The Empire Trilogy (25 page)

“I think I'm going to faint,” Faith said grimly and sat down heavily on the bed, making its springs creak.

“Ugh! That's the corpse's death-bed you're sitting on, Faithy.”

“You'll speak of Angela with respect,” snapped Edward, “or you'll both get a hiding and be sent to your rooms.”

“Why
me
? It was Catty that said it,” Faith said grumpily. “And what's more I
am
feeling sick and will probably start spewing any moment.”

“Faith, don't be dis
gus
ting,” Charity said, grinning in spite of herself. “You've started me feeling peculiar too.”

“Shut up, both of you, and pick one of these dresses before I lose my patience. They're as good as new and some of them were never worn.”

“Which ones?” asked Faith dubiously, poking at the heap of clothing with her tennis racket.

The Major had lit his pipe and was watching the twins as they rummaged in the pile of clothing, holding dresses up to see what they looked like. It was clear (one of the countless things the Major had never known about her) that Angela had dressed extravagantly. Almost all her dresses had tucks in descending horizontal tiers; there was a heavy afternoon dress of velvet embossed with chrysanthemums which reached to the ground and trailed in a swallow-tail behind; there were heavy woollen dresses with overdresses, all with a great deal of frogging and embroidery; there was a blue satin evening dress with a band of black velvet that trailed as a sash behind; there was a dress of black taffeta or chiné silk with a vast amount of braid; and there was a moleskin cape and muff.

“It's all so horribly old-lady!”

“Come on, we haven't got all day,” Edward told them. “Make up your minds. If you don't pick one of these dresses each within thirty seconds I'll pick them for you.”

Under this threat the twins reluctantly made their selections: Charity a simple blue linen morning dress with a white organdie collar, Faith a silk jersey afternoon dress with a belt of gold cord and tassels to the ankles.

“I feel a bit sick, Daddy...”

But Edward's patience was now clearly at an end and the twins retired sullenly to change.

Slumped in an armchair, the Major was wondering whether he might ask Edward for the photograph of himself which stood on the dressing-table (a picture taken in Brighton in 1916 showing a relatively carefree youth who bore little resemblance to the stoically grim head which these days accompanied him to the mirror). He wanted this picture merely to remove it from the room, from the neighbouring hairbrushes and other relics, to destroy it...he did not know why he wanted to do this. In any case, he was afraid that Edward might look askance at such a request.

Edward was kneeling among the bundles of clothing and rummaging through them abstractedly.

“Poor Angie! There's lots more somewhere: petticoats and knickers and corsets and so forth...she liked clothes, used to buy things nobody'd ever wear out here in the country.”

He held up a dress of black velvet that billowed emptily in his hands, empty of Angela.

“Wore this the day she was presented at the Viceregal Lodge. For a joke we went out to Phoenix Park on the tram instead of hiring a carriage, both of us dressed up like dog's dinners. How people stared at us! Bit of fun we had, you know, pretending to be Socialists. Angie said she was ashamed to be seen arriving on the tram, but she laughed about it afterwards like a good sport.” He stood up and went to stare at himself moodily in the mirror, picking up one of the silver brushes (tarnished blue-grey by months of neglect) and rubbing his thumb over the bristles.

“They're only kids and it doesn't really matter what they wear so long as it keeps them warm,” he added defensively. “Got to get hold of a bit of spare cash one way or another if I'm to give that blighter Ripon a helping hand.”

“Is that the reason?”

“Well, you said yourself that with a wife to support he'd be needing some cash to set himself up.”

The Major could remember saying no such thing but could see no point in denying it.

“But don't you think his wife will have something?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, Ripon's not the sort to accept charity, whatever his faults. In some ways, you know, he's a chip off the old block. I suppose I should sell off these brushes and things as well. They're not much good to poor Angie now. These trinkets might fetch something. Hate to do it, though.”

They lapsed into a lugubrious silence. Presently, with a sigh, Edward began: “You know, the one time in my life when I was really happy...” But at this moment the twins entered.

“My! Don't they look smart?” cried Edward in genuine admiration. “Well, what d'you think of that, Brendan? Aren't they lovely?”

The Major had to agree with him. The twins looked more lovely than ever standing there, identical, outraged, each holding up her skirts in small clenched fists. They uttered a simultaneous gasp.

“But we look like
freaks,
Daddy!”

“We can't wear things like this. People will laugh themselves sick at us.”

“Nonsense, you look absolutely charming, you can take it from me. Young ladies knew how to dress themselves before the war.”

“Daddy, you surely don't want us to look like freaks,” pleaded Faith, close to tears.

“That's going too far! I refuse, I simply refuse!”

“Faith, I warned you! Charity! You'll go to your rooms this instant,” shouted Edward, losing his temper. His anger impressed the twins sufficiently to quell them. They glared at him tearfully for a moment and then stamped out.

The soft-hearted Major hurried out after them and handed each a bar of chocolate (he had recently taken to carrying chocolate in his pockets to give to the ragged, famished children he encountered on his walks). They looked at the chocolate, sniffed, but finally accepted it.

The following day the Major came upon the twins in a deserted sitting-room sifting through a mountain of hats, muffs, boas and shoes. The hats were hopelessly lush and exotic, they told him peevishly. Who could possibly wear such things?

“Look at this!” Faith showed him a broad-brimmed felt hat swathed in yards of orange satin with a bird clinging to the back.

“Or this, it looks like a whole farmyard,” she said, throwing him another hat of black leghorn trimmed with a jungle of osprey feathers and real oats. They appeared to be mollified, however, by the boas; indeed, the Major found himself having to adjudicate a squabble that developed over a magnificent boa of magenta cock feathers. It went to Charity on the understanding that Faith should have first claim over a matching hat, tippet and muff of peacock feathers (the muff even had a beak and brown glass eyes on the alert), together with first choice of the silk parasols. Finally, the twins made another discovery: Angela's shoes fitted them to perfection! Unfortunately, however, old Mrs Rappaport happened to hear about the shoes and caused a dreadful scene. They must wear their button boots up to their calves for the sake of their ankles! Otherwise they would look like milkmaids when they grew up. The old lady achieved the support of Edward in this matter (although, to tell the truth, he was losing interest in the twins' clothing) and shoes were forbidden. The twins became spiteful and for days refused to go near their grandmother. But presently all was forgotten and nobody (except the Major) seemed to notice that they had gone back to wearing Angela's shoes. Certainly no one thought of mentioning the fact to old Mrs Rappaport.

This incident marked the beginning and also, really, the end of Edward's economy drive. The simple truth was that the old ladies were right: it was as if an economy drive had already been in operation. There was nothing much left to economize
on
. True, one could sack a few servants, but they were paid so little anyway it hardly seemed worth while. Besides, the place was already in a scarcely habitable state. If, into the bargain, the servants were sacked what would it be like? Well, probably, not much different, as a matter of fact, because the problem of keeping the place clean had long since gone beyond the point where Murphy and the blushing young girls “up from the country” could make a significant impact on it, even if they had wanted to (which they did not, particularly).

Murphy had been behaving oddly of late. At Edward's meeting he had shown signs of abject terror lest his meagre income be stifled by the proposed economies. But now there came to the Major's ears one or two extraordinary rumours about the aged manservant's truculent behaviour; rumours, of course, which anyone who had set eyes on the chap could scarcely credit.

According to a story circulated by Miss Staveley, one of the oldest and deafest but not least talkative ladies in the hotel, Murphy had been asked to assist her up the stairs to her room on the first floor where she had the feeling she might find her pince-nez. The impudent old rascal was reported to have told her bluntly that she would do better to stay where she was...before padding away down some lonely corridor with a wheezing chuckle. Unable to believe her ears (she was distinctly hard of hearing, it was true) she had waited for him to come back. But there had been no sign of him. He had disappeared into the dim recesses of the interior and it was hopeless to look for him (nobody, not even the twins, not even Edward himself, knew the geography of that immense rambling building better than Murphy who had spent his life in it). She had not set eyes on him again for two days, by which time she had found her pince-nez in her sewing basket and lost them again (this time the Major was conscripted to help in the search and found them on the nose of the statue of Venus in the foyer). This rumour reached Edward who rebuked Murphy. But Murphy denied all knowledge of the affair and clearly did not know what pince-nez were; he seemed to have a vague idea that they were a reprehensible form of underwear worn by foreign ladies. One just had to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt and, besides, Miss Staveley... Edward tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes.

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.