Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [135]
“Missed him, did it?” he remarked brightly. “Well, that was a stroke of luck.”
“Hadn’t we better get a mason in to look the place over?”
“That’s a capital idea. I expect there’s some johnny in Kilnalough who does that sort of thing. I’ll get in touch with him.”
That night the Major dreamed that he was in a dirigible. The captain and crew had fallen overboard, leaving only Mrs Rice and himself. Later Mrs Rappaport appeared in the uniform of one of the Bavarian line regiments, together with her marmalade cat, now as big as a sheep. Fortunately she took command and, after bombing Dublin, brought them down safely.
There was no sign of the mason. Instead, a plump and pretty girl wearing a straw boater over her stiff pigtails came wobbling up the drive on a bicycle. It was Viola O’Neill, come to play with the twins. The twins gave her a desultory kiss on the cheek and led her away upstairs. As she went her eyes lingered disconcertingly on the Major, who was standing in the foyer listening sympathetically to an old gentleman in stockinged feet. The Major watched her slender white hand trail up spiral after spiral of the staircase and heaved a melancholy sigh. “Why couldn’t Sarah want me like that?”
“Do you have any idea where they would be?” the old gentleman asked crossly, not for the first time.
“Where what would be?” The Major’s mind had wandered again. “Oh yes, of course, you’ve lost your shoes. I’ll make inquiries.”
The old gentleman, a new arrival at the Majestic, had left his shoes outside his bedroom door. Not only had they not been cleaned, they had disappeared altogether! And all his other shoes were in a cabin trunk that had yet to be delivered from the railway station. The Major left him in the foyer and went to ask Murphy to ask the maids.
Later in the day, while hunting languidly for the shoes along one of the upper landings, he opened a door and was greeted by cries of surprise and dismay: through a blue mist of cigarette-smoke he perceived three figures in petticoats. He closed the door again discreetly. He was shocked, however, and thought: “I must tell Edward. If those girls go on the way they’re going....” But he was annoyed with Edward and did not see why he should have to bring up his daughters for him; let him see to it himself! Besides, young women these days...
The matter of the shoes was cleared up in the course of the afternoon. It seemed that the cook, on her way down to prepare breakfast, had noticed them outside the gentleman’s door and had naturally supposed that he was throwing them away—a perfectly good pair of shoes! She had picked them up and given them to Seán Murphy, who had been digging energetically in them all morning.
At the end of the first week of December Padraig was also sent up to the Majestic to visit the twins, not by old Dr Ryan but by his father who, it turned out, was not only a staunch Unionist but something of a snob into the bargain. The Major intercepted Padraig (who was looking pale and anxious—it was clear he had little appetite for visiting the twins) to ask him about his grandfather.
“Oh, he’s well enough. I don’t see him so much now. He has a cook and a maid but he’ll hardly let anyone into the house.”
“Is he still not speaking to your parents?”
Padraig nodded. “He’s very stubborn and bad-tempered.
“He’s told my father he’s a traitor to Ireland for approving the British the way he does.”
“I didn’t know he was a Sinn Feiner.”
“Ah, you wouldn’t mind him,” Padraig said, his eyes flickering uneasily to the landing above, where three pretty faces had appeared over the banister. “He’s very old.”
“Well, here’s your guest,” the Major called up sternly. “I hope you’ll look after him properly and behave yourselves.”
Padraig mounted the stairs as if under sentence of death, was seized by the girls and whisked away. The Major went about his business.
Curiously enough, Padraig seemed to enjoy himself. He reappeared on the following day looking cheerful and confident, then again on