At length the Major cleared his throat. He wanted to talk about the ball. Perhaps by talking about it one might make its memory less terrible. But so far Edward had not said a word on the subject. All morning the old ladies had been chattering like parakeets, discussing it with any sentient being who came within earshot, servant or fellow-guest, it made no difference. The presence of Edward alone had stilled their tongues. Though outwardly calm there was something in his face, a lurking pain or fury...whatever it was, it had silenced the old ladies just as now it silenced his “only close friend,” the Major.
“It was I who gave her up,” Edward repeated. “That’s something to be thankful for.”
But the Major knew that he was not telling the truth. Besides, Edward’s wounded pride seemed as nothing compared with his own absolute loss.
“You know, sometimes...” Edward began; his lips moving only a millimetre or two above the surface sent tiny waves out towards his knees.
“Sometimes what?”
Edward wearily rolled his eyes towards the Major and then dropped them again.
“Sometimes I even used to forget that she was a Catholic.” And he shook his head, perhaps at the narrowness of his escape.
And so at the Majestic everything returned to the way it had been before. The gleaming tiles became dulled. Sofas as sleek as prize cattle lost their glow. Rooms that had been cleaned needed cleaning again while those that had been locked up were reopened, and still nobody could find the heart or the energy to take down the Christmas decorations (besides, presently it would be Christmas again). Two or three litters of rapidly growing kittens had more than restored the population of cats, although, for the moment, there was no corresponding decrease in the number of rats sighted. Mrs Rappaport’s marmalade kitten (fertilized by heaven knew what hideous monster on a moonless night) caused a surprise (everybody had assumed it to be a tom) by contributing no less than half a dozen of these kittens...enchanting little fellows, though, that one simply couldn’t help adoring as they wobbled blind and mewing across the carpet. But the cries of delight became muted when the kittens at last opened their eyes and six pairs of bitter green orbs were seen to be staring around with malice at the new world in which they suddenly found themselves.
The groaning tables of the night of the ball were now only a distressing memory as the food served in the dining-room returned to normal. One day at lunch, while the guests were sustaining themselves with an Irish stew (“A Chinese Irish stew,” muttered Miss Johnston in disgust), a supplementary dish was brought in by Murphy. On it rested a large sirloin steak. Pushing aside his plate, Edward proceeded to cut the steak into small cubes and place the dish on the carpet in front of Rover who by now was almost totally blind, surrounded day and night by lurking horrors. Rover licked the meat experimentally, masticated one or two pieces, then lost interest. With a sigh Edward returned his attention to the Irish stew on his plate. A moment later the new favourite, the Afghan hound with golden curls, came skipping up, bent his long nose to the meat and wolfed it down in a flash. The guests watched him in thoughtful silence.
In the last week of April the Major, returning from a melancholy stroll in the park, met Edward crossing the drive by the statue of Queen Victoria. He stopped. Edward’s service revolver dangled from one hand. From the other, dark spots of blood were dripping on to the gravel. He stared in alarm at Edward’s stricken face.
“What on earth happened?”
“I shot Rover...He was getting old. I thought...” He peered at his dripping hand. “I thought I...” But with that he turned and went into the house, leaving the Major to borrow a spade from Seán Murphy and wander off in search of the body.
The hole he dug at the foot of an oak tree near the lodge was constricted by large roots. He should really have begun another hole in a more suitable place, but sadness made him stubborn. The result was that, in order to receive the entire dog, his hole had to be narrow and deep. So it was that Rover was buried standing on his hind legs, his shattered skull only a few inches below the surface of soil.
The Major had filled in the grave and was hammering it down with the back of his spade when he spied a delega-tion of old ladies approaching, well furred against the restless spring breezes. Miss Johnston was the spokeswoman. They had heard what had happened and had come with a suggestion: Rover should be sent to Dublin and stuffed. They would make a collection to pay for the work and present him to Edward on his next birthday. The Major thanked them but explained that the heavy bullet had smashed the dog’s skull beyond repair. It would be hopeless, the dog was unrecognizable (all of which was untrue, but the Major could not bear the thought of Rover stuffed and in some debonair attitude, front paw raised perhaps, gathering dust for the years that still remained to the Majestic...It was bad enough to think of the poor dog begging below ground as the worms did their work). Later the Major learned that Edward, cradling the dog’s head in his free hand, had accidentally wounded himself with the same bullet. But luckily it was only a flesh wound.
At about this time in Dublin a number of statues were blown up at night; eminent British soldiers and statesmen had their feet blown off and their swords buckled. Reading about these “atrocities” threw Edward into a violent rage. These were acts of cowardice. Let the Shinners fight openly if they must, man to man! This sort of cowardice must not be allowed to prevail...skulking in ambush behind hedges, blowing up statues...Had there been one, even one, honest-to-God battle during the whole course of the rebellion? Not a single trench had been dug, except perhaps for seed potatoes, in the whole of Ireland! Did the Sinn Feiners deserve the name of men?
“Of course, there was Easter 1916,” suggested the Major mildly.
“Stabbed us in the back!” Edward bellowed with a kind of pain, almost as if he had felt the knife enter between his own shoulder-blades. “We were fighting to protect them and they stabbed us in the back.”
“Well, not if one looks at it from their point of view, of course...Mind you,” he added soothingly as Edward’s features stiffened, “one has to consider both sides.”
A dispiriting silence fell on the room. The Major decided that it would be a sign of strength not to press the matter. Edward inspired more pity than anger these days. Privately, though, he retained his conviction that it was rather amiable of the Sinn Feiners to prefer attacking statues to living people—a proof, as it were, that they too belonged, or almost belonged, to the good-natured Irish people.
“You don’t suppose they’ll have a shot at Queen Victoria, do you? Perhaps we should think of getting her moved a bit farther away from the house...” But Edward merely curled his lip contemptuously at this further proof of the Major’s lack of martial instincts.
The Golf Club these days was thronged with members whom the Major had not ever seen there before: fat, wary men with copious moustaches who cupped their ears whenever the “troubles” were mentioned but said very little, contenting themselves with an occasional mild reminiscence of Chittagong or Cairo or some other place under foreign skies. They seemed to be waiting uneasily for something; perhaps even they themselves did not know what it was. They would stand there, hands in pockets, staring moodily out of the club-house windows at the acres of blowing grass. Nowadays not so many players would venture out there; and all those who did, like Boy O’Neill, carried rifles in their golf-bags. Once or twice, indeed, distant shots had been heard over the hum of conversation in the bar, causing the drinkers to fear the worst: a massacre at the fourteenth hole, bodies spreadeagled on the velvety green or bleeding in bunkers. But no, presently a laughing, windblown group would come into sight on the fairway of the eighteenth and as they came up towards the club-house one or other of the party would be seen swinging a putter in one hand and a dead hare in the other. Not that they would have minded a “scrap”—some of them were young and brave, others middle-aged and fierce, and none of them had been to the war in France.
For the most part, though, the members stayed in the bar drin
king whiskey-and-sodas and waiting. There were still a few ragged, shivering caddies waiting to besiege any plus-foured gentlemen willing to risk themselves in the open spaces—but their numbers had decreased considerably over the winter. Now only the very young and the very elderly remained. And the others? Perhaps instead of hefting golf-bags on their shoulders they were roaming the hills with some flying squad carrying rifles for the I.R.A.
“Hello, Major.”
“Oh, hello, Boy...Didn’t see you there.” O’Neill was leaning on the bar, his shoulders two great bunches of muscle outlandishly swollen by the thick sweater he was wearing. More aggressive than ever, he had recently acquired the habit of grinning sarcastically after anything he said, whether it was supposed to be humorous or not. The Major found this habit upsetting.
“Seen old Devlin?”
“Can’t say I have, Boy.”
“Giving us a wide berth these days. Too bad because I’ve a joke to tell him. Listen. It’s about a girl called Mary from Kilnalough. Mary goes to England in rags and comes back a year later in fine clothes and throwing away money right and left. Meets Father O’Byrne who says: ‘Tell me, Mary. How did you get all that money?’
“Says Mary, shamefaced: ‘Oi became a prostitute, Father.’
“‘What’s that you say?’ cries Father O’Byrne in a fury.
“‘Oi became a prostitute, Father,’ says Mary again.
“‘Ah, sure that’s all roight,’ says Father O’Byrne with a sigh of relief. ‘Oi was after thinking you said you’d become a Protestant!’”
Laughter from one or two of the men at the bar near by. But these were the old hands. The Colonials (as the fat, wary men with moustaches had come to be called) looked blank, being more used to a division of people by race than by religion. This sort of thing was too subtle for them. After all, a white man is a white man when all is said and done.
“Very funny,” said the Major without enthusiasm. He had heard the story before.
Across the room, sitting in an armchair under a portrait in oils of the Founder, the Major noticed young Mortimer. He went over to ask him how Matthews was getting on. Mortimer stood up politely and offered the Major a chair, causing him to think: “At least some of these young fellows have been properly brought up.” And really there was no denying it. Mortimer was a fine young fellow, been to a good school, nicely spoken, good at games...really Charity (or was it Faith?) could do a lot worse. The only trouble was that although he obviously came from a decent family, this family just as obviously had no money or they would hardly have allowed one of their offspring to join the riff-raff in Ireland for the sake of earning a few shillings a day. Still, it was a shame. A nice young fellow, though rather more nervous than one realized at first sight.
Matthews, it seemed, was much better. Still a bit groggy, of course. That bump on the head had turned out to be rather a bad one. But Mortimer had another, much more sensational piece of news. Had the Major heard about Captain Bolton? He had left Kilnalough after a frightful row with his superiors. Dismissed for insubordination. In short, he had told them to go to hell! And he’d immediately gone off to Dublin with an Irish girl. Who would have thought it of Bolton... having a love-affair on the quiet?
“The girl was at the ball at the Majestic. You may remember her?” The Major remembered her.
“You wouldn’t have thought it of old Bolton, would you? I mean, he always seemed such a man’s man. They say that if she so much as looks at another man he knocks her cold on the spot!”
“How d’you know about all this?”
“One of our chaps was up in Dublin the other day and saw them together in Jammet’s. There was a scene with some fellow who was staring at her. Personally, I thought she looked a bitch, didn’t you?”
At the end of April the last of the great spring storms blew in from the north-east and once more all the windows in the Majestic were rattling in torment, while the chimneys groaned and whined like unmilked cows, half threatening and half pleading, and draughts sighed gently under doors like lovelorn girls. At the same time curious cracking sounds were heard, difficult to identify; perhaps the sort of sound one might associate with the breaking of bones. Difficult, also, to say where they originated; they seemed to come dully through the walls or the ceiling, even up through the floor once or twice—or so it appeared; with the howling of the wind and the noise of the breakers outside it was impossible to be sure.
The Major was worried, of course, and sometimes went to investigate. Something had snapped, he could feel it, the special vibrations of something breaking somewhere; one can always tell when something breaks. But when he pulled himself out of his armchair and, puffing his pipe thoughtfully (so as not to alarm the ladies), sauntered into the next room or the one above, expecting to see diagonal cracks appearing in the walls...well, there was never anything to be seen. All was silent. He must have imagined it. But one knows perfectly well (thought the Major) whether one is imagining something or not, and he knew this was real. Besides, other people heard it too. Crack! And one or two of the ladies would look up vaguely, not wanting to make a fuss and not really trusting their worn-out old ears. Then, since nothing had actually happened, they would drop their eyes to the fingers which nowadays seemed all joints, one joint on top of another, strung like fat beads, all this time patiently knitting in their laps (but no longer able to sew)...and then a few minutes later: Crack! It would happen again. And this time even the Afghan hound on the hearth-rug would prick up his ears and go sniffing round the walls or doors before he was diverted by noticing someone asleep in a chair who needed to be licked awake, or one of the ladies trying to smuggle a peppermint from handbag to mouth without being nuzzled by his long greedy snout.
“Did you by any chance hear a cracking sound just then?”
But Edward, concerned about the possibility of a tidal wave swamping his piglets, shook his head.
“Listen for a moment.”
But there would only be the sound of wind and rain, the groaning and the sighing, and Edward would become engrossed in his problems once more so that when it did come, he still did not hear it.
Remembering the bulges, real and imaginary, which he had discovered with Sarah, the Major moved aside the sofa in the lounge. The root throwing up the parquet blocks had swollen from a forearm into a thigh—thick, white, hairy and muscular. The Major thought it best to roll the sofa back promptly over this obscenity.
That night he lay awake listening to the wind and the waves, thinking that he might have been alone in a great ocean liner, drifting in the eye of a storm. Instead of decreasing with daybreak, the storm continued to mount throughout the following morning. By the afternoon Edward had become seriously concerned about the welfare of the piglets. They had not been fed since noon the day before. All this time they had cowered without physical or moral comfort in the roaring black squash court. Something must be done. But in this weather one could scarcely put one’s nose outside, let alone walk a quarter of a mile, so he waited for a lull standing by one window or another with an unread newspaper trailing from his fingers.
“Almighty God! Did you see that?”
The Major had glimpsed a volley of slates climbing out into the driving sky from one of the roofs to windward, perhaps from one of the out-houses. He waited to hear them smash on the rain-scoured terrace beyond, but he heard nothing.
At four o’clock it grew dark. They decided to wait no longer. Wrapped in oilskins they battled across the drive and round the Prince Consort wing in order to get to windward of flying slates, Edward carrying half a sack of cakes and currant buns. Head lowered, one hand crammed on to his hat and eyes half shut against the lashing rain, the Major struggled in Edward’s footsteps. The air was full of dead leaves, twigs and branches stripped from the creaking limes and maples beside the potato field. Cold rain seeped into his collar. So difficult was it to see where one was going that when Edward stopped a few paces ahead to gaze back at the hotel the Major blundered into
him.
Edward’s eyes were lifted to the black, rainswept hulk of the Majestic, his thick locks of grey hair writhing and flickering like snakes in the screaming wind. In that dim light his head appeared more massively sculpted than ever; beneath the heavy frontal bone his eye-sockets were pools of shadow and his cheekbones, glistening with rain, might have been carved by crude strokes of a chisel. With one hand he grasped the sodden sack of confectionery, with the other he pointed up at the building, shouting wordlessly at the Major. But the Major did not need to be told that there was something wrong; he could see for himself the gaping black hole in the roof of the servants’ wing, he could see the slates blowing away into the swirling rain, free as petals...a sudden strong gust and a flurry of them would lift to soar away end over end into the darkness. And the black hole grew steadily larger like a woollen sleeve unravelling. Presently white wooden beams became visible.
Edward tugged at his arm and plunged on into the rain. They reached the lee of the high wall that ran down to the sea from one terrace to the next. There was a narrow path here which the Major had never noticed before, and broken steps thick with weeds which clung wetly to his ankles. It seemed strangely quiet in the shelter of the wall and the going was easier. But as they made their way down towards the lowest terrace the rain increased to a deluge. The Major licked his lips and tasted salt from the clouds of spray whipped up by the wind to cascade on to the boiling mud around them. By the time they had turned and headed with the wind behind them at a reluctant gallop towards the invisible squash court, the water had seeped inside the Major’s oilskin and he had lost his hat which had blown off his head and sailed ahead into the darkness.
“That’s strange. They usually come to meet me. They must be frightened.”
With the outer door dragged shut it seemed, by comparison with the roaring wilderness outside, very still and quiet in the squash court, despite the drumming of the rain on the glass roof and the muffled thunder of the breakers, now only a few feet from where they were standing. Edward had taken a lantern from its nail on the wall and while he was lighting it the Major peered into the darkness in search of the piglets, listening for the rustle of straw. The ammonia smell was even more intolerable than on the Major’s previous visit; with every breath it seized his nose and throat. He longed to be back outside in the gale of fresh air. Edward did not seem to notice it, however. He was emptying the contents of his sack into a filthy wooden trough and cooing gently to attract the attention of the piglets. The iced cakes, buns and barm-bracks had amalgamated inside the sodden sack into a glutinous mass and dropped into the trough with a carnal, sucking sound...But even this failed to produce the piglets. The interior silence remained unbroken.
The Empire Trilogy Page 40