The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [192]
The Major viewed dinner that evening with foreboding. There was a faint possibility that Edward, who seldom appeared for meals these days, might forget to attend. Before anyone else arrived, however, he was standing at his chair in the dining-room. On each side of his own seat three empty places had been reserved for the young men: the places of honour, a fact which did little to mollify the indignant old ladies.
The undergraduates arrived late and somewhat out of breath after ragging through the corridors while changing for dinner. There had been an attempted debagging of Maitland, who was the elected butt of the party. Then someone had pinched one of his socks and thrown it out of the window, so that when he followed the others into the dining-room he was wearing odd socks and looking so humorously aggrieved that the others could hardly suppress their laughter.
But Maitland was promptly forgotten when the impatient Edward showed them to their places. In fact they positively goggled with amazement. Laid out at each place beside the silver cutlery was a...revolver! Amazing! Everything people said about Ireland was true! The Irish were completely mad! They hardly dared catch each other’s eye.
Only Captain Roberts, gloomily eyeing the dim and distant contours of the room, seemed to have noticed nothing unusual. While they were waiting for soup to be served he absently picked up the revolver set at his place, spun the empty chamber, hefted it for a moment in his palm, then put it down again, picking up a silver fork instead. Having twirled it briefly between finger and thumb, he replaced it carefully, peering in a worried fashion across the table at the three bright and gleeful faces of his companions opposite. What on earth was the joke this time? Not for the first time since the vacation had begun he wondered uneasily whether he might not have lost his sense of humour.
“Pass the word along,” Bob Danby on his left whispered, groaning with pain, into his ear. “What can the last course possibly be?”
So it was the revolvers set out with the cutlery that was arousing the mirth of his companions! As he passed Danby’s joke on to Bunny Burdock on his right he reproved himself for not having noticed—though, as a matter of fact, he had noticed, assuming merely that the hotel had rats. In the mess dug-outs in France they had been in the habit of blazing away throughout the meal at any rats scampering by—otherwise the beggars would have eaten the food off your fork. He cleared his throat, on the point of describing all this to young Hall-Smith opposite, but then he thought better of it. These young chaps listened politely, of course, when he talked about the war. On one occasion, however, while he was describ-ing some “show” or other, Maitland had said: “Oh, give the bloody war a rest will you, Roberts? It’s been over for three years!” Of course Maitland had had a few beers and no doubt he had been egged on by his desire to please the others. Still, it was all past history now, all that; no reason why they should be interested.
Meanwhile an argument had started between the huge craggy-faced individual at the end of the table who must be the owner of the place (he was hardly obsequious enough to be the manager) and Bob Danby, who was their spokesman for political and intellectual matters (and was strongly fancied as the next President of the Union). And Danby seemed to be in particularly splendid form this evening.
“But what you’re saying isn’t the least bit logical,” he was now protesting. “Although I agree that the Irish people may not be the most intelligent in the world I simply can’t believe that they would voluntarily choose to elect bandits and murderers, as you call them, to handle their affairs...Come now, that really is a bit steep, sir!”
“Tell me then what they’ve done except ambush unarmed men from behind hedges, shoot innocent people, drive cattle