As he watched, something heaved powerfully beneath the surface. “Looks as if there might be good fishing. Pike, I wouldn’t be surprised. Too bad Edward hasn’t got a decent cook.”
Turning a corner of the pool brought a reflection of the sky down on to the water for a moment and left the water-lilies floating in azure. He glanced back once more to see if any fish were rising, but the surface was glassy smooth. He was tempted to go back and try the springboard to see whether it had rotted through—but undoubtedly it had. And it was fitting that it should have. From here the fashionable young men, his erstwhile comrades in arms, had taken one, two, three steps, a jump, and jack-knifed into the azure. There was something moving about this remnant of a happy youth; the Major, at any rate, felt moved.
But at last they were on the final flight of steps and soon they would be sitting in armchairs drinking tea.
“We’ve scaled the Matterhorn, Doctor!” But the old man, head and shoulders bowed forward on to his chest, was too spent to reply.
The Major looked towards the meadow and sure enough the farmhouses were scattered like grey sugar cubes on the rolling, quilted fields. Much nearer, though (indeed, near enough to have been visible from the lower terrace if he had looked more carefully), not far from the wall of loose, flat stones which divided the park from the meadow, a man in a tattered overcoat was standing motionless, facing towards the Majestic but with his eyes on the ground. The Major wondered whether it was the same man he had noticed earlier and, as they went inside and their footsteps echoed beneath the great glass dome of the ballroom, the incongruous but disturbing thought occurred to him that perhaps this man also would not object to sharing some almost-fresh cakes with Edward’s piglets. Before going off to wash and change his shirt he told Edward that there was some fellow hanging around in the meadow and Murphy was dispatched to tell the chap to buzz off. It was probably that bane of all respectable folk in Ireland, a tinker.
On an impulse he went inside. It was very dark. The heavy curtains were still half-drawn as he had left them six months earlier, only allowing the faintest glimmer of light to penetrate. The bottles and glasses on the bar glowed in the shadows; there was a strong smell of cats and some silent movement in the darkness. Looking up, he was taken aback for a moment to see a pair of disembodied yellowish eyes glaring down at him from the ceiling. It was only when he had moved to the window to draw back the curtains that he realized that the room was boiling with cats.
They were everywhere he looked; nervously patrolling the carpet in every direction; piled together in easy chairs to form random masses of fur; curled up individually on the bar stools. They picked their way daintily between the bottles and glasses. Pointed timorous heads peered out at him from beneath chairs, tables and any other object capable of giving refuge. There was even a massive marmalade animal crouching high above him, piloting the spreading antlers of a stag’s head fixed to the wall (this must be the owner of the glaring yellow eyes that had startled him a moment ago). He had a moment of revulsion at this furry multitude before the room abruptly dissolved in a shattering percussion of sneezes. A fine grey cascade of dust descended slowly around him. “Well, I’ll be damned, where the devil did this lot come from? All the cats in Kilnalough must be using the Majestic to breed in... and not all of them are wild either.” Indeed, led by the giant marmalade cat which from the stag’s brow had launched itself heavily into the air to land on the back of a chair and thence to slither to the floor, they were moving towards him making the most fearful noise. In a moment he was up to his shins in a seething carpet of fur.
He moved brusquely, however, and the animals scattered and watched him in fear. The smell had become nauseating. He tried to open the window but the wooden frame must have swollen with the dampness; it was wedged tight, immovable. He was about to leave when his eye fell on the envelope which lay on the bar. It was the letter from Angela which Edward had handed to him on the day of her funeral; his name was written on the envelope in the precise handwriting which had once been so familiar. He thought of it lying here, Angela’s final message to him, through the long months he had been away, the cats multiplying around it, the seasons revolving. Uneasily he opened it...but he did not read it. It was much too long. He put it in his pocket and picked his way sadly through the cats to the door.
In the Palm Court the Major was greeted by Edward with a fresh burst of enthusiasm, as if the few minutes which had elapsed had been yet another long separation. No sooner had the Major forced his way through the new and astonishing growth of bamboo that threatened to occlude the entrance entirely (for here too the seasons had continued to revolve) when Edward was on his feet calling: “Here he is, the man himself. Come here, Brendan, and explain why you haven’t been keeping in touch with us all this time...Eh? Let’s hear his excuses, what! Damned if the fellow hasn’t been too busy chasing the ladies to give his old friends a thought. Doctor, what d’you think? What d’you make of a friend who won’t write letters, poor sort of a chap, isn’t he? And I’m dashed if he hasn’t put on weight into the bargain. A bit of riding is what he needs, I should think, and a few early mornings out with a gun and a dog...How does that sound to you, Brendan? Not so bad, eh? I thought you’d get tired of being citified sooner or later. Now then, come and tell us all your news, old man. Sit here so we can have a look at you. Yes, that one looks solid enough...pull it up a bit and I’ll do the honours. Och, yes, I have to do it all m’self these days, I’m turning into an old woman so I am, a real old woman. We started. You don’t mind, do you? Thought we wouldn’t wait for the tea to get cold...”
While the Major sipped his tea and peered curiously around at his scarcely familiar surroundings Edward fired questions at him, flitting from one subject to another, as often as not without waiting for replies. Such was his state of excitement that he could scarcely keep still. Indeed, he kept jumping to his feet to make unnecessary adjustments to the table.
“What was Ascot like last year?” he would cry gaily, handing everyone an extra teaspoon. “You must have been there ...now don’t tell me you weren’t. Yes? Yes? No, wait a minute, try a fill of this and see how you like it. I got the man in Fox’s to make it up specially...a special blend, my own concoction, thought I’d try it out on you, see how you like it. No, wait, have a slice of cake first. Bewley’s. They say it’s very good, don’t know much about cake m’self, but they say it’s a good one...Did I tell you I’d taken up science again? Have to keep the old brain from getting rusty, don’t we? Body and mind. Body and mind. Body and soul, as Sammy would tell you. Never had any time for Ascot, Brendan. Ascot is for the ladies, m’father used to say, the men just stand there like stuffed parrots. Give me a good point-to-point any day where there’s none of that nonsense. Used to let poor Angie and her mother bully me into it sometimes. (Poor Angela, echoed the Major in his thoughts, feeling a remote ache of compassion from the folded wad of paper in his breast pocket.) Didn’t care for it, though...Now, young man, what’ll you have? Another slice of cake to put some muscle on you, eh? And you, Doctor? More tea? Now, Brendan, frankly I don’t know what this country is coming to...Have they gone mad over there in London? You tell us, you’ve just come from there...have they gone mad or what? The bloody Shinners are getting away with murder. Land-grabbing is the latest. Pious articles in the papers about what they call ‘land-hunger in the west’ and d’you know what it is? They’re forcing chaps to sign over their land at gunpoint for a pittance...”
“Don’t be a damn fool, Edward!” the doctor said distinctly.
“There, you see, Brendan,” Edward went on grimly. “You see what I mean. The good doctor and I have been having words about this already. D’you know that they’ve even been trying it on with me?” And leaping to his feet once again Edward seized a bread-knife and began to slash away at the foliage with it as if it were a machete. And it was true that the growth of ferns, creepers, rubber-plants and God only knew what had become so luxuriant as to be altogether beyond a joke. Whereas previo
usly the majority of the chairs and tables had been available, here and there, in clearings joined by a network of trails, now all but a few of them had been engulfed by the advancing green tide. While Edward slashed away with the bread-knife the Major, anxious to change the subject, observed politely that he had never in his life seen indoor plants “succeed” so well. Edward, his exuberance subsiding abruptly, murmured something indistinct about the system of irrigation, then something further about sewage and the septic tank. “A devil’s own job” something would be “and frankly the expense...” With a sigh he kicked the slashed leaves and twigs into a pile beside the table and slumped back into his chair.
“And anyway, what does it matter in the long run?” the Major understood him to murmur very softly, eyes raised, mouth open, to the great skylight above them, itself almost obliterated by vegetation. Rover, who had been dozing with his chin on the Major’s instep, went over to inspect the pile of leaves, lifted a leg to sprinkle them with a few drops of urine before, inertia overcoming him, he rolled over on to his side to doze off once more.
There was a long silence as they sat there in the green-ish gloom. The old man was motionless, deeply sunk in an armchair just as the Major remembered him from his first visit and, for all one knew, fast asleep behind the drooping lids. The Major noted with dismay that the doctor’s flies were undone; a fold of flannel was protruding like the stuffing from a broken doll. Really! someone should have reminded the poor old fellow; at his age one couldn’t be blamed for such a lapse. And why had nobody thought of removing his hat? He looked absurd sitting there at the tea-table wearing a hat (though it was true that the foliage made one feel as if one were out of doors).
“You said I could have some peacock feathers,” Padraig said plaintively, but Edward made no reply and silence fell once more.
A faint rustling sound became audible, as of someone making his way with caution along one of the trails through the thicket. There had previously been a way through, the Major remembered, from one end of the Palm Court to the other (leading to a spiral staircase down into the cellars). It seemed, to judge by the steadily approaching rustle of leaves, that against all probability this trail was still practicable. The noise of movement stopped for a moment near at hand, and there was a deep sigh, a long exhalation of breath, almost a sob. Then the noise started again. In a moment whoever it was would step into view from behind an extraordinarily powerful tropical shrub which seemed to have drilled its roots right through the tiles of the floor into the oozing darkness below. No sound but for the rustling footsteps. Even the doctor appeared to have stopped breathing. The Major tried to see past the hairy, curving, reticulated trunk of this tree, to distinguish (between succulent, oily leaves as big as dinner-plates) the tiny figure that slowly shuffled into sight. It was old Mrs Rappaport.
She stopped in the clearing opposite the tea-table and turned her sightless eyes in their direction.
“Edward!”
Edward said nothing but continued to sit there as if made of stone.
“Edward, I know you’re there,” the old lady repeated shrilly. “Edward!”
Edward looked agonized but said nothing. After a long pause the old lady turned and began to move forward again. For what seemed an age they listened to the decreasing rustle of her progress followed by a prolonged wrestling with the grove of bamboo shoots. Listening to the interminable thrashing as she tried to escape from the toils of bamboo, the Major wondered whether he should go to her assistance. But at last the thrashing stopped. Mrs Rappaport had won through into the residents’ lounge.
Silence returned and it seemed to the Major that the greenish gloom had deepened into an intolerable darkness. If only the famous “Do More” generator had been working they could have repulsed this aqueous darkness with a cleansing flood of electric light. He looked round for the tall-stemmed lamp which Angela had once switched on in this very glade, but although it was no doubt still somewhere near at hand (few things being ever deliberately changed at the Majestic) there was no longer any way of telling which of these leafy shrubs possessed a tubular metal trunk and glass corolla.
“Have you had enough to eat, old chap?”
“Eh?” said the Major.
Edward was talking to the dog, however. After a moment, though, as if the sound of his own voice had startled him into activity, he stirred uncomfortably and looked at his guests. He stood up for an instant, without pushing his chair back, then sat down again.
“Glad to hear you’re something of a sportsman,” he said to Padraig with an effort. “Good for a young fellow...cricket, hockey and so forth. Mind you, I was never much of a cricketer myself...Too impatient with it all, I suppose.”
“I hate cricket,” Padraig said sullenly.
Whether or not this exchange served to clear the air, Dr Ryan now also began to speak, though so softly that it was all the Major could do to make out what he was saying. Several moments passed before he realized that the old fellow had begun to speak hoarsely, comfortingly, consolingly to Edward of someone who had died...and several more moments before he realized that that someone was Angela, as if she had only been dead for a matter of hours rather than months.
People are insubstantial, he understood the old man to be saying, a doctor should know that better than anyone. They are with us for a while and then they disappear and there is nothing to be done about it...A man must not let himself become bitter and defeated because of this state of affairs, because really there is no point to it...There is no rock of ages cleft for anyone and one must accept the fact that a person (“You too, Edward, and the Major, and this young boy as well”)...a person is only a very temporary and makeshift affair, as is the love one has for him...And so Edward must understand that this young girl who had just died, his beloved daughter Angela whom he, Dr Ryan, had assisted into the world, even at the height of her youth and health was temporary and insubstantial because...people are insubstan-tial. They really do not ever last...They never last. A doctor should know. People never last.
Edward laughed heartily and, lighting a candle, said: “I remember one time some fellows in Trinity asked me to bowl in the practice nets with them (used to like to keep myself in trim during the vacations) and I’m damned if I didn’t have such a swelled head in those days that I made up some cock-and-bull story about being a demon bowler. Well, they had the nets up against the wall, of course. First ball I bowled (fella called Moore was batting, later played for the Gentlemen of Ireland), first ball, mind you, I’m dashed if it didn’t sail clean over the batsman, over the back of the net, over the wall, bounced on the roof of a carriage in Nassau Street and went half-way up Dawson Street! Eh? What? How about that for a piece of bowling, eh? You can bet my face was like a beetroot and, by Jove, did they laugh at me...Och, after that I stuck to the gloves, I can tell you.” Bubbling with mirth Edward gradually subsided once more.
On an impulse the Major had slipped Angela’s letter out of his pocket and (overcome by curiosity and a vague dread as to what it might contain) was straining his eyes in the candle-lit gloom to read it, while the doctor began a rambling and incoherent monologue about there being a new spirit in Ireland (it was clear that the old chap was so exhausted and his mind so fogged that he no longer knew where he was or what he was talking about).
Ah, it was as he thought, Dearest Brendan—the regular handwriting, line after line like small waves relentlessly lapping a gentle shore. On my dressing-table—the mirror, the brushes, the jewellery-cases, even a photograph of himself. From the window of my bedroom I can see...but what could she see? Only two elms and an oak, reputed to be a hundred and fifty years old, the second or third oldest tree on the estate, the edge of a path where the dogs sometimes wandered, but at this distance she could hardly recognize them...Foch or Fritz? Collie or Flash? They were too far away, in a sense (thought the Major) they were too particular now...only a generality like the circling of the planets could hold her attention now. But at twelve minutes past eleve
n the doctor came and he and Angela had a long chat which, for all that, didn’t prevent her noticing and recording that one of his waistcoat buttons was dangling by a thread and that there was a copious spot of what was undoubtedly porridge on his jacket...(Meanwhile the doctor muttered in the querulous tones of a tired old man: “There’s a new spirit in Ireland; I can feel it, you know, and see it everywhere. The British are finished here. The issue is no longer in doubt, hasn’t been for the last twenty years. There’s nothing now except a huge army that’ll keep Ireland under the British yoke. If you take my advice, Edward, you’ll give in gracefully now while you still can, you’ll give them the land they’re asking for, because, if you don’t, they’ll take it anyway...Parnell was the last man who could have preserved some sort of life for the British in Ireland but the damn fools didn’t realize it, thought he was their enemy! Serves ’em right. I’ve no sympathy for them, they’ve lived here for generations like cocks in pastry without a thought for the sufferings of the people. Now it’s their turn and I’ll shed no tears for them...Ach, things have changed since I was a boy...they have a different look to them, the people, it would take a fool not to see it.”)
“But this is an enormous letter,” thought the Major, appalled, hefting the wad of crinkly paper in his hand. “It would take a prodigious effort even to write such a letter if one were weakened by illness, if one were unable to take proper nourishment (he thought with a pang of the untouched trays of food ferried up and down the stairs) and...and the detail in it is intolerable.”
(“Of course, I was a child then, too young to remember those days, but my father had seen it and my uncles too, God rest them, they were old men before thirty with the worry and the trouble...and I remember the way people talked of it, you know. It must be God’s will, they’d say. He sent it to punish us, d’ye see? so what is there for a man to do? Sure we’ll have to go to another country, says he, to America on a ship because in Ireland we’ll never do any good; we’ll die for sure and there’ll be no help for it...Man, I’d say, what need is there to leave? The hunger is over and there’s food enough. But sure it’ll come again, says he, you’d never know...’tis best to leave Ireland. B’the Lord Harry, in those days they were leaving so quick they were even starving there on the quays of New York. There’s no luck in Ireland, they’d tell you...”)
The Empire Trilogy Page 16