Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [37]
“Brendan Archer.”
“He’s as spineless as jelly. What’ll become of the girl? Ireland is no place for a girl like her with a bit of spirit...”
The doctor’s eyelids stole down over his eyeballs and he slept, or seemed to sleep. The Major told himself that this was the news he had been waiting for, that he was liberated, that since Angela was only suffering from a chill she would surely be up and about again in a day or two so that everything could be settled. He got to his feet quietly so as not to disturb Dr Ryan, but the old man was awake and watch-ing him.
“Don’t tell them where I am, Mr Archer. Ach! Old women!” And he chuckled faintly, with disgust. “She’s the only one worth a farthing in the whole of County Wexford,” he muttered, half to himself. “What fools!” He paused and sighed heavily once more. “The English are fools; they’ll lose Ireland if they go on like this. Do they even want it? Do they even know what they want? Ach, the Protestants will die of fright in their beds and serve them right!”
One afternoon, tired of sitting in the Imperial Bar reading the newspaper while the kittens played with his shoelaces and romped on the carpet, the Major set out for a walk in the company of Haig, a red setter. On his way across the fields he passed the grey stone buildings that before he had only seen from a distance, pointed out to him by Edward as the home of his ungrateful tenants. There was no sign of life: a dilapidated farmhouse built of loosely matched grey stones rising out of a yard of dried mud, once grass perhaps but long since worn into deep ruts. For a moment he considered having a look round, but as he climbed over a stile and made his way along the edge of a cornfield (the corn was still as green as grass) a dog started barking angrily; then another took up the cry, and another, and he imagined he could see a grim face staring at him from a window, and then, all around him, dragging on chains somewhere out of sight behind walls, beyond hedges, inside closed doors, a whole pack of dogs was fiendishly barking.
After he had crossed two more fields and a stream a gravel road came into sight which the Major judged would take him into Kilnalough. The day had turned chilly now that the sun was declining. The thin grey smoke of turf-fires rose from one or two of the chimneys of Kilnalough, very faint against the opal sky to the west where there were no clouds; the horizon looked very cold and clear, as if it were already winter. He shivered. Winter 1919. A peacetime winter: skating on frozen ponds, roasted chestnuts? He had forgotten what winter in peacetime was like and through the unbroken bubble of bitterness in his mind, inches thick like plate glass, he tried to visualize it. But the war was still there. He had not yet finished with it. Although he no longer attended morning prayers to be confronted by the photographs from Edward’s memorial, there were other photographs, smudged and accusing, that still continued even now to appear on the front page of the Weekly Irish Times. The harvest was not yet complete. And what about the survivors? The pathetic letters inquiring about pensions and employment printed in “Our Servicemen’s Bureau” and signed WHIZZ BANG, DUBLIN TOMMY, DELVILLE WOOD, 1916, IMPERIAL RULE, DUBLIN and suchlike? When would it all be finished and forgotten?
On his way down the main street he was hailed by a man whom he at first did not recognize. Nearer at hand, though, he recalled the dapper appearance and the obsequious smile: it was Mr Devlin, Sarah’s father. He had been spotted by Sarah from her bedroom window. She was bored and had nothing to do, confined to bed by a slight chill, it was nothing really, the doctor said, but the Major knew how young people were... they were inclined to be fretful. She was over the worst, of course, thanks very much, but she was so highly strung...In short, she had asked him to ask the Major, if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition (he needn’t stay more than a minute—it was more for