The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [54]
However, she was pretty certain that such provincial matters would hardly interest him now that he was back in the big city...Was it true that in London even the horses wore leather shoes? But she was only teasing him, of course. The English (that was to say, “the enemy”) were so serious one could never risk making a joke in case they believed you.
Had the Major heard the very latest, God forgive her (in fact, God forgive everybody), that had been happening right under her nose all this while...which was that one of her father’s clerks, a red-faced lad up from the country with a smathering of the “mattermathics” had dared, had had the temerity, had made so bold-faced as to get up his nerve to, in spite of her spots (which must show what strong stomachs country people had), actually fall in love with her! ! ! Without so much as a by-your-leave! He, the Major, would undoubtedly be as amazed as she was that even a country lad who only knew about cows (and himself smelled like a farmyard) could have his wits so deranged as to consider marrying a “total cripple” like herself.
Himself: “Will ye walk out with me, Miss Devlin?”
Me: “How can I, you peasant oaf, with no legs?” And now every time she went out of the house she would find her “rural swain” touching his forelock and blushing like a ripe tomato and the whole thing was positively sickening and disgusting. There surely must be something wrong with someone (apart altogether from the things which immediately greeted the eye and the nose) who would marry someone like her sooner than one of the millions of girls who could churn his butter and wash his clothes and thump his dough and have a brat a year like a pullet laying eggs from dawn to dusk without so much as batting an eyelid. And what did the Major think of such a thing anyway? Wasn’t she right to treat the whole thing as nonsense? But the worst was yet to come.
One could hardly believe it, but the “rural swain” had had the temerity to approach her father with his “bovine proposal” and had even inquired if there might not be a little bit of a dowry now to sweeten the bargain, a couple of heifers and a few quid, perhaps, or a brace of pigs and a few auld hens and then maybe later on a wee share in the bank (which he seemed to think was something like a farm for growing money) and so on and so forth, with lots of blushes and his breeches hanging off of him like potato sacks on a scarecrow! And the very worst was yet to come!
Incredible though it might seem, her father, instead of sneering at the young bog-trotter’s pretensions to his fair daughter’s hand, boxing his ears and sending him back to scratching in his ledgers or whatever he did (stoking the boiler for all she knew), had said that, by Jove, in such circumstances one did well to treat all proposals with serious consideration and though, of course, it would never occur to “me or your mother” to influence her in any way, it nevertheless seemed unwise to send likely lads packing, up from the country or not (after all, they could be groomed and citified to cope with Kilnalough’s undemanding standards), before one had given them a fair run for their money! The Major would hardly believe it, but there was even worse to come!
The “bovine suitor,” greatly encouraged by her father’s attitude, had now taken to lurking beside the gate whenever she went outside, greeting her with familiar winks, and had even approached her near enough to suggest that she should play him “a bit of a tune” on her piano and even, no doubt considering the conquest effected, had placed a hand like a gelatine lobster on her “fair shrinking