Edward had asked her a polite question about her stay in France (although he already seemed to know all about it) in order to give the Major time to recover his breath, and Sarah was saying that the family had been charming and as for the children, her charges, leaving them had been (the Major listened in vain for a change in her measured, indifferent tone) ...had been heartbreaking. Now it was the Major’s turn to say something and both Edward and Sarah turned to him. But he could hardly express the critical thoughts which had been passing through his mind with regard to Sarah, so he panted artificially a little longer. At last he exclaimed: “I must have left my pipe on the beach,” but then he noticed that his fingers were still curled round a dark wooden object. He stuck it in his mouth and then removed it. Both Sarah and Edward burst out laughing.
Sarah said: “Brendan, you look positively absurd in that bathing-suit.”
Sarah was expected home, she said, and had just looked in for a moment. But she seemed in no great hurry, so the Major went upstairs to wash the sand from his skin and change into more suitable clothes, rubbing macassar oil into his hair and brushing it meticulously smooth. This effort was wasted, however. By the time he went downstairs there was no sign of Sarah. The twins had come up from the beach but they were sulking for some reason and when he asked them if they knew where Sarah was they shrugged their shoulders and said that they hadn’t the faintest. Nor was there any sign of Edward.
He noticed that some of the old ladies were throwing meaning glances in his direction. “What’s the matter with them now?” he wondered irritably. Whatever it was, he had no time for them at the moment. Moreover, he was tired of being considered their protector. Presently, however, he came upon the reason for their meaning glances. Peering into the ladies’ lounge he saw that it was empty except for the broad uniformed back of Captain Bolton. He had his feet up on a sofa and was reading a magazine.
“You may not be aware of the fact, but this room is reserved for ladies.”
Bolton turned slowly. In his hand he held a lady’s lorgnette. He lifted it to his eyes and surveyed the Major for a moment in silence. Then he tossed it aside and turned back to his magazine, saying: “Tell someone to bring me some tea, old boy.”
The Major turned away angrily. There was nothing he could do except find Edward, which was what he was trying to do already. At last he came upon him in the foyer.
“Where on earth have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Taking Sarah home. I say, you do look smart, Brendan. Remind me to ask you for the name of your tailor.”
“Yes, yes, by all means...The thing is that one of those Auxiliary fellows, the one called Bolton, is upsetting the ladies by sitting in their lounge. I tried to get him to leave but it was no go. Maybe you could have a word with him.”
The Major would have accompanied Edward but at this moment one of the maids came to tell him that Miss Porteous was summoning him to the Palm Court. She had been driven out of the ladies’ lounge, she told him when he had at last located her amid the foliage, by that awful man. What was it that she wanted? inquired the Major patiently. Oh yes, she wanted two things: one was for him to kill a spider which had been making repeated attempts to climb on to her shoe and was causing her great distress. And the other? She would tell him the other in a minute...wait...she put a small, swollen-jointed wrist to her brow and tried to think what it was.
“I can’t see this ravening beast, Miss Porteous, that’s been trying to attack you,” the Major said, peering on the dusty, shadowy floor. And then, imagining that he had perhaps seen something scurrying away, he murmured, “I see it,” and stepped heavily forward, crushing something beneath the sole of his shoe. He made no attempt to examine the remains of his victim. “I suppose that means bad luck for me, doesn’t it?”
“Oh dear, I hope not,” said Miss Porteous. “I’ve just thought of what I wanted: someone to help me wind my wool.”
A few moments later, as he sat there, hands raised in an attitude of surrender or benediction with the skein of wool diminishing between them, a roar of angry shouting broke out from the direction of the ladies’ lounge. It was Edward losing his temper.
Later in the evening a story circulated among the jubilant old ladies to the effect that during his confrontation with Bolton, Edward had threatened to call the police. When Bolton had pointed out that he was the police, Edward, outraged, had telephoned to Dublin Castle where he had an influential friend. The matter was being dealt with and it was likely that Bolton would lose his job or, at the very least, be reduced in rank.
There was a curious supplement to this story. After Bolton had been evicted from the ladies’ lounge he had retired, vanquished (at least, in the eyes of the old ladies), to the Prince Consort wing. On his way he had passed through a small antechamber where a number of ladies had gathered while waiting to reoccupy their rightful territory. He had appeared unperturbed by his encounter with Edward, at most a trifle preoccupied. He might have passed through without noticing the ladies had not Miss Johnston abruptly hissed: “And I should think so too!” Captain Bolton had paused then and, smiling politely, had plucked a pale pink rose from a vase on one of the tables. Then, holding it delicately between finger and thumb, he had walked over to where the ladies were sitting. The more timorous ladies had looked away. Miss Johnston, however, was far from supine by nature (the Major had heard that her father had died on the Frontier, taking with him some astonishing number of the dark-skinned persons who had sought to oppose his will). She had straightened herself resolutely. Captain Bolton had stood there for a moment, bowed politely, and offered her the flower. Naturally she had refused it. He had continued to stand there, still smiling. It was an agonizing moment. At any instant, one felt, he might fly into an uncontrollable rage and, drawing his revolver, wreak his vengeance on the defenceless ladies. Instead of that, however, he had done an even more extraordinary thing. Slowly, methodically, petal by petal, he had begun to eat the rose. The ladies had watched him munching it in amazement and alarm. He was in no hurry. He did not wolf it as one might have expected (the man’s reason was clearly unhinged). With his lips he had dragged off one petal after another, masticating each one slowly and with evident enjoyment until at last there were no petals left. But he had not stopped there. With his front teeth he had bitten off a part of the stem, calmly chewed it, swallowed it, and then bitten off another piece. In no time he had eaten the entire stem (on which there had been two or three wicked-looking thorns). The ladies had stared at him aghast, but he had merely smiled, bowed again, and strolled away.
The Major sighed when he heard this and agreed that it was an incredible way to behave. Later he asked Edward if it was true that he had telephoned to Dublin Castle. Edward nodded.
“There’s something rather odd I’ve been meaning to tell you. D’you remember we had a good laugh the other day when I told you a rumour I’d heard about the water supply at the Castle?”
“I remember. Only the whiskey drinkers survived.”
“That’s right. Well, it’s probably just a coincidence but the fellow I spoke to on the telephone was quite definitely tipsy...in fact, he was as drunk as a lord!”
Part Two: Troubles
THE TUAM MURDERS
Preaching in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, Tuam, on Sunday, the Most Rev. Dr Gilmartin said that he came to sympathize with the people of Tuam in the sickening horror and terror of last week. A foul murder of two policemen was committed within three miles of the town on the previous Monday evening. Had no reprisals been taken, he said, there would be a great wave of sympathy with the police. Commenting on the wrecking of the town, His Grace said that he need not add that one crime did not justify another...in this case the police had taken a terrible revenge on an innocent town. No matter from what quarter the encouragement came, the policemen committed a fearful crime in gutting a sleeping town with shot and fire. The town was vengefully and ruthlessly sacked by the official guardians of the peace
, and if the Government did not make immediate compensation and reparation for the damage done, the sense of crying injustice would remain as a further menace to peace and good will.
* * *
All this time the hotel building continued its imperceptible slide towards ruin. The Major, though, like Edward, had almost come to terms with living beneath this spreading umbrella of decay. After all, the difference between expecting something to last for ever and expecting something, on the contrary, not to last for ever, the Major told himself, was not so very great. It was simply a question of getting used to the idea. Thus, when he put his foot through a floorboard in the carpeted corridor of the fourth floor, which these days hardly anyone ever visited, he sprang nimbly aside (the carpet had prevented him from making a sudden appearance on the floor below) with a muttered oath and the thought: “Dry rot!” But a glance at the ceiling was enough to tell him that for all he knew it might just as easily be wet rot. He informed Edward, of course. Edward sighed and said he would “consider the matter.” In the meantime the Major set about adapting himself to the fact that he was living in a building with rot, of one sort or another, in the upper storeys.
On another occasion, while leaning with his hands on a wash-basin and gazing in contemplation of his freshly shaved cheeks, he felt the basin slowly yield under his weight. It slid away from the wall, twisting the lead pipes so that it hung upside down and emptied a deluge of water over his slippered feet. For a few moments the plug swung gently to and fro on its chain like a clock pendulum. The Major dried his feet carefully and moved his belongings next door. This was by no means his first move. Since the episode of the decaying sheep’s head on his first visit he had moved a number of times for one reason or another.
It was true that the Major had the advantage of already having become accustomed during the war to an atmo-sphere of change, insecurity and decay. For the old ladies, on the other hand, who had lived all their lives with solid ground underfoot and a reliable roof overhead, it must have been a different matter. The Major sometimes lurked in the residents’ lounge, spying on them as they read of the day’s disasters in the newspaper. What must they be thinking as they read that a patrol of a dozen soldiers had been attacked in broad daylight between College Green and Westmoreland Street? The very heart of Imperial Dublin! In July alone there had been twenty-two people murdered and fifty-seven wounded, the majority of them policemen. While the Manchester Regiment suffered heavy losses in Mesopotamia (but there had always been some corner of the Empire where His Majesty’s subjects were causing trouble) were they relieved and gratified to read, that August, of the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act? Trial by court-martial (since locally conscripted juries had long ceased to be reliable) and the withholding of grants to local authorities which refused to discharge their obligations—the Major did not think for a moment that this would restore order in Ireland. Nor perhaps did the old ladies, for none of them looked in the least cheered as, with quivering cheeks, they read about it. On the first of September the partridge season opened. Birds were reported to be numerous.
One morning the Major and Edward found themselves standing in the potato field which lay within the boundary wall of the Majestic on the far side of the orchard. They stood there in silence, looking round at the rows of green plants in which stark, mysterious craters had begun to appear overnight, like the empty sockets of missing teeth.
“They’re even climbing the wall now. Next thing we know they’ll be sitting down at the table with us.”
“They have nothing to eat. What d’you expect?”
“It’s not my fault they have nothing to eat.”
“Oh, I know that. All I’m saying is that you can’t expect someone willingly to starve to death. What would you do in their shoes?”
“Don’t be absurd, Brendan. I wouldn’t allow myself to get into such a mess in the first place.”
The Major turned away to watch the crows flapping in lazy circles, looking for some nourishment from the newly turned soil. Between himself and Edward there was a long, dissatisfied silence.
Early in the afternoon the weak sunshine was masked with cloud, the sky crept nearer to the treetops and a drizzle began to fall. The warm, clammy breath of autumn hung by the still open windows, but Edward, with absent-minded munificence, called for turf and log fires to be lit. It was not so much against the chill in the air as against the melancholy; everyone was touched by it. By half past four it was already quite dark outside, thanks to the drizzle. The Major, transfixed by sadness, was slumped in an armchair in the gun room with his elbows on a level with his ears, gazing into the fire or watching its reflection flicker in the shining, varnished scales of an immense stuffed pike. In the hotel’s heyday this pike had succumbed to a gentleman with a title, name and date illegibly inscribed with spidery flourishes on a brass plate, and now it rested on the mantelpiece, its small, vicious mouth frozen open in impotent rage and despair.
The ladies never came into this room; it was a masculine preserve. In Ireland, of course, the distinction between the sexes had become blurred in recent years. Many young women were crack shots, the Major had heard, and would fire off both barrels without batting an eyelid. Someone he knew had a niece who was a fast bowler. Another girl, the young sister of one of his army friends, had been given a rhinoceros-hide whip for her sixteenth birthday; by the time she was eighteen she could flick a cigar out of a man’s lips at twenty paces. And of course there was the Countess Markievicz who day and night wore a pistol on her hip, it was said, and thought nothing of shooting a man between the eyes. He had heard, too, that these days girls smoked cigars and drank port. But all that was the younger generation. Older ladies had been brought up with different ideas on how it was seemly to behave. It was rather a relief to know that here in the gun room he was protected from them—because after all, he couldn’t spend all his life with old ladies. Of course, young ladies (if there had been any) would not think twice about barging in here for a smoke and a chat. But against them the Major did not particularly feel he wanted to be protected.
He sighed. He had been avoiding the Majestic’s ladies all day. This evening they would feel they had been neglected. At dinner he would very likely be snubbed by Miss Staveley. He would receive vinegary glances from some of the others. It had happened before.
Edward came in and sat down in an armchair beside him. Having taken a spill from a pewter mug on the mantelpiece, he proceeded to light his pipe, saying between puffs that he would be going up to town tomorrow to see Ripon, was there anything the Major wanted?
“No thanks.”
“Sarah has to see her doctor, so I may as well give her a lift. Save her the train journey.”
The Major sighed enviously, thinking how much he would like to motor up to Dublin in Sarah’s company. There would be room for him in the Daimler, moreover. But Edward showed no sign of inviting him to join them and for some reason he felt unable to broach the subject. He sighed again, disgruntled. She was only a friend, of course. The pike’s small bad-tempered mouth and wicked teeth expressed his mood to perfection.
“Will it be safe travelling by yourselves?”
“Oh, I should think so,” Edward replied blandly. After a moment he added reflectively: “What a state the country’s in! You know, Brendan, I sometimes think ‘to hell with them all’...The way they’ve ruined life in this country I sometimes feel that I’d welcome a holocaust. Since they want destruction, give it to them. I’d like to see everything smashed and in ruins so that they really taste what destruction means. Things have gone so far in Ireland now that that’s the only way they can be settled with justice, by reducing everything to rubble. D’you understand what I mean?”
“No,” said the Major sourly.
After Edward had left for Dublin on the following morning the Major took a walk with Rover (who was getting old, poor dog) as far as the summer house and then looked back across the lawns towards the Majestic. How dilapidated it looked from this an
gle! The great chimneys towering over the hulk of wood and stone gave it the appearance of a beached Dreadnought. The ivy had begun to grow, to spread greedily over the vast, many-windowed wall adjacent to the Palm Court...indeed, it appeared to spread out from the Palm Court itself, through a broken pane in the roof: one could just make out a trunk which emerged thick and hairy as a man’s thigh before advancing multifingered over the stone. Rusting drainpipes bulged on the southern walls like varicose veins. “Maybe,” thought the Major, “the ivy will help hold the place together for a bit longer.”
Ripon stood beside the statue of Queen Victoria with one elegantly shod foot on the running-board of a shining Rolls-Royce. His eyes shielded by a tweed cap, he was staring up uncertainly at the windows of the first floor. His manner, the Major thought, was oddly furtive as he started towards the front steps. He stopped abruptly when he saw the Major and seemed disconcerted.
“Oh hello.”
“Hello.”
“Didn’t know you were back here. Thought I’d just drop in...”
The Empire Trilogy Page 22
