Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [209]
And as he shuffled from one silent, deserted room to another he watered the carpets with the liquid from the watering-can he was carrying; he sprinkled everything with it, the flowers on the curtains and the coronets on the faded red carpet in the corridor. He soaked the bedding with it and poured it into empty drawers and cupboards, crooning gently all the time. When he came upon a pair of long-abandoned ladies’ shoes in a dusty drawing-room, chuckling, he filled them till they were brimming. Several times he padded slowly down the creaking stairs to fill his watering-can from the tank in the garage. Then the sound of his wheezing breath would alert the cats to the fact that their friend Murphy was back amongst them once more and they would all come galloping up, postponing whatever they had been doing—their bloody territorial battles in the attics or their fierce and appalling carnal endeavours on the battlements.
“Pussies!” Murphy would mutter. “Have a sup now, will ye?”
And he would sprinkle the seething quadrupeds until their fur became slick and oily (and the cats inside the fur became definitely displeased). Lick themselves though they might, there was nothing that would make their fur return to normal; howling with grief they slunk away, sticky and wretched.
“Dead!” said Murphy, standing in a patch of afternoon sunlight. “Sure I’ll drink to that...” And gripping the watering-can, he raised it to his blue lips and began to gulp, pausing every now and then to make a smacking sound, it tasted so good.
“Now then, where’re me matches?”
Wearily he turned out his pockets. On to the floor he dropped, one after another, a penknife, a raw potato with a bite out of it, two silver teaspoons, a devotional communication from the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, a ball of twine, a lump of tobacco, and a dead thrush. But no matches! Murphy scowled and popped the tobacco into his mouth, chewing morosely until he remembered how he used to make fire without matches as a boy. Once more he descended the creaking stairs, this time to Edward’s study where he had seen a magnifying glass. Then up to the sunlight on the fourth floor where he trained the blazing golden eye on a piece of paper. Just as it was beginning to smoke, however, the sun passed behind a cloud. Murphy took another drink and sat down to wait impatiently for it to reappear.
The Major was not yet dead, however, though by now not very far from it. He was about a mile and a half from the Majestic, lying on Dr Ryan’s kitchen table. The old ladies would never have had the strength to transport him here by themselves. Fortunately they had come upon Seán Murphy who, although he had gone into hiding, had been unable to resist lurking in the vicinity of his familiar potato diggings. At first he had seemed too frightened of the I.R.A. to help, but a brief conversation had convinced him that he was even more terrified of Miss Johnston. So the limp Major had been trundled up to the house in a wheelbarrow and then put in the Standard. The journey had reopened his wound, however, and now as he lay on the table he was once more bleeding copiously.
While the ladies were trying to staunch the flow of blood with towels the doctor, who was tired and upset by this sudden invasion, wandered away to look for a needle with which to stitch the wound. “Ach, old women! What a fuss they make! Always making a fuss, always talking, gossiping, good for nothing except drinking tea and causing trouble.” It annoyed him to think that he had once actively sought the company of these creatures. What a young fool he must have been! he was thinking as he rummaged through the instruments scattered on his desk (now what was it he was looking for?). A young man is better off minding his studies. The musty, faded smell of old women drifted up out of his imagination as he slumped wearily in his armchair beside the empty grate. Women! Ah, his wife had been different of course, yes, but that had been many years ago. Years before the rise of the new Ireland. The new Ireland would