The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [94]
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
A match flared and dipped towards the branched candle-stick, lighting first one candle, then the other. It was Edward, haggard, in a dressing-gown.
“Ah!” exclaimed the Major joyfully. “I was just going to ask you something...” He stopped, unable to think what it was.
Edward threw open the window. With his hands on the sill he leaned out. Gradually coming to his senses, the Major sleepily pulled on his bedroom slippers and reached for his dressing-gown. Even before he reached the window he had begun to realize that something was wrong. He had not been asleep long enough; it was too dark for it to be dawn. He stared past Edward’s head at the distant lake of flame. The cornfields were blazing furiously on each side of the valley beyond the sloping ridge. All around them the blackness was perfect and impenetrable.
“Did you do this?”
“Don’t be a damn fool!”
“But why should they?”
“How the devil should I know?”
By now there was nothing to do but watch it burn. It took hardly any time at all.
Now in the Prussian officer’s field-glasses there was no waving corn to be seen, only an expanse of blackened earth. Here and there, where the corn had been still a trifle green, the stalks had not burned to the ground but stood up in scabrous rings and patches, making the Major think of the worm-eaten scalps of young boys whom he had seen trailing round the golf-links. “The wanton burning of food,” he thought. “As senseless as the plague.” Word had spread in the neighbourhood that Edward had burned the crop himself so that the country people should not have it. The Major guiltily remembered that this had been his own first thought and would have liked to make amends, particularly as Edward had taken on his disabused air.
“Naturally everyone thinks me capable of burning my own crops,” he said wryly to the Major. “Why, I’ll burn the blessed house down out of spite one of these days, I shouldn’t be surprised.” And he went off chortling grimly.
But if Edward had not set fire to the field, who had? Surely not the peasants themselves, they needed the corn too badly.
“Brendan, you’re not listening!”
“Yes, I am. I’ve heard every word you said. It’s about a bathing-costume.”
And still, it could have been an accident, a dropped match, perhaps, or a smouldering cigarette. Or perhaps it was one of those spontaneous fires that sometimes occur in hot weather, a fragment of broken glass catching the rays of the sun, or some such thing.
“Brendan, do you understand, we want eightpence. You’re not listening again!”
“Yes, I am. What d’you want eightpence for?”
“Oh, how many times have we got to tell you? For the pattern. Read it to him again, and for heaven’s sake listen this time!”
“‘Bathing-Suit 1149 (a Practical Bathing-Suit). This is a remarkably simple pattern. The knickers are cut in one piece and joined on to a plain bodice, while the overdress is on the lines of a coat-frock, with a back...’”
(In summer such fires are always possible. There had been a spell of warm, dry weather; the earth was brittle and broke into powder underfoot. But the Major did not really believe that it had been caused accidentally. It had started in the middle of the night and no fire was ever generated by the rays of the moon. Edward was convinced that it was the work of the Sinn Feiners, who were anxious to turn the peasants against him. If they became hungry enough they could be persuaded to do anything. It seemed the only realistic explanation.)
“‘...with a back, front, short sleeve, and straight stole collar. A plain belt buttoned over in front holds in the fullness round the waist, and gives the suit a neat finishing touch. (To the knee, with shoes and a cap.) Pattern eightpence.’”
“But why tell me all this?”
“Faithy, I swear that I’ll kill him if he says that just once more...Because we want eightpence to buy the blessed pattern with!”
“Certainly,” chuckled the Major, fumbling in his pocket. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
The Major had not yet managed to divest himself of his peculiar habit of patrolling