Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [92]
To his surprise Edward nodded gloomily. “I thought as much, but I wasn’t sure. Now I shall have to do something.”
“What will you do?”
“God knows. I shall have to stop them one way or another.”
“Why not just let them take it! They must need it badly if they come out to cut it at night.”
“That’s quite out of the question. It’d never do to let them know that they can get away with stealing my property. The whole bally place would be stripped in two shakes.”
“Oh, surely not.”
“Look, it’s not my fault they cleared off. If they want to follow the wretched Shinners then let the Shinners feed them. Another thing, the corn isn’t even properly ripe yet. Any fool can see that.”
“I suppose they can’t wait,” said the Major with a sigh. “Mind you, I agree that it’s their own fault.”
“Really, Brendan, there’s such a thing as law and order, you know. If the country’s in such a mess at the moment it’s because people like you and I have been slack about letting the blighters get away with it.”
“Oh, hang law and order! Two miserable fields of corn which the poor beggars planted themselves anyway. You don’t mind letting them go hungry so long as your own pious principles are satisfied.”
There was a sudden silence. The Major was as surprised at his outburst as Edward. Edward flushed but said nothing.
He must have brooded about the matter, however, because after lunch he took the Major aside and told him that he would try to make arrangements to have it harvested and milled by people in Kilnalough and then distributed to the people round about who most needed it. He would also make sure that Dr Ryan and the parish priest heard of his intentions, so that they could warn the people to leave the corn alone until it was ripe. That way they wouldn’t be obliged to break the law, nor would his own “pious principles” (he smiled wryly) be offended. He had already sent Murphy into Kilnalough with the news.
For some time the Major had been impermeable to the rumours that circulated in the Majestic, having had his fill of them in the damp of the trenches where they grew like mushrooms. But now he found himself listening again, since the old ladies gobbled them up greedily and loved to share them with him (it was a mystery where they originated unless they were somehow generated by the revolutionary sentiments said to be bubbling in Murphy’s brain). The I.R.A. had planned to assassinate His Majesty, Miss Archer (no relation) assured him one day, with a dart tipped with curare fired from a blow-pipe by some form of savage imported specially from the jungles of Brazil.
“Oh, what nonsense!” the Major chaffed her (she was one of his favourites). “I’m surprised at you, Sybil, for believing such a cock-and-bull story.”
“But it’s perfectly true. I have it on the best authority.”
“Oh really!”
Miss Archer lowered her voice. “D.C.”
“D.C.?”
She clicked her tongue, despairing of the Major’s power to comprehend. “Dublin Castle.”
“Absolute rot,” laughed the Major.
But no, Miss Archer insisted that it was nothing less than the truth. And that wasn’t the half of it...Not only had the I.R.A. planned this dastardly act, they had come within a whisker of carrying it out. The Brazilian savage, wearing his own feathers and disguised as a tipster, had been placed beside the course at Ascot. As the Royal Carriage swept towards him he had raised his blow-pipe. The King had come nearer and nearer, had drawn level, the savage’s cheeks were actually bulging when...he had been taken by a fit of coughing (unused to the climate, he had died of pneumonia two days later), the dart had slithered out of the pipe and stuck harmlessly in the turf! Miss Archer had abandoned the pretence of seriousness and finished her story in a gale of maidenly giggles, her dim, rheumy, once beautiful eyes streaming with tears of laughter, so that the Major no longer knew whether she had ever intended him to take it seriously. Perhaps she no longer knew herself.
“I shall never believe another word you say,” the Major told her sternly.
There was another