The Empire Trilogy (42 page)

The weather continued bitterly cold for the next few days. Getting out of bed in the morning, taking a bath with an icy draught sighing underneath the bathroom door, became an agony. The Major's teeth chattered and he thought with physical distress of sunshine and Italy. People spoke little during this cold weather; the ladies curled themselves up in tight little bundles and compressed their lips to preserve every particle of warmth in their bodies. Twelfth Night came and went, but nobody thought of taking down the decorations. One had to keep one's arms tightly hugging one's sides these days; lift them for a moment and the chilly sword of pneumonia would run you through.

Not only for the ladies was this a bad time. Padraig too was in despair. His father was now talking of having him apprenticed as a clerk in a solicitor's office in Dublin, a prospect which no person of sensitivity could tolerate. Faith told the Major that Padraig was going about telling the ladies that he would prefer to dress himself in a scarlet cloak and leap from the battlements of the Majestic. The Major told her to tell him on no account to go near the battlements, they weren't safe. The ornamental façade might give way at any moment.

Wearing mittens and a Balaclava helmet, the Major sat in the residents' lounge on a bright February morning reading of the day's disasters in the
Irish Times
. Looking up, he noticed that Edward had come into the room. He gave a violent start. With Edward was Sarah! Her face was pale and tense; she looked unhappy. Edward stared sightlessly past her, but his lips were moving rapidly as he spoke to her in an undertone. Only for an instant, as he came to the end of what he was saying, did he allow his eyes to focus on her face before retiring to scan the empty reaches of the room once more. Sarah was protesting bitterly about something. The Major dropped his eyes and pretended to be engrossed in the newspaper. Sarah stood talking with Edward near the fire for a few moments. The Major was aware that her glance rested on him once or twice, as if waiting for the moment when he would look up and their glances would meet. However, he continued to scrutinize the
Irish Times,
frowning with concentration. Presently he was aware that she and Edward were moving away again through the chairs and tables towards the door. When he at last permitted himself to look up they were no longer there. “What a fool I am! It would have been much better if I'd gone up to her and made some cheerful remark and then wandered away again, so that she'd have realized how little she means to me since she told Edward about the letters I wrote her.”

Edward's experiments were languishing once again. His toad, spread out invitingly on the marble slab, had been devoured during the night by the omnipresent cats—they had evidently been undeterred by the fact that the toad had been marinated in formalin, which had turned it a blue-black colour, more like damson jam than strawberry. Edward still sat among his books and implements, lost in thought, his face extinct. But now sometimes his seriousness gave way abruptly to disconcerting bouts of hilarity; he became once more a player of mild practical jokes. To the Major, who had no sense of humour, practical jokes were disagreeable in the normal course of affairs; in cold weather they became intolerable—one simply had no energy left to cope with them. But nevertheless he was obliged to keep a constant watch on Edward, jokes or no jokes; he was obliged to haunt him, in fact, flitting along chilly corridors, taking walks in the grounds whenever Edward went to commune with his piglets, or repeatedly passing the ballroom windows to ascertain that he was still at his desk. The reason, of course, was that sooner or later Sarah would come again to visit Edward. Honour required the Major to seize the opportunity of making some casual remark to her which would indicate his indifference.

The three of them met head-on in one of the high-hedged privet alleys of the Chinese Garden.

“Hello, Brendan,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, hello...you're back, are you?” replied the Major casually, turning pale. Even though he had been prepared for this inevitable meeting, it had still come as a dreadful shock. She looked very pretty in her winter coat of heavy grey wool trimmed with dark musquash, fingers buried in a fur muff, ears hidden by a fur cape. Her eyes remained steadily on the Major's, disconcerting him. In order to avoid this gaze he turned about and strolled in the direction they were going.

Edward himself seemed disconcerted for a moment; he had been talking with animation but had stopped suddenly on seeing the Major. Edward continued to look distressed until his eye fell on a bird-bath in the shape of a giant sea-shell proffered by a cement nymph. Her body was naked, clothed only in patches of yellow green lichen on her stomach and beneath her arms; one foot had been broken off, a rusty wire projected from the stump of her ankle. The Major studied her with feigned interest.

A great deal of snow had collected in the sea-shell and Edward was busy patting it together to make a snowball which he drolly pretended to throw at Sarah.

“Oh, for God's sake!” she muttered testily.

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 what 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.