Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [202]
The ladies tied aprons round their waists and put their diamond rings in a saucer on the sideboard while they kneaded the dough for apple pies or disembowelled chickens with trembling fingers. How exciting it was! If only the future had seemed less uncertain how they would have enjoyed this challenge to abilities which since girlhood, throughout all their long, dull and genteel lives, had lain dormant! Moved, the Major watched them at work, Miss Bagley’s rheumy eyes blurred by incipient cataracts, Miss Devere’s head permanently bent to one side, Miss Johnston unable to stand up for long because her ankles would swell, Mrs Rice stooped over the sink with the steam clouding her pince-nez, and all of them, without exception, forgetting things (“Now what was it I was going to do?”) and losing things (“Now where on earth did I put...?”) which very often turned out to be in front of their noses.
But then with a start, the Major would remember that he had letters to write, that he must telephone Dublin, that he must put an advertisement in the Irish Times...and many other things. In short, that he must continue to row furiously for the nearest land, for the boat continued to settle lower and lower in the water.
Unsavoury characters were noticed lurking among the trees (the Major remembered with nostalgia the “unsavoury character” they had hunted chuckling through the park on the afternoon he had first arrived). Worse, the ceiling of the writing-room descended with an appalling crash, ridden to the floor by the grand piano from the sitting-room above. For hours afterwards a thick white fog of plaster hung in the corridors, through which the inhabitants of the Majestic flitted like ghosts, gasping feebly.
* * *
PREMIER’S BID FOR PEACE
Proposed Conference in London Following
The King’s Appeal for Reconciliation
De Valera Invited by Lloyd George to London
Reuter’s Paris Correspondent telegraphed yesterday: “Commenting this morning on the letter addressed to Mr De Valera inviting him to attend a conference in London with Sir James Craig to explore to the utmost the possibility of a settlement of the Irish question, Le Petit Parisien lays special stress on the conciliatory and even friendly tone of the letter, which, in its opinion, marks a great and praiseworthy effort on the part of the British Government.”
* * *
Every now and then, just for a moment, the Major would rest on his oars, lost in thought. It was early summer, a delightful season. The smell of grass and wood lingered delightfully under the mild sky. On his way to fix a FOR SALE notice to one of the gateposts he strolled through a grove of silver birches; it was hard to believe that there was any malice in Ireland. For a moment he felt almost at peace; but then it occurred to him that a few inches below where he was standing the rotting carcase of Rover sat up and begged, encased in earth.
A letter arrived from Faith with the news that Charity had fallen in love with Mimi’s butler, Brown. But this was swiftly followed by a letter from Charity saying that it wasn’t true. Besides, Brown was a Socialist and had ideas above his station and would the Major send her some money (it was hopeless asking Daddy) as she desperately needed some new clothes? She and Faithy were ashamed to be seen out of doors in their dreadful Irish rags and tweeds and all the men they met absolutely had fits when they saw what scarecrows they were. Also could the Major afford to buy them a motor car? In London a motor car was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! Just a small one would do as they didn’t need anything big and it would only cost more. Mimi (Aunt Mildred) had crashed hers into a wall and the bally thing wouldn’t work any more. A frightful bore! But the clothes were the most important because they simply couldn’t wait