The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [186]
Then, later on, while he was standing, hands thrust gloomily into the pockets of his jacket, by the gatepost at the end of the drive and looking up at the notice posted by Edward: TRESPASSERS FOUND TAMPERING WITH THE STATUE OF QUEEN VICTORIA WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. BY ORDER and thinking: “But he’s gone clean out of his wits! He’s trying to provoke them!”—while staring up at this defiant and reckless object, he found himself thinking instead: “But how often does she ‘look at other men’? How often is she ‘knocked cold’? Is it likely to damage her brain?” And his thoughts would meander away, low in vitality, convalescent, as if he had really been sick (and perhaps he really was sick), round and round like tired animals in a circus ring...to arrive at last at the exit (which looked strangely similar to the entrance), concluding that it certainly couldn’t be very good for one to be continually knocked senseless.
But no, it wasn’t that at all...It was the intimacy which distressed him. Sarah felled in a restaurant for fluttering her eyelashes at a head-waiter; Sarah felled among the teacups at a Viceregal garden party for a lingering glance at some young officer; Sarah felled in Jury’s Hotel for looking out of the window...His mind, tired and dutiful, furnished him with any amount of these images. And they were always together, Bolton and Sarah, and he was always excluded (attempts to imagine himself stepping forward to correct Bolton with a classic uppercut proved hopeless). Bolton and Sarah...
Late in the evening, while listening patiently to Miss Bagley complaining that a maid had taken up residence in the room next to hers and the cook in the room opposite, it occurred to him that now, at this very moment, it was quite likely that Sarah and Bolton were preparing to get into bed together. His vitality dropped a few points lower and the muscles of his face became numb with despair; the moustache on his upper lip felt as heavy as antlers. He explained carefully, nevertheless, to the indignant Miss Bagley that the servants’ wing was uninhabitable: the roof had been taken off as cleanly as the top off a boiled egg.
On returning from the squash court his watery footprints had diverged from Edward’s bloody ones and made their anxious way along dim corridors to “below stairs” where they were baulked from proceeding any farther. A foaming cascade of water was pouring down these stairs, and farther on down where they continued into some cellars which he had never visited. Odd bits of bric-à-brac slipped gently down from one stair to the next: pieces of wood, a coloured picture of the Holy Virgin, scraps of newspaper, rags of cloth that might have been underclothes or antimacassars, a sodden Teddy bear.
Weeping and shivering, a young girl in maid’s uniform, drenched to the skin, sat with her ankles in the torrent. The Major, still wearing his oilskins, had picked her up since she refused to move by herself and carried her back and down the other stairs to the kitchen, which was fortunately still warm and dry, depositing her without explanation on the kitchen table before the astonished, wild-eyed cook (who had never entertained a high opinion of the Major’s morals and sanity). Heaven only knew what she had thought!
He described the pertinent parts of this experience to Miss Bagley, and to Miss Johnston, Miss Devere (who had returned to the Majestic after a brief and unsatisfactory flirtation with the outside world) and Mrs Rice, who had come forward with similar grievances. And he listened carefully while they demanded with indignation whether it was a “free-for-all,” guests henceforth to “fight it out” with the servants for the use of bathrooms and other amenities;