Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [95]
“Oh, how many times have we got to tell you? For the pattern. Read it to him again, and for heaven’s sake listen this time!”
“‘Bathing-Suit 1149 (a Practical Bathing-Suit). This is a remarkably simple pattern. The knickers are cut in one piece and joined on to a plain bodice, while the overdress is on the lines of a coat-frock, with a back...’”
(In summer such fires are always possible. There had been a spell of warm, dry weather; the earth was brittle and broke into powder underfoot. But the Major did not really believe that it had been caused accidentally. It had started in the middle of the night and no fire was ever generated by the rays of the moon. Edward was convinced that it was the work of the Sinn Feiners, who were anxious to turn the peasants against him. If they became hungry enough they could be persuaded to do anything. It seemed the only realistic explanation.)
“‘...with a back, front, short sleeve, and straight stole collar. A plain belt buttoned over in front holds in the fullness round the waist, and gives the suit a neat finishing touch. (To the knee, with shoes and a cap.) Pattern eightpence.’”
“But why tell me all this?”
“Faithy, I swear that I’ll kill him if he says that just once more...Because we want eightpence to buy the blessed pattern with!”
“Certainly,” chuckled the Major, fumbling in his pocket. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
The Major had not yet managed to divest himself of his peculiar habit of patrolling restlessly from one room to another. Wandering aimlessly one day, he entered the writing-room, which was hardly ever used these days, and had a look round. The walls were panelled in dark oak but partly obscured by vast greyish tapestries depicting hunting scenes. Above the mantelpiece, for example, stretching up to the dim ceiling was an immense doe lying on its side on a table laden with fruit and round loaves of bread. One of the animal’s hind legs was twisted up at an angle to the table while in the foreground the graceful head lolled on its long neck. Once scarlet, the blood which dripped picturesquely from the slit white gullet was now as grey as the fruit on the table, as grey as dust. Tables, chairs and desks were distributed here and there in clusters.
A faint sound alerted him. Edward was fast asleep in a cavernous winged armchair of worn leather, his head lolling on one side, mouth open, face collapsed by weariness, by the beginnings of old age and despair. The Major stood there for a long moment in the silent room, appalled to see Edward looking so vulnerable, so disarmed. Then, as he was preparing to tiptoe away, a black shadow slipped from beneath a dusty escritoire and settled itself comfortably in Edward’s abandoned lap (for the great army of cats from the Imperial Bar had recently begun to commandeer certain other little-frequented rooms in the Majestic). Edward woke up, saw the Major watching him, muttered: “Fell asleep,” and cleared his throat with a long weary hooting sound which might have been the cry of a dying animal. Neither of them could think of anything to say.
Since the burning of the fields the weather had taken a turn for the worse: perhaps this was adversely affecting Edward’s spirits. In any case, it was clearly no comfort to him that the burned crop would very likely have been flattened by the rainstorms that howled around the Majestic and left shining puddles on the floor of the ballroom, even if it had escaped the fire. The storms retired to lash and grumble their way over the Irish Sea towards Wales, leaving a steady, interminable downpour that seemed to hang from the sky like a curtain of glass beads.
“Where’s my revolver?” demanded Edward one morning of one of the maids, having spent an hour rummaging through various drawers in his study.
“The cook has it, sir. She does have it safe in the press in the kitchen.”
“What the devil does she have it for?”
“She does be afraid of the Volunteers.”
Edward wasted no time in recovering the weapon—it was covered in floury fingerprints and wrapped in buttered