“Steady the Buffs!”
“Oh, it’s you. I just thought I’d come down here for a while. All those morbid old ladies, you know.”
“Just called to say goodbye. I’ve got to go back to England to see a relation who’s been taken ill.”
“Oh, I see,” nodded Ripon, putting on his jacket and for some reason patting his pockets anxiously. “I don’t blame you, really. It’s awful here, isn’t it? I’m thinking of trying to get out myself while the going’s good before the bloody ship sinks, so to speak. Matter of fact I’m glad you came because I’ve been wanting a word with you.”
For the second time in less than ten minutes the Major considered defending the innocence of his motives for leaving, but thought better of it.
“Well, I haven’t got much time. In fact, I haven’t got any time at all. You see, I missed the train from here and I’ve got to get myself over to Valebridge before, let me see...” He looked at his watch.
“You’ve heard the news, of course,” stated Ripon, ignoring the Major’s remarks. “It’s all over town, I expect.”
“Heard what news?” demanded the Major anxiously.
“About me and Máire Noonan. I’m sure that little bitch Sarah will have told you.”
“Yes, I did hear something. But look here, Ripon, you mustn’t go around calling girls bitches like that...I mean, really! Besides, she’s a cripple, more or less, and if you had her disability...”
“I suppose you know Máire’s a fish-eater...an R.C.?”
“Yes.”
“So there’s going to be an unholy row sooner or later. Or maybe I should say a holy row. And just at the moment it’s not such a good time, you know, what with poor old Angela and so on...But old man Noonan has been putting on the pressure, d’you see, and something’s got to be done.” Ripon paused and jabbed the knife violently into the oak panelling. “Can you lend me a couple of fivers, by the way?”
“No.”
“Just one fiver would be a help.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t really matter, of course, if you’re short.”
“Why has Mr Noonan been putting on the pressure?”
“It’s this R.C. business. He thinks that maybe I’m not going to...Well, what it all boils down to is that he wants me to make it public and the main thing is...”
“To tell your father?”
Ripon nodded gloomily.
“Well, I’m sure it will all turn out all right. After all, the Noonans are rather wealthy from what I hear. I don’t see why Edward would have any real objection once he knows you’re serious.”
“It’s this stupid religious business, Major. The point is, you see, that I’ve been trotting along to see the old priest for what they call ‘instruction’ (they’re frightful sticklers for the rules). Not my idea, I can assure you. Old man Noonan insisted on it. It’s a lot of rot, really. I mean, frankly it doesn’t make an awful lot of difference to me where we’re married, couldn’t care less about that sort of thing. The snag is that Himself is going to get into a fearful wax when he hears about it...and to tell the truth, I don’t quite know what to do.” He paused, avoiding the Major’s eye. “Fact is, I was rather hoping you might do something to help me...tip the wink to Himself and so forth.”
“Oh really! That’s out of the question, Ripon. Look here, I’m in a dreadful hurry at the moment and I simply can’t afford to miss this train (this business with my aunt is perfectly genuine, I can assure you). If you want me to give you advice I’d be glad to help you in any way I can; in fact, I’ll give you my card and you can put it all down in black and white.”
Ripon took the Major’s card and looked at it without optimism.
“If you spoke to Father he might not take it so hard, you know. If you pointed out that it’s not the end of the world and so forth. I know he respects you. I’m afraid he won’t listen if I tell him.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question,” repeated the Major, becoming agitated. “It won’t do at all if I miss this train, as I’m sure to do if I stand here talking any longer. And so, well, I just wanted to say goodbye...I’m sure everything will turn out all right in the end. Goodbye, Ripon.”
And without looking back the Major hastened along the corridor, up the stairs three at a time, through the residents’ lounge, took a short cut through the orangerie and emerged beside the statue of Queen Victoria where Murphy was waiting for him with the trap.
As they reached the last point of the drive that afforded a view of the building the Major looked back at the grey, battlemented mass that stood there like a fortress among the trees.
“Stop, Murphy!” he cried suddenly. He had just remembered: he had left Angela’s letter in the Imperial Bar!
The old manservant dragged on the reins and turned slowly to look back at the Major, his discoloured teeth exposed in a ghastly rictus. Was it the effort of reining in the pony that made him look like that or was he laughing hideously? The Major gazed fascinated at the old man’s fleshless skull and sunken eyes.
“Never mind. Drive on or we’ll miss the train.” And he thought: “I’ll get Edward to send it on to me. At this stage it can’t contain anything very urgent, after all.”
* * *
IN PRAISE OF BOXING
A man’s last line of defence is his fists. There is no sport, not even cricket, which is more essentially English than boxing. Wilde is a national hero because he has shown that in the great sport which is ours, and now is the property of the whole world, we can still produce a champion when it comes to a fight. There is no sport in the world which demands cleaner living. There is no more natural sport. Low cunning will not help him, but a quick, clear brain, a hard body, and perfect training will carry a man a long way.
* * *
The Major now found himself sitting beside his aunt’s sick-bed in London and not in the best of tempers. He had very quickly reached the conclusion that his aunt was less sick than he had been led to believe, which irritated him and caused him to suspect a conspiracy between this lonely old lady and her doctor (it was the doctor who had sent the telegram which summoned him). And although within a few months his aunt vindicated herself by dying, the Major was never quite able to discard the faint irritation he had felt at being greeted, as he raced up a beautifully polished staircase (everything looked so clean after the Majestic) beneath sombre, heavily varnished portraits of distant dead relations, and burst into her bedroom, by a wan smile rather than a death-rattle. Meanwhile he sat beside her bed with her loose-skinned, freckled hand in his and murmured rather testily: “Of course you’ll get better...You’re only imagining things.” But even while consoling his aunt his thoughts would very often revert to Edward. “If I’d stayed a little longer,” he kept thinking, “I might have been able to cushion the shock and make him see reason about Ripon and his lady-friend. After all, it can’t be as serious as all that.” Nevertheless he knew instinctively that the possibilities of mutual incomprehension between Edward and Ripon would be prodigious, and he continued to ruminate on them as he held a glass of verbena tea to his aunt’s faintly moaning lips and commanded her brusquely to take a sip. To tell the truth, he felt rather like a man who has walked away from a house drenched in petrol leaving a naked candle burning on the table.
Here he was in London and nobody seemed to be dying. What was he doing here anyway? The doctor appeared to be avoiding him these days and when they did meet he wore an apologetic air, as if to say that it really wasn’t his fault. But at last the day came when the doctor, with a new confidence, informed him that his aunt had had a serious haemorrhage during the night. And even his aunt, though pale as paper, looked gratified. This news upset the Major, because he was fond of his aunt and really did not want her to die, however much he might want her to stop being a nuisance. However, in spite of the haemorrhage, his aunt still showed no sign of passing on to “a better life” (as she unhopefully referred to it herself when, for want of another topic of
interest to both of them, she embarked, as she frequently did, on conversations beginning: “All this will be yours, Brendan...”).
The news from Ireland was dull and dispiriting: an occasional attack on a lonely policeman or a raid for arms on some half-baked barracks. If one was not actually living in Ireland (as the lucky Major no longer was) how could one possibly take an interest when, for instance, at the same time Negroes and white men were fighting it out in the streets of Chicago? Now that gripped the Major’s imagination much more forcibly. Unlike the Irish troubles one knew instantly which side everyone was on. In the Chicago race-riots people were using their skins like uniforms. And there were none of the devious tactics employed by the Shinners, the pettifogging ambushes and assassinations. In Chicago the violence was naked, a direct expression of feeling, not of some remote and dubious patriotic heritage. White men dragged Negroes off streetcars; Negroes fired rifles from housetops and alleyways; an automobile full of Negroes raced through the streets of a white district with its occupants promiscuously firing rifles. And Chicago was only a fragment of the competition that Ireland had to face. What about the dire behaviour of the Bolshevists? The gruesome murders, the rapes, the humiliations of respectable ladies and gentlemen? In late 1919 hardly a day went by without an eye-witness account of such horrors being confided to the press by some returned traveller who had managed to escape with his skin. And India: the North-West Frontier...Amritsar? No wonder that by the time the Major’s eye had reached the news from Ireland his palate had been sated with brighter, bloodier meat. Usually he turned to the cricket to see whether Hobbs had made another century. Presently the cricket season came to an end. A rainy, discouraging autumn took its place. Soon it would be Christmas.
One day the Major received a telegram. To his surprise it was signed SARAH. It said: DON’T READ LETTER RETURN UNOPENED. The Major had not yet received any letter and waited with impatience for it to arrive. Next morning he was holding it in one hand and tapping it against the fingertips of the other. After a brief debate with himself he opened it.
She had no reason for sending him a letter (she wrote) and he didn’t have to read it if he didn’t want to. But she was in bed again with “an unmentionable illness” and bored to tears, literally (“I sometimes burst into tears for no reason at all”) and, besides, her face was so covered in spots that she looked “like a leopard” and she had become so ugly that little children fled wailing if they saw her at the window and nobody ever came to see her these days and she had no friends now that poor Angela had died and (that reminded her) why had he not come over to say hello to her on the day of Angela’s funeral...after all, she (Sarah) didn’t bite, but then she supposed that he was too high and mighty to be seen talking to the likes of her and he probably, anyway, couldn’t read her writing because she was scribbling away in bed, her fingers “half frozen off” and surrounded by stone hot-water jars against which she kept cracking her “poor toes” and which were practically freezing anyway...and besides, besides, she was positively bored to distraction with everything and there was simply nothing to do in Kilnalough, nothing at all, and she would certainly run away if she could (which, of course, she couldn’t, being a “poor, miserable cripple” into the bargain... and full of self-pity, he would surely be thinking)...
But enough of that, about herself there was nothing of interest to say. The Major must be wanting to hear what was happening in Kilnalough and at the Majestic and the answer to that was...ructions!!! Edward Spencer challenging Father O’Meara (practically) to a duel for improper association with Ripon. Old Mr Noonan threatening to horsewhip the young pup (Ripon, that was) if he didn’t stop playing fast and loose with Máire (did the Major remember the fat pudding of a girl they had met one day in the street?) and show whether he was a gentleman or what he was, anyway, begod...And as to what that might mean the Major’s guess was as good as hers...only it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the above-mentioned fat pudding was pregnant with triplets by the young pup. And to make matters worse Fr O’Meara was threatening to sue Edward for something the twins had done to him, she didn’t quite know what but she’d try and find out and let him know. Anyway, there was surely worse to come.
However, she was pretty certain that such provincial matters would hardly interest him now that he was back in the big city...Was it true that in London even the horses wore leather shoes? But she was only teasing him, of course. The English (that was to say, “the enemy”) were so serious one could never risk making a joke in case they believed you.
Had the Major heard the very latest, God forgive her (in fact, God forgive everybody), that had been happening right under her nose all this while...which was that one of her father’s clerks, a red-faced lad up from the country with a smathering of the “mattermathics” had dared, had had the temerity, had made so bold-faced as to get up his nerve to, in spite of her spots (which must show what strong stomachs country people had), actually fall in love with her! ! ! Without so much as a by-your-leave! He, the Major, would undoubtedly be as amazed as she was that even a country lad who only knew about cows (and himself smelled like a farmyard) could have his wits so deranged as to consider marrying a “total cripple” like herself.
Himself: “Will ye walk out with me, Miss Devlin?”
Me: “How can I, you peasant oaf, with no legs?” And now every time she went out of the house she would find her “rural swain” touching his forelock and blushing like a ripe tomato and the whole thing was positively sickening and disgusting. There surely must be something wrong with someone (apart altogether from the things which immediately greeted the eye and the nose) who would marry someone like her sooner than one of the millions of girls who could churn his butter and wash his clothes and thump his dough and have a brat a year like a pullet laying eggs from dawn to dusk without so much as batting an eyelid. And what did the Major think of such a thing anyway? Wasn’t she right to treat the whole thing as nonsense? But the worst was yet to come.
One could hardly believe it, but the “rural swain” had had the temerity to approach her father with his “bovine proposal” and had even inquired if there might not be a little bit of a dowry now to sweeten the bargain, a couple of heifers and a few quid, perhaps, or a brace of pigs and a few auld hens and then maybe later on a wee share in the bank (which he seemed to think was something like a farm for growing money) and so on and so forth, with lots of blushes and his breeches hanging off of him like potato sacks on a scarecrow! And the very worst was yet to come!
Incredible though it might seem, her father, instead of sneering at the young bog-trotter’s pretensions to his fair daughter’s hand, boxing his ears and sending him back to scratching in his ledgers or whatever he did (stoking the boiler for all she knew), had said that, by Jove, in such circumstances one did well to treat all proposals with serious consideration and though, of course, it would never occur to “me or your mother” to influence her in any way, it nevertheless seemed unwise to send likely lads packing, up from the country or not (after all, they could be groomed and citified to cope with Kilnalough’s undemanding standards), before one had given them a fair run for their money! The Major would hardly believe it, but there was even worse to come!
The “bovine suitor,” greatly encouraged by her father’s attitude, had now taken to lurking beside the gate whenever she went outside, greeting her with familiar winks, and had even approached her near enough to suggest that she should play him “a bit of a tune” on her piano and even, no doubt considering the conquest effected, had placed a hand like a gelatine lobster on her “fair shrinking shoulder,” murmuring that she should accord him “a hug.” Naturally, he had received a tongue-lashing for his trouble. Yet he had stood there grinning and red-faced (the blush, she realized, was permanent), quite unabashed. What did the Major make of her predicament? Did he not agree that it would be better to accept the rigours of spinsterhood and penury (“your mother and I won’t always be here to look after you, you know”) rather
than submit to such a grisly fate? Indeed, her only support in the matter had come from a totally unsuspected source, namely the incredibly ancient and insufferable Dr Ryan whom she had always thought of as her “arch-enemy.” He had told her father flatly that he would as soon see her marry a gorilla in the Dublin Zoo as the above-mentioned peasant Lothario and that if he so much as heard mention of the matter again he would see to it that all his patients in Kilnalough transferred their business to some other bank. So for the moment there was an armistice. But for how long? The more he thought about it the more her father wanted to marry her off. So no wonder that she had been overtaken by her “unmentionable illness.” Perhaps, like poor Angela, she would just wilt away and probably no one would care. The Major, she was certain, wouldn’t care in the least.
And who knew? Perhaps her parents were right. Perhaps there was no real difference between one man and another. After all (she sometimes found herself thinking, sinful though such thoughts were), after all, are we so very different from animals? And animals made less fuss about such matters.
By the way, she had forgotten to mention one curious thing about the “rural swain” (whose name was Mulcahy, incidentally): in his lapel he wore a plain gold ring. She had asked him what it meant. “An Fáinne,” he had replied: Oh, she had eyes in her head, she had told him impatiently. But what was it for, that was what she wanted to know? Oh, so she “had the Irish”? Just a little, she had admitted, not wanting to encourage his respect. Well, it was like a circle for Irish-speaking people, he had explained, so that they might recognize each other by the ring and talk to each other in Irish rather than in the tongue of the foreigner. They had a retreat, it appeared: a number of young men and women anxious to perfect themselves in the ancestral language of Ireland, all off in a cottage in the depths of the country somewhere chattering away in Irish from morn till night. Had the Major ever heard of such a wonderful idea? She had to admit that that was one point in Mulcahy’s favour (admittedly, the only one). He had even asked her to join the circle (though no doubt his motives were impure). So the “rural swain,” though he did not do at all, though he was impossible, at least had gained a meagre point.
The Empire Trilogy Page 12