The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [140]
“Look, you won’t forget about the mason, will you? We don’t want the place to fall down.”
“I’ll see to it right away.”
Unhopefully the Major wandered out of the ballroom, leaving Edward to ruminate.
Meanwhile the days were slipping away towards Christmas and still nothing had been done about decorations. The ladies became sulky and despondent at the comfortless prospect of spending the festival at the Majestic. Miss Staveley talked openly of going to stay at the Hibernian in Dublin where they knew how to do things properly. She might have gone, too, had it not been common knowledge at the Majestic that respectable ladies were being raped by Sinn Feiners every day of the week in Dublin; indeed, the aunt of someone’s friend had only the other day been violated by a Sinn Feiner posing as a licensed masseur. Miss Staveley had no desire to suffer a similar fate, so she stayed on at the Majestic, but with bad grace.
At length the Major decided that something must be done, so he took the twins, Viola, Padraig, and Seán Murphy into the park to collect holly and mistletoe, while he himself chopped down a puny and naked Christmas tree he had noticed near the lodge. At the sight of this activity the ladies cheered up and soon they were helping to make paper decorations. The residents’ lounge became a hive of industry. Miss Johnston mounted the largest and most drastic shopping expedition hitherto, and returned from Kilnalough with a great supply of glass ornaments and coloured ribbons. In due course this enthusiasm spread to everyone, servants and guests alike; even the newcomers became eager to lend a hand. The old ladies underwent a gay metamorphosis and showed themselves full of energy, humming and singing as they worked, reach-ing up with trembling hands to pin mistletoe strategically over doors or intrepidly making their way up shivering step-ladders to hang coloured paper streamers. The Major watched them and admired their daring. Whenever a step-ladder began to get a fit of the shakes he would spring forward and anchor it firmly, but then perhaps another step-ladder would begin to rattle on the other side of the room and he would have to watch helplessly, with that mixture of resentment and admiration one feels as one watches trapeze artistes sailing dangerously here and there under the circus roof.
There was only one casualty. One of the less prominent ladies, Mrs Bates, fell off a high stool while trying to deposit a glass fairy on top of the grandfather clock in the writing-room and broke her hip. By an unusual stroke of luck there happened to be a young doctor staying in the hotel overnight on his way back to Dublin. He took charge of everything and Mrs Bates was whisked out of sight before her fate had time to affect the morale of her fellow-guests. A few days later the Major motored over to visit her in the Valebridge nursing-home...but he was too late. She had caught pneumonia and died in the meantime. “Poor Mrs Bates.” Ankle-deep in a drift of dead leaves, he stood outside the nursing-home and sucked his moustache distractedly.
In the midst of all this cheerful activity and confusion Edward moved like a sleepwalker, silent and remote. If you called to him: “Where’s the hammer?” or “Have you seen my scissors?” he would shake his head wordlessly, not bothering to understand. He seemed unaware that the grim walls around him were blossoming into festive colour. He remained where he was, at his table in the middle of the cavernous ballroom, slumped in a chair with a book open on his knee. The ladies, awed by his silence, tiptoed around the perimeter of the room as they executed their decorations. One day Miss Archer came to the Major and said: “He has a shotgun.”
“Who has a shotgun?”
“Edward. It’s on his table in the ballroom.”
“Good God, what does he want that for?”
They stared at each other in consternation. Later, while Edward was out visiting his piglets, he went to have a look. It was perfectly true. On Edward’s table there lay a shotgun,