The Empire Trilogy (9 page)

Sarah had changed her mind and no longer wanted to go to Finnegan's Drapery. She wanted to be taken home, off this hateful street; it wasn't far, the Major needn't worry, she wouldn't detain him long even though he obviously thought her company intolerable and was dying to get away...

“But I don't think anything of the kind,” protested the Major, amazed. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

Ah, it was as plain as anything from the way he kept looking round him all the time, particularly when a pretty girl (one with two sound legs) passed by, dragging her skirts so prettily through the cowpats. The Major, with his “ram-rod posture,” obviously had far better things he could be doing and, besides, he must be simply dying to get back to his dear Angela by now and, in any case, he had been in a great old hurry off somewhere when they had first bumped into each other...

“That's true. I was going to make some inquiries at the railway station. I'd forgotten completely.”

“What? Are you leaving Kilnalough so soon? Have you and Angela had a quarrel?”

“Not only have we not had a quarrel; we haven't even spoken to each other—at least, privately. There was never really an understanding between us, you know—at least, I don't think there was; nothing serious—except that we wrote to each other regularly, of course.”

“I
didn't
know that. In fact, I thought...but never mind what I thought. Why did you come here, then?”

“Oh, to get it straightened out, I suppose. I hardly know why myself. In any case I never seem able to find Angela alone. You don't think she might be deliberately avoiding me, do you?”

But Sarah made no reply. They had now turned into a street of small but well-kept buildings of red brick, in one of which was housed the bank, behind and above which Sarah lived with her parents. Would the Major care to come in and have some tea?

They went in by a side gate and followed a path between trellises of climbing roses to where a shallow wooden ramp made for Sarah's wheelchair led up to the back door. Of course, she explained, the house was not nearly as grand as the sort of place he was no doubt used to, but it would do him no harm to be in a “miserable hovel” for a change. Indeed it would do him good. She pointed out the door of a room and said she would join him there in a minute, he was to make himself at home as best he could. The Major went into the room and sat down on a blue velvet sofa to wait. An oil-painting of a cow and some trees hung over the mantelpiece. There were a few books in the bookcase, for the most part fishing and travel reminiscences. There was the piano, too, no different from other pianos except for the iron clamps which held its broken legs together. In this neat, clean room, so utterly without character, it was only these broken legs which provided a touch of comfort.

The
Irish Times
lay neatly folded on a table. He picked it up and scanned it idly. Officers' families in abject poverty. Good luck to the R34. A new era in transatlantic travel was about to begin. The Bolshevists were advancing—British seaplanes had been in action on the Finnish border. At Wimbledon Lieutenant-Colonel A.R.F. Kingscote, M.C., R.G.A., had gratifyingly beaten a young American. Dr King's Liver Pills (Dandelion and Quinine), guaranteed without mercury. Absolutely cure the symptoms of the TORPID LIVER...combat Depressed Spirits, etc. The Major folded the paper carefully and replaced it with a sigh. He was ill at ease, wondering whether it had been disloyal of him to discuss Angela with Sarah.

“I hope you won't mention our conversation to Angela,” he said when Sarah at last appeared. “As you know, I haven't yet had a chance to talk to her properly.”

“Of course not,” Sarah said with indifference. “It's none of my business. Besides, I never see her.”

“But I thought you were great friends.”

“We used to be friends, but not any longer. I'm surprised you're so unobservant. Didn't you notice how coldly they treated me at the Majestic? Edward hardly speaks to me any longer. The only reason he invites me to his absurd tennis parties is because Angela is sorry for me. Yes, that's right, sorry for me! It's as clear as day. I expect you're sorry for me too if the truth be known, but I don't care. I shouldn't go to the Majestic, it would be much better not to, but I get so bored sitting here all day like a miserable cripple...”

“But Angela was so pleased to see you; and you're so pretty and amusing. Really, I'm sure you must be imagining all this,” exclaimed the Major in surprise. “What possible reason could they have for not liking you?”

“They think I've been encouraging Máire (you remember that fat, ugly girl who was pushing my chair), they think I've been helping her to ‘trap' their darling Ripon. They're quite wrong, of course. The last thing I'd do for a friend of mine (and she is a friend of sorts, that part is true) is to help her to ‘trap' someone as odious as Ripon.”

“But what do they have against her, anyway? I mean, if she's so rich and so on. The Spencers live in that huge hotel, but they don't appear to be all that well off. Ripon could surely do a lot worse.”

Sarah shook her head sadly. “I can't believe that you're such an innocent, Major. D'you really mean to tell me that you don't see why the Spencers wouldn't want Ripon married to that rich, ugly creature? Well, I shall tell you, though I refuse to believe that you don't know. The reason is that Máire is a Catholic. Now do you understand?”

But before the Major had a chance to reply there was a polite knock on the door and a small dapper man dressed in a grey flannel suit of dubious cut made his appearance. He advanced holding out his hand nervously. He was, he said, Sarah's father (Sarah made no comment but looked annoyed) and he hadn't been able to resist taking a moment off to say hello to the Major, about whom he'd already heard a great deal, both from his old friend Mr Spencer and, of course, from Sarah herself (here he smiled fondly but Sarah looked more exasperated than ever)...

“I hope what you heard was complimentary.”

Oh, most complimentary, of course, and it was really very kind of the Major to wheel Sarah home...getting about was something of a difficulty for her, as he could imagine, but she did very well, all things considered, she had so many kind friends who helped to lighten her load. He hoped too that the weather would be less changeable than it had been recently, particularly while the Major was visiting, it made such a difference, especially if the Major was, as he expected, a sporting man...And this was Mrs Devlin...

A heavy-set lady had entered wheeling a tea-trolley on which (the Major noticed with relief) there were only two cups, saucers, plates and cake-knives (and a splendid-looking cherry cake). Mrs Devlin nodded at the Major without speaking, hesitated for a moment and then withdrew. Mr Devlin patted his hair which was oiled flat and neat against his skull, smiled, and said that he would have to be getting his nose back to the grindstone but that it had been a pleasure and that he hoped the Major would often come again to visit them. He backed out of the room smiling and the door closed softly.

Sarah's mood had changed. To the Major's attempts at conversation she answered only in peevish monosyllables, all the time glancing round the room as if she were seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she interrupted a laborious compliment that the Major was paying to the cherry cake and said: “What an appalling room this is. You'd think some awful English person lived here.” And with that she wheeled herself quickly to the door, opened it deftly and disappeared, almost before the Major had time to realize what was happening. He sat there, a half-eaten piece of cake in his fingers, wondering what she had meant by “some awful English person” and whether she intended to come back. Presently he heard the sound of a muffled argument from some other room, a woman's voice raised in protest. But then a door slammed and a moment later Sarah reappeared, her face so dark that the Major asked her what was the matter.

“Nothing at all.”

As she wheeled her chair forward the Major saw that in her lap lay a number of religious ornaments. Two plaster saints, painted in bright colours, she arranged on the piano within a few inches of his head. A wooden crucifix was propped on the mantelpiece while a crudely coloured and alarming picture of the Sacred Heart was placed on the bookcase backed by a pile of books removed from the shelf. That left another wooden crucifix which she put on the tea-table itself. The Major watched all this in amazement but said nothing, allowing himself to be given more tea and more cherry cake (which really was delicious). He munched it cautiously under the eye of the saints.

“I lease them the land at a price that's so cheap they laugh at me behind my back. I mend their roofs for them and give them seed corn and potatoes in return for a miserable percentage of their crop. I send them the vet when their cows get sick. I help them make ends meet when they spend all their money in the pub. Am I entitled to some loyalty, Major? Answer me that.”

The Major had come upon Edward with a hoe in his hand, standing motionless beside a rose-bed sunk in thought. With the hoe he was now poking at the horizon to the south where a cluster of grey farm buildings stood on a ridge in the distance. Shading his eyes against the sun which for the first time that day had just appeared from beneath smooth carpets of grey cloud, the Major agreed that someone who did such things was indubitably entitled to loyalty.

“You know what I did to ‘aggravate my tenants,' as old Ryan says? I asked them to sign a piece of paper saying they were loyal not to me, mind you, not to me but to the King... and that they wouldn't get mixed up in any of these Sinn Fein goings-on. Is that so terrible? Is it aggravating them to ask them to abide by the law? Well, I'll be damned if the blighters don't refuse point-blank to sign. It's Donnelly that's put them up to it, an old fellow with no teeth...‘What's the meaning of this, Donnelly?' I ask him. ‘Ah sure,' says he, ‘we'd be in danger.' ‘In danger from who?' He can't tell me the answer to that one. ‘You'd never know,' he says. ‘Well, Donnelly, I can tell you,' I said to him, ‘if you don't sign it quick sharp you'll be in danger from me!'” Massive and imposing, Edward punctuated his explanation with sharp jabs of the hoe.

There was silence for a moment. The Major was surprised to see that Edward, who had been scowling angrily, now had a rueful smile on his face. He threw down his hoe with a sigh and fell into step beside the Major, who had decided to take a stroll round the southern corner of the hotel. “The joke is that I don't really give a damn about all that. I only lease them the land because I have to; they'd starve if I didn't. But I have no interest in it and it only causes me endless trouble. I'm not a farmer, never have been. I'd sell them the land in a trice but they couldn't even pay me the half of what it's worth. I'm not as young as I was but I often think I'd like to do something with my life. Yes, do something completely different...go back to the university, maybe, and do some research (I still take one or two scientific journals, you know, but in Kilnalough it's impossible to keep up). Have you ever thought, Brendan, how many completely different lives there are to be lived if only one could choose? I can tell you one thing, I certainly wouldn't choose to be a landlord in Ireland. One gets no thanks for it. However, that's the job I've been called to, so I suppose I must make the best of it.”

As they walked they were joined by a shabby spaniel that appeared out of a clump of rhododendrons and trotted along behind Edward.

“Does old Ryan even know his doctoring? Frankly I doubt it. He must have been in the College of Surgeons when all they knew was leeches and bloodletting. And yet he's the only doctor in Kilnalough, so everyone treats him as if he's God Almighty.” Edward was scowling again. He halted suddenly at a diamond-shaped bed of lavender and his scowl faded.

“Planted by my dear wife.” After a moment, as if to clear up a possible misunderstanding, he added: “Before she died.”

The spaniel mutely lifted a leg against an acute angle of the diamond and they set off again. The Major looked up at the great turreted wall that hung over them. They were so close to it at this point that it was impossible to gauge its size. A few yards farther on, however, they made another turn and this allowed him to see the back of the hotel which was really, in fact, the front, since the building had been designed to relate entirely to the sea. It was into the Irish Sea (and not into Ireland) that the most magnificent flight of steps led, and they were in the middle of the crescent whose curving arms spread out to embrace the distant coast of Wales across the vast expanse of windswept water. The Major was staggered to see for the first time just what this side of the crescent looked like: the extraordinary proliferation of turrets and battlements and crenellated cat-walks that hung from the building amid rusting iron balconies and French windows with drooping shutters. In the very heart of the crescent above the staircase of white stone and running from the slate roofs on one side to the slate roofs on the other was a great construction of glass which at this moment caught a stray gleam of sunlight and flared gold for a few seconds.

This, Edward was explaining, was the ballroom the Major might already have seen from the inside, a place impossible to keep warm in winter because of its glass roof. This glass roof, he went on with his eyes on his shoes, could be a bit of a problem in summer too. However (he brightened a little), in the old days it must have been really magnificent: the great Hunt Balls, the carnivals, the regattas (think of the lanterns glimmering on the yachts that bobbed at the landing-stage)... the dancing would go on until the rising sun dimmed the chandeliers and the waiters carried in silver trays steaming with bacon and kidneys and fried eggs gleaming in the sunlight and silver coffee-pots breathing wisps of steam like... like old men talking in winter, ah, but the marvellous part was that the whole thing would have been visible from above because of the glass roof, almost as if it were taking place in the open air...the nannies and the children crowding on to the balconies to watch and to listen to the violins until they, the children, became sleepy and even maybe fell asleep completely and were carried in and put to bed, not even waking up when the grey, exhausted but content grown-ups came in to kiss them good night in the early hours of the morning before themselves retiring to sleep till the afternoon, undisturbed except for memories of violins and glinting chandeliers and silk dresses and an occasional cry of a peacock (because there had been peacocks too, still were, come to that) settling on their sleeping minds as soft as rose-petals...