Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [187]
Weeping and shivering, a young girl in maid’s uniform, drenched to the skin, sat with her ankles in the torrent. The Major, still wearing his oilskins, had picked her up since she refused to move by herself and carried her back and down the other stairs to the kitchen, which was fortunately still warm and dry, depositing her without explanation on the kitchen table before the astonished, wild-eyed cook (who had never entertained a high opinion of the Major’s morals and sanity). Heaven only knew what she had thought!
He described the pertinent parts of this experience to Miss Bagley, and to Miss Johnston, Miss Devere (who had returned to the Majestic after a brief and unsatisfactory flirtation with the outside world) and Mrs Rice, who had come forward with similar grievances. And he listened carefully while they demanded with indignation whether it was a “free-for-all,” guests henceforth to “fight it out” with the servants for the use of bathrooms and other amenities; and said that no, of course not, that he was sure they wouldn’t want the poor servants to sleep out under the stars and catch pneumonia (even though, as the hastily arriving Miss Staveley had just pointed out, “they were only servants”) and that it was, again of course, only a temporary measure, while the roof of the servants’ wing was rebuilt. But they knew, and he knew, that the roof would never, this side of paradise, be rebuilt—which weakened his argument to some extent.
And all the time, even while he listened to the reassuring tones of his own voice, he could feel the extraordinary sloth of the hurt muscles of his smile, unable now to prevent himself from thinking of Bolton and Sarah making love. But perhaps, finally, the searing quality of this thought had a good effect. It helped to cauterize his festering emotions. At first he imagined that Sarah, with brutally parted thighs, was being violated—but later, simply worn out with caring, he became hard-hearted with this weakness and said to himself harshly: “Look, she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t enjoy it!”
True, Sarah was a woman. Therefore she was physically suited to accommodate men. There was no violation, except to the Major’s feelings.
On his way to bed the Major, who had by now stayed in so many different rooms at the Majestic that he very often became confused, absent-mindedly presented himself at the door of a room he had been occupying a few days earlier. In the light of a candle he was astonished to see a young girl standing naked by the wash-basin. Without embarrassment she turned and smiled at the startled Major—who withdrew with a hasty apology. There must be a new guest in the hotel whom he had not yet come across! But surely that was impossible, for nowadays the servants came directly to him for their instructions. He found the incident most puzzling.
He had reached his room (the right one this time) before he realized who this new guest must be. It was simply one of the maids who had been obliged to move out of the servants’ wing. And this was the very matter that he had spent the evening discussing with the old ladies.
Later, lying in bed, he mused: “She could have been a lady for all the difference there was...Of course, without clothes on everybody looks the same. They look just like we do.” And he remembered thinking on some occasion during the war how, with all the distinctions of class effaced, one dead body resembles another...and...and...
These democratic notions must have soothed him, for he began to feel drowsy.