Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [126]
The wind that had been blowing since early morning continued without slackening throughout the afternoon, a solid rushing of air that kept the branches of the trees pinned back and combed the grass flat on the hill-slope where the Major was standing. The wind sifted through Captain Bolton’s short fair hair and ballooned the jacket of his tunic as he sat on a shooting-stick, peering through binoculars. His wind-swollen shoulders gave him the appearance of a hunchback. After a moment he dropped the binoculars, removed the leather thong from round his neck and, without a word, handed them to the Major. The Major raised them to his eyes and looked down the slope towards the sea.
“Funny thing,” Bolton mused. “I never cared much for the Irish even before all this. An uncouth lot. More like animals than human beings...used to make me sick sometimes, just watching them eat.”
The Major had by now focused the binoculars on the seminary, which stood beside a rocky promontory. The crowd had assembled in a meadow in front of the grey stone campanile, whose bell, moved by the wind, struck an irregular, querulous chime, scarcely audible at this distance.
“I hope they all get rheumatism from kneeling in the wet grass.”
“They’re standing up again now. A young man is making a speech by the look of it.”
“Let’s have a look.” Bolton took the glasses, looked through them briefly and handed them back.
Even though earlier in the afternoon he had seen the roads packed with people and carriages, the Major was astonished by the size of the crowd. With the foreshortening of perspective the heads seemed to be piled one on top of another. A number of women stood on the fringes of the crowd and three or four carts in which invalids lay propped on mattresses had been dragged over the rough ground to the front of the seminary so that they could hear the speaker. At the upper windows of the seminary building white-faced boys craned to hear, grasping the heavy iron bars for support, while on the steps a group of black-skirted priests stood and stared and cupped their ears into the rushing gale of air. The young man now stood way out by himself on a jetty of rock that ran some distance into the sea.
He had a strong jaw above a thick, muscled neck in which the Major imagined he could see veins starting out, bulging furiously as the mouth opened and closed to articulate his soundless words of rage. He stood on a level a little below that of the listening crowd and the wind from the sea blew his matted hair forward over his face.
“Are we going down there?”
“You can go if you like, but I prefer not to get a bullet in the spine if I can help it.” Bolton stared mockingly at the Major and then went on: “I get fed up, you understand, with all the heroes in the Golf Club. You must excuse me for not being able to resist calling their bluff from time to time.”
“I see.”
“Sarah Devlin was telling me the other day what a fine man Edward Spencer is. A man of courage and principles who would never be capable of a cowardly or unworthy act—a real gentleman, in fact. She compared him favourably with me, a ruthless and unprincipled fellow whose men harass innocent people, burn their houses and destroy their property as the whim takes them.”
“What she says is true, isn’t it?”
Bolton smiled and picked up a dry twig, snapping it thoughtfully into small pieces between his fingers. “I do whatever the situation requires, Major. What I tried to explain to Sarah was that people like you and Edward can only afford to have fine feelings because you have someone like me to do your dirty work for you. I become a little upset when people who rely on me to stop them being murdered in their beds start giving themselves superior moral airs.”
“As a matter of fact I think you’re wrong about Edward. If anything he supports reprisals.”
“Perhaps, but without dirtying his own hands with them. That makes all the difference.”
The Major raised the binoculars and gazed once more at the young man on the rock jetty, wondering what he was saying to the crowd. Behind