But whatever one might say about Miss Staveley one was obliged to add that she paid her bills regularly. This made her a person of consequence among the guests at the Majestic. However confused her apprehension of the world around her might seem at times, she was always listened to with respect. Another rumour, promoted this time by Mr Norton, the mathematical “genius,” had it that Murphy was well known for speaking seditiously in public houses. Miss Johnston remarked despondently: “No doubt we shall all be murdered in our beds by the wretched man,” but scarcely anyone took Murphy to be a serious menace, even full of whiskey and Bolshevism as he was reported to be. Nevertheless the old ladies and the Major agreed that it was a sign of the times. And what terrible times they were! At no point in recent history, reflected the Major (who was slumped in an armchair in an agreeable after-lunch torpor), at no point in the past two or three hundred years could the standards of decent people have been so threatened, could civilization have been so vulnerable and near to disintegration, as they were today. One just had to open the newspaper...
Another sign of the times was the derelict state of the fields that lay around the Majestic. Not planted in the spring because of Edward’s quarrel with the farm-workers, they now wore a thick green fur of weeds. The Major sometimes saw tattered children dragging aimlessly through these fields in a doleful search for something edible: a little corn that had seeded itself from last year’s harvest or a stray potato plant. Edward too seemed oppressed by this sight and although he said: “It’s their own damned fault. I told the silly beggars what would happen if they didn’t plant those fields,” he made no move to have the children chased away and even one day sent Seán Murphy out with a washing-tub full of windfalls from the orchard. The children fled, of course, at the sight of him and he was obliged to leave the tub there in the middle of the field. When he went back for it half an hour later it was empty.
“I sometimes wonder,” mused the Major, “what would happen if one caught one of those little brats young enough, taught him how to behave, sent him to a decent public school and so on. D’you suppose one could tell the difference between him and the son of a gentleman?”
“You might just as well dress up a monkey in a suit of clothes,” replied Edward shortly.
* * *
AMRITSAR
The findings of the Hunter Commission in regard to the disturbances in the Punjab in the spring of last year were issued last night as a Blue Book...General Dyer’s career as a soldier is over. All the members admit that firing was necessary. Even the Indians recognize that the riots could not have been quelled by any other means. They condemn General Dyer, however, in the first place, for firing without warning, and, in the next place, for continuing to fire when the necessity for drastic action had disappeared...Six months after an event it is very easy to weigh its circumstances in a deli-cate balance and to apportion approval and blame. No doubt, General Dyer acted rashly; but he probably had about two minutes in which to make up his mind. He was confronted with a fanatical Oriental mob, fired with anti-European frenzy. He knew that hundreds of white women and girls were dependent on him for their safety. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the fate of India was at stake. Therefore, he gave the order to fire. We quite agree that he went beyond his brief. The “crawling” order was merely stupid. General Dyer was neither a politician nor a moralist. He was a soldier and, moreover, an Anglo-Indian. He thought of the memsahib who had been assaulted, and in India the memsahib is sacrosanct. The Hunter Report will have far-reaching consequences in India. We are not at all certain that they will lighten the task of the Indian Government. General Dyer’s condemnation, although inevitable and strictly correct, will be remembered in India when his unfortunate decision has been long forgotten.
* * *
NIGHT OF TERROR IN DERRY
Fierce Fighting in the Streets
Armed parties of Unionists and Sinn Feiners took possession of some of the streets and rifle and revolver fire was almost continuous during the greater part of the night. Our Londonderry Correspondent, telegraphing last night, says: “The fiercest and most fatal rioting of modern times in Londonderry occurred on Saturday night when several people were killed and many wounded. A state of the greatest terrorism prevailed throughout the night. On Sunday morning looting took place on an extensive scale and there were instances of actual and attempted incendiarism.”
* * *
CONNAUGHT RANGERS IN INDIA
A Reuter’s Simla message states that three-quarters of the men of the Connaught Rangers at Jullundar refused duty and laid down their arms upon receipt of a mail giving news of Irish events...
The detachment at Jutogh, six miles from Simla, is perfectly quiet. The whole affair is regarded as being entirely due to political causes and the Sinn Fein agitation.
* * *
In Kilnalough, as elsewhere in Ireland, it rained all that July. The farmhouses were now empty except for two or three old men, the rest of the workers having decamped after their abortive attempt to induce Edward with threats to hand over ownership. It was no doubt thanks to the fact that a contingent of Auxiliary Police were billeted at the Majestic that Edward escaped without harassment or injury. Other landowners in various parts of the country were prudently giving in to the demands made upon them at that time, but Edward remained inflexible and contemptuous. Given the state of the country and the frequency of terrorist attacks, any vindictive farm-labourer with a gun might have shot Edward down with impunity. In the meantime, however (provided he could find men willing to harvest them for him), Edward still had two meagre fields of slowly ripening corn.
The Major could see both of these fields from the window of his room; they lay one on each side of a gently sloping valley, separated only by a rutted cart-track that swept round by the farm and on to join the road to Kilnalough. Pale green at the beginning of August, the corn seemed to grow a little more blonde morning by morning. He had brought with him a pair of excellent field-glasses, made in Germany, which he had removed from the massive punctured chest of an apoplectic Prussian officer with waxed moustaches whom he had come upon lying upside down in a shell-crater. Every morning he used these glasses to scan the countryside and derived a particular pleasure from examining the shining, iridescent surface of the corn as it flowed this way or that along the valley in waves of syrup.
“Strange,” he thought one morning. “How did that get there?” A large boulder which he had never noticed before had appeared at the edge of one of the fields. Why should anyone go to the trouble of carting an extremely heavy boulder to the edge of a cornfield? He decided to take a walk over there later in the day.
But immediately after lunch the twins pounced on him. They wanted him to “be the man” while they practised some new dance steps; in particular, it seemed, they were anxious to learn “The Joy Trot” and “The Vampire.” They had succeeded in borrowing a gramophone and some new records from old Mr Norton, whose relentless pursuit of youth was truly amazing when one considered his physical decrepitude. At first Mr Norton had demanded that he should “be the man” in return for the use of his gramophone. But the twins were unenthusiastic. Besides, it was found that the rhythm was too lively for his arthritic joints and the twins absolutely refused to dance at half-speed as he proposed. Somewhat disgruntled, he settled for a “squeeze.” Each twin in turn was given a hug that squeezed a groan of air out of her, while the Major frowned and puffed at his pipe, wondering whether he shouldn’t intervene. But at last Mr Norton let them go and sat down gloomily to watch the Major’s clumsy efforts to do as the twins told him. For unfortunately the Major was a very poor dancer and found new steps difficult to acquire. Not that there was anything particularly difficult about the one-step or the foxtrot—they were remarkably like walking; the difficulty lay in matching his movements to those of his partner. He also sometimes had trouble turning corners.
“Not with your pipe,” said Faith, seizing it from his lips and taking it away while Charity b
usied herself with winding up the gramophone. “Now, hold me tighter for heaven’s sake.”
“Hm, I told you I wasn’t frightfully good at this sort of thing,” murmured the Major, discountenanced by the removal of his pipe. “Now let me get this straight...”
“Forward with your right foot!”
“Ah...”
“Dear God!”
“Sorry, I got mixed up.”
“You’d better let me lead. Now just listen to the rhythm and don’t bother to look at your feet...Oh, you’re perfectly hopeless!”
But the Major, although he was aware that music was being played, was at first deafened by the scraping of his own feet on the grimy floor of the ballroom and listened in vain for some sign which would tell him when to make his movements. He had started off with one softly yielding hand in his own horny palm and another resting like thistledown on his shoulder; but in no time at all he was being towed, pushed and dragged without ceremony this way and that, first by one twin, then by the other. For such slender, delicate creatures they were really amazingly strong: when Charity spilled a box of gramophone needles and dived under the piano to pick them up the Major involuntarily glimpsed the back of her smooth, firmly muscled thighs and (while fox-trotting swiftly forward to block this disturbing sight from Mr Norton’s avid gaze) found himself thinking that, physically at least, one could hardly still call her a child.
By now the Major was beginning to warm up and get the hang of things and did not need so much pulling and pushing. They changed the record to “By the Silver Sea” and while he had a rest the girls danced together most prettily, taking it in turns to be the man.
“The little darlings,” whispered Mr Norton hoarsely to the Major who had sat down beside him. “Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”
The Major too was watching them with admiration as they spun round whirling their skirts and shaking their ankles in the air and doing all sorts of amusing and fanciful things without ever losing the rhythm or getting in each other’s way. With the exertion (the Major changed the needle and wound up the gramophone as quickly as he could, so that they would not stop this enjoyable display) they gradually became flushed and flirtatious. Their eyes sparkled. They flashed lingering smiles at the Major as they danced round. They licked their lips with delightful pink tongues and demurely lowered their lashes over moist, shining eyes. Dimples appeared in their cheeks and their teeth had never glistened more pearly white. “How perfectly charming they are,” thought the Major, “as they try out their attractions on me—though not in the least seriously—like young birds learning how to fly: the same attractions that one day they’ll use on the young men whose hearts they choose to break...How charming!” But a glance at Mr Norton’s puckered walnut face told him that the old rascal obviously considered that he was the target for the lingering smiles and licked lips and lowered lashes. He was returning the smiles with a roguish one of his own, a peeling back of the lips to exhibit unusually large yellow false teeth. The man was truly amazing. Really, one almost had to admire him for the tenacity with which he held on to the remnants of his youth.
Once more it was the Major’s turn. Dancing could really be quite enjoyable, he decided, and one girl melted into another so smoothly from one record to the next that he had trouble remembering which twin he was dancing with. It came as something of a shock when he realized that Mr Norton had fallen asleep on his chair (worn out by the sexual electricity in the air) and that the time was five o’clock and that he himself was exhausted.
“Just one more!” cried the twins, but the Major said no, he hadn’t realized the time, and picking up his pipe made for the door, ignoring their entreaties. It was only later, while he was thirstily drinking a cup of tea in the company of Miss Bagley and Miss Porteous, that he remembered the curious boulder which had appeared from nowhere at the edge of the cornfield. By that time it was too late to walk over and have a look at it. If it turned out to be still there—he fancied it might disappear as magically as it had arrived—he would go tomorrow. Having made this decision, he put the matter out of his mind in order to give his full attention to Miss Bagley and Miss Porteous, who already seemed to have discovered how he had spent the afternoon. Yes, he agreed, the younger generation’s love of dancing might well be one of the reasons for their disrespect for their elders; on the other hand, it was all in good fun, they really meant no harm by it. It was all very harmless. Yes, he would like another cup of tea, he had a “terrible thirst on him,” as the Irish would say.
He was still in pyjamas the following morning when he removed the German field-glasses from the cardboard box in which he carried them (the Prussian officer had inconsiderately bled all over the original velvet-lined leather case) and raised them to his eyes. The boulder was still there, of course, lying beside the waving ears of corn. He had not really expected to find it gone. But it had now been joined by another and much more startling object. The Major adjusted the focus of the glasses to make sure that it really was, yes—but how could it possibly be?—a tree stump, the stump of a tree, which quite positively had not been there yesterday, neither tree nor stump. But there it was, as large as life, beside the densely packed corn.
When he had finished dressing he went downstairs, but he was too early. Edward and the rest of the household had not yet even begun their breakfast; morning prayers were still being said. Outside the breakfast room the Major listened with a faint smile as Edward began to recite the list of things for which on this morning of 1920 one should give thanks to God. He lingered for a moment, leaning against the cold stone wall of the corridor and thinking that Edward’s voice sounded tired and disabused. And over the last few months the list seemed to have grown shorter. Edward’s voice ceased. Now he would be moving to the War Memorial to open the hinged leaves. Still smiling, the Major tiptoed away; the ranks of tiny accusing eyes would once more look for him in vain. Moreover, he would be first with the Irish Times and would not have to wait his turn through the long morning while the old ladies pored over the “Births and Deaths” column to see which of their contemporaries they had managed to survive.
When he saw Edward later in the morning he said: “I suppose you know there’s a clandestine harvest going on.”
To his surprise Edward nodded gloomily. “I thought as much, but I wasn’t sure. Now I shall have to do something.”
“What will you do?”
“God knows. I shall have to stop them one way or another.”
“Why not just let them take it! They must need it badly if they come out to cut it at night.”
“That’s quite out of the question. It’d never do to let them know that they can get away with stealing my property. The whole bally place would be stripped in two shakes.”
“Oh, surely not.”
“Look, it’s not my fault they cleared off. If they want to follow the wretched Shinners then let the Shinners feed them. Another thing, the corn isn’t even properly ripe yet. Any fool can see that.”
“I suppose they can’t wait,” said the Major with a sigh. “Mind you, I agree that it’s their own fault.”
“Really, Brendan, there’s such a thing as law and order, you know. If the country’s in such a mess at the moment it’s because people like you and I have been slack about letting the blighters get away with it.”
“Oh, hang law and order! Two miserable fields of corn which the poor beggars planted themselves anyway. You don’t mind letting them go hungry so long as your own pious principles are satisfied.”
There was a sudden silence. The Major was as surprised at his outburst as Edward. Edward flushed but said nothing.
He must have brooded about the matter, however, because after lunch he took the Major aside and told him that he would try to make arrangements to have it harvested and milled by people in Kilnalough and then distributed to the people round about who most needed it. He would also make sure that Dr Ryan and the parish priest heard of his intentions, so that they could warn the peo
ple to leave the corn alone until it was ripe. That way they wouldn’t be obliged to break the law, nor would his own “pious principles” (he smiled wryly) be offended. He had already sent Murphy into Kilnalough with the news.
For some time the Major had been impermeable to the rumours that circulated in the Majestic, having had his fill of them in the damp of the trenches where they grew like mushrooms. But now he found himself listening again, since the old ladies gobbled them up greedily and loved to share them with him (it was a mystery where they originated unless they were somehow generated by the revolutionary sentiments said to be bubbling in Murphy’s brain). The I.R.A. had planned to assassinate His Majesty, Miss Archer (no relation) assured him one day, with a dart tipped with curare fired from a blow-pipe by some form of savage imported specially from the jungles of Brazil.
“Oh, what nonsense!” the Major chaffed her (she was one of his favourites). “I’m surprised at you, Sybil, for believing such a cock-and-bull story.”
“But it’s perfectly true. I have it on the best authority.”
“Oh really!”
Miss Archer lowered her voice. “D.C.”
“D.C.?”
She clicked her tongue, despairing of the Major’s power to comprehend. “Dublin Castle.”
“Absolute rot,” laughed the Major.
But no, Miss Archer insisted that it was nothing less than the truth. And that wasn’t the half of it...Not only had the I.R.A. planned this dastardly act, they had come within a whisker of carrying it out. The Brazilian savage, wearing his own feathers and disguised as a tipster, had been placed beside the course at Ascot. As the Royal Carriage swept towards him he had raised his blow-pipe. The King had come nearer and nearer, had drawn level, the savage’s cheeks were actually bulging when...he had been taken by a fit of coughing (unused to the climate, he had died of pneumonia two days later), the dart had slithered out of the pipe and stuck harmlessly in the turf! Miss Archer had abandoned the pretence of seriousness and finished her story in a gale of maidenly giggles, her dim, rheumy, once beautiful eyes streaming with tears of laughter, so that the Major no longer knew whether she had ever intended him to take it seriously. Perhaps she no longer knew herself.
The Empire Trilogy Page 20