Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [108]
Of the gentlemen only the tutor, summoned from his room above the kitchens to make up the numbers, seemed ill at ease, perhaps because Miss Bagley was cross at being given him as a partner: after all, he was “practically one of the servants,” she whispered to the unsympathetic Major when they found themselves at the same table. She watched him like a hawk and rebuked him sharply if his attention appeared to wander, calling him “partner” with bitter irony. A faint flush crept up Evans’s pale pocked cheeks. The Major sighed, feeling sorry for the man (Miss Bagley, besides, was by no means his favourite among the old ladies), but at the same time he was irritated. After all, the fellow could surely afford to buy himself a new collar or two to replace the thing like a dish-rag that he was wearing.
Old Mrs Rappaport was blind, of course, and so could not play. She sat on a straight-backed chair by the fire, glum and disapproving, refusing to admit that she was comfortable and warm enough, refusing to answer the pleasant remarks that were spoken into one ear or another as the winning players shuffled past her in the periodic changing of tables. Shortly before tea was served, a thickset marmalade cat (which the Major thought he recognized as a former inhabitant of the Imperial Bar) emerged from the forest of chair- and table-legs and jumped on to her lap. It was greeted with cries of surprise. Where had it come from? Windows and doors were shut. The room had been diligently searched beforehand. There was a fire in the fireplace, so it could hardly have come down the chimney (a favourite trick of the cats at the Majestic), it was absolutely impossible that the beast could have got in...yet here it was! The Major, as it happened, knew the answer to this problem. He had earlier noticed that evil, orange, horridly whiskered head poking itself out of a rent in the side of a massive velvet sofa on the far side of the room. The creature presumably lived in there. The Major took a perverse pleasure in keeping this knowledge to himself, merely smiling in a superior way at the general bafflement. Nor did he relent when Mr Norton genuinely alarmed some of the ladies by saying that there must be a witch in the room, that the cat was quite plainly a witch’s familiar and that he for one had already had a spell put on him by one of the ladies present (he glanced roguishly at Sarah and attempted to place a trembling hand on her knee). A witch in the room! The ladies laughed nervously and tried to avoid looking too plainly into each other’s haggard, wrinkled faces.
“What piffle,” said Edward. “We’ll soon get rid of the animal.” And getting to his feet he made to remove the cat from Mrs Rappaport’s lap. But she would have none of it, demanding petulantly that “her” cat should be left in peace. She even went so far as to call it “Pussy”; the cat narrowed its acid green eyes and flexed its claws, which were as sharp as hatpins.
“You’re all enjoying yourselves,” she cried. “I just sit here...I don’t know, why haven’t I got any tea?”
“No one has yet,” Edward soothed her. “Tea will be served in a few minutes.”
Mrs Rappaport sniffed ill-temperedly. The attempt to remove the cat was abandoned and it remained where it was, relaxed but alert, flicking its tail from time to time as it watched the swaying feathers and nodding plumes of the ladies’ hats.
After tea the Major sank into a nightmarish daze in which it no longer seemed to matter when Mrs Rice played an ace or a trump to make doubly sure of tricks he had already won. He even gave up trying to win enough tricks to progress to the next table where Sarah and Edward had been losing steadily for some time;