• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1067 0

eyelid. Someone he knew had a niece who was a fast bowler. Another girl, the young sister of one of his army friends, had been given a rhinoceros-hide whip for her sixteenth birthday; by the time she was eighteen she could flick a cigar out of a man’s lips at twenty paces. And of course there was the Countess Markievicz who day and night wore a pistol on her hip, it was said, and thought nothing of shooting a man between the eyes. He had heard, too, that these days girls smoked cigars and drank port. But all that was the younger generation. Older ladies had been brought up with different ideas on how it was seemly to behave. It was rather a relief to know that here in the gun room he was protected from them—because after all, he couldn’t spend all his life with old ladies. Of course, young ladies (if there had been any) would not think twice about barging in here for a smoke and a chat. But against them the Major did not particularly feel he wanted to be protected.

He sighed. He had been avoiding the Majestic’s ladies all day. This evening they would feel they had been neglected. At dinner he would very likely be snubbed by Miss Staveley. He would receive vinegary glances from some of the others. It had happened before.

Edward came in and sat down in an armchair beside him. Having taken a spill from a pewter mug on the mantelpiece, he proceeded to light his pipe, saying between puffs that he would be going up to town tomorrow to see Ripon, was there anything the Major wanted?

“No thanks.”

“Sarah has to see her doctor, so I may as well give her a lift. Save her the train journey.”

The Major sighed enviously, thinking how much he would like to motor up to Dublin in Sarah’s company. There would be room for him in the Daimler, moreover. But Edward showed no sign of inviting him to join them and for some reason he felt unable to broach the subject. He sighed again, disgruntled. She was only a friend, of course. The pike’s small bad-tempered mouth and wicked teeth expressed his mood to perfection.

“Will it be safe travelling by yourselves?”

“Oh, I should think so,” Edward replied blandly. After a moment he added reflectively: “What a state the country’s in! You know, Brendan, I sometimes think ‘to hell with them all’...The way they’ve ruined life in this country I sometimes feel that I’d welcome a holocaust. Since they want destruction, give it to them. I’d like to see everything smashed and in ruins so that they really taste what destruction means. Things have gone so far in Ireland now that that’s the only way they can be settled with justice, by reducing everything to rubble. D’you understand what I mean?”

“No,” said the Major sourly.

After Edward had left for Dublin on the following morning the Major took a walk with Rover (who was getting old, poor dog) as far as the summer house and then looked back across the lawns towards the Majestic. How dilapidated it looked from this angle! The great chimneys towering over the hulk of wood and stone gave it the appearance of a beached Dreadnought. The ivy had begun to grow, to spread greedily over the vast, many-windowed wall adjacent to the Palm Court...indeed, it appeared to spread out from the Palm Court itself, through a broken pane in the roof: one could just make out a trunk which emerged thick and hairy as a man’s thigh before advancing multifingered over the stone. Rusting drainpipes bulged on the southern walls like varicose veins. “Maybe,” thought the Major, “the ivy will help hold the place together for a bit longer.”

Ripon stood beside the statue of Queen Victoria with one elegantly shod foot on the running-board of a shining Rolls-Royce. His eyes shielded by a tweed cap, he was staring up uncertainly at the windows of the first floor. His manner, the Major thought, was oddly furtive as he started towards the front steps. He stopped abruptly when he saw the Major and seemed disconcerted.

“Oh hello.”

“Hello.”

“Didn’t know you were back here. Thought I’d just drop in...”

“Your father’s not at home. In fact, I understand that he’s planning to visit you today.