Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [58]
Edward’s feelings were virtually a mirror-image of Mr Noonan’s. He had a profound lack of interest in money, never having been sufficiently short of it, and was positively chilled by the idea that his daughter-in-law (buxom and rosy-cheeked) should be represented on packets of flour available to the grubby fingers of the populace for a penny or two. He was by no means anxious to dissolve the “breeding” of the Spencers in a solution of Irish “bog Catholicism” (a daughter of Cardinal Newman might have been another matter). In these troubled times one clearly had to close the ranks, not open them...or so he thought as he set off to wander around the corridors of the Majestic in search of the “dratted” elderly telegraph boy (he supposed it was a telegraph boy). The two men failed to meet immediately, however, since Mr Noonan, tired of waiting, had struck off towards the west wing, Edward towards the east.
Little by little, as they moved back towards each other, Edward’s thoughts turned to the main and unbridgeable chasm, the Roman Catholicism of the Noonans: the unhealthy smell of incense, the stupefying and bizarre dogmatic precepts, the enormous families generated by ignorance and a doctrine of “the more souls the better” (no matter whether their corporeal envelopes went barefoot or not), the absurd squadron of saints buzzing overhead like chaps in the Flying Corps supposedly ever ready to lend a hand to the blokes on the ground (and each with his own speciality), the Pope with all his unhealthy finery, the services in a gibberish of Latin that no one understood, least of all the ignorant, narrow-minded and hypocritical priests. Well, such thoughts do not actually have to occur by a process of thinking; they run in the blood of the Protestant Irish.
At this point he found himself at the foot of the staircase leading to the servants’ quarters and remembered that the maids had been complaining about a supposed colony of rats. There was no shortage of them in the cellars, of course, but who ever heard of rats in the upper storeys? The whole thing was plainly nonsense; all the same, since he was there on the spot he might as well have a look round.
The inspection did not take long and it came as no surprise to him that no rodent crossed his path. He peered with distaste into the cramped little rooms with their sloping ceilings. They had a curious and alien smell which he could not quite identify; perhaps it came from a lingering of cheap perfume on Sunday clothes (seeing the maids out of uniform in Kilnalough, he very often failed to recognize them and stared in surprise if they acknowledged him). Wherever it came from, he associated it with the distressingly vulgar holy pictures on the wall, with the chocolate-coloured rosary beads on the table, with the crucifix above the bed.
“Education is what these people need. And they think they’re fit to govern a country!”
Satisfied that the rats were imaginary, Edward resumed his languid search for the telegraph boy.
Mr Noonan had just had a curious experience. He had met a maidservant hurrying down a corridor carrying a tray of teacups and toasted scones together with a large and (it must be admitted) desirable seed-cake. He had beckoned her, summoned her to his side. “Come here to me now,” he had said to her. But, to his surprise, hardly had the girl seen him when she turned and fled back the