A little farther on they reached the terrace balustrade from where they could look down on the frozen swimming-pool. The twins had made a slide on the ice by shunting back and forth along a track to make it slippery. They were busy there now, skirts hitched up to their knees, running down the frosted grass and leaping over the lip of the pool to skid with gracefully flexed bodies to the other end. They stopped to watch this game for a moment, then Edward hurled his snowball as Charity was bounding forward on to the ice. Although it missed, it startled her, causing her to lose her balance and sit down heavily. There was laughter from Edward and soon a snowball fight was raging. Sarah forgot her bad humour and soon her slender fingers had left the warmth of her muff to dig into the freezing snow.
The Major loathed this sort of thing but joined in nevertheless. Sarah and Edward were enjoying themselves so much—besides, he did not want Sarah to think he lacked a sense of fun. Soon he got his reward. A snowball hurled by one of the twins struck him on the ear and made his head ring. He retired at that, laughing like a good sport—but displeased nevertheless, cupping his tender ear in the palm of his hand. Faith afterwards apologized: the twins had learned in a hard school and put stones in the middle of their snowballs. But the one that had hit the Major had been intended to flatten Sarah, not him. She was dreadfully sorry.
“Good heavens, why Sarah?” asked the Major, astonished that anyone could fail to like such a lovely girl.
“Oh, because she’s so bloody awful,” Faith said vaguely. “She’s always hanging around Daddy.” The Major frowned then, to show his disapproval of swearing. He frowned later, too, on thinking it over. How he wished it were him instead of Edward that Sarah was always hanging around...!
What was going on between Edward and Sarah anyway? She still came to the Majestic quite frequently, but both she and Edward were always looking so grim these days. They did not behave in the least like lovers. Although his indifference to her had been amply demonstrated, the Major still could not prevent himself from haunting the couple, in the hope of getting further opportunities to demonstrate it. Thus it was that while flitting after them along a dim corridor one day he heard Edward exclaim: “You’re not the only woman in Kilnalough!”
“Who else would look at you twice?” jeered Sarah in a tone that the Major recognized only too well. After that she stopped coming to the Majestic.
* * *
TROUBLE IN INDIA
The centre of growing Indian unrest seems to have shifted from the Punjab to the United Provinces. Here, in the Oudh district, a serious land agitation has been in progress for the past month. It has given rise to violent outbursts and the United Provinces today are passing through a crisis not unlike that which reached its most acute phase in Ireland forty years ago. Hatred of the landlords is the cause of all the trouble and, undoubtedly, the peasantry has many grievances.
The trouble in the United Provinces has furnished a rare opportunity to Mr Gandhi. His object is the expulsion of the British from India, and he will welcome the aid of the Fyazabad farm labourers just as heartily as if they were Sikhs from the Punjab or Brahmins from Madras. Unless the dispute be settled quickly the agitators will succeed in convincing the rioters that their real enemy is the Raj...
Throughout the Punjab, in Delhi, and now even in Calcutta, this fanatical “patriot” has proclaimed his boycott of British rule. He has transformed peaceful villages into hotbeds of intrigue and sedition, and his lieutenants, by their plausible sophistries, have fired the imaginations of young Indians with crazy ideas. Mr Gandhi is the author of his country’s unrest. While he is allowed to preach his gospel India will continue to seethe with discontent.
* * *
THE GREATEST NEED
Ireland is being ground to powder between the two millstones of crime and punishment. For those whose sense of horror recent events have not blunted the daily newspaper has become a nightmare. The deliberate death-blow and the wandering bullet fired in attack or defence spare neither sex nor age. On Monday night a police officer’s wife was murdered at Mallow and the officer himself sorely wounded. Immediately afterwards, in a fight with forces of the Crown, one man was killed and seven were wounded. Human life is cheaper today in Munster than in Mexico. The explosion of bombs has become a common sound in Dublin, where yesterday another attack was made on a police motor car in Merrion Square...We believe that a national demand for a stoppage of murder and lawlessness, made with a single voice by our Churches, our newspapers, our public bodies, our farmer’s unions, our Chambers of Commerce, would be the herald of a new day of hope and peace for Ireland. No man has a right to say that this great act of faith would be fruitless until it has been attempted. Who will give the lead?
* * *
By this time the Major was perfectly numb to the daily horrors printed by the newspaper. He had become used to them as he had once become used to the dawn barrage. He supposed that one day it would all come to an end, somehow or other, because the situation was by no means static. On the contrary, it continued to get worse. “It has to get worse before it can get better,” remarked one of the ladies who was used to looking on the bright side. Early in January the sinister De Valera was reported to have returned to Ireland from America, having travelled, according to rumour, in, variously, a German submarine, a seaplane and a luxury yacht. Shortly afterwards there had been talk of peace negotiations between him and Lloyd George—but the days had gone by, multiplying into weeks. Nothing more had been heard. Instead, the Major congratulated himself on having resisted the impulse to visit the theatre in Dublin; a man sitting in the stalls of the Empire was shot in the chest while watching the pantomime The House that Jack Built. The advertisement for the show in the Irish Times carried the slogan: “Not a dull moment from rise to fall of curtain.” Meanwhile the English cricket team continued to lose test matches in Australia by huge margins.
In mid-February a young widow appeared at the Majestic. Her name was Frances Roche. Though not exactly beautiful, she was a pleasant young lady, without airs or graces, the sort of person one felt inclined to trust instinctively. Her husband had died early in the war leaving her comfortably off, a fact which lent her considerable prestige at the Majestic. But she took no advantage of it. She was just as kind to impoverished Miss Bagley as she was to wealthy Miss Staveley. True, she aroused some criticism because in certain respects she was inclined to be “modern” and lacking in finesse. But for the most part she was well received.
Mrs Roche had arrived accompanied by her mother, Mrs Bates, who in every respect was an older, more portly version of herself, though much less modern. Her mother was not in the least talkative, however. She listened and smiled but was hardly ever heard to utter a syllable. There was always a greater shortage of listeners than of talkers at the Majestic, and the new Mrs Bates (as opposed to the old Mrs Bates who had fallen off the stool before Christmas and long since gone to her reward) was as popular as her daughter. But it was, of course, in the daughter that Edward one day began to show an interest.
It was some time before the Major perceived what Edward had in mind, partly because he found it impossible to believe that any man in his right mind could prefer Mrs Roche, charming though she was, to Sarah—but then he remembered the jeering remark he had overheard and concluded that Edward was treating it as a challenge—and partly because Edward’s method of courtship was a curious one, consisting of advances so discreet as to be virtually invisible to anyone but himself. For example, he treated Mrs Roche herself with decorous formality and instead engaged her mother in long conversations which soon became—since Mrs Bates only allowed herself an occasional smile or nod of agreement—a rather frantic series of questions and answers, both supplied by Edward himself. “Ah, I see you’re interested in that painting over there,” he would say if Mrs Bates’s gaze wandered away from his face. “It shows King William crossing the Boyne after the famous battle...All the smoke in the background and so forth...” And then, shaking his head: “You’re wondering just w
hat it was all about, I expect, apart from the religious aspect. Well, I’m afraid you have me there. We must ask Boy O’Neill. He’s sure to know all about it.” “Do we always have such a hard winter in Kilnalough? Now let me see: if I recollect rightly, last year and the year before that...” And so on.
For some time past Edward’s appearance at dinner had become extremely erratic. As likely as not he would be content to eat off his knees wherever in the hotel Murphy, carrying a tray, happened to find him. But now he once more took to appearing punctually and presently he got into the habit of showing Mrs Roche to a seat at the end of the table where he sat himself, thereby dislodging old Mrs Rappaport to sit at the end of the Major’s table. They were too far away to talk to each other, of course, but think of their position—one at each end of the table! It gave them such an air of being en famille that Edward was clearly embarrassed to be making his intentions so obvious; yet to his evident surprise Frances Roche showed no sign of being aware of them, chatting pleasantly as she had always done to the old ladies sitting on either side. There was no sign at all of blushes or swoons or melting glances (some of the looks the old ladies gave him, on the other hand, would have turned the milk sour). Was Mrs Roche perhaps rather stupid? Edward might have wondered. As a scientist, of course, he should have known that young ladies no longer functioned, physiologically speaking, quite as they had done when he was a young man: they no longer swooned in a difficult situation (“indeed,” thought the Major gloomily, “the modern young lady would be more likely to punch you on the jaw”). But Mrs Roche seemed even to be unaware that she was in a difficult situation.
He was getting nowhere. Like it or not, if this difficulty was ever to be resolved he would have to make his overtures even more brutally frank. Thus, at any rate, did the Major interpret the fact that Murphy was ordered to place the soup tureen and plates at Mrs Roche’s end of the table so that she should serve the food. And she did serve the food—with Edward’s dilated pupils fixed to her homely features, trying to find some trace of awareness in them. But Mrs Roche ladled the transparent, faintly steaming bouillon into one dish after another as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world, which indeed she was.
Edward was beginning to lose heart by now. He had taken to brooding darkly at his end of the table. He was bewildered, the Major could see. One had to feel sorry for him. But then the Major thought of Sarah and hardened his heart as with a sigh he turned back to sift through the watery hot-pot on his plate in search of a piece of meat suitable for Mrs Rappaport’s marmalade cat, sitting on its stool and staring him down with expressionless, acid eyes.
The next thing was to take Mrs Roche for afternoon drives in the Daimler. These tended to be tedious and repetitive because, with the country in such an uproar, it was not safe to go far afield. The twins were usually present, conscripted at the price of violent scenes and sulks to chaperon their father. Sarcastic remarks were passed about the beauties of the countryside. Worse, the twins had recently become experts on the subject of sexual intercourse, thanks to a volume wrapped in brown paper lent to them by one of the young Auxiliaries. As a result they were inclined to take a disabused view of all relations between men and women, and this view even extended to their father’s afternoon drives in the motor car. “Oh, for heaven’s sake grab her, Daddy,” the appalled Major overheard Faith groaning to her sister. “Throw her on her back, that’s what she wants!”
But Edward, of course, did nothing of the sort and gradually, although Mrs Roche continued to sit at the end of his table, the afternoon drives declined in frequency and were forgotten.
“One needs every now and then to escape from the company of women into a place from which women are excluded. After all, unless he has sisters or comes from the lower classes a young Englishman is likely to grow up entirely among males. Later in life he simply isn’t accustomed to a heavy dosage of female company. And surely, if the English gentleman is respected throughout the world for his courtesy towards the gentler sex, it is because he takes care to provide himself with a room in which he can be alone in the company of other men.” So the Major was thinking as he sat in the gun room with Edward on a frosty moonlit night.
It was very quiet. There was no movement in the house or in the trees outside the window. Edward was gazing abstractedly into the fire, enjoying a rare moment of tranquillity. Presently, however, a small oak leaf of white plaster dropped from a wreath on the dim ornamented ceiling and shattered into pieces on the tiles by Edward’s feet. He gave a start and peered up at the ceiling.
“We really must do something, Brendan, about the old place. It needs doing up badly. One simply can’t let things slide.”
The Major raised his eyebrows dubiously but said nothing. He remembered Edward’s indifference about the piece of the façade which had almost crushed the dog Foch. By comparison the distintegration of the ceiling plaster was trivial. But Edward had begun to interest himself in what he was saying.
“There’s so much wrong with the place no wonder we get complaints from some of the guests (because we do get complaints, Brendan, from time to time). Heaven only knows when we last had a lick of paint and some new wall-paper, not to mention the things like mending broken windows and replacing some of those old curtains that the moths have been getting at...And then we need to have a look at the roof, I hear there was a positive waterfall cascading down one of the servants’ staircases during that spell of rainy weather we had over Christmas. And of course we must get that M put back up there...it looks too absurd the way it is... “AJESTIC”...whoever heard of such a word?...and make sure none of the other letters are going to fall off...After all, if one’s going to run a hotel it may as well be a good one, what d’you think?”
“I quite agree,” the Major said with a sigh, doubtful that Edward’s enthusiasm would last long enough to become action. “I should think the first job is to make sure none of the masonry falls on anybody’s head.”
“Absolutely! That’s the ticket. Really put the old place back on its feet again. We could clean out the swimming-pool and maybe try to get that wretched ‘Do More’ generator working again...”
“And maybe the Turkish Baths,” added the Major, who at that moment felt like taking a Turkish bath and was prepared to join Edward’s romancing. Edward was being serious, however.
“The Turkish Baths might present us with a tiny bit of a problem, actually. We did try to get them going again some years back but it was a disaster. The boilers suddenly went haywire and before anyone knew what was happening half a dozen guests had suffered heat prostration...Had to be carried out, poached like lobsters...”
“Well, we must do something about the Palm Court before it undermines the foundations. And the squash court...”
“Ah yes, and the squash court. Of course I’d have to find another place for the piggies, but that shouldn’t be impossible. Really, the place has all the amenities...all we need to do is to fix things up. Mind you, with the state of the country this may not be the best time to get people over here from England. But with luck the situation should be under control by the beginning of the season...I hear that Dublin Castle has a plan to start shooting Sinn Feiners by roster until they stop attacking the police...We could put an advertisement in The Times and do something about the tennis courts. Pity not to make use of them.”
Edward was on his feet now, his eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. As he talked he jingled some loose change in his pocket, which caused the Major to wonder where the money for all this splendid refurbishing would come from. But Edward’s enthusiasm was infectious. How was it that he had never thought of this before? he was wanting to know. His eyes had been opened! The Majestic was no fantasy. It was solid. It was there! It had everything that was needed... indeed, it had more than most places: it had electric light. It even had a firmly established reputation as a place of fashionable luxury—tarnished, doubtless, but a reputation nevertheless.
Dubious again, the Major listened as Edw
ard talked on excitedly. At his feet Rover stirred and barked fearfully, peering with his sightless eyes into the threatening darkness all around. Poor dog! The Major dropped a soothing hand to scratch that fretfully acute silken ear. Rover allowed himself to sink back to the floor again and yawned, emitting a frightful smell.
Edward was too excited to sleep. It was all the Major could do to prevent him setting off there and then on a tour of the premises, notebook in hand, summoning from their beds masons and carpenters, plumbers, painters and glaziers. When in a little while the Major climbed the stairs to bed he left Edward wandering from one silent, sleeping room to another, raising branched candlesticks to gaze with inspired eyes at cobwebbed walls and dusty brocade curtains which, after all the years they had hung there, still glinted dimly with their heavy gold thread, woven into the dusty, tattered cloth like the thread of hope that runs from youth to age.
Edward continued to move through the house, treading softly as a ghost, staring and staring, his heart beating strongly, his eyes full of tears. He sat down once on the arm of a chair, as if he were drunk, overcome by exhilaration, gazing around at this house which he had somehow never really seen before. And he continued for a while to sit there with tears of joy coursing down his cheeks, thinking now of his wife, now of Angela, now of his friend the Major. He sat there until his candles had burned down to thin liquid wafers of wax. Suddenly the thought came to him that he should give a ball—a magnificent ball, the kind of ball they used to give here in the old days. His excitement surged to new heights. This would mark the rebirth of the Majestic! He must go and tell the Major immediately, wake him up if necessary. A Spring Ball will be held at the Majestic in Kilnalough. The pleasure of your company is requested...the formal delicacy of this phrase enchanted him. The pleasure of your company.
Faintly from outside in the park there came the shattering, lonely cry of a peacock. For a moment the sound of that cry disturbed him—aching, beyond hope. As he got to his feet there was a threatening movement in the darkly swaying shadows. But it was only one of the multitude of cats, out for the purposes of hunting or mating in the Majestic’s endless forest of furniture.
The Empire Trilogy Page 33