The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [323]
“You sit there, Lou, and, Miriam, you sit there,” Harry was proceeding commandingly. “That’s right, everyone. That’s the spirit.”
Astonished by how insufferable her brother had suddenly become, Louise could not help thinking that Miriam, who was older and in every way more mature than Harry, must object to being ordered about by him...but she did not seem to; she seemed perfectly content to be given orders. Yet nobody seemed more content than Lucy. “Shall I do this? Shall I do that? Is that the right way?” she kept asking Harry, turning to him meltingly for more gruff instructions than could possibly be required. Although Louise was still glad that she had saved Lucy’s life by sending that letter to the dak bungalow she could not help feeling that she had been rather taken advantage of...If you save someone’s life you do not expect them to start promptly making mincemeat of your innocent brother’s affections with melting glances and flashings of pretty smiles. Not that Louise would normally have minded a pretty girl like Lucy capturing Harry’s heart...to have their hearts besieged and captured was, after all, at least one of the things that men were there for.
What Louise could not forget, however, was that Lucy had been dishonoured. This lovely and quite innocent-looking girl who was sitting there with them now cheerfully eating pudding had allowed, perhaps even encouraged, certain things to be done to her by a man; she had perhaps allowed her clothes to be fumbled with and disarranged...she might even perhaps, for all Louise knew, have been seen naked by him. The thought of Lucy’s delightfully shaped body, of which she herself had inadvertently glimpsed intimate parts in the billiard room (for Lucy was careless where modesty was concerned), exposed to the eyes of a gentleman, was very distressing to Louise. She was ready to be friendly and forgiving to Lucy, and she was ready to believe that the sin had been less Lucy’s than that of her seducer...but she could not believe it a good thing that Harry should become infatuated with her. That a man (let us not call him a gentleman) should have been permitted to view that sacred collection of bulges, gaps, tufts of hair and rounded fleshy slopes which, as clear as the tossing arms of the semaphore on Diamond Head, signalled their own message: “Womanhood”; on this, apply cosmetics of exonerating circumstances though you might, Louise could only put an ugly complexion, for it added up to the betrayal of her sex.
But now it was time for Fleury’s birthday present to be handed to him and, once again, although the idea had been Miriam’s, the hard work had had to be done by Louise. With the Collector’s permission they had cut the cloth off the billiard tables and made him a coat of Lincoln green together with a cap of the same material, garnished with a turquoise peacock’s feather.
“I say, he looks as if he has just come from Sherwood Forest,” cried Harry gruffly in his new insufferable manner. “Ho there, Locksley! Ha, ha!”
“Oh shut up, Dunstaple!” said Fleury, delighted with his new coat and secretly pleased to be compared with Robin Hood. He put the coat on and turned slowly in front of the ladies, exclaiming: “What a splendid fit it is!” and indeed it was a good fit, even though one arm seemed to be rather longer than the other (“That’s so he can fire his long-bow the more easily, ha, ha!” cried Harry obnoxiously, causing Lucy to swoon with laughter). “Thank heaven it fits, anyway,” thought Louise sadly. For some reason, she had no idea why, she suddenly felt close to tears. With one hand to her forehead, as if she were “thinking” again, she used the other one to give her collar a little tug to make sure no one could see her new boil, the one on her neck.
At this moment the Collector happened to pass through the