Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [100]
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 reliable) and the withholding of grants to local authorities which refused to discharge their obligations—the Major did not think for a moment that this would restore order in Ireland. Nor perhaps did the old ladies, for none of them looked in the least cheered as, with quivering cheeks, they read about it. On the first of September the partridge season opened. Birds were reported to be numerous.
One morning the Major and Edward found themselves standing in the potato field which lay within the boundary wall of the Majestic on the far side of the orchard. They stood there in silence, looking round at the rows of green plants in which stark, mysterious craters had begun to appear overnight, like the empty sockets of missing teeth.
“They’re even climbing the wall now. Next thing we know they’ll be sitting down at the table with us.”
“They have nothing to eat. What d’you expect?”
“It’s not my fault they have nothing to eat.”
“Oh, I know that. All I’m saying is that you can’t expect someone willingly to starve to death. What would you do in their shoes?”
“Don’t be absurd, Brendan. I wouldn’t allow myself to get into such a mess in the first place.”
The Major turned away to watch the crows flapping in lazy circles, looking for some nourishment from the newly turned soil. Between himself and Edward there was a long, dissatisfied silence.
Early in the afternoon the weak sunshine was masked with cloud, the sky crept nearer to the treetops and a drizzle began to fall. The warm, clammy breath of autumn hung by the still open windows, but Edward, with absent-minded munificence, called for turf and log fires to be lit. It was not so much against the chill in the air as against the melancholy; everyone was touched by it. By half past four it was already quite dark outside, thanks to the drizzle. The Major, transfixed by sadness, was slumped in an armchair in the gun room with his elbows on a level with his ears, gazing into the fire or watching its reflection flicker in the shining, varnished scales of an immense stuffed pike. In the hotel’s heyday this pike had succumbed to a gentleman with a title, name and date illegibly inscribed with spidery flourishes on a brass plate, and now it rested on the mantelpiece, its small, vicious mouth frozen open in impotent rage and despair.
The ladies never came into this room; it was a masculine preserve. In Ireland, of course, the distinction between the sexes had become blurred in recent years. Many young women were crack shots, the Major had heard, and would fire off both barrels without batting an