The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [45]
Mrs O’Neill and Viola, looking tired and rather cross, were standing near a window entirely blocked by a group of very fat and ecstatic ladies. They brightened up when they saw the Major.
The Major opened the door of his room and stood aside for the ladies. Boy O’Neill thrust them aside, however, sped across the room and threw the window up with a crash. The skirl of pipes filled the room, diminishing gradually as they passed on towards College Green.
“The Irish Guards,” groaned O’Neill. “We missed the pipers.” He craned out over the street. “Here come the demobbed lads.”
While her father and mother gazed hungrily down at the passing troops and recited the names of regiments (the Royal Irish, the “Skins,” the Royal Irish Rifles, the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster, the Munster Fusiliers), Viola O’Neill, who had stationed herself at another window with the Major, kept turning to bestow smiles and lingering glances on him.
“Will there be tanks, Major?” she inquired, opening her eyes very wide.
“I expect so,” replied the Major gloomily.
“I’m sure I shall be frightened if there are,” Viola went on, running the tip of her tongue around her parted lips. “I mean, just the sight of them.”
“Wait! Is it them?” barked O’Neill from outside the other window. “Is it them or is it not?”
With feigned interest Viola leaned out to see what her father was looking at. “I’ve no head for heights,” she assured the Major. “I’m afraid I’ll fall if I lean any farther.” And her small hand slipped into the Major’s large paw, gripping it tightly. Frozen with alarm, the Major stared down at the grinning, jauntily striding Munster Fusiliers. The child was flirting with him! And she was certainly no more than fifteen years old. Although today her hair had been released from its pigtails and hung in thick shining tresses, she looked if anything younger than she had on their previous meeting in the Palm Court of the Majestic. What if the O’Neills should suddenly look back into the room and see him holding hands with their daughter?
“It is!” roared O’Neill from outside. “It’s them! It’s the Dubs! I can see them.”
The volume of cheering below in the street increased to a deafening roar as the Dublin Fusiliers swung into sight. Viola withdrew a little from the window, making a face at the noise, and the Major took the opportunity of relinquishing her hand. But under the pretext of looking at something in the street she changed her position so that her perfumed tresses brushed against his chin. A scent of warm skin rose from her bare neck. The Major stepped back hurriedly and busied himself with lighting his pipe. And not a moment too soon. The O’Neills, hoarse with cheering, had just decided to restore their heads to the room.
The parade dragged on for another hour—an eternity it seemed to the Major, who presently retired to sit in an armchair with a newspaper. When at last the O’Neills had been granted their first view of armoured cars and tanks (Viola had gasped with emotion at the sight of the monsters creeping along Dame Street and silently besought the Major for comfort with her lovely grey eyes) and the parade had come to an end, Boy stepped back satiated from the window and remarked cryptically: “That should give the blighters something to think about.”
His face appeared less drawn and yellow than when the Major had seen him at the Majestic and his listless manner had been replaced by a disquieting nervous energy. He’d never felt better, he assured the Major. Found a new doctor who’d done him the world of good...indeed, he felt a new man. He wouldn’t give a farthing for your Harley Street specialists. “I feel a new man,” he repeated categorically. Saying this, he looked angrily round the room, as if expecting the Major to disagree with him.
The O’Neills were going to spend the afternoon and evening in Kingstown. There were two ships in Kingstown harbour, H.M.S. Umpire and H.M.S. Parker, which were to be illuminated that evening to supplement the bonfires and fireworks. It should be a splendid