The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [60]
“An old man? What does he want?”
“What d’you want?” demanded Faith firmly.
“Where is Mr Spencer? I won’t stand for it,” stuttered Mr Noonan furiously. “I’m looking for...I shall speak to my solicitor!”
“What is he doing up near the ceiling?” the old lady wanted to know.
“We’re in the library, Granny. There’s a sort of balcony...”
“Well, whoever you are, I’m sure you won’t find your solicitor up there. Show him to the door, Faith. You stay here, Charity, it doesn’t take both of you.”
Faith was already half-way up the spiral iron staircase to the gallery. Without a word she grasped Mr Noonan by the sleeve and towed him back the way he had come, down a dark flight of stairs, along a corridor, through a deserted cocktail bar, into the lobby and up to the front door which, with an immense effort, she dragged open.
“Peeping Tom!” she hissed and, placing a hand on his back, gave him a violent shove which propelled him out into the rain at a reluctant gallop.
A few moments later Edward, looking out of a window without a pane on the first floor and thinking that all this rain would give his Daimler a good wash, noticed the elderly telegraph boy hurrying away down the drive. The fellow halted for a moment and shook his umbrella angrily at the Majestic.
“Good heavens!” murmured Edward. “I don’t suppose that could have been old what’s-his-name, by any chance...”
* * *
THE HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM
Irish Ladies’ Terrible Experiences
Reuter’s representative has just had an interview with two Irish girls, the Misses May and Eileen Healy, who have just reached London, having escaped from Kieff with nothing but the clothes—thin linen dresses—they were wearing.
They tell a terrible story of the Bolshevist outrage, of which they were personal witnesses. They said that the mental strain was awful and one, Miss Eileen Healy, has lost 3 st. in weight.
“In a side building, a sort of garage, I saw a wall covered with blood and brains. In the middle was cut a channel or drain, full of congealed blood, and just outside in the garden, one hundred and twenty-seven nude, mutilated corpses, including those of some women, who had been flung into a hole...
“Ten Bolshevists occupied rooms next mine. There was a beautiful drawing-room filled with valuable furniture. There, night after night, they carried on drunken orgies of an unspeakable character with women whom they brought from the town, and I lay on my bed with the door barricaded until from sheer exhaustion I went to sleep...
“The terrorism of the Reds is really much worse than anything I have read of, and to those in this country who believe the story is exaggerated I would only say go out and see for yourselves.”
* * *
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRIUMPH
Marshal Foch’s Analysis
In conversation with a representative of the Echo de Paris Marshal Foch said that he had won the war by avoiding unnecessary emotions and conserving all his strength so as to devote himself whole-heartedly to his task. “War requires an ingenious mind, always alert, and one day the reward of victory comes. Don’t talk to me about glory, beauty, enthusiasm. They are verbal manifestations. Nothing exists except facts and facts alone are of any use. A useful fact, and one that satisfied me, was the signing of the armistice.”
In conclusion Marshal Foch said: “Without trying to drag in miracles just because clear vision is vouchsafed to a man, because afterwards it turns out that this clear vision has determined movements fraught with enormous consequences in a formidable war, I still hold that this clear vision comes from a Providential force, in the hands of which one is an instrument, and that the victorious decision emanates from above, by the higher and Divine will.”
* * *
Nineteen-twenty. One, two, three weeks of January—grey, cold weather, fog in the streets, dirty snow underfoot—elapsed before the Major finally found another letter from Sarah propped against the toast-rack on