The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [182]
A dispiriting silence fell on the room. The Major decided that it would be a sign of strength not to press the matter. Edward inspired more pity than anger these days. Privately, though, he retained his conviction that it was rather amiable of the Sinn Feiners to prefer attacking statues to living people—a proof, as it were, that they too belonged, or almost belonged, to the good-natured Irish people.
“You don’t suppose they’ll have a shot at Queen Victoria, do you? Perhaps we should think of getting her moved a bit farther away from the house...” But Edward merely curled his lip contemptuously at this further proof of the Major’s lack of martial instincts.
The Golf Club these days was thronged with members whom the Major had not ever seen there before: fat, wary men with copious moustaches who cupped their ears whenever the “troubles” were mentioned but said very little, contenting themselves with an occasional mild reminiscence of Chittagong or Cairo or some other place under foreign skies. They seemed to be waiting uneasily for something; perhaps even they themselves did not know what it was. They would stand there, hands in pockets, staring moodily out of the club-house windows at the acres of blowing grass. Nowadays not so many players would venture out there; and all those who did, like Boy O’Neill, carried rifles in their golf-bags. Once or twice, indeed, distant shots had been heard over the hum of conversation in the bar, causing the drinkers to fear the worst: a massacre at the fourteenth hole, bodies spreadeagled on the velvety green or bleeding in bunkers. But no, presently a laughing, windblown group would come into sight on the fairway of the eighteenth and as they came up towards the club-house one or other of the party would be seen swinging a putter in one hand and a dead hare in the other. Not that they would have minded a “scrap”—some of them were young and brave, others middle-aged and fierce, and none of them had been to the war in France.
For the most part, though, the members stayed in the bar drinking whiskey-and-sodas and waiting. There were still a few ragged, shivering caddies waiting to besiege any plus-foured gentlemen willing to risk themselves in the open spaces—but their numbers had decreased considerably over the winter. Now only the very young and the very elderly remained. And the others? Perhaps instead of hefting golf-bags on their shoulders they were roaming the hills with some flying squad carrying rifles for the I.R.A.
“Hello, Major.”
“Oh, hello, Boy...Didn’t see you there.” O’Neill was leaning on the bar, his shoulders two great bunches of muscle outlandishly swollen by the thick sweater he was wearing. More aggressive than ever, he had recently acquired the habit of grinning sarcastically after anything he said, whether it was supposed to be humorous or not. The Major found this habit upsetting.
“Seen old Devlin?”
“Can’t say I have, Boy.”
“Giving us a wide berth these days. Too bad because I’ve a joke to tell him. Listen. It’s about a girl called Mary from Kilnalough. Mary goes to England in rags and comes back a year later in fine clothes and throwing away money right and left. Meets Father O’Byrne who says: ‘Tell me, Mary. How did you get all that money?’
“Says Mary, shamefaced: ‘Oi became a prostitute, Father.’
“‘What’s that you say?’ cries Father O’Byrne in a fury.
“‘Oi became a prostitute, Father,’ says Mary again.
“‘Ah, sure that’s all roight,’ says Father O’Byrne with a sigh of relief. ‘Oi was after thinking you said you’d become a Protestant!’”
Laughter from one or two of the men at the bar near by. But these were the old hands. The Colonials (as the fat, wary men with moustaches had come to be called) looked blank, being more used to a division of people by race than by religion. This sort of thing was too subtle for them. After all, a white man is a white man when all is said and done.
“Very funny,” said the Major without enthusiasm. He had heard