The Empire Trilogy (18 page)

“In a side building, a sort of garage, I saw a wall covered with blood and brains. In the middle was cut a channel or drain, full of congealed blood, and just outside in the garden, one hundred and twenty-seven nude, mutilated corpses, including those of some women, who had been flung into a hole...

“Ten Bolshevists occupied rooms next mine. There was a beautiful drawing-room filled with valuable furniture. There, night after night, they carried on drunken orgies of an unspeakable character with women whom they brought from the town, and I lay on my bed with the door barricaded until from sheer exhaustion I went to sleep...

“The terrorism of the Reds is really much worse than anything I have read of, and to those in this country who believe the story is exaggerated I would only say go out and see for yourselves.”

* * *

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRIUMPH
Marshal Foch's Analysis

In conversation with a representative of the
Echo de Paris
Marshal Foch said that he had won the war by avoiding unnecessary emotions and conserving all his strength so as to devote himself whole-heartedly to his task. “War requires an ingenious mind, always alert, and one day the reward of victory comes. Don't talk to me about glory, beauty, enthusiasm. They are verbal manifestations. Nothing exists except facts and facts alone are of any use. A useful fact, and one that satisfied me, was the signing of the armistice.”

In conclusion Marshal Foch said: “Without trying to drag in miracles just because clear vision is vouchsafed to a man, because afterwards it turns out that this clear vision has determined movements fraught with enormous consequences in a formidable war, I still hold that this clear vision comes from a Providential force, in the hands of which one is an instrument, and that the victorious decision emanates from above, by the higher and Divine will.”

* * *

Nineteen-twenty. One, two, three weeks of January—grey, cold weather, fog in the streets, dirty snow underfoot—elapsed before the Major finally found another letter from Sarah propped against the toast-rack on the breakfast table.

“Dear Major,” she wrote, “it was wrong of you to read that letter when I told you not to. I was ill when I wrote it and had a fever, as I'm sure I said. You needn't expect me to apologize, however, since I took the trouble of warning you not to read it. It's your own fault if you came across something that didn't please you. About Mr Mulcahy, I regret very much making fun of him as he's a decent enough sort of person and I exaggerated a great deal. As for being rescued from the Irish swine, as you remark, I can assure you that there's really no need for that as they and I agree very well (perhaps because I'm one of the same swine myself). Also, as regards London, I'm perfectly content where I am. Nevertheless, I must thank you for your offer, because, though unsuitable, I'm sure it was kindly meant.”

“Ah,” thought the Major, chastened, “she's angry with me and no doubt thinks that I'm contemptuous of Kilnalough. Perhaps my letter was tactless.” And he hurriedly wrote to apologize, pleading with her to forgive his tactlessness. Would she not satisfy his curiosity anyway? He was devoured with curiosity to know how the affair between Máire and Ripon had come out? And what was this thing that the twins had done to Fr O'Meara? And how was Edward bearing up under the strain?

All
she
knew (Sarah wrote back) was that Ripon and Máire were living in Rathmines with “a little one” on the way. Had he run away in the middle of the night with his fiancée? Had he been thrown out of his father's house without a penny? Nobody knew for sure, but several stories were circulating in Kilnalough. According to the one she believed (or liked to believe, anyway) Ripon had half run away and half been ejected. What had happened (so this story went) was that Edward had given him a sum of money, driven him to the railway station and put him on the train for Dublin with strict orders to stay there and get up to no mischief until he, Edward, had settled the affair in Kilnalough. This done, he had arranged to meet Mr Noonan at the Majestic to talk things over. Meanwhile Ripon had only allowed the train to carry him to the next station up the line. There, after a long argument, he had finally succeeded in extracting a refund from the station-master on the rest of his ticket to Dublin. Then he had returned with all speed to Kilnalough, climbed the Noonan's garden wall causing poor Máire to faint (she thought he was a tinker), revived her, informed her she was liberated (she had been “confined to barracks” by her military-minded father), helped her to pack a suitcase, bribed a man he saw standing at the gate whom he supposed was one of Noonan's servants (but who was merely a bystander) and finally fled with her to the station while her father was still at the Majestic. By all accounts (or rather, by this particular account) the Kilnalough station-master came close to having a heart attack when young Ripon, whom he had only just seen go off on the last train to Dublin, appeared in time for the next one and went off on that one too, accompanied by a heavily veiled lady whose ample proportions and pink ankles suggested that it might not be impossible that this was “a certain person,” he'd say no more; as he was handing this veiled lady up into the carriage he had caught “a whiff of something not unlike chloroform...but, mind you, I'm not saying it was nor it wasn't though, begod, it was as like as the divil!” Well, that was a story the Major could believe if he liked, the English (or “the enemy,” as she preferred to think of them) being so literal, the Major in particular being as literal as a lump of dough, she had no doubt that he'd believe it all.

As for the attack of the twins on Fr O'Meara, here was another story that the Major could try out on his digestion. The brave and worthy Fr O'Meara had taken it into his head one day to pay a visit on Ripon whom he had been grooming spiritually (the Major being a “beastly Prod” would fail to see the need for this, she was sure) for the marriage he contemplated with the miller's daughter. He had cycled up the drive past two identical girls of such radiant countenance that he had at first mistaken them for “angels from heaven” (he was later said to have explained, while still in a state of shock). However, when one of them made a disagreeable remark he quickly perceived his mistake and pedalled onwards out of earshot disturbed, in particular that a young girl should know such words, in general at God's habit, frequently observable here below, of mixing the fair with the foul, the good with the evil, and so on.

Before reaching the front door he had come upon Ripon in the orangerie, apparently in the act of upbraiding a flustered girl in maid's uniform who had no doubt neglected some household chore (though she, Sarah, had her own opinion of what the rogue was doing). Ripon had appeared startled and suggested a “stroll.” Fr O'Meara, who envisaged a reflective promenade discussing extra-terrestrial matters, agreed immediately and they set off, Ripon heading at a great pace towards the bushes and looking round somewhat furtively the while. Fr O'Meara had trouble keeping up with him, but after the first hundred yards or so the pace slackened and Ripon asked him a few distrait questions about the catechism. Then somewhat abruptly he said he'd have to be going and marched off without even conducting his visitor back to his bicycle. The kindly priest, acknowledging to himself that he was more at home with ecclesiastical than with social etiquette, promptly forgave the lad. On second thoughts he also forgave the young girl who had addressed the obscenity to him. His mind at rest, he clambered back on to his machine and cycled down the drive.

It seemed, though versions of this particular version of the story differed, that disaster struck him at some point before he reached the gate. As he pedalled on his way, it seemed, he was lassoed from the overhanging branches of an oak tree. According to the most dramatic version of the version he was plucked out of the saddle and hung there swinging gently to and fro while his bicycle sailed on into some rhododen-dron bushes. More probably, however, the noose missed him (luckily, since it might have broken his neck) but caught on the pillion, shrunk rapidly, tightened, halted the bicycle suddenly and tipped Fr O'Meara over the handlebars. Stunned though he was by his fall he was willing to swear that as he unsteadily tried to pick himself up two smiling angelic faces were looking down on him from above. It was a matter for the police, no doubt about it. Charges of assault were prepared for the R.M., together with counter-charges of trespass (Ripon having assured his father that the priest was nothing to do with him) and theft (some apples had been stripped from trees in the orchard). Other charges were being considered and had there been a magistrate to hear them this sudden sprouting of litigation might have grown so dense and confusing as to become, inside a few days, entirely beyond resolution. But there wasn't. This representative of the foreign oppressor had received a number of menacing letters from the I.R.A. and had wisely retired. A new R.M. was expected but in the meantime criminals of all hues, includ-ing the twins, were running the streets at liberty. In fact Fr O'Meara had learned with satisfaction that while he was still removing the gravel from his grazed palms these two violent girls had been stripped and caned by their father as if they'd been boys; the thought of this retribution did something to mollify him. As for Sarah, although she had to admit that the “odious brats” had some spirit, she sympathized entirely with the unfortunate priest. Almost everything with those two girls, she said, had a habit of beginning amusingly and ending painfully.

Now, had that satisfied the Major's curiosity? If he wanted to hear the other versions he would have to come to Kilnalough, because she was getting writer's cramp...Yes, and as for his question about Edward, she never saw him these days...Since Angela was dead she no longer had any reason to go to the Majestic. Indeed, she was bored, frightfully bored, and looking forward to being amused by the Major... “Amuse me, dear Major, amuse me!” Life was intolerable in Kilnalough.

But wait! She had an idea. The Major must reply and tell her precisely, yes or no, whether he believed the stories about Ripon and the twins. He must do so immediately. It was essential, so that she'd know what sort of man the Major was... though, of course, she really knew that already. Still, he must write and tell her anyway. And by the way, perhaps she would visit him in London after all. There was a chance she would go to a clinic in France for a while. Her walking had improved greatly and she wasn't nearly such a “miserable cripple” as she had been when the Major knew her. She still, in spite of his dull letters, thought of him with affection and remained truly his.

The Major didn't know what to do about this letter. If he said he
did
believe the stories about Ripon and the twins she would accuse him of being “as literal as a lump of dough.” If he said he didn't, she would almost certainly accuse him of having no sense of fun, no imagination. After two or three days' deliberation he wrote back to say that he believed parts of them (and enjoyed the other parts). A postcard was all he got in reply. It accused him of having made a cautious and typically British compromise. And it ended with the words: “I despise compromises!”

All the time this correspondence was taking place the Major's aunt continued to linger in a twilight stage between living and dying which he found most unsatisfactory. At the time of her first haemorrhage a night-nurse had been taken on, a sombre lady of middle age who had a habit of enjoining his aunt to “put a brave face on it, my dear,” commenting that “Madam's pain won't last for ever,” or informing her that her “only hope is in the Lord,” while discreetly averting her face to eat steadily throughout the night. Though most of this woman's remarks had a religious cast and few of them were sequential she occasionally spoke of other deaths she had witnessed, invariably those of ladies in comfortable circumstances. One of them, a Mrs Baxter, had “died in the arms of Jesus.” Another had provided her with food that was unsuitable. Yet another had beautiful daughters who “went to dance at balls during their mother's agony.” One story she often repeated concerned the lovely and youthful Mrs Perry, far gone with tuberculosis, whose husband, a ravening brute, had claimed his marital rights until the very end, causing her to leave the sick-room for hours at a time, so that very often it would be nearly dawn before she was allowed back to comfort his victim—who had been uncomplaining, however. Describing this, she would aim black looks at the Major as if he were responsible.

Somehow this story made a very painful impression on the Major. He imagined the lovely Mrs Perry and her husband quite differently. He was sure that they had been passionately in love. What other reason could the husband have had for making love to a woman with tuberculosis? The physical act of love remained the one crumbling bridge between them. He pictured the slow nights of despair. He wondered whether the husband had also hoped to fall ill with tuberculosis. One night he had an agonizing dream about Mrs Perry and the next morning he felt so disturbed that he sought out the night-nurse and dismissed her with a month's pay. He thought: “Really, I'm still a young man...there's time enough to become morbid when I'm old.”

At about this time he read about the siege of the R.I.C. barracks at Ballytrain—half a dozen constables overrun by a massive horde of Shinners—over a hundred of them, like the dervishes at Khartoum. Edward had called them individual criminals out for what they could get. Never, thought the Major with a smile, never had so many individual criminals been seen together in one place!

The Major had invited Sarah to stay at his aunt's house as she passed through London on her way to France. Would this not be considered improper? she wanted to know. What would his aunt think? The Major replied that his aunt would certainly find nothing amiss in Sarah staying with them. Indeed, she would act as chaperone (his only worry was that the old lady, having survived so long, should die prema-turely now that her services were needed). So presently Sarah arrived.