The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [99]
“I remember. Only the whiskey drinkers survived.”
“That’s right. Well, it’s probably just a coincidence but the fellow I spoke to on the telephone was quite definitely tipsy...in fact, he was as drunk as a lord!”
Part Two: Troubles
THE TUAM MURDERS
Preaching in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, Tuam, on Sunday, the Most Rev. Dr Gilmartin said that he came to sympathize with the people of Tuam in the sickening horror and terror of last week. A foul murder of two policemen was committed within three miles of the town on the previous Monday evening. Had no reprisals been taken, he said, there would be a great wave of sympathy with the police. Commenting on the wrecking of the town, His Grace said that he need not add that one crime did not justify another...in this case the police had taken a terrible revenge on an innocent town. No matter from what quarter the encouragement came, the policemen committed a fearful crime in gutting a sleeping town with shot and fire. The town was vengefully and ruthlessly sacked by the official guardians of the peace, and if the Government did not make immediate compensation and reparation for the damage done, the sense of crying injustice would remain as a further menace to peace and good will.
* * *
All this time the hotel building continued its imperceptible slide towards ruin. The Major, though, like Edward, had almost come to terms with living beneath this spreading umbrella of decay. After all, the difference between expecting something to last for ever and expecting something, on the contrary, not to last for ever, the Major told himself, was not so very great. It was simply a question of getting used to the idea. Thus, when he put his foot through a floorboard in the carpeted corridor of the fourth floor, which these days hardly anyone ever visited, he sprang nimbly aside (the carpet had prevented him from making a sudden appearance on the floor below) with a muttered oath and the thought: “Dry rot!” But a glance at the ceiling was enough to tell him that for all he knew it might just as easily be wet rot. He informed Edward, of course. Edward sighed and said he would “consider the matter.” In the meantime the Major set about adapting himself to the fact that he was living in a building with rot, of one sort or another, in the upper storeys.
On another occasion, while leaning with his hands on a wash-basin and gazing in contemplation of his freshly shaved cheeks, he felt the basin slowly yield under his weight. It slid away from the wall, twisting the lead pipes so that it hung upside down and emptied a deluge of water over his slippered feet. For a few moments the plug swung gently to and fro on its chain like a clock pendulum. The Major dried his feet carefully and moved his belongings next door. This was by no means his first move. Since the episode of the decaying sheep’s head on his first visit he had moved a number of times for one reason or another.
It was true that the Major had the advantage of already having become accustomed during the war to an atmo-sphere of change, insecurity and decay. For the old ladies, on the other hand, who had lived all their lives with solid ground underfoot and a reliable roof overhead, it must have been a different matter. The Major sometimes lurked in the residents’ lounge, spying on them as they read of the day’s disasters in the newspaper. What must they be thinking as they read that a patrol of a dozen soldiers had been attacked in broad daylight between College Green and Westmoreland Street? The very heart of Imperial Dublin! In July alone there had been twenty-two people murdered and fifty-seven wounded, the majority of them policemen. While the Manchester Regiment suffered heavy losses in Mesopotamia (but there had always been some corner of the Empire where His Majesty’s subjects were causing trouble) were they relieved and gratified to read, that August, of the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act? Trial by court-martial (since locally conscripted juries had long ceased to be