The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [64]
The Major, sunk in a slough of despond, his mind as barren as the frozen snow that lay on the streets, had been awaiting her arrival with indifference, even a vague dread. But Sarah appeared to have left the malicious side of her nature in Kilnalough. She was so affectionate and ingenuous, so excited to be in London, so obviously impressed by the Major’s air of authority and distinction in these new surroundings as she clung to his arm (the confidence with which she was walking these days astonished him) that in no time at all he was disarmed. In restaurants she was apprehensive lest she be “noticed.” The Major mustn’t let her use the wrong knife and fork or she’d die of mortification. And how did all the diners (how did the Major himself?) look so much at ease in front of these august waiters? It was a mystery to her. And the ladies wore such lovely clothes! Was the Major not ashamed to be seen with such a scarecrow as herself? On the contrary, the Major was delighted to be seen with such a pretty girl.
The splendid shops, the elegant streets...Amused and touched by her enthusiasm, the Major found himself seeing London with new and less world-weary eyes. It was perfectly true, London could be an exciting place if one allowed oneself to notice it. In the evening after dinner they sat and talked in front of a blazing fire. For a while they discussed Kilnalough. The Major had been hoping to hear more of the Majestic, but Sarah had nothing to add to her letters. Ripon and Máire were married now and living in Rathmines, but she knew no more than that. She thought that Edward and Ripon were having no more to do with each other. There’d been some terrible rows but she didn’t know the details. She’d hardly seen Edward for ages, she added, gazing into the glowing embers. And then she grimaced and said that she didn’t want to talk about Kilnalough, she wanted the Major to tell her about himself. And so the Major, feeling strangely at peace, found himself talking about the war. Little by little, random names and faces began to come back to him. He told Sarah first about one or two curious things that had happened: about a young Tommy who had been found dead in his bunk and the only thing they had been able to find wrong with him was a broken finger; about the shouted friendly conversations with the Germans across No-Man’s-Land; about a man in the Major’s regiment who had had his leg blown off and had sat in a shell-crater tying up the arteries by himself and had survived...And soon the Major was telling Sarah about incidents that until now had been frozen into a block of ice in his mind. In the warmth of her sympathy he found he could talk about things which until now he had scarcely been able to repeat to himself. A little drunk and tired, sitting there in the flickering firelight, the bubble of bitterness in his mind slowly dissolved and tears at last began to run down his cheeks for all his dead friends.
The following morning Sarah left for France. She would send the Major her address, she said.
The Major had written to Sarah an enormous letter, crammed with confidences, packed with poetic observations on life and love and every other subject under the sun. He had at last found someone to talk to! He had found someone who understood him and shared his view of the workings of the world. Everything which for want of a listener he had been unable to say for the last four or five years came foaming out of his head in a torrent of blue-black ink, all at once. The leaves of writing-paper became so thick that they would no longer fit in an ordinary envelope and, besides, he had still more to say...by the time he had finished he would be obliged to wrap up his letter in a brown-paper parcel. Not that the Major was waiting to finish his letter