Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [39]
Of course he had heard of it, he assured her smiling. That was the treacherous attack by Irish hooligans on the British Army so busily engaged in defending Ireland against the Kaiser.
“Did Ireland ask to be defended?”
“Whether they asked for it or not they obviously wanted it, since so many Irishmen were fighting in the army.”
“Obviously? Nothing was less obvious! The Irish people weren’t even consulted. No one asked them anything. Why should it make any difference to them whether they were invaded by the Germans or by the British? It might even be better to be subject to the Germans; at least it would make a change...” And the Major was quite wrong in saying that the heroes of the Easter Rising were hooligans. On the contrary, there were many gentlemen among these patriots. Did he know nothing at all? How ignorant the English (only politeness, she laughed, prevented her from saying “the enemy”), how ignorant the English were. Had he even heard of the débutante Countess Markievicz who with a pistol in her belt defended the College of Surgeons and was sentenced to death for shooting at a gentleman looking out of the window of the Unionist Club (even though the shot missed)? Or did he think that Joseph Plunkett, jewels flaring on his fingers like a Renaissance prince and who was, in fact, the son of a papal count, did he think that this man was a hooligan? Already doomed with T.B., he had got up out of his bed to fight; did that make him sound like a treacherous criminal? Did the Major know that Joseph Plunkett got married to Grace Gifford (a beautiful young aristocrat whose Protestant family disowned her, naturally, the pigs) by the light of a candle held by a British soldier in the chapel of Kilmainham gaol in the early hours of the morning shortly before he faced a firing-squad? Did that sound like the behaviour of a hooligan?
“Indeed, no,” said the Major smiling. “It sounds more like the last act of an opera composed by a drunken Italian librettist.”
“Ah, it’s impossible to argue with someone so cynical!”
“But you ask me to believe in these operatic characters when one reads entirely different things in the newspaper. Just the other day I was reading about a woman who had pig rings put in her buttocks for supplying milk to the police...and then there was the brass band that started a rough house with the police, using their instruments as clubs... and a donkey stabbed to death for carrying turf to the R.I.C. barracks and labelled as a traitor to Ireland!”
“Such things are invented by the British to discredit us. We’ve no way of knowing whether the newspapers tell the truth. Everything belongs to the British in Ireland. Everything.”
There was silence for a moment. Sarah’s flush had faded but she still looked rather fretful. She said abruptly: “Did you know that Edward thinks you a cold person, Brendan?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” said the Major, surprised.
“I think it’s because you’re always so very polite and distant.” She smiled at the Major’s look of concern and shook her head. “However, I told him I thought quite the opposite ...in fact, I told him I thought you were probably as soft as a steamed pudding.”
“That doesn’t sound very complimentary, I must say. But how do you know what Edward thinks of me? You said he was always unfriendly to you. I thought you never saw him.”
“Oh, in Kilnalough one meets everyone,” Sarah said vaguely. “One couldn’t avoid people even if one wanted to. Now do stop looking so uneasy. Close the door and come and sit here on the bed. Don’t be silly, you don’t have to be paying any attention to him (my father, I mean)...What, you’re off already? Don’t say I’ve offended you again!” And she broke into peals of laughter that rang pleasantly in the Major’s ears all the way home.
But before he reached the Majestic a disturbing thought occurred to him. Could it be that Dr Ryan had been talking about Sarah and not about Angela with his “chill” and his “touch of fever” and his “father as spineless