Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [60]
Below, two identical girls were sitting on a studded sofa with books in their hands. Opposite them, in an armchair but sitting very straight, was a small elderly lady wearing a lace cap. Her milky eyes were directed towards the girls, while her hands, constantly moving and apparently disconnected from the rest of her body, knitted away tirelessly in her lap.
“Are you sitting up straight, Charity?”
“Yes, Granny.”
“Faith?”
“Yes, Granny.”
The two golden heads turned towards each other with their tongues out.
“A lady never slouches in her chair as if she had no backbone.”
“No, Granny.”
Faith let herself sink back with her mouth open, miming inertia, while Charity shook with silent laughter.
“Sit still!”
“We are bally well sitting still.”
“Don’t answer back! You’ll be kept here all afternoon unless you behave. Charity, are your knees together?”
“Yes, Granny.”
Charity pulled her skirt up over her knees and threw one leg over the arm of the sofa, exposing pink thighs.
“I’m sitting up straight, Granny,” she said, and snatching a pencil from Faith’s hand began to puff on it as if it were a cigarette-holder. While flicking the ash she happened to lift her eyes and saw Mr Noonan.
“Good girl,” said the old lady.
The twins stared up at Mr Noonan and he stared down at the twins. At length Charity said: “There’s an old man with an umbrella in the room, Granny.”
“An old man? What does he want?”
“What d’you want?” demanded Faith firmly.
“Where is Mr Spencer? I won’t stand for it,” stuttered Mr Noonan furiously. “I’m looking for...I shall speak to my solicitor!”
“What is he doing up near the ceiling?” the old lady wanted to know.
“We’re in the library, Granny. There’s a sort of balcony...”
“Well, whoever you are, I’m sure you won’t find your solicitor up there. Show him to the door, Faith. You stay here, Charity, it doesn’t take both of you.”
Faith was already half-way up the spiral iron staircase to the gallery. Without a word she grasped Mr Noonan by the sleeve and towed him back the way he had come, down a dark flight of stairs, along a corridor, through a deserted cocktail bar, into the lobby and up to the front door which, with an immense effort, she dragged open.
“Peeping Tom!” she hissed and, placing a hand on his back, gave him a violent shove which propelled him out into the rain at a reluctant gallop.
A few moments later Edward, looking out of a window without a pane on the first floor and thinking that all this rain would give his Daimler a good wash, noticed the elderly telegraph boy hurrying away down the drive. The fellow halted for a moment and shook his umbrella angrily at the Majestic.
“Good heavens!” murmured Edward. “I don’t suppose that could have been old what’s-his-name, by any chance...”
* * *
THE HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM
Irish Ladies’ Terrible Experiences
Reuter’s representative has just had an interview with two Irish girls, the Misses May and Eileen Healy, who have just reached London, having escaped from Kieff with nothing but the clothes—thin linen dresses—they were wearing.
They tell a terrible story of the Bolshevist outrage, of which they were personal witnesses. They said that the mental strain was awful and one, Miss Eileen Healy, has lost 3 st. in weight.
“In a side building, a sort of garage, I saw a wall covered with blood and brains. In the middle was cut a channel or drain, full of congealed blood, and just outside in the garden, one hundred and twenty-seven nude, mutilated corpses, including those of some women, who had been flung into a hole...
“Ten Bolshevists occupied rooms next mine. There was a beautiful drawing-room filled with valuable furniture. There, night after night, they carried on drunken orgies of an unspeakable character with women whom they brought from the town, and I lay on my bed with the door barricaded until from sheer exhaustion I went to sleep...