Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [85]
“If I get dry rot I’m done for,” Edward continued as if still discussing his health.
“Oh?”
“Bally place’ll fall about m’ears.”
One hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three...The next room had no brass number screwed to the door but once there had been one; its darker shadow remained on the varnished wood. It was at this door that Edward halted. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
“In there?” exclaimed Charity, mystified. It was dark inside. Edward crossed to the window and threw open the closed shutters. Abruptly everything took on shape, colour and meaning. Although he had never been here before, everything he saw was perfectly familiar to the Major. He knew whose room this had been. His heart sank.
The twins had not been in here before. The room seemed to be occupied. They peered around curiously but already their excitement was melting into suspicion. They looked at the unmade bed, sheets and eiderdown roughly pulled up as if the chambermaid had not had time to make it properly. They wrinkled their noses at the pitcher and bowl, the sponge dried as hard as the pumice-stone beside it. They eyed their lovely reflections in the mirror and looked at the dressing-table with its silver hairbrushes and the silver frame containing a photograph of, well...the truth had dawned on them now but for a moment they were speechless with disbelief.
“Now let’s see...where...?” Edward said quietly. As he spoke the Major glimpsed a shadow of pain, as if he had been hurt behind the eyes (but why did he have to bring me? he wondered bitterly). Edward stepped over to the wardrobe and opened it experimentally. It was empty. A large white moth flew wearily out for a little way until it vanished from the air under a vicious downward smash of Faith’s tennis racket. A puff of powder from its wings hung in the room.
“Daddy, how could you?” cried Charity. “You surely don’t mean us to wear Angela’s things!” Edward said nothing, but his face darkened as he turned away and looked round the room. His eye came to rest on a chest of dark polished oak which, to the Major’s excited imagination, looked remarkably like a coffin. In fact it was an old dower chest which had probably belonged to the Spencers for generations. Edward had dug up the old metal clasp and lifted the lid; inside it was lined with another kind of wood, lighter and fragrant, cedar-wood perhaps. Another lid was lifted. In a moment Edward was scooping piles of neatly folded clothing on to the carpet.
“We can’t, Daddy, it’s too creepy,” insisted Faith, wiping the strings of the tennis racket on the bedclothes to clean off the minced remains of the moth.
“Not a corpse’s clothes,” pleaded Charity. “It’s awful. Just the thought of it makes me feel funny.”
“We must save money, my dear. Now be a good girl and take your dress off so we can try them on. If they don’t fit we’ll have to get the cook to work with her needle and thread—they tell me she’s very handy at that sort of thing. Besides, you’d do well to take a few lessons from her while you have the chance since you don’t seem to have learned much at school...One of these days you’ll have homes of your own and maybe, I don’t know, the way things are going you’ll not always have servants to look after you...in any case,” he added weakly, “a bit of sewing never did anyone any harm.”
“I think I’m going to faint,” Faith said grimly and sat down heavily on the bed, making its springs creak.
“Ugh! That’s the corpse’s death-bed you’re sitting on, Faithy.”
“You’ll speak of Angela with respect,” snapped Edward, “or you’ll both get a hiding and be sent to your rooms.”
“Why me? It was Catty that said it,” Faith said grumpily. “And what’s more I am feeling sick and will probably start spewing any moment.”
“Faith, don’t be disgusting,” Charity said, grinning in spite of herself. “You’ve started me feeling peculiar too.”
“Shut up, both of you, and pick one of these dresses before I lose my patience. They’re as good as new and some of them