Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [169]
Charity was rolled on to her front, so that the eye-hooks that meandered up her spine could be unfastened one by one...but then something became stuck in front, so she had to be rolled on to her back, then on to her front again so that half a dozen white laces in granny-knots could be untied. Next he had to work his forearm under her stomach in order to lift her off the bed an inch or two, with the other hand trying to work the clumsy hooped skirt upwards...but he found this too difficult and had to stop and scratch his head in perplexity. It was clear that the only way was to roll her backwards and forwards working the skirt up a few inches at a time.
Each time he rolled her over Charity groaned, dreaming that she was crossing the Irish Sea to school in a black gale; giant waves swept her up and down, up and down...Of course she was never seasick...it would be too shaming if she was sick...but what if the boat began to sink? Up and down, up and down...Ah, no wonder it hadn’t been moving, Matthews was thinking, there were a million pins he hadn’t even noticed, he must be losing his touch...Now over she goes again, a firm shove on the hip and on the shoulder and...“No, no, straighten out your legs,” he muttered crossly. “We’ll get nowhere like that...It’ll take us all night.”
The temperature had been dropping steadily as the night wore on. By now it was freezing in the room. His fingers were stiff with the cold and lacked their usual dexterity, but he worked on without a pause. In a moment the first layer of clothing would be lying on the carpet. After that, things should go more smoothly.
Next door it was cold as well; at least Faith thought so. She was sitting in bed with her knees up to her chin, naked and shivering. The room was pitch-dark except for a faint orange glow that leaked under the communicating door from the oil lamp by which Matthews was working. Mortimer was striding up and down in the darkness. Although she could not see him she could tell more or less where he was by the sound of his voice and the creak of the floor-boards.
For some minutes he had been telling her about a master at school who had got drunk on Speech Day. Young, handsome, courteous, artistic, a wonderful athlete, the whole school had loved him from the loftiest prefect to the most insignificant fag until that day when he had gone weaving across the quad in gown and mortarboard shouting that the Matron was a flabby old bitch before the horrified eyes of a lot of chaps’ parents...But Faith’s teeth were chattering and try as she might she was unable to see the relevance of this story to their present situation. Was Mortimer trying to say that he was drunk? No, it couldn’t be that. But what was it, then? Having failed, together with Charity and Viola, to understand and identify on her own person a fair proportion of the technical terms used in the brown-paper-wrapped book that Matthews had lent them, she was vague about what exactly was supposed to happen to begin with; but instinct told her that this sort of preamble was not necessary. Perhaps she had got undressed too promptly? On the other hand, what else was there to do? If only there had been a light burning she might have been able to see his face and get some clue as to what he was thinking. Mortimer had refused even to permit a candle to be lit. He had become hysterical when she had struck a match to see where the bed was. After that she had had to grope her way towards it in the dark. The whole thing was turning out to be decidedly odd and a much bigger bore than she had anticipated. Discouraged, she dolefully rested her trembling chin on her knees and wondered whether it wouldn’t be best to give it up and start slipping on a few clothes again.
Mortimer was now telling her in a rapid, high voice about a fellow in the army who had gone for a trip on a whaler before the war, all those mountains of blubber, cutting through the mountains of blubber with flensing-knives! Ah, he could have done with a flensing-knife himself...The truth was that he