The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [69]
When he judged that they had gazed at the animals for a suitable interval the Major doused the lights (which turned the piglets as grey as rats) and ushered the doctor and his grandson out into the fresh air. The old gentleman looked very weary indeed now and his movements had become more trembling and tentative than ever. They began to climb in silence towards the looming house, with the old man leaning heavily on his grandson’s slim shoulder and thrusting at the ground with his stick. “Really,” thought the Major, “it was most inconsiderate of Edward to bring the ‘senile old codger’ all the way down here for this pig nonsense.”
On a flight of stone steps between two terraces they stopped for a rest. They had gained sufficient altitude to afford the Major a view over the strip of park-land to the south-west, and beyond to the meadow. From the next terrace up, or from the one above that, he should be able to see clear to the tenants’ farms and the rolling hills behind them. The farmhouses—he remembered them perfectly—would be clustered there on the green slopes looking, at this distance, like grey sugar cubes.
They were now taking a short cut across the penulti-mate terrace, which led them past an immense swimming-pool, a splendid-looking affair which for some reason the Major had never noticed before. Here and there bright blue tiles were visible through the green lichen that veiled its sides and they passed the peeling white skeleton of a high-diving-board; beside it a springboard hung over the black water on the surface of which, by accident or design, lay the green discs of water-lilies. “It must be fresh water,” he thought. “Rainwater, perhaps.”
As he watched, something heaved powerfully beneath the surface. “Looks as if there might be good fishing. Pike, I wouldn’t be surprised. Too bad Edward hasn’t got a decent cook.”
Turning a corner of the pool brought a reflection of the sky down on to the water for a moment and left the water-lilies floating in azure. He glanced back once more to see if any fish were rising, but the surface was glassy smooth. He was tempted to go back and try the springboard to see whether it had rotted through—but undoubtedly it had. And it was fitting that it should have. From here the fashionable young men, his erstwhile comrades in arms, had taken one, two, three steps, a jump, and jack-knifed into the azure. There was something moving about this remnant of a happy youth; the Major, at any rate, felt moved.
But at last they were on the final flight of steps and soon they would be sitting in armchairs drinking tea.
“We’ve scaled the Matterhorn, Doctor!” But the old man, head and shoulders bowed forward on to his chest, was too spent to reply.
The Major looked towards the meadow and sure enough the farmhouses were scattered like grey sugar cubes on the rolling, quilted fields. Much nearer, though (indeed, near enough to have been visible from the lower terrace if he had looked more carefully), not far from the wall of loose, flat stones which divided the park from the meadow, a man in a tattered overcoat was standing motionless, facing towards the Majestic but with his eyes on the ground. The Major wondered whether it was the same man he had noticed earlier and, as they went inside and their footsteps echoed beneath the great glass dome of the ballroom, the incongruous but disturbing thought occurred to him that perhaps this man also would not object to sharing some almost-fresh cakes with Edward’s piglets. Before going off to wash and change his shirt he told Edward that there was some fellow hanging around in the meadow and Murphy was dispatched to tell the chap to buzz off. It was probably that