what it was all about but suspected it had something to do with their being sent home from school. In any event, Edward was taking a firm line with them (or so he told the Major). Any disobedience or lack of respect should be instantly reported to him and they would be dealt with. Part of their punishment, it seemed, was to spend the afternoon with the Major (who was offended by the idea); they were to go with him in the Daimler and show him the whereabouts of a remarkable trout stream. These days the Major was only faintly interested in fishing, but he had nothing better to do. Though Faith and Charity had a chastened air they looked remarkably pretty in their navy-blue dresses with white lace collars encircling their slender necks. The Major felt sorry for them.

  “Which is which, and how can I tell?”

  “I’m Charity and she’s Faith,” one of them said. “Faith is bigger there,” she added, pointing at Faith’s chest. Both girls smiled wanly.

  Throughout the afternoon, as they motored through the low rolling hills, the twins sat on the back seat in attitudes of meek dejection, slim fingers lifted to entwine the braided velvet straps, each the mirror-image of the other. “What charming girls! Edward is being much too hard on them.”

  He modified this opinion a day or two later, however. As an additional punishment a daily lesson with Evans, the tutor, had been ordained by Edward to take place in the writing-room. Passing the open door one afternoon, the Major paused to listen.

  “How do you say in French, Mr Evans, ‘The buttons are falling off my jacket and I need a clean collar’?” one of the twins was asking innocently.

  “How do you say, ‘I’ve got boils on my neck because I never wash it’?”

  “How do you say, ‘I have ideas beyond my station’?”

  “What does ‘amavi puellam’ mean?”

  “How do you say in Latin, Mr Evans, ‘My pasty white face is blushing all over’?”

  “Sharpen my pencil, Evans, ’fraid I’ve just broken it again.”

  “Any more of this and I’ll report you to your father.”

  “Any more of what? We’re only asking questions.”

  “Aren’t we even allowed to ask questions?”

  The Major moved on. He had heard enough.

  Later that same afternoon, while taking a stroll with old Miss Johnston in the Chinese Garden (“If you ask me it’s an Irish Chinese Garden,” Miss Johnston said with a sniff, looking round at the thick beds of tangled weeds and seeded flowers), their path crossed that of a young man in khaki tunic, breeches and puttees, wearing on his head a tam o’shanter with the crowned-harp badge of the R.I.C. The Major’s eyes were drawn to the bandolier he wore across his chest and the black leather belt holding a bayonet scabbard; on his right thigh rested an open revolver holster. It was shocking, somehow, to meet this man in the peaceful wilderness of the garden, a sharp and unpleasant reminder of the incidents the Major had read about in the newspapers but could never quite visualize, any more tha
n he could now visualize the shooting of the old man in Ballsbridge that he had witnessed. As they passed, the young man grinned sardonically and, winking at the Major, drew a finger across his throat from ear to ear.

  “Gutter-snipe!” hissed Miss Johnston indignantly. “To think the R.I.C. is taking on young men like that!”

  And it took all the Major’s considerate inquiries about her nephews, her nieces and the state of her health (“Chilblains even in midsummer in this hotel, Major. I’ve never known such draughts...”) to smooth her ruffled plumage.

  And yet they were all ex-officers, these men, so Edward assured him later. One had to remember, though, that to be an officer in 1920 was not the same thing as being an officer in 1914. A lot of the older sort (their very qualities of bravery, steadfast obedience to the call of duty, chivalry and so forth acting as so many banana skins on the road to survival) had disappeared in the holocaust and had had to be replaced. It was also true that these new men, and the great number who would soon be following them to a meagre six weeks of police training at the Curragh, were among the least favourably placed of the countless demobilized officers who now found themselves having to earn a living once more. All the same, though one made allowances (and Edward was always ready to make allowances for men who had served in the trenches), there were limits. The old kind, the officer who was also a gentleman, would never have gone about frightening old ladies. So thought Edward. What did the Major think?

  The Major agreed, but thought to himself that these “men from the trenches” who were being paid a pound a day to keep a few wild Irishmen in order might well have trouble taking anything very seriously—whether the Irish, the old ladies, or their own selves.