The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [10]
“They took advantage of their sex,” his wife agreed. “They blew up a house that Lloyd George was going to move into. They damaged the Coronation Chair. They dug up the greens of many lovely golf-courses and burned people’s letters. Is that a way for a woman to behave? It never pays to give in to such people. If it hadn’t been for the war....”
“...In which the women of England jolly well pulled their weight in the boat, more than their weight, I take my hat off to them. They deserved the vote. But the British public doesn’t give in to violence. They didn’t then and they won’t now. Take that Derby in which the woman killed herself. The King’s horse was lying fifth and was probably out of the running...but if Craiganour had fallen the anger of England would have been terrible to behold.”
Abruptly the Major noticed that Viola O’Neill, whose long hair was plaited into childish pigtails, who wore some kind of grey tweed school uniform, and who could scarcely have been more than sixteen years of age (plump and pretty though she was), was nevertheless looking him straight in the eye in a meaningful way. Embarrassed, he dropped his gaze to the empty plate in front of him.
As for Ripon, he was plainly bored. He had resumed a more orthodox sitting position and, with legs crossed, was tapping experimentally at his knee reflex with a teaspoon. The Major watched him drowsily. Now that he had eaten he was finding it an agony to stay awake and at the same time was pain-fully aware of being hunted by Miss O’Neill’s importunate eyes. Fortunately, just as he was feeling unable to resist for a moment longer some overpoweringly sedative remarks that Boy O’Neill was making about his schooldays, there was a diversion. A large, fierce-looking man in white flannels stepped from behind a luxuriant fern at which the Major had happened to be looking with drugged eyes. He said: “Quick, you chaps! Some unsavoury characters have been spotted lurking in the grounds. Probably Shinners.”
The tea-drinkers goggled at him.
“Quick!” he repeated, twitching a tennis racket in his right hand. “They’re probably looking for guns. Ripon, Boy, arm yourselves and follow me. You too, Major, delighted to make your acquaintance, I know you’ll want to be in on this. Come on, Boy, you’re not too old for a scrap!”
In the semi-darkness the old doctor stirred imperceptibly.
“Damn fool!” he muttered.
The fierce man in flannels was Angela’s father Edward, of course. There was no mistaking that stiff, craggy face with its accurately clipped moustache and broken nose (at least not for the Major, who had studied his daughter’s letters so assiduously). The broken nose, for example, was the result of having boxed for Trinity in a bout against the notorious Kevin Clinch, a Roman Catholic and a Gaelic speaker whose merciless fists had been a byword in those days (so Angela said, anyway). The savage Clinch (the Major remembered with a chuckle), mouthing incomprehensible oaths through his bleeding lips, had got as good as he gave, until he had finally succeeded in flattening “Father” with a lucky punch. Time and again the elder Spencer had been battered to the canvas, time and again he had risen to demonstrate English pluck and tenacity against the superior might of his Celtic adversary. The Major imagined him stretched out at last, his fists still twitching automatically like the limbs of a decapitated chicken. What difference had it made that Edward had ended the contest horizontal and motionless in spite of all his efforts? Why, none at all. He had proved his point. Besides, the game’s the thing, it doesn’t matter who wins. Besides, Clinch was a stone heavier.
As he followed the others down a corridor the Major noticed Edward’s ears, which he also knew about—that is, he knew why they were so remarkably flattened against his skull, the reason being his mother’s horror of ears which stuck out. They had been taped back against his skull throughout his childhood, an intervention which the Major considered to have been a happy one. The rugged forehead, the heavy brows,