The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [63]
But wait! She had an idea. The Major must reply and tell her precisely, yes or no, whether he believed the stories about Ripon and the twins. He must do so immediately. It was essential, so that she’d know what sort of man the Major was... though, of course, she really knew that already. Still, he must write and tell her anyway. And by the way, perhaps she would visit him in London after all. There was a chance she would go to a clinic in France for a while. Her walking had improved greatly and she wasn’t nearly such a “miserable cripple” as she had been when the Major knew her. She still, in spite of his dull letters, thought of him with affection and remained truly his.
The Major didn’t know what to do about this letter. If he said he did believe the stories about Ripon and the twins she would accuse him of being “as literal as a lump of dough.” If he said he didn’t, she would almost certainly accuse him of having no sense of fun, no imagination. After two or three days’ deliberation he wrote back to say that he believed parts of them (and enjoyed the other parts). A postcard was all he got in reply. It accused him of having made a cautious and typically British compromise. And it ended with the words: “I despise compromises!”
All the time this correspondence was taking place the Major’s aunt continued to linger in a twilight stage between living and dying which he found most unsatisfactory. At the time of her first haemorrhage a night-nurse had been taken on, a sombre lady of middle age who had a habit of enjoining his aunt to “put a brave face on it, my dear,” commenting that “Madam’s pain won’t last for ever,” or informing her that her “only hope is in the Lord,” while discreetly averting her face to eat steadily throughout the night. Though most of this woman’s remarks had a religious cast and few of them were sequential she occasionally spoke of other deaths she had witnessed, invariably those of ladies in comfortable circumstances. One of them, a Mrs Baxter, had “died in the arms of Jesus.” Another had provided her with food that was unsuitable. Yet another had beautiful daughters who “went to dance at balls during their mother’s agony.” One story she often repeated concerned the lovely and youthful Mrs Perry, far gone with tuberculosis, whose husband, a ravening brute, had claimed his marital rights until the very end, causing her to leave the sick-room for hours at a time, so that very often it would be nearly dawn before she was allowed back to comfort his victim—who had been uncomplaining, however. Describing this, she would aim black looks at the Major as if he were responsible.
Somehow this story made a very painful impression on the Major. He imagined the lovely Mrs Perry and her husband quite differently. He was sure that they had been passionately in love. What other reason could the husband have had for making love to a woman with tuberculosis? The physical act of love remained the one crumbling bridge between them. He pictured the slow nights of despair. He wondered whether the husband had also hoped to fall ill with tuberculosis. One night he had an agonizing dream about Mrs Perry and the next morning he felt so disturbed that he sought out the night-nurse and dismissed her with a month’s pay. He thought: “Really, I’m still a young man...there’s time enough to become morbid when I’m old.”
At about this time he read about the siege of the R.I.C. barracks at Ballytrain—half a dozen constables overrun by a massive horde of Shinners—over a hundred of them, like the dervishes at Khartoum. Edward had called them individual criminals out for what they could get. Never, thought the Major with a smile, never had so many individual criminals been seen together in one place!
The Major had invited Sarah to stay at his aunt’s house as she passed through London on her way to France. Would this not be considered improper? she wanted to know. What would his