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By Root 1031 0

assured his father that the priest was nothing to do with him) and theft (some apples had been stripped from trees in the orchard). Other charges were being considered and had there been a magistrate to hear them this sudden sprouting of litigation might have grown so dense and confusing as to become, inside a few days, entirely beyond resolution. But there wasn’t. This representative of the foreign oppressor had received a number of menacing letters from the I.R.A. and had wisely retired. A new R.M. was expected but in the meantime criminals of all hues, includ-ing the twins, were running the streets at liberty. In fact Fr O’Meara had learned with satisfaction that while he was still removing the gravel from his grazed palms these two violent girls had been stripped and caned by their father as if they’d been boys; the thought of this retribution did something to mollify him. As for Sarah, although she had to admit that the “odious brats” had some spirit, she sympathized entirely with the unfortunate priest. Almost everything with those two girls, she said, had a habit of beginning amusingly and ending painfully.

Now, had that satisfied the Major’s curiosity? If he wanted to hear the other versions he would have to come to Kilnalough, because she was getting writer’s cramp...Yes, and as for his question about Edward, she never saw him these days...Since Angela was dead she no longer had any reason to go to the Majestic. Indeed, she was bored, frightfully bored, and looking forward to being amused by the Major... “Amuse me, dear Major, amuse me!” Life was intolerable in Kilnalough.

But wait! She had an idea. The Major must reply and tell her precisely, yes or no, whether he believed the stories about Ripon and the twins. He must do so immediately. It was essential, so that she’d know what sort of man the Major was... though, of course, she really knew that already. Still, he must write and tell her anyway. And by the way, perhaps she would visit him in London after all. There was a chance she would go to a clinic in France for a while. Her walking had improved greatly and she wasn’t nearly such a “miserable cripple” as she had been when the Major knew her. She still, in spite of his dull letters, thought of him with affection and remained truly his.

The Major didn’t know what to do about this letter. If he said he did believe the stories about Ripon and the twins she would accuse him of being “as literal as a lump of dough.” If he said he didn’t, she would almost certainly accuse him of having no sense of fun, no imagination. After two or three days’ deliberation he wrote back to say that he believed parts of them (and enjoyed the other parts). A postcard was all he got in reply. It accused him of having made a cautious and typically British compromise. And it ended with the words: “I despise compromises!”

All the time this correspondence was taking place the Major’s aunt continued to linger in a twilight stage between living and dying which he found most unsatisfactory. At the time of her first haemorrhage a night-nurse had been taken on, a sombre lady of middle age who had a habit of enjoining his aunt to “put a brave face on it, my dear,” commenting that “Madam’s pain won’t last for ever,” or informing her that her “only hope is in the Lord,” while discreetly averting her face to eat steadily throughout the night. Though most of this woman’s remarks had a religious cast and few of them were sequential she occasionally spoke of other deaths she had witnessed, invariably those of ladies in comfortable circumstances. One of them, a Mrs Baxter, had “died in the arms of Jesus.” Another had provided her with food that was unsuitable. Yet another had beautiful daughters who “went to dance at balls during their mother’s agony.” One story she often repeated concerned the lovely and youthful Mrs Perry, far gone with tuberculosis, whose husband, a ravening brute, had claimed his marital rights until the very end, causing her to leave the sick-room for hours at a time, so that very often it would be nearly dawn before she was