Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [131]
“If it is necessary to have further powers we shall seek them (Hear, hear), for civilization cannot permit a defiance of this kind of the elementary rules of its existence (Hear, hear). These men who indulge in these murders say it is war. If it is war, they, at any rate, cannot complain if we apply some of the rules of war (Loud cheers). In war if men come in civilian clothes behind your lines armed with murderous weapons, intending to use them whenever they can do so with impunity, they are summarily dealt with (Hear, hear). Men who carry explosive bullets are summarily dealt with in war. If it is war, the rules of war must apply. But until this conspiracy is suppressed there is no hope of real peace or conciliation in Ireland and everyone desires peace and conciliation—on fair terms—fair to Ireland, yes, but fair to Britain (Hear, hear). We are offering Ireland not subjection but equality. We are offering Ireland not servitude, but a partnership. An honourable partnership, a partnership in that Empire at the height of its power, a partnership in that Empire in the greatest day of its glory.” (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
* * *
The Major should have left for Italy now, but he did not, of course. A letter arrived for him from Cook’s answering a variety of questions about trains, hotels and steamers which he could no longer remember having asked. He dutifully read it through twice, but five minutes later he was unable to recall a single word. By this time it was almost the end of November. Icy draughts played around the rooms and corridors of the Majestic and sent their freezing breath up the legs of his trousers as he sat in the lounge.
After some deliberation he wrote Sarah a letter asking if they could meet some time to talk things over—but she did not reply. Presently, he wrote her another letter saying that whatever her virtues, constancy was not one of them (not that she had ever claimed that it was). The only conclusion he could come to, he concluded, was that she was simply a plain, old-fashioned flirt, which was fine, of course, if that was what she wanted to be. A little later he wrote yet another letter disclaiming the one before, which, he regretted to say, had been written in a spirit of bitterness. Neither of these subsequent letters achieved a reply, however, and he thought: “All I’ve managed to do is to have an argument with myself in these letters. She’ll think me quite mad.” And he forbade himself to write any more. At the very end of November, while getting dressed one morning, he became extremely depressed and one by one the buttons dropped off his shirt, like leaves off a dying plant.
This was also a bad time for Rover, who was gradually being supplanted as the favourite among the harem of dogs. By degrees he was going blind; his eyes had turned to milky blue and he sometimes collided with the furniture. The smells he emitted while sitting at the feet of the whist-players became steadily more redolent of putrefaction. Like the Major, Rover had always enjoyed trotting from one room to another, prowling the corridors on this floor or that. But now, whenever he ventured up the stairs to nose around the upper storeys, as likely as not he would be set upon by an implacable horde of cats and chased up and down the corridors to the brink of exhaustion. More than once the Major found him, wheezing and spent, tumbling in terror down a flight of stairs from some shadowy menace on the landing above. Soon he got into the habit of growling whenever he saw a shadow... then, as the shadows gathered with his progressively failing sight, he would rouse himself and bark fearfully even in the broadest of daylight, gripped by remorseless nightmares. Day by day, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, the cat-filled darkness continued to creep a little closer.
To share his place another dog had been summoned from the yard, a spindle-legged Afghan hound with pretty golden curls. Little by little this animal usurped the affection dedicated to Rover. True, he