Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [210]
In the kitchen the Major’s face was as grey as oatmeal and the blood was flowing faster than ever, so that the old ladies were beside themselves with desperation. The sight of the blood all over the place would have been enough to make anyone quail, let alone an old lady who was not used to that sort of thing. But they hung on grimly, determined that the Major should live, come what might. By now they were pale and trembling themselves. Mrs Rice had already fainted, revived, fainted again, and now she was drinking a cup of tea to give her strength and courage. Meanwhile, where was that dratted doctor?
In due course the doctor awoke, refreshed by his nap, and remembered that he had been looking for a needle and that he had to stitch that young fool the Major, who had got himself into a scrape. He had told the silly ass to go while the going was good! He had known that something would happen. Only young fools would get themselves into trouble for nothing. And really, he thought, more disgruntled than ever, it was all for nothing! What purpose did anything serve? It all ended in the graveyard. He ought to know. He’d been to enough funerals in his time. And he tottered peevishly back to the kitchen, muttering: “People are insubstantial. They never last, they never last...”
“Of course they don’t!” snapped Miss Johnston. “If you treat them all like this!”
“Old women!” snorted the doctor petulantly, looking more senile than ever. But the hands with which he set to work were surprisingly deft and steady for such an old man.
Presently the Major, stitched, bandaged, and given some beef tea, had been tucked into bed and his body had at long last been allowed to start on the business of repairing itself. The four ladies had all locked themselves into one of the upstairs bedrooms for fear of being molested by that dreadful old man. The doctor, for similar reasons, had locked himself into his study, and soon everyone was fast asleep. By this time the sun had set and it had grown quite dark. But about an hour later, while down on the beach the young Cockney was being immersed for the third time, yet another sunset lit up the sky, for Murphy had at last realized that the cloud behind which the sun had disappeared was, in fact, a hill to the west. And so he had resorted to matches instead, having come upon a box in an old silk dressing-gown of Edward’s.
By the time the inhabitants of Kilnalough had noticed the glow in the sky and motored, ridden or walked out to the hotel, the Majestic was an inferno. Streams of fire the size of oak trees blossomed out of the windows of the upper storeys. Caterpillars of flame wriggled their way down the worn and threadbare carpets and sucked at the banisters and panelling until all the public rooms were ablaze. The heat grew so intense that the spectators were driven back with flushed faces, first to the edge of the gravel, then farther and farther back over the grass, which the heat quickly shrivelled to raffia—until at last they were standing right back among the trees, gazing with shaded eyes at the blinding magnificence of the burning Majestic. By now only the attics under the roof were recognizable, their windows still black and empty.
It was from these black windows that flaming, shrieking creatures suddenly began to leap—hundreds of them, seething out of the windows on to the gutters and leaping out into the darkness. Those not already ablaze exploded in mid-air or ignited like flares as they hurtled through the great heat towards the earth. Someone in the crowd remarked that it was like watching