Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [156]
The maid, Faith and Charity were all looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to work a miracle. He dropped his eyes from the glinting diamond pendant the old lady wore around her withered neck and with a sigh fixed them on the worn leather holster she had strapped around her velvet waist. Pulling up a chair, he sat down opposite her, repeating in a reassuring tone that there was really no danger, none at all. Moreover, even if there had been any danger, a whole platoon of young policemen were among the guests. Let a Shinner so much as sneeze out of place and hey presto! he would find himself handcuffed to the nearest grand piano in a brace of shakes.
“Oh do talk sense, Brendan,” pleaded Faith, close to tears. “She hasn’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about. Can’t you be firm with her? The ball is going to be over before we’ve even found anyone to dance with...”
“Look here, I’m doing my best,” replied the Major, offended. “Besides, if you will interrupt me...Why don’t you both go downstairs and send Miss Archer up here. She’ll know what to do, I expect. Or Mrs Roche if you can’t find Miss Archer.”
The twins required no second bidding. They squeezed their crinolines through the doorway and raced ballooning down the stairs three at a time. The Major turned back to Mrs Rappaport. Few new notions succeeded in getting through to her these days, but when one did it tended to preoccupy her. All the more unlucky, therefore, that when someone had happened to mention the “troubles” to her a day or two earlier, her mind had been sent back to heaven only knew what lonely Indian station out in the middle of nowhere with a vociferous, gesticulating, hopelessly untrustworthy rabble of natives at the gates; the women had had to be armed, taught how to use a revolver and reminded to save the last shot for themselves. Now, sixty years later, on the one night in years that it mattered, the old lady had remembered her elementary weapon training, found her departed husband’s revolver and, thin lips quivering, buckled it on.
As the Major reasoned with her gently, and drew his chair closer with the intention of disarming her when the time was ripe, the hideous marmalade cat leaped nimbly out of the hat-box in which it had been sleeping, stretched luxuriously, and bunched itself to jump into the old lady’s lap. There it settled, obscuring the buckle which the Major had been hoping to undo. It fixed the Major with a bitter, hostile gaze. The situation seemed hopeless. But at that moment there was a knock on the door and Miss Archer came in, followed by Mrs Roche, both looking serene and capable.
“She mustn’t be allowed to go downstairs wearing it or the twins will die of mortification,” the Major explained, and then hurried away, leaving the matter in their hands.
Since Edward’s moment of inspiration as he roamed the building by candlelight a month or so earlier a great deal of work had been done at the Majestic. It was on a new carpet with new rods that the Major’s patent-leather dancing shoes were now treading as he made his way downstairs, thick and blood-red (which was a good thing since the farther down the stairs they had gone the more copiously had the sack of cats oozed its morbid liquid). True, this carpet came to an abrupt end on reaching the first landing and gave way to the old threadbare and faded one—but in theory it might have come to an end just round the first bend of the banister, the last point that could be glimpsed from any part of the foyer unless one stood on a chair. It was a tribute to Edward’s generous nature that no such parsimonious thought had occurred to him. Besides, although guests do sometimes climb stairs uninvited, out of curiosity, they really had no business going up there at all.
The Major paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs and surveyed the foyer, which, though now empty, was brilliantly lit, first by the crude blaze of the torch which had been lifted out of its iron bracket by the stairs,