The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  All their spring-cleaning had been fun! The Major was smiling at the recollection. But as his eye wandered over the gleaming black and white chessboard of tiles his smile faded —for sitting on a white tile in the very middle of the floor was a plump grey rat. Almost immediately, startled by the Major’s movement, it crept away under one of the sofas and vanished from sight. Frowning, the Major made his way towards the ballroom. This was something they had not envisaged when they had gone upstairs to make their grim harvest of cats. Those cats hadn’t been eating the air! A steady grey stream of nourishment had been coming up into the house: rats from the cellars and the pond, mice from the fields and the barn. A cat, however wild and savage, can always be passed off as a pet. Not so with rats. Fortunately there was still a sizeable residue of appetites in the upper storeys. Perhaps the rats would remain out of sight until the guests had gone home.

  The orchestra was playing a foxtrot. As the Major made his way towards the ballroom, the lively melody of “Dreamland Lover” grew louder, blending with laughter and the chatter of voices, the rhythmic movement of the dancers on the parquet floor which was shining like a pool of ice. What a fine time everyone must be having! Once again he allowed himself a touch of optimism about the success of the evening.

  In the doorway he hesitated. He had seen Sarah and, although his mind continued to register calmly a variety of impressions which had nothing whatever to do with her, he was aware of a solid pulse throbbing in his neck and chest. Tonight he would propose!

  The ballroom was decorated with banks of violets which added a sweet fragrance to the faint odours of cologne and perfume drifting from behind the delicate ears of the ladies and the heavier aroma of tobacco-smoke from the thickly moustached lips of their companions. Sarah was sitting beside one of these banks of violets, her face slightly blurred by a mist of green ferns. Behind her chair, with his right hand over his heart as if posing for a photograph, stood Captain Bolton, watching the dancers (of whom there did not seem to be a great many). It was Bolton’s other hand which caught the Major’s eye; the palm rested on the back of Sarah’s chair but the fingertips trailed carelessly forward on to her shoulder. As the Major watched, he bent his head to say something to her, delicately encircling her naked upper arm with finger and thumb as he did so. The finger whitened for an instant, but Sarah continued to look straight ahead. Her face was dark and closed. She might have been unaware that Bolton was standing behind her.

  Having started in her direction, the Major now changed his mind. He had a great deal of dancing to do; he had cheerfully promised a number of the old ladies that he would dance with them. He began with a trembling but light-footed Miss Porteous, next came a waltz with the cumbersome Miss Johnston who made things difficult by wanting to lead, then it was time for a bewildered Mrs Rice to take the floor.

  Edward was moving from one group of guests to another, making genial, incoherent remarks, red in the face and wearing an air of mingled triumph and discomfort in the tight grip of his tail-coat. The Major was afraid that this triumph might be premature. The guests had been carelessly chosen because, although there were a great many young men, thanks to the Auxiliaries, young ladies were in short supply. The twins, flushed and exultant, were besieged and claimed for every dance. Viola O’Neill was also discreetly holding court under the sharp eye of her parents, flirting with three or four young men at once. Even Sir Joshua’s daughters were being paid considerable attention: their long, horse-like faces were turned continually to where their mother was sitting, for encouragement or advice. A doting smile would appear on her face, which was an older, more wrinkled version of theirs, and she would nod affirmatively. And this horse face—the Major’s disabused eye noted as with flexed knees he foxtrotted a gasping and near-hysterical Miss Staveley round the floor—these equine features were repeated again and again all the way down the glittering ballroom, as if the Smileys had been reflected in a great hall of mirrors, from the oldest men and women to the youngest children. This was the face of Anglo-Ireland, the inbred Protestant aristocracy, the face, progressively refining itself into a separate, luxurious species, which had ruled Ireland for almost five hundred years: the wispy fair hair, the eyes too close together, the long nose and protruding teeth. “Ripon was right, in a biological sense as well as in several others, to marry Máire Noonan.”

  If only there had been more young people! No doubt it was this absence of youth which lent the guests the appearance of wax figures, museum curiosities, unconnected with the present era, the seething modern world of 1921. The Major peered round Miss Staveley’s heaving shoulders. The handsome and distinguished young people from abroad were no longer to be seen. Even the lovely Miss Bond, who had briefly captivated him in the foyer, had vanished.

  Thinking of the Auxiliaries, he cast a worried glance in their direction; they had stationed themselves near the buffet and were drinking copiously, becoming steadily noisier and more boisterous. But now they had discovered an amusing game: if there were no young ladies to be danced with, well, they would make do with the older ones. As the next waltz began half a dozen of them crossed the floor to bow and click heels in an exaggerated manner in front of as many old ladies. The ladies looked apprehensive. They perhaps remembered how these or similar young men used to threaten them with bayonets at the tea-table. Under the obligation to be good sports they accepted, nevertheless, and allowed themselves to be escorted on to the dance floor.

  “The first time I came to the Majestic,” the Major was saying to Sarah, “I went for a walk round the terraces with Edward and he told me about the hunt balls and regattas they used to hold here...the violins and the chandeliers and the silver breakfast dishes...I never expected to see it for myself.”

  “It’s lovely, Brendan. This is how it should be all the time—with candles and flowers. It’s almost too good to be true. D’you think there’ll be silver dishes for breakfast? What a long time there is still to go before then!”

  She was smiling at him warmly, with a trace of that innocent enthusiasm which he had found so disarming during her visit to London. Dancing had made the Major thirsty. He drank a glass of cold champagne and then another. He was in a strange mood, both sad and somehow optimistic at the same time. He told Sarah, pointing at the blue-black glass on the roof, how, up on the balconies above, the nannies and the children used to watch the grown-ups dancing. That was in the old days, at the height of the season, when the ornate gilt mirrors in every room in the hotel were busy reflecting the corporeal envelopes of titled persons and the attics under the roof were positively bulging with their servants. Those were the days! (In those days too Sarah would have thought him too splendid a match to refuse.) He drank some more champagne and gazed into Sarah’s grey eyes, thinking...well, he didn’t know what he was thinking...perhaps of old women, black as ravens, rummaging through the rubbish bins.

  Sarah dropped her eyes to her glass, which was empty; she flicked it idly with her finger-nail and drew from it one thin, clear note of a painful beauty, over which the honeyed sighings of the violins on the platform had no dominion.

  “Come on, let’s go upstairs and see what the nannies and the children used to look at.”

  He gave her his arm. On the way out they passed Bolton, who was conversing politely with a feathered lady. He raised one eyebrow sardonically at Sarah as she passed.

  Through the empty foyer and up the stairs Sarah clung tightly to his arm, humming under her breath.

  “Well, you must tell me all the gossip, Brendan,” she said at last. “I hear that Edward has been courting that sensible lady with the moustache.”

  “Oh come now!” protested the Major feebly. “She hasn’t got a moustache. And besides, he wasn’t really courting her in my opinion and anyway he’s stopped now...But why do you want to know? Are you jealous?”

  “Look at me, Brendan. Isn’t it plain to see that I’m head over heels in love with him?”

  In consternation the Major stopped. For a few moment
s she gazed at him with a sombre, tragic air; then, seeing his expression, she abruptly burst out laughing—a fresh, mocking laugh that echoed cheerfully all around them.

  They had now reached the second landing. Reassured, the Major steered her along the corridor and into one of the dark starlit rooms. They moved out on to the balcony; below them lay the ballroom, an immense, glistening bubble of glass. Another waltz was about to begin; the orchestra sat poised in its luxuriant garden of ferns, bald heads shining with perspiration, fingers crooked, bows at the ready. Hardly had the first few notes been played before the twins were out on the floor spinning round and round, disappearing every now and then into the fierce solar glare of one or other of the chandeliers. Presently three of the young Auxiliaries went spinning out on to the floor with their partners, Miss Bagley, Mrs Bates and a terror-stricken Mrs Rice. The Major watched, perturbed lest the young men might be taking their joke too far. A crash of breaking glass echoed up to them—but it was only some young chap who had clumsily swept a tray of empty glasses to the floor.

  “I’m cold,” Sarah said with a shiver. “Let’s go inside.”

  In the darkened room the Major took hold of Sarah’s arm and, in concert with his strange mood, kissed her sadly yet optimistically. It was one of those nights, he had the feeling, when everything isn’t (as it usually seems to be) already settled; when one doesn’t have to say to oneself: given your character and my character what harmony shall we ever be able to achieve?

  “The moon will be coming up soon. Let me show you my favourite room.”

  As he opened the door of the linen room a great exhalation of hot air enveloped them. The night was mild, the kitchen ovens had been burning for several hours at full blast while the supper was being prepared, so behind this closed door the temperature had been mounting steadily all afternoon. Still, Sarah had said she was cold. The Major stepped inside and lit the candle beside his nest of pillows on the floor. He gestured for Sarah to sit down in the depths of the cocoon. She looked faintly surprised but did so, murmuring: “It’s frightfully warm in here.”

  The Major was full of determination but uncertain quite how to proceed. He would have liked to take his coat off for a start (indeed he would have liked to take all his clothes off) but was afraid lest Sarah might put an unfortunate construction on any removal of clothes. He took his place in the nest beside her and for a few moments they kissed, thereby making real a scene which the Major had frequently evoked in his imagination. The reality however, turned out to be less satisfactory than the scene he had pictured. In hardly any time he was sweating profusely; his shirt clung to his back and his collar itched unbearably. Sarah was clearly also suffering from the heat; her brow was damp and shiny; as she raised a hand to brush away a stray lock of hair that was threatening to creep between their kissing lips he noticed that a dark stain had appeared under the arm of her grey silk dress. At any moment, he was afraid, she might decide that the heat was too much. While with a trace of desperation he continued to kiss her, he nerved himself to say what he had to say, to speak the words on which his happiness depended. He cleared his throat and...but no, he retired again for one final revision of the words in his mind.

  Presently Sarah disengaged herself and said: “I’m afraid my dress will get crumpled.” She hesitated for a moment, half expectantly, then with a sigh she got to her feet. The Major leaped up also and, mopping the perspiration from his brow, said jerkily: “Look here, I want you to be my wife.” He could say no more. He could not move. He stood waiting there like a pillar of salt. He could see, however, that it was going to be no go.

  Sarah’s face had taken on a bitter, sly expression he had seen many times before. She said crossly: “Oh, I know you do, Brendan.” For a while neither of them said a word, then she added: “This heat is frightful. I shall have to go and wash my face.”

  She turned away. The candle on the floor threw hulking shadows over the ceiling and the walls.

  “Really, you’re such a child. You haven’t any idea what I’m really like...Oh, I’m sure you mean well, but it’s quite out of the question...D’you know that I’m a Catholic? Of course you do. But do you even know what a Catholic is? You probably think it’s some sort of superstition or black magic or...But no, forget all that, that’s not what I want to say. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a Catholic. It’s simply impossible, d’you understand? And for heaven’s sake stop staring at me with sheep’s eyes like that! You’re not the man I want and that’s all there is to it...That’s that. So please don’t mention it again. I thought you were cured of all that nonsense. Now I’m going to wash my face!”

  “But why not?”

  “I told you. Because you aren’t the man I want! Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “I suppose you want Edward, then.”

  “I want a man who isn’t always trying to agree with people, if you must know. There! Now perhaps you’ll let me go and wash my face...And for heaven’s sake don’t look so wretched. I’m sorry...but it would serve you right if I did marry you. You wouldn’t like it in the least. No, don’t come with me...I’ll find my own way.”

  Left alone, the Major took off his coat and fanned his flushed, unhappy face with a pillow-case starched as stiff as cardboard. Craving sweetness, he delved into his pocket for the bar of chocolate he had put there. But the chocolate had melted into a mass of oozing silver paper.

  When the Major had composed himself a little he went downstairs. The ballroom was empty except for an effete young man with a monocle who was strumming on the abandoned piano while a thick-set lady sat on a stool beside him eating trifle. This young man was G.F. Edge, the racing motorist, so the Major had been told (but somehow he found it hard to believe). In any case, they paid no attention to the Major and so, although he was not in the least hungry, he wandered towards the dining-room where supper was being served.

  Not for many years had such a magnificent display been seen in the dining-room of the Majestic: the snowy linen that cloaked the tables, the silver winking in the candlelight, the golden-crusted battlemented pies filled with succulent game, pheasants and ducks in quivering aspic, brittle and juicy hams cured with sugar and cloves and crowned with white frills, spiced beef the colour of mud, and steaming pyramidal vol-au-vents overflowing with creamed chicken, mushrooms and seafood. On long silver platters salmon stretched themselves, heads and tails shining and perfect as if caught a moment before (if one forgot the clouded, resentful eye) while, in between, all that glorious pinkness was gradually scooped away by the deft and deferential waiters imported from Dublin for the purpose. And besides all that, the salads and the soups, the pâtés and the hors d’oeuvres, the sucking pig (which at that very moment, as his eye fell on it, caused Edward to knit his brows pensively and think of his own plump darlings), the smoking pasties and pies, the delicate canapés, the cheeses that came not only from Ireland but from certain other countries as well (these cheeses, however, had been set at a table apart lest their smell offend the ladies). Nor must the desserts be forgotten: the mountainous creamy trifles that gave off the fumes of sherry and cognac, the trembling fruit and wine jellies, both clear and cloudy, aquamarine and garnet, pearly blancmanges and black fruit puddings smeared with melting slabs of brandy butter...and, of course, many, many other things besides.

  On all this the Major, for whom life had become empty, cast a listless eye. Instead, he stationed himself by the sugar bowl on the coffee table and into his mouth morosely popped one lump after another, crunching them noisily. Sarah was not in the room. He was glad. He would never be able to speak to her again.

  The other guests, their appetites unimpaired by love, were doing full justice to the magnificent food prepared for them. The elderly guests ate with dignity but more than was good for them, remorselessly, a little of this and a little of that (the Majestic’s old ladies making the most of this opportunity to acquire a little nourishment), the others out of a mixture of gluttony and surprise that Edward should do
things so well. Only the very finest of the guests (Lady Devereux, Sir Joshua and his wife and a sprinkling of other titled gentlemen) were heard to murmur “Wonderful!”, “Absolutely capital!” but were not seen eating anything. Such groaning tables, of course, were an everyday sight for them—besides, people without wealth are obliged to eat not only for today but a little for tomorrow as well, “just in case”...Aristocrats and millionaires (and men of letters), on the other hand, scarcely have to eat at all: they can survive for days on a finger of toast and a plover’s egg. The Auxiliaries ate with the zest of youth, their appetites sharpened by the wine they had drunk. They had gathered into a rowdy group of their own, full of laugh-ter and horse-play; a movement of this group afforded the Major a glimpse of white crinoline: the twins were standing there like queen bees at the centre of a swarm; tasting everything but too excited to eat, they laughed louder than anyone as the young men ribbed each other and played the fool. On the far side of the table a veil of steam from the tureen of turtle soup failed to conceal the pale elfin face that watched them, brooding. The Major caught Charity’s eye and beckoned her over.

  “Why haven’t you asked me to dance?” she cried as she came skidding to a stop in front of him.

  “You seem to be too busy,” smiled the Major. “I just wanted to tell you not to forget about poor Padraig. He looks lonely and he’s probably too shy to talk to anyone.”

  “Oh all right, where is he? But I’m sure he could talk to the old women if he really wanted to. What happened to Granny?”