Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [206]
Someone had been here recently. Dust hung in the air and, where the sun touched it, blazed like a furnace. On each side the towering banks of hay had a grey look, as if cut many years ago and abandoned. But there was no one here now. He cautiously backed down the ladder. “I could look for him here for ever and not find him.”
He continued, however, to move through a succession of courtyards, past the well and the pump, towards the apple house, of which the door also stood open. It was here that the superfluity of the Majestic’s huge apple crop was stored: windfalls and “cookers” for the most part. At the time of the Major’s first visit they had been piled on top of each other, bruised and rotting, to within a few feet of the roof; but in the interim the cook had made her daily visit to fill a coal-scuttle with apples for pies and desserts (and perhaps the old crones in black had also been filling their flour sacks). The result was that a hollow had been scooped out of this ocean of apples, a valley that built up from knee height to shadowy slopes reaching well above the Major’s head. There was silence here too, and a pungent smell of rotting fruit. “In a few weeks,” the Major was thinking, “this place will be so full of wasps that one won’t be able to get near it...But then, in a few weeks will it matter any longer?” And he took a few steps forward into the gloom. As he did so there was a convulsion of the shadows behind him and he pitched forward into the apples. Losing consciousness, he was aware that the apples had begun to roll; a great avalanche of apples thundered down on him and buried him in blackness. But he was not dead yet, so he had to be dragged out by the heels.
The Major was left lying on the ground for a few moments while his wrists were tied behind his back. When he was picked up again a pool of blood was left in the place where he had lain. All the way down the steps from one terrace to the next, past the black and silent swimming-pool with its skeletal diving-board, past the derelict tennis courts and the empty weather-beaten urns that lined the route like grim sentinels, blood continued to splash every few paces. Presently the lowest terrace was reached. Then the Major’s limp body was conveyed lower still, on to the rocks, and from there with considerable difficulty was handed down to the beach.
Some distance away was the young Black and Tan whom the Major had been attempting to summon for tea. Bound, gagged and, like the Major, scarcely conscious, he had been buried up to his neck in the sand, ready for the incoming tide. His head was lolling to one side and he did not raise it as the sound of clinking pebbles drew nearer and came to a halt beside him. His eyes were closed, his young face had a peaceful expression, and his breathing was slow and steady.
Beside the Black and Tan a hole was begun for the Major; but before it was more than two feet deep the digging spade rang against rock and this hole had to be abandoned. The spit of sand was narrow, the shape of a blade pointing towards the sea. Since the Black and Tan already occupied the only suitable position another hole was dug a few yards farther back. This time there was no impediment.
When the new hole was deep enough the Major’s limp body was lowered into it and the crook of a walking-stick was used to drag his bound ankles back into a kneeling position. A heavy rock was then laid on the back of his calves, packed down with smaller stones and covered with sand. By this time only his head remained visible.
His wound had stopped bleeding now but he was still