The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [158]
Edward was moving from one group of guests to another, making genial, incoherent remarks, red in the face and wearing an air of mingled triumph and discomfort in the tight grip of his tail-coat. The Major was afraid that this triumph might be premature. The guests had been carelessly chosen because, although there were a great many young men, thanks to the Auxiliaries, young ladies were in short supply. The twins, flushed and exultant, were besieged and claimed for every dance. Viola O’Neill was also discreetly holding court under the sharp eye of her parents, flirting with three or four young men at once. Even Sir Joshua’s daughters were being paid considerable attention: their long, horse-like faces were turned continually to where their mother was sitting, for encouragement or advice. A doting smile would appear on her face, which was an older, more wrinkled version of theirs, and she would nod affirmatively. And this horse face—the Major’s disabused eye noted as with flexed knees he foxtrotted a gasping and near-hysterical Miss Staveley round the floor—these equine features were repeated again and again all the way down the glittering ballroom, as if the Smileys had been reflected in a great hall of mirrors, from the oldest men and women to the youngest children. This was the face of Anglo-Ireland, the inbred Protestant aristocracy, the face, progressively refining itself into a separate, luxurious species, which had ruled Ireland for almost five hundred years: the wispy fair hair, the eyes too close together, the long nose and protruding teeth. “Ripon was right, in a biological sense as well as in several others, to marry Máire Noonan.”
If only there had been more young people! No doubt it was this absence of youth which lent the guests the appearance of wax figures, museum curiosities, unconnected with the present era, the seething modern world of 1921. The Major peered round Miss Staveley’s heaving shoulders. The handsome and distinguished young people from abroad were no longer to be seen. Even the lovely Miss Bond, who had briefly captivated him in the foyer, had vanished.
Thinking of the Auxiliaries, he cast a worried glance in their direction; they had stationed themselves near the buffet and were drinking copiously, becoming steadily noisier and more boisterous. But now they had discovered an amusing game: if there were no young ladies to be danced with, well, they would make do with the older ones. As the next waltz began half a dozen of them crossed the floor to bow and click heels in an exaggerated manner in front of as many old ladies. The ladies looked apprehensive. They perhaps remembered how these or similar young men used to threaten them with bayonets at the tea-table. Under the obligation to be good sports they accepted, nevertheless, and allowed themselves to be escorted on to the dance floor.
“The first time I came to the Majestic,” the Major was saying to Sarah, “I went for a walk round the terraces with Edward and he told me about the hunt balls and regattas they used to hold here...the violins and the chandeliers and the silver breakfast dishes...I never expected to see it for myself.”
“It’s lovely, Brendan. This is how it should be all the time—with candles and flowers. It’s almost too good to be true. D’you think there’ll be silver dishes for breakfast? What a long time there is still to go before then!”
She was smiling at him warmly, with a trace of that innocent enthusiasm which he had found so disarming during her visit to London. Dancing had made the Major thirsty. He drank a glass of cold champagne and then another. He was in a strange mood, both sad and somehow optimistic at the same time. He told Sarah, pointing at the blue-black glass on the roof, how, up on the balconies above, the nannies and the