Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [36]
There were two other ways in which he could find out about Angela: one was to ask Ripon, the other was to ask the doctor. But Ripon was plainly avoiding him (the Major’s brusque manner had evidently offended him) and, besides, he spent a great deal of time away from the Majestic. The doctor was another matter. He had taken to visiting every day now, usually in the morning or afternoon but sometimes even quite late at night. Long after the great building had been steeped for hours in darkness and silence and he had assumed everyone to be fast asleep the Major, sitting in the Imperial Bar with the tortoiseshell cat on his lap and reading a book with the oil lamp at his elbow, would hear the deep chug of the doctor’s motor as it swept up the drive spraying gravel. At the window he would see Edward leaving the porch with short, anxious steps, carrying a lantern to light the old man’s laborious progress from motor car to door.
These visits normally took a long time. The reason was that Dr Ryan, however alert his mind, had to cope with a body so old and worn out as to be scarcely animate. Watching him climb the stairs towards his patient was like watch-ing the hands of a clock: he moved so slowly that he might not have been moving at all. One day the Major saw him on his way upstairs, clinging to the banister as a snail clings to the bark of a tree. After he had smoked a cigarette and glanced through the newspaper he happened to pass through the foyer again and there was the doctor, still clinging to the banister and still apparently not moving, but nevertheless much nearer to the top. The Major shook his head and hoped that it was not an emergency.
After his visit to Angela (though no one admitted that this was the purpose of his ascent) the same process of clinging to the banister would be gone through in reverse. Afterwards he would doze in an armchair in the Palm Court or the residents’ lounge and around him would gather a group of chattering old ladies who looked, by contrast to his immense age, as sprightly and exuberant as young girls. And maybe, reflected the Major, in Dr Ryan’s presence they did become a little intoxicated with their youth again. He found it touching, this recovery of youth, and enjoyed hearing them chatter in this girlish and charming way and thought that, after all, there is not so very much difference between an old lady and a young girl, only a few years diluting the exuberance with weariness, sadness, and a great sensitivity to draughts.
However, the presence of the old ladies made it a little difficult for the Major to bring up the subject of Angela. And perhaps, too, the doctor resented their enjoyment of his extreme old age, because one day, after his usual ascent of the stairs, he was to be found in none of his usual haunts. Disconsolate, petulant and elderly, the ladies took their knitting from one room to another and back again...but in vain. The old man had disappeared.
The Major, however, soon came upon him (though by accident) while searching for the place where the tortoiseshell cat, who had grown suddenly and eloquently thinner, was hiding her kittens. He was dozing in a wicker chair in the breakfast room behind a great oriental screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl dragons, pagodas and sampans. Seizing his chance the Major said: “How is she, Doctor?”
“Eh?” The old man started guiltily. “Ah, it’s you.” Reaching out with a blue-veined, freckled hand, he dragged the Major down into another wicker chair at his side. “It’s nothing. Nothing serious. A chill. Touch of fever. But that’s nothing...It’s her future here in this town that I’m worried about. Her father has no guts. She’s a fine girl but what will become of her? She’s of a different metal from the rest.”
“I’m glad to hear it’s not serious,” replied the Major, surprised to hear the doctor say that Edward had no guts. There was a silence, broken at length by the doctor saying with a sigh: “Why are you young men so stupid?