The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [89]
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CONNAUGHT RANGERS IN INDIA
A Reuter’s Simla message states that three-quarters of the men of the Connaught Rangers at Jullundar refused duty and laid down their arms upon receipt of a mail giving news of Irish events...
The detachment at Jutogh, six miles from Simla, is perfectly quiet. The whole affair is regarded as being entirely due to political causes and the Sinn Fein agitation.
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In Kilnalough, as elsewhere in Ireland, it rained all that July. The farmhouses were now empty except for two or three old men, the rest of the workers having decamped after their abortive attempt to induce Edward with threats to hand over ownership. It was no doubt thanks to the fact that a contingent of Auxiliary Police were billeted at the Majestic that Edward escaped without harassment or injury. Other landowners in various parts of the country were prudently giving in to the demands made upon them at that time, but Edward remained inflexible and contemptuous. Given the state of the country and the frequency of terrorist attacks, any vindictive farm-labourer with a gun might have shot Edward down with impunity. In the meantime, however (provided he could find men willing to harvest them for him), Edward still had two meagre fields of slowly ripening corn.
The Major could see both of these fields from the window of his room; they lay one on each side of a gently sloping valley, separated only by a rutted cart-track that swept round by the farm and on to join the road to Kilnalough. Pale green at the beginning of August, the corn seemed to grow a little more blonde morning by morning. He had brought with him a pair of excellent field-glasses, made in Germany, which he had removed from the massive punctured chest of an apoplectic Prussian officer with waxed moustaches whom he had come upon lying upside down in a shell-crater. Every morning he used these glasses to scan the countryside and derived a particular pleasure from examining the shining, iridescent surface of the corn as it flowed this way or that along the valley in waves of syrup.
“Strange,” he thought one morning. “How did that get there?” A large boulder which he had never noticed before had appeared at the edge of one of the fields. Why should anyone go to the trouble of carting an extremely heavy boulder to the edge of a cornfield? He decided to take a walk over there later in the day.
But immediately after lunch the twins pounced on him. They wanted him to “be the man” while they practised some new dance steps; in particular, it seemed, they were anxious to learn “The Joy Trot” and “The Vampire.” They had succeeded in borrowing a gramophone and some new records from old Mr Norton, whose relentless pursuit of youth was truly amazing when one considered his physical decrepitude. At first Mr Norton had demanded that he should “be the man” in return for the use of his gramophone. But the twins were unenthusiastic. Besides, it was found that the rhythm was too lively for his arthritic joints and the twins absolutely refused to dance at half-speed as he proposed. Somewhat disgruntled, he settled for a “squeeze.” Each twin in turn was given a hug that squeezed a groan of air out of her, while the Major frowned and puffed at his pipe, wondering whether he shouldn’t intervene. But at last Mr Norton let them go and sat down gloomily to watch the Major’s clumsy efforts to do as the twins told him. For unfortunately the Major was a very poor dancer and found new steps difficult to acquire. Not that there was anything particularly difficult about the one-step or the foxtrot—they were remarkably like walking; the difficulty lay in matching his movements to those of his partner. He also sometimes had trouble